July 19, 2005
About the Authors
Bob Owens
I have been a day laborer, atv rider, sports writer, web designer, technical writer, and blogger. I've moved back south since starting this blog in New York, and currently live and work near Raleigh, North Carolina, where I am a web developer for a Fortune 1000 company.
I am writer for Pajamas Media and Shooting Illustrated.
Occasionally, I post articles at The Tatler, Big Government, and Big Journalism.
I also maintain a shooting blog, Bob's Gun Counter.
I've also been discussed in the book Blog Wars: The New Political Battleground by University of Kansas journalism professor David Perlmutter, who has also featured some of my work in his teaching and in media conferences as an example of bloggers as investigative journalists.
Mike McDaniel
Like Bob, I have connections to the North and the South. My father was a genuine Kentucky hillbilly, and all of his side of the family has lived in the deep south. How deep? Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, where I spent substantial time on summer vacations over the years. Yet, until I got to Texas as soon as I could about a decade ago, I always lived in South Dakota or Wyoming. I miss winter, and in many ways, I’m a Confederate Yankee too.
My background is pretty eclectic. I’m a classically trained musician--a first tenor--but am also skilled on the guitar and bass, compose and arrange music, and have also been a director at various times. These days, I’m a professional singer, performing with a well known chorale, where I serve as a board member and the tenor and bass section leader, and with a fine symphony orchestra. I also sing regularly with a metropolitan church choir, for which I am actually paid! As a sidebar, I was fortunate to have the opportunity in college to build a double manual harpsichord from a kit. Being a musician and carpenter helped a great deal, and I got college credit for the project. The instrument will outlive me by centuries, and no doubt, look better too!
I am a veteran of the Air Force, having served in SAC during the Cold War as a Security Policeman. I am also a veteran of a bit less than two decades of experience as a civilian police officer where I served as a patrolman, juvenile officer, detective, field training officer, taught at a state law enforcement academy, served as a shift supervisor, division commander, firearm trainer and SWAT operator. I’m also a firearm instructor certified by the NRA and the American Small Arms Academy.
I’ve been an athlete all of my life, and have run several marathons, but these days, I mostly bicycle and lift weights for exercise and fun and ride the occasional century. I was the co-founder and first vice president of the Wyoming Division of the United States Fencing Association (essentially European fencing), and study Kendo (ken-dough, Japanese fencing) and Iaido (ee-eye-dough, Japanese sword drawing). As you might guess, I’m a real history buff as well.
My day job is teaching high school English. I love it, and my students, with a passion. I’ve been married 32 years to a magnificent woman who deserves far better than me, and have a cat, Mushi, which is short for “mushin,” or “empty mind” in Japanese. I’ve always been a writer, and have written two plays that have been produced several times. I’m also published, from time to time, at Pajamas Media.
I consider myself fortunate indeed to blog at Confederate Yankee with Bob and the wonderful, awe-inspiring, yet mysterious Brigid, she who must be read and obeyed.
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Brigid Durham
Brigid Durham is the birth and pen name of a writer and adventurer, author of the popular blog Home on The Range. She makes her home in the Midwest while traveling far and wide in her role as "Secret Squirrel", her name for a investigative position in the law enforcement field. A Ph.D. in Criminal Justice with related studies in Forensic Anthropology, she was raised and educated in the West and is the daughter of a Deputy Sheriff (Mom) and Military Police Officer (Dad). A licensed Airline Transport Pilot and flight instructor in heavy aircraft, she's flown airplanes ranging from Boeings to her favorite, the T-39, hanging up her wings in 2001 to do what she also loves - "solving the puzzle". She lists her hobbies as history, photography, antique weaponry, really bad gunsmithing, hunting and gourmet cooking and freely admits to owning more firearms than shoes. She'll write of firearms and family, flying and forensics.
She hopes to retire in 10 years, coming out of the shadows with a book that might actually have her face on the back cover.
