A little about me

Please ignore this post if you don't want to understand the author of ten thousand felonies.

All facts in this statement are a matter of public record.

Biography
I am a 56 year old white man born in California. My father was a photo journalist, my mother a housewife. I was raised with 2 brothers, a sister and two cousins. Our family was not financially privileged. My mother supplemented my father’s income with washing, ironing and babysitting.
When I was age 12, my father joined a union dispute against his employer, the Hearst Corporation. This strike was to last over seven years and resulted in the financial ruin and fragmentation of our family. I left home at age 18 and have been self supporting since that time, financing my own 15 years of higher education. At age 18, I became a Buddhist, and thus a pacifist. This caused many problems when I was drafted at age 19. I refused military induction and after much effort and emotional trauma I was assigned to a civilian program for conscientious objectors to war where I worked in a hospital for two years. During this time I also attended college, participated in peace promotion and developed a strict Buddhist practice which I have maintained for 37 years.
After release from service, I worked, attended college with the goal of becoming a physician and contributed to peace promotion, including counseling other men with conscientious objection to war and representing my religion at national and international peace conferences. Due to financial and logistic constraints it took me eight years to complete a bachelor’s degree and another two years to be admitted to medical school. During the first few years of college I suffered from a lack of preparation for completive academics and did not fair well. I was advised to abandon my goal of becoming a physician. I persevered and eventually graduated with honors from the University of California. After graduation I attended California Polytechnic University, studying subsistence agriculture and nutrition. My life before attending medical school could be characterized by hardship and struggle. This experience shaped my world view and allowed me to devote my future to helping society’s socially and economically disenfranchised.
I attended medical school at the University of California in San Francisco from 1978 to 1983. I then completed a three year post graduate training program in family medicine at the University of North Dakota in Bismarck. After graduating, I worked with the Indian Health Service in North Dakota and Nevada for 3.5 years. I attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Public Heath Service. I would have preferred to continue on in the Indian Health Service as a career but was treated abominably by the Federal Government. Their regard for my physical safety and mental health was so poor and appreciation for my work and innovation so scant that I resigned my commission in 1990. After leaving government service I worked as a physician in various positions in rural areas in the West between then and 1997. In my free time I developed a not-for-profit Native American TV/Radio production studio in Reno, Nevada. We produced public service announcements and advertisements for tribal functions. I invested over $100,000 and most my free time in this project from 1990 to 1994.
In my pre-graduate college years I had a special interest in the economics of poverty, international public health dilemmas and the ecological destabilization caused by deforestation. I allied myself with a company called Sun Ovens International that had just perfected solar ovens for household and commercial use. Since the majority of the world’s population use wood fuel for baking and cooking food, deforestation has ruined ecologies in many areas. The inhalation of smoke from wood cooking fires is directly responsible for the deaths of over two million children a year. Also, preventable water born illness is the most common form of death in the world. Since solar ovens successfully address all of these issues I spent much of my free time from 1995 to present and spent over $50,000 of my personal money in solar oven education and promotion. I have traveled extensively in the USA, Mexico, Haiti and Barbados in the service of this project. I have served a consultant in this regard to international aid organizations. War has prevented planned trips to Ethiopia and Ghana. I promote solar ovens and educate in their use on an ongoing basis.
I'm going to take my nap now
Kirk