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Tell me more, tell me more!
Well, since you asked... Let me start at the beginning. At least at the date of this writing (20 August 2002), I am 18 years old, a member of the male variety of the species Homo sapiens and an obviously English-speaking individual. In more specific terms, I was born in New Orleans, LA on May 17, 1984 and have since been a resident of the United States with the brief exception of a monthlong stint as an exchange student in Spain in the summer of 2001. I lived in Louisiana and Michigan alternately for the first six years of my life, and then we moved to the magical and wonderful and beautiful Portland, OR. I'm serious when I say that there's something endearing and magical about the place.
So I grew up in SW Portland, and later in Lake Oswego (a suburb). I went to Wilson High School, and was quite happy there for four years. Go Trojans! I studied just about everything the school had to offer, especially journalism—I was the editor of the Statesman, our newspaper—and I decided that I wanted to become a journalist. So I applied to go to school at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and I got in, et voilà: here we are. I am a freshman there this year. For more detail, see the media section.
But there's more to my life than that. For example, I spent three years enriching myself and getting academic fodder by attending Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth summer programs in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and in Carlisle, PA at Dickinson College. I wasn't just journalism-focused in high school—I won a series of departmental awards (social studies, Spanish, English, journalism) and the Overall Scholar award upon graduation. I like to have fun, too; see the music section for a decent enumeration of that sort of thing.
As an Oregonian, I feel it's my moral responsibility to be a Democrat and a socially responsible one. If you're interested in my views on diverse subjects like universal health care and the right to collectively bargain and how to salvage the public schools, take a look at the politics section for a more in-depth look. I'll be posting essays and articles and transcribed debates there, from time to time.
I love books. Who doesn't? I was blessed enough to be a Portlander, and my best friend and I spent a number of afternoons over the years at Powell's City of Books in downtown Portland. I'm an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, but my bookshelf is happily adorned also by some of the literary greats of our time and our forebears'. Latest sci-fi highlights include J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a smattering of Ben Bova and Kate Elliott and C.J. Cherryh and a little William Gibson too. On the literary end of things, I just finished Hanif Kureishi's Gabriel's Gift and Victor Pelevin's Homo Zapiens, am prodding my way through Gore Vidal's Lincoln after reading Empire and Hollywood and Washington, D.C. and The Smithsonian Institution and loved Dave Eggers' incredible A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'll still take J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye when it pops up at the top of my stack of books, am partial to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees and love Jorge Luis Borges' fiction and non-fiction. What else, I ask, are you going to do in Portland wintertime rain (or Chicago wintertime freeze)?
There's also a Technogeek side to me, one that enjoys computers as much as politics and the media. I don't have a separate page devoted to it because I don't think it's important enough, but there are some links here that will amuse those of you who appreciate the Digital Hub and Lifestyle. I use an Apple Powerbook G4, a titanium-encased beauty called Ithildin with an enormous monitor and enough punch for my web development/graphics design/media work, like this web page, and enough ease of use for anyone. It runs Mac OS X, because I'm an old-time Linux junkie and I like the Unix core as well as the Apple GUI. This web page was designed using Adobe Photoshop, BBEdit 6.5, and Vim and Genpage in the OS X Unix console. In addition, I do from time to time use Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress for media work.
On the hardware/accessories end of things, I have a Visor Edge, which it appears is no longer manufactured but was once made by Handspring and an Apple iPod. I'm quite fond of both. I'm looking into a set of Harman Kardon Champagne black speakers to listen to music with, since I don't have a stereo in Evanston.
Other passions of mine include history, trivialized pop culture and—of course—coffee. Torrefazione Italia, as an example, has what I hold to as the best coffee in the United States (and Canada). There is, luckily for me, a franchise in Portland and in Chicago (on Michigan Ave. in the Saks building and on Lakeshore Drive). But for when you can't take the El into town to get a cup of expensive joe, there's always a French press and some beans, my solution.
If you're still perplexed as to just who is this Wes Meltzer person, well, that's what an email address is for, isn't it?
(mwm223), Webmaster, 2002