25 Things About Me

Here are 25 things that you may not know about me:

1. I was born in Mattoon, Illinois because the other town my parents lived in didn’t have a hospital.
2. One of the earliest cartoons I remember watching on t.v. was called Crusader Rabbit. The main character had a tiger as a sidekick.
3. I lived with my family in the Indiana countryside for a year or more and attended a school that had two grade levels in one classroom.
4. My father was a minister and named me after Peter Jon Marshall, a well known Presbyterian minister at the time.
5. I once shared an apartment with a friend who bought an Asteroids coin-op video from a local Chuck E. Cheese and put it out on our balcony for entertainment.
6. One of my favorite memories from childhood is hunting geodes with my younger brother in the wooded creek areas of central Indiana.
7. I liked the shoes that George Harrison wore on the cover of the Abbey Road album so much that I asked my parents to buy me a pair.
8. I learned how to sing harmony by singing in the church choir and singing old hymns on Sunday mornings.
9. As a teenager, I loved to play the main theme from Thus Spake Zarathustra (from the 2001: Space Odyssey movie) on my father’s baby grand piano.
10. At about four years old, I got to appear with other kids on one episode of Romper Room, a local children’s t.v. program that aired in our area.
11. Although I was born in the state of Illinois, I grew up next door in the state of Indiana.
12. I saw Richard Harris play King Arthur onstage in the live theater version of Camelot.
13. In the fourth grade, I lived in the country across the road from a large corn field.
14. In my high school art class, I created a pen and ink drawing of a guitar. It was my own creation and I dubbed it a Willmon; a combination of two of my favorite guitarists – Mason Williams and Paul Simon.
15. The first LP record I ever owned was Alvin and the Chipmunks with Dave Seville.
16. One of my favorite classic films is To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck.
17. I used to love to swing on the playground set and sing songs.
18. I’m a big fan of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals from the 60s (ex., Carousel and Oklahoma)
19. My sister, Camile, got me started on playing the guitar when I was sixteen. I was housebound and stir crazy after breaking my leg while skiing.
20. I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy almost twice when I was in junior high and wrote a list of actors I thought would be great for the film version. My pick to play Gandalf was Gregory Peck,
21. I named my son, Kabir, after a 14th century Persian poet of the same name.
22. My first guitar was an Alvarez classical guitar. I paid $100 of my own money for it.
23. In my college years, I used to listen to popular records of the day (like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) and play along with my wooden recorder.
24. The first vehicle I ever owned was an old ?65 panel truck. I paid $200 cash for it.
25. In my early 20s, I protested the imprisonment of my Indian spiritual teacher by sitting with others on the steps of the U.S. capitol building in Washington, D.C. It was a peaceful demonstration and we sat together in meditation.

Blessed Journey

And one more than 25 things – I wrote this song in January 2016. It was posted on my YouTube channel. I think it’s timely to share it again here, as we begin another new year of possibilities. I look forward to living more of my dreams in 2017! Happy New Year everyone!