A few years
before he died at 86 in the early 1990's, my father gave me hell for not
telling stories
about my international work and
travels (he had spent some 30 years in the same office as a doctor). I
started
with short stories, roamed around
with a novel, back to nonfiction. I'm still roaming around with intentional
and unintentional 'writer's block'
(I have a Master of Arts in Procrastination).
Born and raised
in Connecticut with summers on a mountaintop in Vermont, I was an only
'Depression Baby'
after mother almost died at childbirth.
Relatives jokingly said my red hair was attributed to our russet
dog! Father, himself an 'ham radio
operator' in the early 1920's, guided me into radio and I got my license
at 14. Because of a communications
capability, I was in Civil Defense and member of the Auxiliary State Police.
DXing fueled my interest in affairs
foreign. After undergraduate work at Washington and Lee in Virginia, I
enlisted in the US Army's CounterIntellignece
Corps and volunteered for Berlin after agent and German language
schools. After three years, I thought
my long term goals elsewhere in international affairs and went to Johns
Hopkins' School of Advanced International
Studies for a MA. Then it was a tour in international finance in the
US Treasury, a short stint as a
consultant in Congress on to a financial attache at the US Embassy in Bonn.
But, alas, I felt I 'had to go independent'
and left the US Government to set up an office in downtown DC to work
on World Bank projects. Assignments
and sightseeing along the way took me to some 40 countries. I have been
published directly and indirectly
by Johns Hopkins, GPO, OECD and the Hartford Courant and have taught political
science at the college level.
What am
I to do now? Well, first, I have to shed my MA in Procrastination; second,
heed my father giving me
hell to write stories and; third,
to type. All assistance is gratefully accepted.--- Arthur Fern
