About

I am an amateur author, literary critic and poet. As a recently retired banker, sales manager and software configuration management engineer, I write about my passions which are: the magic of English rhetoric, speculative science, music, geography  and human institutions.

Other than one year at University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law, I am a product of the California public educational system, going  from primary school through high school, two community colleges and finally, San Francisco State College pursuing an English major with Creative Writing emphasis, in the early 1960s.

While at SF State I was taught by professors like S.I. Hayakawa and Manfred Wolf. Hayakawa was the then reputed “World’s Foremost Semanticist” who, gained national attention later when, as the University’s President, TV news showed him  wearing his signature tam-o-shanter, storming out of his office and yanking the microphone out of the hands of the driver of an unauthorized speaker truck. He later parlayed this notoriety into being elected Junior U.S. Senator from California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._I._Hayakawa

Manfred Wolf, now a professor at the Fromm Institute of Lifelong Learning at University of San Francisco, was my instructor in Critical Writing at S.F. State and a true mentor. In recent years, He has published several books, the most recent of which is an autobiographical memoir of his early years.  Dr. Wolf and I collaborated on a film adaptation of that book which is now in pre-production in Holland.  The draft is on my site at

/content/images/wordpress/2018/01/survivalinparadise-by-vernon-miles-kerr.pdf

Today Manfred Wolf is still a close friend, occasional collaborator, and still a mentor.  See http://www.survivalinparadise.com