My wife, my honey and best friend. I met for the first time in June, 2000, chatting with her online. We met at Sweetwaters in Burlington for lunch and I realized she had the McCormick sense of humor. She was skinny as a rail a lot younger that myself. She said she liked tall, intelligent, chubby men with a sense of humor, so it seemed I filled the bill. We married June 15th, 2002. She is an adventuresome soul who is willing to try anything. She even put up with us going to Thailand, and amazingly a McCormick family reunion!

My sister Carol took physics in high school, and later told me that I would love it. When I could, I took physics in eleventh grade and Mr. Smith was my teacher. He was very laid back yet thorough as a teacher. Carol was right, I loved physics and decided after a year of physics to major in physics in college. Of course, I might have done better if I had gone into engineering physics, but I could not stand carrying around boxes of drafting tools and drawings. I would do much better nowadays with computer drafting. Because of Mr. Smith I got two degrees in physics and taught physics for over nine years altogether. It was my physics students and their problem solving problems that led me into studying educational psychology.

I met Hank in my first educational psychology class in 1977. He was a very gregarious fellow, who was very curious about the philosophy of physics - relativity and quantum mechanics in particular. We both were interested in photography - he more professionally than myself. He photographed my wedding with Emina, who is also in the photo. After we both graduated, we did consulting jobs together and generally got together when conferences happened. He lived/lives in New Mexico. In July of 2000, I took my kids with a great photo trip with Hank to the Grand Canyon.

I arrived in Njoro, Kenya, to teach physics and math in August, 1973. For a week I stayed with another teacher until my house was ready, and Alice showed up looking for a job. We had an interesting negotiation with her sister as translator, the other teacher, his brother and houseboy. It went on for a long time, and inspired the first chapter of my book "Njoro Castle."  Alice was my cook and housekeeper for four years, and she later told everyone I was her husband, which I thought was funny and did not mind. Early in her employ, she got pregnant by her boyfriend Mwangi, but everyone assumed that I was the cause. To a young man, that is actually flattering, but I simply stated that I was not blessed with the required treats. After I left Kenya, I sent money on a regular basis to help her three kids get through school. Once the kids were through school, we stopped writing.

I met Taka in late 1983 when I applied for a research position at the University of Vermont. I did not get that position but was hired to teach a statistics course. I did that for a semester while also organizing Radio Shack computer training center. After which I taught for a year at Champlain College, then taught fulltime at the university again. Taka got me a research position which looked at differences in the release of people with schizophrenia from hospitals in Vermont and Maine. I worked with Taka until June of 1991 when the grant money ran out. It was also the time my father died, so it was a period of loss. Taka was known as a tough boss, but he was always great for me. 

I first met Sheila in 1986, when I got a job as a program evaluator in the biometry facility at the University of Vermont. We shared an office for several years and got our lives intertwined with our spouses and kids. She was a great help with her knowledge of statistics and programming. She made an otherwise boring job, interesting to show up for daily. She and her husband were intending to avoid children to save the planet, and my response was oh great, only morons will be having children.  She went on to have smart, adorable children. When I left the university and got a government job in the capital, I lost track and only heard of her through mutual friends.

I met Emina in a seminar class in January, 1979. She came in late for class, and I swear an angle had sailed in. Everyone, except me, knew her it seemed. I did not exist for the first month, until the professor kept asking me my opinion of things, and Emina's girlfriend Cecilia began noticing me, and hitting on me. Cecilia was engaged already, so Emina invited me to dinner on my birthday March 23rd. We got married in a fever on August 11, and had our daughter the following May, 1980. We moved around a lot. First to South Carolina for two years, then to Vermont in 1983. She got pregnant with twins in 1984, but they came prematurely and died a few hours later. We tried again and again and again, and after two miscarriages we got a handsome healthy son. The marriage died in 1996  when Emina fell in love with someone else and moved out in early October, 1996. Divorce was final the following September.

I met Beatrice in Kenya in 1977. A Brit teacher at Njoro, David, and I became friends and he and I would go out to bars in Nakuru. David was dating Beatrice and brought her along so that he would not have to dance all the dances with her. She was British but had an Irish accent from working as a nurse with a lot of Irish working in Kenya. So, I was beguiled. We had only one date per se. David had been invited to Christmas dinner, and asked me to stand in for Christmas dinner with Beatrice. I knew David was crazy in love with Beatrice, as I could easily be if given half a chance, so I thought he was being quite trusting. It was a wonderful Christmas dinner, with roast and wine, etc. But over the months, Beatrice made the better choice and married David. I came to the wedding in the Catholic Church; David converted just to marry her, which is something I would refuse for sure.

