A native of Wyomissing Hills, Pennsylvania, Vernon Trollinger has BA's in Theatre Arts/Communications and in English from the University of Iowa. In 1986, he earned a Master of Arts in English from the Expository Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
This naturally led him into a career in Archeology...While living in Richmond, VA from 1989 to 1994, he took part in the Virginia Penitentiary Burials Excavation, the Virginia Penitentiary Excavation of the "Latrobe Arch", and excavations at the Tredegar Iron Works during its operation as "Valentine Riverside" by the Valentine Museum of Richmond, Va. Tredgar is now part of the National Park Service.
Through these diverse projects, he developed interests in human osteology, 19th century ceramics, The American Civil War, Pirates, and industrial archaeology. He has extensive phase I, phase II, and phase III experience as well as some field director experience. Some survey locations include the FBI Academy, Ft. Lee, and NASA Langely Research Facility.
His primary career passion, however, has been writing, more writing, and perhaps a wee bit more writing in a peppercorn sauce with mushrooms, shallots, laid over garlic and almond mashed potatoes and accompanied with an unsophistcated, drinkable merlot. ...and perhaps followed by a few large strawberries hand-dipped in dark chocolate washed down by a chilled glass of Italian muscato...but I digress.
Other interests include desktop publishing, medieval calligraphy, typography, and honing his skills in the Dark Art of Photo Retouching in Adobe Photoshop. He is also an unpardonable ho scale model train fan with a special interest in the Reading Railroad (aka: The Reading Company), the PRR, and Conrail.
He is a fiendish bassist (4, 6, and 8 strings) and guitarist, and revels using long, pointy sticks to poke clever people who talk loudly in restaurants.
Returning to Iowa after an eight year hiatus, he co-founded Third Eye Over Iowa in 1996 with Fred Norberg, Todd Ristau, and the intermitantly evil Hans Abbadon (who maintains a truly lovely orchid collection).
In July, 2004, he set fire to himself with a washing machine...if only to prove that the Quantum Mechanics notion of Probability lurks in laundry.
He is married to a Mental Health Professional (much to the relief of everyone worldwide, whether they know it or not), with whom he shares three dangerously brilliant children, who will undoubtedly enslave the known world.
Now is probably the time to begin trembling...
The names he has written under for Third Eye Over Iowa are:
Staff
Morton Charnel
Jeff Hodson
Murphy Giberson
Addelle Chevalier
Mac Bowery
Dr. Wesley Abbingdon-Hyde
He can be largely blamed for the The Third Eye FAQUA: Frequently Asked Questions Usually Answered.
The The Classifieds page is almost entirely his fault, and
so is the shameful Dairy Aire Wines.
Another project of his was the CivilWardrobe Catalog which he desktop published for his friend's business from 1992-1994. Sadly, CivilWardrobe is no longer operating. Too much blue wool fuzz got into places it shouldn't.
However, as it is a quirky but historically accurate catalog of uniforms for Civil War Reenactors and 19th century US and British militaria collectors, the last re-tooled issue can be downloaded as a .PDF here:
.