The coyote card pretty much sums up my life at this point. I'm a post-doctoral associate at the Proctor Maple Research Center at the University of Vermont. I recently completed my Ph.D. at Brown University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My area of expertise is forest ecology, with an emphasis on understanding the interface between community and ecosystem ecology in forest systems, and in particular on interactions between sugar maple and American beech. I work mostly at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, which sure beats the hot, humid summers I spent in East Texas as an undergrad at Rice University.

To find out more about what I'm working on, click here. Or, you can e-mail me, and I'll tell you all about it.

So how does one become a forest ecologist? Well, I started out as a freshman at Rice University interested in astrophysics. I meandered my way through several majors before deciding on biology. Then, as a sophomore, I took an introductory biology lab where we had to remove hamster intestines and turn them inside out. I passed out in class, and decided to become a botanist.

To have this delightful experience for yourself , I have provided a link toVirtual Frog Dissection Kit, Version 1.2. This link has integrated video segments which allow you to interactively dissect a frog. Trust me, though, without the warm mushy guts, it just isn't the same.

After taking a few ecology courses and discovering that you can actually hang out in cool forests and get credit for it (and eventually even get paid for it!), I decided that ecology was the way to go. I spent a delightful semester at the The University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, hanging out with Scottish trees. Then I went to the The University of Kansas to get my masters degree. Then on to Brown, where I got a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Now I'm at UVM working as a post-doc.

In my spare time (when it exists) I enjoy writing, but I'm finding it's more and more difficult to keep up with snailmail now that most of my friends are on the internet, so I have created a list of my favorite postcard sites as a way to keep in touch. I also love quilting, although I am finding that dissertation writing and quilting projects don't mix well, and the quilting has been pretty dormant in recent months. You can see some of my older quilts and a few of my favorite links on my Quilting Page.

I spent a semester at the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, and while I was there, I got addicted to the music of the folk/rock/Celtic band Runrig. I've been working on putting together a page about them and their music. It's the only page I maintain with any sense of regularity, and the only one of its kind in the US (not that national boundaries have any meaning in cyberspace).

I keep meaning to put together a page on my latest favorite music obsessions, including Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan, Loreena McKennitt, Indigo Girls, k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Dar Williams... but I haven't done it yet.

And because no set of homepages would be complete without pictures of cats, you can see ours, Corwen and Ellie, on their various pages. We also have a dog, Star. The internet needed more pet pictures. No really.

This page was originally generously created by my friend Beth Wilson, owner and creator of Miriland. She's moved on to creating many more beautiful pages, and anything bizarre that you see on these pages is due to my upkeep rather than her creative skill.