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Right out of the gate I will acknowledge that this website is in good measure a vanity project. Of course I like to think it’s something more than that. But there's no denying that the form and content result from a compulsion to publicly share, on my own terms and in my own venue, what I think and believe and experience. Of course, in that respect I”m not so different than other writers, or for that matter any type of artist … all of whom are at some level or another seeking to reveal themselves for one or another level of self-aggrandizement. That's OK, because all art, or at least art produced for public consumption, is by definition exhibitionist.
In no way does that mean that I conceive of this website as 'high art' of any sort But there's no question that this is a creative project for me, and I hope that at least some elements of this site are at least 'artful.' Maybe some of the photos? Or even some of the writing? I'll actually be satisfied if somebody finds anything in these pages 'interesting' or 'provocative.' If anybody finds something here that can be called 'evocative,' that will indeed be gratifying.
Anyway, at least for now rest assured that I'm not selling anything and no subscription is being solicited.
So about me … (a thumbnail autobiography)
I’m a chronically immature just-past-middle-age 70ish guy with a checkerboard past. Originally from the South – born in Arkansas, early youth in Wichita Falls, Texas – I had a traumatizing childhood and a troubled adolescence, before moving on to a long period of dissolute living as a young adult. I started an endless road to recovery in my mid-30s when I returned to college, where I basically stayed for the next 25 years or so, along the way being overcome with an exuberant cocker-spaniel intellectualism, of sorts, characterized by an intense but often disorganized interest in everything, often manifested by outbursts of flowery language. Rather like this little autobiographical résumé, in that regard.
I wonder, sometimes, if my childhood teachers would be surprised at who I've become. Because educationally, you see, as a young child I started off early but badly, being plunged into first grade a full year early due to a precocious aptitude and immediate love for reading. Unfortunately, my social and emotional skills weren’t as developed as my reading skills, and for the next dozen years my school progress always ranged between unsatisfactory and failing. I was a miserable kid, often bullied, and looking back with heartless hindsight, often understandably if not justifiably so.
But I was never held back a grade in what would almost certainly have been a disastous attempt to place me among my developmental peers. Rather, I was passed from one grade to the next in a kind of bureaucratic peristaltic process because administrators saw no other acceptable alternative other than to pass me along. Their frequent sanctions and occasional emotional massaging never really worked, and I dead-ended and dropped out midway through my senior year of high school, seven months before my 17th birthday.
I never did get a high school diploma. Ironically, given my adult interests and education, I failed junior English and history, so couldn't have graduated on the basis of not having the required credits even for the 11th grade, not to mention losing half of my final year of high school. Years later, I was allowed to enter college on the basis of a high ACT score and was told not to bother with a GED. So in the end, lack of a high school diploma was among the least consequential of all the achievements my youthful pathologies kept me from achieving.
“Gradually, then suddenly,” as one of the characters in a Hemingway novel famously responded when asked how he went bankrupt. That description also fits how my epoch of dissolute living came to an end, as years of acute immaturity, bad decisions, and self-destructive behaviors eventually resulted in emotional, social, and financial bankruptcy about the time I hit 30. To nobody's surprise at the time, I was suddenly washed up, with no attachments, no money, and no clear future.
After floundering for a bit, I figured out that the only palatable option I had was to go to college, which quickly led to the discovery that not only could I finally handle the structure of formal classwork, I excelled at it. So, with income from full and part time jobs, Pell Grants, and a little help from the aunt who raised me, I flashed through a B.A. in English and Philosophy and Journalism at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, graduating in three years with honors. Days after attending my last undergraduate class, I married my former teacher, soul-mate, lifetime travel partner, and inner beast tamer, Mary Pliska, then went on to almost get an M.A. (never wrote the thesis) in English from Oklahoma State University over the next couple of years.
At that point, my ambition to be a famous novelist and English professor were derailed by lack of self-discipline and competing interests and passions, and I again lost track of where I was going with my life. I ended up teaching fourth and fifth grade science for seven years, which to my surprise turned out to be a job I loved. But suddenly, at the entry-level middle age of 41, Mary was notified that her job was being phased out in one year, which for financial reasons forced me and Mary to reconsider our long-term plans.
