See where I'm from:
...in a solar barn (crazy parents read too much Mother Earth News during the blizzard of '77), and educated in New York at activist-hippie infested Vassar College and at a pedagogical institute in the uniquely beautiful city of Velikii Novgorod, Russia, aka Novgorod the Great (click on Photo 1 to see a view of sunset over the local kremlin, a view from the Ped where I studied).
I moved to San Francisco in 1995 after I graduated with a double BA in Russian and English. For several years I played 1st violin in the Bay Area Community Women's Orchestra, having played violin since age 5. In college I took up doumbek (a hand drum), and then studied Middle Eastern style drumming with Mary Ellen Donald in San Francisco for a few years. I stopped doing anything with music when I was out of work; now that I have time and money to study I've taken up bellydancing with the amazing Nanna Candelaria.
I've been doing freelance Russian interpreting and translating on and off since college, doing work with senior service, hospice, immigration advocacy, poetry, housing rights, human rights, and other political organizing. From 1999 to 2004 I was on the payroll of The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the only human rights organization in the world using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights instruments to advance the rights of communities subjected to abuse based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status. Or at least it was, I don't keep in touch with the group since the board closed our main office and laid off all the staff, starting from scratch with a new staff in NYC.
Currently, I work for Pacific Environment, the only organization working for the protection of the North Pacific Rim as a unified ecosystem. My particular sphere of work is environmental protection in Siberia and the Russian Far East, as well as the campaign to improve bank finance of resource extraction projects around the world.
I was identifying as a "lesbian bisexual" when my partner Kris committed suicide on October 26th, 2001 (escaping end-stage terminal breast/bone/lymph cancer-- she didn't want to die of cancer, and she didn't-- a choice I supported). Since then my sexual orientation has been pretty vague. I like nice people who return phone calls.
I initiated myself as a witch at age 10 (writing in my journal "I am a witch and a good one at that, I am a witch and I own a CAT!!!"), and am slowly building a personal liturgy and sense of personal religious structure. I'm interested in any good references to sites on Slavic Paganism and folklore. I'm have a Cancer sun, Virgo rising and Aquarius moon; I turned 33 on July 16th.
I place a candle here in memory of my late love, Kris Kovick, 9/10/51 - 10/26/01. (Shine on, my crazy diamond.)
this page last updated: 22 January, 2003
Click on Kris to enter into a little bit of Kris' world, through my eyes.
This is my boss at home, the head of the household, Demi "Dasha" Moore, My Little Sweet... (click her picture for more on her)
This is me riding high in July 2000 in the mountains of south-central Siberia, in the Altai. My horse is named Ryzhii. My guide would sing to him "Ryzhka, ryzhka, ryzhka moia..." 
This is my work headshot from around 1999- I have since lost this necklace, and chopped my hair and dyed it burgundy a couple of times, but otherwise you could say I look the same.
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