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I’ve been interested in communication since vying for a spot amongst six brothers and sisters. One learns to be a clever rascal in that kind of environment. I excelled, over and under achieved, having been on the wrong side of an issue, rule or two.
Born in the fifties, experienced the sixties, learned in the seventies, lost in the eighties, reborn in the nineties and now we are well into the twenty first century and oh what a ride this decade has been.
I grew up in the Silicon Valley when it was considered the most fertile in the world. I remember, looking from the foothills, across a dream like pallet of careening textures and brilliant colors in bountiful patterns of fields, row crops and orchards. Gardens of ranches and farms stretched as for as the eye could see. Those colors and fragrances are just a picture book history now, all gone to rows and patterns of corporatism and suburbia. Growing up on a farm was an irreplaceable experience.
In the late sixties the corporate system began buying up everything. Companies wanted a larger market share and a new wave of micro electronics wanted macro space to grow. The suburbia dream was at full-steam and farms rapidly disappeared, as did the heroes and statesman of the day, cut down, divided and relabeled. Then the social revolution completely shifted with the ring of gunfire at Kent State.
Our family spent a few years in Deepest Darkest Africa; the experience was mind opening, to say the least. The greater part of that garden has also gone into the history books. Community development and nation building shifted to a battle for dwindling resources. Mega-corporations hired private armies and rebel groups to protect there mining claims and whole villages and tribes were moved off their native turf to solidify land claims.
Upon return to the states, I came to Santa Cruz, my home of escape and built a production pottery, Pat’s Pots. My evolution lead to starting a family of my own and in 1979 began a real estate career. The eighties were a financial crash and I became estranged and deluded.
In the nineties I was at odds with the world. I have often thought of myself ‘butter side down,’ however, as a perpetual optimist, at least the butters on the bread.
In 1999, I co-founded the Community Housing Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, Inc. I really look forward to this 501-c-3 non-profit being instrumental in fulfilling some of our community needs.
This past decade has been an eye-opener. I never thought, we as a nation, could be so led astray from basic human principles. It seems the nation has betrayed itself.
I began Fresh Ground News ™ in the nineties before much of the Internet existed, when WTO was just a wishful thought of the international mega-business and before the fall of the twin towers.
Oh yeah, my education? – The Hard Way School of Hard Knocks
