SJ Duchess *No Human Being is Illegal*

Tom Russell singing his song, "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall"
photography by David Burckhalter.
This page has been redesigned for easier viewing by those of my friends who are without a high speed Internet connection.
To this end, I'll be coming through periodically and deleting the oldest of images from my comments. If this happens to be one of yours, I beg your understanding.
If you came looking for some of your favorite videos, I will post a link to the page containing them as soon as I've set it up.
And if you really really can't stand the changes, please let me know, that's what good friends are for - to tell us when we've messed up a good thing!
This song is as close to About Me as there is. Hugs and eternal gratitude to my mother for the gift of it.
And in ten-fold measure to Rosalie Sorrels, and to (RIP) Utah Philips, for making the world so much more worthwhile to live in. Lady Bless!
Normally I'm pretty mellow and quite gentle. I'm 53 and it too is my favorite age to be. I've lived a lot of places, from Prague to Montana and a whole lot of spots in between. I've taken my time-outs in California though. I was born in Texas and Prague is where I grew up. I've lived in cities and in the country, flatlands and mountains. For a while I lived in a tipi. I am really glad that when I had the chance to, I took a summer-long road trip living out of a tent.
I've hardly ever had a job, because people only want to hire me for things I've never done before. I never got hired for something I was actually qualified for. Go figure.
So I danced, and was a secretary, and a chiropractic technician, and a technical writer and a survey technician and I taught English conversation at a hospitality vocational school in the CzechRepublic. Oh and I sold flowers in Tucson, Arizona.
All the rest of the time I worked on my own. I wrote, edited, translated, interpreted, advised, analyzed, consulted, computerized, designed and networked, and for a while read Tarot cards on a river boat.
Eventually I found my bliss researching things for women-owned small businesses, progressive non-profits and interesting consultants. I've just been offered space as a research consultant on a green career website, I'm pretty jazzed about that.
I've been a voracious reader ever since a babysitter gave me the idea when I was five. Don't know who she was, but hope she's had blessings showered upon her ever since. I don't like to read gory stuff. I seem to have lost my taste for Regency Romance. Just about anything else works.
I came to music very late in life and am making up for lost time. Lately, since I found how to find it, it's even been taking over my reading time.
When I was born, my mother, who had not been exposed to newborns before, thought I was kind of funny looking and looked like the pictures of the Duchess out of Alice in Wonderland. The name stuck.
I like intelligent, articulate and creative people. I grew up in an environment where they were always around. I love to laugh, even at very stupid jokes. As long as they're not mean. Mean people suck.
I admire subtlety but don't have a talent for creating or discerning it. And I have a habit of sticking my foot in my mouth. I'm trying to make peace with that.
I love to walk and on most days manage 3-5 miles. When I have my pink Hydra mp3 player with me I run out of time before I run out of desire to walk.
I gave away my car in 1995 and I don't have a TV. People who turn me on to or teach me something about music have a special place in my heart forever.
My favorite holiday is Imbolc. Maybe because it's close to my birthday. Beltane runs a very close second.
And I just love WD-40. Really!
...all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life...
      -- Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Sometimes it happens
that music touches
exactly that spot
in one's soul
that needs
healing.
Or waking up.
Or even just acknowledging.
And when it does,
you might as well
just let the tears flow.
Or the feet dance.
And you know
it's really good
when you find
they're both going
at the same time.