About the Author

John M. Burt has been a human since 1960, a veteran since 1982, married since 1984, a college graduate since 1985, a massage therapist since 1985, a father since 1988, a published author since 1996. He has been a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman, a Certified Nursing Assistant, a house cleaner, a telephone interviewer, a census taker, a security guard, a middle-school history teacher and a farm laborer. He lives in a decrepit but beloved Victorian house which is known all over Corvallis, Oregon, for its cedar tree whose branches overhang the sidewalk (people stop almost every day to take their pictures under it). He walks out with his wife every day, always wearing a striped engineer's cap and almost always wearing his garish sweater (he's owned The Sweater since 1987 and has been mending it ever since, and it has its own web site: http: //the-sweater.tumblr.com/). He has raised four children and is contributing to the maturation of another.