Oklahoma

I was born an Okie from Muskogee the same year the song by that name came out. It was meant to be a light satire of provincialism, the song, but was celebrated as an anthem by the literal-minded, which was most of the folks I was raised with. We’ll call that foreshadowing.

At the age of 4 my folks joined a right-wing, racist, apocalyptic Christian cult that was all the rage among terrified denizens and aspirants of the white middle class. It was an Old Testament-based concoction of a Madison Avenue confidence man named Herbert, and fit in a subcategory of fringe Christianity called British Israelism. The gist of the cult pitch was this: Women and minorities were upsetting the “natural order” of things to such a degree in the 1970’s, that it was surely a sign of the End Times. Cult members should give all they could to Herbert, and he would get you and your kids into the whites-only afterlife. That was a suboptimal reality to have to negotiate as a tyke, and made the next few decades a hellscape of gaslighting and cognitive dissonance.

I was institutionally warped by the cult, through my parents, into a traumatized and isolated outsider in the world. I was taught that I was special, genetically descended from King David, and Jesus himself. I was also taught that the only way I could enjoy my genetic specialness was to not have any fun while living in the Natural World, which is a shithole of vile and animalistic seduction. Bonus, if I failed to resist the temptation to enjoy myself while living, I would spend eternity in unimaginable torment. I had a very graphic imagination.

My suicidal ideation started as soon as I could grasp the concept. But if I committed suicide I was probably going to have my skin stripped from my body and rolled around the lake of fire on a beach of broken glass and ghost peppers. For eternity. So, puberty was a bit of a rough go for me.

I hated school, for the most part. Girls were my main draw to attend class every day, but also, all those involuntary teenage boners evoked scenes of my eternal damnation. I lived like a prisoner, counting down the day ‘til I was 18 and out of the house. Maybe life would be better in college.

My parents were both the first college graduates in their recent family histories, so of course they wanted their kids to continue on that journey. My three older sisters went to college. The oldest, Kimberlyn, graduated from college, the two others, Rene and Roma, went for a year or two, and then they found dudes.

I had a very brief but memorable college experience. (See Sigma Lambda in the Endeavors section)

Boulder, CO

So then I decided I was going to go to Colorado and start a t-shirt company. That was the goal. I was going to go there and start a business. I got my business cards made up. Snake Enterprises was my first company. Yeah, I was gonna be a silkscreen millionaire. I was just gonna make the cool t-shirts that everybody had to buy.

Something else entirely happened in Boulder. (See Drug Warrior in Endeavors)

Los Angeles

I moved to L.A on Halloween 1989. I had heard that the 90’s were going to make the 60’s l ook l ike the 50’s. I was totally open to the possibilities that l ife might have in store for me. I had no plan, in other words. I chose comedy as my path to success. I fell into a couple of agents, stumbled into SAG and AFTRA, did some commercials and television, then decided I valued my anonymity after these early small successes yielded stalkers and teenie bopper fandom. Also had a wee bit of a psychotic breakdown. (See Land Of Misfit Toys in the Endeavors section)

Great Falls

I gave L.A close to ten years. In 1998, after a brutal four-year family court battle for shared custody of my daughter Kaitlin, all naivete around the U.S. Justice system, and general fairness in life, was thoroughly exhausted. I jettisoned everything and went North with a bag. I was pointed toward Alaska, but a Montana friend offered a place and opportunities in a slightly less frozen North. I was advised that the contiguous would be safer than Alaska, post Y2K.

I had a job waiting for me when I got to Great Falls. I was a bartender at a restaurant/casino. I emceed an open mic on Saturdays from behind the bar with a lapel mic, and “pushed the envelope” of local tolerance on late-night community radio. (See The Lost Woodsman in the Endeavors section)

Hawai’i

My second daughter appeared unexpectedly on the radar in Great Falls. Taking a cue from the incongruous Hawaii state license plate on a ‘ 56 Ford truck we saw crawling through a Montana snowstorm, her mom and I decided she would l and in Honolulu. We ignored concerns that Hawai’i would be just as vulnerable a place as Alaska when the ships stopped running after Y2K, and we left the mainland to see what the millennium would bring. Our plan of living on the island for two years to get our daughter on her feet turned into ten years for me.

In Hawai’i I helped create dynamic events as emcee and performance poet by night, and spent most of my days in the trees, running an organic landscape nursery. (See India Cafe, Studio 1, and The Red Elephant in the Endeavors section) (Monkey Works/Alchemy Farms?)

Nevada City

During the 2008 real estate debacle I was between nurseries, and l andscape development ground to a halt. I moved to Nevada City California to j oin the Medical marijuana frontier. I l ived for a year in the historical shift from the black market to the green market, from honor among the outlaws to hippy capitalism. In ten months the price of a pound of OG Kush dropped from $4000 a pound to $1700, and the delivery chains between grower and retail swelled with ineptitude and thievery. Marijuana paid my way back to the mainland and bought me a few months of respite. I extensively photo-documented this shift i n California cannabis history.

Three Rivers

At the southern gate of Sequoia National Park I further developed my climate-specific landscape architecture style of incorporating native plants, xeriscape techniques, and “urbanite”. I worked on these projects In the Three Rivers area, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

Here I also further developed my small kinetic sculptures, larger outdoor kinetic sculptures, small egg sculptures, nature photography, and began writing “It Seemed Funny At The Time,” a collection of essays and biographical accounts of my journey from the far right to the far left, and my endeavor to find a window of understanding between the two.

Butte, MT

My first visit to Butte, America was in 1998. On the way from Los Angeles to Great Falls, Montana, I found myself marooned for 3 days and fell in love with the people and the place. I felt it was futile to even attempt to shoot the fantastic architecture and post-apocalyptic landscape of Butte, America with just two rolls of 35mm, so I made a determination to come back someday for an extended period of time and see what I could capture with the camera.

I moved to Butte in 2014, armed with digital camera powers. The plan was to live in and remodel a Victorian. The owner engineered the place back together, and I made it look like it wasn’t engineered. Construction carried on into a third year. In that time I experienced an explosion of community experiences, after the virtual solitude of Three Rivers. (See The Silver Dollar Open Mic, Imagine Butte, KBMF, and The Zulus, in the Endeavors section)