For more than 20 years my supreme goal has been to be a good reader, an active listener, a decent writer and an articulate speaker. I am best one-on-one as a listener, and I have spoken with passion to a group of more than 200 people. Also, I have written as a staff writer for a newspaper in a national news syndicate, and I have two masters degree, one in Special Education from Old Dominion University and one in Journalism from the University of Oregon. Along with many other college students and some graduate students, I won a national internship competition through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund as a copy-editor for the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota. My favorite study right now is Spanish, in which I write my near daily diary and about which I always learn more around the subjunctive, one of my favorite features in languages, of which I have received formal instruction in the Fijian language, Spanish, Hindustani, Hebrew and Arabic, 2 years in Spanish and 2 years in Arabic. I have also used informal instruction in German and Italian when I traveled in Europe. My first experience in teaching was as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the South Pacific at a 4-year middle school, and I have taught as a teacher assistant often times one-on-one with students on the autism spectrum and done that work for almost 20 years, many of my students being non-verbal and some with orthopedic complications. One of my favorite students responded quite well to my singing as we walked city streets to and from vocational assignments

Hobbies and interests include cooking, history, mechanics, music, building, minority studies, the sea, the state of the nation and historical creative writing.