About me.

I’m Bill. I was born in 1960 about a mile and a half inland from the Gulf of Mexico at Pensacola, Florida. My father was born and raised in Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan, and my mother is from the mountains of western North Carolina. I consider Pensacola my home town, but I’ve also lived in Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana. Most of my life — nearly thirty years of it, off and on — has been spent in Richland and Lexington Counties in South Carolina.

I live in a small house in Lexington County, South Carolina, with my partner John. We have a small circle of close friends, and most of our nearest relatives live within 25 miles of our house. John is our household’s mover, shaker, and organizer, the one who keeps the computer network up and running, and basically the one who makes life as I know it possible. I’m the cook, the one who tears out walls, paints, refinishes floors, and generally keeps our house looking like a construction zone. I have a tendency to start a big project and then drag it out much longer than necessary. I’m a perfectionist, but my work is noticeably imperfect, so I’m always unhappy with it.

I hope to move back up north someday, to New York or New Jersey, maybe, but we don’t have any real plans.

Politically, I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but I generally consider the Democrats the lesser of two evils. John and I are in complete accord about politics, but we differ on religion. John is a Christian who generally dislikes both ritual and the institutional church, a former Baptist with strong Pentecostal leanings. I’m a former Eastern Orthodox Christian with little sympathy for Western Christianity in general, a nontheist, and a religious solitary trying to practice the Quaker way of life in the context of Buddhist philosophy and meditation.

I like to read, and I like to talk, write, and argue. Hence the blog.