User:Jules Grandgagnage
Where Jules lives it is approximately: 20:40
Hi, I am a Flemish writer and retired teacher living in Brasschaat, a town near Antwerp, Belgium, and I hope to be able to contribute something valuable to this project. For about 30 years I worked as a elementary school teacher, meanwhile I studied at the open university for about eight years (Faculty of Arts) and wrote a few Dutch books for adults and for children. In the late nineties I was a columnist for a Dutch computer magazine ('Netwerk') and worked as a programmer of educational software in my wife's company. At about that time I also made a career change and quit teaching to start working as an ICT coordinator in the city of Antwerp.
I am retired now and enjoy the good life! For me that means playing the saxophone, reading and studying a lot, translating English poems (Shakespeare's sonnets, John Donne), walking my dogs, and contributing to a number of online encyclopedias. I also write poetry and short stories and some of them where published in literary magazines. I enjoy playing guitar, blues harp and thin whistle, watching old movies, painting still lifes, reading magical realist novelists like Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Isabel Allende and listening to my favourite music (traditional jazz and jazz manouche). Life's too short. I do not consider myself to have a real field of expertise, but I do read a lot about philosophy, the occult, jazz and English literature. I also studied western astrology for more than 20 years, not as a 'believer' but because of my interest in medieval sciences. For the same reason I'm absolutely fascinated with alchemy.
- My language skills: Dutch (mother tongue), English and French (middle level, reading and writing), German (basic, reading), Spanish (basic, reading).
- B.A. in education, studying Arts and Humanities ('Cultuurwetenschappen') for fun at the Dutch Open University - cultural history, art history, literature and philosophy. I also took courses in scriptwriting, music theory and network management for a few years.
- For more information please see my website
- Articles started on Citizendium
Pre-Socratic philosophy - Arthur Schopenhauer - The Tempest (play) - Cynics - Socratic dialogue - Protagoras (dialogue) - Gorgias (dialogue) - Critias - Jack Sels - Witch-cult hypothesis