Kodiak's Korner

I just went to the opening of Tom Barker’s Earth Images exhibit at our Dyer Arts Center. The exhibit was up yesterday, and though not officially open, I was browsing it with two colleagues. One of them mentioned that it would have been nice if the photographer had put up signs describing the images. A few minutes later I saw a picture of two old-school VW Bugs and I mentioned how my sister would have liked that picture.

Today I headed down to check out the exhibit again during its official opening and Barker had added the missing notes to the photos by the time I got there. I looked at the VW picture again and I was shocked to see the words “Belchertown, Mass” listed with it. Turns out Barker’s daughter lives in good old B’Town now (as does my sister). Strange.

Welcome to Kodiak's Korner, my little corner of the net. This is my place to share my thoughts and opinions on the world.

Kodiak's Korner has been around for several years in one form or another. It first got its start back sometime in 1994, when I, as editor-in-chief, started writing a short column for each issue of my high school's newspaper, The Oriole Gazette.

When I went off to college, Kodiak's Korner followed, becoming the title of my personal website. While I had high hopes of running the web version of Kodiak’s Korner as a sort of "e-zine" with content similar to my high school column, my course work and other activities prevented me from keeping the site updated regularly.

Upon graduation, my college hired me as a full time staff member. At that point, I took Kodiak's Korner down, launching a more professional site in its place. But the desire to publish Kodiak's Korner in some form once again never went away, so now, after a nearly three-year hiatus, its back.

This new Kodiak's Korner is a work in progress, and it likely always will be. For me, it is an experiment in web design. It is my first attempt at building a fully CSS-controlled, XHTML-compliant web site. It is also built on a home-grown content management system (CMS) backend and is designed to be fully accessible to assistive-technology users. Don't be surprised if the look of this site changes every time you visit, as I’ll constantly be making adjustments and improvements.

Finally, I feel its is only fitting that I dedicate this site in the memory of Shaun "Bres" Bresnahan, my freshman year social studies teacher and advisor to The Oriole Gazette. Bres was one of the best and most influential teachers I’ve had, and without his help and support, we’d never have published the paper and Kodiak's Korner would never have come to be. Bres passed away in 2001. It’s hard to find a former student of his whose life was not touched in some way by him. He is deeply missed.