
My last race:
San Jose Mercury 10K, 2002

"The Zoo Story," May 1968

Cousins Heather Hogue and Michael Cooley, c1968

Cousins Marie and Michael about the time of our bust for possession of oregano in San Francisco, 1969

The Cooley Gang, 1969: Gwen, Michael Cooley, cousin Marie Cooley, Albert LeMonnier.

Xmas 1975

c1983

2000, age 50

Albert and I 31 years later. I have no idea why he's holding his balls.

2006

2009

2009

2011

2012

2013

2016

Reading | Favorite Jazz | Domains

First, some words and phrases that might apply to me: vegetarian, liberal, atheist (and agnostic),1 cat lover. I'm sure that my friends could up with several additional choice adjectives—many of which I would probably not care to use myself.

More on that to come.

Some books I've read since ca. 2003 (bottom to top)

The vast majority of what I've read lately is non-fiction. I used to, and will undoubtedly again, read poetry, drama and fiction. My favorite poets and authors were Charles Baudelaire, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Knut Hamsun, Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov and, of course, more. Not exactly light and happy reading. There was a five year gap between 2012 and 2017 while I was going to school. It wasn't that I didn't read. Because of time constraints, the books were "studied" rather than read in the usual manner, something I wasn't comfortable with.

  • Waiting for the Apacolypse, by Veronica Chater☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World, by Andrea Wulf☆☆☆☆☆
  • Why There is No God, by Armin Navabi
  • Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens
  • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
  • First Generation: Women in Colonial America, by Carol Berkin
  • A Short History of Reconstruction, by Eric Foner
  • Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War, by Thomas D Mays
  • History and Historians, by Mark T Gilderhus
  • Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America, by William E Gienapp
  • John Adams, by David McCullough
  • Team of Rivals, by Dorothy Kearns Goodwin
  • Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times, by H W Brands ☆☆☆☆
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt ☆☆☆☆
  • A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (2nd reading) ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt
  • Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Izzy and Lenore, by Jon Katz
  • Fermat's Enigma, by Simon Singh
  • Over the Edge of the World, by Laurence Bergreen
  • Lincoln's Sanctuary, by Matthew Pinkster
  • Blood of the Isles, by Bryan Sykes
  • Truth & Beauty, by Ann Patchett ☆☆☆☆☆
  • 1491, by Charles C Mann ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Counterknowledge, by Damian Thompson
  • Sea of Glory, by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • Night, by Elie Wiesel ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
  • The Knife Man, by Wendy Moore
  • The Bridges of Madison County, by Robert James Waller
  • The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
  • Darkness Visible, by William Styron ☆☆☆☆☆
  • House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III
  • Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder
  • The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Disgrace, by J M Coetzee ☆☆☆☆
  • Murder in Amsterdam, by Ian Buruma
  • Love and Hate in Jamestown, by David A Price
  • Miracle at Philadelphia, by Catherine Drinker Bowen ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Theory of War, by Joan Brady
  • The American Revolution, by Gordon S Wood
  • Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C Clarke (3rd reading) ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Black Maestro, by Joe Drape
  • My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Swift Justice, by Harry Farrell ☆☆☆☆☆
  • An Execution in the Family, by Robert Meeropol
  • The Snake Charmer, by Jamie James
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn ☆☆☆☆☆
  • This Land is Their Land, by Barbara Ehrenriech
  • The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S Thompson
  • The Adventure of English, by Melvin Bragg
  • Faith, Madness, and Spontaneous Human Combustion, by Gerald N Callahan
  • Patrimony, by Philip Roth
  • Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Relin
  • Calendar, by David Ewing Duncan
  • Dog Days, by Jon Katz ☆☆☆☆
  • Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
  • American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph J Ellis
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Code Book, by Simon Singh ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Born on a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Skeletons of the Zahara, by Dean King
  • Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M Bordenwich
  • The Color of Water, by James McBride
  • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson
  • The Parrot Who Owns Me, by Joanna Burger
  • Paula, by Isabel Allende ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Tesla, Margaret Cheney
  • The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein ☆☆☆☆☆
  • An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison ☆☆☆☆☆
  • American Brutus, by Michael W Kauffman
  • The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer
  • The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
  • Ishi In Two Worlds, by Theodora Kroeber ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Living to Tell the Tale, by Jane Taylor McDonnell
  • Writing the Memoir, by Judith Barrington
  • Guest of the Revolution, by Kathryn Koob (1982)
  • King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild
  • Lincoln's Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Barbary Plague, by Marilyn Chase
  • Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • A Good Dog, by Jon Katz
  • The Colony, by John Tayman
  • The Tribe of the Tiger, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
  • Condor, by John Nielsen
  • 1776, by David McCullough ☆☆☆☆☆
  • A Death in Belmont, by Sebastian Junger
  • The Good Good Pig, by Sy Montgomery
  • Party of One, The Loners' Manifesto, by Anneli Rufus
  • In the Wake of the Plague, by Norman E Cantor
  • A Cat Named Darwin, by William Jordan ☆☆☆☆☆
  • In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • The Monk in the Garden, by Robin Marantz Henig
  • The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart ☆☆☆☆
  • In Search of Billie Holiday, by Farah Jasmine Griffin
  • The River of Doubt, by Candace Millard ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan
  • The Human Nature of Birds, by Theodore Xenophon Barber
  • The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan ☆☆☆☆☆
  • An Imperfect God, George Washington and ..., by Henry Wiencek ☆☆☆☆
  • Made in America, by Bill Bryson
  • Out of the Silent Planet, by C S Lewis (3rd reading) ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, by Gordon S Wood
  • Strange Fruit, by David Margolick
  • The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Biological Anthropology, edited by Michael Alan Park
  • Leonado da Vinci, by Sherwin B Nuland
  • Stiff, by Mary Roach
  • Einstein's Unfinished Symphony, by Marcia Bartusiak
  • His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph J Ellis ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Facing the Congo, by Jeffrey Tayler ☆☆☆☆☆
  • America at 1750, by Richard Hofstedter (2nd reading) ☆☆☆☆
  • Beethoven's Hair, by Russell Martin
  • The Seven Daughters of Eve, by Bryan Sykes
  • Adam's Curse, by Bryan Sykes ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, by Jon Katz
  • The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, by Mark Bittner
  • The Dogs Who Found Me, by Ken Foster
  • River Out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Quest, by Charles Pasternak
  • The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
  • To the Elephant Graveyard, by Tarquin Hall ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells
  • The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond ☆☆☆☆☆
  • How We Die, by Sherwin B Nuland ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Next of Kin, by Roger Fouts ☆☆☆☆☆
  • When Elephants Weep, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy
  • General Washington's Christmas Farewell, by Stanley Weintraub
  • The Naked Olympics, by Tony Perrottet
  • The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Domininque Bauby ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Reflections of Eden, by Biture M F Galdikas
  • Genghis Kahn, by Jack Weatherford
  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs
  • The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Seierstad
  • Assata, by Assata Shakur
  • A Mayan Life, by Gaspar Pedro Gonzalez
  • A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid
  • The Morning the Sun Went Down, by Darryl Babe Wilson
  • Isaac Newton, by James Gleick
  • The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
  • Slackjaw, by Jim Knipfel
  • Never Cry Wolf, by Farley Mowat ☆☆☆☆☆
  • A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson ☆☆☆☆☆
  • How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill
  • Longitude, by Dava Sobel
  • The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, by Thad Carhart ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Feynman's Rainbow, by Leonard Mlodinow
  • Old Man Goya, by Julia Blackburn
  • Mapping Human History, by Steve Olson ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Picasso, by Gertrude Stein
  • Pack of Two, by Caroline Knapp ☆☆☆☆☆
  • A Dog Year, by Jon Katz ☆☆☆☆☆
  • Dominion, by Matthew Scully ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The Assassination of Julius Cesaer, by Michael Parenti
  • A Short of History Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
  • Genome, by Matt Ridley
  • Seabiscuit, by Laura Hillenbrand ☆☆☆☆☆

