James Bruce Lyttle
After retiring from a career in academia, I completed a Master of Education and started looking into how wisdom might be disseminated. A background in professional music, Zen practice, and the study of humor turned out to be good preparation for that. Comedians, monks, and musicians seem quite familiar with the wisdom that escapes the rest of us.
IN MY YOUTH
Born in North Bay, Ontario, I put off college to "play in a band." That meant a decade crisscrossing Canada in a van, studying arranging by correspondence through the Berklee College of Music, and writing charts for my own and other bands. Later I designed lighting for more than three dozen Toronto theatre productions. I'm still interested in the performing arts, making music in the basement with REAPER as a hobby and as a meditation.
AS AN ADULT
In 1980 I left full-time performing for a three-year Telidon project (an early start on what we now call the internet). Then I returned to school for a B.A. in Philosophy & Economics, followed by a case-method MBA. What really got me, though, was teaching adults at the DeVry Institute of Technology. This sent me back for a Ph.D. and, with it, a move to New York City just in time for the September 11 attacks. I spent the remaining years until retirement teaching graduate and undergraduate students and conducting research at Long Island University, Penn State, and the University of Minnesota.
IN RETIREMENT
I hold a Ph.D., Life Membership in Mensa, and - from practice and precepts under Korean Zen master Samu Sunim - the Dharma name Single Breath. I have put theory into practice through civic and community work with Minnesota Mensa, Lake Superior Freethinkers, the Duluth Charter Commission, and the Clan Little Society. But my long-term plan is just to leave some money for my dependents and become fertilizer for the local ecosystem.