My life for the past 40 years…
Well, as some of you may know, I went from MLHS to Lehigh where I got my degree in Chemistry in the usual way and in the usual time frame. At that point, not having any hot job offers, I took the natural alternative and went off to grad school, at Villanova. I did research in analytical chemistry, specifically inorganic spectroscopy. After publishing a few papers, doing enough work for my Ph. D., and marrying a fellow-student, we went off to beautiful Ames, Iowa, where I spent a year as a post-doc for the developer of a then-new analytical technique, the inductively coupled plasma. This got me a job with Jarrell-Ash in Waltham, Mass., an analytical instrument company which was then developing new instruments based on what I had been working on as a post-doc. So in 1975 we moved to Massachusetts and settled in historic Concord. A daughter, Sara, was born in 1977, but the marriage soured and we were divorced four years later.
Eventually I started going back to church, and one of the first people there I met was the assistant rector, one Lee Ferry. Things developed, and we were married in 1984. Shortly before that she left her job to be chaplain at U. Mass. Dartmouth and interim at two parishes in Fall River, so we bought a old (1850's) largish house in East Bridgewater, about halfway between our respective jobs. We still live there (http://satucket.com/Milo/ourhouse.jpg - that's not me in the picture). Meanwhile, Jarrell-Ash was undergoing mergers, resulting in a series of lay-offs, and I got caught by the last one. After several months of looking, I landed a job at an environmental lab in charge of their Inorganics section (analyzing lead, mercury, etc., in water, soils, & other stuff). This lasted for about ten years until they went out of business - environmental labs are not big money-makers - and I taught Chemistry part-time at U. Mass. Dartmouth for a year or so until getting a job with another environmental lab, this time as IT manager. This lasted only a couple of years through a reassignment and being (very thankfully this time) laid off. Right now I'm back to teaching Chemistry part-time, at Bridgewater State College, and Massasoit Community College, and have been happily doing this for about three years now. I consider myself "semi-retired" at this point, although these two teaching gigs add up to about a full-time load.
Lee and I have two sons, Thomas, age 19, and Christopher, 16. Thomas is a student at Massasoit and, after next year, will be transferring to some as-yet-undetermined 4-year school. Christopher is also taking courses at Massasoit as an extension to his homeschooling (both were home-schooled mainly due the "high quality" school system we have here). Sara graduated from Wellesley a few years ago in architecture and works for a Concord firm. She's to be married in October, so I'll be a father-in-law. Lee busies herself with the kids and being the Episcopal Church's representative to the Boy Scouts, chaplaining at Boy Scout camps, and helping out doing Sunday services at a local cluster of parishes.
In my Copious Free Time© I find myself mostly doing Church stuff and most of that connected with the Internet. For example, if you are looking for the Book of Common Prayer online, my site is where you go (http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/). I'm also Senior Warden (head layperson) at my local church. I have a garden out back and try to ignore everything that needs fixing around the house as much as possible. Recently we've been getting involved in town politics, trying to build a Rail Trail along an abandoned rail line here. So far we haven't needed Doug Foy's assistance, but you never know.
Well, I'm now at the bottom of the page, so that's all you get!
