About
I retired after teaching high school math for 35 years(all but the first 2 in a central school in the western Catskills) and coaching, primarily interscholastic girls’ basketball and volleyball. My wife and I live on 7.5 acres of land in the south/central part of New York State. We’ve lived in this house since 1964 and are just getting it remodeled so we like it. We share our space with 5 cats who either wandered in or were rescued from the SPCA and which are a heck of a lot easier to take care of than our two girls were when they were growing up. (Actually, I’m kidding, we love them both but what is the sense in having off-spring if you can’t kid them once in awhile?) Fortunately both girls produced grandchildren in 1998–a girl and a boy–just to prove to us that some of the lessons we tried to instill as parents took root in next generation and the old adage that if you keep from killing your teenagers they will, eventually, reward you with grandchildren.
In addition to teaching I havebeen seriously involved in a number of pursuits: tropical fish–for 25 years I wrote a column in Freshwater and Marine Aquarium Magazine–beekeeping, poultry (I still have two dozen laying hens), fruit–apples, pears, peaches, raspberries and blueberries, orchids and tropical plants(in a 12 X 10 greehouse), O-gauge electric trains, golf, hunting, dry fly fishing, woodworking,and a huge vegetable garden. Aside from the woodworking, hunting, bees and the tropical fish, I’m still messing around in the other areas. I also have written a number of books, the three on tropical fish being, I assume, out of print , but my book Education of a Dry Fly Fisherman, is still available. In addition I have finished the first of two novels set in the western Catskills–Minimum Competency will be available starting in May,2009. The second will, hopefully, be out next spring. I write under the name Jim Mortensen, btw, in case you need to do a search.
I expect, from time to time to prattle on about all of the above. If you need to contact me, email me at woodmort@aol.com