I grew up on a small dairy farm where there was all kinds of work to learn to do but which I never seriously considered doing after I left home. I dreamed about becoming an oceanographer, and read a whole lot about what one had to do.

My college courses included sciences and geology but by the time I graduated it was either be drafted into the army or join the Peace Corps. Fortunately, the Peace Corps in 1965 came up with an invitation first and it was off to teach sciences and geography in Ethiopia for 3 years.

By the time I got back to the states I was too old for my draft board and enrolled for a graduate degree in geography at Michigan State University. Well, I did manage to get my Ph.D. there after 6 years but I found a whole lot of things more interesting by that time than teaching.

I had helped organize an Energy Demonstration Center (Urban Options), a Tenants Resource Center, a housing co-op (Rivendell), lobbied for statewide mortgage anti-redlining laws, and played lots of music. At one point I panicked and joined the state bureaucracy, becoming a researcher for the Michigan Occupation Information Coordinating Committee. It was a bad move, a thorously miserable 6 months, but fortunately I was able to write a successful National Science Foundation Grant and do something more useful for a year (monitoring the implementation of the new Redlining Law) and I never looked back to secure employment.

Since returning to Maine in 1982 I helped do the major fundraising for two Nuclear Power/Nuclear Waste referenda, worked full-time on a brilliant but failed U.S. Senate campaign, renovated and sold several buildings, and continued to make music. I now do digital photography for artists and builders, occasional fundraising for land trusts and other environmental organizations, and am looking for another building to renovate.

I'd like to do more writing, both stories as well as songs.

It ain't over till it's over!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble