I'm a writer. I string together words, which often I feel amount to a lot of tripe, and sometimes people read them and occasionally even like them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am a bibliophile. I love books. I am stimulated by the smell of the paper, the scent of age that permeates the antique, and the intricacies of traditional binding. I’ve been known to lovingly caress the grain of leather covers, fabric wrapped boards and artfully embossed spines with seemingly erotic intentions. I will explore bookstores for hours, examining each publication which has garnered my attention until I choose that which has appealed most to my primal need for the scroll. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have held hands with a mummy and spoken, at length, to a shrunken head about my self-doubts and dreams.

During the summer of 1996, I volunteered at the Dayton Museum of Natural History, now called the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. On my first day there I was given the opportunity to explore the vaults, without chaperone and uninterrupted, for nearly 6 blissful hours. In the days following, I helped re-bag and catalog flint chips whilst seated at a long, banquet-style table with a very pleasant group of weirdos and geeks, plus an entomologist who was always granted ample space at the far end of the table for examining his specimens.

I dug 4’ x 4’ pits with a maddox in the worst heat of August, hand sifted 20cm of plow zone dirt (yes, HAND SIFTED), was bitten by ants whose colonies I’d destroyed, and loved every minute of it. The Wegerzyn Garden Center Site excavations produced large, nearly foot-long pieces of carbon, i.e. wood from a burned building, some post-holes and fire pits. Bits of animal bone found in and around the fire pits had turned blue from heat and looked very similar to the pottery fragments also present. The only test which could be given on-site to ascertain what the item actually was---bone or pottery---was performed by popping the piece in your mouth. Bone, as it turns out, sticks to your tongue.