Candidate for
Member, Democratic Party County Central Committee; County of Sonoma; Supervisorial District 2

Beginnings

To borrow someone else's phrase, I have lived a number of "parallel lives." It is this feature that allows me to "take the role of the other," to better understand where a diversity of people are "coming from." I got to go to college, but my career did not proceed directly to graduate school and academic work. I owe my unique path to my origins.

I am a multi-ethnic/heritage woman who began in the working-class of the Deep South. With such beginnings and in that locale, my prospects were not good. However, I set my sights on going the distance and attempting to make a positive difference in people's lives. I am the first person in my immediate family to earn a state high school diploma without attending Adult Education late in life. I am the first in the family to earn a college degree, and I did so while working swing shift in a textile mill in Charlotte, North Carolina and free-lancing news and feature stories for several South Carolina newspapers. When I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in only three years' time, there were no entry-level professional jobs to be found. Like many young persons today from hardscrabble regions of the United States and elsewhere, I joined the military for the opportunities it represented.

In the Army

At the U.S. Army's Quartermaster School, I worked with a diversity of fellow soldiers from not only the United States, but from a wide variety of other countries: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Afghanistan, West Germany, Colombia, and one Tibetan serving in the Taiwanese army. My training at the Quartermaster School allowed me to expand my knowledge of different languages and cultures.

The Army sent me to Alaska for my permanent duty station. I expanded into a number of job areas because of my ability to communicate across cultures, and because I was open to new experiences. For instance, I am the first Army woman to be trained as a combat mountaineer. My upper-level supervisor was then-Colonel H. Norman Schwartzkopf, the "Stormin' Norman" of Gulf War legend. When I wrote about my mountainclimbing experiences, I was sent to work on the magazine of the 172nd Arctic Light Infantry Brigade. For a time, I was also that brigade's historian. Today, it is known as the 172nd Stryker Brigade, the unit that not long ago took so many casualties in Iraq. It is this affiliation that has earned me my nickname bestowed on me by the Veterans For Truth: "Stryker."

In Washington and Alaska

During some postgraduate studies at Washington State University, I expanded my knowledge of Arabic, Farsee, Pushtu, and some other Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian languages. However, I also formally studied a number of Na'Dene languages. I created the first Native American Literature course syllabus for WSU. By 1980, by which time I had been back in Alaska, I had established and funded a number of scholarships for Middle Eastern women studying at WSU in the areas of resource development, economics, and hunger elimination.

After my postgraduate stint at Washington State University, I returned to Alaska where I worked in a series of media and public opinion jobs in Anchorage, on the Kenai, and in Fairbanks: advertising, public relations, radio broadcasting, technical writing, and film production. From 1977 - 1979, I was a news anchor and show host for Mutual Broadcasting System affiliates in Alaska. From those stations, I transmitted stories to our Mutual parent and was heard nationwide on an almost weekly basis.

At Mutual's KIAK-AM in Fairbanks, I worked substantially as an investigative reporter. This led to my being recruited by those working for the U.S Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force that was managed out of San Francisco, as well as its sister state and federal agencies working in Alaska. I worked in service to a federal grand jury collecting information by a variety of means about criminal activity relating to businesses and banks in Alaska, Washington State, and California, as well as in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline unions. I used various means to collect the information: interviews, content analysis of obtained documents, unobtrusive photography, and infiltration of groups. Part of my undercover work required me to become a member of the Alaska Teamsters and an AFL-CIO local.

This work took on the character of counter-intelligence when my investigations and infiltrations began to turn up Balkan nationalists, Irish Republican Army officers and men, a Palestinian Liberation Organization general and his Alaska support network, and Contra Era Latin Americans linking to a former CIA paramilitary and student of the School of the Americas. All lived in Fairbanks or Anchorage. This was often dangerous work. Later, it was discovered that the CIA man and his coterie were linked to the human and cocaine trafficking from South America to the North Slope. The Pipeline union halls played a role as staging areas. I would go on to be involved in those investigations for the Alaska Narcotics Enforcement Unit and their sister state and federal agencies.

