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A Brief Biography
I am a retired 64 year old native Idaho resident. I live in a small community of about 125 folks called King Hill. We're so small that we don't even have a gas station or grocery store. I serve as the Chairman of our domestic water association and hold a class 1 operators license as a drinking water operator. I also serve as a Commissioner for the Elmore County Planning and Zoning Commission. And another hat that I wear is as the Chairman of the Western Organization of Resource Councils: The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) is a multi-state network of seven grassroots community organizations that include 10,000 members and 45 local chapters in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Besides being retired, I am the author of The Non-Consumers Digest. I also do freelance writing and have been published in such varied magazines as The Mother Earth News and Computer Edge Magazine. I am currently working on publishing a series of e-Books based on my Non-Consumers Digest The Non-Consumers Digest started life as a local newspaper column called "An Easier Way", back in 1990. It soon became "Another Way", which became an 8 page monthly subscription newsletter. I published the Digest from December, 1992 thru September 1994. After learning to surf the net I decided to try my hand at doing an E-zine type newsletter. The Digest was then published weekly from May 1999 to April, 2006.
I also do carvings from deer and elk antler under the business name Knight's Crafts. These are primarily small (less than 2 inch) animal heads that can be worn as a hat pin, tie-tac or broach. I have recently started doing larger pieces that combine woodwork with my carvings, like book ends and wine racks. I first began carving elk antlers back in the mid eighties as a hobby. After getting married in 1987, I dropped the carving for the more important job of raising a family, and then picked it up again in 2003. I’ve been carving fairly steady now for the past 6 years. Although self-taught as far as carving goes, I have had a small amount of formal training in art: 2 semesters of painting, 2 semesters of pottery and 1 semester of silver-smithing back in my college days. Besides carving antlers, I have also done some wood carving for walking sticks and walking staffs.
I have also started working with a wood lathe that I got for Christmas and have been creating a lot of garden dibbles from Apricot, Black Walnut and Russian Olive. My background also includes making my living as a business machine repairman, a framing carpenter, doing concrete work, taxi driver, change person in a Reno casino, computer operator/programmer, painter, truck driver and as the head of Maintenance for a circuit board manufacturer (amongst other things). I spent 3 years with the U.S. Navy and 22 years with the U.S. Army Reserve, ending my career as an instructor in Nuclear, Biological & Chemical Operations. I ran my own handy-man business called Odd Jobs Unlimited for 5 years doing almost everything imaginable around a lot of homes. I built our own home; one nail at a time, (it only took 7 years) and I’m retired from an irrigation district as a 'ditch rider/pump maintenance/computer operator'. I guess you could call me a jack- of-all-trades. Respectfully, If you would like to know when I update this site or add some more content, email me and I'll add you to my notification list. One of my recommendations for maintaining a frugal household is that you subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter, which always contains a dozen or so of my various tips. (I do put in one ad at the bottom for you to ignore.) There are several volumes of Non-Consumer tips and How To
articles available here. Return from My Bio to The Frugal Non-Consumer
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