I was born in Nebraska but my family moved to southern Oregon in 1950. After eleventh grade I entered Yale College and participated in the Directed Studies (honors) program. I double-majored in English and German, and wrote my senior thesis about the poem “Brod und Wein” (“Bread and Wine”) by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843). When I continued at Yale for a Ph.D. in German I changed my scholarly focus radically, writing my dissertation about German SF. In retrospect, such refocusing has been characteristic of my professional career. The next change was from literary scholarship to language pedagogy, an area which for me has involved five sub-specialities: teaching skills; textbook writing and production; use of technology, especially development of language learning software and apps; assessment; and teacher education. Multiple changes of career emphasis may now be typical in the larger world, but that was not, and is not, typical of academia. Perhaps maintaining my original focus would have led to greater career advancement. But I would not have enjoyed my work and life nearly so much.
Over the years I have maintained my youthful school band experience on trombone and baritone horn by playing in various groups. I now play euphonium in a semi-serious brass ensemble. In my earlier years I did like to sing, just casually, and did so passably. But it wasn’t until my wife and I had children and were looking for a church that I discovered that, because of the brass experience and my early childhood piano lessons, I could easily sing bass harmony from the hymnal. From that it wasn’t far to chorus roles in productions by Portland Opera and Portland State University Opera: two Aïdas, Turandot, Flying Dutchman, Falstaff, Street Scene. Music and my profession of German Studies blended poignantly when I sang in the “Defiant Requiem”, a re-enactnment of Verdi’s Requiem as sung by prisoners at Terezin / Theresienstadt, the Nazi’s sham showcase concentration camp. For several years I taught practical German at opera workshops for young singers, and sang chorus in the associated productions at the Astoria Music Festival and Portland Summerfest Opera. Currently I sing in the Portland Bach Cantata Choir, to which I am donating all royalties from When God Sang German.
I am also a woodworker and, generally, a tinkerer. Indeed, my capsule description of myself is “I make things”, and when I consider my self-image, my hands mean as much to my as my mind and my words. As a teen I made a telescope, which at that time meant grinding and parabolizing a mirror (look it up), as well as constructing the tube and mounting. Our home is filled with furniture I’ve made, and I’ve built two cedar-strip canoes and a sailboat. For years I have been the family cook and grocery-shopper, partly because I enjoy it – the touch of the ingredients and the rhythm of moving through the kitchen – and partly because, as we had children, I believed that a mother who was nursing babies, and then caring for children and having her own profession, should not also have to cook. I taught our three daughters how to cook, so that they would not have to marry someone just because he could cook.
And now has come the reward of grandchildren: five little boys, after three daughters!