Biographical information

The short version (from the back cover of the novel):

Emory Menefee received a PhD in physical chemistry from MIT, and afterwards did
research in natural and synthetic polymers. Other interests are experimental film and
music, general semantics, and drawing and painting. He now lives in  Richmond,
California, with his wife Josephine. “The Cultivation of Weeds” is his first novel.

A little more detail:

I was born as a depression baby in West Texas, living mostly in small oil towns where
my father managed oilfield supply stores.   From this background I developed an
interest in engineering and chemistry, and from high school in Pampa I went to Texas
Tech, getting a BS in chemical engineering in 1950. After working for two years in
Amarillo as an engineer in the Bureau of Mines Helium Division, I went on to Cambridge
to obtain a PhD in physical chemistry from MIT, with thesis research on krypton.

I met and married Josephine while still a grad student there. We moved to Wilmington
and du Pont, where I learned about high polymers. In 1960 I took a job with the USDA
in Albany, California, extending my polymer study to fibrous keratins such as hair and
wool. After nearly 25 years there, I began a long consulting collaboration with a
dermatologist now at the University of California at San Francisco, broadening research
interests into medical areas. I taught a graduate course in high performance polymers
at U.C. Davis, and have published some 60 research papers.

Josephine and I have three children, Lisa, Andrea and Rossana, living respectively in
Chico, Thailand, and Charlotte, though we continue to live in the same 87 year old
house in Richmond that we bought in 1964, maintaining over the years several cats
and a garden filled with succulents. In the late 70s,we bought a piece of land in
Sonoma County and handbuilt a cabin in the woods, which we regularly visit.   It now
sports even such amenities as a sauna and an electric toilet.

While in Wilmington, a friend and I founded the Evergreen Film Society to show what
were then called"experimental"films, both of us having had an interest in this minor art
form for some years.  After coming to California, I joined a fledgling group in the East Bay
called Canyon Cinema and later went on to run weekly screenings, edit a newsletter,
and help set up a filmmakers cooperative. I still have a great interest in films such as
these, some of which have been very influential to Hollywood films, especially those
involving the use of special effects. Partly as an outgrowth of this interest, and from a
long love of classical music, I have a consuming passion for contemporary music, both
as a listener, and in composing it on a computer. I never got beyond the third grade level
in piano playing, but the computer gives one the illusion of ability beyond the reality.

I have enjoyed drawing and painting since before high school days, and eventually took
some classes at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 60s. I didn't learn as much as
I thought I would, but I did learn to keep plugging away. As a result, the house is filled with
this work. Another interest was sparked by a trip to Italy -- mosaics. All colors consist of
discrete bits at some level, but with mosaics one can consciously work with color on a
macroscopic scale. A gallery of some of these works will be available on this website.

While at Texas Tech, I discovered the magazine Et Cetera, usually called ETC. It was
started by S.I. Hayakawa after he broke from Alfred Korzybski, the originator of General
Semantics.  I was electrified by the articles, and eventually plowed into "Science and
Sanity," Korzybski's seminal work. Other tasks kept me from further involvement for many
years, but through a lab colleague I rekindled my interest. The headquarters of the
International Society for General Semantics was then in San Francisco (it's now in Fort
Worth), so I soon found myself on the board of directors, and eventually acting as president
for four years. The philosophy of general semantics has many branches, but a  principal
one is the study of how often we tend to forget that words are wholly abstract  "things,"
and act on them as though they were concrete reality, often with disastrous consequences.

Life is a little slower these days. Neither Jo nor I have the stamina to pursue things as
avidly as we once did, but we still try. With limited travel, we enjoy the simpler pleasures
we find nearby. My writing of the novel "The Cultivation of Weeds," seemed a perfect
challenge for this stage of life, when my friend and now publisher Leigh Robinson suggested
that we both write a novel.  From my long standing interest in polymers and  their sometimes
peculiar behavior, it has been easy for me to introduce some ideas of  nanotechnology.
Other parts of the novel, the politics, the unfair distribution of services  in this country, the
sex, the violence -- these are all around us, just needing a little coaxing into the computer.

I have no idea about what from my life may "live on" after I am gone. Actually, that's not
quite true. There is one thing. In 1960, a friend and I were sitting around trying to come up
with the longest palindrome. We totally failed in that, but I did devise a short one that
everyone seems to like, "Sex at noon taxes." I later sent it in to Herb Caen at the SF
Chronicle,  and not long after he published it, nearly every compendium of palindromes
included it. Though nobody will know who did it, it will live forever.