How Skydiving Changed My Life

This was published in June of 2017 in the United States Parachute Association’s magazine, “Parachutist”. “How Skydiving Changed My Life” is a monthly column. I took a slightly different slant on it than what’s usually offered. My position was activities like skydiving are undertaken by people who are inclined to pursue them so although they can be life changing, to those people, such experiences are more affirmation and fulfillment than transformation.

Keepers of the Land

This feature article in Delaware Today, September 2002 covered the reunion of the Keepers Of The Culture, who are the Lenape Indians from Oklahoma and Canada and the Keepers Of The Land, the ancestors of those who stayed in Delaware and the surrounding states. I spent the day at the symposium held at our local community college and then attended the social that night. A recurring, even dominant theme adhered to by the speakers was hostility toward the establishment, specifically white men. Before the affair in the evening it was what I had intended to emphasize in the article. What I saw in the evening caused me to change my mind. It was the children, who were exuberant, well behaved and independent and the attention the adults paid them was perfect. It was clear that whatever injustices or indignities these people had suffered they had successful families and therefor their values and culture were sound.

 

True Lies

“The Final Word” appears on the last page of Delaware Today Magazine. I provided the article for the February 2001 edition. It was inspired by the work that a friend of mine was doing at the time. John Malatesta is a television producer based in Rising Sun, Maryland and he was working on a reality show. I was a producer then too and I knew that television and reality, except in a few types of programming, really don’t mix.

 

Military Might

Delaware Today publishes a Guide To Delaware every year. I provided an article on Dover Air Force for the 1999 to 2000 edition. Coincidentally, I produced a series of programs for the Air Force on operations at the base the following year. I was in the middle of that project on September 11, 2001. In fact I was supposed to be videotaping on the C5 flight line on September 11. I wasn’t allowed on the base that day of course but for the next couple of weeks the restrictions continued. The officer with whom I was working kept telling me that security wouldn’t allow it. Finally I reminded him that President Bush was urging everyone to get back to business and he knew that I wasn’t a security risk so we should complete our project. A day later he told me to come back and finish the work. Since then the restrictions have only increased and I’ve come to wonder if the kind of freedom we had before 9/11 will ever be restored. The access I had while writing the magazine article, particularly to Dover’s most famous facility, the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs, is far less common now.

 

Fourteen Carrot Gold

Kit Stewart was a television producer, musician and the Carrot Man. This Delaware Today article, published in January 2000, tells a little of Kit’s story. I first met Kit while he was doing the first YOUNG AT HEART television show, which was a talent show for seniors. He had a good idea and the skills to host to show butlimited technical knowledge and no equipment. He persevered though and eventually put the team together that was needed to produce a good show which only ended when Kit died in 2001 at the age of 61. Carrot Man was a character Kit created to promote his produce stand in West Chester, Pennsylvania which was a vocation that came after his music career. In the 1960’s and 70’s he was the leader of the Kit Kats a Philadelphia / Jersey Shore area band with international acclaim. I was with Kit the night he died after an illness that overcame him in just a couple of weeks.

 

A Capitol Idea

The renovation of Dover’s, vaudeville era, Capitol Theater is the subject of this March 1999 Delaware Today article.