Me

  • 15 Years of Sobriety— All Hail Alcoholics Anonymous

    Today marks 15 years of sobriety for me. I am not the most devout member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I do try to practice these principles in all my affairs. The “Big Book“, which is actually titled, “Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Recovered from Alcoholism” is one of the…

  • Billie Jean-Induced Crying Jags

    Like many of my agnates who were teenagers in the 1980s, I have a a long musical relationship with Michael Jackson. I appreciate him. And like most people all over the world, music is a nutty and mysterious trigger. Hearing AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells brings the scent of my friend Virgil’s 1980s basement space heater to my…

  • The Public Library + Me

    I was born in the Northview Heights Housing Project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is where Andrew Carnegie made most of his money and he built nine out of the 2,500 libraries that bore his name. At one point, the “Carnegie library system” was responsible for 75-80 percent of every library in the nation. In Pittsburgh,…

  • What I Learned From One Year on Fitbit

    From April 4, 2011 to April 4, 2012, I recorded pretty much every step I took and every thing I ate via the device and Web site called Fitbit. I am by no means going to go all Feltron on you, but I have some insights about myself, Fitbit, and the world at large, based…

  • Writing Down Who I Am

    Recently I published this: Statement of Personal Ethics, Potential Biases, and Possible Conflicts of Interest in order to explicitly state— for me and anyone interested in interacting with me— who I am. What moves me, where I’m coming from, how I get my money. Who I am in league with, and why. All of these…