About Me
I live 40 miles from a city and 12 miles from my mailbox. But I have wild turkeys, deer and, on special rare occasions, a mountain lion in my front yard. In order to live here, I operate several small businesses that build on my education in anthropology.
Ah yes —education! I earned a BA from Grinnell College, Iowa; masters degrees in African Studies and anthropology and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and conducted post-doctoral work in medical anthropology. I worked for awhile with people with disabilities from cultural backgrounds different from my own. That experience led to my first book, published by Paul Brookes Publishing in Baltimore: Your Values, My Values: Multicultural services in developmental disabilities. It is for sale here. Do not be fooled by the publication date of 2000. The principles of providing values-based, culturally appropriate services in any medical, educational or human services area have not changed. As part of my lifelong quest to increase multicultural understanding, I continue to give workshops and in-service training through my business, Multicultural Consulting Services.
I became interested in local history while working as part of a grassroots network to decrease racism. Joyce Jefferson recruited me to write the labels for an exhibition at The Journey Museum in Rapid City, SD. It focused on African American history in the Black Hills. That information has now been gathered in the book Corporals, Cooks and Cowboys: African Americans in the Black Hills and surrounding areas. The few remaining copies are for sale here. It was also the impetus for founding another business —Lune House Publishing.
Some of the stories in that collection just begged to be researched further. Thus, seven years of research on Sarah Campbell finally resulted in a full-fledged biography of her: Sarah Campbell: The first white woman in the Black Hills was African American. And, you guessed it! It also is available for purchase here.
Along the way, Jerry Goes In Center and I put together a little booklet about decreasing racism and increasing multicultural understanding: Recognize Our Similarities, Respect Our Differences. And, I assembled a PowerPoint presentation about the service of Buffalo Soldiers in Dakota Territory. Purchase the Recognize and Respect booklet here and the Buffalo Soldier disk here. These two programs and a third one, Homesteaders in Dakota Territory, are also given in person, sponsored by the South Dakota Humanities Council, the Minnilusa Pioneer Museum, at Elderhostel sessions in the Black Hills or contact me to book programs directly.
To balance the talking and writing required by these businesses, I also construct art jewelry, assembling beads from multiple cultures and marketing them as Multicultural Mosaics. They symbolize how mixing cultures together results in beauty. Strictly speaking, my jewelry is not published by Lune House but you really should wear it while reading these books!
LIVE GREEN
My husband and I have lived a "green life" long before it gained that name. For 30 years we have pumped our water with a windmill, heated our home passively with solar energy, grown much of our own food and, until recently, used a composting toilet. We enjoyed the philosophy of the BioTour folks who visited us for a few days on one of their cross-country tours. The photo above was taken at our place. Click on it to visit their informative site and support the transition to bio-fuels.
Just for fun, here is a photograph of me back in 1980 when we were first building our gravity-feed water system and erecting a windmill to pump water.
