A brief bio
"Every sensible person sincerely praises a bowl of
soup.
From cherries and apricots we make
pies."—Robert Walser.
I live in Marquette, Michigan
with my wife Cathy and our three sons, Jack, Evan, and Zane. Marquette lies on
the south shore of Lake
Superior in the north central of Michigan's brilliant Upper Peninsula. It is, quite simply, one
of the finest places in the United
States (and beyond), especially if—like my family and me—you enjoy the
outdoors. (Here are a few photos Iնe
made of scenic Marquette.) But we are
in the north up here. At a latitude of 46 degrees, 32 minutes, 47 seconds, weղe
closer to the Arctic
Circle than we are to the Tropic of Cancer (Minneapolis, by comparison,
is closer to the Tropic of Cancer). Weղe often billed as the second snowiest
city in the U.S. Weղe
farther north than the capital of
Canada; than the provincial capitals of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and
Nova
Scotia; and than Canada's largest city. And weղe
on roughly the same latitude line as Tiraspol (Moldova), Lausanne (Switzerland), Odessa (Ukraine), and Helena (Montana, U.S.A.).
But our weather is greatly tempered by Lake Superior, so our winters are much
milder than are the winters a few hundred miles to the west, in Minnesota and
North Dakota; we get almost none of the bitterly cold temperatures that they
endure for most of the winter. And there is no place in the entire world finer
than the U.P. from July through September.
I spent most of the first 21 years of my life on the edge of
the Great Plains, more
specifically, in the circle of radius 30 miles centered roughly on the midpoint
of the line connecting the Santee
(Sioux) Indian Reservation with the Winnebago
(Sioux) Indian Reservation. Cluster points within this circle, for me, were
Wausa, Nebraska
(my home from birth through age three); Norfolk, Nebraska (my
home from age three through age eight; here is
the house we lived in, photo taken on 5 August 2015, 43 years after we moved
out); Sioux City, Iowa
(my home from age nine through age twenty-one); and Yankton, South Dakota (home of both of my
grandmothers, many of my cousins, and my momճ hometown). Other than
occasional trips north (to fish) or west (to fish and backpack) or south and east (to Omaha or Des Moines or Kansas City; our
version of the Grand Tour),
my only time outside of this circle during my first twenty-one years was the
year we spent, after Norfolk and before Sioux City, in Emporia, Kansas, within
spitting distance of the geometric center of tornado
alley (and sure enough, right on cue, a killer
tornado rumbled over our apartment building in June of 1974). I turned nine
during the year we were in Emporia.
Eventually, I hope to add a few paragraphs about my
childhood, mostly as an excuse to give a ҳhout outӠto some old friends. But for now, and as a set-up to what
follows, I note that as a boy, I liked—in addition to all the usual things,
i.e., sports, breaking things, blowing stuff up, etc.—the outdoors. A lot. And other than a few fishing
holes and farm fields holding some pheasants
and quail,
the circle described above encloses, well, not a ton to excite the heart of an
outdoorsman. True, the west end of the circle marks the beginning of the
rolling hills and pine scrub that open up into the Sand Hills of Nebraska
(which, by my reckoning at least, is the most under-rated of America's
spectacular wild places—at heart, Iխ a Nebraska
boy), and thence the Badlands of South
Dakota. And the eastern most point of this circle lies roughly at the
midpoint of the unique and occasionally picturesque Loess Hills of Iowa. But within the
circle, where I spent most of my childhood, the outdoorsy pickings were, well,
not as abundant as they are further to the west and to the north.
So after finishing college, one
might think that, at age 21, I'd find myself, finally, in one of America's
great wild places. Instead, I decided to go to graduate school in Ames, Iowa. To be sure, Ames
is a fine town, but not exactly an outdoorsy Mecca. So after six years in
Ames—during which Cathy and I were married, I finished my Ph.D., and we spent a
remarkable semester abroad (at the Banach
Center in Warsaw)—I took a
job at Saint Mary's College of California
in the San
Francisco Bay Area, and I found myself, for the first time in my life,
living in (or at least near) some of North America's premiere wild places.
We lived in California for nine happy years. During our time
there, we bought our first home; Jack, our first son, was
born; we traveled quite a bit (including a semester spent at Charles University
in Prague); and I
learned a lot about the liberal arts
(and loved teaching) at Saint Mary's. They remain nine of the happiest years of
our lives. Alas, the Bay
Area was, and is, absurdly expensive, prohibitively so for a young
professor and his young school-teacher wife, who are trying to raise a family,
and who don't come from families with the financial means to help out (which,
by the way, distinguished us from most of my colleagues at Saint Mary's). And
besides, the
traffic in the Bay Area was worse than a rectal exam.
And so, when Cathy was eight months pregnant with our second child, I gave
up my cushy (but vastly underpaid) tenured position in one of the world's
garden spots and we moved to Crawfordsville,
Indiana, of all places. Our eight years in Indiana were. . . First the good
things: our second and third sons were born in
Crawfordsville; we became friends with many fine people; I liked my job at Wabash College (whose students I greatly
enjoyed teaching); we (all five of us) spent a beautiful
year in Prague (I was on sabbatical, again at Charles University); and I did a lot of mathematics.
But on balance. . . the woods afar beckoned. And so
after eight years, we decamped for the north woods!
As above, we now live in Marquette, Michigan, where I am
professor of mathematics, and head of the department
of mathematics and computer science, at Northern
Michigan University, and where all five of us are happy as clams.
Eventually, I hope to add a few paragraphs here about some
my current interests, and about my family. But for now, and since this bio is
part of my professional website, I include here a very brief comment about my
understanding of, and approach to, the academic life. This doesn’t lend itself
to a brief statement, mostly because it is so far out of fashion that it’s hard
to even grasp as a possibility for most academics today. But a good place to
start is this sentence, written by Christopher Beha in a 21 February 2019,
review of a book (Seven Types of Atheism, by John Gray) in the New York Review of Books: Gray has
encouraged a kind of philosophical quietism—an embrace of the life of
contemplation over the life of action—as the proper response to the reality of
our place in the world. My claim (here, at least) is narrower
than Beha’s: this is a proper approach to the academic life; if nothing else, it’s
mine.
And how could this bio be complete without a
few pics of me.
Addendum 1: Here is the latest addition to our household (January 2016);
here he is on 16 July 2016.
Addendum 2: Here is a link to feature the University did on me, July
2022.
"Whilst I walk here at peace under my planted trees,
not a laurel on the place."—
Robinson Jeffers.