I met Judd in the late 1980s, after he had moved to Vermont to continue his father's human resources and wellness consulting business. He introduced himself to Emina, who was the wellness coordinator at the University of Vermont. He and his girlfriend Beth and we became friends. At various times he needed help with statistics and hired me to help. Several times when work ran out, first in 1991 and then again in 1998, he hired me to do statistics or programming for him. I think it was more for friendship and having someone around, than an actual need. But it was interesting work, and the money helped smooth things out between permanent jobs.

I had known Susan before Emina and I separated, because she was the mother of my son's good buddy. She had two adopted sons, was divorced and was a professor at a local college. She had a lovely place on eleven acres on a dirt road in the outback of Essex Town. Over the years we often went out to her place to drop off or pick up my son from her place to play or stay overnight with his buddy. One time months after Emina moved out, Susan dropped her son off for a play time, we talked a long time. She invited me and my son over for dinner one Saturday in Spring, 1997, and it began a close relationship that lasted several years. It fizzled out after we took a trip out to Texas to visit her father. A while later, her father visited and talked in my ear. He said that Susan had been married twice, etc. I got the impression he did not like me, or that Susan could do a lot better.  She got busy with her boys, and I got busy with my two kids and by early 2000 she had stopped returning my calls, and we both lost interest.

When I returned from Kenya in 1977, I got an apartment on Eastgate in Carbondale with a roommate. There was a pretty girl sunbathing in the yard next door. After a few days of seeing her, I worked up the courage to walk over and introduce myself. She was shacking up with her boyfriend, Jerry. I found later that Jerry was very popular with very attractive girls who hung out in the apartment to smoke some of his stash.  Martha enjoyed the product also. She thought I was a "narc" because I said I did not want to start since I have an addictive personality. I got the impression that while Martha said Jerry was her boyfriend, Jerry seemed to act as if she were merely a roommate. I asked her out on a regular basis, but did not get anywhere for the longest time. We talked often, and she came over to talk as if with an older brother about her problems with Jerry.  It was not until later that I learned that she did accept my invitation for a date in order to make Jerry jealous. It was a very sweet date, but I think it had the result she wanted, since it was the last date.  Martha was the kind of girl I thought I would spend my life with, but it was one of those things that would not happen, but maybe in another life.

I first met Ronna when she was interviewing at Southern and she sat in on a class that I was doing a presentation on. That was in the Spring of 1978. She, the professor and I chatted. Later, I learned the reason she sat in was that she was told that I was one of the best students in the department. She got the job and I ran into her again in the Fall of 1978 in the hallway. She started chatting me up, saying she had been quite excited watching me give the presentation the previous Spring. She was married, but her husband in California would not be moving to Illinois, since he was unwilling to give up his for her career. She invited me out to her place for supper and to meet her dog Miracle, a miniature schnauzer. Listening to FM radio, things got exciting on the living room floor only to get Miracle excited and he started nipping me all over. It did ruin the romantic atmosphere. Over the next few months, whenever Ronna called, I'd come. She got me a job working under her as a teaching assistant, which taught me well that I would prefer not to teach educational psychology. I naively thought she was in love with me, but it was a lesson to learn the difference between love and lust. 

I met Liz when I was teaching in Kenya and she was a Peace Corps trainee who stayed at my place and practice taught chemistry at my school. She was posted in Nakuru in a very nice house. I went to Nakuru every week either to shop or go to the bank. I would often drop by her place, and she would show up at my place in Njoro. She was very sweet, and often made suggestions, but I was taken aback by something in her personality that suggested to me that she was not meant for a long term relationship. She did take up a boyfriend, a former student of hers who was tall and quite handsome and about her own age. She got to be friends with my other Njoro friends, including Alice and Kamau. She travelled around Kenya with me, dropping suggestion but backing off if I responded.

