Jason Makansi

"A pie in the face is worth two in the mouth."

That's my favorite quote. I first heard it watching Saturday morning cartoons.

My favorite meme goes something like this: If you want to understand America, dwell not on who suffers but who profits from the suffering.

I'll share anything, except pie, especially cherry pie. I've probably visited more power plants around the world than any living human. My favorite piece of music is Brahms 1st Piano Concerto.

My phone wall paper and display illustration on my blog is a photo of the towers of light from the site of the World Trade Towers after they were attacked. That's because I worked on the 95th floor of Tower One from 1979-1981.

I first saw those towers of light from an airplane sitting on the Newark Airport tarmac shortly after they first beamed to the world. I wept. Again. Then I was filled with hope.

I believe that there have been five critical inflection points during my time on this planet: JFK's assassination, Watergate, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, and the day in 1988 when James Hanson presented his testimony about global climate change to Congress when the air conditioning wasn't working.

The finest rock n roll song ever recorded is Layla, also the name of the oldest of my three dogs.

I have two daughters. One attended what a friend of mine called "one of the top ten anarchist colleges," the other got her education on Chicago's South Side. I hear a lot about the patriarchy, paternalism, privilege, and pan-opticon-ism around my house.

All three of the ladies I am surrounded by are accomplished writers themselves. Their books, The Seeds Trilogy, have been optioned for a film.

My apartment in Manhattan had a shower in the kitchen. I've been riding a bike avidly since 1980 when I got my first bike as an adult and even wrote a bad poem about it. I do week-long rails-to-trails biking expeditions with several other riders annually.

My favorite short story is "Another Manhattan," by Donald Antrim.

My mother is Greek but born and raised in Montana. My father was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, came to the US for his Masters and PhD, met my mother in Manhattan when he was a graduate engineering student at Columbia and she was attending the Julliard. Thus, my heritage comprises one country held up as the economic basket case of the last five years and one obliterated by civil war and foreign fighter intervention.

The portrait you see in the photo gallery of a young boy is me; my father drew it.

I was suspended from 4th grade for two days, almost kicked out of 8th grade, got the highest grade in a college calculus test and the lowest grade on a college physics test. I wrote the humor column for my high school newspaper. It was hard to be funny even once a month.

I think I won the "Most Cleaned Up" award at my 20th high school reunion. That's based on all the wives waving around the class of 1974 yearbook, pointing first at me and then my senior "portrait" during the evening reception, and asking their husbands, "Is that him? Is that really him?" I had really, really long hair and a disheveled "why the hell am I here?" look in my portrait, yet I was the only one who wore a sports jacket to the reception.

My boyhood heroes were Thomas Edison and Johnny Callison (Philadelphia Phillies Outfielder in the early 1960s). That explains, I guess, why I ended up in the electricity industry and a Yankees and Cardinals fan (i.e., winning teams).

I took piano lessons from my mother for eight years. I have not recovered.

I swam breast stroke and butterfly for the Holiday Hills Swim Team in Wilmington, DE. I won two second place trophies for tennis. No other sports accolades adorn my space.

For eighteen years, I worked for one of the oldest, continually published magazines in American history. You never heard of it because it's an industry trade publication and the only people who read those work in that narrow sector of the industry. It was a great gig but we had executives who thought the future was in financial engineering, not real engineering.

My favorite trade publication name was "The Wrecking Ball: Serving the xxxx professionals in the demolition industry." I learned a great deal about demolition during the Enron debacle.

I worked for a dot com for a year. That was Y2K. The lights stayed on but my senses, apparently, went dark with the close of the millennium.

Vision without a plan is a daydream. A plan without a vision is a nightmare. A vision of a career change at the end of the millennium is a Brian DePalma movie.

Okay, that's the fun stuff. Now for the dry stuff. the official bio used when I'm introduced at speaking gigs:

I earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University in the City of New York, and spent the last fifteen years as an independent "technology deployment" consultant to the electricity industry for clients ranging from garage shop inventors to members of the Fortune 50 global energy corporations and industrial conglomerates.

A serial entrepreneur, I've raised venture capital for companies, launched and became Director of Research for a hedge fund focused on the electricity industry, led two Washington DC policy organizations, started up industry publications and industry events, and authored dozens of energy industry reports at the intersection of technology, policy, and finance.

I speak to groups as large as 5000 as well as intimate groups in workshops, training seminars, and educational and public interest events. I've published three professional books, including the highly regarded Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means To You (John Wiley & Sons, 2007). For several years, I pursued a higher degree in Sociology, a subject I loved in college and have pursued in an avocational sort of way ever since.

I also write fiction, with twelve published short stories appearing in a variety of academic literary fiction journals and anthologies. My first novel, The Moment Before, will be available from Amphorae Publishing Group in late 2017. I am an avid champion of the short story form and organize and lead workshops for aspiring short story writers. I serve as Associate Editor for December Literary Magazine and a Contributing Editor for River Styx literary journal.

I play the viola (strictly as an amateur) and have performed with the Confluence Chamber Orchestra in St. Louis, and currently play with the Foothills Phil Community Orchestra in Tucson. I also play bass guitar, diddle around on the piano, and compose piano pieces for the enjoyment of no one but himself.

If you visit the Titan Missile Museum and historical site south of Tucson, you may be lucky enough to take a tour with myself as docent. In other service activities, I mentor engineers and business students at the University of Arizona, appear as an invited guest lecturer in college and secondary school classes, and interview applicants to my college Alma Mater.

In 2014, I was presented with the Alumni Achievement Award from The McCallie School for Boys in Chattanooga. Obviously, they forgot about my stellar eighth grade year.