Welcome to my Web site; a collection of my life’s experiences, collected content, and occasionally some original thoughts.
I begin with a summary of my life’s experiences and interest areas to better enable decisions about how much time, if any, to spend on this tiny, remote corner of the internet universe.
My LinkedIn Profile is a good summary of where I’m coming from, in terms of social concerns:
Servant of God, working with Academia and the United Nations since 2014, employing information and communications technologies to improve economic growth and the resilience of underserved communities to natural disasters and societal displacements. Second focus area is assisting small US municipalities achieve the big city benefits of a smarter city transformation, both in terms of economic growth and disaster risk reduction.
I have a lifelong interest in Science, as part of God’s programming and purposes for me, and cultivated in my formative years by my Godmother, who often took me to one of my happy places, the New York Museum of Natural History, and its fabulous Hayden Planetarium. Those monthly visits, coupled with many trips to the 1964/5 World’s Fair in NY gave me a lifelong thirst for how things work in this universe. The second blessing in the “how things work” aspect of my life was my Godfather, who owned a wooden sport fishing boat, which required endless hours of upkeep but provided the family with many weekends on the waters of Long Island’s Great South Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond the barrier islands. All winter long he would work on the hull components, engine and cabin trim, re-coating, varnishing, and re-plating everything ravaged by the elements of the prior season’s exposure to the salt environment. I would often help. The third great blessing, though I did not recognize it at the time, was my father, who took up golf in 1958, and whose weekend time on the local links offered me ample unsupervised time to maintain our house, yard, plumbing, electrical and lawnmower repair. The unsupervised practice on our poor old lawnmower along, with watching my Godfather work on his boat’s Chrysler SeaV8 gave me endless confidence in maintaining and repairing my own homes and our many family cars over the past 50 years, including my first American automobile, a 1967 Pontiac GTO, the subject of 1 of the 5 major discussion topics on my site. The other 4 areas include materials from my interests in
2) Reduction of Hypertension (high blood pressure) around the world,
3) Disaster Risk Management to help reduce the adverse effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable populations
4) Small Smart Cities, enabled by innovative use of Information & Communication Technologies, creating “Cities for Me” by reconnecting governments, residents and the business communities on ways to improve value and contribute to the long term viability of Small Town USA and the other smaller communities around the world
5) And as an enabler to them all, creation of a Global Development Exchange to facilitate connection of global resources to individual needs for accelerated value in healthcare, education, financing, agriculture and the inclusion of all social groups into the world’s benefits(?).
And finally, as a payback for all my life’s blessings, I spend considerable time working with and mentoring some of the youth of my church to help them in their transition from students to functional adults. I teach the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University for South County Church in Lorton VA, and find that sound financial principles are missing in most families and nearly all of the youth in contact with me through the church. Financial skills and other sound lifestyle choices key to maintaining our Nation’s place in the world are sorely lacking in my corner of Virginia, and so I volunteer time to help battle against these knowledge shortcomings which contribute to rising private debt, healthcare issues, and knowing how things work in this world.