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Hi there Web Surfers. I'm an old retired guy from the United States Air Force and IBM. I live on the island of Nantucket off the coast of Mass. and in Englewood, Florida with my wife, Cynthia of 28 years. I have three children in Tennessee, Virginia, and Minnesota, eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. I'll tell you about my hobbies and principal interests in the spaces below.
Bird Watching
-- I've been 'Birding' since I was 12 years
old
-- that's pushing 60 years. I have seen over
600 species of birds in the U.S. and over 1,000 worldwide.
I can identify most birds by
their calls alone. I really enjoy sharing my enthusiasm
for bird study with others and find the best way to do that is by writing about them.
In 1976 I co-authored (with Sheldon Severinghaus) A New Guide to the
Birds ofTaiwan .
About the same year I started a series of bird guides for the island of Nantucket
with birding legend, Edith Folger Andrews. That book, called
Birding Nantucket ,
has been updated seven times with its most recent release in 2010.
This has mushroomed into a series of six
books about Nantucket's birds -- Birding Nantucket
the Series.
From 2003 until 2010 I wrote a weekly column,
The Birds of Nantucket, for the Nantucket Independent newspaper. Alas, that weekly
newspaper is no longer with us.
Above left, you can see me on a Maria Mitchell Association Barn Owl Banding
mission in 2008. You can click that picture to
go to a page that has a lot of birding web links. The
picture on the right shows me scoping some ducks on Nantucket's upper harbor from
Pocomo.
The Ham Radio hobby has brought me many benefits. My electronic skills got me a good job in the Air Force, plus I've made many wonderful friends all around the world. I hold an Extra Class FCC license with the call sign of W1NQT. To the right you see me sending Morse Code during a Field Day operation with the Englewood Amateur Radio Society (EARS) . You can click that picture for interesting Ham Links on the web.
The sport of
Badminton
has been a major avocation for over 50
years. In 1973 I was the Colorado State Singles Champion.
For many years I was a National
Umpire with USA
Badminton,
Headquartered in Colorado Springs, CO.
Now I play mostly with other seniors.
The picture to the left shows me at the
Boston
Open Tournament in March of '99
with one of my favorite players, Andy
Chong. You can click anywhere on that
picture to find interesting Web Sites that relate
to the sport of Badminton.
I was born on
Nantucket back in
1941 and lived there
'til I graduated from High School in '59. I then joined the United States Air Force
and had jobs as an aircraft radio repairman, computer programmer, and then in personnel data systems.
I was stationed at Westover AFB, Syracuse University, Randolph AFB, the US AF Academy, Taipei Air Station, and
did short duty in Greenland and Labrador, honorably discharged as a Captain in 1975.
After finishing an MBA in Finance and Marketing at Syracuse University in 1977 I had a career with IBM, in
Systems Engineering and Manufacturing Consulting, finishing as a Senior Planner in Atlanta in 1996.
In retirement mode, we
live on the island part of the year, and in Florida the other part.
You can rent
our Nantucket house for the summer, since we are down in Florida
then.
On the right you see a scene from Nantucket. If you click on that picture,
it will take you to some other web links about the quaint, windy
island.
In
1992 we visi
ted my sister-in-law down in
Englewood,
FL and
bought a house there, thinking of retirement. Englewood is 100 miles
south of Tampa. We
rent
this house to snowbirds who come down to escape the cold. So we are up on
Nantucket in the winter. Then we're down here in Florida in the
summer since we rent the Nantucket house then. We are always in the
wrong place at the wrong time?? Perhaps?? Click anywhere in
the picture for
more Englewood links.
Click Here
to see about renting this house for the winter season!
Page designed and maintained
by Ken Blackshaw, Scientia Enterprises. To have Ken design your OWN web
page
--
Click Here! -- .
Check out our current photo selections on My Flickr Photo Albums.
Click on the references below for some good web sites that tell about other things near and dear to me.