CURRENT MISSION

Joy, Peace, Public Health, Theater, Education

ABOUT ME

Right now I pass for a white frumpy middle aged housewife. My nicknames include: MomMom, motherbadger, policewoman of the universe, and bashful militant.
I had signed up for couchsurfing about 9 months and two lifetimes ago, but I lost my internet e-mail. (I LOVE the functional anarchy of the worldwideinterwebs.) I've been called erratic, scatterbrained, and the most organized person that some have ever seen. I laugh at everyone's jokes. (Then I berate the sexist and racist ones.) I believe in the inherent worth of all living entities. I was raised christian (still believe that Jesus' teachings are cool) but my first religious experience was Buddhist.
I've been a fisherman in Coos Bay, Oregon; a Blackjack Dealer in Reno; I co-started Gypsy Theater in Kansas City (where we produced 30 one act plays and two babies in 3 years).

PHILOSOPHY

I believe in the inherent worth of all living beings. I believe in kindness. I believe in forgiveness, although I'm not as good at it as I'd like to be.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I teach. Constantly. I try to not be pendantic, but there are so many things that I wish I had known when I was a teen, so I advocate alot. An example is when I helped a neighbor get her financial aid back when UTEP had canceled it.
Both of my parents were civil rights lawyers, I got to hear Martin Luther King speak when I was about 7 (I remember the BBQ picnic afterwards) and the KKK burned a cross on our front yard.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Dude, we were couchsurfing before there was an internet. At one time between Kansas City, Reno, Las Cruces, Coos Bay and San Francisco - if you met up with a friend or family member of mine, you had a place to stay between the West Coast and the Missouri river. Back in the '70's we'd pick up hitchhikers all the time, and my apt. in The City was right next to the Fort Mason youth hostel.

Interests

Poetry, Theater, Film, Politics, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Ireland, Literature, Art, Quantum Physics, Education, basically the only thing that I'm not interested in is arrogant ignorance.

• dogs
• arts
• literature
• poetry
• singing
• theater
• civil rights
• education
• picnic
• bbq
• politics
• teaching
• physics

Music, Movies, and Books

The movies: "Crash," "All that Jazz," "The Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada," "Ran," "American Beauty," "Children of Heaven," Foreign Films, Art Film Houses.
The books: "The Tao of Physics," "The Places Inbetween," "Three Cups of Tea," "Reading Lolita in Tehran," any and all playscripts, literary and professional periodicals, industry rags.
The music: Jazz, Rock & Roll, Rap, Hip-Hop, Country Western, Folk.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

San Francisco, 1984. Christmastime. Old drunk man singing very old Christmas tunes on the very crowed Geary bus full of end-of-the-work-day commuters. Bus driver told him to shut up or get off the bus. Folks said, "He's not really bothering anyone." Situation builds. Bus driver stops bus and demands that the drunk singer get off. There is a pause and then in one voice EVERYONE on the bus starts singing "God Rest ye Gentle Merrymen!" Bus driver gets off. We all stay singing in the bus. No one gets off. Every carol that the old man and then the rest of us can remember. 20 minutes later a new bus driver gets on. He looks at us, smiles & shakes his head, resumes the route. Everyone sang till they got off at their stop.

Teach, Learn, Share

The first five "no's" don't count.

(Except - you dirty dogs, of any gender ;-) who are hitting on someone who isn't interested).