About me
For those of you curious about who I am and where I've been and what I've done, here's a little biographical (mostly professional) information.
The Early Years: from the East Coast to Alaska
I was born in Washington, D.C., but didn't stick around the area for long. In my early childhood, I lived in Greenbelt, Md., Dover, Mass., Riverdale, Md., and Washington, D.C., itself.
When I was 11 years old, my father went back on active duty with the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to Elmendorf Air Force Base, near Anchorage, Alaska. On the way there, my mother, my two brothers, and I spent a few months living in Kalamazoo, Mich., my mother's birthplace. We arrived in Anchorage (traveling on one of the last trips made by the Alaska Steamship Company, with stops in Ketchikan, Sitka, and Juneau) in November 1953 and spent three years in Alaska during my dad's tour of duty. The whole family was smitten with the Last Frontier (which was not, at that time, even a state; it was still a territory).
My father's next duty assignment was at Hamilton Air Force Base near San Rafael in Northern California. I stayed in California to graduate from San Rafael High School while my parents and younger brother returned to Alaska upon my father's retirement from the military in 1959. I joined them after high school and got my first job working for the City of Anchorage in the City Clerk's office. But that fall, I returned to California to attend San Francisco State College (as it was then named).
The Adult Years in California and Alaska
I met Dan W. Lew at the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco, and we were married in 1962. We moved to Los Angeles, where he was working for North American Rockwell, and our three children were born in that area: Kent in September 1962, Danika in December 1963, and Mark in November 1965.
After Dan and I divorced, I returned to Alaska in 1969 to raise my children, as a single parent, in what I considered to be the most wholesome environment available. The four of us lived in Anchorage for 17 years. During those years, I worked in various aspects of professional communications for a number of private, nonprofit, and government agencies and organizations as well as with two newspapers and two radio stations.
In 1985, when the price of oil bottomed out, the economy in Alaska pretty much collapsed, and I was laid off as an information officer with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, I sold the family home (all three kids had moved out by then; Kent and Danika off to college, and Mark living in his own apartment in Anchorage). After a year of freelance writing, and a spell in eastern Oregon, I decided it was time to look around the rest of the country and to take time to smell the flowers. Mark and I drove Out in July 1986, leaving no more Lews in Alaska for the time being.
The Midlife Years: Exploration and Travel
Leaving Mark on the West Coast, I spent two months traveling across the United States and Canada, eventually ending up at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health (in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts). Except for a summer when I was hosteling around Australia and New Zealand, I spent the majority of the next three years as a resident of Kripalu (a Hindu ashram and spiritual community). In October 1989, I left Kripalu and traveled again across the United States to end up in Arizona, eventually working as head of publications for Arizona Game and Fish Department.
A year later, when my mother was killed in an automobile accident in Anchorage, I decided to move back to the Kripalu area where I had a "support system" and where my son Kent was now a resident. I lived, and worked as a freelancer, in that area for a while before deciding that I really was not comfortable as an East Coaster (despite my birth and younger years). After an exploratory trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I returned to Massachusetts, packed up everything I owned in my Chevrolet van, and moved to Oakland, California, in May 1992. This was my 11th cross-continent drive in less than six years!
The Second Round of California Years
I lived and worked in the Bay Area, where my son Mark was also living, for the next eight years, becoming increasingly involved in technical writing and editing (as well as finishing my degree in philosopy and religious studies). It was not until the last two years I lived in Oakland that I purchased a house, and then it was primarily for economic reasons. Somehow no place had ever felt enough like "home" for me to feel inclined to make that sort of commitment. Down deep, I knew I would eventually return to Alaska to live out my life in the land I had come to love the most (and by then I had traveled in all 50 states and a good portion of Canada, as well as visiting Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Mexico, and The Netherlands).
For a number of years prior to my return to the Great Land, my visits to Alaska involved death and taxes: my father died in 1998 after many years with Alzheimer's disease, and my brother Kent died of Lou Gehrig's disease the following year. It was not until 1999 that I thought maybe I was ready to go to Alaska just for my own sake.
Return to Alaska
I figured that if I came up here in the dead of winter (or in breakup -- which is what Alaskans call "spring") and still felt as strongly, than it was the thing to do. So I came up for a week's visit in January 2000, intending to check out Anchorage, the real estate market, the job market, and my feelings. I ended up, before week's end, making an offer on a home in Eagle River. Although it had not been my plan to make such a move that soon (it's easier to move in summer, believe me!), I had found the home I wanted, complete with an acre of land; plenty of mature spruce, aspen, and birch trees; a sense of privacy and isolation (there's a lot of the recluse in me); beautiful mountains to the north and south; Chugach State Park practically in my front yard; and only a short drive by highway to get to Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska and my primary source for professional work.
The offer on the property was accepted! I hurried to sell my house in Oakland, and, by late March, I was ready to move to Alaska. On April 1, my two cats (Purrna and Kapika) and I started driving north. After a few days visiting with my daughter Danika and her husband Nick in Seattle, the cats and I started up the Alaska Highway, ending up in Eagle River on the morning of April 12.
Although my intention all along had been to continue freelancing, as I had been doing in Oakland before I left, I decided to accept a long-term nonpermanent job in my old stomping grounds, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game from June 2000 to May 2001.
Most of the rest of my adventures in Alaska since then can be followed by reading "Northland News." And if you want to see what this particular Alaska freelance writer and editor looks like, while on the job, take a look at this picture, taken while I was visiting Kodiak Island in August 2001. And, no, the reindeer antlers aren't a requirement for writing about wildlife.
Oh, and about those cats. At least one of them is an active part of my professional life. Here's Purrna assisting me with the editing of a book.
