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This photo is from Christmas, 1955.  I was born in October of 1956, so I was very very small at this time.  In fact, I consider myself to be rather improbable, and logically speaking, the chance that I could ever exist is so small, so petrunifically minuscule, that it makes sense to ignore the very possibility.

Hello world. [age 2]

I was born as a little baby. Gradually I grew to be a boy.

Picking blueberries was a favorite summertime activity.  I would always spend the first half hour eating non-stop.  Only then would I slow down and start to put some berries in the bucket. That's my brother Eric on the right.

Another favorite summertime activity: crabbing! That's Dad, me, my cousin Susan (I think), and Aunt Elaine (Dad's sister) in the background.

On a cold January morning in 1970, I was driven up to St. Andrew's School, Middletown, Delaware.  It is an excellent institution, but back in those days it had one major flaw: no girls.  I don't think that mattered that much to me initially (in 8th grade), but within a couple years, it was a tragedy of hobfrukinian proportions.  I have never fully recovered.

At St. Andrew's, only seniors were allowed to ride bicycles, but the rules said nothing about unicycles, so I built my own out of a tricycle that had been run over.  It was phenomenally difficult to ride, with the tricycle seat rotating freely, and the pedals way too small, and the tire of hard rubber, and yet somehow I did. When I finally managed to purchase a manufactured unicycle (see photo), it was so easy (and so much more comfortable).  I got really good at it, could go backwards for long distances, and I could pick things up off the ground.

In high school, I wrestled.  I was always very thin, so I wrestled guys who were much shorter and stronger than me. In wrestling, the most desirable outcome is to pin your opponent (that is, to hold both his shoulder blades to the mat for three consecutive seconds).  I was almost never pinned, and I tended to fall way behind on points as my opponents ground me around the mat, but I managed to pin a fair number of them when I got my turn on top.  My favorite move was the "Cross-face Cradle," and when I got that Cross-face on, I got it on tight [I think my long arms actually helped - better leverage]. This photo was taken just after I had pinned a much older and stronger opponent in the final period.  He walked right into it, and soon I had him such that he could only wiggle.

That's my wrestling coach, Coach Madigan.  We called him the Mad Dog, but he was really great.  He knew his stuff, and he worked us real hard, and helped us win a lot of victories.  I remember how stunned our opponents were when we won the conference tournament.

I graduated from St. Andrew's Summa Cum Laude (only the 13th person to do so in the school's (40+ year) history at that time).  I got a McCabe scholarship to attend Swarthmore College, and started studying physics and math.  My spring semester of my sophomore year, I went to Grenoble, France (a beautiful city in the Swiss Alps) in an exchange program.  My years of intensive French study at St. Andrew's [I had done it for the grades] paid off.  Unlike many of my American friends, I made a point to do things with organizations of French people, and I had the good fortune to live with a family that did not speak English.  With my solid foundation in grammar, I soon picked up the vocabulary and pronunciation.  By summertime, native French speakers could not tell I was not native.  One person asked, "What part of France are you from?  I can't quite place your accent."

This is me in France with egg on my face. Behind me (cleaning raw egg off the wall) is Galina, who was kind enough to allow me to live in her home as a voraciously hungry teenager.  This photo was taken just after I tested the proposition that an egg cannot be broken by pressing on its two ends.  In fact, it does take a great deal of force to break it -- I folded my fingers, and pressed with all my strength using the heels of my palms.  The egg went everywhere, including a perfectly vertical line of egg on my face. Now that I think of it, this must have been particularly disturbing for Galina, who spent much time decorating eggs in the Ukrainian tradition.

These are Galina's sons, Theo and Paul.  They helped me perfect my pronunciation of French, repeating words I mispronounced (and laughing).  We'd go back and forth twenty or more times until I managed to hold my face in the right manner to produce the sounds. Oeil? Oeil. Oeil? Oeil. Oeil? Oeil.

I spent the summer of '76 traveling throughout Europe, especially Greece, France, Italy, England, Germany, and Sweden.. Here I jump into a fast flowing canal in Munich.

I took a train in Italy (returning north to Rome from Pompeii, I believe), and all these children got more and more excited at seeing me.  We couldn't speak a word to each other, but I amused them with coin tricks and other slight of hands.  I asked someone why they were so excited, and they said that the children thought I looked like Jesus Christ.  [I did have long hair, a beard, and was quite burnished by the sun]. You can see me in the back center of the photo.

This is my soccer buddy Andrew and his sister.  I visited them in England.  Andrew has a couple of children now.  I haven't seen him for a few years.

While I was in France, I realized that aging is a scientific problem, and that it could be studied scientifically and perhaps cured.  So upon my return to Swarthmore in the fall, I redirected my studies towards biology.  The biology department was overbooked with premed students, so I majored in Chemistry and took a lot of biology courses.

My college friends, Steve Lyon and Linda Grimaldi, and I (often together with Mary Belferman) would walk several miles late on a freezing cold winter's night to the Dunkin' Donuts in a nearby town.  It was crazy, but it was a wonderful time.

