About Me

            I am an author, educator, international travel lecturer.  At Colorado College (1977-1998) and later at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, I taught various courses in geology and art history.  As a geologist, I studied volcanoes; as an art historian, I studied the representation of race in American Art.

            After leaving full-time teaching, I lectured on small-group, land-based tours — e.g. traveling the Silk Road through Central Asia on a private train from Moscow to Beijing; on international small-ship cruises — e.g. plying the waters from Japan, along the remote Kuril Islands to Kamchatka, then continuing north along the remote east coast of Siberia to the Arctic Circle, seeing a 50-ton whale disappear in two hours, flensed by seven native Chukchi men. 

            I twice flew around the world lecturing on private jet tours.

            Aside from teaching and traveling, my passions are hiking and back-packing—finding joy in nature.  Through gardening and landscaping, home remodeling and interior design—I find joy in the creation of beauty, in making a nest, a place to call home. 

            Most recently, I competed a Japanese garden understory to the native cedar-fir-hemlock forest at my home on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where I reside with my husband, Dan.

            Finely-attuned to economic, political and social injustice, I fought for LGBT inclusion and equality, for the freedom to love who you want, for the right to be free from discrimination.

            In 2018, at the age of sixty-eight, a recovered memory of being raped as a very young child forced me to confront all of my past.  I’d been trying to solve the puzzle of my life in therapy since I was 25, without its most-essential piece—the early childhood rapes that I’d erased from memory.

            I continued my work with a brilliant therapist; joined a therapy group for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, found other men wired just like me.   Extensive deep-tissue body work with a gifted practitioner helped me move back into my body.  In a supportive writing community, I wrote a memoir that became a powerful vehicle for truth and healing.

            My life makes much more sense to me now.

            I live in a state of relative peace and acceptance. 

            I’ve let go of shame. 

            Become a passionate writer.