A Peripat(h)etic Travelogue disguised as a biography
Born in Watertown, Wisconsin, you would think that I might like cold weather.
But two years were not enough to do the trick. My father, after finishing his second bachelors at
the University of Wisconsin, began work with the Navy as an oceanographer,
and we moved to Clinton (Prince George County), Maryland, next to Washington D.C.
Elementary school was at Surrattsville Elementary School,
followed by Surrattsville Junior High school.
(If you are my student and you can tell me why the name Surratt is important in American History,
I'll buy you lunch at the school cafeteria!)
When my father (along with rest of the Naval Oceangraphic office)
was transferred to Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, the family moved to Picayune,
Mississippi ('A precious coin in the Purse of the South'), where we settled down.
When I finished high school, I chose to go to the University of Southern Mississippi,
largely because I could easily come home to get my clothes washed.
Six years, 320 credit hours, and 5 changes of major later, I was given a B.A.
in Linguistics, with minors in French and music, on the condition that I never
darken their doorstep (or their gym towels) again. With this education behind me,
I was ready, in the words of a friend, Diana Collins, to be
'very good at a game show that hadn't been invented yet'
I was very fortunate to receive a posting as an assistant des langue étrangers
in Poitiers, France at the lycée Camille Guerin. After a great year there,
I found a job at a children's camp in La Granja, Spain.
I've lost touch with most of the people I met, so if you read this, write me!
I returned home to Picayune without any special plans. After spending some time at home,
I was accepted to the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Program.
I was placed in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture and remained there on the program for five fabulous years,
working in three different high schools and then, the final two years, in the
Prefectural Board of Education.
After my time in Sendai, I went to the University of Oregon to study linguistics and
was introduced to Native American languages (Sahaptin, Nez Perce, and Klamath).
My long suffering roommate in Eugene, Robert Davis (we were undergraduate roommates)
postponed getting a dog to let me move in.
My first summer, I went to the Linguistic Society of America's Summer Institute in Columbus, Ohio,
where I met my wife. Our email romance led to a
backyard wedding.
It also led to me applying for the job at Hokkaido University as a gaikokujin kyoushi in the
Institute of Language and Culture.
Hokkaido was quite nice, but due to an idiotic policy where foreigners cannot work as regular faculty
at a national university, I was only allowed to work there for a maximum of five years.
At the end of my third year, I was fortunate to be hired as a tenured assistant professor at the
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Department of English and British studies,
Kumamoto Gakuen University, where I remain.
Our first daughter was born in 1998 and Kumamoto started to look like home. Our second daughter was born in 2004, and it's hard to imagine being anywhere else.
picayune