My Other "Lives"

The criminal justice work was not 9 to 5 and my involvement in it was intermittent with periods of high productivity interspersed with those when nothing much was required of me, but it did involve me from late 1978 through the 1980s. In the meantime, I engaged in other projects, jobs, and activities.

I undertook a lot of college coursework on the side. For one, I learned how to teach and to teach well. My most notable mentor on that front was Dr. Donald C. Orlich, one of the most vocal opponents of "No Child Left Behind." Don taught me in both Washington and Alaska, and we still correspond today. His recent book, School Reform: The Great American Brain Robbery is a "must-read" for those concerned with K-12 education.

In time, I earned a first Master's degree in English that capped my media "career." I earned a second Master's degree in largely an area known as geoarchaeology. My background on that front allows me to work as both an anthropologist and a planetary scientist. I got a firsthand glimpse of global warming by making many discoveries of coastal Alaskan historic and prehistoric sites partially awash on the northwestern and northern Alaskan coasts. I also made a number of findings on the condition of the sea ice and related features in the Arctic shelf seas.

When not surveilling suspicious characters or mucking about Academe, I did other things. The early 1980s was a very busy period in my life and career. I helped a host of Pipeline union reform candidates related to the Professional Drivers' Council (PROD) run their campaigns for leadership positions in their unions. I played a role in getting the 1980 Alaska Statehood Commission Act (State of Alaska, Eleventh Legislature, Second Session) off the ground. I had a hand in the formation and first meetings of the Alaska Statehood Commission. Alaska was a relatively new state and wanted to examine its role in the union of the United States. The Commission was very strong on self-determination in the lives of Alaskans.

With two other Alaska Chapter members of National Press Women, we played a role in helping tailor what would become Public Law 96-487 (Dec 2, 1980, 94 STAT 2371), the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). ANILCA is the greatest piece of federal environmental legislation on the books till this day. The law created or revised 15 National Park Service properties, and set aside other public lands for the United States Forest Service and United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Altogether, the act provided for the designation of 79.54 million acres (124,281 square miles; 321,900 km˛) of public lands, fully a third of which was put aside as wilderness area. This law made significant changes to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

My Press Women colleagues and I had founded a company that let us work on ANILCA and related projects. My second company, Totem Productions, quickly evolved into my third company, Rowley Media Services, when my business partner, the program manager at Mutual Broadcasting System affiliate, station KIAK, Fairbanks, decided to leave Alaska. As far as I could tell, based on my competition, Rowley Media Services was the only multiple service in situ public relations, public opinion, and marketing firm in all of Alaska during the late 1970s through the 1980s. We were headquartered in Fairbanks, and also had a branch operation in Anchorage. In 1980, I co-founded a 501 (c3) non-profit to joint venture on some projects with Rowley Media Services to handle "less commercial" projects that had connections to education and science. All of these entities are the origins of the OPS-Alaska network collaborative "think tank" that is located in Petaluma today.

Rescuing and Relocating Afghan Refugees

The first "less commercial" project developed when Dr. Louis Dupree and I made contact in the late 1980 timeframe. Louis Dupree was this country's premier expert on Afghanistan and the surrounding region. I saw a reference once that mentioned he had made many of the modern maps of Afghanistan.

We made each other's acquaintance in the matter of the Kara Kirghiz when Louis tried to get a face-to-face meeting with the Alaska Congressional delegation. In those days, Rowley Media Services and I had name recognition with Congressman Don Young, Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Mike Gravel (and later, with Senator Frank Murkowski who replaced Gravel).

It turned out that Louis and I were both from the Carolinas and hit it off at a distance over the telephone and via snail-mail. We "spoke the same language" in a lot of ways. And, we had fallen far from the trees of our native places. For all of that, though, Louis was certainly no mainstream American. He had lived so long in Afghanistan, he may as well have been an Afghan. Another way to put it, he was an "Indiana Jones" sort. He had been thrown in jail by the Marxist government in Afghanistan, an entity he referred to as "more Groucho than Karl." Then, after the Soviets had invaded, he would go out on sorties with the Mujahadeen.

