Doug Soderstrom is a Professor of Psychology and is planning on "hanging it up," retiring, that is, in May of 2006. As he has been doing for the past three years, Soderstrom would like to continue his efforts to become a first rate poet...... whatever the hell that just might mean. The highlight of his emerging efforts is a combination of three poems entitled Trilogy: Militaris Inhumanitas expressing his abhorrence of war using "the soldier" as a metaphor to satirize the inhumanity of our continuing to "kill each other en masse." Individually, the poems are entitled; A Soldier, A Soldier's Prayer, and A Soldier's Lament. Singly, the poem, A Soldier, was published in An Episcopalian peace and social justice oriented online magazine, The Witness. Somewhere around the end of 2005, Soderstrom plans to put his poems into book form entitled "Out Of My Mind!" Other than this, Soderstrom, for the past 38 years, has been happily (at least most of the time...... happily) wedded to his beautiful wife, Virginia Ann. They have a wonderful son, Michael, a very successful Licensed Professional Counselor, who is, at present, single and thirty years old........ anyone have "anyone" in mind? If Mike can find "the right woman," his parents are looking forward to someday having a couple of grandchildren. And then there is his dog Hayden, a devoted animal companion, who accompanies Soderstrom on his trips to The Rocky Mountains where he spends his summers admiring the wonders of God's handiwork. Soderstrom refers to himself as a Christian Humanist (a non-religious liberal who believes that Jesus Christ, along with Buddha, and perhaps even Mohammed, are magnificent models for how we ought to be living our lives). He is a democrat, believes that George Bush may well be the most dangerous man living on the earth today, that The Iraq War is a monumemtal mistake, and that it just might be the precursor of WW III, but let's hope, and perhaps even pray, that it is not. And finally, Soderstrom would like to spend the rest of his life doing whatever he can in order to further the possibility of there being at least a modicum of peace, love, and justice in the world.
