I’m a versatile writer and editor who began my media career as a copy editor at the San Angelo Standard-Times. (Remarkably, the Standard-Times hired me after I walked in off the streets and asked for a job.) I later joined the Austin American-Statesman, where I held various positions over the years: copy editor, arts and entertainment editor, national editor and editorial writer and columnist. Between my newspaper careers, I supervised the production schedule of a monthly, peer-reviewed research journal of the American Physiological Society, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

My interests are wide-ranging — Texas and national politics, foreign affairs, science, religion, books, film and pop culture. I am a tough-to-beat trivia player, if nothing else.

I am a distance runner, history buff and Beatles geek. Herman Melville and Thomas Hardy are at or near the top of a list of favorite writers. I love coffee. I like beer.

I’m a multi-generational Texan (on all branches of the family tree) from Abilene, the West Texas city in Taylor County between Austin and Lubbock. My dad grew up in Buffalo Gap, just south of Abilene. My mom lived on a ranch near Tuscola. Her father — my maternal grandfather, of course — made a name for himself raising champion show steers. I showed a few of those champion steers in the 1970s. That might be the least-known fact about me.