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Me -- photo taken with disposable camera - paws - sister

I should sum up my two goals in writing: (1), to present well-researched and as in-depth information as possible about the varied subjects that interest me, with an interest in providing something of a public service and not just a forum for my views (though there's always the writer in whatever he/she writes); (2), to of course develop a collection of good articles.

And I should list my favorite foods: cocoa and cranberries. (But yes I like most beans, except kidney beans.)

My most recent writing experience involved helping non-profits with web development and, to a lesser degree, web content as a VISTA/United Way "Teaming 4 Technology" resource person in Fort Worth, Texas. I also briefly helped a small (one-woman) business with web development.

Other writing experience includes a couple of semesters writing for a Gainesville, Florida student publication, The Independent Florida Alligator. I also spent one year editing my undergraduate literary magazine, plus four years on its board. I've had several poems published (in The Cumberland Review, Oyster Boy, the now defunct Potato Eyes, which was edited by Carolyn Page, and two other mags). I taught in Kuwait 1996-1997, adapting technical readings– some with humorous or sci-fi slants – for my students.

I'm more interested in technology and features than in news. (Most of my articles for The Alligator were technically focused. In high school I reported on school board meeting news, but as I was the feature editor, I managed to classify the reports, which included a bit of editorializing, under the "features" section. Currently I am looking for work in technical writing, perhaps in the nuclear industry; I'm also somewhat familiar with software documentation but software changes the more rapidly of the two.)

See also my blogs on youth (http://tech4youthontheborder.blogspot.com/) and education (http://resourcesforthenearse.tripod.com/articlearchives/education/index.html).

Other Experience (Teaching)

Besides writing I've taught and done odd jobs. Perhaps my overbite helped to draw me from teaching to writing but I also had a "bookish" childhood.

Places I have taught include Kuwait and South Central Los Angeles – in the 80's, on an emergency credential, while taking education courses. I've taught some college courses in the States too, and have done a bit of substitute teaching (at the K-12 level) giving me a total of ten years of experience, albeit much part-time.

I had great students everywhere. In South Central Los Angeles were some of the best (though pollution left us all with nosebleeds). Before accepting that job I interviewed for a job teaching English at a high school in WATTS, where I had an opportunity to talk with several students, who, unfortunately, expressed resignation about both their learning and their futures.

This was before "high stakes testing" came into vogue, but in the school I taught in the curriculum was nevertheless focused on the basics (reading, writing, and arithmetic) with less emphasis on electives. Teachers were largely free to design their own teaching schedules however, once at least they'd given enough time to reading, language arts, and English as a second language.

In L.A. had a master's in linguistics/TESL, some limited secondary subbing experience, but no degree in elementary ed., and only one or two courses related to teaching methods (TESL; Spanish Applied Linguistics). Emergency-credentialed teachers, unlike police officers, undergo virtually no training before coming on board; thus I had to "discover" over time that the best way to praise students was in a letter home as wall charts and papers got modified by some; I also had a lot of rules to absorb about just about everything including firecrackers, toy cars, toy dolls, parents in the classroom; parents, parents' addressing the class.

Other Jobs

While traveling in France while a college student, I picked grapes, did maid work and cooking for a youth hostel, and dog sat for a French girlfriend. Recently I've worked in farming (onions in 2008; mixed vegetables in 2009). In 2008 I briefly helped give children's rides for Strates Shows ("The Carnival at Midway") as a temp. As a teenager and young adult, I did restaurant work and babysitting. I've also done temporary clerical work.

My (Limited) Computer Experience (Learning About Computers for Language Learning, Cookies, Security)

In graduate school I had a chance to see a demonstration of "Eliza" ("the Doctor," an early text parser, of sorts), As a member of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (1985-87; 1992-2001) I was a member of the computer-assisted language learning (C.A.L.L.) interest section. I also had several opportunities to learn about L.I.S.P. (a language in use in artificial intelligence communities) but never got very far. In 2001, I applied to and got accepted to work with "Teaming 4 Technology."

