Parents Influence

My father is a lawyer, an economist and a hippie. My mother is a special-ed teacher, a naturalist and a hippie. Although I was born in Orange County, CA, I grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Seattle. We moved to Seattle in 1980 just as Boeing was in the midst of a major layoffs. Microsoft and Starbucks weren't even born yet. There was even a billboard that said, "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights". So we managed to move into the area at just the right time. Eventually the fortune of our good timing would modify thier hippie personalities but at that time they were such hippies! Let me prove it. Their VW bus broke down on our journey north from southern California and my lullabys were Puff the Magic Dragon and Sounds of Silence.

So what do you get when you cross a lawyer, an economist and a hippie? I learned three important lessons from my father: "buy low, sell high", don't trust everyone else to solve the problems and don't argue with a guy who argues for a living. They also drove me into the Marines. How else do you rebel against hippie parents, other than join the Marines?

I had the upbringing that was supposed to lead toward careers in climate science, folk musicology or medical research in the developing world. There was nothing stopping me from going to college at the end of high school. Good grades, no arrests, no drugs, no children. I never shot a gun. I wasn't even allowed to watch GI Joe as a child because it was too violent!

What happened in high school that made it all go so awry?

A little while later...

Ever have a great plan then as you are executing you get sidetracked?? Yeah, well I think that happened with my blog here. I am not that old but I think that I have a difficult time grasping the Kerouacian style. I want my words to be so polished. However this media is about the moment and the evolution of thought rather than the presentation of completed thoughts.

So be it.

I pick up where I left off. I am a green marine. I served in the Marines for 4 years (1993-1997). During that time I thought about the rest of my life. What did I want it to add up to? Inspired by my parents, my high school and the overall political climate, I decided to invest my time and money into an education in alternative energy. Now I work as an engineer at a hydrogen fuel cell company. I hope that my efforts will help to move our country away from fossil fuels. Of course there is a LOT of work to be done. For me the question is, who's going to do the work? Who has the skill sets required to imagine, develop and market new technologies?

My answer: Anyone who has the knowledge and the motivation.

Where does my motivation come from?

For me it is the convergence of three sources: parents, high school and overseas deployment.

First my parents are alumni of the University of California at Berkely (Class of 1968). They are hippies (or at least former hippies). Key to my upbringing were the things that they taught me about global consciousness, environmentalism and economics. Later at Garfield High School in Seattle (a math-science "magnet" school), I re-enforced the environmentalism training but it was infused with a special dose of economics. At that time there was a large political debate over logging and the old-growth forest. Despite the very liberal leanings of Seattle, our ecology teacher took us on a field trip to "meet the loggers". We were taught about both sides of the debate and shown our hypocracy. It was that field trip that pushed me toward the Marines. I knew that the arguements could not be settled unless there was trust, trust must be earned and I needed to earn some trust. Voilla! Marine Corps. I was the only vegan in my platoon! Finally in 1996 I traveled to the Persian Gulf. It was there that I witnessed the size of our force. I began to comprehend the hidden cost of our gasoline. I realized that we were never going to change our habits. We never do! We didn't stop using gasoline when we found out the dangers of lead, we just took the lead out. We didn't stop using aresol cans when we found out about the ozone layer depletion, we just invented a different kind of aresol. I was inspired to become an engineer, to work on developing a new technology to replace oil.