: About Me

I was born in Virginia during WWII just before my Dad left to fight the war in the South Pacific.

As I child in the 50's, we lived across from a state park in Mountainside, New Jersey, where we kids had the run of the woods, knew all the animals in the little "Trailside Zoo" (and contributed turtles) and learned the names of wildflowers and birds. The riding stable and the peach farm across the street added to being able to forget that NYC was only 20 miles away.

Later, we lived in Zanesville, OH, York and New Castle, PA, Mountain City, TN and then finally my parents moved to Denmark, ME i 1967. In the meantime, I went to college at Oberlin, OH and graduate school in Chapel Hill, NC, before moving to Europe (Denmark) to learn Danish, and then permanently because I'd met my Dane, Asger, with whom I have 2 wonderful, but very different, now grown children, Pelle - now in San Francisco - and Hanne - now in Rio de Janeiro, but who calls Copenhagen home.

In Denmark, I didn't live in Copenhagen very long. I've lived in the second largest city, Aarhus, 5 different tims, and I guess I consider it "home." But the 6 1/2 years I lived on the Baltic island of Bornholm are really special to me. At first I taught English and German in colleges and high schools. Later tried running a diaper service and then translating until I found my niche, Environmental Management.

And I have taken a new leap, too, following the call of John, a fellow grad student from Chapel Hill, to move to Upland, CA, under 10,000+ ft Mt. Baldy. Coming back, I first worked for a Danish windmill company, Vestas, out of Palm Springs, but have since mostly worked freelanca as a technical writer.

Nevertheless, the environment is my big passion. Recently I have found a new opportunity to combine my writing with my passion, a start-up company called Citizenre, which will be renting solar panels to residential customers starting in less than a year. That means that customers will no longer have a large financial outlay for their panels, but will be renting the panels at a rate that is locked in for up to 25 years at less than they pay now for electricity.

Be sure to see my "favorites" - my blog, my website with portfolio, my Squidooo with links to lots of books, that generates a little income for Heifer International, and my Join the Solution site, to learn how you can rent solar panels!

My passion is ...

The environment

I know too much about ...

you can never know too much about anything - but I know a lot about the environment!

My parents always told me ...

that I coud do anything I really wanted to do

My childhood ambition ...

become a nuclear physicist! Ouch!

My favorite memory ...

In a long life the memories crowd each other!

Why I write ...

I have a lot to say about lots of topics, but mostly the environment. I've had so many good experiences to share.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Mostly books about the environment, but also many different novels, particularly located near places I've lived (California, Maine, Scandinavia)

My first job ...

camp counsellor at YWCA week camp near York, PA

My best moment ...

In a long life, there have been many!

My inspiration ...

our world

Politics, News & Issues > Energy Issues Is solar energy a viable solution to reducing oil dependence?

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The sun shines all over the world, not just in the United States! Already, Japan and Germany draw a (relatively) high percentage of their energy from solar panels. This has been accomplished through excellent government incentives. Those countries have no oil resources of their own and want to limit the use of the coal that they have to avoid the pollutants that burning coal produce. Germany in particular has had a long history of bad air because of burning coal, so it is conscientiously finding alternatives, including enormous wind farms. Developing countries are leapfrogging over dirty e...

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