Let me take a moment here to link you to an extensive interview that fellow writer Glenda Council Beall conducted with me and has now published on the North Carolina Network’s website. You can access it by clicking on THIS LINK.
Glenda, a teacher, poet, and writer in these mountains, has been instrumental in teaching and encouraging writers and maintaining conversations among them for many years. We got to know each other over 15 years ago as I was bringing out Red Clay, Blood River and she published a collection of poetry entitled Now Might as Well Be Then (Finishing Line Press, 2009). I think you will appreciate, as I have, her careful and sensitive insight into the key lines of thought and activity that have constituted a good deal of my life in these past decades. Thank you, Glenda, for taking the time to lift up the world of one of your many grateful conversation partners!
What an interesting and multi-faceted life you have led! I am an elder in the Presbyterian Church and I like your image of the round communion table. I want to forward this interview to our pastors and consider this concept. Like you, I have many varied, and some might say disparate, interests. I am a civil engineer with an abiding interest in sustainability and the environment, so your concern for ecology interests me as well. I am proud to say I am Glenda’s brother-in-law, so it might be that I get to meet you in person some day.