Look and Listen

Biography

I was born at the bottom of a mountain top in Tennessee, in a little town that produced the Scopes "Monkey" Trial and not much else. I was homeless way back in the 1950s, before it became so popular. I have too much education for my own good and too little reverence for the powers-that-be for their own good. My experience covers many areas. I have been an advocate and lobbyist for nonprofits for the mentally ill, served as field director for a project of the National Institute of Mental Health and have a consulting firm in the field. I do volunteer work with the mentally ill in prisons and those on the street. My labors in other fields are varied. I was an assembler language programmer, a foreign correspondent, a professional photographer and computer dealer. I wrote for an academic journal and worked in intelligence. Additionally, I have held licenses as a radio technician, pilot and real estate broker. This appears to be an extreme example of someone not knowing what he wants to be when he grows up. The problem is that, at my advanced age, I have a limited amount of time to settle on something.

Inspiration

I was giving speeches all across the country and people were constantly telling me that I should write a book. I did. It turned out to be 25 pages long. It was one of my speeches. I tried to expand and elaborate. It was then up to 45 pages long but I realized that I didn't know enough about the subject to write a book. I determined to conduct what I expected to be a year's worth of research. It became 14 years of research. With another couple of years to write it, my first book was complete after only 16 years.