: About Me

Once upon a time, a New York literary critic commented that my writing reminded her of Faulkner. She went on to say, "If I had taken a couple of stiff drinks like I do for Faulkner, maybe I would have liked your writing better."

As a teacher and a historian, writing is a vehicle for creation and self-expression, a means of continuing to find out who I am in order to learn better where I can be helping and doing more. Yes. Writing - particularly creative writing -can be narcissistic and somewhat selfish. But are we ever too old to simply dream? Imagine?

Teaching creative writing to 5th graders is a challenging and rewarding experience. I am dumbfounded at how difficult it is to have students (and this would transfer to adults) actually think for themselves - believe in themselves!.

I have written for The Macon Telegraph, I have written publications for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the National Park Service, brochures, a film script for Georgia Public TV, a few poems, and various other articles. Yet I have never completed what I enjoy writing the most - novels (I now have about three in the works). And, now that my son is going off to Savannah College of Art and Design, I am thinking about having him illustrate a children's book I would write.

Novels I am currently working on include a historical fiction novel on the Woolfolk axe murder near Macon, Georgia in 1887 (actually it's more psychological than bloody), Scrambled Eggs - a humorous look at life in a small Georgia town based on my experiences as a chamber of commerce executive -, a historical fiction novel set in 1907 and told through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. And I am considering writing - whether fiction or nonfiction - a true look at public education from the inside seen through the eyes of a teacher who believed - and still believes - there could be so much more.

My passion is ...

My passion is wandering down dirt roads or mountain path just to find out where they end.

I know too much about ...

I know much more about public education than I wish, and more about history than my son sometimes wishes.

My parents always told me ...

Never quit.

My childhood ambition ...

Ah. I would write the Great American novel.

My favorite memory ...

Was it hanging by a black thorn in the rock over Tallulah Gorge or the miracle of my son's birth?

Why I write ...

I write. . .because I have to. Because of a passion to share experience, to learn from it myself, to find who I truly am. . .to teach.

My first job ...

I was a night watchman at The Insurance Company of North America in Macon, Georgia.

My best moment ...

My best moment was my son's birth,

Arts & Humanities > European History Why did Tsar Nicholas II fall in 1917

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Why Did Tsar Nicholas II Fall in 1917? It might be fair to ask why Nicholas II did not fall before 1917. Nicholas II not only had history against him - his grandfather Alexander II had been assassinated, his great-great uncle Paul had been murdered, and the blood of coups and coup attempts flowed through Russia's past like the Volga. . . More importantly, Nicholas had the future against him. Time was ticking on the dynasty. Nicholas and the Romanovs clung to power in one of the last of the absolute monarchies in Europe due, as much as anything, to tradition. The bond between Father Tsar an...

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