Magazine Writer & Photographer
I’ve been telling since I was a kid. I wasn’t good at writing; at least that's what Ms. Paige, my 10th grade English teacher, told me. Yes, I’ll admit to a certain lack of grammar. My sentence structure was atrocious, my spelling worse. I had dyslexia, ADHD and audio processing issues. That’s what the doctors told mom. But, boy could I tell a story. It didn’t even need to be true, so long as it brought a laugh or I could see my listeners were listening, wanting more.
Eventually I got better at the technical stuff, and found a career as a journalist, but now I had to tell the truth, stick to the facts, no embellishing or hyping the story. Then I went into the Navy as a photojournalist. In 1966 I was assigned to a Seabee Battalion in Vietnam. I was the unit’s historian, editor of its monthly newspaper, The Transit. I was really the unit's PR hack. I couldn’t tell the truth, not the truth I saw. All I could do was make the outfit, the men, especially the officers, look good to the folks at home.
When I got out of Vietnam and the Navy, I landed the job as editor of a small town weekly newspaper in Southern Vermont, The Mount Snow Valley News, then the Goose City Gazette. Now I could tell the truth, but again, my readers seemed less interested the results of the Selectman and Planning Board meetings, than the gossip column, character profiles I wrote and the high school basketball games. The Goose City Gazette lasted but a season. I I was a better journalist then a businessman.
I was hired by Kim Chaffee of the Student Ski Association to be the editor of his monthly magazine, The Student Skier. That was fun, and I got to travel around the US and Europe covering ski races, carnivals, doing resort and personality profiles. I wrote for Ski American, Ski and Skiing magazines. When I started The Workshops in my early 30s, my writing career went on hold. When I turned the schools I created over to a non-profit in 2007, 35 yers later, I went back to journalism, this time writing about my other passions, boats, sailing, offshore voyaging and a long-term fascination with the islands in West Indies. Today I write feature articles for Causing World, Caribbean Compass and others, create videos for my Youtube channel. I'm still skiing, sailing and writing.
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