The Memoir:

a brief insight into my life so far with

 a reflective cover memo.

He came a long way  
Just to explain  
--Paul Simon
The Wall 
This story means a lot to me and my family because my dad had a lot of friends fight in Vietnam.  Some died in battle and are upon that wall.  But some lived through the war and are still living.  And some of them lived through the war but killed them selves because of the horrible things they had done or witnessed during the war. 
When we visited that wall a couple of years ago that was the first time I had seen my dad cry. 
This poem is one I wrote about war 
(read Hate poem) 
And this is the book.  The Wall by Eve Bunting, told from the perspective of a child. 
--Amelia Waldschmidt
Notes for Oral Book Report. 
Age 11, Grade 7  5/9/2002 

Because I am unclear on the purpose or "audience" of this piece (I assume it is you), this is a third-person perspective of a guy I have known most of my life.  Its tagmemic heuristic is from the "particle" or snapshot perspective.  Here is where he is right now with a few brief explanations of how he got there (where?).  It is a rewrite of a rewrite of a basic generic cover bio- written from the present position of an aspiring professor.  

gbw 

Brief Insight

Geoffrey B. (Jeb) Waldschmidt was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana during the last days of summer in 1948.  After a prototypical fifties childhood when Sputnik and the Cuban Missile Crisis profoundly changed his life, he was swept into the turbulent era of the Viet Nam War.  Involvement in anti-war activity took him out of the country and out of college several times.  In those days of avoiding death and seeking employment, academics seemed to make no sense. 

Between 1967 and 1973 he worked as a touring and recording musician, occasionally crossing paths with rising or falling stars.  During that time, odd jobs as a copywriter and free lance journalist fed him when music gigs became infrequent.  There were more half-hearted pokes at academics as well.  The subject material did not seem relevant at the time to cheating death and churning income.  Movement toward the family advertising business was more by default than design. 

He began his advertising career in 1974 and became CEO of an advertising agency in 1983.  "Building a better mousetrap" became a captivating business paradigm and reading became a passion.  In 1991, two years after the death of his father and birth of his daughter, he became disillusioned with the advertising business and dissolved his company to become a "serious writer."

The first novel still exists on several floppy disks, and the only good part was the dedication: 

"To Wife Diana, daughter Amelia, and my boy Ezekiel.  To George, JoElla, Robin and Kim.  To all the good old boys (especially you, Cully).  To all the Great Ladies (you know who you are).  And most of all, to my Brothers and Sisters who never came back from a war that never should have happened.  Nothing is forgotten.  Nobody dies." 

After a year of rejection slips and unemployment, he found shelter in the geothermal industry as Creative Director for WaterFurnace International Inc.  Two years later, he experienced his first corporate "downsize."  After a year as a student and a freelance writer/ musician, he stumbled into a position at Lincoln National Reinsurance.  Unlike most corporate interviews, Lincoln's search process included an "audition."  Later, the culture changed, "creative types" were no longer fashionable, and it was a lucrative four-year diversion. 

The academic year 2000-01 was spent finishing the undergraduate degree that was 30 years overdue.  Upon discovering the beloved republican democracy was gone and that death and unemployment are inevitable, academics became the only thing that DID make sense.  Learning for learning’s sake is like art for art’s sake.  If somebody pays you for it, that’s nice.  Making money has a way of becoming an end in itself, and it usually has little to do with art or learning.  Art, learning and income do merge occasionally and he is still alert for that possibility. 

The mousetrap paradigm has shifted, for the neighborhoods swarm with door-to-door mousetrap salesmen who cruise through the alleys, dumping bin loads of live mice into basement windows by night, leaning on doorbells by day with their sales kits of shoddy, mass-produced, overpriced but accessible and convenient opportunistic mousetraps.  Maybe mousetraps make a better metaphor than model.  With failing hands he throws the flaming mousetrap to the next generation, and the fire in their eyes makes him feel born again.  The funny old duck still reads because the answer may be on the very next page. 

He still writes because ducks don’t have hands.