I was born in summer in the 1950s in Bremerton Washington, and grew up there. Bremerton is less than an hour's ferry ride from Seattle, more than an hour's drive. It's close enough for some culture to rub off yet far enough to not be just a suburb. Bremerton's population was about 35,000 then. Bremerton's major employer was the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, a government facility that made warships.
I moved only once. At that time the town had two high schools. I went to East Bremerton High School. In my family of origin I had two siblings: a sister close in age and a much younger brother.
I spent five years getting a four year BS degree in the mid '70s. The school was in the middle of Boston, and the new experiences of urban living kept crowding out serious studying. I eventually got a degree in General Studies, which meant I took nearly every 100 level course the college offered.
I only lived in a regular college dormitory for two years. I spent two years in a co-operative house and one year living completely off campus. These living arrangements provided lots of opportunities to learn how to cook, shop, and maintain a household.
After graduating from college I moved to Northern California. After a couple months of fruitless job hunting in San Francisco I figured out that San Francisco and "silicon valley" aren't precisely the same place. Jobs were plentiful in the computer companies an hour to the south of the city.
I lived in that area for 12 years. I lived in Palo Alto (twice), Mountain View, Los Altos, Santa Clara, Los Gatos, San Jose, Cupertino, and East Palo Alto.
At first I was always the youngest person in the group. I had flashes of technical brilliance, and as some managers told me many years later also a reputation for being a bit difficult to control. As the years passed I outgrew the mantle of favored young person without ever completely growing into either marketing or management.
In 1989 I moved to the Boston area of Massachusetts and married Kaye. Nobody could predict what would happen, other than that it would be an interesting adventure. Initially we lived in Beverly.
After Jennie was born and before Caleb was born we moved further north to Ipswich. Ipswich is a tiny town, around 6000 people decades ago and only a little over double that now, with a social milieu reminiscent of Mayberry RFD. It's about 35 miles from downtown Boston, about as far outside the 128 beltway as the beltway is outside of downtown Boston. Ipswich is a good compromise of cost, commute distance, and decent schools. The commuter rail line from Boston goes right through Ipswich on its way to Newburyport.
For most of a decade I saw myself as middle-aged (40-ish), with a family with a wife and two kids but only one cat and no dogs. Suddenly there were kids that wanted homelife to be organized and regular. All-nighters at the office were frowned on, as were horribly out of date clothes and sleeping in past noon on Saturday. It was time to act like a grownup.
The marriage didn't work out. I've been out of the house since summer 1998, and our divorce was final in early 1999. We communicate fairly amicably regarding the kids, mostly via email. We're certainly not friends though. Our interests and likes and values are so different that it's hard to explain how we ever got together in the first place. It seems sometimes people get married for reasons that have little to do with the other person.
I live in an apartment in downtown Ipswich. I don't have a TV or VCR, partly in an effort to simplify my life. The location is great. From my apartment I can walk to the car mechanic, the post office, the doctor, the bank, the pub, the news store, the toy store, and the shrink.
Previously I lived in an apartment in Peabody, but found it overly wearing to commute to see my kids and be involved in their schools. And I lived for a year and a half in a tiny studio apartment in the same building I live in now. I liked the low rent, and coped with the tininess at first, but eventually it got to me so much I moved when there was an opportunity. I couldn't even hide birthday presents very well because there was so little space. And when the kids stayed over night getting up to go to the bathroom at night entailed stepping around sleeping bodies.
I took the opportunity of living by myself to investigate a lot of possible personal interests. Many of these were re-visitations of interests from my college and young adult days, which of course mostly being rather inappropriate for my current age didn't stick. I revived my interest in movies, finding rather obscure art house and second run theaters that aren't consumed by the "blockbuster"; after all my interest is in movies not hype. I read even more widely, and attempted to use the library to reduce costs, but found my interests and the library's collections quite often don't coincide. And I revived my interest in walking and hiking, which my physical limitations have gradually reduced from my marathon 12 miler barefoot on the beach to just a couple hours a week with other retired people organized by a local Bay Circuit Trail committee member to exploring nearby parks to almost nothing.
I saw my kids about once a week while they were growing up. It seemed time passed all too quickly; I remembered vividly changing Jennie's diapers, and I remembered Caleb not being able to work a computer mouse very well because his coordination wasn't that good yet. Nowadays Caleb installs software and reconfigures the computer regularly.
My body is falling apart (much much moreso than is typical for my age); I have trouble sitting and standing, trip and bump into things an awful lot, and can't run or ride a bike let alone ski. And my mind has slowed down significantly. So it's impossible for me to keep up with the "young hot dogs" and I know better than to even try. I've withdrawn from the labor force; by living carefully I can pay the bills, although I can't save anything during what I once expected to be my peak saving years. The model that fits best is to think of me as firmly "retired", ignoring the fact that my chronological age says that shouldn't happen for another decade.
My time is fully occupied. I drive senior citizens to their doctors appointments for the local Council on Aging, some weeks once and others none. As a volunteer I try to help the local school computer technicians. For a few years I even went into the school for a couple days each week. The state's rule of thumb says they should have three people to support the computers in the middle and high schools, but they actually have only one full time equivalent, so there's plenty to do.
I have become interested in producing good statistical charts directed to the general public, for example this display of the value of a dollar over time.
For a while I was moderately active in local politics, particularly those directly related to my children's schools. One can actually follow and occasionally pariticpate in local politics in a very small town like Ipswich. Local concerns of mine related to the funding of public education included our local property tax rate, the demographic characterization of the population of Ipswich, and the purpose and composition of the local Finance Committee. Other local concerns of mine related to the function and performance of our schools included funding of the Ipswich public schools, our state's requirement to pass the MCAS test to graduate from high school, the federal No Child Left Behind program inspired by Massachusetts, and education of gifted and talented students. My past experiences with override campaigns led to these remarks on advocacy for public school funding.
Also I've grown old enough that I feel justified in pontificating on some wider issues, with the theme that something about humankind living on this planet is going horribly wrong. I seriously wonder if our current population level could be sustained without "drawing down our capital" by extracting fossil fuels to turn into food. And shouldn't our goal be to enhance the quality of human life around the globe rather than growing our economy at all costs? Here are my thoughts on our foreign policy (fighting extremist violence in particular), our domestic policy, some what I consider common sense issues including common sense about Iraq, and some things about our world that are still unsolved puzzles to me.
And I've grown very frustrated with a foreign policy that's so wildly out of tune with my values. Even though I was kicking and screaming "no no no", our country went in the other direction. Now the "ugly American" tourist is back, and will be with us for another generation. My thoughts on the folly of our well-intentioned efforts to be the world's policeman are parhaps best expressed by this parable of the dragon.
One of the constants from the early 1980's, through my family and independent phases, and continuing now in my semi-retired phase is my favorite rocking chair.
That describes my identity in a nutshell. You may be interested in other aspects such as my family of origin or Great-grandma Dover's Autobiography.
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Location: N42 40.86' W070 50.35'
(North America> USA> Massachusetts> Boston> North Shore> Ipswich) Time: UTC-5 (USA Eastern Time Zone) (UTC-4 summertime --"daylight savings time") Email comments to Chuck Kollars |
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