Q: What's your favorite food?
A: Mom's everything; her pork & sauerkraut, seafood soup, asparagus fresh picked from the garden, blueberries fresh off the bush and chicken & waffles- she makes it the way grandma made it, a waffle lathered with chicken gravy.

Q: Where's your favorite place?
A: In the mountains, in the pines, where everything, including the briars and trees come alive. The forest holds such a scope for the imagination and mine  ran wild as I lay in a bed of soft ferns while looking upwards to the heavens - through the bows of the leafy foliage the sky looked such a fabulous blue.


Q: Did you enjoy words just as much as you enjoyed art?
A: I wasn’t good with words - my brother teased and my mother was frustrated as she edited my pieces. However, through continued writing, patience and persistence, I enjoy playing with words much like I do when I create a paper-cut with watercolor. It becomes a puzzle and when the words fit, they bring me satisfaction and excitement that I yearn to share.

Q: What's something most don't know about you?
A: I was once freckle faced, had curly, red hair and was an orphan when I played the starring role of Annie in our high school musical. I was a chubby 9th grader wearing a short red-white dress, but oh how I loved to sing and still do. I got the tune in my heart from grandma, a former Sweet Adeline & mom.

Q: Besides a teacher, did you consider any other field?
A: I wanted to be an archeologist or paleontologist. I have my father to thank for my interest in diggin' and rocks. When I was a little girl, the highlight of any weekend was my father packing pick & hammer, creek shoes and gloves, while  mom made sandwiches for a picnic.  Driving the car onto the ferry boat meant we had an hour to enjoy the waterscape and be mesmerized by the wooden stern, paddle wheel, as it pushed the water, skirting us closer to the other side.  I remember asking myself, "How  long would it take me to swim the Susquehanna River?" Navigating to dad's favorite fossil hunting spot took some time, but once we arrived, the hunt was on….for the best specimen of a trilobite, fern or other prehistoric creatures.  Needless to say,  although my eyes were sharp, my brothers were sharper and he found a beauty of a trilobite, which I, to this day have not superseded.