Richard W. Bailey

Richard W. Bailey I have always been drawn to writing; I find the expression of thoughts and feelings through written language, communicating one’s perspective on a subject through the lens of one’s life experience, offers useful, interesting, entertaining, and sometimes important information to an audience of readers. My writing is informed by many things: My childhood and adolescence in 1950s New York and Connecticut, my college experience in Syracuse. I moved to San Francisco in 1963 and fell in love with California. I finished my BA at California State University, Sonoma, and did my graduate studies at UC Berkeley. My career in the helping professions, first working with abused and neglected children and adolescents in residential treatment as counselor and then administrator for many years, later my private counseling and psychotherapy practice in Marin county, California taught me a great deal more about human psychology. My family experience growing up in Wilton and Westport, Connecticut and New York, Baldwin, Long Island. Mine was a typical, achievement-oriented dysfunctional family with a somewhat abusive father, an artist, a loving mother and my alliance with my two bright and wonderful sisters, one older and one younger. This natal experience formed my basic world views and relationships. I was reasonably happily married for 25 years, the first time around, producing two great children, now adults of whom I am justly proud. I remarried a number of years ago to my dear wife Jan and we retired to Europe a number of years ago, where we love our life in Portugal’s Algarve, from which we travel around much of Europe, frequently. We have between us, five marvelous children, and eight wonderful grandchildren in the US. We miss our friends and family in the US and try to visit often. We have developed many precious friends here as well. It was not until retirement that I actually honed my creative writing skills, having written mostly technical and reportage materials previously. I love to study and write about history, American, European etc. I am very interested in international relations and gaining more appreciation of European culture and learning about the people I meet here. The lessons of history act to inform us and forewarn about not repeating the errors evident in our past. History can come to life meaningfully as we follow the experiences of the players in those events. I have tried in several of my books to portray action and characters as they might have truly been, given the circumstances we know from our study of those times. I love the environment, Earth and it’s wondrous uniqueness. I am increasingly concerned about human abuse of the environment and the troubling direction of the politics of the world. The lessons of history can serve us well if are willing to listen.