Welcome to a site about nothing in particular, dedicated to helping make sense out of the chaos and noise of today’s world. Primarily, what is virtue and how do we best display it? Or, what is a lack of virtue and how do we recognize it?
The Mean, Middle Course, Middle Way, Zhongyong…the list goes on of terms and descriptions of avoiding excess and walking the middle ground. The “Middle Ground” has come to mean a lack of conviction and an unwillingness to act in many corners of our culture, but looked at in the broader sense, the middle means survival, while excess means extinction.
About
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I am 58 years old (b. 1965), retired and living with my wife in the Vicksburg, Mississippi area. I am a kept man, house husband and full-time devotee of my wife. I keep busy with photography, blogging and gaming, and on one occasion worked as a contracted teacher.
Born in Seattle, I have lived all over the country but grew up mainly in Corona del Mar, California and the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. I have lived the longest in the Twin Cities and Wisconsin.
I went to high school in Oconomowoc (Potawatomi for “gathering of waters”), Wisconsin and then attended the University of Wisconsin (after a freshman year at Marquette) in Madison. I graduated in 1987 with degrees in Nuclear Engineering and in Physics.
While at Madison I enlisted in the Navy and, upon graduation, attended Officer Candidate School and then entered the Navy’s nuclear training pipeline. I was assigned to the submarine USS Simon Bolivar in 1989 and then a recruiting command in Scotia, New York before leaving active duty in 1996. I then entered the Naval Reserve (as a Reservist assigned to a unit based in Korea) and started working full-time at a cardboard plant in the Twin Cities.
These first stints only lasted until December of that year when, utterly dissatisfied with my paper job, I was voluntarily recalled to active duty at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center, where I served until December of 1999. I then reentered the Naval Reserve at the same Reserve Center and took a teaching position at the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant in Monticello, Minnesota.
As a Reservist, drilling in the Twin Cities, I first served in the Fleet Training and Support Pacific unit, out of San Diego, then the security force out of the Naval Air Station, Keflavik, Iceland, and finally the headquarters unit for Commander, Naval Forces Japan, out of Yokosuka, Japan. I retired from the Navy in 2009.
As for my civilian career, I worked at Monticello until 2010, first as an engineering instructor, then a nuclear engineer and finally, as an operator. When my mom’s cancer battle got intense, I then moved to Manitowoc (“home of the good spirit”), Wisconsin and took an operator position at Point Beach Nuclear plant, to be closer to her. I worked there until 2018 (after my mom passed) and moved to Vicksburg, taking a management position at Grand Gulf Nuclear station until 2021, when I retired after my own successful cancer battle.
My wife is a nuclear operator and Shift Manager at Grand Gulf. Our two daughters live in the Twin Cities. In addition to the hobbies I mentioned above, I enjoy history, particularly local, medieval, ancient and of the Vicksburg National Military Park, as well as reading. My photography focuses on landscapes and wildlife. My blogging has no focus, as my website demonstrates.
For more about my family and me, see the biography page.
I was watching a class give by the author, Joyce Maynard, and she said something that really hit on something I wish for my children, particularly when considering what they dealt with as a result of my divorce. She was asked what consideration she gives to those she writes about…does she worry about hurting them. …
