Biographical Sketch

The Sketch below is intended to provide a little non-professional information about me.

I was born in the fall of 1969 on Castle Air Force Base in Merced California. My dad was career Air Force, my mom a social worker type, and over the next 18 years we lived in California, Texas (Ft. Worth once and Abilene three different times), Guam, Colorado, and South Dakota. I attended 8 different schools by the time I graduated from high school in 1987.

In 1977 my brother Phillip and I went to see "Star Wars" at the mall with our mom and we spent the rest of our elementary school careers as Jedi masters. About the same time my dad brought home the very first video game unit ever made - Pong; soon to be followed by Atari. Yes, it was the dawning of the age of the video game. The country caught "Pac-Man Fever" and the Martin brothers never recovered. Phillip is still my number one gaming partner. In order to maintain my VIP status at "The Magic Door", one of the finest video arcades I have ever had the privilege to frequent, I worked odd jobs in junior high. I also spent a lot of time playing Dungeons and Dragons during this golden era of leisure.

My sophomore year my knee (ACL) was sacrificed to the West Texas football gods; and that was the end of that. One less group of people (coaches) to give me a hard time about the length of my hair as far as I was concerned. The movie "Friday Night Lights" was about a team in our district and, despite its inaccuracies, might give you some idea as to the seriousness in which the sport is taken in West Texas. But "Dazed and Confused" might better depict my high school experience despite it being placed just a few years before my time. If you haven't seen it - or don't remember it - the main character is in the process of being socially blackballed for dropping out of a Texas football program. In high school I also worked at a fast food joint - Whataburger -- and the local K-Mart to pay for my expanding cassette tape collection. New wave was at its height, Heavy Metal was going through a golden age, MTV played music, and a new sound called Rap was blasting out of my moms Oldsmobile. Three cheers to whoever can provide me with a copy of Duke Bootee's classic "Who Dat" on CD.

Being quite unhappy about a forced relocation to Rapid City, South Dakota before my senior year of high school, I left upon graduation to return to Abilene, Texas where my extended family lived to pick up my fast moving career at K-Mart. I began attending the local junior college, and no one was more surprised than I was when I made straight A's my first semester. Learning seemed more interesting if no one was cramming it down my throat.

My second year of college I transferred to a four year university in rural Texas, and to another K-Mart, where I majored in criminal justice and history. The three or four times I quit my job(s) at K-Mart were three or four of the most glorious moments of my life. I kept going back because jobs were hard to find -- and the recession of the late 80's didn't help much. There were some fun K-Mart moments to be sure: I drove a forklift right through a garage door, I let another forklift fly down the hill while I was looking the other way - faulty emergency break, and my two best friends at the time, Steve and David, also worked there. But I hated retail, shifting schedules, dress codes, and I was fed up with power tripping assistant (micro) managers; one of whom insisted the local reservoir, too small to even consider waterskiing on, was over 800 feet deep because his sonar said it was. It was 34 feet deep -- at the dam. The last time I quit I decided to get a job doing whatever was the opposite of retail. I wound up spending my last two years of college and three years afterwards working in the mental health/mental retardation fields, some of the sanest jobs I ever had -- highly suggested.

I graduated from Tarleton State University in 1991 and moved to Austin, Texas where I spent the next three years seeing live music, avoiding creditors, and living the fine life of an Austin Slack Lord with Judd, Chris, and many others who have proved since to be life long friends. The movie "Slacker" was filmed in Austin at this time. I am honored to have had the opportunity to have learned at the feet of many true Masters of the Slack Arts. I also unexpectedly became stylish for the first and only time in my life as flannel shirts and camo became the height of grunge fashion. A few years later, I was unstylish again as grunge faded except in the Northwest. I had an Austin girlfriend for awhile who was into Reggae, she passed that along to me, and now I have a pretty extensive Jamaican music collection which I periodically use to produce a radio show known as The Rythym Shower. I also had an awesome 72 VW bus that burned to the ground and broke my heart as well as my checkbook. I lived for the next 10 years without owning a car - one of the best "hardships" I have had to endure. I lost weight walking or riding my bike to places I used to drive and learned life without the financial burden of a car was pretty sweet.

In 1994, I moved to Arlington, Texas and began working on my M.A. in history. At the time Arlington was the largest city in the U.S. with no form of public transportation whatsoever. It makes for good conditions for studying when the library is the most exciting place within walking distance. When I wasn't in the library I was keeping my gaming skills sharp, as my neighbor Greg proved to be one of my best all time video football opponents; and I was being turned on to a lot of new (to me) Reggae on a KNON 89.3, a community radio station out of Dallas.

I moved to Boston in 1996 to begin working on my Ph.D. at Northeastern University's World History Center directed by Pat Manning. I was lucky to share an office with three great people my first year. Jeff was coming off a previous life as a labor organizer, David had been teaching world history for 20 years, and some of Yinghong's writings were already banned in China. I worked on various world history research projects to pay the bills during my time in Boston. I also taught part time at a couple of colleges in the area while I working on my Ph.D. I spent my last two years in Boston as a full time visiting assistant Professor at Salem State College where I was fortunate enough to work with Avi who uncounsciously provided me with a good college teacher role model.

No one was more prepared than this Texas boy to dislike New England, which I thought meant everything north of Washington D.C., but the East Coast worked its charm on me. The New England Fall lives up to all the hype - every single year; neighborhoods are a great concept; public transportation was outstanding; and I met a lot of really cool people. I lived with two roommates, Rudy and Maria, in a Cuban/Dominican neighborhood known as Jamaica Plain -- with a pizza joint with a mural dedicated to the original Nintendo video game system across the street, my kind of neighborhood. Over the course of five years I had four great roommates and two who had better hope we don't see each other again. One of the best things about Boston was that driving a car was more trouble than it was worth and it really opened my eyes concerning how much quality of life we give up in Texas, the Northwest and elsewhere building cities around cars instead of people.

In 2002 I graduated from NU and moved to Moscow, Idaho in order to begin a teaching appointment at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston after a brutal fall/winter on the academic job market. There is something like 100 applications for every full time history position listed and everybody has PhD.s. If we leave out salary, institutional financial support, and general funding for higher education in Idaho, I can honestly say I have my dream job. I was going to read these books on the shelf anyway; and I was going to talk about them. Now I get paid to do what I was going to do anyway. That is the best kind of work to be involved in and I suggest you give the matter some serious thought as you march towards graduation and a 'career'.

I have stayed in Idaho because it is beautiful and there are great people here. The summer in Idaho is worth sticking around for (or coming to) as is the winter (sledding on the palouse is a sport for kids of all ages). And I can't say enough about the great community of friends I have made here who understand the fun you make yourself for free is better than the fun you buy from the store. I got married in the Spring of 2007 to an Idaho girl, Julia -- who gave birth to another Idaho girl, Suzanne Estelle, on Dec. 22nd 2007.

These days when I am not doing work related stuff or showing off my daughter, I might be camping, on the mix at KRFP, playing the drums, or watching kung fu movies. But probably I am online playing video games with my brother - some things don't change that much.