The stories I was hunting for turned out to be answers to questions we all share: where did we come from, where are we going and what does it all mean? In my case, the quest for page one and tab fame came up wanting early enough so I could switch journalistic gears and begin a more private journey. My media were letters to friends and colleagues, family, essays on my travels for work and on an amateur genealogical search that turned out to take many rewarding years. This search also opened up the internet to me and heralded the new potential for publishing in the digital age. Along the way I would confront my family's origins, and soak up the facts and stories of dozens of people in locations here at home, and some quite exotic places abroad. Taken together these two volumes tell a story about the reconciliation between a father and son, about the forces of technical and social change to spur immigration and development, and how the constant economic demands of common people for more is the energy that powers our modern world. The volumes I want to share are:
Wordsmith - Writing a Way Home (ISBN 1-928928-06-4) is a chronicle of journal entries written between 1980 and 1988 after I went to work for Mobil Oil Corporation, which at the time was at the center of one of the biggest stories of the day - the energy crisis. These entries portray a journey of discovery into the realities of modern industrial life, while enabling me to confront some of the causes and consequences of my family's past. When edited later, I also learned this journal reveals a story of redemption for a father and son. (Volume 2 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)
White Monkey - A Journey Upstream (ISBN 1-928928-07-2) is a series of essays that describes travels to my ancestral headwaters in Ireland and Britain to investigate the origins of my own beginnings and later to my wife's home in Korea. Also included in this narrative are travel essays that were about my work in the oil industry, and which allowed me to paint a portrait of today's oil industry and its interconnection with nations and trade. Featured essays include profiles of events and people in Nigeria, Indonesia, Qatar, Korea, Scotland, England, Ireland and Hawaii, and also background into the causes of the largest corporate merger in history - Exxon's purchase of Mobil Oil. (Volume 4 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)
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