Who I am personally

A bit of History

I was born Peter Dombrowsky in Seattle, Washington, but I don’t remember the city at all since my family moved when I was 9 months old. I spent my childhood and early adolescence in Tucson, Arizona, and I consider that to be my hometown. We moved to Fort Worth, Texas during my freshman year at Saguaro High School in Tucson, so I actually graduated from Castleberry High School in Fort Worth. I went to college at the University of Texas at Austin where I studied math. I went on into the graduate program in math at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I earned a master’s. After a few years of free-lance math tutoring, odd-jobs, and travel, I returned to school at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for a second bachelor’s in linguistics and German. In 1994 my wife and I moved to Santa Cruz, California so I could do graduate work in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Department of Linguistics.

Since I finished my MA in linguistics in March 1997, we have lived in Sunnyvale CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, Elmira NY, Hamilton NY, and our current location (as of September 2005) in Cortland NY

Interests

I like finding patterns, especially in complex structures (like language!). This affects my interests as well as my profession. For instance, I enjoy folk dancing—in particular Morris dancing. Morris dancing is a traditional English form of dance done mostly as a folk performance. It dates back to at least the 15th century (some say back to the dawn of time :-) ) and shows up in literature from Shakespeare to Terry Pratchett. Several villages spread throughout and around the Cotswold Hills in England each had their own style or tradition of Morris Dancing, so it is interesting to compare and contrast the village traditions to find the essence of Morris. It’s also just plain fun to dance! The group we danced with in Santa Cruz/Silicon Valley is Seabright Morris and Sword in Santa Cruz, California. Here in New York we dance with Heartwood Morris of Ithaca and the Bassett Street Hounds of Syracuse

Another interest and lifestyle choice of mine is Nudism/naturism.

Family

My wife, Julia E. Schult, is a Reference Librarian at SUNY-Cortland’s library.

Our only child, June Schult, is a lot of fun to be with! I was an at-home-parent until she started school, so I got to spend most of my days with her. As she approached school age, we thought a lot about how we‘d want her formal education to go. Given that 20 or 30 students per teacher sounded like a lot, we thought quite seriously about homeschooling her, but after moving to a smaller school district, we decided to enroll her in school. This seems to have been a good choice as she has made a few friends that she enjoys being at school with.

I also have a page with the URLs for some of my friends and family.

Last modified
 Thursday, November 24, 2005
 8:51 PM EST
  PDS

Copyright ©1995-2005, Pete and Julie Schult. All rights reserved.