Why did Louis want to see the Alaska Congressional delegation? He had a friend with a problem. The friend, the Haji Rahman Qul of the Kara Kirghiz, wanted to get about 1,000 of his closest friends and relatives out of the Wakhan Corridor, away from the Soviets. Another friend of theirs, a World Wildlife Fund biologist and University of Alaska-Fairbanks graduate, had put the bug in the Haji's ear to try and get his people to Alaska.

In the end, Louis and I motivated the rescue and relocation of these people through Louis' knowledge of the region, through his networks, through my media and political networks, through the telecommunications network of the RCA-Alascom telephone and telegraph service that had enabled the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and through the mass media publicization of Haji Rahman Qul's "dream of Alaska." Had the Haji not had that dream there might not have been any rescue and relocation. While I knew that we might not get the Kirghiz to Alaska, one thing I did know having been a journalist there, the mention of "Alaska" would be an immediate cachet to attract the international media and the Kirghiz would get their plight in the world eye. And, that they did.

On the rescue and relocation project, I gave the U.S. State Department direction in the day-to-day on the issue, with either Dennis Murphy on the Pakistan desk or Ernestine Heck on the Afghanistan desk, contacting me by telephone at my home office in Fairbanks. I marshaled information among personnel from several federal agencies and NGOs in the field across a number of national boundaries (whom Louis and I had recruited), I raised funds and other resources by transnational means, and we both shaped the public diplomacy in the affair. The State Department's Pakistan and Afghanistan desks regarded Louis Dupree and me its point men for the life of the project. The Kara Kirghiz are currently located in Eastern Turkey in the Lake Van region.

I have often described my typical day in the opening years of the 1980s as follows. I would confer with union reformers in my home office or in downtown Fairbanks during the morning hours. A few of those union reformers were also engaged in the type of criminal justice research I mentioned before. I might go to lunch with a client on a media or writing project. I would spend a few hours in the afternoon in class. I would next swing by an office on site at the University of Alaska where I might have a non-student project going on with UAF professors or staff. (Some of those professors helped consult on the Kirghiz rescue and relocation.) Then, I might check in with state or federal criminal justice colleagues. From there, I might make dinner before proceeding to take unobtrusive photos of people getting off of a certain plane from the North Slope at the Fairbanks International Airport. Then, I would swing by the library or go home to do homework.

Back to the Southland

I returned to social and cultural concerns during my Ph.D work that began in late 1989 at The University of South Carolina. I had to work two and three jobs to afford being away from my home in Alaska and the costs of my program. In the opening years of that program, I made several important discoveries in how power is calculated and predicted in varying configurations of social networks. I continued to manage and develop my OPS-Alaska think tank. The chief project by which I was known following April 1991 was my lead in the development of the Kuwait Victimization Assessment Data Base (KVAD) methodology, being planned with full knowledge of the Government of Kuwait to produce a descriptive statistical national record of personal and organizational damages rendered by the Iraqi army for purposes of an international criminal tribunal. I organized and led team members from the University of South Carolina, Furman University, Benedict College, South Carolina State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Consultation was provided throughout the design of the procedures by a variety of experts including the former Research and Development Director of Nestlé Corporation (Dr. Louis Rey, who had been Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks), the Deputy Director of Research for the United Nations (Dr. Andronico Adede, a colleague of Dr. Rey's), and a Chief Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, Benjamin Ferencz. While the international criminal tribunal was never convened, our work sparked the United Nations effort for victims in Kuwait. Our effort did more than that. I had handed over our methodology to Dr. Adede. Several years later, I found out that this methodology that combined GIS, remote sensing, and statistical techniques had been used to identify patterns and perpetrators of political violence in the Balkans.

Afterwards, I did substantial original research on community response to the Exxon Valdez disaster and on the demographics of Hurricane Hugo damages. This research wound up leading to what I finally wrote my dissertation on. Much substantial research that was done at The USC concerning these disasters also wound up being pursued under the OPS-Alaska flag.

Among this substantial work was producing the evidence to show that oil tanker disasters are actually four disasters-in-one: wreck, spill, clean-up, and restoration of oiled communities. In this, this type of disaster is similar to the levee break and other water control disasters: breach, submersion of populated areas, clean-up, and restoration of submerged communities. It can be shown that both kinds of disaster are afforded their probability of occurrence through ignoring expert calls to maintain and upgrade equipment, procedures, and infrastructure to offset the likelihood that the disasters can occur. Getting state and federal executives to understand how these disasters are phased, structured, and play out at the convergence of society and environmental extremity is instrumental in developing technological responses and socially responsible policies.

