Born in western Pennsylvania, raised in the 60s in the sarcasm belt of north-central New Jersey (yes, you can take the boy out of Jersey but you can not take the Jersey out of the boy), graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in Education, I moved to San Francisco in 1977 (partly to see what it might be like to live someplace where the people wore flowers in their hair - someplace very different from what I had so far been accustomed to). After surviving significant initial culture shock, I spent most of the next two decades in various parts of the pacific northwest, and loved it. But in order to be closer to family, I then moved back east to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where I was employed as a Respiratory Therapist in a children's hospital until I retired. I am now thankfully living on the Oregon coast.