I’m a retired professor of political science and economics at the Penn State Fayette Campus in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. That’s about fifty miles south of Pittsburgh, on the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains and just a bit north of the Mason-Dixon line.

I live happily in my hometown of Connellsville, Pennsylvania with my wife Mary Ann.

My father was a machinist on the B&O Railroad and my mother was a secretary and bookkeeper, but mostly a housewife. He was Irish. She was Italian. My grandparents and great-grandparents were immigrants. I grew up very conscious of the immigrant experience. If anyone cares–and even if they don’t–my last name is pronounced COMMA-ski.

Working class life in Pennsylvania was good when I was a kid in the 1960’s. It’s not so good now. That’s the subject of some of my poetry.