Gwynn Peabody

Family
I am married to a thoroughly wonderful woman named Lauren. We have been together since February 1999 and were married June 1, 2002. We have lived in Seattle, Washington, since April '04, and before that in Cleveland, Ohio, since '99. We have four cats who are named Kiara, Elentari, Pixel and Wyoming. For more information about my family please visit our website.

Spirituality
I was raised in the Catholic Church but had cast off that faith by the time I reached high school. After a period of searching for something to believe in I found my way to paganism and have been on that path ever since. At this time I would call myself an independent thinker who combines elements of pantheism and Celtic Reconstructionism to form a part of my beliefs. An important aspect of my spirituality is my devotion to the Irish-Celtic goddess the Morrighan. I have written extensively about this facet of my personality and you can find that information on one of my web sites, Elessacar.com.

Profession
While attending Syracuse University my major was Design/Technical Theatre, with a focus in lighting design. During that period I also developed a love of computers and the internet. One of my greatest interests in this field was web and graphics design. After graduation in 1999 I parlayed this hobby into my current profession. After spending over four years with a Cleveland company named Smart Solutions, Inc. my job was outsourced to India, forcing me to enter the world of freelance and contract work. At the same time I work with Lauren doing freelance projects under the name of Wyrd Weavers Design. The name is something I have been using since '97 or '98 and we have just grown into it over the past few years. Also having to do with my profession as a "new media" designer is my online portfolio, of which I am pretty proud. The Flash portion of it is my first real work with this dynamic technology. I was without permanent employment from September '04 to October '05, though I prefer to think of it as being self-employed. I spent most of '05 working for a variety of companies doing theatrical and production work. In October I went in search of a more stable situation. The result is that I now have two jobs - one as a night security officer for a company named Northwest Secuity Services and one as a Mac Specialist at the Apple Store. I look forward to seeing what the future holds in the employment arena.

Art
I have been interested in photography since family vacations to National Parks when I was a child. Both of my parents are avid amateur photographers and I grew up with their interest in the hobby and skill to nurture my own. In college I was given a 35mm Pentax (fully manual) camera with a couple of lenses and other accessories. This gave my interest in it a boost which carried me through until the digital revolution began in earnest and digital cameras really started becoming a viable option. My first digital camera (shared with my wife Lauren) was a 2.1 megapixel, $800 Epson PhotoPC 850Z. After more than three years and thousands of photos we upgraded to a 6.3 megapixel Canon EOS Digital Rebel. With the procurement of this new equipment I felt like a whole new world had opened up to me and I began to seriously explore photography as an art form and medium of communication. If you would like to see some of my photography you'll find it scattered around this journal as well as in my photography site and my family's photo gallery.

Voice
I've been blogging since January of 2002 on a variety of different subjects, including politics, and have always enjoyed this venue for sharing my thoughts and feelings on issues which are important to me. You can read my blog entries through the blogging web site LiveJournal. On January 21, 2006, I launched a podcast named Left of Friday. Left of Friday is a weekly, liberal podcast focusing on a range of topics. Included in the program will be straight politics, social and cultural issues affecting politics, a little bit of technology news, and other, miscellaneous things. Left of Friday is currently listed in a number of the largest and most often visited podcast directories, including the iTunes Music Store. Give the show a listen and see what you think.

Hobby
One of my great passions in life is for the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Late in 1999 I began work on a web site which I intended to highlight The Silmarillion. Since that time the web site has continued to grow and now includes a small but very active message board. If you love Tolkien please pay a visit to Valaquenta.com and have a look around.

Politics
Prior to 2003 I was never politically active. I voted in the elections every two or four years, but I never got any more involved. But then in 2000 George W. Bush was appointed to the Presidency by the Supreme Court and my world turned upside down. I watched the positive, healthy America that had grown under Bill Clinton being systematically shredded by George W. Bush and the corporate special interests he had sold himself to. Up until 2003 there was very little I felt I could do other than carrying on with a variety of online protest activities. Then in the Spring I started learning about a candidate for the Democratic nomination named Howard Dean. As I learned more about him I came to respect him more and more and I began to believe that he had a real chance of defeating Dubya in 2004. In the late Summer Lauren and I began attending Meetups and in the following months became more and more involved in his campaign. It was with great sadness that we watched the assassination of his campaign by the media and his eventual withdrawal from the campaign. We became supporters of John Kerry as the official nominee of the Democratic Party and worked to see him elected throughout 2004. Since Bush's reelection we have both done what we could to bring to light his astounding failures as president.

Gwynn is the voice of Perry White in "Superman: The Last Son of Krypton".