The Bio

I have a rather chequered past. I was born in Hobbs, NM on Father's Day, 1942. HAPPY childhood. When I was 11, my daddy bought a farm. Some of my happiest days were spent there, although I didn't know it at the time. HARD physical work, and Daddy was neither a particularly good farmer, nor a very lucky one. Mama ("MSM" to some of you) taught English.

We traded the farm for the house in town in 1958. I graduated from Hobbs HS in 1960, and went to New Mexico State that fall. I can't say I was an outstanding student in college, but I DID learn to have a lot of fun, and how to get along with people. I graduated with a BA in English in 1964.

I married in 1965, taught school (language arts, in junior high school), and then had my twin sons, Mark and Gregg:
[KID PIC]

Spouse and I moved to Tucson in 1971, when the kids were a year old. Built a house, and then started breaking up.

We moved to Utah in 1976, as the last-stab at making the marriage work. Seven months later, we divorced (spouse moved me out of his house on the 4th of July. . . Independence Day has a different meaning for me -- we were divorced the next Monday). I moved back to New Mexico and my beloved desert in 1979, to go to law school. Graduated from law school in 1982, and went back out into the "real world." Single-parented my boys, worked a more-than-full-time job, was a "hockey mom", a "swimming-mom", a "track-mom", and managed to graduate a couple of honor students in 1988. [GRADUATES!]

Gregg went to the University of Arizona in Tucson. Mark first opted for the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, and then transferred to NMSU (where, according to Mark, "it's warm, and there are girls".)

When the kids left home, I discovered quilting. My mother always quilted (as did both my grandmothers). It helped a lot that the rotary cutter and rulers had been invented. I turned the kids' bedrooms into a sewing room and a "stash" room (I wish I had a picture of the 1988 "stash". I've "come a long way, Baby", stash-wise). At the end of the first one (a rail fence for Gregg), I was HOOKED. Here's a picture of the current stash (which has slopped over into a second room)

STASH PIC #1	STASH PIC #2	STASH PIC #3

[MARK AND TAMMY FORMAL] [GROUP PIC] Mark and Gregg graduated from their respective universities (on the same day) in 1993. Mark is married to Tammy (quite a delight) lives in Albuquerque, works as a mortgage banker, and will soon have his very first house.

[Greg in the Alps] [ERIN] Gregg lives five houses from the beach in California, sells computer software, and his SO, Erin works for Steven Spielberg's "Dreamworks".

In 1991, I got a chance to come back to Las Cruces (40 miles north of El Paso, USA), and jumped at it. I bought an "old" house

with 10' ceilings and hardwood floors, and I reckon I'll be carried out of this house, this wonderful town, and this astonishing state in a pine box.

I'm still quilting and it became my PASSION shortly after I discovered it. I'm simply DELIGHTED with my life, these days. I discovered r.c.t.q. in January, 1997, and have "met" the most delightful people. And now, I'm REALLY meeting them. I read, I quilt, I "craft," I drive a teal-green pickup truck named "Bubba." I play a little pool, love chiles (come see the Mesilla Valley, and discover chile), do like my beer, and am simply delighted about the notion of LIVING.

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