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 A Small Gallery of Photos
Me as a gap-toothed 2nd grader, followed by a typically dreadful high school senior yearbook picture from 1967 that I will never live down. 
My, how quickly things change. 1973 in Boston, playing bass and auditioning for bands while presumably studying in a Gurdjieff group.
1988: picking up a friend at the airport, and with Cory, the first of my many fabulous Abyssianians, in her favorite perch on my shoulder.
I recently bought a decent digital camera, so if I get up the courage, I'll post a portrait or two of the crippled old fart I've become today. |
I was born and raised in a middle-class suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. California-ranch-style, Eisenhower-stable, white-bread-safe. None of that, however, prevented me from growing up seriously disturbed.
Despite my inner demons (or perhaps because of them), I took the bait of education. I was a National Merit Finalist in high school and tried gamely to study undergraduate psychology at Michigan State University and the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Behvioral psychology held little interest for me, however. I was studying psychology to try to save my own troubled life, but rats and mazes and white lab coats just didn't cut it. So, in 1970, when my first earth-shaking love affair caused astrology to thrust itself into my world, to my great surprise I found the insights more deeply relevant and illuminating than my psychology classes. Before long, I was drawing up charts and doing sessions for everyone I knew.
Ah, the halcyon days of youth. During the decade I was in Columbia (1968-1978), I was a member of an urban commune that bought a 300-acre farm and benefited greatly when friends started a non-commercial community radio station (KOPN, now 50,000 watts strong). I love community radio! In 1973 I went full-time as an astrologer, teaching classes and doing sessions to earn what was then a very meager living, and later played in a kick-ass Irish music band (hugs to my old compatriots in Swoop!).
In 1978, I moved to Minneapolis, and my astrological clientele gradually expanded throughout Minnesota and across the country, all the way to Los Angeles, where my Hollywood clients allowed me the unexpected privilege of experiencing the movie biz from behind the scenes. (Oh, the stories I could tell…)
Since then, I've authored two books, published many articles, and written more than 100 essays on astrology, spirituality, politics, and culture. Some of my writing, including newsletter commentaries, is available on this site.
I've been a contributing author to the journal The Mountain Astrologer throughout its history. I even did a stint as an Associate Editor from 2002-2004. TMA's publisher Tem Tarriktar was kind enough to publish a long interview with me in the January 2009 issue. (Many thanks to all the good folks at TMA for their longstanding friendship and support.) In 2005, I left Minnesota, leaving behind many dear beloveds and a longstanding clientele, to move halfway across the continent to Olympia, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. Then, after suffering the stroke in November, 2007, I moved to Florence, a very small town on the Oregon coast. I now live half a mile from the Pacific Ocean overlooking the Siuslaw River and the biggest sand dune I ever saw. Large flocks of blackbirds, seagulls, and Canada geese forage daily in my back yard.
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