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Here's Uncle Roland Incident In Africa Develop Your Own Odyssey |
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Here's Uncle Roland Incident In Africa Develop Your Own Odyssey |
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A
few years before he died at 86 in the early 1990's, my father gave me
hell for not telling stories about
my international work and travels (he had spent some 30 years in the
same office as a doctor). I started
with
short stories, roamed around with a novel, back to nonfiction. I'm
still roaming around with intentional and
unintentional 'writer's block' (I have a Master of Arts in
Procrastination).
Born
and raised in Connecticut with summers on a mountaintop in Vermont, I
was an only 'Depression Baby' after
mother almost died at childbirth. Relatives jokingly said my red hair
was attributed to our russet
dog!
Father, himself an 'ham radio operator' in the early 1920's, guided
me into radio and I got my license at
14. Because of a communications capability, I was in Civil Defense
and member of the Auxiliary State Police. DXing
fueled my interest in affairs foreign. After undergraduate
work at
Washington and Lee in Virginia, I enlisted
in the US Army's Counter Intellignece Corps and volunteered for Berlin
after agent and German language schools.
After three years, I thought my long term goals elsewhere in
international affairs and went to Johns Hopkins'
School of Advanced International Studies for a MA. Then it was a tour
in international finance in the US
Treasury, a short stint as a consultant in Congress on to a financial
attache at the US Embassy in Bonn.
But,
alas, I felt I 'had to go independent' and left the US Government to
set up an office in downtown DC to work on
World Bank projects. Assignments and sightseeing along the way took
me to some 40 countries. I have been published
directly and indirectly by Johns Hopkins, GPO, OECD and the Hartford
Courant and have taught political science
at the college level.
What
am I to do now? Well, first, I have to shed my MA in Procrastination;
second, heed my father giving me
hell
to write stories and; third, to type. All assistance is gratefully
accepted.--- Arthur Fern