Richard M. Berthold

Berthold (1946-) was educated at Stanford and Cornell, where he thoroughly enjoyed the late 60s and avoided the draft as "mentally unfit for the military." He then spent 31 years of award-winning teaching of ancient history at the University of New Mexico, admittedly a third rate institution, until an ill considered remark on 9/11 led to a very hostile environment among his generally stuffed colleagues. Harassed into retirement, he successfully made the transition from professor to barfly and now works on a novel (who isn't) and a personal blog: www.qqduckus.com. His university career was an excellent gig, revealing to him that a saying common among Soviet workers was readily applicable to academics: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."