I identify as a scholar who yearns to be a bird, circling the sky on wings of witness to the world. A re-wilded-eco-feminist-poet-philosopher-comedian of joyful defiance, social critique and repair, I’ve long been a woman seduced by language.
A retired front-lines activist, I’ve impersonated an anti-nuclear warrior, psychotherapist, performance artist, womyn’s land resident, and Women’s Studies professor, & now am a proud full-time space artist practicing breathing. Kin with forests and clouds and creatures, now a semi-retired barbarian flitting around in an off-grid, hand-built, recycled straw-bale temple at 7200 feet in the Rocky Mountains.
A Neo-Luddite, my sole life’s goal is to be a good human-animal. I imagine my intellectual work as a social service, a deep pocket of some shared dreams from a public defender.. I’ve earned what I reckon is a PhD and a half with two Masters’ degrees—in Literature from CSU, and Transpersonal Psychotherapy from Naropa University. M.A. + M.A. = MAMA *this is the sum arithmetical formula of my educational career.
Instead of children, I’ve planted trees and activists in this world. For decades as a professor and a performer, I raised rebels and protectors, aiming them in the direction of social and earth justice. The purpose of my research and writing, my teaching and performance and my life, is to illuminate oppressions and our struggle for justice. I focus wide on the elemental crises of Nature, of war, rape, racism, misogyny, poverty, fascism, and assaults on the Earth. As an activist, I target patriarchy’s vicious snarl of institutions. As Cassandra, I raise a storm to warn my people. As a witch I speak for the land.
I’ve always been a radical dyke. Following three years spent protesting nuclear war at Greenham Common Womyn’s Peace Camp, and another five living on Lesbian Lands, I returned to the world of our shared problematic humanity. I worked for 23 years as a radical feminist performer and writer for Vox Feminista, joyfully tossing pollen to the winds of change. I was the children’s therapist for our local Safehouse for seven years, taught Conflict Resolution in Elementary, Middle and High Schools, and then Women’s Studies classes for 11 years at Front Range Community College.
I’ve been arrested for peace nine times.