While working for "Teaming 4 Technology" in 2002 I needed to locate the files and work of my predecessor. I used "cookies" left on the laptop I'd "inherited" to track her work and contacts online (I managed to correspond with some of the site hosts too; in the end my predecessor appeared and gave me some of the passwords; it was too late however when she finally remembered the password for one site). That was my first real acquaintance with http cookies.

After my VISTA work with non-profits in technology I imagined that I might enjoy running a server/network and completed my CCENT, which is the entry-level examination for running a network. I've still got to do the whole CCNA (as I understand things, there's the CCENT part 1 and 2 but alternately you can do the whole CCNA which includes both; I think one big thing not on the first part of the CCENT is writing codes for routers which permit and deny various kinds of connections from various addresses; this of course is really important in security). And of course it would also be nice to complete the entry-level examinations for Windows and Linux . . . however, I am not yet ready to invest in so many exams (for one thing, I have not yet had sufficient experience with wire crimping: my sole experience is holding together the wires of my cell phone charger when those broke, which worked, sort of, for a time; I had less success trying to crimp my car battery wires. Nevertheless, networking does sound interesting, and I do hope to complete at least one more exam, although I suppose checking network and security/access logs can be boring; and I've been told that you need to crawl around in dusty and cramped spaces in order to connect and disconnect routers; perhaps that's "scare stuff.")

Travel

Besides teaching in Kuwait and harvesting grapes in France, I've traveled briefly in Spain, Morocco, Canada, and Mexico. I've lived in several different places in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Hamburg (Pennsylvania), Fort Worth, and, more briefly, places in several Southeastern states, and then, of course, my native Florida.

Childhood

I grew up near the Banana River in Brevard County, Florida – which is part of what is called "the intercoastal waterway." Initially much of Brevard was undeveloped (it's hard to believe that now, but it was marsh and mosquitoes). We burned "pick" to keep the mosquitoes down and ate mullet caught in the Banana River (a local fisherman rowed almost to our door to deliver it). My father put down a few oysters (not much luck but I think he was interested in helping the environment not eating) in the intercoastal waterway. I also occasionally enjoyed fresh oysters served at a now defunct restaurant called "The White Caps" across the "river" at Port Canaveral. (It was a very healthful climate, something I missed greatly when I lived some other places.)

My parents were both fans of space and astronomy. My mother had actually majored in astronomy and worked in field before having children, and began teaching us the names of constellations as soon as we were born. My father, who was deaf in one ear due to a childhood infection, never got the chance to take but a few college courses (before being discharged from the army for his lack of hearing) but liked physics, radios (that is the parts and workings of them), and sailing. We were encouraged to study science, but I gravitated most toward foreign languages.

In first grade my best friends were Cuban bilinguals. I had by then myself taken up studying Spanish using a discarded high school text I'd acquired, so we spoke both Spanish and English together. My brother (in kindergarten at the time) learned French and Spanish songs from his teacher and brought home the words (my brother was exceptionally good at pronouncing foreign words and non-standard dialects), and we worked together on the translations. I did not get to formally study Spanish till ninth grade (I added French in tenth). Besides languages, I liked history and mathematics and some physical sciences (but I dropped my study of math and science in college for languages and literature).

"Angst" and Teenaged Identity

I spent a great deal of time worrying about my "image" beginning in the upper elementary grades and continuing through grade nine. What other teens had to say to me about the makeup the one day I really wore any, they mostly said to my face. I feel I am able to make sense of "the youth identity crisis" through my own, perhaps slightly gender-specific experience.

I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, because my mother liked the desolate moors (she said). When I read Wuthering Heights, I began asking my mother which "Catherine" I was named for (there were two) but she could not recall she said. (Myself, I prefer Austen to Bronte.)

Education

I hold an Educational Specialist's degree along with my CCENT. My bachelor's degree is in English with a very strong minor in Romance languages. I actually first spent three years majoring in Romance languages. However, I wanted to do creative poetic renditions of Trobador – the French spell it "Troubadour" – poetry in English for my thesis, while, in the program at my school, all translations of medieval Trobadors and Trouvères were done through the French Department and so had to be in literal French prose. During the last semester of my junior year, I switched hurriedly to English, where many of my friends who worked on the literary magazine with me already were. I managed to finish my English major in one year, having already completed a minor in it. I've also studied two years of Arabic.

