About Andrew

I’ve tossed my autobiography into a footnote.^* I have no possible illusion of fame. Maybe the reader will find something amusing or shared, which is great. I’ve done a lot of different things and lived in a number of different places, so there’s probably something.

You are what you create can be inspiring or scary. You are the things you build, the children you raise, the words you write, even the stones you skip out into the lake. I worked hard for a good education that I intended to parlay into creating interesting things.

Many lives provide ample writing material. For the lucky, it also gives some contempt for adversity, a refusal to defer to your enemy. Listen to this undercurrent of defiance:

“Nothing bad ever happens to a writer. It’s all just material.”
—Garrison Keillor

If you didn’t have any fun writing something it probably won’t be fun to read. I want to share experiences and ideas that matter to me, in relation to my own life, and to preserve stories that are interesting, funny, or sad. The thing to do now is write stuff, and most of my efforts are going into specific projects. I appreciate the responses I’ve gotten, best of all where something I’ve written has prompted someone to think of their own life a little differently.

It would be a terrible failure if I didn’t pass along the (sometimes dark) sense of humor that has carried me along, but I’ve set aside an “upbeat” category in case anyone accuses me of being a killjoy. But the first sin of writing is to be boring. What’s true is not necessarily interesting or revealing. You won’t read here what I had for breakfast or whether it’s raining outside (it is!).

These are also early sketches for a memoir I’d like to write someday, adding the sort of detail that I think belongs within the depths of a book and not a fast-skim blog. There’s a more intimate connection once you’ve sucked someone between the covers of a real book, a reliable place to share a complex story, versus the turmoil of the web.

Reach me any time via “contact“

^*Vitals: I am from all over. Born in Connecticut, raised in California (SF, two parts of LA), drawn East for college (Harvard College ’89, psychology and biology), then Somerville, next Ithaca (Cornell Law School ’92), two years in Chicago (clerkship), and now Arlington, Virginia, by far the longest residence. My wife is also Harvard ’89 and struggles with multiple sclerosis; our two boys are in college much too far away. Add to that a circle of friends, a codependent cat, and emotionally unavailable elderly dog (we did get a dog). My resumé includes a bewildering variety of experiences ranging from flight instructor to MRI technologist to full-time dad

The dad gig is permanent, or as long as they’ll have me. Hobbies include reading, all sorts of home improvement trades, cycling, and science, for which I do demos in the schools.