Monday, December 31, 2007

And so it begins...

I suppose I should start by introducing myself.

My family was Québécois for some ten generations, and then by the 1880's they appeared resident in Troy, New York. We have no records of who decided to emigrate to America, or when or why, but I assume it was done in the back of a turnip cart, and that it was not done under sanction of law.

I was born in Troy, therefore, I am Trojan.

I was raised by a group of talented but careless former circus people in an old rambling farmhouse outside a small run-down dairy town. This was in the highlands above Troy, among the brooding Taconic Mountains.

I came to Connecticut for academic reasons, and was enrolled at "a wealthy but minor university" on the banks of the majestic yet torpid Connecticut River. I spent several years ambulating in long-untended gardens of forgotten philosophy with a sworn corps of colleagues.

I have spent several more years now among the tribe of Yankees, (wary, dry-humored, and frugal), or hiking among the crushed and ragged hillsides, the dark forests wet with a cold drizzling rain. Or again, hiking on warm days in the sea breezes on the shore of Long Island Sound, the bright sunlight on the shattered rocks, with waves of sea and waves of salt-marsh grass.

I am a historian and spent a number of years in a frozen, snow-covered land, engaged in the preliminaries of the profession. My historical studies then focused on both American government and archaeology. I have since become an Archaeologist and have been licensed in the practice of law.