Bio edit
I was born in 1952, a post-war "baby-boomer". I was one of the first students to receive the New Math and SRA English reading curricula in the 1950s, was a National Merit semi-finalist and member of MENSA at age 16, and attended half a dozen colleges, including University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford and Amherst College, focusing on philosophy and religious studies as well as a broad study of the liberal arts.
I was 1-A the last year of the Vietnam draft lottery and had determined to resist if called, and spent many years in non-violent political protest and social-change movements, including the Anti-War, War-Tax Resistance and No-Nukes movements, as well as Appropriate Technology, Consumer & Worker Cooperative, Community Land Trust, Sustainable Building, Post-Carbon, Permaculture and Transition Town movements.
I was one of the first fully-certified master auto mechanics, and taught auto-mechanical theory and praxis in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Since 1982, I have been a pioneer designer and builder of passive-solar, super-insulated, affordable and healthy homes; and taught sustainable design, engineering and construction for eight years.
I was also a 30-year volunteer firefighter, a 20-year EMT and EMS instructor, a 12-year wilderness medicine and search & rescue specialist and instructor, and a 10-year professional instructor in technical rope rescue (low, steep and high angle, mountain, fast-water, ice & snow, cave and industrial rescue).
I am now a green building designer and consultant, as well as instructor of rigging, and keep three blogs: one for green building, one for rope rescue and one for "changing the paradigm of human culture".