Leigh E. Rich
In Hamburg (2012), à la John Lennon’s album “Rock ’n’ Roll”
In the vein of Anton Chekhov, Leigh E. Rich has followed two passions in life: literature and medicine.
A longtime “culture critic,” she is an award-winning writer of editorials, news and feature stories, and reviews, and she has experience as a staff and freelance journalist for multiple publications in the United States.
She also holds a doctorate in Health and Behavioral Sciences and a master’s degree in Cultural and Medical Anthropology and has worked or studied in Australia, Denmark, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland.
A professor of Health Sciences, she teaches courses in bioethics, health law and policy, and social theory.
Catch her on Fridays at 11 a. m. on Beyond the Liner Notes and 12:05 p.m. for Listening to Literature. (The Common Good, an exploration of health, law, and ethics, is currently on hiatus, though it may return soon! Leigh also was a guest host for Health Care Ethics from March to July of 2020.)
She is also a coleader of the Friday afternoon reading forum at The Learning Center.
P. T. Bridgeport
P. T. Bridgeport is a photographer, calligrapher, and uncompensated curmudgeon.
He is the author of The Moon and I Confer — a collection of his weekly radio soapboxes that speak to the human condition and the wondrous inanity of life — as well as East of Savannah that showcases his photography of Savannah and beyond.
He is a former president of the Savannah Art Association and a former member of the Greater Savannah International Alliance. He has exhibited his photography with the Savannah Art Association and in solo shows.
He was a trombonist early in life, but went through a program and now lives spit-valve free.
Find P. T. Fridays at 11 a.m. on Beyond the Liner Notes and at 12:05 p.m. for Listening to Literature. He also has a solo show called When the Moon Sings on Saturday evenings at 5 p.m.
Carol Andrews
Carol Andrews, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in American and Southern literature from Vanderbilt University and taught English composition and literature courses for several decades at Georgia Southern University (Armstrong campus), Sewanee, and Tift College. She wrote her dissertation on Faulkner and has been a member of a long-running faculty reading group that has explored the works of Marcel Proust, Naguib Mahfouz, James Baldwin, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and others.
Find Carol on Fridays at 12:05 p.m. on Listening to Literature and at 3:30 p.m. at The Learning Center.
Jack Simmons
A professor of philosophy, Jack Simmons, Ph.D., specializes in metaphysical comedies with romantic twists.
He is the author of Three Dashes Bitters, a novel set in the city of New Orleans; the short story “The Painter’s Daughter” (The Southern Tablet, 2014); and the plays A Tropical Affair (performed in 2013) and The Thin Tweed Line (performed in 2022).
He is also the editor of The 21st Century and Its Discontents (Lexington Books, 2020), an academic book on contemporary social norms.
He has published scholarly articles in journals such as Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Film and Philosophy, the International Journal of Decision Ethics, and Techné: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.
Find Jack as a recurring guest on on The Common Good.
Marc Thomas
Marc Thomas has been a college librarian, an historical society archivist, and a government technocrat. In 2006, he retired from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after a varied career in several capacities, including regulation and policy development, legislative implementation, planning, budget, systems, contracts, and project and risk management.
He has master’s degrees in Library and Information Science from the State University of New York at Albany and in Theology from the Ecumenical Institute of St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore.
Active in several book clubs, he is an avid and eclectic reader — especially of mystery stories, literature, history, philosophy, science, and any other damned thing that catches his fancy — and is known for diving down rabbit holes of enthusiasm and coming back with odd treasures of trivia. He supports Little Free Libraries, including the one in front of his house, and is a sporadically active amateur genealogist.
A book collector limited by (shelf) space and time, Marc persists in an ongoing battle to manage the transition from simple accumulation to a curated library of fixed physical dimensions. He and his wife retired to Savannah in 2011, where they live in an artfully painted house and enjoy their dog, their ducks, and a new garden.
Find Marc at The Learning Center on Fridays (and other days), most likely with nose in book …