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Dwight Peck 
Dwight Clark Peck, Jr is a quiet, gracefully-aging gentleman who has managed so far to keep more or less out of harm's way. [This page was frozen in 2019 because there seems not too much more to say.] He "grew up" in northern New Jersey in the United States of America, and whilst living in that country fetched up on two world record track-and-field relay teams at the Univ. of Kansas and clutching a PhD in Renaissance Literature in Ohio, along with an MLS in librarianship in Rhode Island (11 blissful years in university!). And he taught in universities, too, for a while, Western Civ and 16th-century Renaissance Lit, along with lots and lots of Freshman English and Intro to Poetry, in Ohio, Oklahoma (that was a treat), oh man. Many late nights poring over nasty old books and microfilm readers, grubbing about amongst crumbly manuscripts in archives & public records offices in England, with a pretty short bibliography to show for it in the end. Most of his research publications had to do with political/religious propaganda in the 1580s -- a field in which no one could make a decent living even in the 1580s, let alone now. Shakespeare was his favorite subject to teach, until he found that all the best bits made him want to cry.
ACS and Leysin 
ACS. Mr Peck worked for many years at the American College of Switzerland, formerly an independent US-accredited liberal arts college located in Leysin, a ski resort in the Vaudoise Alps, and as Head Librarian he built the 50,000-volume ACS library (with help) from scratch.
And was Academic Dean from time to time when required. The American College went bankrupt in 1991 and lingers on only as a fond memory, though the building and the name were still being used, somewhat blasphemously, by a commercial educational fastfood chain, until in 2009 the Battered Old ACS finally left this earth. And the library has apparently been acquired by another institution, thoroughly weeded out, and put back into service. Leysin. For the nostalgic amongst us, here are some photos of Leysin village and surroundings circa 1979 and, into the bargain, mountain scenery all roundabout Leysin in the same era. The Jura In 1992, seriously unemployed after the College passed into History, Mr Peck sold his chalet in Leysin -- SOB! -- and moved "to the valley!", in the Geneva-Lausanne axis (to Gimel, then to Trélex, then to Bassins near Nyon, and thence to Féchy). It was a comedown, at the time, from the Alps to the Jura mountains, but the southwest Jura is not without its mountainy charms, and now we've got an inexhaustible collection of photos of the local sites, including Jura farms in winter, caverns in the snowy forest floor, all to remind us that continuously good fun can be had almost wherever in this world you may be, as long as it's in Switzerland. Update 2014: Goodbye to the Jura; we've moved back to Ollon near Aigle, just downhill from Leysin. And predictably, we miss the Jura sorely!! Update 2019: It's worse than that! -- we've moved back to the USA! In March 2019, after 42 years in our pricey paradise, we're back in the USA, under semi-duress, in Staunton, Virginia in fact, one of a very few possibilities that looked to be congenial. And, so far, it is. 
Ramsar. Coming off a few years as Librarian of the American Library of Geneva, Mr Peck has since 1993 become an earnest environmentalist, toiling long hours in the casual uniform of Communications Officer of the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), known as the "Ramsar Convention". Ramsar is the world's first global treaty for conservation and sustainable management of natural resources -- as of 2024, there are 172 nations that are Contracting Parties to the Convention, and its secretariat is housed with The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Gland, Switzerland. Some 2,518 wetlands round the world, over 257 million hectares' worth (2,570,000 km2), are presently covered by the Ramsar umbrella. Here's a brief history of Mr Peck's sojourn with Ramsar, and here is a link to the Ramsar Convention website, which ought to answer all of your swamp, marsh, bog, fen, estuary, coral reef, near-shore marine, and peatland questions or make you wish you hadn't asked. Not that bad a job, warn't it; better than making munitions or cigarettes, or innovative fertilizers. Update February 2010: Mr Peck is now officially semi-retired, henceforward working remotely 50% as Documentation Officer, preparing official documents & publications. Update January 2014: Mr Peck, Ramsar-wise, is now a semi-interested member of the public, trusting that the Ramsar Secretariat, with its new Secretary General, can get back into the game, after a gumbo decade. And that's that! Retirement. Not half as bad as advertised. In fact . . . when the sun's out on the patio, and we're nodding off with an improving book, this is pretty close to what we've been waiting for, for a very long time. Update May 2015: Uh oh, we're going back to work, at the 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention, late May to mid-June, in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Just when we were getting settled in on the patio. With our improving book. Update November 2015: Well, that new SG's gone already, but the same best wishes for the next new Secretary General. In the meantime, Mr Peck works on demand for the only first-rate Secretary General Ramsar ever had, Mr Blasco, who's now the Coordinator for the Mediterranean Wetlands Initiative (MedWet) in the Camargue wetlands in France. Update 2017: No, he's gone now, too, but we still help out a bit for our friends at MedWet. 
Neat kids Here's Kid One: Alison was living in Chile, where she was the Deputy Project Scientist building the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array project (ALMA); thence to the HQ of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Kid Two: Deirdre is no longer with us, but when she was, she was the greatest. We won't even try to describe what she was like. Kid Three (left): Marlowe spent her first decade in Switzerland, then lived in England for three & a half years and came to visit every other weekend throughout that time. Thence to the USA, and as soon as possible afterward, off for university to Ottawa, Canada, where some years later she consorts with Dmitri (Dima) and Young Will and visits us whenever possible. Recent Events [a few recent examples]
Physiognomy (Herr Peck's). An essay on faces and what they sometimes reveal or don't. (And Kristin's as well.)
The view from home, 2016-2019
© 1997-2024 |
Since moving to Switzerland in 1977, Mr Peck has been dabbling at lots of odds and ends, but mainly playing about in the mountains. He was probably one of the better uphill afterwork nighttime skiers, inspired in the more rewarding applications of telemark skis fitted with crosscountry bindings and sealskins on the bottom, with a couple of headlamps on; getting back down was always trickier, naturally. And lots of non-competitive 
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Last modified 20 June 2024.