My college
degree has
been for "play" instead of "pay."
An unusual
career path
What newspapers and magazines have
said about me
Soon after graduation,
I bought
a second hand mimeograph machine (this was before the Internet became
wide
spread) and started cranking out my own publication. It didn't
make
money, but self expression was the goal. I paid the bills by
working
as a custodian.
Being a janitor
didn't mean
that I couldn't be "the director of a think tank." My
correspondence
with people evolved into, sort of, a think tank that was featured, many
years back, in the business section of the TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE.
Cranking
Out Happiness at Robert's Think Tank.
Continued
correspondence got
me in touch with a bazaar network of artists called the MAIL ART
NETWORK.
Mail artists send things like doodles, manifestoes and old shoes to one
another, all over the world.
This interactive
network of
common folk is sort of a "pre Internet" exchange of creativity.
Mail
Art shows would take place (and are still taking place) all over the
world
where people would collect the mail they got, put it on display and
call
it a show. In 1983-84, I did a show. See this article in
the
BELLINGHAM HERALD.
The
Mail Art Beauty Pageant
In 1989, my letter
to the editor
of a local paper inspired one woman to throw out her car keys.
They
did a feature on her.
In 1991 and again
in 1993,
I bicycled all the way across the US. See this 1993 article on my
cross country tours in KLIPSUN MAGAZINE as published by the journalism
department of Western Washington University.
About
my bike trip across USA
Also see a 1997
article in
the BELLINGHAM HERALD How to prepare for a
long
distance tour,
In 1995, I started
this web
page. It got its own domain name in 1999, theslowlane.com
2001, I was second most
prolific writer of letters to the editor published in Bellingham
Herald.
2002, My site and
Bellingham
Bicycle Map featured in Herald Article.
128kb jpg included.
| Excerpt
from January 18 2003 Seattle Times
"The
first clue that Robert Ashworth thinks differently comes when he is
asked
how he got the idea for his new spam-fighting scheme.
"I
have a job as a custodian," he said. "And I think about things as I mop
the floor."
The
first impulse is to get out while there is still time, were it not the
fact that Ashworth's idea seems pretty sound:" See
Article.
|
On line edition of
Seattle Times
takes a look at the anti spam strategy I use. Find article
in archives. May require sign up, but no fee.
Check out this odd
story.
Still paying the
bills by working
as a custodian, but there are not too many bills to pay. Living
my
kind of "alternative lifestyle" has not been too expensive. One
can
do a lot on the web for very little money. It's the mundane
stuff,
like housing and dental care, that gets expensive. So far, I have
managed to squeak by those monsters.
I never figured out
how to
make big money with my "dot.com," but that is common. So many
dot.coms
have become "dot.gones." Mine is still going. It should say
"this site powered by custodial work."
As of May, 2004, my
site has
some advertising in it. Ads are provided by a service of the
Google
search engine. They are automatically picked for relevance to the
topics on the pages. It is an interesting concept and a
suppliment to my income.
See my
history section in my blog.
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