In the meantime, working my way through my doctorate, I worked both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. On the white-collar front, I worked on two and three teaching contracts over different colleges and universities teaching literature and media arts, social sciences, and psychology. In the early 1990s, I worked in home renovation and fire and smoke restoration. Later, I upgraded my driver's license and went to work as a long-haul tractor trailer driver, hauling commodities and produce between South Carolina and California two to three times a month -- with my doctoral dissertation materials in a milk crate by the gearshift. I was driving in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, though my drop-off points were either routinely in Westwood or in East LA. My produce pick-up points took me up and down the length of California. I practiced my Spanish hiring day laborers to help me unload my truck or shooting the breeze around the produce processing houses.

From 1993 through 1996 in South Carolina, after earning my clinical credential through a program separate to my doctoral work, I worked as a clinical counselor, as I have sometimes done in California. From 1995-1996, I managed a long-term residential treatment center and its 50-plus person staff, including its contract nurses, physicians, and dentists. Then, in 1998, I received, under the OPS-Alaska flag, with my major doctoral professor as co-investigator, a number of National Science Foundation grants to investigate issues of people living and working in extreme environments.

From 1998-1999, I would go to Russia a number of times to work on extreme environments projects. My dissertation, completed in 2000, demonstrated a number of discoveries about those living and working in extreme environments, including the first hard evidence of a group state condition called "third-quarter phenomenon." In essence, that is where the extreme environmental group goes a little bit haywire about halfway through their time in the extreme environment. During this period, I developed a national and international reputation for this work.

In late 1999, I was listed in the active selection files for NASA Astronaut (Scientist) Mission Specialist Candidate. I stayed on the list through about 2003. To wit, I am the first sociologist admitted to the astronaut selection process, where we sociologists, in particular, had heretofore been traditionally barred. I had a number of NASA affiliations since the late 1980s, but they have been more substantial since the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2001, I accepted a teaching contract at Sonoma State University. I served in the SSU faculty senate between 2002 and 2004. I am a chief architect of "the Sonoma Model" that helped prevent the mass layoffs of untenured faculty over the 23 campuses of the California State University system.

On 6 June 2006, voters elected me to the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee. I have served from that day on the Issues and Legislation Committee, being active in its many activities illuminated in my colleague's, Tom Gangale's, portion of this Smart Voter site (http://www.smartvoter.org/2008/06/03/ca/sn/vote/gangale_t/philosophy.html). I chaired the ad hoc bylaws committee that revised portions of the SCDCC bylaws. And, I am currently the Recording Secretary.

In my professional time, I am currently writing policy-oriented books concerning:

1.Global warming and shaping environmental-geopolitical realities; decline side of oil, resource struggles, alternative energy sources including those requiring civil space-based systems and the increasing connection and usage of world power grids; the dilemma of the airliner in the post-petroleum world; the status of water control technology; space-based disaster detection; why Academe is the most important industry in the world; how the de-tenurization of American Academe is helping move the United States out of the core of world societies while other societies become more able to add value to the challenges of a changing world. My published paper attached to this site, "Global Warming, Earthly Disasters, the Moon and Mars...." is a short version of the book that connects these dots.

2.The second book manuscript speaks about the necessity for stringent state and federal oversight in how American public colleges and universities conduct their business in order to repair the effects of de-tenurization, to bring back the preparation of students as the manifest function of the university, and to curtail graft and corruption within public Academe.

Under legal review by Praeger is my more autobiographical book Pipeline to Terror that discusses the non-state actor networks that I observed during the start-up of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in that venue.

Besides various Democratic organizations, I belong to and am active in a number of professional organizations: notably, the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association (PDAA), the Foreign Service Association of Northern California (FSANC), the U.S. Department of Defense's Human Factors Engineering Technical Advisory Group (DoD HFE TAG), and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). I intermittently support the activities of several local, regional, and national social and behavioral sciences societies.