Here are a couple other brief things about me. This is stuff that informs my work in one way or another….but not everything that informs it.

• Music is very important to me. Listening to recorded music, experiencing live performance, and performing music are all very different phenomena, but they all provide some sort of sustenance. I enjoy a ton of music but my absolute favorite artists are: Streetlight Manifesto, Brand New, the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, and Midtown.  Favorite songwriters: Tomas Kalnoky, Jesse Lacey, Tom Petty, Jagger/Richards, Paul Simon, Trey Parker, Ingrid Michaelson, James Taylor. So like I said, I like lots of music, but it tends to lean in the “loud and fast” direction, but not all the time.

• Food is very important to me, but not in the sense that I’m a food snob. I just really enjoy eating food, preferably food that tastes good. My favorite restaurants/eateries are: Wood’s Seafood (Plymouth) and Nick’s Pizza (Buzzard’s Bay). I also love a number of things my mother makes. And I have a bad habit of eating Entemann’s chocolate frosted mini donuts by the box-full.

• Plymouth is very important to me. It’s where I grew up and I’ve established a deep connection to it. It’s an interesting place. It’s a very very large town (maybe should be a city – but that’s a divisive issue) – it has the means and culture of a small city, but a small town mentality, if you will. Or something – and that could be good or bad. It’s a very diverse place, for being a town on the South Shore of Massachusetts (“the Irish Riviera” on top of a 300-year history of WASPs) – the diversity is mostly socioeconomic, but Plymouth has a pretty wide spectrum of citizens. Plus its importance to American history is pretty cool.

• I was once an avid basketball player and runner. I’ve been getting back into running lately (road races and such), but as a former teacher pointed out recently, when I was in high school, basketball was my life. If you are an elementary thru high school basketball player, check out the Championship Basketball School in Buzzard’s Bay. One of my prized possessions is my 2002 camp championship trophy (along w/ my 2001 South Plymouth Basketball Association championship shirt/trophy).