Home | JPD Interviews MWS | Artistic | Toastmasters | Interview MWS | La Nausée | About Me
Alopex
About Me

This is the page where I'll describe myself in more detail.

I am on the far left with those eyeglasses.
ashleyjuly1972.jpg
My best guess is Independence Day of July 1971.

Kunkle Scholarship, 1975
kunkle_jpg_w560h447.jpg

I am in middle age, yet I still fight nature to slow down the process.  I just entered a new phase of my life.

The entire Wyoming Valley is stuck in the 1930's.
fdratmilnerpark1936.jpg
FDR is second from the left at the podium.

I was born and reared in the area around Wilkes-Barre. My hometown bears the names of John Wilkes and Isaac Barre, who were two members of parliament. They favored the colonists in the Revolutionary War. I spent less of my life in that area, and I have not been there since 1994.
Wilkes-Barre is a fine place to live, but someone as educated as I am will find it an impossible place to make a decent living. Without any connections, I tried to get into politics the last time I was there, but it led to nothing but temporary jobs. Meanwhile, all the relatives on my distaff side died off, and I brought my mother to Philadelphia. I have only one cousin on my father's side still in the area, so I really have virtually no one left alive to visit there.
My primary struggle is to find my place in the economy. I spent eleven years at Penn State, five as an undergraduate (three of those at the Wilkes-Barre Campus in Lehman) and six as a graduate (eight total at University Park). I seem to be in a rut of making a living, instead of making a life.

Frank & Ernest on MBA's

This cartoon, which appeared on Thursday, 1 May 1986, was much too close to reality for me. Nearly two years after I'd received my MBA from Penn State, I was finally employed. I came all too close to living on the streets, because I was "overqualified" for everything.

Marty McLamb

This preacher pulled a Shilo on me, which is a
uselessmanustupration.jpg
vicious attack in unknown enemy territory (1862)

In a pathetic attempt to get professionals to come back, the chamber of commerce put out this pamphlet.  Note how they try to justify the cheap wages the employers pay.  Who makes $50,000 there, anyway?  This place is going to have a severe labor shortage soon, as the number of entering workers continues to drop, and the economy recovers.  Nationwide, employers will want us boomers to stay around because we have few replacements.  We have fled the area en masse, so there will be few left to stay around!  The employers dug their own hole by keeping down wages.
Now Wilkes-Barre has "right to work" laws, or better, "right to be exploited" laws.  Unions are so weak now that the councils can get away with favoring the rich, and driving down wages more and chasing more of us out of the area.  No wonder my high school (Bishop Hoban) has combined with the other three Catholic high schools in Luzerne County.  Employers are depopulating the area.

wb1.jpg

wb2.jpg

wb3.jpg

wb4.jpg

Favorites

wedding.jpg

undefined
tauras.jpg
undefined

A picture of the event at the bar my father started on Sunday, 9 February 1964, the night the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Grand Opening was Thursday, 30 January. The building is now a VFW at 1474 San Souci Parkway near Nanticoke and Wilkes-Barre.

Oh, those days of innocence and naïveté!
ashleyme62.jpg
This picture evokes memories of the early summer of 1962.

In my bedroom in February 2000 (on the magnetic
feb00.jpg
calendar, in front of my drawn posters of Bill Clinton, Ryan White, and Terry Fox)

3strikescv.jpg

3strikestl.jpg