Dance Without A Rack Of Bones Within

James Victor Anderson was nurtured by a world made up largely of Coos Bay's waterfront and sloughs, sand dunes, lakes and creeks, forests of ancient trees, wind, rain, fog and a wonderful old Scottish descended mother who steered him with a large wooden spoon. For more than twenty years he studied the wonderful human faces of unforgettable small town seaport characters during his walks to and from school, newspaper routes, subscription drives and working in the mills and forests. After high school he joined the Army because he didn't know what else to do with himself at the time. Finding himself in an Army Airborne intelligence battalion where everyone but himself was college graduate, he promptly followed the college route after separation from Uncle. He applied himself with sporadic and questionable zeal at Linfield College during the early sixties and eventually emerged with meritorious degrees, skills and commendations necessary to acquire the credentials he would need for thirty-three years of teaching high school in the toughest logging town in Oregon. Teaching English for both a high school and a community college was actually an academic afterthought which only enhanced his original mission of helping those who wished to escape from the conditions of rural poverty. He retired from teaching in 1999 in order to fulfill his lifelong ambition of being a self supporting Taoist bum. He spends his time now in hospice work, wandering about and getting lost in downtown Roseburg.