W. Steven Burke

W. Steven Burke resides and ruminates – about some buildings but also sometimes more – in Hillsborough, North Carolina, graced by days with husband Randy, swell friends in this exceptional town, and daily gratitude that his life has so far unfolded well. Growing up with a father both senior army officer and diplomatist, he learned to look and think around America and other places: London, Ankara, Athens, the Philippines. College at Duke in the highly stimulating prime years of societal foment, 1966-1970, yielded a self-shaped degree in the conjoined field of Religion and Literature, an individual crafting option unsurprisingly soon abandoned by Duke. As America, curiously, was not seeking persons with such practical offering, he moved along to quasi-hippie carpentry; graduate work in Instructional Design; a small company with partners in Chapel Hill; and a faculty position at the School of Education and Psychology at North Carolina State University. All such gambits logically prepared him for twenty-eight years in state, national, and international biotechnology and life science development, policy, and societal issues. Still conjoining, he found the juncture of such issues with American Folk Art Buildings to yield contrast, balance, and enrichment. www.americanfolkartbuildings.org

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Husband Randy Campbell
2. Decency in others and I hope in me
3. Courtesy in others and I hope in me
4. The Once and Future King
5. A good hipped roof
6. A good building
7. Generously interactive friends hereabouts
8. Clement gossip hereabouts
9. The lessons and wonder of most any animal
10. Trees