Randy Barber:  

I recently joined Facebook. You can find me by searching its site for "randy.barber.5220" [I would have put in the link directly, but CM won't permit it] [Posted three years ago] I live in the Washington, DC suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland with my second wife, Melissa Moye. I've lived in the area since 1975, after going to college in the east and spending some time in New England and France. We spend almost all of our weekends at a small farm we bought a decade ago which is within sight of the Appalachian Trail, about twelve miles north of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. We are small-scale fruit growers, harvesting 500-600 quarts of red, yellow and black raspberries and blackberries, two-thirds of which we sell to a local farm stand and the rest of which we turn into preserves (Christmas presents for our friends). We also have about 80 fruit trees, but since we don't spray, these are only for personal use (and for the deer, groundhogs, etc). Melissa is an economist who has been a union researcher, teacher, bank officer (responsible for ~$10 billion in union pension fund investments), Maryland Retirement System trustee, and now Maryland Deputy Treasurer. She's also just been appointed Interim Chief Investment Officer for the $34 billion Maryland Retirement System (October 2010). We've been married ten years, and she really is the match of my life. My office is in Takoma Park, MD, and hers is in Annapolis, where she moors her 27' trawler that serves as a pied a terre when she works late. I have two kids from my first marriage: a son, Phil (27), who lives in Portland, Oregon and a daughter, Kyle (23), who lives just five miles away from us. In my biased opinion, they've been great kids, and I'm amazed at how wonderful it is to have adult children with whom I can relate on an almost-peer basis. I work as a "strategic financial advisor" to labor unions, something I've done since the late '70s. My clients are typically large national organizations involved in education, health care, air transport, telecommunications, and manufacturing. I specialize in corporate financial analysis, collective bargaining, and benefit funds, and have a retainer relationship with four separate unions (it pays the bills and keeps me more than a bit busy). Here's a sample o...Expand for more