That was in 1994. Four years earlier, in 1990, Mary and I had gone to study Spanish in Guatemala for the summer. The experience was enchanting, and we returned for the next several summers. By the time our changing financial circumstances forced us into a different path from the one we were on, Latin America in general and Guatemala specifically had become a passion. With no specific ambitions and no better options on the table, I sent applications off to several universities for admission and funding for graduate Latin American Studies. I was accepted by all the programs I applied to, but one of them – Tulane University, in New Orleans – made a financial aid offer that I couldn't refuse.
At Tulane, I flew through the MA, first, and then through the coursework and comps for the PhD, and late in 2000 we moved to Chichicastenango, Guatemala, where I began fieldwork for the dissertation. As is often the case in life, though, things happened, some personal problems and indecisions, which bogged me down during the dissertation process, and it took nine long years to finish earning the seldom used title of 'Doctor Max.'
During our long periods of doing fieldwork in Guatemala, I had worked with a variety of research and social development projects and jobs. Although I didn't realize it at the time, a lot of what I did was actually social work, in terms of being a combination of counseling and connecting needful, often desperate, people up to resources. But it was only when a family crisis forced Mary and me to move from Guatemala to Albany, NY, that I realized with some surprise that my various social science credits actually qualified me to apply for positions requiring a Master of Social Work degree. So, again, with no immediate options on the table, I slid into a social work position as a short-term survival strategy. Then, in the way of such things, short-term became long-term, and now, 12 years later, here I am still working in the human services field.
This was not a vocational or professional evolution I ever aspired to. But it's not one I regret, either, and I remain happily employed as an in-house consultant at a large family services (foster-adoption services, family mental health counseling, group homes, etc.) organization. I've had four job titles over the course of my 12 years with the firm, but since late 2018 my central responsibility has been to train and coach a continually shifting and rotating staff of about 75 social workers in the proper use of the “Child and Adolescent Needs & Strengths” (CANS) psychosocial assessment used by social service organizations across the United States and in several other countries. I spend my days meeting with case managers, reviewing their CANS assessments, explaining why they might not make sense and how they might be applied to a care plan, and doing quality assurance monitoring and data analysis for more than a thousand children and youth who have mental health, behaviorial, and/or developmental diagnoses and problems.
I also continue to collaborate with an NGO based in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, that Mary and I inadvertently founded in 2001. This organization, with the help of its U.S. 501(c)(3) funding sister-organization, MayaCREW, promotes education for primary and secondary students in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, largely through scholarships to primary and secondary students, about 90 percent of whom are girls and young women. In 2017 I followed up on a suggestion by high-flying CANS mentors in the United States to do research with the CANS assessment in the very needful highland Maya community of Chichicastenango. The lessons and methodologies learned from this research are what led my employer to create a position for me as a CANS specialist, which led to a second job as an associate coach for the CANS New York Institute.
An ongoing truism for the last twenty years is that of all my interests and jobs, working with in partnership with the Asociación in Chichicastenango and the project planning and athropological/social work research that goes with it, remains the emotional center of my vocational/professional soul. Importantly, it also provides me with a great excuse to continue making regular planning and research trips to Central America … with the next one planned scheduled for the end of summer 2023.
My more quotidian passions include food & cooking, travel, art, searching out affordable fine wines, photography, reading just about anything, undisciplined writing, gardening, and perpetually remodeling our very modest home near Albany, in Upstate New York. It would be pushing it to say that Mary and I have an idyllic lifestyle … but that's really not far off the mark. Barriers to the good life at this point are pretty minimal, and we have remarkable access to our greatest pleasures of life. Our home is comfortable, our very working-class village is picturesque, and the surrounding landscape, at the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers and the Erie and Champlain Canals — is lovely.
Our greatest challenge is resisting the murderous populist nonsense that should alarm all critically thinking people of all ideological stripes in the U.S. — a challenge shared by sensible people and almost all countries throughout the world in which authoritarian populist (read: fascist) movements have gained momentum in recent years. Anyway, all of my passions, along with my preoccupation (I don't think it's right to call it a passion) with current events and trying to survive the current assault on humanity by reactionary populism, will be colors on my palette of life to be talked about on this site.
I hope something I share on this site will result in some number of provocative and entertaining conversations, and that I can make some new online friends here on the maxkintner site.
Thanks for making it all the way to the end!
So now, off to wherever!