This site was designed with the belief that you should know whose hands are making your crafts, how and where they're made, so you may have a personal connection with the doing, making, producing.

In times past, we used to know who made our belongings. You, your family, or your neighbors made them. Now we live in a world where the majority of our possessions are made in a factory, often in a country we've never visited, in an unknown city, by unknown people.

I wish to celebrate the independent crafts-makers, and to celebrate the relationship between the maker and the buyer!

In that spirit, here is a little about me:

Born and Bred:

(Formal) Education:

Previous Occupations:

Teacher for:

And, Alaska?

Sonoran Desert, Arizona

Undergraduate years in the rural farmland of Ohio
Graduate school in New York City

Raspberry picker
Owner of small jewelry-making business
Founder, editor, publisher of cowboy poetry/literary magazine
Dishwasher
Art school model
Snake handler (primarily boa constrictors and California king snakes)
Box-office ticket seller for opera house
Barbed-wire fence repairer
Writer in tropical Mexico

but mostly, I have been a teacher, for nine years

Bank executives in Bogota, Colombia (despite its reputation, one of the most beautiful and charismatic countries in the world)
Immigrants from Central America
Political refugees from Sudan
Elementary school children in Greenwich Village, Brooklyn, and Arizona
Many, many children learning English for the first time


I first came to Alaska in 2004. I was following in the footsteps of my father, who had come to Alaska in the summertime for many years, living in the remote bush for months at a time, chasing his gold fever with a gold pan and Klondike dreams. He was as good a storyteller as Jack London, with similar stories, and his tales turned Alaska into a mythic land for me, a pure wild nature that I had to experience for myself.

Alaska: one of the grandest adventures of them all!

In this general 40,000 square mile area where I live, there are only 24 inhabitants year-round. To buy groceries, we drive 200 miles. The post office is 80 miles away - mail is delivered here twice a week. Moose graze in the front yard and an occasional grizzly bear wanders by. In winter, the only noise are the cries of the ravens and the wolves.

Winter finds me Nordic skiing and traveling. Summertime in Alaska is when we: bike, raft, kayak, canoe, hike, fish, and enjoy gold-panning and berry-picking.