Marcus’s birth was recorded in Brownsville, Texas. The registry clerk typed Marcos on his birth certificate. The imprint of the Mexican border culture on Marcus/Marcos’s life was permanent.

The critical event in Marcus’s early life was learning to read. All else is detail. Subsequently, Marcus learned to ride, and to shoot, but reading remained and remains the most important of these. Reading opened worlds beyond the worlds beyond the worlds outside the narrow, parochial micro-world of small town South Texas.

At 23, Marcus went to Germany to sell life insurance to American soldiers. He was top agent for his company. He added street fluency in German to his street fluency in Spanish.

At 26, Marcus founded a mutual fund dealership in Madrid. Independent representatives sent business from the Congo, from Sweden, from Bolivia, from Libya, from around the world. One afternoon, an American diplomat stationed in Ouagadougu walked into Marcus’s Madrid office to buy a mutual fund. The diplomat heard about Marcus from another diplomat.

It was a time of living well, of polo at Sotogrande, of the expat good life.

In February of 1968, Marcus received a letter from Fidelity Funds that he was one of the top ten Fidelity dealers in the world in cash business. In October of 1968, the Dow hit 1,000. Within weeks the Dow was 600 and no one could give a mutual fund away.

Marcus moved his young family to Luxembourg. He circled the globe looking for something that could keep the good times going. He spent three months in Hong Kong trying to make something happen. In the aftermath of the market crash, the opportunities were not out there. Money dried up.

Back in the U.S., there were difficult years...more lean years than fat...the lean years leaner than the fat years fat. There was divorce. There was bankruptcy. In the few fat years there was travel. Always there were books.

One fat year, at age 55, Marcus realized a life-long ambition…he played buz kashi, an ancient game of war played on horseback with the carcass of a calf or a goat. A book resulted, Naïve & Abroad: Pakistan, Travel in a Land of Mullahs.

Two other ambitions, to ride a freight train from the Midwest through the Rockies to the West Coast and to play polo at Gilgit in the high Himalayas will never be realized. In December of 1999, Marcus’s T4 and T5 vertebrae were removed. There will be no riding the rails, no polo at Gilgit. Marcus is grateful to walk. He walks with a stout Irish blackthorn stick. See Why Marcus Limps at the left of your screen.

Marcus lives in some comfort in a 416 square foot efficiency condominium apartment. One wall is covered with vintage posters, another with books. Marcus has no TV, no cell phone, no credit cards, and no money. His watch, his cameras, and his pen are fine mechanical instruments from another time.

In 2006, Marcus walked 600 miles - add 100 miles for the many times he got lost - from Seville in the south of Spain to Santiago de Compostela in the far northwest on the Via de la Plata, one of the lesser known pilgrimage routes to Compostela. Naïve & Abroad: Spain, Limping 600 Miles Through History is available now.

On that walk, mountains were difficult for Marcus. It was later learned Marcus has Atrial Fibrillation.

Naïve & Abroad: Mexico, Cracks in the Painted Mask will be released in March, 2009. Mexico is a multi-faceted, multi-layered society more Oriental than Western...with complex history...with an infinitedly complex culture. Understanding Mexicans is important to North Americans today.

Given the short time remaining to him - he was 70 November 7th, 2007 - Marcus has an ambitious list of goals. There are places to see. Books to write.

The clock ticks for Marcus. It ticks for you. Be busy about what you want to do.