I have graduate degrees in German and chemistry and I work as a community college instructor, independent scholar, free lance writer and translator from German into English.
I was born in Southeastern Ohio in the town Lyndon B. Johnson was making a speech in when he first made use of the word "Appalachia"; Athens, Ohio, which is indeed on the northwestern borders of that region. I grew up in a little town in Northern Ohio that's a lot like Lake Wobegon: you can't get there unless you really want to. It's not "on the way" to anywhere; major roads pass it on all four sides, each at least five miles away. As soon as I graduated from high school, I went to Southern Arizona to go to college, which I did long enough to get a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees. There is where my wife and I met and married. I worked teaching in a high school while my wife finished her studies. As soon as she got her pharmacy degree, we and the three sons we had by then left the Sunny Southwest and moved to the Puget Sound region. We both got jobs, she doing pharmacy relief work, and I as an instructor at the local community college. A year later, we bought a small farm on the Skagit River floodplain. We've been here ever since. Our sons, five of them eventually, all grew up here and went out to establish good lives for themselves and we now live on the place alone. We lead a life that includes a lot of gardening and raising of our own foodstuffs. I still work at the community college and my wife still works as an on-call pharmacist, but our real focus is as it always was; on our home and farm life. I do much of my studying and research from my home office and computer. She does her gardening and herb growing. Life proceeds apace.
Here is a more-or-less chronological list of schools and training institutes I have attended.
Instructor (Skagit Valley Community College, Mt. Vernon, Washington, USA, 1965-pres.): Teach chemistry, remedial mathematics and German to 1st and 2nd year undergraduate college students. Design and administer distance education courses in remedial mathematics.
Volunteer Translator, German>English(German Genealogy Center, University of Giessen, Germany, 1996-pres.): Translate short (40 lines or less) pieces of genealogical material from German into English via Internet. Average 100+ pieces per year.)
Free lance Writer (self employed, 1990-pres): Write and place pieces on German-American history for various publications. See current issue ofThe Early America Review for my latest published article.
Musician(The Happy Wanderers, 1981-pres): Play bass (tuba and bass guitar) for a polka/country-western band . Band plays throughout the Puget Sound region.
Here are a few sites that I find both useful and entertaining. I've listed them under subject headings:
German language and culture:
Goethe Institute
German page
Deutsche Welle TV
German
Railway timetables and information
Writing:
Inklings
Writers' Village University
Writers on the Net
History:
From Revolution to Reconstruction
The Early America Review
Fort Ticonderoga
Send me an email:
jpierce@sos.net