PatientsLikeMe ™

I was born in Annapolis, Maryland when it was still a sleepy southern town--before it sold its soul to tourism. After high school, I entered the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious order dedicated to running high school, colleges and universities, and welfare institutions. I spent thirteen years as a teaching monk, and don't regret a moment of that time.
When I left the order, I returned to Annapolis and became a professor of English and comparative religion at at community college. I met my late first wife on the faculty there; we had a fine marriage of eighteen years before I lost her to pancreatic cancer.
She was a native of upstate New York, and halfway through our marriage we bought a small farmstead there, planning eventual retirement. After her death I spent another couple of years at the college ad academic vice president, then took early retirement and moved north to the farm, thinking I'd live a kind of hermit's existence--the monastery all over again.
I married my wife Anne seven years after Gwen's death.Together we've since produced a book with my newspaper columns shaped into a narration of my life's major transition. Anne, a fine artist and graphic designer, was hired by the publisher to lay out and illustrate the book. Sales have been excellent, and we've been asked to prepare a sequel.
I have been a Quaker for thirty-five years and am a recorded Quaker minister who does a great deal of ecumenical lecturing and preaching. As a Friend, I'm trying to read the Parkinson's as a message and to discern what I'm now meant to do in service.