(Well, not ALL about me, but enough, I think, to get you oriented…)
I was born and raised in Michigan by parents who, like all of us, had hopes and dreams and, in the wake of World War II, against all odds, were eager to achieve them. But they had low intellectual aspirations, and, tired of big-city life, they’d chosen for personal reasons to live on the outskirts of a village with even lower aspirations than their own.
That decision, to go rural, had consequences both positive and negative for me. I loved my six years in a series of tiny one-room schools, each of them populated by students from K-12 who felt like a family and really did care for each other — not just occasionally but on an hour-by-hour basis. The only negative about these educational experiences was that many of my one-room school teachers had aspirations as low as, or even lower, than those of my parents.
So whatever aspirations I nurtured and kept alive were the result of those few teachers who lived for more than the weekly arrival of their paychecks. I owe those teachers a great deal, and would dearly love to be able to go back home and thank them for what they gave me — a genuine sense of possibilities far beyond the painfully low horizons of the village I called home for all those years. Too late, of course, because they’ve all bought the farm and, I hope, found peace-of-mind somewhere Up Yonder. Guess I’ll have to catch up with ’em later.
Anyway, after five years of study in music and English literature at Eastern Michigan University — I was sometimes an inspired, highly driven student, other times a distracted, floundering adolescent, struggling with issues of familial conflict and personal identity — I proudly became a father and moved with my wife and daughter to the southern Maine village of Berwick, just as Nixon was given the Boot and the Vietnam War was coming to a painful, ignoble, life-altering conclusion. By then, with the help of a small handful of University instructors with high aspirations and even higher character and compassion, I had begun to find myself — to find genuine purpose within the world of literature and the fine and performing arts.
I plunged headlong into that multi-faceted world, and have benefitted enormously from the immersion, which continues to grow, expand, and enrich me in countless ways. In my early years at home, I was never really seen as a youngster with high aspirations and serious potential. That gift — the gift of high expectations and constant encouragement — was given almost entirely to my brother, who became a psychologist at a time when “science people” were thought to be inherently more intelligent than poets and actors, dancers and musicians. It was only that small, magical handful of caring educators, people who took the time to see what was inside me, begging to come out and play, who gave me the precious Key to Romance, Idealism, and an ardent, unremitting drive to excel in everything I do. So there you have it: for better or worse, an honest, more-or-less all-encompassing thumbnail portrait of me. And now it’s my job to make this little Story of Me, and my most cherished values brought to life, at least occasionally worth reading. Won’t you come along for the ride? I truly hope so! We could have so much fun together!
— Ross Alan Bachelder July 2022