About Pimpernel

/uploads/pimpernel/pimp.jpg

About Me.

I was born in 1946 and privileged to grow up in the post-war boom of a kinder, gentler time, which makes me 57, although I am always amazed to realize this.  I was raised between Boston and boarding school by a widowed mother who utterly failed to comprehend that the Edwardian Age had ended with WWII.  I went from school to military to university.  I received a gentleman's education, which is to say long on languages, fine arts, history, the classics and law but short on the practical and physical sciences.  I was married, then divorced with no regrets after nearly a decade.

In 1989, at the age of 43, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (I shake, therefore I am), a fact which disappointed me tremendously.  I had for years dreamt of dying in a Turkish harem, or being eaten by army ants or in the midst of a tango dip ?  anything but something as mundane as spilling soup and trading my straight razor for a Gillette Blue.

Having begun an unexpected race with the clock, I resigned my position with the premier British law-publishing house, organized a company and departed for Eastern Europe with the idea that the two dozen-odd new democracies would need some expert help in collecting, translating and organizing their laws for publication.  In the course of this project I managed to travel extensively while settling in Riga, Latvia for six years.

The short version is that I succeeded ?  if not in dying in some far-flung corner of the old Austrian Empire by romantic device, then in seeing my project through to its logical conclusion.  Restructuring the company to a series of non-profit organizations I returned home to fade away with some degree of personal dignity.

Shortly thereafter I had two strokes of extreme good fortune: a new surgical intervention for my "inconvenience" became available, and I chanced across the Disabilities-R-Us website.  I am now part cyborg with 2 lovely pacemakers governing a variety of wires implanted in my brain (Deep Brain Stimulators) which allowed me to cut my medications by 70%, thus slowing my ever-present clock.  In Disabilities-R-Us I have met a number of interesting and worthwhile persons whose courage, dignity and optimism in the face of disabilities far greater than mine daily remind me of my great good fortune, and the ultimate and imnnate goodness of mankind.

My Hobbies and Interests.

I am interested in virtually everything, an omnivorous reader and a born optimist, which means there are virtually not enough hours in the day, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.  I'm an enthusiastic gardener and live in genteel poverty in southern New Hampshire with long-time friends whose children are grown, an irrepressible Samoyed and a self-absorbed cat.

My Friends & Family.

I am an only child (what else?) but I do have a short list of real friends who suffice.