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The Office of Naval Research Public Affairs Office provided my first encounter with the World Wide Web. In addition to the text creation and management part of editorial service, I had the pleasure of coding and uploading ONR publications back when there was nary a WYSIWYG HTML editor in sight. It was all still new for consumers back then in 1995. The changes in online publishing have, of course, been nothing short of incredible in the 17 years since then (I'll spare you the typing of that article right now): I've become a pretty good photographer with a legacy of unfulfilled ambitions in literary and musical circles, the detritus from that has itself been rather spectacular.
Zoetrope.com: close to 850 reviews of photographs submitted in the "virtual film studio" photography wing and I have no idea the count on posts or correspondence.
Models.com: I'm just going to say "thousands of posts".
Modelmayhem.com: 2,248 posts as of 3 May 2007.
In music . . . I've made a very little money although I would call some of the "gigs" the best jobs I've ever had. First Night Alexandria, the open deck of a restaurant in Ellicott City, Maryland, travel for a community group in Seaford, Delaware, bars around Takoma Park and Cleveland Park in D.C.--priceless (and remunerative: First Night paid $500, for example). There, however, is a business whose retail floor you have to rather love and for which a young lifestyle may be helpful (for all those late nights and all that beer). Music probably helps me stay healthy (partly because it helps to run; it's also spiritually exalting when you get it about right), but it bothers me to have the voice I do (and do I ever have that) as well as more than a few of my own songs laying around. I'd like to get the whole thing back into shape and working for me as well.
Altogether, that's a lot of service for not a lot of reward, something too typical of the English major's fate and something I'd like to change with this blog by having it help me focus my efforts and by cultivating associates, clients, readers, publications, and patrons.
Editor & Writer
Photographer
Singer & Songwriter
M.A. Outdoor Recreation Resources Management, University of Maryland, College Park 1985
M.A. English, University of Maryland, College Park 1988
A Shug's Country. 1993. Produced guitar and vocal track for second 60-minute album of socially-conscious and unconsciously pastoral blues, country, folk, and rock music.
A Shug's Delight! 1989. Album (60 minutes) with distribution split between sales and promotion.
1997-2000—Noon show, Darlington Apple Festival, Darlington, Md., 1997, ‘98, ‘99, '00; Courtyard Troubadour, P.J.’s Restaurant, Main Street, Ellicott City, Md., August through December, 1998; Street Singer (two years running), Alexandria First Night Festival, Alexandria, Virginia; Evening Entertainer, Presbyterian Home, Washington, D.C.; February (1997): troubadour, private Valentine’s Day party, Fairfax, Va.; principle concert performer, The Boardroom, Seaford, Delaware.
1995--produced 3-minute dance composition, "Swingin' Dada" for Alexandria Department of Recreation, Merrymaker Summer Camp, Arts Division (performance: July 14, 1995). 1994--gigging private parties as pianist with standards and show tune repertoire; continued songwriting.
1993--In September, played at Fratello's in Gaithersburg, Md.; performed Tuesdays, July and August, at the Judge's Bench, Ellicott City, Md.
1992--performed in October as open mike opening act (30 minutes) at E.C. Does It Café, Ellicott City, Md., and in November as a featured act (45 minutes) at Silver Spring Folk Showcase; performed over spring and summer at Songwriter's Showcase, Westminster Inn, Maryland.
1990--Principal Male Vocalist, Alexandria Royal Fifes and Drums. Venues included Omni Shoreham, Washington Hilton.
1988-89--A Shug's Delight! won airplay on WWDC's Local Licks program; 1988--Led trio, The Shugs, into Washington, D.C. venues, including Galleghar's Pub, The Royal Warrant, The Takoma Café, and Bosco's.
1987--while on vacation in Jacksonville, Florida, played at TJ's Oyster House (won free-seafood-dinner-for-two contest), Applejacks, and Mayport Naval Air Station.
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In periodicals, I seem to have long-term attachments to American Photography, Aperture, Esquire, Playboy, and Vanity Fair. In earlier years, accompanying my ramping up for professional photography, collections of Elle, Vogue, and W developed as well (and still earlier, collections of Outside and Sports Afield. This past year, I've also been receiving Baltimore, GQ, Maxim, Studio Photography, and Wired. As I reformat my relocated photography business (more on that in a moment), I'll be taking an interest in Merideth publications such as Better Homes and Gardens. The list of periodically purchased periodicals grows longer each year: there's always, and among others, a Travel + Leisure, Town and Country, or Hagerstown magazine around here too.
At the start of February 2006, fire destroyed the habitability of the apartment building in which I had been living in Laurel, Maryland, setting off months of rooming in emergency housing while searching for a new location. At that time, the rising housing market in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor as well as personal issues pretty much drove me out of that market and up into the mountains of the Maryland panhandle. Along the way, I ditched several years worth of Elle (but managed to keep practically a full set of the defunct magazine Talk). My work on and with the library, which I regard as both invaluable and irreplaceable, continues with the building of bookshelves, the sorting out of various periodicals for utility (as entertainment, markets, and reference), and the organization of the whole to support my efforts to better focus the "mission areas" in creative writing, essay writing, journalism, and, my still more practical business, photography.