Since graduating from Fordham University (major: history; minor: theology) and dropping out of the Graduate School of the University of Virginia (major: U.S. history; minor: disillusion), I have managed, despite a total lack of formal training, certification, and official approval, to trick diverse Powers That Be into admitting me into several different professions. Besides teaching (parochial school in New York City, boarding school in Connecticut, day school in Maryland, and, most delightfully, at the Kirov Academy of Ballet since its academic inception), I have been a chef in restaurants and a chef-instructor at a culinary school, a designer and crafter of wooden household furnishings and furniture, and a free-lance writer and nature columnist with about 150 bylines to my credit. In addition, I have lectured on Classroom Management for the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, and have been listed four times in Who’s Who in American Education. I have lived for 20 something years in Edgewater, Maryland with one wife, three children, 5 musical instruments, and an awful lot of books, pots, pans, machinery, and tools. Future plans, besides teaching at KAB until I die, include continuing to write and publish, to wear out pairs of running shoes and hiking boots a little more frequently, to learn the names and understand the habits of every native plant I encounter, to figure out how to play bebop on the piano, and to secure a patent or two for tools that I have designed.