Posts published in September 2014

I grew up in Santa Cruz. My dad was in mid-level management at a disk manufacturer in Scotts Valley. We lived in a suburban neighborhood that was fortunately across the road from Henry Cowell Redwood State Park near Felton, which I really treasure. Most everything I understand about our relationship with ecosystems I learned from the redwood forest. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for a big part of my child, an incredibly sharp, intelligent person who went back to school when she was in her 40s and got an advanced math degree. Now she’s a community college instructor. So I had a caring and intellectually-oriented mom who had a big influence on me.

I was born during the last part of World War II, in a town called Oostvoorne, The Netherlands on the North Sea along the English Channel in 1944 during the Allied invasion and bombings of Germany. The anti-aircraft guns and German bunkers were set up on our shore to shoot down Allied planes, and we lived right there. A Canadian pilot was shot down over the town and got hung up in a tree, and before the Germans could get to him, Dutch people who lived nearby rescued him and brought him to my father and asked to hide him.