Liann like Liz was a Peace Corps trainee who did her practice teaching at Njoro, and stayed at my place for the two weeks. She was posted to Njoro and asked to share my house with her. This made things complicated with Alice as housekeeper and cook, since Liann wanted to do her own cooking and laundry. But I thought she wanted to live with me, because she wanted to live with me, but she was being cheap. Every other weekend, she would head off to Nairobi. After a few months of getting along and thinking we might form a relationship, she said her friend was coming to visit. Her big boyfriend showed up on a huge motorcycle, which made my motorcycle look puny. He was a great guy, and I saw why she liked him, and slept with him. After a while, the financial problems and complaints led me to talk to Job about getting Liann her own house, which he kindly did. She lived off campus, but was gone so often that her house was robbed. She transferred to her boyfriend's school.

I first met Kamau when I got to Njoro in 1973. He was a form five student who wanted to make sure that I would teach his physics class the next term. His current physics teacher was not very good, and early on I got a good reputation. I ended up becoming his math and physics teacher, and he would drop by often for tutoring with the other students. He invited me to his home in Nyeri to see Mt. Kenya and meet his parents. We became best friends travelling all over Kenya, including most of the way up Mt. Kenya, Mombasa, Lamu, Garissa. He was an adventuresome soul who was willing to try anything. The photo is of him on a floppy sail boat on the harbor at Lamu.

I first knew Job as the deputy headmaster at my school in Kenya. He took over as acting headmaster and did wonders for the school in a short time. When he was suddenly transferred, he came to me and the other physics teacher to go lobby with the district education officer to make Job the permanent headmaster of Njoro School. He got the job, and he and I became close friends meeting in his office to work out the wording of staffing requests or grants for materials and buildings. My most satisfying accomplishment with him was getting a grant to build new physics and chemistry labs. After I left Kenya we wrote for awhile, until he got too busy. He did tell me that he named his son, who was born on Valentine's day in 1978 after me: Rodney Valentine Osiako.

I had many students over the four years that I taught there, and few I can recall their names. They needed me there more than wanted me, in that they would prefer to be taught be someone of their own tribe. However, few educated enough to teach, would teach, and rather get a much better paying position elsewhere. Once those positions are all filled with Kenyans, then foreign teachers will be less needed.

Virginia came to my house in Kenya in late 1973 to visit her friend Alice and drink tea. We started chatting which led to Alice's suggestion that the reason Virginia was there was that she took a liking to me. My being very naive, she was an excellent teacher, willing to show me the ins and outs, the various niceties of human interaction.

Alice once a year would want two weeks off to go to her small four acres of farmland to deal with her crops. She provided a substitute housekeeper, Muthoni, who turned out also to be my friend Kamau's girlfriend. I think she was Alice's substitute, because she was not a very good housekeeper and would not compete much with Alice. Once I came back from classes early to find her coming out of the back bedrooms with Kamau. I had a good laugh. She tried her best to make it up to me. It was Muthoni's sister Wanjiru that inspired my fictional novel

 "Wanjiru's Sons." Wanjiru also was a substitute housekeeper for Alice.

Bach was a student when I was working for Taka in the late 1980s. He would drop by my office and tell me his interesting stories. He was a Vietnamese boat person who escaped Vietnam and ended up in a refugee camp for a year. He claimed to be Jewish, if I recall correctly through his mother's line, and also gay. So, for the university's diversity program he was a three-fer. After he finished his masters he got a job at the university and we would have lunch about once a month until I got the job in the capital. And when I returned to a job in Burlington, we would go back to our occasional lunches and swapping stories.  He invited me up to his place to see his paintings, where he disclosed that he had painted two picture of me based on a photo he had taken of me years before. One was shoulder up, and the other was a fantasy nude of me - very well endowed and very unlike me. I thought he was going to give them to me, but he said he wanted to keep. When I was between marriages, I saw a lot of Bach, wondering in what respect he was interested in me. It never went anywhere, and the friendship faded when he kept remarking negatively on other groups of people. I once said for a gay Vietnamese Jew, speaking down to other groups is probably not the way to go.

I met Sue online between Susan and Louise, and never understood why she invited me over. I wonder now if she were not a he with a sex change operation trying to pull a fast one. I had gained a lot of weight from Susan's fantastic cooking, so I was not all that attractive. She invited me over several times to her French farmhouse with six and seven foot ceilings. Most rooms I had to walk hunched over. One time her teenage daughter dropped by to say hello. As she was leaving I overheard the daughter say, "He looks like a fat pig." Which I thought was interesting since the daughter was quite a chub herself. Despite this assessment, she took me to her bedroom to give it whirl, but it turned out to be one of the more boring if not disastrous of my bedroom experiences. For the life of me, I cannot recall her surname, but rather her screen name.