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Edwin Rutsch

Born in Cleveland, Ohio,  I grew up in sunny Sacramento, California and now live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My first inspirations from travel and adventure books

A drawing of my first memory of
being inspired.

I remember reading adventure books, like Call of the Wild, by Jack London. For a while, when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said  a hunter and fur trapper in Alaska. There was also a book about some guys that drove a Land Rover around the world. I forget the name of it. These books inspired me to want to travel around the world and seek adventure.

 

 


In this video I drew and danced my first inspiration. (1 min)  Was created at the  Dance and Inspiration Workshop.



Travels around the world

 I was anxious to graduate from high school and start traveling. Learning by practical experience was my motto. I started off by backpacking for several months in the Sierra Nevada's and got a job in a gold mine.  I was hitchhiking with my dog, Buck, and a beat-up old pickup truck drove by. "Want a job?" the driver yelled out. "Doing what?" I asked. "Gold mining!" How could I resist.... Three months latter I hadn't made much, if any money, but it sure was an adventure.

Next, I rode a bicycle to Vancouver, Canada from Sacramento, stopping to pick apples in Hood River, Oregon.  Thus started my traveling and working my way around the world.
In total, I was "on the road" for about 10 years.   I flew through the South Pacific, Hawaii, Samoan Islands, Fiji and ended in New Zealand. There I worked picking fruit, (apples, peaches, apricots) and as a kitchen helper in Bluff, on the Southern tip of the South Island.  In Auckland, I worked as a hospital orderly for 4 months. Off to Australia where I hitchhiked all the way around the country and down to Tasmania. I worked as a surveyors assistant in the outback of Western Australia, picked fruit  around Adelaide and worked in a cheese factory in Bernie, Tasmania.  Then on to Indonesia to teach English. In the Philippines I worked as a movie extra on the movie Apocalypse Now. I traveled all through South and South East Asia. Middle East and Europe. In Germany  I was a warehouse worker, longshoreman and ship watchman in the Hamburg harbor. I eventually went though China and took the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Mongolia and Russia.

 

As an extra, I played the part of a soldier in Apocalypse Now. That's me in the back row. X marks my back. At one point, my back takes up 1/4 of the move screen!


Bali Sailing Adventure
 

Sailing an outrigger canoe "sampan" in Bali, Indonesia. They're made of hollowed out logs and are quite heavy. My friend Nyoman helps me drag it into the water.



A 1990 video of sailing a sampan and searching for dolphin's in Bali. (2 min)


One of my best adventures was when I bought an outrigger canoe and sailed around Bali for a couple of months. I remember one night getting stuck out beyond the breakers and unable to navigate into shore for fear of crashing on the rocks in the dark. I stayed out all night in the rain and lightning, worried I'd be swept far out to sea. 

Another night I was sailing along in the dark closer to shore and suddenly I could hear what I now know were dolphins blow holes all around me. I got really worried that they were whales and would tip my little canoe over.

Sailing was a great way to learn the Indonesian language. I'd pull in to shore in the evenings, sit and chat with the fisherman around the camp fire, eat roasted fish on the open fire and learn the language.

 



University  Days

Not content to just go to one University, I went to six for my undergraduate degree. That has to be some sort of a record. Initially I studied German and Indonesian languages and cultures, finally getting a degree in Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. I remember going for a physical checkup in Germany and talking with the doctor. I told him about all the universities I had been going to and he said, "That's the way it was done here in the old days. Going to university meant you got a broad universal education and that you went to several different universities as well." Here's a list of the schools I went to;

I enjoy backpacking and making videos


Computer Expert

I bought a PC and on my own I started learning about  "PC clone" computers and ended up authoring three books on how to buy and use them.
 

I also wrote articles for several computer magazines.  Taking advantage of the new desktop publishing software, I created a small book publishing company. 

MicroTimes Magazine named me one of the top one hundred most influential people in the computer industry for 2 years in a row. They said,

   "With his series of clone buyer's guides, Rutsch provides sound, lucid advice to the confused shopper and a valuable resource to the bewildered user. His books (themselves a testimonial to desktop publishing) make a great contribution to the industry by making it vastly easier to make an informed decision, as well as be more productive with your machine after you've bought it."  

I became interested in Windows NT in 1994, and became President and founder of the Bay Area Windows NT User Group. I passed the Microsoft MCSE + Internet certification and have worked as a computer systems administrator and consultant. I worked at Esalen Institute and my last position was for three and a half years at Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Labs, a cutting edge computer research lab located on the Xerox Parc research campus, Palo Alto, California.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first book edition on display at B. Daltons in San Francisco, 1986

   

A favorite activity, fishing in the High Sierra Nevada mountain lakes and streams. Here I'm sneaking up on some trout. If they see you they will take off for deeper waters. 

Success. Natural bait like grasshoppers and ants work the best.

   
 

 

 


Action adventure video scenes from my 1989 to 2005 Sierra Nevada fishing trips. (5 min)





Latest Project, Looking for Inspiration
 

My interests have shifted to how technology and the arts can be used to learn about the human spirit and values.  I'm now creating a website for human values and beginning the first of a series of documentaries that uses the arts to thematically explore values, emotions and feelings. The first documentary of the series explores the experience of inspiration and is titled
 "The Spirit of Inspiration."  I've also started a documentary on What are Progressive Values?  Future documentaries will cover such themes as; love, empathy, authoritarianism, peace, creativity, tolerance, greed, grief, joy, gratefulness, sorrow, guilt, perseverance, etc.

uninspired inspired
   
   

Me along with some members of the Creative Study Circle  Inspiration Project Group.

Acting, singing and poetry activity videos.
 
 

Feel free to email me and say hello.

Edwin Rutsch,
 (my email address)
 

See some of my videos at;
     My EdwinRutsch Youtube Channel (600+ video clips)
     A list of Youtube Groups I maintain
   Google video
          Rutsch Family History: Part 1 Gerhard Rutsch living in Germany from 1928 -1953 (1 hr. 12 min)
         Rutsch Family History: Part 2 Jenny Rutsch living in Germany from 1927 -1950  (1 hr. 20 min)
         Dance and Inspiration  (30 min)
         Favorite Spots of Esalen, Big Sur, California 1992   (36 min)
         Richmond Art Center 70th Richmond Anniversary Art Auction   (35 min)
         Richmond Art Center Holiday Sale