| About Me ~~~~my story |
---- |  |
| About Me ~~~~my story |
---- | |
I was born in 1935 in northern Ohio and was raised there by 3 strong, competent, caring and intelligent women: my grandmother and her 2 daughters, my mom and aunt...one of my earliest memories is of my grandfather`s dead body being carried out of our home, which he had built years before on our family paradise of northern Ohio woods with the Chagrin River running thru it...outside, shortly after, on a blustery Fall day I watched these 3 dear women holding hands and crying and crying with the leaves swirling all around... with bankruptcy and our paradise lost we moved into a small apartment in Cleveland... my mom and aunt went out and worked to support us while my grandmother stayed home, taking care of me, doing the cooking, cleaning... I was 3 or 4 at the time... I never saw my mom or aunt ever cry again either...............
|
 |
|
Prosperity returned in the late 1940`s with a house in Shaker Heights, my mom and aunt both married and I was sent to private schools and summer camps.....my childhood influences were predominantly feminine and as a child I always felt loved, was treated with kindness&respect and encouraged to make my own choices in life...
| In the Fall of 1953 I started my Freshman year at CU in wonderful Boulder, Colorado, which at that time had a population of around 5,000... that Fall the pendulum of American politics was still swinging rapidly away from the values and visions of Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt, which had been those of my family and thus my own, and I was immediately thrust into the the realities of American politics in Freshman English . | |
I spent a good part of my years at CU and most of my energy exploring and climbing in the mountains of the West and was not a very serious student until my Senior year............ |
 |
Up to this time mathematics had always been a dull but not difficult subject for me, but then I took a required Calculus course my Senior year from a visiting Professor from England, Werner Rogosinski, an extraordinary man...a German Jew, who had been given haven in England from the Nazi thugs in his homeland and in his teaching stressed the aesthetic and philosophical sides of mathematics, which was quite the "opening experience" for me...so I went on to study mathematics as a graduate student at UW in vibrant 1960`s Seattle...what a hopeful and exhilarating time this was! |
|
|
Hanging out in the coffee houses in the U district, Against-The-War Marches, Peace Vigils, falling in love with Joy, marriage, our first child in 1967, moving to Victoria, BC in 1968 where we had 2 more children in the early 70`s and where I was a prof in the UVic math department for the next 25 years until taking an early retirement in 1993, the same year Joy and I went our separate ways---so much of my life has been spent around and in Universities, which early on were real havens for me, beacons of light really---but later at UVic, as the early passion of Pythagoreanism grew cold in the professionalism of academia, the U became more and more of a place to escape from---yet I remain in awe of 20th century mathematics&physics and continue to see our Universities as among our most tolerant and progressive institutions---it`s just that the U scene is not where it`s at for me any more ... nowadays I spend much of the year out here in the boonies in northeastern Washington .... |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
please stop scrolling....there`s no need to use the scroll bar below here
