J. Howard Cahill is a pseudonym crafted to honor different elements in the origins of the person responsible for this blog.
Born in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in the 1950s, J. Howard has lived and worked in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and South Dakota. In his youth, he worked summer jobs on forest fire fighting teams, as a dishwasher and in a paperboard mill. His extended work history includes retail cashiering, freelance reporting, volunteering in soup kitchens, and jobs in telephone call centers, political campaigns, and state and federal government.
His travels took him across North America by plane, automobile and bus, and across the Atlantic Ocean. These journeys led him to various places: Seattle, Los Angeles, Burns, Pendleton, Walla Walla, Chicago, New York, Green Bay, Eagles Mere, Orlando, Tampa Bay, Chattanooga, Las Vegas, Burlington (Vermont), Independence (Missouri), the Texas panhandle, the Grand Canyon, Great Britain, France, Canada and Ireland.
J. Howard is a graduate of Oregon public schools, and two institutions of higher education (one near the west coast and the other near the east coast).
His father was born in the Oregon Rogue Valley, his mother in a town near Adirondack Park in upstate New York, and somehow, the two found each other in the 1940s. Hence, J. Howard’s bi-coastal nature may be genetic. He and his siblings had one grandfather. The other left J. Howard’s parent’s family long before both his parents met. Despite having a trio of grandparents rather than a foursome, J. Howard never thought of his family as different or unusual.
The abiding Grandpa disliked his own first name and preferred to use his initials “H.P.” Some of Grandpa’s admirers gave him the nickname “Horsepower,” which he did not mind. Grandpa was known as an individual who got things done in contrast to his grandson who may be more of a dreamer.
At the end of J. Howard’s first year in junior high school, he won the award for “Best Student in Mythology Class.” Later at a university, one of his favorite courses was “Greek Myth and Its Relationship to Literature.” For over 40 years, his love of mythology and fantasy was placed in the background by other pursuits. Now moving in full circle, he returns to his fascination with the human imagination.