As regards languages, I believed that I had already devoted sufficient time to them, and even also to the writings of the ancients, to their histories and mythical stories. To hold converse with those of other ages is almost, as it were, to travel abroad; and travel, by making us acquainted with the customs of other nations, enables us to judge more justly of our own, and not to regard as ridiculous and irrational whatever is at variance with them, as those ordinarily do who have never seen anything different."

-Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

Culture is an agrarian word oriented to "cultivating" the land. Broadly speaking, I am very invested in creating/cultivating new experiences and ideas and pondering those of others. In other words, culture is both a professional and personal interest of mine.

Of course, human history has created a hierarchical way of understanding culture, i.e. high and low culture, folk culture, popular culture and the like. As for me, I list towards Raymond Williams' notion of culture as a "whole way of life." The stories/narratives that permeate our music, food, poetry, visual art, films, television, scholarship, spirituality/religion, engineering, science and beyond are our ways of life - ways in which we attempt to, with great passion and desperation, make sense of our lived experience in relation to our hopes for something better.

These images represent many of the cultural stories that have helped shape who I am as a son, husband, father, friend, neighbor, and citizen. Each has an underlying connection to my personal narrative and conveys fragments of my many interests.