Welcome to my world!
I am an award winning writer, laugh-er, lover of flora, fauna, the quirky and the quotidian. I enjoy discovering oddball interview subjects hiding in plain sight. I also boast a fondness for jazz, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and binder clips.
I moved to Seattle more than a decade back and quickly found that the overcast skies suited my temperament. You ask Seattlelites here if they’ve seen a movie, and they proudly respond, “I read the book.” I’ve watched locals with their nose in a tome – while crossing the street, or sitting on a log in a vacant lot, illuminating the pages by flashlight .
While I was deciding whether to move to Seattle or Paris, I met the owner of First & Pike News at Pike Place Market and fell in love with the cast of characters owner Lee Lauckhart welcomed to the newsstand. They included a drunk befriended by Lee whom the newsboy helped go sober by driving him into the mountains to camp. He then put that man, Lyle McBride, to work at the newsstand for under-the-table pay, and he delighted customers and Pike Place Market merchants with his creative insults.
After my story for Crosscut.com won a Society of Professional Journalists Award, I asked Lee if he had any more stories.
He did – especially on his mother’s side of the family, many of whom were ink-stained wretches. Lee’s uncle Albro Gregory cut a swath of alcohol-fueled journalism from Washington D.C. to the Pacific Northwest, before counting himself among the most notorious newspaper editors in post-state Alaska. After being fired from numerous publications in the Last Frontier, Albro finally bought the Nome Nugget – a half-century after his future-embezzling brother had worked there during the 1925 diphtheria epidemic.
I’m currently writing a book , Read All About It: How Kooks Crackpots and Failed Astronauts Saved Seattle’s Pike Place Newsstand. to tell the stories of Lee, his family, and the characters from the Market who found a community with him and his band of clerks.
Would you like to check out more of my work?
I wrote this shortly after arriving in Seattle.
This investigative piece details how King County Metro bought buses manufactured with a blind spot that maimed and killed pedestrians. It won a First Place Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
King County Metro violated its agreement with the state to provide sufficient bathrooms for its bus drivers, some of whom were forced to use bottles to relieve themselves. A month after my story got published, Metro finally provided a permanent bathroom at the end of its busiest route -- the No. 36. This also won a top Society of Professional Journalists prize.
Eccentric cartoon showman Mike Gribble championed the work of Nick Park (Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts) and Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead) before the world embraced it.
She remembers her son, “Alfalfa.” That cowlick didn’t spring up far from mom’s head.
Awards
First Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Government and Politics Reporting, “King County Metro’s bathroom reform: Constipated or incompetent?” crosscut.com, 2015
First Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Investigative Reporting, “Metro buses: Pedestrians in a blind spot?” crosscut.com, 2015
Second Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Investigative Reporting, “King County Metro’s bathroom reform: Constipated for incompetent?” crosscut.com, 2015
Third Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Government and Politics Reporting, ““King County Metro’s bathroom reform: Constipated for incompetent?” crosscut.com, 2015
Third Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Long Feature Story, “The End of Everything: The Harvard Exit takes its final bow.” crosscut.com, 2015
Third Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Arts and Entertainment, “The End of Everything: The Harvard Exit takes its final bow.” crosscut.com, 2015
Third Place Award, Society of Professional Journalists, Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest, Special Report/Enterprise, “Struggling newsstand a last bastion of real Pike Place character,” crosscut.com, 2011.
Women in Film, Screenwriting Award, Short Script: Musical, 1998.
When I’m not writing, I like to doodle in my datebook. Here are a few favorites.
Not a man of letters? A marquee sign changer at the Uptown Theatre makes a typo.
My sister pals around with her goat in Oregon.
This Fairy seen snap on a bodice, & thus transformed from Queen to Goddess.
A Greater White-fronted Goose hangs beside a house in Index. Why fly anywhere with a glorious grass feast at your wingtips?
These sea lions don’t think the rules apply to them.
This Canada Goose at Be’er Sheva Park ignores the sign permitting water vehicles exclusively.