[SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Of the items on the menu bar above, the only ones that presently have content are “CV/Resumé” under the menu “Academic”; the sections “The Empire Strikes Out”, “Writing & Presentations about Music” and “Panoramic Photography”, all under the menu “Projects & Publications”; and the bio information under “Personal”. The “Contact Me” resource is available.]

Welcome to my site! I live in Portland, OR, USA. About ten years ago I retired from the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Portland State University, where I had worked for more than thirty-five years.

Although I doubled-majored in German and English as an undergraduate, my base field after that was German or, to use the German term, Germanistik. I began my professional life as a scholar of literature, which was the norm in Germanistik, but a few years after obtaining my PhD (1979) I moved into language pedagogy. That was my main area of professional specialization for many years, and I had the inclination, ability, resources, and freedom to define it broadly. I worked in assessment, teacher education, curriculum development, textbook writing and production, and application of technology in language learning. My journal publications are listed on my CV (link in main menu) and are available through JSTOR and in major academic libraries. My book about German SF and my introductory German and Spanish textbooks are also listed there. They can be obtained through Amazon and other outlets. Eventually it will be possible to download some other publications from elsewhere on this website.

As I approached retirement, I planned to use my greater leisure to deal somehow with four of my long-term academic or at least intellectual projects: 1) language-learning software; 2) “SpeakEasy” – the advanced language course that was also a student-run business; 3) Moonlighting in “Turandot” – a book long since well underway – about my experience singing in opera choruses and how that had affected my view of literature, history, politics, and my own education and profession; 4) the “Humboldt Project” – research and teaching materials I had created as I was teaching multi-disciplinary courses based on the explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt. I hope that the outcomes of those projects will eventually be available on this website.

But instead, or at least at first, I embarked on a much different project. Although my career development had early taken me away from my original specialities in the Age of Goethe and then in German Science Fiction, I had long maintained my interests in the humanities, and had pursued my amateur and semi-pro musical activities on the side. So early in my retirement I found that my intellectual and emotional focuses were returning to the liberal arts. The outcome was my book When God Sang German: Etymological Essays about the Language of Bach’s Sacred Music (2017). The book is also a product of my spiritual inclination, religious faith, and (bien entendu!) denominational identity. I enjoy the liturgy (text, music, ritual). When God Sang German is available through Amazon. Only the Kindle ($9.99) and black-and-white versions ($20) appears conveniently. For the color version ($54.33), select the “see all formats” choice or search the Amazon site on ISBN 9781973123712. More detail is available on the separate webpage elsewhere on this site. I also offer the book as a fundraiser for the Portland Bach Cantata Choir (Use the main menu “Contact Me” to send an email inquiry to me.)

In 2022 I began working on another book related to music, my study of German literature and culture, my interest in technology, and my experience with letterpress printing and desktop publishing. The working title is Printing Bach: People, Technology, Economics, Aesthetics and Politics. The main focus is on Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, and Edition Peters. But I also explain the technologies of printing, note the importance of hand-copied music, summarize the printing of music up to Bach’s death in 1750, and attempt to discern Bach’s own view of publishing, including whether he may have preferred (or at least have been satisfied) to disseminate his work in hand-copied versions during his own lifetime. Appendixes will list Leipzig-region locations related to printing and publishing in the Bach era, and present a German-English lexicon of printing and publishing terms. If you would like sample chapters, use the main menu “Contact Me” to send an email request to me.)

Update 2024 December:

In June 2024 I traveled to Europe with the Portland Bach Cantata Choir to perform concerts in Berlin, Potsdam, Prague, and – by invitation – the prestigious BachFest in Leipzig. We performed the cantata “Ein’ feste Burg” (BWV 80) and two others in the Nikolaikirche.

In late September 2024 I attended the national conference of the American Bach Society in Atlanta. I gave a presentation titled “‘Bring Your Bärenreiters’: The Colorful and Checkered History of a Major Music Publisher” (abstract). Bärenreiter Verlag is a publisher in Germany that produces many pieces of classical music. When the Portland Bach Cantata Choir that I sing in starts rehearsing for a concert our director often tells us to “Bring your Bärenreiters”, meaning the score we will be using the next time. I got curious, researched Bärenreiter, and found much of interest to musicologists, historians, and students of printing. Here are the links to the text of my presentation and the slideshow for it. Our choir will sing Bach’s Weihnachts-Oratorium (Christmas Oratorio) on December 20.