Biographical Sketch

Written by John

Biographical sketch, January 2008

Dear visitor, I hope you have found this web site interesting. Perhaps you wonder what I have to tell in the manner of personal history. There's really not much to tell, but here is some information that may help to satisfy whatever curiosity you may have about what I have been doing on Planet Earth.

My parents (father, Vic; and mother, Nel) came from Canada. After they were married, the only satisfactory job father could find was at a cardboard paper-making factory in a town in California named Antioch. It is about 60 km east of San Francisco on the river that runs into the San Francisco Bay. He worked in the laboratory there doing quality-control tests, on the paper that was being made, even though he was over-qualified for this job, having a Masters in Chemical Engineering. Later, he became the production scheduler for the factory. My mother found work planning menus at the local hospital. She was a dietitian. Later, she taught cooking and sewing at the high school.

They didn't trust the hospital in Antioch, so when I was to be born they went to a larger town just east across the bay from San Francisco for my birth. I entered this physical existence on 09 January 1942. My sister Virginia entered in August of 1945. We grew up in Antioch until we left to go to universities. At that time the town was small, and much of our time was spent hiking in the hills south of the town, and playing along the river on its north side.

When I went to the university in the city of Portland, in the state of Oregon, at first I studied math and sciences. But, I "hit the wall" as they say, in my mathematics course Math Analysis; I simply had not the mental capacity to comprehend it. I had dreamed, in my high school years, of becoming a theoretical physicist, but now I discovered that this was beyond me.

I studied history, and art, and literature in English: after I graduated, I found that I needed a job to support myself, and that the knowledge I had of the Liberal Arts would not help me find one; so, I took a job that my science work had prepared me for, and worked as a laboratory technician.

I have never married nor had any children. I have been "in love" with a few women, but with none of them was the relationship satisfactory for a marriage. I have learned that love, like hate, can incline one toward poor judgment. Now, I'm getting a bit old, and have not the energy of youth, and I doubt that I will ever have a family of my own.

I have traveled a little bit. When I was 21 y.o. I came into an inheritance from my father's step-father, Henry Koch, and with it I spent a year and a half traveling in Europe and lived seven months in Paris, France. When I was 38, I went on a pilgrimage to the holy places of the Bahá'í Faith in Israel, in and in the vicinity of the port city of Haifa, Israel. The gardens and shrines of the Bahá'í Faith in and near Haifa were and are beautiful to see, and it was a deep experience I had being in them.

My major hobby these days is being in correspondence with and in the company of my friends. I used to like taking care of and beautifying my home. I liked to collect pretty pictures and little objects of art with which to adorn my house. Also, rugs or whatever I could get that was an improvement over what I had, I liked to try to acquire. I was particularly happy with the tea-cups and mugs for drinking tea and coffee that I had collected over a long period of time. I am an aesthete to a certain degree. I have turned to the ascetic side of late, and aspire now to devote my time to worship of the Great Being and to live in simplicity.

At my current age of sixty-six, I recognize that a large part of life is a fraud, and that people must be examined carefully before one dare trust them to any significant degree. My religious inclination is closest to that of J. Krishnamurti.

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