This "about me" stuff is the most awkward part of putting together a personal website.  How much do you as the reader want to know?  How much do you need to know?  At what point does it go from helpful background information to babble?  Do I talk about myself in the third person like an omniscient narrator of my own life?

"Rich Lane is an English teacher in a small town in Northwest Pennsylvania. "

That just feels weird to me.  There's an aura of pompousness there I'm not comfortable with. So do I abandon the illusion of a narrator and talk about myself in the first person? Seems more natural, but there's the potential to try to get too clever and become enamored to the sound my own "voice."  Still of the two choices, I guess I'll go with natural.

Hi.

My name is Richard R. Lane. You can call me Rich or even "Ricardo" (my wife's name for me) if you like. I answer to both. Don't ask me my middle name. I won't tell you until I get to know you better.

I'm in my mid-forties, and I teach high school English in Pennsylvania (didn't the omniscient narrator already say that?). I've been doing this for more than fifteen years now, and I enjoy it quite a bit despite the No Child Left Behind Act and it's efforts to thoroughly drain any kind of individual thought from education.

I was born and raised in PA, but I lived for most of the 80s in Albuquerque, NM, where I received a B.A. in Journalism from the University of New Mexico and met my wife Dolores. We moved back to Pennsylvania in 1989, and I picked up my teaching credentials from Edinboro University.  Dolores and I have four kids, Dale, Linda, Patrick, and Kathleen, as well as a feisty Lhasa Apso named Scooberto Antonio Doo Lane.

Like many bloggers, I'm an aspiring writer. I did manage to check at least one thing off my "Things to do before I die" list a few years ago; I wrote professional for Wizard magazine for almost a year right before the bottom dropped out of the comics market and they had to cut all their freelancers. Currently I'm working on a comic book that I hope to pitch to publishers soon. As that's a big part of the reason for this blog, you'll probably be able to read quite a bit about the process here.

The title of this blog comes from my favorite poem, "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, specifically the lines:

I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

I like that idea, the notion that as you get closer to what you are seeking, new vistas coax you out ever further. It's a good way to live your life, be it physically, intellectually or spiritually.

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I took the name of my blog from a line in this poem, so I thought it apropos to post the entire thing here for the benefit of those who may not be familiar with it.

Ulysses

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

 

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

 

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

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