Major influences: Good ones: my mother and her mother and father. Growing up in Mississippi, experiencing the  countryside, hot sun, animals and birds, creeks, rivers and fields. Huge setback:: a father who did no fathering. Major spiritual influences: Krishnamurti, Buddhism, Taoism. Major literary influence: Too many to list. Very early ones: L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Bouroughs, The Tom Swift series. Later: Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson. Eudora Welty. Currently learning from countless writers in literary journals. Major events: Going to the Far East in the Korea War. Living 13 years in California, which included the sixties. Getting an education. Returning to Korea and Japan for 6 1/2 years. Marrying my present wife.Living in rural Mississippi again for the past 18 years.

BA: philosophy. MA: General Humanities. Doctorate: Education.Worked several years on a novel; threw it away. Worked 20 years translating the Tao Te Ching ("Tao Te Ching:Poetry and Paradox," Exlibris, 2000). Worked ten years on my memoir, "The End of Tenderness." Finished it this spring.