About Me

I am fortunate enough to be a man with one love and many passions: my wife Christine is the absolute love of my life. My passions are literature, music, writing, and woodworking. And I really cannot talk about my woodworking unless I first talk about my writing, because in a sense the one led me to the other.

In school I always wrote better than my peers, and as the years went by I became more and more interested in the thought of pursuing it as a career. For a long time, as a young adult and even for the first half of my marriage, I considered myself as one who had two jobs: the one that paid the rent, and the one I pursued in the wee hours of the morning before going to work. I wrote quite a few short stories and two full-length novels in those years, getting up at 3:45 each morning and writing from 5:00 to 8:00 each morning before going to work. And, in all honesty, had I succeeded in that venture, it is not likely that I ever would have picked up a woodworking tool.

What led me to the woodworking in the beginning was a simple need for an item I could not buy elsewhere. In the first instance it was some simple wooden speaker stands that I could see in my mind’s eye, but not in any store I visited! Later, the projects became more involved, as did my involvement in the craft itself, until it had gotten to a point where I began to view it as a vocation. For twenty-five years I had done nothing but work a job I hated and write in the wee hours of the morning, because I did not think there was anything else I could be passionate about. In 1991 I made an elaborate double-pedestal computer desk, using only a skill saw and an electric drill, and I thought then that I’d like to do it for a living, if only I could find a way to get a foot in the door.

I got my chance the following year when we got our home. “Let me get a table saw and some tools,” I told Christine, “and I will make for us something fine.” So, that is what I have done these last 20 years, and the writing was set aside, until my friend asked me to join him in this blogging adventure. Now I’m involved with two blogs: this one and CFT411 which is about all that’s new in the world of cabinetry and furniture.

I had originally intended this second blog to concern itself with thoughts and feelings about the art of woodworking, but as time went on, I found myself wanting, instead, to concentrate on life in general and politics in particular. “How it Began” deals more with the political aspect of this blog site, so I won’t add to it here.

The other thing I hope to accomplish with the blog site is a bit of life aroma therapy, AKA, taking time to smell the roses. As I was putting this blog site together I had a discussion online with a lady I’ve never met and may never meet. We were talking about a coffee press she’d just gotten and was enjoying. I told her that it sounded like just the sort of thing for one of those mornings when you’re on vacation, sitting on a patio somewhere (we love a resort in Tucson that is MADE for this). One of those days when you have all the time in the world to just talk and talk and talk. And watch the coffee do its thing. In talking to her about her coffee press, though, I knew that I was really talking much more about my own views on life. One of the most brilliant lines I ever read was from Gandhi. “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Perhaps we can find ways to explore that concept.