Jerome Doolittle

What you're passionate about at the age of 12 is probably what you should make your life's work. I was either chasing frogs and snakes and other small animals outdoors or reading indoors, and may have wound up making the wrong choice. But there it is.

At any rate I became a reporter, columnist and editor for the old Washington Daily News and for the Washington Post. Following that I free-lanced for the Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Holiday, the Nation, Penthouse, Oui, Esquire, and the Readers Digest.

In 1966 I joined the U.S. Information Agency, serving in Casablanca before becoming press attache in our Laos embassy during the war. I resigned over there and went back to free-lance reporting, in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

On returning to the United States in 1972, I wrote two volumes of the Time-Life Books wilderness series. In 1976 I joined the Carter campaign, ending up as a White House speechwriter and later chief of public affairs for the Federal Aviation Administration.

When Reagan fired us all, I wrote my first novel, "The Bombing Officer," and spent five years teaching writing at Harvard. There I began the Tom Bethany mystery series, which I may yet revive.

In recent years I've been blogging at http://badattitudes.com/MT/ on politics, culture, and whatever else catches my interest. And lately, having at last become old enough to figure out what actually matters, I have been spending time in the woods again.

Ideas, leads, anecdotes, suggestions, and pictures are all welcome and may be sent to my gmail account. To the left of the ampersand, type: jerome.doolittle