Tanner’s Crossroads lies on the Allegheny Plateau just east of the Ohio River, where the land breaks into hills and hollows and the morning fog pools in the low ground before it burns off. The quiet is deep there, and the hills are old. Civilization never conquered that country. It found a crease in the hills and settled in.
Being from the crossroads means growing up before the world rushed in — a bicycle, a town that knew your name, and an analog childhood that still shapes how I think, work, and build in a digital world.
One of my earliest memories is dropping a needle onto a 45 of Hound Dog and realizing there was a bigger world past the ridgeline. Not long after, I was spending time in hardware stores, job sites, and workshops, learning how things get made and why craftsmanship matters. By fifteen I was alone in a radio booth with a wall of country records and hours of airtime to fill, learning to put something worth hearing between the songs. That curiosity — about how the world works, and how to make something tangible inside it — has never left.
It all carried me to Denison University, where I studied Religion and Political Science, and on to a term in Washington, D.C., working for Senator Richard Lugar. The Senate taught me how institutions function and how decisions ripple outward. Washington gave me the place I would eventually call home, and the person I’d share it with: my wife, Amy.
The thread led into residential construction, first with NVR and then nearly a decade at EYA, learning from mentors who set a high bar for precision and integrity.
Today I lead two companies in Washington, D.C. PACE Design & Construction is a design-build firm specializing in urban renovations. Nightingale Air is a design- and wellness-based HVAC firm focused on indoor air quality and comfort. Both rest on the same belief: the spaces where people live shape their health, their relationships, and their days more than they realize.
I live in the District with Amy, the steady center of our family, and our son, who is teaching me more than Tolstoy ever did — mostly about timing, and when to stop talking.
The best books I read tend to leave in someone else’s hands. I make playlists constantly. I root for every local team from Little League to the pros. I have more guitars than I can justify and fewer answers than I had at twenty-two.
What you’ll find here is a commonplace book kept in public: notes from the margins of what I’m reading, the records I keep returning to, films that work for a whole room, and a few tools that have earned their place. None of it is advice.
This site is an extension of my curiosity — the record is still spinning.
If you’d like to say hello, I’d like that too.