Mary Belferman & Steve Lyon give me a lift.

My college roommate and good friend Walter.

Valerie was my girlfriend my senior year of college.  She plays piano beautifully.

In 1978, I graduated from Swarthmore with a B.A. in Chemistry, and had to choose between Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley for biology graduate school.  I traveled to California to check out Berkeley and Stanford, and then chose Berkeley... uh, Stanford.  [I've always had a problem making decisions.  I'm very good at balancing the two sides.  Could it be because I'm a Libra?]

Around 1980 I met a woman named Ruth.  We soon moved in together and spent a wonderful couple of years.

Ruth was a character.

This photo is way before my time with Ruth, but I just love it, and I love her still.  She passed on, but she lives on in the hearts of her family & friends.

While I was living with Ruth, I bought an old nonfunctioning player piano [Man, that thing was heavy!] and over a three-day period, I took it completely apart (all over the living room floor), repaired the leaks and lubricated the frozen joints, and reassembled it.  It worked, but you had to pump the leg pedals really hard and fast.  But what a reward, to see those piano rolls playing incredible music [I had a lot of great ragtime rolls; boy, those players could play].

While at Stanford, I studied aging on my own, outside of my coursework.  I also discovered libertarianism and spent a great deal of time and effort promoting that.  Eventually time caught up with me -- By eschewing professor-directed laboratory research in favor of self-directed library research, I had failed to acquire a training in experimental science (which the biology department considered essential [In hindsight, I think they have a good point]); so in 1981, I accepted a Master of Science degree as a booby prize.

I did however manage to publish a couple of papers, including:

• "A Theory of the Origin of Life" Origin of Life 11 (1981): 353-368.

I promptly found work for a software firm, IntelliGenetics, which made software for genetic engineers.  I had used computers since high school (punch cards & FORTRAN), and I had liked them.  Unlike labwork, computers were clean, and you never had to deal with (or produce) low-level radioactive waste [I was really bothered by that].  I worked for IntelliGenetics for a couple of years until...

I met my future wife Lisa at the 1983 Libertarian Party National Convention in New York City. Here we are at the banquet with libertarian friend Wayne.

In January of 1984, I quit my job and drove to Toronto, Canada, to live with my new love.  In Toronto, during the next three years (except for a six month period in California), I did independent library research on aging, spending long hours in the biology library of the University of Toronto. This resulted in these two publications:

• "A Review of Why and How We Age: A Defense of Multifactorial Aging"
  Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 41 (1987): 1-28.
• "A Possible Cure for Death" Medical Hypotheses 26 (1988): 77-84.

I got hundreds of reprint requests for my various papers, but nothing more came of it.

In 1987, Lisa and I got married, and moved to California, where she attended Stanford graduate school in Psychology, and I went to work for Torus Systems (more computer work). Lisa's Ph.D. thesis is entitled: I feel therefore I think: the role of anger in the development of paranoid symptomatology [Way to go, Lisa!]

Ouch! On March 19, 1989, while playing soccer, I was bumped on the head by another player (presumably unintentionally) who did not apologize.  I went gonzo, playing wild and rough, and within 5 minutes I stuck my foot out in front of a rolling 220 lb. goalie (who was covering the ball).  As he rolled over and through my leg, it sounded like a huge pile of matchsticks all being broken at once.

How not to rehabilitate a broken leg My leg was treated by having a 14" rod put in (through the length of the tibia).  That enabled me to heal without having a cast put on.  In a month I was walking, and in two I was playing soccer, gingerly of course.  In order to play, I had to run with a huge exaggerated limp: Jackhammer the healthy left leg, and stick-leg over the injured leg (imagine a pole vault).  My body responded by greatly strengthening the muscles on the one side, shortening and lengthening various muscles and ligaments, and putting a twist through my entire body from head to toe. I only became aware of all this after I took a massage course in 1994, and I started to become much more body-aware.  I am still struggling with the repercussions of that rehabilitation. It is sad that sometimes we do not learn to take care of our bodies until it is too late.

Here is my spine, on Oct 29, 1998, almost a decade after my leg broke. Do you see those sideways bends. It really snakes back and forth, and I am convinced that this is a result of my intense one-legged soccer playing. This photo was taken after much much effort towards rehabilitation, including a couple years of chiropractic (which helped a lot, but clearly did not work completely)

In 1990, Torus was going downhill, so I started my own consulting business, and I have been a self-employed programmer since then.

Lisa & I broke up on March 27, 1994.  I am happy to say that throughout our marriage and ever since, we have continued to treat each other with love and respect.

Lisa, Jeff & Colleen, and Rose (holding the box of Jeeves the cat's ashes) and I all wave good-bye to the great and dignified spirit that was Jeeves the cat. Careful, don't sneeze!

I enjoy reading Dr. Seuss books to my nieces, Jennine, Erika, and Julie.  They call me Uncle Duck, and I love it.

Sometimes I worry about my future.

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