• Articles/Cartoons by Nikitas on FHK
• www.nikitas3.com

My name is Steven Nikitas. I was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1953. Pittsfield is in rural and scenic Berkshire County at the far west end of the state, next to the New York border.

My name is Greek. My grandparents all came from the historic land of Phidias, Aristotle and Aeschylus. I was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, and after much of my life away from my faith, I have rediscovered the beauty and profundity of my religious heritage.

My father was a family physician and I was raised in Pittsfield in the upper middle class of America in the booming post-World War II years. General Electric was the big employer, and much defense spending poured into our city.

Our family was a typical story. I have two brothers, and my mother took care of us. My father worked hard and was well-loved by his patients. He was a very good man. My father was prosperous, not rich. But we never wanted for anything, so we were rich.

I graduated from Taconic High School in Pittsfield in 1971 and went on to Middlebury (Vt.) College, where my father graduated in 1943. I took an interest in art spurred by the gift of a camera that my father bought me when I was in high school. I soon moved past photography to painting, sculpture and drawing, which I found infinitely more challenging. I graduated from Middlebury in 1976 with a degree in Studio Art.

Although I was offered the opportunity to attend a prestigious graduate art school which would have allowed me to spend a life of ease as a college professor, I opted out because I was ever-doubtful about academia. So after I graduated from college, I traveled for a year and a half. I went to Europe and Mexico, but more importantly, I hitchhiked 40,000 miles around the United States, which was a transformative experience for me. In elite academia, you learn that America is a dangerous, weird place. In my travels, however, I met many wonderful people, and developed a new and optimistic view of our nation as a good and hard-working place.

After my experiences on the road, some of which are fictionalized in my short novel Traveling Hopefully, I moved to rural Vermont and took a job at a small newspaper as a reporter, columnist and cartoonist. During my time in Vermont, I lived in an “alternative energy” house called Dimetrodon and learned about windmills and solar energy, both of which I became skeptical about, even at the tender age of 25. I could see even then that they could provide only a small fraction of the energy that we needed to live on.

In Vermont, I had two experiences that changed my life. First, I worked part-time for a farmer named Everett Palmer making maple syrup in the Spring and thinning his forest in the Summer. From Palmer, I learned about the traditional beliefs and practices of a different world than I knew. Everett taught me about forest management and agriculture. His maple syrup won many First Prizes in Vermont, which is no small feat. He was a “wise old farmer” in the most authentic mold and I am honored to have known him.
My experiences in Vermont are fictionalized in my novel Sugar In the Wind (the “sugar” refers to the sweet clouds of steam that come from making maple syrup).

In 1979, I attended a speech by Republican US Representative Phil Crane of Illinois, who was planning to run for President of the United States in 1980. As I heard this good man speak, I knew immediately that I believed in what he was saying. I have been a conservative Republican ever since.

In Spring of 1981, I moved out of Vermont and took a studio in Chatham, New York, just over the New York state border from my home town in Massachusetts. Over the next 4 years, I worked odd jobs and developed a body of paintings, sculptures and drawings that I planned to take to New York City to make my way in the art world there.

In those years, I watched a masterful President named Ronald Reagan transform our nation. He revived our self-image, restored our economic vigor through tax cuts, and brought down the Soviet Union through the strength that defines us. I was deeply moved by what I saw.

In October 1985, I moved to New York City, and ended up living in Brooklyn, which is part of the city.

In my years in New York, I made art and had a few exhibits, none of which brought me the worldwide acclaim that I certainly expected. I married in 1988, and my wife and I produced a beautiful daughter in 1992. I worked a variety of odd jobs - as a clerk at the old Manufacturers Hanover Bank, as a newspaper copy editor, and as a retail worker at a flower shop (fictionalized in my short novel Simply Roses). For a period of one-and-one-half years, I stayed home with my daughter while my wife worked.

During my time in New York, the important things to me were the joys of my daughter, the transcendent knowledge that I was developing about art, and the political ideas I was founding about the things our nation needs to do to move forward.

By 1998, I was divorced, and I had become disdainful of the New York art world. It is a false and highly political world of commercialism and mediocrity. I had difficulty finding employment, so I left New York and moved back to Massachusetts, just as many people leave the city after a long stint there.

From 1999 to 2004, I worked as a small-business manager and kept in close contact with my daughter in New York, making frequent trips there. I worked on my paintings and drawings, which were becoming much more mature and consistently good. And I began thinking seriously about my political beliefs. I started writing my book Right Is Right, finishing it in 2007. I will be available for speeches and Internet discussions as time passes.

I also spent those 8 years designing and building prototypes for three ergonomic chairs that I plan to patent, manufacture, and market at an affordable price in order to create jobs and wealth, and to give Americans, particularly the elderly, a new and useful tool for their everyday lives.

I currently live in Massachusetts.

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