About Me

Like Walt Whitman, I "start[ed] from fish-shape Paumanok"--the Indian name for Long Island. I grew up in Bayport, the small town on the Great South Bay where the Hardy Boys solved mysteries (though somehow I never met them). My youth was the stuff of a Norman Rockwell painting: Little League, Cub Scouts, altar boy service, the school band, plays, sports teams, student government, and lots of time outdoors.

I moved to New England at the age of 18 and between college and work, I have lived here ever since. I've made my living as a schoolmaster for more than a quarter-century now, teaching history, government, and literature courses in a boarding school in Connecticut. I spend some time coaching and handling administrative duties, too, and ride herd on a few dozen adolescent residents in the biggest dormitory on campus. It seems, as the novelist John Barth once put it, "there is chalk dust on the sleeve of my soul."

I possess a well-used passport: I travel all over the globe when school is not in session. I am something of a wandering scholar as well, as I am usually enrolled in a university course and/or taking advantage of online educational offerings. It would be fair to say I am a media ommivore--reading far too many books and periodicals and digesting lots of film, television, theater, podcasts, and music.

You can read my professional biography here if you are dying to know more.

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revised June 29, 2014