Born— Ventura, California, March 18, 1958.

Raised— Bakersfield, California.

Currently— Lost in Little Rock, Arkansas.

     I've been told that this photograph makes me look like an ogre. That's funny to me, because it's one of a group of self-portraits that I took right before moving to Arkansas. The pictures were good enough to get me the job, so to speak, but weren't enough to allow me to keep it for long.

     Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction as the most graceful limbs in the world. But to be fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain— which taste cannot tolerate— which ridicule will seize.

Jane Austen— Persuasion.

     * A minor update. As of 2003 I've been here in Arkansas for about seven years. I have finished my Bachelor's degrees in English Literature and Rhetoric, and am currently on the home stretch of a Masters' in Rhetoric. Maybe I'll get out of here pretty soon, to a Ph.D. program somewhere.