Phil Billitz

I have always loved to live in beautiful places. My lifelong passions have been poetry, photography, building things and making things work. I grew up in a small Alabama coal mining town, and I was a teen during the Civil Rights struggle in Birmingham, where I had several unsettling brushes with the Klan. Initially I studied Engineering, but later changed course and earned the first BA in Philosophy from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. In my 20’s I hitchhiked out to Southern Arizona where I got married, built a house near the Mexican border, and was blessed with two amazing daughters. We next moved to Portland, Oregon in the great northwest, where I became a single parent and learned to dance Argentine Tango. I moved to beautiful Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, with my partner Hana in 2012. Now retired from a modestly successful career in Engineering and Information Technology, I spend my time taking pictures, making books and feeling very grateful.