About the Author

Name: Jimmie Moglia
Contact: jimmie.moglia@gmail.com

Place of Birth: Torino, Italy

Residence: Portland, Oregon

Age: Though not clean past my youth, there’s yet some smack of age in me, some relish of the saltness of time. (1)

English Readers. Scroll down to “Appearance:”

Italian Readers Only: You may refer to this link, on the site of Italian Journalist Maria Luisa Bressani, who also kindly posted a biographical article on my student, musical and singing experiences.
http://mlbressani.wix.com/marialuisabressani#!6/c2233
On reaching the page, scroll down to locate text and images.

Appearance: … careful hours with time’s deformed hand
Have written strange defeatures in my face (2)

Strengths. An unquenchable passion for what is utterly, totally, and incontrovertibly useless, notwithstanding occasional evidence to the contrary.

Weaknesses: Take your pick. Or rather, I have my faults like everyone; only I don’t get any good out of them.

Languages: I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse. My German is not what it used to be but it’s not the horse’s fault. Too many Germans speak English.

Education:
“You taught me language and my profit on it
Is, I know how to curse.” (3)
More to the point – in Italy I studied Greek for five years and Latin for eight. Only to discover that prospective employers were remarkably uninterested in dead languages. Whereupon I obtained an Engineering Degree at the University of Genova.

Career: Chronicle of Wasted Time (4). Skip to “Books written” if you so wish.

After some inconsequential meandering, and being mellowed by the stealing hours of time,  I joined a multinational manufacturer of Electronic Instrumentation in Portland, Oregon – where I assumed marketing responsibility for the European, Middle East and Africa division. I worked for five years out of the island of Guernsey, Channel Islands. On returning to the US I became disenchanted with corporate life. Or rather, perhaps, I could not acquire adequate proficiency in the new corporate turn of phrase. What I called a spade had now become “an upward-downward, dynamic and portable, soil management tool.” In fact the book “Your Daily Shakespeare” is my answer to an Orwellian language I could not learn.

Left without a job I had to invent another. I put on the market a simple electric device that saved users literally thousands of dollars every year. I called the product MacInker and the company Computer Friends. As luck would have it Fortune was on our side. We sold over 350,000 units worldwide and introduced and manufactured a range of other popular computer related products.
Being the founder I was also the president of the company though I dislike the word.

Its Latin root means “sitting before” or “sitting above” others. And many agree that sitting is done with anatomy not routinely used for thought.

Ready for a shock, and an online, one-minute video-demonstration of the injuries of time? The featured machine in the video has not changed in 25 years, but the presenter…. hence my comments at the heading “Appearance” above,
https://youtu.be/c_LOPpVCMzU

Assuming, but not given, that you read this far, I will halt talking about my past pursuits for… “there is not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself….” (5) Nor I wish to annoy or alienate the audience.

At the moment… “I set my life upon a cast and I will stand the hazard of the dye” (6), equally realizing that for me, you and everyone, “the lottery of our destiny bars us the right of voluntary choosing” (7).

And lest you object and raise questions about chance, choice or free will I counter with, “There are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” (8)

(1) King Henry IV part 2, act 1, sc. 2
(2) Comedy of Errors, act 5, sc. 1
(3) Tempest, act 1, sc. 2
(4) Sonnet 106
(5) Much Ado About Nothing, act 5, sc. 2
(6) King Richard III, act 5, sc. 1
(7) Merchant of Venice, act 2, sc. 1
(8) Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5

HISTORICAL SKETCHES.  I currently produce a monthly series on Portland’s Cable TV Channels, also re-broadcast by various other channels across the Nation. The series is called “Historical Sketches”. Shakespeare is NOT the subject, though relevant Shakespearean quotations are occasionally interspersed.  Each sketch lasts about 28 minutes and deals with “minor history”. Associated with major historical events are often anecdotes and secondary happenings omitted by the canonical history books. And yet, anecdotes and curiosities can also help us remember the key events they are connected to.  You can find the videos by clicking on “Historical Sketches” and selecting the episodes of interest. They are uploaded as they are produced.

On the Fly..… In March 2015 I found myself the unwitting guest on the well known Portland TV Show, “Conversations with Dr. Don”. Through which, the unlikely, improbable and corageous few viewers may know a bit more about my views, leanings, roots, biographical anecdotes, adventures and misadventures. Here is the link,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJLRxz_EkHw

 

Books Written

• “Your Daily Shakespeare, An Arsenal of Verbal Weapons to Drive your Friends into Action and your Enemies into Despair”
• (In Italian) “Il Nostro Dante Quotidiano, 3500 modi di cavarsela con Dante” – (Our Daily Dante, 3500 ways to get away with it with Dante). This is the equivalent for Dante of “Your Daily Shakespeare”. The book was presented in Florence in November 2012, in the “Sala Dantesca” of the “Palazzo della Lana’, in the presence of the authorities of the Tuscan Region. Subsequent presentations were in Genoa, Turin and Milan in January 2013. Click here to see outlines of the presentations
• (In Italian) “USA e GETTA”, Controstoria dell’America. The history of America is mostly written from one point of view. Considering that “There are no facts, but only interpretations” – at least, so says Nietzche – this Counterhistory of America offers a somewhat different point of view and compares the history of the Country seen from the inside and from the outside. — La storia dell’America e’ per lo piu’ scritta da un solo punto di vista. Considerando che “Non ci sono fatti ma solo interpretazioni” – almeno cosi’ dice Nietzche – “USA e GETTA” offre un punto di vista un po’ differente dal solito. Potete leggerla a:
  http://sakeritalia.it/interviste/un-regalo-per-i-nostri-lettori-usa-e-getta-un-libro-di-jimmie-moglia/
• “The Pleasures of Active Reading.” The companion book to the Memex device and system I invented to mark books non destructively and to develop the analytic memory.
• “The Art of Memory in the XXI Century”   or  How to Remember 500 Shakespearean Quotations Without Really Trying (guaranteed) with the Mnemonic Frame System (MFS).  It is a combination book/DVD to develop the specular memory. The book explains and illustrates the effective and amusing MFS. The MFS is based  on the principles of Simonides of Ceos, Cicero and other Renaissance writers and researchers, when memory was a subject in the syllabus of ALL students. It also incorporates the concepts of ‘Philosophic Painting” discovered by Italian Philosophy Professor, Emanuele Gennaro.
  The DVD contains 500 Mnemonic Frames for Shakespeare quotes. One frame, one quote.
  Do not imagine effort, pain and suffering. “No profit grows, where is no pleasure taken” (Taming of the Shrew). You will quickly become captivated and elated at discovering the great memorizing power you never thought you had. And, more important, how you will quickly be able to recall, apply and interject the cutting punch-line into your conversation, at the right point and right time.

…. two in progress.