History

I find it very helpful to reflect often and appreciate the paths I have chosen to take. Of course, I should take very little credit for those decisions as I feel they are mostly a combination of luck, intuition and my outlook at the time; all embraced by some sort of cosmic guidance.

I grew up in what was a small, quiet farm town in southeastern Massachusetts. Since the commuter train that connects Providence, Rhode Island to Boston went in, my small town has become a bedroom community of cul-de-sacs and half million dollar McMansions. The whole corridor between Boston and Providence has changed that way.

While I was growing up, I was blind to my parents desire to raise us in the country. They spent many years saving to get us there. It was their dream to live in an old house with a few acres in a small town. The three kids in our family are still drawn back to this place, this “home”. We come back for the smell of the old house during the summer’s humidity (this comes mostly from the ashes in the fireplace), the ever-burning small fire in the kitchen fireplace in the winter, , the creaky floors, the tick-tock of moms antique wooden clock on the kitchen wall, the pond in the backyard full of frogs…

My high school years were remarkably uneventful although I developed three wonderful friendships through a local church youth group. Together we became very good at being mischevious. I never learned how to study in high school; good grades came easily.

After finishing high school, I took a year off before heading off to college. It was the right thing for me to do. I had a job working at the local hospital as an orderly and that year helped me by allowing me to mature, play a bit (okay, play a lot) and save some money. I decided to go to a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin (Beloit College) (www.Beloit.edu). I started college with interests in art and science. I left with a degree in Biochemistry. As a New England boy, Wisconsin was a serious bit of driving from home. I ended up there at the suggestion of a private guidance counselor as the one assigned to me in high school was lame even on his good days.

Moving 1200 miles away to college helped me grow up and appreciate my intellect, especially at the college rathskellar. I almost flunked out my sophomore year because I never learned how to learn. I could listen and remember things but I could not integrate the pieces into the whole. It was demoralizing to have friends come to me for help and then get better scores on exams. I found it difficult to develop understanding from textbooks and instead learned to enjoy tinkering in a science lab. I found I was very good at explaining stuff if I could understand how to take it apart and put it back together again. I wrote an undergraduate thesis and graduated.

After graduating, I spent the beginning of a summer helping to restore an old playwrights house outside of Chicago and wondering what to do with my life. I had papered my office wall in college with rejection letters from all the biotech companies I had applied to. In late summer I received a call from my college mentor. He was going on sabattical to work in a research lab at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and needed a lab technician. Little did I know that this was the beginning of my career as a professional scientist. After my professors sabbatical ended I looked for other positions at the UW but none looked the least bit interesting. I ended up moving back to my folks house and taking a job, again as a lab technician, at Brown University in Providence, RI. I worked there for a bit over a year and, to my surprise, received a call from Bristol-Myers asking if I’d come for an interview in upstate New York. I took the job in Syracuse and within 14 years, I had relocated to Connecticut and then again to Seattle. Then the big BM asked me to relocate again to New Jersey. I looked out the window to the west, across the waters of Puget Sound at the snow covered Olympic Mountains and decided that I wasn’t ready to move again on a corporate whim. I really hadn't "sold my soul".

I stayed in Seattle and became a high school science teacher. This was more than a 50% reduction in salary. I must say that I have never worked so hard in my life for so little (in terms of my pay). How sad that our priorities as a country aren't where they should be. Switching careers was fairly easy for me because somewhere along the way (while living in Connecticut), I picked up a Masters in Science and Environmental Education and certified to teach. Call me crazy but I thoroughly enjoy high school age kids. My first teaching gig was teaching both regular Chemistry and super-duper advanced Biology in the International Baccalaureate Program in a northern suburb of Seattle. This curriculum is kind of like college in high school. It was intense for the kids but probably more intense for me. I gave up my life for the next two years until I had all the lessons developed. An opportunity arose to teach in the Seattle Public Schools in the neighborhood where I lived so that’s where I spent the last three years of my west coast teaching career. I really enjoyed my stint at Ballard High the most because of the ethnic diversity that existed. I was impressed at the quality and professionalism of the faculty and the kids were fun, lively and enjoyable to teach to.

Somewhere in between switching high schools, I met my wife. Next I knew, we had two beautiful children. My view of our city home and life changed. The buses on the street became louder and dirtier. The police and fire sirens became more frequent. The graffiti on our garage door spoke of gang turf issues. I wondered if the pop-pop-pop in the alley behind our house was fireworks or gunshots. My wife shared these concerns. We had both grown up in relatively rural areas and wanted our kids to do the same.

Our new home had to be on one coast or the other; I needed ocean nearby. 9-11 changed most all of us in some way; I felt I needed to be closer to my kin. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s, Seattle was a mecca for fun and I could always fly home if I wanted to. Now at 40, with children and having a choice, I wanted them to have the opportunity to grow up with space to run, night skies full of stars and woods to enjoy; probably most of the same things that my parents wanted for us as kids.

We sold everything before we moved. What we couldn’t sell we gave away. I camped out on Craig’s List (www.craigslist.org) and Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) for months getting rid of what I could. Craig’sList allows you to post things for sale on the internet, Freecycle allows you to post things you have to offer for free. We donated the rest to local charities. We sold our vehicles and our property. Our house went on the market the day after we left. With wet paint still on my hands, we boarded a shuttle for the airport.