CURRENT MISSION
After many years of doing large-scale community gardening, urban agriculture, and food systems work, I spent a decade at the University of Colorado-Boulder where I taught writing and environmental studies (I also researched green infrastructure, urban agriculture, and the benefits of child/nature connection). Now I'm back in Toledo, Ohio writing grants, working on community revitalization projects, promoting social determinants of health, and tending a nonprofit volunteer-run tree nursery that I co-founded. I also garden, play basketball, and rehab a 124 year old house in Toledo, Ohio.

ABOUT ME
Pretty good cook, considerate, intellectual, economical with words. I take my shoes off at the front door.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

When I worked at a botanical garden, one of the long-term volunteers said that she had never met a gardener she didn't like. After twenty years in gardening, I've met a few bad apples, but I have never met a couchsurfer/couchsurfing host that I didn't like or learn from. It has been delightful to meet people from all over the world and to show them around Toledo and Boulder. I haven't gone out surfing much lately, but when I have, my hosts have quickly become friends.

In the book Hard Times, Dickens criticizes the "philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter." Like Dickens, I oppose the process that has turned most of life into a bargain across a counter. The Couchsurfing community is a virtuous way to share space with kindness and gratitude.

Our house has hosted couch surfers for years (without the benefit of this great website) - activists, gardeners, artists, cyclists, explorers, et cetera...

Interests

Gardening, mushroom foraging, philosophy, basketball, hiking, bicycling, fermentation, living without a car, denaturalizing capitalism, et cetera

• cooking
• gardening
• socializing
• bouldering
• hiking
• basketball
• ecology

Music, Movies, and Books

I like the sounds of the environment (especially cicadas), silence, John Cage, Detroit Techno (Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Derrick May etc), Meredith Monk, Ani Difranco, Ozomatli, Godspeed You Black Emperor! Miles Davis, Coltrane, Sixto Rodriguez, Odetta, Indre, underground hip hop, etc. From Couchsurfing: Miss Christine, Indre,...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Golly that's a tough one to narrow down...

Teach, Learn, Share

Gardening, ecology --Sustainable living - I've lived most of my adult life in various collective living arrangements without a refrigerator or television. Now I have a fridge and a giant TV.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I'm happy to share whatever I can with hosts.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, France, Italy