i am (therefore i think) ...

After living most of my life in southeastern Idaho and a few years in northern California, I returned in 1994 to Oregon, the state of my birth (way back in 1949). My early 20s were filled with adventures in Louisiana, Texas, and "sunny" Southeast Asia during my Army years, and I rode a motorcycle for further adventures during the 70s and 80s. Today, I enjoy taking a drive somewhere to see the countryside or walking on the Pacific beaches or through our beautiful old-growth forests here in the northwestern US, but most of my free time seems to be spent doing computer stuff ranging from graphics rendering to flight sims, and of course this Web site.

Andromeda Galaxy My interests have always been dominated by the scientific fields, astronomy being my "first love" around age 11 (a classic nerd-in-the-making), followed through high school by periods of interest in geology, microbiology, chemistry, physics, cosmology. In the mid-70s, I graduated in nuclear engineering (seemed like a good idea at the time) and went to work for a company which was contracted with experiments for the Navy's submarine program. Then, in early 1984, my worldview abruptly and undeniably took on a whole new dimension. This change came totally unexpectedly during a sort of "thought experiment" into the subatomic realm, and with it came a paradigm-shifting view of the fundamental nature of space, time, and the Universe itself. Also with it came the stigma of being thought of as someone who had, well, "gone around the bend" a bit.

Nevertheless, in an instant I knew my soul had awakened -- before that moment I had not even acknowledged the existence of that part of my being. Although I can now see that my passions had been taking me toward this realization essentially my entire life, my interests quite suddenly expanded into fields of study that I would never have believed I'd be taking seriously.

Buddha

Now, as engineer-scientist, writer-philosopher, and all-around day-dreamer, my core interests are cosmology, theoretical physics, metaphysics, and mysticism, and how they all tie together in an emerging vision of the Universe that is actually not new at all. Over several years I had been putting together a manuscript which I originally called Full Circle and later The Ocean of Cosmic Light. Serving mainly as a means of personal exploration, the desire to publish has always been there and the opportunity to publish its essence using this versatile medium was too much to resist. So, born of previous creative effort while lending itself nicely to continual polishing, that is the primary theme of this site.

windmill in Ostfriesland
Ostfriesland Ancestors is a site by a relative in Alaska which is dedicated to the history of my father's ancestors, Dutch people living in the northwestern part of Germany. The ancient country of Friesia covered the entire North Sea coast of what is now The Netherlands and Germany. Ostfriesland, or East Friesia, is that part of Germany bordering the Ems River and the North Sea.

We know that my father's family was living in the Pilsum (or Pewsum) area during the 18th century and were socially active in the community and well regarded. A high degree of honor and integrity seems to run naturally in my father's family and was a signature trait in my father his entire life. The American Civil War was 8 years past when his grandfather emigrated from Germany in 1873, settling first in Illinois then moving to Iowa.

close-up of a family gravestone in Pilsum, Germany
dated 1715, engraved with the Nanninga Coat of Arms

With family in Philadelphia during the American Revolution, my mother's father is (ironically?) descended from Edward III (b. 1312), king of England, and thus the other Plantagenet, Angevin, and Norman kings, back to William the Conqueror (b. 1028) and the earlier Dukes of Normandy, descended from the king of the Viking invaders, Hrolf the Walker (he was either too big to ride a horse or looked like he was still walking when he did), who became the first Norman Duke of France in 911. Through the wife of Henry I, Princess Matilda of Scotland (daughter of Malcolm III), we are also descended from the earliest Anglo-Saxon kings, including Edgar the Peaceful, Edmund the Magnificent, and Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great (b. 849). Intermarriage among the royal families was common in medieval Europe, so also in the family tree are some early kings of Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Finland.

Edward the Black Prince (son of Edward III), Richard the Lionheart (son of Henry II), and Edward the Confessor (grandson of Alfred the Great) would be great-great-(very great) uncles. This makes Alfred the Great a great-great-...-uncle as well as a great-great-...-grandfather. Hmm. Yes, well...

The royal families of old Europe actually have a great number of descendents in the world today. The power struggles and miss-guided blunders of the times are well-known, yet most medieval kings did in fact aspire to be wise and just leaders and the fact that they achieved many important milestones in social law and human justice is equally well-known.

To those of us who believe in the metaphysical realities of he Universe, there is a whole other dimension to the family tree than physical-Earth genealogy. You could call it soul-genealogy -- it transcends the DNA-based bioform. All of us have been around a lot longer than what we see on the "surface".

What is Asperger's Syndrome? Most who have known me will say I have always been 'somewhat different'. :) Fortunately, most symptoms are not readily apparent at this stage of my life, but it is always there.

Oregon State University, in Corvallis

The University of Oregon, in Eugene

Center for Sacred Sciences is a meditation and learning center in Eugene emphasizing the integration of spiritual and scientific knowledge.

Breitenbush Hot Springs is a retreat and conference center east of Salem, a beautiful place to which to get away.

Ahimsa Sanctuary is a center for Sacred Healing and Global Renewal located in the hills near Corvallis

Mystic Mountain Center for Healing Arts offers classes, workshops and healing therapies, near downtown Corvallis

Vietnam Memoirs is dedicated to those who served in the Air Defense Artillery units in Vietnam and Korea and includes some stories, fiction and nonfiction, by those who were there.

I served with the ADA unit of the First Field Force in the central highlands of Vietnam as squad leader on a quad-50 machinegun system. (Did you see Waterworld?). Ours was mounted on a 5-ton tactical truck.

Rendered obsolete long ago in their air-defense role by surface-to-air missile systems, the ADA units in Vietnam spent their time primarily as perimeter security and convoy escort. We much preferred being on the road with small, fast convoys or on some other errand -- it was more exciting (a "guy thing", no doubt) and made the time go faster. At night, of course, we would essentially always be in a perimeter security mode.

I work in the Corvallis facility (right, on the Willamette River) which is HP's largest, at present, and serves as a primary center for thermal inkjet and digital imaging development and is a major player in the research and development of new technologies.

The Corvallis site started small in the 1970s, involved with the development of the first hand-held scientific calculators, which finally made the slide-rule obsolete, and the Series 80 computer, a pre-PC desktop computer used primarily by businesses and universities. As an offshoot of the calculator program the site pioneered thermal inkjet printing technology in the early 1980s. Inkjet printing quickly bloomed into a huge business and the site has expanded to its maximum allowable size for the community.