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About the author
I’ve led a charmed life, ever since my birth in Black River Falls in the Coulee Country of west central Wisconsin. This despite growing up in a hard-luck, hardscrabble family in the same small town at the center of WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP, Michael Lesy’s montage of nightmarish photographs and haunting news clippings from 1890-1910. I’m a proud descendant of Norwegian and Finnish immigrants and the grandson of two dairy farmers.
What my impoverished family couldn’t do for me, others did in their stead, bless them one and all. Do I ever get annoyed when people mock the proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” Because I wouldn’t have made it very far in life without the kind support of my hometown, my family being so poor and dysfunctional. Such as a dentist checking and cleaning my teeth for free. Or a childless neighbor who owned a men’s clothing store giving me a new pair of school pants every year of grade school. Or a pharmacist neighbor giving me two dollars so I could go to the county fair with his two sons, the same amount he gave them. One of my dearest friends as a boy was the head of the public library, a favorite personal hangout. A widow, whose deceased husband fought in the Spanish-American War, Mrs. Frances Perry was the most intellectual person in the county, capable of saying things like, “Danny, this winter I’m going to re-read the works of Charles Dickens.” That opened up unimagined possibilities. A teacher’s pet in every grade, I got all A’s in high school, graduated as co-valedictorian, won scholarships to the “U,” as everybody called the University of Wisconsin back then, earned a B.A. in German, making Phi Beta Kappa, and then studied for two semesters as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Marburg in West Germany. A draft notice at the height of the Vietnam War interrupted graduate school plans. After consulting recruiters from every service branch, I enlisted for the Army Security Agency and completed Basic Combat Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Next I studied Russian for a year at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, winning its Commandment’s Award. After passing an F.B.I. background check, I received a top secret codeword security clearance and served along the Iron Curtain in West Germany as voice intercept operator. Upon discharge, I returned to Madison with plans to earn a doctorate in German literature and to become a college teacher. I especially enjoyed courses taught by Professor Jost Hermand, generally considered the world’s greatest scholar of Germanistik. Though I completed all requisite doctoral work, including an external minor in Russian literature, I was unable to finish a thesis. So I earned a second Master’s degree in Library Science and became a professional librarian at Ohio University. Upon retiring, I remained here in funky, lovable, beautiful Athens. Many an unforgettable vacation, be it to Yosemite and Death Valley, Zion and Capitol Reef, Kauai and Maui, Paris and London, Bruges and Amsterdam, Munich and Salzburg, Madrid and Grenada, Florence and Siena, Auckland and Wellington, Ulva Island and Milford Sound, or New Orleans Jazzfest. My most memorable trip was a six-week jaunt to China the spring of 1989 as a guest of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, lecturing on computer applications in libraries through a translator in Lanzhou and Chongqing and toured Beijing, the Great Wall, Xian, Guilin, and Hong Kong. Such a simpatico, hospitable people the Chinese. My wife and I entertained two unforgettable guests in this Athens, Ohio home. For a few nights in 1985, my ex and I put up the American ex-patriot actor, singer, songwriter, director, and social activist Dean Reed, known as the “Red Elvis” for his communist sympathies and political activism. Dean had come to Athens for the premiere of Will Roberts’ documentary film AMERICA REBEL: THE DEAN REED STORY, for which I had written the subtitles for the German and Russian dialogue. Such an easy-going, unpretentious man. Such a shame he died so young in East Berlin the next year. More than a decade later, we threw three unforgettable dinner parties for Oleg Grinevsky, a visiting scholar from Russia at Ohio University’s Contemporary History Institute, and formerly a security advisor to Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as head of the Soviet delegations to the Stockholm and Vienna Disarmament Conferences, and Russian ambassador to Sweden. Such a sweet man, such a fascinating conversationalist. No kids, but many a beloved cat. A diehard Packers and Badgers fan. I also love reading, walking, biking, foreign languages, genealogy, photography, films, history, and, above all, my wife, Sharon. And keeping diary of more than a half century standing. During my spare hours, starting at UW-Madison, I analyzed the techniques of every fiction writer I read and applied these self-taught lessons in works of my own creation, which now total one hundred stories, twelve novels, and six screenplays. I also submitted queries to agents and editors. In 1994, my persistence finally paid off with the appearance of my first story in print. Since then, I have published in thirty-seven other literary journals. Among my many favorite authors, I especially cherish William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Brontës, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad, John Le Carré, Margaret Atwood, and Ian McEwan. |
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