James J. Raciti Biography

James J. Raciti

 October 2016: I will soon be making my last posting on the blog  America's Revolutionary Voices. It has been an enjoyable journey for me and I hope my readers feel the same. Just over 4,000 page views have been reported. It is evident to me that the core of our readers has followed the development of this blog from the very beginning by the comments I have received. Thank you.


August 2016: I want to thank my readers for following America's Revolutionary Voices since its inception. You may be interested to know that this blog has had more than 3,000 page views by readers in fifteen countries including the USA, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Russia, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, etc.

March 2016: Welcome to my new site, America's Revolutionary Voices. Here, leaders of the new nation and other important figures share their ideas, dreams, fears and aspirations with family and close friends. From these sentiments, in whispers or shouts among confidants, opponents or rivals during moments of triumph or despair came plans to fashion a young independent nation.

These include George Washington, Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, John Quincy Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, Stephen Girard, Thomas Paine, James Madison, James Monroe, John Hancock, Aaron Burr, Samuel Adams, Mercy Warren, Kitty Greene, Lucy Knox and many more.    

I am a native of Philadelphia where I went to Girard College, Temple University and then continued my education in Europe earning two Masters Degrees (English and French) at the University of Grenoble in France and a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.

I remained in Europe as an educator and administrator subsequently working for the University of Salamanca, the University of Barcelona, the University of Maryland’s European Division. Returning to the States, I became the Director of Education and Training for US Space Command and oversaw the worldwide Space Command Education Programs from Colorado Springs. During my tenure at Space Command, I attended and graduated from Harvard University's MLE ( Institute for Management and Leadership in Education) 1993. Upon my retirement in 1998, I was awarded the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal.

 

Throughout my career, I have written in a number of different genres.  To date, I've written and had published four novels: Au Revoir à la France, Giacomo, Pulling No Ponchos:  An Irreverent History of Santa Fe and Legacy of War.   My non-fiction works include Ask About Santa Fe, Old Santa Fe, A Brief Review of History, Ask About Florida, Carrabelle and Florida’s Forgotten Coast and Stephen Girard: America's Colonial Olympian. 

I have three poetry collections, Charles, Dabs of Myself, and The Bird Chart Boy - which contains poems about my childhood at Girard. I have written and produced two plays, Invitation to Dawn (Hemingway's last hours) and The Song of Roland (The Black Crucifixion in Modern Society).  I also have two theater scripts Tallahassee by the Sea and Dialogs Beyond still on the drawing board.

In 2014, I created a blog: Get to Know Stephen Girard.  It can be accessed at www.stephengirard.org.

This present blog follows my research on Stephen Girard and is expanded to include most of the Founding Fathers. The history of these conversations is mostly factual, the relationships accurate, and the topics of the conversations are drawn from written documents; however they are not spoken as I have presented them. Where written documentation was not available, I have created the exchanges imaginatively as though I had heard them myself. 

Please note that no attributions are provided with this blog. When this blog becomes  a published book, there will be a bibliography of cited works as well as a section for extended notes.