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My BiographyI was born in Massapequa, New York, in 1963. My family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida in 1973. I attended several schools in south Florida, including John F. Kennedy Junior High School and North Miami Beach Senior High School in North Miami Beach Florida. I left NMBSH in 1979 to attend a session of the High School In Israel, Qlamaniyya, Israel, now known as the Alexander Muss Institute in Hod haSharon, Israel. I earned a GED shortly after returning from Israel and spent a semester at Miami Dade Community College. Although academically successful, I longed for the road and left Florida in the Summer of 1980, just having turned 17, in a 1964 Volkswagen Van, the purchase of which was generously funded by a loan from the mother of my friend Shari Diamond. After spending 1981 in Northern Maine on a couple of different small farms, I went west with Jane Leibowitz to Seattle (with a new transmission in the 64' van). In Seattle I worked as a Volkswagen mechanic and started flying lessons. While Jane and I were in Seattle, we were visited by 4 friends of hers who were following the Grateful Dead for the Summer. I had never heard of the Dead and only years later, in the company of my wife Mary, did I get fully exposed and fell madly in love with their music. I settled in Northern Maine in the mid-1980s, with Jeanne Brady, whom I met in Miami, Florida at "Insight I". I had spent the past few years working as a tree-planter and bookeeper to save money to buy a piece of land. I was interested in homesteading, alternative energy, and self-sufficiency (I was greatly influenced by John Seymour and the Nearings). I eventually earned an Associates Degree in Liberal Studies and then a Bachelors in Information Technology Services Management from the University of Maine at Presque Isle. After spending a few .com years working in Los Angeles, Sarasota-Fl and Manhattan, I rejoined the University of Maine System in Augusta, Maine in 2002 and my family and I relocated to Central Maine. |