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people know you as:
Jim.
where you lived first year:
And every other year: 302 Hitchcock.
your major:
English.
Dartmouth person(s) who had a major influence on you, and how: James Epperson, my first-term, freshman-year English professor, in a course on satire. He indulged me in my idea of writing a final paper on the comic strip Li'l Abner and its creator, Al Capp, complete with clippings from the pages of daily newspapers. Professor Epperson granted me the license to choose theme and thesis topics with abandon, cementing forever my love of writing about whatever interests me.
one of your most memorable Dartmouth moments:
The night in 1967 that George Wallace spoke in Webster Hall to howls of protest inside the building and out. As a biographer later recounted, Wallace “paced restlessly” over the stage, “exhilarated by the violence heavy in the air.”
where's home:
Birthplace: Knoxville, Tennessee. Childhood: Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin (suburb of Milwaukee). After Dartmouth: Cambridge and Brookline, Massachusetts.
where you live now:
Thetford, Vermont.
what you do for work:
I'm the executive director of the Aloha Foundation, which owns and operates summer youth and family camps; wilderness tripping programs; and a year-round center for outdoor education, meetings, conferences, and retreats.
you could talk for hours about:
A great dish of risotto, bowl of Vietnamese pho, and plate of red snapper chargrilled with papaya and lime.
something you learned yesterday:
The chance of one of two tossed coins coming up heads is 50-50; of a double-header, 1 in 4. See the June 7, 2008, New York Times book review of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.
favorite spot in your home:
Our backyard deck after dark on an early-summer night,
looking out over a field full of fireflies.
web site you love to go to:
New York Times op-ed page.
biggest one-eighty of your life:
Actually, this is a 360: Returning to the Upper Valley to run
a camping organization, after 35 years working with museums and other cultural and arts institutions in Boston.
trait you love about someone dear to you:
A riotous laugh at the least provocation.
you've been meaning to get to it for years:
The Galapagos. And my toes, without bendingmy knees.
historical figure who fascinates you, and why:
Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, who had Margaret Thatcher beat by a decade and Hillary Clinton by 40 years. Meir grew up in my home town of Milwaukee and took office in 1969, the year I graduated from Dartmouth.
you blow off steam by:
Making a nice cup of tea.
reading on the bedside table:
Three Short Novels, by Wendell Berry, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
tops on tomorrow's to-do list:
Not tops, but somewhere on list: Write a poem.
message you'd like to see on a billboard:
A Quaker dictum:Proceed as way opens.
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