What I intend to present here is a pictorial history of my life. Why? Because I like the attention, silly. You're here, aren't you *grin*?

I should start with my paternal lineage, which came to Texas in the 1850s from the Moravia (a province of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now the Czech Republic). Like most immigrants, I'm sure my great-great-great grandfather and his family dreamed of a new life full of opportunity and improvement of their lot in life. So they emigrated to Texas, where many Czechs were headed, landing in Galveston. By horsecart, they travelled the 200 miles to a point midway between Houston and San Antonio, where they established the homestead pictured to the right. This makes me a fifth generation native Texan, by direct male descent. (More family info you may care to know, is that my mother's side of the family came to the colonies of the British Crown on the Mayflower - that forebear, Samuel Wilder, is also the ancestor of the American playwright Thornton Wilder)




So five generations later I was born in Dallas, Texas. Wasn't I cute? These are my grandparents on my father's side.


As you can see here, I must have been quite a handful.













This is my ever-so-stylish mother sometime before I was born, don't you just love the flip in her hair?











"But I want more okra, mom. Why don't you put in a good word with Grandma for me?"






From the left, this is my cousin Kea from Tacoma, me, my grandfather and my brother, at one of the rare occasion when we got all of my father's side of the family all together at my grandparent's farm. This brings back memories of running down the lane to the main road to get the paper in the morning before breakfast, and my cousin and I accidentally killing a coral snake (poisonous but very very slothful) by stepping on it.












That same occasion, as I evoke a blues melody - due to no ice cream for desert.





My teenaged years were all angsty, typical of a spoiled American youngster. Look at that pout.













Of course, it was not all angsty. To your left, my posed photo, with braces, of my first day of high school. And the dogs that I grew up with.

























This is me and my best friend Debra, when we were both freshmen in college. Deb and I have known each other for 11 years as of this writing, and ours is a lifelong friendship. We've been through so much together, and we may experience different things in our own lives, but we always have had the "no-bull" rapport that you only have with relatives and best friends. She is now the proud mother of Nick and William. I assisted with William's birth. You wanna talk about intense.....













My life started to get interesting when I started my university studies. Free from what I saw as the constraints of my parents, I went a little wild, discovering such things as alcohol, dance music, clubs, the stuff of Satan. And some of the associated vices. But at the same time, I learned so much about myself that I would never trade those days for anything. Besides, I made some fab friends out of those years, most of whom are now calm and sedate late-20s and early-30s folks.

 
















But of course, I wanted more out of life than school was offering me. I dropped out, I re-enrolled, I dropped out again. I moved to San Francisco, living there for seven months, but let me tell you, it ain't no Seventies wonderland like in Tales of the City, no more. The people in California are an alienated lot, and I found them generally hard to get to know, and coming from friendly Austin, Texas, that was hard to get fathom. And you wonder why people burn out on San Francisco left, right, and center? I do love The City, don't get me wrong. It's just that unlike New York or London, the benefits do not outweigh the flakes.









So I moved back to Texas for a while, got into the rave culture in Austin, slacked about, and faffed about, basically. Definitely life-experience for that novel I'll write someday.













Then I moved to Portland, Oregon in October of 1996. I love Portland. Beautiful, rainy, GREEN Portland. Portland that makes you glad to be alive, when the sun comes out. And so close to one of the world's coolest countries, Canada.

















After living in Portland for a year, I was drawn to England. More specifically, London. London rules the planet, in case you didn't realize it. There's something about living in a city that once ruled two-thirds of the Earth's surface. The architecture, the energy there (not as frenetic as Manhattan, but still abuzz with infinite things going on). I lived in West London(see map below) for six months, working for a charity called YouthNet. They operate The Site - a virtual charity. The Site acts as a one-stop source for information for young persons in the UK, 16 to 24 years of age. It was a cool job to have, and I made some good mates there. Of course, I also made great mates outside of work, including Nick and Sandra and Derek.






















Now I live in Austin, again. For current info, visit me Vitals page.