My favorite science fiction ☆☆☆☆☆

  • Rendezvous With Rama, by Aurther C. Clarke
  • Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson
  • Man Plus, by Frederick Pohl
  • Non-Stop, by Brian W. Aldiss
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Aurther C. Clarke
  • The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
  • Out of the Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
  • The Web Between the Worlds, by Charles Sheffield
  • Gateway, by Frederick Pohl
  • Ringworld, by Larry Niven
  • Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
  • Childhood's End, by Aurther C. Clarke

My favorite jazz albums
This list will quickly grow

Domain names I own
I know. This is getting silly.

  • emcee.com SOLD!
  • genealogy.org Sold to RootsWeb in 2000
  • newsummer.com
  • runners.net Donated to the Santa Cruz Track Club
  • orbitmail.com
  • orbitmail.net
  • johncooley.net
  • penelopstout.com
  • orbitinternet.net
  • ancestraldata.com
  • myAhnentafel.com
  • soquel.us
  • hennequin.us
  • ashenhurst.us
  • michaelcooley.us

1As a thinking man, I understand that I know nothing of any real consequence. But I do not believe in the existence of dieties of any kind, except for their use as a philosophical aid, such as in a statement like this: "Our actions on earth must surely be seen by the gods as blasphemies. They may yet have their revenge."

2009: Yes, I was depressed. I knew what was about to happen.  
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