Over the years, I've made several attempts at creativity for various reasons. Some were at the prodding of friends, others spontaneous on my part, still others some combination of these and other motivations. On this page you will find a few samples.

Visual Expression

If this category seems thinly populated, blame it on the fact that I've never felt I have the manual dexterity to be an artist. This is probably just self-deprecation, and my lack of visual artistic expression likely stems from the fact that I never spent the time to develop it.

  • Train of Thought - I created this work when my friend Phoebe had an art party, and she told me I had to play cut and paste with the rest of the guests as a requirement of being at the party. I'm glad she did. This selection is the original version, scanned in and unmodified.
  • Train of Thought (digitally enhanced version) - After I scanned it in, there were a few technical elements that I wasn't happy with, and while I was correcting them, I realized that I could make a few other changes that I had thought about while I was working on the original, but was limited in creating by the media I was working in.
  • Lego Sculpture - While not usually seen as sculpture, creations with Lego bricks are a form of visual creative expression, and thus are included in this section of the page.
  • Possible later inclusions: Examples of my cartography (including my only published cartographic work, if I can get permission to reproduce it here).

    • Verbal Expression

    This category is somewhat broader the visual one, and since I've always felt at home in the realm of language, and it has also been more frequently requested and required by others, I have more examples to put in this section. I'm limited, of course, to the items which I've had the time to put into a postable format, so I expect this part of the page to increase in the future.

  • The Raven - with apologies to Poe, this rewording of the Raven was required by my military duties; not the typical cause for bouts of artistic creativity.
  • Untitled - I wrote this poem years ago, and dug it out recently after reading some of W.E. Henley's works, which reminded me of this one.
  • Bright Moon - inspired by a full moon which kept me awake most of the night, I wrote this in January of 2001.
  • The Sentry - while inspired by my military career, this poem was written during the closest brush I've had with civilian life since I reached adulthood, that is to say, while I was in college and merely participating in Navy ROTC, rather than being on Active Duty.
  • Sun Rhythms - I wrote this while floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean in 1988. My friend Dave Day wrote music to it, and he, his friend Biff Clarkin recorded it. If I find the recording, I'll turn it into an MP3. In the meantime, if you want to hear it, you'll have to ask me to sing it for you when you see me.
  • Possible later inclusions: the papers that I had published as chapters in Michael Conzen's Studies on the Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor (if he or the publisher don't object to their inclusion here), my bachelors thesis from the University of Chicago, other papers written at Chicago, a couple other examples of my poetry (in other words, the remaining corpus of my work as a poet), and a possible short story or two if I can dig them up.