I got through my undergraduate years with the assistance of work (as a waitress, dishwasher, astronomy laboratory teaching assistant, and book store clerk, plus of course a temporary farm hand), a scholarship, and a student loan. I paid most of my loan off (though it took a while plus some assistance from my mother; I paid the last of it from Kuwait), but borrowed again for graduate school (leaving myself with a debt).

I joined Future Homemakers of America in ninth grade, though I planned never to marry. I joined mainly because I liked my teacher, and loved cooking. I then became a "Future Old Maid of America" (and yes there is or was a real organization with this name and I'm looking for them today). I suppose my brothers thought me horridly lazy – when asked out to prom by a very nice guy, I just told him to take his sister instead. I was an obsessive-compulsive studier, so did not want to take the time to go out/the money to buy a prom outfit (I then went to a women's college – for more on this see Elizabeth Schneider's essay, "Our Failures Only Marry: Bryn Mawr College and the Failure of Feminism; I don't quite agree with Schneider" – although, yes, a bit like monasteries in the Middle Ages enabled some women to escape arranged marriages the women opposed, women's colleges have been refuges of sorts for a few women; however most women's college graduates do in fact marry; and many young women though by no means all had close male friends when in college especially by junior/senior year, so I am hardly a typical example of what life is like with a women's college degree).

Current Activities

I'm currently an occasional participant in several online discussions focusing on the internet and making it increasingly functional in a multilingual context. I'm also a volunteer assisting in recruiting for my alma mater.

I like keeping busy, French, technology, my kitty, the outdoors especially the mountains, and cooking, which I've enjoyed since age three whether helping peel potatoes or make the thanksgiving stuffing, or fixing something creative for myself. I've never studied cooking formally but I'm always excited when something works! I've enjoyed inventing recipes and harvesting wild stuff since, as a preschooler, I picked some dried Great Dock seeds, mixed them with mud, and served the beverage as "coffee." I soon concocted my own recipe for an "Orange Julius," based on the taste. I like vegetarian food, and for a while was a "strict vegetarian," but today, on occasion, I cook fish.

I have several great nieces and nephews. My parents help keep me in touch with them, but I don't hear enough from my sister's sons. I also have chronic lyme disease (contracted during my stint in Hamburg, Pennsylvania; I still remember the tick bite.)

I have a commitment to seeing more foreign language education in the U.S. Though full-time teaching is probably out; if I ever take one more graduate-level French course I'd like to run a college-level language lab and teach French maybe. I occasionally also think of doing editing for a major pulp fiction or language text publisher.

Alas, however, I rarely read anymore however except online. I recently reread Kafka's The Trial (it's full of wit) but it's a difficult read for teens and it too is depressing. I do slip occasionally into a Kafka-like "World View."

I most enjoy reading biographies of bilinguals and biographies documenting language or literacy learning. I got addicted while pursuing my studies (Mary Jemison, Richard Rodriguez, others), and plan to read more biographies of persons who have learned a second language (bilinguals or not), and also read creative or informational writing by bilinguals.

My Writing at Suite101

I joined Suite101 in May of 2010. My online interests – that I hope to write something about – are varied, and include: cooking, farming (I hope to do some interviews), technology, network security (which, as noted above, I am just learning about), space science (my parents in fact met at White Sands, New Mexico during the infant days of the space program I suppose you'd call it -- Dad worked at various posts mostly as a technician), foreign language education, Jane Austen of course, and educational costs and benefits. I also plan to continue investigating text parsing for things like online games ("Eliza" was the inspiration for a recent article; "Eliza" is a very basic text parsing/processing program now known as "The Doctor" that responds to "key words" that are input; it's now online; you may either find it fun or boring to "talk" to it).

My thanks go to the artists who let me use their work to illustrate my articles, particularly to photographer Andrew Stawarz and maze artist Yonatan Frimer, and finally to the lovely lady who took the photo of me. I try to research each article carefully and do want to hear if anyone feels I've given erroneous information (only please no spam).