I want to say nothing on this topic, but if I get revved up 10,000 words might not be enough. I always have liked holding up the mirror to myself.
But I’m undistinguished. My adult life has been free of awards or fame. I’m another Baby Boomer, booming out of the hard coal region of Pennsylvania—Polka People—the very traditional Catholic Church, and schools that no longer exist. Given that, I try harder to make sense.
I attended Penn State, twice, and revered Coach Joe Paterno and took Bill Cosby for the funniest man in the world…until…much later….
At the same time I became an anti-Viet Nam War Conscientious Objector, preparing to go to prison or Canada rather than bear arms. By the age of 25 I’d been in 35 States and 4 provinces, mostly by hitch-hiking–I carry a collage of remembered conversations in moving vehicles from north of Edmonton to Portland Oregon to Ft. Lauderdale to Boston–that was the education I was really after–and did some kind of work in 6 or 7. For a couple years I carried everything I had in a bedroll and a small knapsack. I always crammed in a sheaf of writing and a copy of Tielhard de Chardin. I hung out with varied welcome in 3 or 4 communes, always with short hair and attitude that raised suspicions of me being some kind of undercover agent.
That was strange because I considered myself Radical, a person insisting that Americans should live by the principles of freedom and equality (and also by work), and if you called yourself a Christian you should do as Christ taught. Being a Leftist meant I included myself with some very very shaky people, but I made my choice after finding some individuals on the Left who were quiet, thoroughly reasonable, informed and self-aware, and everything people should be. They, and that, was what I aligned with.
I take great pride in having a great-grandfather who was an organizer in the United Mine Workers of America, a grandfather who died of black lung at the age of forty-two, and with a son in AFSME, I am the fourth in a five-generation run of union members.
I also attended New College, also twice. Incredible place. Incredible experience. Incredible education—respect for truth, no respect for cant.
I built farm silos, drove a truck, moved pianos, washed dishes, cooked, did farm labor and became a dairy herdsman until about the age of 32. Then God sent us computers and I became a programmer and an analyst for the next thirty years. What a godsend. If it hadn’t been for computers I’d have had to work for a living.
I fell under the spell of Tom Dooley and the Kingston Trio; after fourteen more years I learned to play the 5-string banjo. Dad’s advice was to learn the accordion. “Nobody here plays banjo,” he said, and he was right. That’s why it took fourteen years. I do old-timey, mostly clawhammer, and a version of three-finger I call Bluegrass for the Slow of Hearing.