Born in Nebraska while my father was attending college on the G.I. Bill, I spent my first eight years worshipping my big brother and dreaming about growing up to be a cowboy. We moved to New Jersey and then to Connecticut, and after high school graduation I headed to Syracuse University to major in journalism. By graduation, I had changed majors twice and married a very nice fellow I met freshman year at a dining hall protest (the food was truly awful...).

I took a break after graduation and worked as a waitress (good times!) and in retail (eh) while I figured out what to do next. Unable to shake my interest in the history of dress, I finally took the graduate school plunge at the University of Rhode Island, where the research bug bit me hard. In 1976 I accepted a one-year teaching appointment at a university I'd never heard of in a state I had never visited. I wrote a bunch of stuff about clothing and gender, and invented new ways to teach (online, service-learning, contract grading). It was great fun, mostly. Forty-one years later, I retired. Now what? WHo knows?

I have been doing more reading for fun, more cooking and crafts, and less formal research (a lot less, if I am honest). I enjoy all kinds of music, sampling craft beer, and watching Indian films. We moved to a retirement community exactly as COVID shut everything down, which turned out to be a brilliant decision.

​I miss teaching, but I will never grade again. Also, no more committees. Ever. I am so done with committees.