I've never been very comfortable with labels on people. As I recall, I was upset by reading a newspaper headline BOY SCOUTS LOST ON MOUNTAIN as a youth. Having been a Boy Scout, I knew that if I were ever lost on a mountain, a Scout is all I would be. Being quite a few other things as well, it just didn't seem right.
When I was 19 and still a Christian, I made quite an effort to list all my allegiances, there were dozens, and order them according to their importance to me. I wondered when was it more important that I was a Christian than an American, and when being an earthbound mammal took precedence over being a Christian. When did it matter that I was a former Boy Scout, or that I would eventually have some professional title?
At that time, I was a Stanford student, sitting high on a hill above Beutelsbach, Germany, spending two quarters "abroad" and wondering about many things. Thirty some years later, I am a Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I've been here for most of the last 25 years, but I still can't wear a shirt that says UW or WISCONSIN on it. It's that same old label phobia, I guess. In fact, the only shirts I own that say anything whatever on them are ones that suggest I'd rather be scuba diving. My scuba buddy is Ellen Roecker, to whom I am also married.
I am now a husband, father, teacher, astrophysicist, diver, skier, and a would-be-writer, among other things. There is more about some of these hiding behind the buttons below.