Accomplishments

Though I have never won any prestigious awards or honors, I have a number of personal accomplishments to be proud of. The work I did as a wildlife biologist in Alaska and other exotic locations was a relatively rare and extremely educational experience.

But most of my accomplishments over the last twenty years fall into three categories, writing, website design/publishing and political activism.

Writing & Publishing

I’ve written articles for a number of magazines. The most noteworthy was a series on Montana’s state symbols that appeared in Montana Magazine during that state’s centennial, featuring my whimsical vision of a new Montana state flag.

A major publisher once signed me on to write a series of books about Fossils of the 50 States. However, I backed out after the publisher tried to take advantage of me.

I later self-published two books. Teacher With an Attitude deserved to be a flop, though its publishing was a landmark event in some respects. My first book was (IR)Rational Parks, a humor book about America’s national parks that was a moderate success.

Largely because of the corruption in the publishing industry, I decided to stick with self-publishing, though in a less expensive venue—on the Internet. My original website, www.geobop.com, became quite large and diverse before I decided to break it up into several smaller websites.

It has taken me years to recover form a serious technical accident that destroyed my original website. However, things are finally coming together, and my revised websites will be nicer still. The original GeoSymbols was the premier website focusing on national and state symbols.

Activism

Though I discuss political activism in more detail on this website’s sister site, I’ll list a few highlights here. I was the only teacher in Seattle to speak out against the late John Stanford, a retired general recruited to lead the charge in privatizing Seattle’s public schools. Though I wasn’t able to stop Big Business, I at least opened a few eyes and got my name mentioned in the New York Times and USA Today.

I’ve run for public office six times. No one in Seattle has spoken out more forcefully against George W. Bush than I have. I’m probably the only candidate in the nation who has made Bill Gates a campaign issue—and I did it in Gates’ backyard.

I’ve also tried to popularize the idea that Americans need to make political activism a lifestyle. I do my part by promoting alternatives to Microsoft.

Oh, yes...I’m also trying to establish a new political party, the Fifth Republic Party.

> Accomplishments