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As I said in my opening column, I am going to write about a lot of things in the days ahead. One of them is going to be my own life, or rather defining moments in my own life. That is what biographical information is all about, whether its autobiographical, as in this case, or done by a supposedly disinterested party. No one wants to know how bowel movements I have every day, or whether I had measles and mumps when I was a child. The things that make life, anybody's life, interesting, are those times when shit happens, when you are transformed from the person you were into a new person, with a drastically different outlook. So it will be with my autobiographical columns. I will attempt to only tell you about the times that did that to me, as if I were relating stories to my grandchildren sitting around at my feet, or telling a new acquaintence "who I am."

Furthermore, I am going to make no attempt to sequence the anecdotes temporally. That is, I am not going to start with my birth, my parents, my family, and proceed upward and onward in time through schooldays, the army, etc. up to the present. Rather, I am going to choose items in the order that I recall them, perhaps reflecting a loose prioritization, more likely just a kind of random walk through my recollections. I will attempt to hyperlink the articles in a way that ties them together in meaningful ways, sometimes sequentially, sometimes by subject, sometimes just "that reminds me of the time..." I would be remiss as a Web author if I did not do so. Since I will be putting these recollections on the Web in a time related fashion, one after the other, this means that I will frequently have to revisit formerly posted articles to link them "back to the future." At least one acquaintence, the editor of the Star/Tribune Online, Bob Shafer, has expressed reservations about this manner of stringing together a biography (or any other kind of story). He stated that he found such efforts disjointed and confusing. We shall see.

In order to give you, the reader, some sort of guidelines, here is a general outline of my life story, with approximate dates and principal subject matter for the toime period.

• Early years, 1936-1950, a typical middle class upbringing.
• High school, 1950-1953, wherein I wished to be a star athlete, got to be a "child" prodigy instead.
• Undergraduate (I), 1953-1954, where I realized I did not want to be a scholar.
• The US Army, 1954-1957, spy versus spy and I marry.
• Undergraduate (II), 1957-1960, when I start to really grow up.
• Graduate (I), 1960-1963, a scholar despite myself, raising a family (I).
• Graduate (II), 1963-1967, things get a little weird; teacher, corporate executive, consensual bigamist, psychedelic experimenter.
• Communal living, 1968-1972, things get VERY weird.
• Fugitive, 1972-1974, things get weirder still!
• Prison, 1974-1975, things settle back down.
• Normality, 1976-1997, becoming a computer expert, raising a family (II), the Internet arrives, being "straight."
• Whoops!, 1998, and here we go again...

Anyway, tomorrow I will begin my long narrative journey with a description of Bruce Madison, the real Bruce Madison, and my counterfeit copy. The day after, I will take you to McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, where my days of fun in prison began. I hope you like the journey.

See you tomorrow...

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