DrBen

My blogs

Blogs I follow

About me

Gender Male
Industry Education
Occupation Information Systems Manager
Location Sacramento, California
Introduction I’m a 56-year-old Information Systems Manager at a major Teaching Hospital. In my other life, I'm a community activist, union officer, creative writer, Episcopal lay minister and hospital chaplain. I grew up in Glastonbury Connecticut, living there until 1986. Since then I've lived in Chicago, Boston and now California. I live in Tahoe Park, a working-class neighborhood of Sacramento in a converted Catholic Rectory with my two cats, Tiger and Muffin. For the first time in years, I am mowing the lawn, and fixing what goes wrong in an 80+year old building. I once more enjoy trips to Home Depot, and after years of living in a college town which rolls up the sidewalks at night, I enjoy being back in the hustle and bustle of a city neighborhood. In my free time, I work on restoring (and camping in) a classic VW Camper Van, bicycling writing, reading, making or listening to music. I'm a 3-time survivor on Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (also surviving a life-threatening treatment-related infection in 2005), and have been healthy since a Bone Marrow Transplant in 2001. I’m a peer counselor for cancer and BMT patients.
Interests Writing, reading, music Day Trips, The Lost Coast, Episcopal church, Chaplain, cancer support, Benedictine centering prayer, ministry, computers, cycling, LINUX, social networks, Air-Cooled VW bus
Favorite Movies The MATRIX (All), Classic Movies, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Bogart, Gregory Peck, Erol Flynn, etc. (Recently Gary Cooper too after seeing Sgt. York again)
Favorite Music Pretty much anything BUT RAP! Live music festivals. Celtic, atmospheric, folk, classical, classic rock, blues, jazz, vocals and more
Favorite Books The Bible, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Chaucer (in Middle English!), The Once and Future King, the Mabinogean, Mysteries by James Lee Burke, Denis Lehane, Kieth Ablow, Patricia Cornwell and others. Read widely in Buddhism, Celtic Pagan, and Christian Theology and church History.. Futurist Authors, including Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman, Po Bronson and others