My pen name is Larch from the eastern version of the western Tamarack tree, thus my stories are called Barks of Larch. Donald R. Loedding has a degree in bachelor of science in geology (March 1956); an MBA in finance and marketing (August 1959), both from Ohio State; was a Chemical Corps officer for eight and a half years with honorable discharge as captain; was a real estate broker at Don Loedding, Inc.; and was an exploration geologist in the Hawaiian Islands in the mid-1950s. In the mid-1960s, he marketed development for boron filament composites in aerospace, like the stealth fighter, with commercial applications like fishing rods, golf club shafts, and other high-stress lightweight applications, which carried over to carbon filament products. He lived and worked in Central America and Colombia from 1968 to 1974 with Texaco Latin America sales division; has been a real estate broker for thirty-four years in Georgia, Colorado, and Idaho; owned horses for trail riding; hunted elk, deer, and pigs; taught marketing, finance, and geology courses as adjunct instructor in Colorado, Arkansas, and Georgia for over thirty-eight years; and has been a writer of short stories for over thirty years. Many of my short stories are memoirs. Some start with a tad of fact, filled in with fiction, parodies of life and memories of dogs and horses that were part of me. My two books of short stories are The Search for the Bearded Clam and Global Warming: The Iceman Cometh (and other cultural takes), both available in paperback and e-books. My project is my third book I am working on, which has a political slant due to all the idiots in Washington, DC. Also by Donald R. Loedding The Search for the Bearded Clam Global Warming: The Iceman Cometh (and other cultural takes)