After a decade or so of teaching various subjects to
adolescents (English, math, Latin, some science and history;
usually middle school, some high school) I'm now an
Upper Elementary
teacher at The Post Oak School,
and am enjoying it thoroughly.
For two years (2006-08) I worked as Director of External Affairs for Post Oak, where I got to
"spread the word" about Montessori education through the school's weekly
newsletter,
web site, press releases, and parent education.
I'm also a Community Associate for Baker Residential College
at Rice, which lets me pass on my worldly wisdom, such as it is,
to college undergraduates. I've now spent over twenty years working
with the Baker Shakespeare festival
as actor, director, designer, and adviser (not, thankfully, all at once!)
Several
college classes or literary web pages have linked to my
online collection of papers and essays, Grist
for the Mill. I'm proud and glad to share.
Playing
That's "playing" as in "plays" -- I'm a great
fan of live theatre, whether acting, directing, or sitting in
the audience.
Rice Players gave me my
real start in acting (and directing!), and still do great shows;
including letting me direct (as an undergraduate) Alan Ayckbourn's
Woman in Mind (Fall 1990) in
Farnsworth Pavilion
and (as a professional) David Auburn's Proof (Fall 2007)
and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
(Fall 2009) in Hamman Hall.
Baker
Shakespeare Theatre is Houston's oldest Shakespeare festival
(five years senior to that other one).
I've worked with "BakerShake", as undergraduate, alumnus,
and college associate, sometimes acting and sometimes directing,
each season since 1988: over half my life! I'm particularly proud
of my six directing stints: 1997's The Winter's Tale,
1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2003's King
Lear, 2005's The Taming of the Shrew,
2006's Cymbeline, and 2009's The Tempest.
Now let me tell you about my idea for Macbeth....
I also used to direct musicals for the adolescent program at
St. Catherine's Montessori:
Little Shop of Horrors, Into the Woods,
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,
The Wizard of Oz, and Godspell.
Fun, but a lot of work.
Computing
I've worked as a web designer, technical editor, desktop publisher,
and database engineer... many of which paid more than education, but were far less fun.
I love Apple computers: my
personal machine is "Prospero," a dual-quad-core 2.26
GHz (Intel) Mac Pro.
For travel and note-taking, I have "Ariel," an older
1.2 GHz 12" iBook.
I'm a huge fan of Adobe's Creative Suite of software
(Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator),
to the extent that I attended a
mogo™media conference
in Chicago back in 2007 to learn new tips and tricks.
The software is handy for school newsletters, classroom handouts,
or role-playing game materials, and every time I try a new project
I learn some new feature or technique. Maybe someday I'll also
pick up Flash or Dreamweaver as well....
I used to be an evangelist for
Palm personal organizers (Palm III, IIIx, and T3), but now
I've gone over to the iPhone platform.
I was once the sort of person whose wallet was stuffed full of little,
easily forgotten or misplaced scraps of paper: no more, thanks to
"Umbriel," my valiant 16GB iPhone.
Fun gadgets: I'm having fun playing with a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet
and my Panasonic DMC-FZ20 digital camera.
I suppose I should mention it here, since it runs on Linux: my
wife and I also couldn't live without our TiVo.
I don't think I've watched live TV in months, and it's splendid to
have the latest NewsHour
or Daily Show
(or Doctor Who
and Torchwood!)
on tap at any hour of the day or night. (And don't forget the guilty pleasure of
Hawaii Five-O!)
Frolicing
I have a number of other hobbies I enjoy:
Reading: I read voraciously, when I have time -- fantasy and
science fiction, mysteries, history, biography, science and
technology, news, commentary on current issues and events, etc.
My Amazon wishlists are huge!
Role-playing Games: Not the computerized variety, but the
original pencil-and-paper kind. Okay, they're a bit geeky, but
wonderful exercise for imagination and improvisation. My favorite
system is still GURPS,
which I used to play with a small group
(now, alas, dispersed). However, it's definitely much easier to find players for
Dungeons & Dragons,
which I've played on-and-off-again since elementary school, and
now referee (fourth edition) for a group composed entirely of Jenn's relatives.
I also remain an unmitigated Traveller
fanboy, feel fond of Shadowrun's
background if not its mechanics, and have become intrigued by Savage Worlds.
Cat Ownership: "Pirate" found us on
Pirate's Beach
in Galveston (thus her name) in 2005. We think she's
Burmese;
we know she's adorable. She can be a bit shy with strangers,
but if you visit she might show you her trick wheelbarrow-walking
up the banister.
Recumbent Bicycling: The picture shows me on my
Linear"Mach III" CLWB
recumbent bicycle "Carol" (short for "Carolus
Linearus"; yes, it's a bad biology-history pun.),
during the 2000 MS 150 charity
bike ride from Houston to Austin. I've participated five
times since.
Music: I sing (high baritone),
play the Renaissance recorder (C fingering only),
and am an indifferent player on the
highland bagpipe.
In the fall of 2008 we attended the Texas
Toot and had lots of fun with early music.
For Christmas (2008), my wife bought me an acoustic guitar: we'll see where that goes.
Before I die, I'd love to add
the Renaissance crumhorn and
the Australian didgeridoo,
and the electronic theremin.
Oh, and it would be cool to do central Asian throat singing too....
Woodturning: My wife and I bought a Jet 1236
lathe a while back. We're stil relative beginners, but have had fun
exploring by making palm gavels for Post Oak, gladius hilts for
Cymbeline, bowls for ourselves, etc.
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Last Modified: Tue 16 March 2010
