Personal Biography

My family moved out to Eugene Oregon from Rochester New York in 1960 when I was 4 years old. I don't think I could find a better place to live if I went searching, so I don't.
My father, Virgil Boekelheide is an organic chemist of international renown. My mother, Caroline has been involved with the Eugene Symphony since its inception. In fact its precurser, the Emerald Chamber Players rehearsed in our livingroom.
I was fascinated early on with electronics, photography and music. I started playing violin in 4th grade and continued through college. I still pull it out every now and then.
I studied journalism, mass communication and photography at the University of Oregon, and am now completing my more practical training in electronics and computer programming at Lane Community College. Click to download a Windows temperature conversion program.
In 1992 I married the love of my life, Jamie May. I inherited two children, Kyle and Flynn from her previous marriage. Life together was more than I could hope for. Sadly, just after Thanksgiving in 1994 she succumbed to liver disease which had gone undiagnosed until a few months before.
Please don't feel sorrow. She would want us to celebrate her life rather than mourn her passing. Jamie lives on in my heart. And yes, she did have a license to drive. She just happened to also have a license to not drive. And her car which paralleled her life broke down frequently, and finally died shortly after Jamie herself. Grid willing, let each rest, or rust in peace.
A lot has happened to me and the people around me. I'm starting to think that I should start writing it all down for my own feeble memory if not posterity.
I have been writing down my dreams for years. Here's one.
Since 1974 I've photographed the likes of B.B King, Gerald Ford, John Lee Hooker, George McGovern and the Grateful Dead.

But my favorite has been Frank Zappa. (Click on his nose to see the rest of him.) I managed to interview him for the Oregon Daily Emerald the first time he came to Eugene. His advice for aspiring guitar players was to find the chord fingerings that hurt the most and practice them until they don't hurt anymore.

Here are some audio clips of Frank and the Mothers (.au format):

Zappa's snark (13053 bytes) Motherly love (30345 bytes)

I love creating fractals!
I came across this tagline which pretty much sums them up:
+++ consciousness is universal and fractal +++
+++ the universe is fractal and conscious  +++
+++ the fractal is conscious and universal +++
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