The music video below is of a vacation with my friends Pat and Mary that we took to Colorado in 2003. The big highlight was riding the steam train from Durango to Silverton, staying the night, and then riding back. Another was visitng the Royal Gorge. Click on the arrow in the middle of the video screen to start. I used the same software as the previous posting described below from Animoto.com Enjoy.

Greetings, Maybe you have noticed a new addition to my blog page. In the upper right-hand corner of the page is a small section called "What I am doing now..." These are very short blog postings on what I am doing at the moment. Sometimes they are work related, sometimes just personal notes. At the time of this blog posting I had just placed a note about watching "Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn. Why do I do this? I am testing out a new communication and community tool called "Twitter" available at http://twitter.com Twitter is a way to communicate with others on what you are doing. Some people do the same thing with postings to their Facebook page or sending text messages or using Instant Messager. Most people use Twitter to keep connected to their friends. Rather than going into the details of what Twitter does and how it does it, check out an online video at http://Twitter.com What's my purpose? Inbetween the bigger blog postings to this blog page (I promise to be more regular now. See previous blog posting for why I have a little more time now.), the Twitter postings let you know what I am up to, both personally as well as job wise. My goal is to make several postings a day through Twitter and a posting to the blog several times a week. Just another experiment with technology. :-) Take care, David

Greetings everyone, After a long, long process I was recently awarded tenure at the University of Minnesota. I was promoted to Associate Professor. It has been such an amazing process. I have worked in postsecondary education for nearly 30 years. After beginning my career as a history instructor at Pratt Community College (KS) I moved on to Highland Community College (KS). These were small institutions, about 500 full-time students. Then I accepted a position at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Then in 2002 I received a wonderful opportunity to join colleagues at General College at the University of Minnesota. People ask me what it has been like. For me, my journey has been exciting, hard, joyful, and most of the rest of emotions. But the best thing has been having colleagues, friends, and mentors from across the U.S. who have supported me. No one gets to this position by themselves. I have been fortunate to have had the support of so many. Now it is my opportunity and responsibility to encourage and support others in their quests for attaining tenure at their institutions. I look forward to the opportunity. Take care, David