I
currently divide my time between Los Angeles and Amsterdam, where my
domestic partner, Leston Chandler Buell, has a post-doctoral research
teaching fellowship at the University of Amsterdam. He
completed his Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics (his dissertation
was on an aspect of Zulu syntax!) in 2005.
My careers have involved being a trainer and reservations manager for
Pan American World Airways in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas; teaching
foreign languages and ESL in San Jose and Santa Monica, California;
working for The Argonaut, a weekly newspaper in the Los Angeles area;
and founding and directing a nonprofit arts organization, (Beyond
Baroque Foundation, in Venice, California).
From 1972 to 2009 I worked for The Argonaut, a well-respected weekly
newspaper that covers the Santa Monica, Ocean Park, Venice, Mar Vista,
Marina del Rey, Playa Vista, Playa del Rey and Westchester communities
along the Pacific Ocean about 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. I
was for many years associate publisher and chief financial officer
(CFO). After my semi-retirement in 1994, as was senior copy editor and
CFO.
I occupy myself with writing, editing and reading and learning Dutch.
My novel, The Slant Hug ’o Time, is scheduled to be published by
Kitsune Books in September 2012 and I am currently working on what I
call my “memoires” For more about these the novel, go to NOVEL. I have
also been working with Sophie Rachmuhl editing a translation of her
French doctoral dissertation on the Los Angeles poetry scene from 1950
to 1990, scheduled to be published by Otis College of Art and Design.
My interest in experimental, “avant-garde” writing spurred me to start
the magazine Beyond Baroque in 1968. In 1972, what had become a
cultural center that focused on literature and publishing became Beyond
Baroque Foundation, a nonprofit tax-exempt educational organization at
1639-41 W. Washington (now Abbot Kinney) Blvd, in Venice, California.
Around 1980 Beyond Baroque moved to The Old Venice City Hall, 681
Venice Blvd., Venice and I resigned as president and director of the
foundation, but stayed on its board of trustees for another decade.
Beyond Baroque Cultural Arts Center has survived, and is still in the
Old Venice City Hall in VeniceFor a lot more about this, see Beyond
Baroque.
I am interested in languages, which I studied in Europe for three years
as an undergraduate. I am still reasonably fluent in French, but much
less so in Spanish and German, which I once spoke fluently. I am
currently working on Dutch. I studied in France, Spain, Austria and
Germany for three years as an undergraduate and I received a Bachelor
of Arts cum laude with majors in French and Spanish and a minor in
German in1953 from Marietta College, Ohio, and went on to the
University of Minnesota as a teaching assistant, but did not complete
work for an M.A. Later I entered the Graduate Internship Program in
Teacher Education at the University of California at Berkeley, and then
did some graduate work in French, German and Spanish at the University
of California at Los Angeles.
I have been traveling to Europe once or twice a year (mostly Paris) since about 1990.
I enjoy reading, movies (especially foreign and “far-out”), theater, classical music and art.
|
|
