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Me, myself and I
John Mcreery (jlm@TWICS.COM)
Tue, 19 Apr 1994 15:41:51 JST
Who? Me. As per D. Yee's request. Born in 1944 in Savannah,
Georgia. Grew up in Virginia, near Yorktown where the last
major battle of the American Revolution was fought. Am old
enough to have been to a segregated high school and to have a
fifth grade home teacher who (after we'd said the Lord's Prayer
and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and sung the Star
Spangled Banner) made us sing Dixie. Grew up and turned my
back on my parents' (Lutheran) religion. Did philosophy as an
undergraduate (Michigan State) and a Ph.D. in anthropology
(Cornell, 1973). Did fieldwork in Taiwan, wrote a dissertation
called "The Symbolism of Popular Taoist Magic," taught four
years at Middlebury College in Vermont. Didn't make tenure.
Spent another year in Taiwan, then three years in New Haven,
CT, where Ruth (my wife) was doing a Ph.D. in Japanese
literature at Yale. Spent first two years househusbanding and
taking care of daughter Katie (who's now 17, going on 18, and
deciding where to go to college). The third year I found a job in
the Yale Computer Science Department's Artificial Intelligence
Program and learned about computers. Then Ruth got a grant
that to brought us to Japan. A friend's introduction got me an
editor's job in a small translation cum corporate communications
company. A mutual interest in personal computers led to my
meeting my predecessor at Hakuhodo, Inc. (Japan's 2nd largest
advertising agency), where I started working as a copywriter and
am now International Creative Director. In the last couple of
years, I've revived my academic interests. I've got a paper
("Negotiating with Demons: The Uses of Language in a Taoist
Exorcism" ) accepted by American Ethnologist that is scheduled
to appear some time in 1995 and am teaching a graduate seminar
on "The Making and Meaning of Advertising" at Sophia
University in Tokyo. Ruth, Katie and I share space with four
Persian cats.
Cheers, John McCreery (JLM@TWICS.COM)
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