Having come from a humble background and been raised in a dirt-floored log cabin, I still find indoor plumbing amazing. Ain't modern technology wonderful! Actually, it wasn't logs, but a two-story frame house There was some "dirt floor" in the crawlspace of the basement. Although available, the indoor plumbing was rarely used by my brother and me. This boyhood home, located in Hartford City, Indiana, was a family-values, small town of about 9,000 persons. Thus, any large urban area, such as Manhattan, Kansas with its overwhelming population of several tens of thousands, makes me nervous. Don't fence me in.
As a kid, my family commonly went on Sunday visits to relatives. We would have lunch in some roadside diner. My father would slowly sip a second, third, or fourth cup of coffee after our meal. This waiting, as is true for nearly all children, was unbearable. My father would suggest that I, and my little brother, go outside and wait. My brother would go to the car and read; this early studiousness lead to his career as a corporate lawyer. I, having less ambition, picked up and threw pieces of parking-lot gravel (this was before the introduction of concrete and asphalt to the area). One day, in mid hurl, I noticed a crystal. Closer examination of other pieces of gravel revealed other crystals and fossils. The crystals, having never lived, were boring. The fossils were not. I was hooked. Since that fateful afternoon, I have never spent one day in productive societal activity. I became a geologist.
Since Indiana had no active volcanoes, no mountains, and no glaciers, I went to Oregon State University, acquiring a B.S. in 1976. By this time, I was more sophisticated in my geological interests. Finding hard rocks to be distasteful and Silurian reefs endlessly fascinating, I returned to Indiana University, acquired a M.A. degree in 1979. A project opening in Cretaceous biogenic structures (trace fossils) lead to my Ph.D. degree in 1983. While working on this last degree, I taught at DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana. This family-values town and university, for example, is where Dan Quayle got his undergraduate degree. Dan and I, being products of Hoosier educational institutions, can't spell very well. After finishing my Ph.D., I then moved to New Orleans, where my future wife, Lori Zinn, was working for Shell Oil Company. There is much more to be told of intervening events, but I'm sure that you are probably as tired reading this as I am writing it.
One thing lead to another. Lori and I moved to Manhattan, Kansas (the "Little Apple") in 1989, where I filled a faculty opening in the Department of Geology at Kansas State University. Despite the floods, tornadoes, prairie fires, and droughts, we survive to this day. Not only survived, but have multiplied. We have two daughters, Hannah, who was born in 1989, and Emily, who was born in 1993. Both are native Kansans. My family and I acquired a stone house, built in about 1892. For Kansas, this is a very, very old house. While not engaged in work-related crisis management, I engage in home-repair crisis management. I now consider any home fix-it job to be a success if it didn't require 8 or 9 trips to the hardware store, several broken tools, and damaged body parts. Homo habilis can be translated as "handy man". Obviously, I have evolved far beyond such primitive capabilities.