I have been many places and done many things in my life. On this page, I'll try to summarize them and give you links to places you can go for more. I first created this page in 1995 as an early experiment in web page development. As such, there is nothing terribly fancy on this page or any others that I maintain. I've always believed that pages should load fast and be informative.
I work as a consultant to healthcare organizations as an expert in business intelligence, with a focus on clients who use software from Epic Systems Corporation. This is largely an extension of work I did when I worked at Epic and I've been doing work like this for the past thirteen years. My works calls for me to travel quite a bit, but otherwise I work out of my home. It's a balance I enjoy immensely. The work is fulfilling, I'm good at it, and it pays well.
I enjoy dining out and have a particular fondness for sushi, cheese, and beer. My tastes tend to fluctuate, but these days I'm enjoying salmon, soft French cheeses, and dunkel weizen beers. Traveling gives me plenty of opportunity to explore new restaurants and local foods. Traveling also gives me lots of time to read. I'm a verocious consumer of Young Adult literature and maintain a BLOG with reviews of the books I have read.
I'm always been a collector and enjoy acquiring and cataloging the things I collect. For the past dozen or so years, I've focused on antique photographs of people. I'm particularly interested in what the British call "social history" (basically, pictures of people doing things) and also pictures of interesting clothing. My collection is immense but honestly is focused more on quantity than quality.
A few years back, my partner and I adopted a seal-point siamese, who we named Miri (after the heroine of the eponymous episode of Star Trek). More recently, she and I got married to complete our happy little family. I've managed to live the past eighteen years in Wisconsin, so I suppose I consider this to be home.
Spiritually, I am a Quaker (having been raised both as a Unitarian and a Quaker). I don't always live up to the lofty ideals of Quakerism and find Simplicity to be a great challenge. However, I do strongly believe in giving back and I make a point of tithing to various charities and causes I believe in.
I've gone through many changes in my life. If you had told me in High School that I would be a jet-set consultant, I'd never have been able to picture it. Yet, I have found that plans really do change and it is never too late to start a second (or a third) career. Interests and hobbies change as well, and the ability to acquire new ones (and let go of the ones that no longer inspire you) is a mark of a cultured person. So, here is a brief history.
I used to teach political science at the University of Wisconsin -- Platteville. I received my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Russian Politics and Political Philosophy. As an undergraduate, I attended Simon's Rock College and got my A.B. from Vassar College. I published a book called Pornography and Democratization: The Case of Legislating Obscenity in Post-Communist Russia with Westview Press in 1999 and I have published several articles on that subject (as well as giving several talks at various universities and institutes).
I eventually gave up on academia. The next step after leaving teaching was to get a job as a project manager with Epic Systems Corporation. After three years at Epic, I moved on working as a consultant with SafeNet Consulting and occasionally freelancing as a writer on healthcare revenue cycle management. Consulting led me to a permanent position with Agfa HealthCare, working in Instructional Design (neatly combining together my two past careers in one!). But after 15 months of an incredible daily commute (125 miles each day!) and a daily routine of not enough work to keep me busy, I got a unique opportunity to return to writing SQL reports for Epic installs, but as a consultant. I worked for a company called Healthcare Informatics Associates (which eventually sold it self to Infologix, which in turn sold itself to Black & Decker). I left after the second sale and worked for Brookmeade Healthcare and now Nordic Consulting Partners.
The dominant hobby of my life has been medieval reenactment. I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) for nearly three decades. In that time, I've done all sorts of things, including heraldry, embroidery, and crossbow shooting. I've held a variety of offices ranging from Hospitaller to Seneschal. About twenty years ago, I founded an organization called the Slavic Interest Group, which promotes amateur research into medieval life in Eastern and Central Europe. My single largest contribution to the SCA (and probably my life's most important work) is my Dictionary of Period Russian Names (available on-line in its second edition and still in-print in the third edition). Between it and my archive of related articles, I'm still considered the "expert" on medieval Russian onomastics for the SCA, even though I am retired. In the SCA, I am known as Paul Wickenden of Thanet, a Anglo-Norman noble residing in my ancestral abode on the Isle of Thanet in the early-mid 13th century.
Drop me a note (goldschp@tds.net) if you want.
This page last updated on November 28, 2013
