I was educated at Culver Military Academy (Culver, Indiana, 4 yr. military high school), where I did well in English and physics and enjoyed wrestling, football, and crew. I spent 2 years at U.C. Santa Barbara, majoring in English. I spent 4 years in the U.S. Army, learned Korean at the Army Language School (Monterey, California), and served as a Korean interpreter in Seoul. I operated a dairy farm (with draft horses) in upstate New York, then finished my education at Cornell, majoring in General Agriculture. Subsequently I worked for the departments of Entomology, Ecology and Systematics, and Floriculture, all at Cornell, as a research technician and general laborer.

My late father, Dr. John C. Gowan, was a well-known author and researcher in his field, Creativity and Gifted Education, and a professor of education at UC Northridge in California. He was a major force in my creative life and CPSI experience. His remarkable books developed synthetic, "unified" theories of human development and psychic phenomena ("Trance, Art, Creativity"; "Development of the Psychedelic Individual"; "Operations of Increasing Order").

During a checkered employment career I have also worked as a general laborer in construction in Los Angeles, as a clerk in an electrical supply house in Santa Barbara, as a dishwasher and janitor for various institutions, as a car cleaner for a rental agency, as a pheasant farmer for the State of New York, and (with a lot of help) designed and built a house (for mom). I am not especially antiestablishment, but healthily suspicious of it, and resist being swallowed whole by it. Consequently I have always enjoyed the freedom of thought accorded those in its lower ranks. The penalty for this choice has traditionally been the silencing of one's voice in the establishment press. The grand democracy of the internet, now dawning among us, promises to abolish forever the power of the establishment censor. With these pages I raise my voice among my fellows, hoping to be heard above the general din.