{"id":15,"date":"2014-01-02T04:44:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T04:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2026-05-25T12:07:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T19:07:29","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I am a historian, poet, essayist, library worker, mother, and community organizer. I live at the Rill<\/a>, a collectively-owned community in the Mayacamas Mountains above Santa Rosa, CA, and have lots of neighbors, including deer, quail, jackrabbits, scrub jays, humans, bluebirds, and spiders.<\/p>\n

I studied social history, anthropology, and the history of imperialism at Princeton, University College London, and Stanford, a seemingly long long time ago. While completing my PhD at Stanford, I served as Research Director for\u00a0The Insular Empire: America in the Marianas<\/i><\/a>, a PBS documentary about the indigenous communities of America\u2019s territories in the western Pacific and their tangled colonial relationship with the U.S. government and military. I was an active participant in the Occupy movement in Sonoma County, and started the Occupy Santa Rosa Free School<\/a>, which offered free teach-ins and civic conversation in Santa Rosa\u2019s Courthouse Square for almost a full year.<\/p>\n

I began studying and writing poetry in about 2014, and it rocked my world. I spent several years building my confidence in my creative voice, publishing both poetry and essay. You can read a lot of it on my Writings<\/a> page. From that time until now, I have been gently, wisely and fiercely guided and grounded by my teacher Rachel Boughton at Flower Mountain Zen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before my community was devastated by wildfire in 2020, I was also a World History content writer for the OER Project<\/a>, a free online curriculum resource for high school history teachers. Now, after helping my community rebuild, I work for the Sonoma County Library, am a member of Service Employees International Union local 1021, and a member of the Organizing and Communications Committees of the North Bay chapter<\/a> of the California Working Families Party<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>To nourish this work, I completed a course in \u201cLeadership, Organizing and Action<\/a>\u201d with Marshall Ganz (and over 100 inspiring global companions) through the Harvard Kennedy School.<\/p>\n

Basically, I have somehow built a big, roomy, creative and meaningful life, and I give thanks every day.<\/p>\n

Thank you<\/em> so much for your companionship in this gorgeous, troubled world. We will win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a historian, poet, essayist, library worker, mother, and community organizer. I live at the Rill, a collectively-owned community in the Mayacamas Mountains above Santa Rosa, CA, and have lots of neighbors, including deer, quail, jackrabbits, scrub jays, humans, bluebirds, and spiders. I studied social history, anthropology, and the history of imperialism at Princeton,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4goq1-f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3265,"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/3265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.turningplanet.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}