I am a writer and journalist living in a small wine community 60 miles north of San Francisco. At the age of 67, I’ve been involved in writing and publishing since the sixth grade newsletter in one form or another, working as a legal editor for CCH, assistant to two art directors at the Rolling Stone, a cub reporter at the Sonoma Index-Tribune, founding the Kenwood Press, assistant ME at the Petaluma Argus-Courier, ME of the Novato Advance (4 months), production editor for DealFlow Media, and today I’m back at the Kenwood Press, writing and providing technical assistance on a part-time basis.
I was educated in Beaconsfield, England; Washington, D.C., Dayton Ohio; Washington again; Paris, France (graduated HS); San Antonio, TX (graduated Trinity U); Chicago, IL (three years Loyola School of Law). College degree in History with minors in Psychology and French.
I live in a canyon next to Sugarloaf State Park on a very isolated half-acre of God’s back yard. It is so beautiful I pinch myself daily because after 33 years I still don’t believe I have the right to live so well.
For anyone with political sensitivities, I declare firmly that you have no idea of what I think about politics. I vote Democratic 90 percent of the time. I’m more fiscally conservative than anyone would ever believe. I have no trouble with the death penalty, justly and fairly administered. Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and most of Western Pakistan would be glass if I ran the country after 9/11.
I think the silliest and least useful sobriquets in the current US lexicon is “liberal” or “conservative,” inevitably used to tar the recipient with a host of preconceived nonsense that prevents communication at any level. I have traveled, read, listened, learned and thought about life enough to know that it’s anything but simple. On the contrary, it is rich, complex, multi-hued, nuanced and a constant source of wonder to me in it’s kaleidoscopic presentation.
“Parallax is an apparent displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines.” Taken straight from Wikipedia (blush). I learned about it using a CIA provided Leica the year before my father — Col. Jay F. Gamel, Sr. — moved to Paris to become Military Attache to NATO. As most attache’s are spies of one sort or another, they have to take courses in surveillance before posting. Pop hated the whole idea of it in general, and cameras in particular, and since I was a camera buff at 12, i got the Leica and a whole bag full of goodies.