Sid Gold:  

Life I attended SUNY Brockport & earned two degrees there, both in English. My original intent was to become a HS English teacher, but I ended up just drifting around until I entered graduate school a couple of years later. I knew then that I wanted to write, but mainly poetry. The best alternative seemed to earn advanced degrees & become a college teacher, which would afford me the freedom to write. With that in mind, I came to the U. of Maryland, College Park to work on my Ph.D. I have lived in the DC area ever since & have taught in various local colleges. My years & the people I knew at Brockport remain deep in my heart, however. I grew up in some important ways there. Recently, I spent 18 years at The George Washington University on year-to-year contracts. My position got caught up in a program change & rather than seek employment in the new program, I decided to try retirement. I love retirement. I am getting by financially & have a ton of time to myself. Throughout the years my main goal was to make myself into a "publishable poet", a poet whose work is respected by other poets & by experienced readers of poetry. After years of hard work-the usual trials & tribulations-my book "Working Vocabulary" was published by a well-regarded local literary press, The Washington Writers' Publishing House. Since then I have become one of the people involved in WWPH's operation. To back-track a little, if you knew me at all at Forest Hills, you knew that I moved to the neighborhood from The Bronx a couple of months into my sophomore year & that I did not particularly enjoy living in Forest Hills or attending FHHS. I never recovered from the culture shock even though both neighborhoods were Jewish. Shortly after I graduated, my mother moved to the Upper West Side in Manhattan, a neighborhood I enjoyed very much. While at FHHS I began playing a lot of basketball, probably as an escape, although I really possess very little natural athletic ability. I still play b-ball to this very day, though not as much as I should. Over the years, I've met many players & coaches, & have formed some lasting friendships. In my 20s I began listening to jazz & for a while was something of a fanatic. I've met many friends among fellow listeners & players in the DC area. I never had a lot of money & never did some of the things more money would have made possible, but I got by & compared to a lot of people I had a lot of time to myself, which I found to be a necessity. I had a number of relationships & met a few women with whom marriage seemed a real possibility. For better or worse, that never happened. On the one hand, I would have liked to have had a familly, but on the other hand, I am something of a loner. If anyone I knew in The Bronx, FHHS, or SUNY Brockport wants to get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Finally, I hope everyone out there is doing well & has had good life. The best is yet to come. The following information was added in April 2010 in an effort to remain current. A few important events have occurred since my earlier profile. First, my last remaining close relative from my parents' generation, my father's sister, passed away in early '09 in her apt. in Manhattan. She was 93 & was an interesting enough lady to be the subject of a feature article in the NY Times in September '04. Around the time of her passing I learned that I had a malignant mass, a lymphoma, in my neck right under the left side of my jaw. I began receiving b...Expand for more