Marketing Coordinator
Treasures: Photo of Mae, shamrock pin she designed, Film Quarterly, page from my novel
Favorite Movie: Seven Samurai
Last Book Read: Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor
Listening to Now: Bluegrass, Glen Gould, The Rolling Stones
Caught at the Curran Theatre: Kevin Spacey in Richard III
Last Meal on Death Row: Barbecue pork ribs, rice pilaf with snow peas, Mae’s poppyseed cake.
Bright Lights, Big City
In high school I went on a school-sponsored trip to London and realized, “Oh, I want to come back here as soon as I can.” My folks were very progressive and adventurous so a year or so later they staked me to several months in London. I had just gotten my first article published in the New York Times, writing about movies. That was the plan: to go to London and write about film. Went right from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, this very isolated, almost rural town, to one of the glittering capitals of the world. And of course I was unprepared!
Met my Sweetheart!
I came to San Francisco in—what? 79? I had a period in my 20s where I was just traveling and living in different places. Lived in Boston for awhile. Lived in New Orleans. I tried New York, but New York was going through one of its difficult times. So I came to San Francisco with the idea that it would just be another of my stops… and that I’d probably go back to Boston. Then I met my wife Mae and my life just kinda got going here.
Follow your bliss
You have to work at what you really love to do or you’re not going to be happy. I’ve been writing since I was a kid and it’s what I’ll do after I retire. And if I never get anything published again, I’ll still do it. What happens as you get older is: it becomes the onlything you want to do.
View from here
I’ve worked at O+A for over 5 years. What’s been interesting in that time is seeing the company evolve from a little south of Market firm, mostly local, to this—well, I guess you could say world player in commercial design. O+A always had a look. Now it has a vision. Not just of what a workplace should look like, but of how work itself is evolving.