Speaking about the research for Revenge and Barcelona. Great event ..read more

New Year’s is a time of renewal and contemplation. To celebrate, I’ve meditated on a few items that are truly meaningful to me. Aside from family, friends, and loved ones, I’ve taken a voyage back to my teens to remember when one of my lifelong passions – ancient cultures and archaeology – started. Despite the 3-D age we live in, when I could have donned a headset to take a virtual tour, I opted to use the same tool ancient people employed – memory banks in the human brain. Since my early teens, when I was growing up in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, in northern Mexico, I shared my mother’s passion ..read more

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“Terror on the Roper…” During the monsoon rains that drenched the Northern Territory, our speedboat became our sole mode of transportation. The wet season, from December through February, caused dirt roads to become impassable and brought with it an obligatory time of leisure at Outback cattle stations. One beautiful, sunny morning during this forced vacation, four of us, including my seven-month-old son, Philip, set out to visit the policeman and his family at Roper Bar. My husband played “captain” while Manolo, a young Mexican man that worked on the station, decided to ski all the way to the ..read more

“Solitude in the Outback…”   Living in the Outback, I often found myself alone for weeks at a time at the homestead while the men were in the field catching feral cattle. That solitude gave me time to read the Russian novels by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Puskin, and Pasternak to name a few. Dr. Zhivago and The Brothers Karamazov remain favorites to this day. In my Australian days, I’d visualize the great books I read as a lighthouse that would light up the path of my life. A silly image, perhaps, but when one is completely alone, the mind creates interesting imagery. Even after the Outback bec ..read more

Kathryn makes presentation on “Danger in The Coyote Zone ..read more

“Camel Races in the Outback?” “Did you know camels have two rows of eyelashes?” the friendly camel handler asked me, pointing to the camel’s long, thick eyelashes. I knew nothing about camels until the day I visited Mparntwe, known as Alice Springs, when I lived in the Outback. “It’s to keep sand out of their eyes,” he responded, wiping his own eyes for dramatic effect. The Central Australian desert has sand dunes reputed to be the most spectacular in the world. To write this blog, I did a little research on the Central Australian desert to find out more about it. I learned that El Niño, a wea ..read more

“Uluru (Ayers Rock) …” Living in the Outback provided interesting adventures beyond the saltwater crocodiles that resided in the Roper River. For whatever reason that escapes my mind, the Piper Cub on St. Vigeon’s Station was used exclusively for work purposes. We never flew it around Australia to see other parts of the country. (In retrospect, a terrible loss of opportunity!) A particular weekend when I was antsy to go somewhere, we had a surprise visit from a pilot friend, another German fellow, and like our good friend at Roper River Settlement, his name was also Dieter. We distinguished be ..read more

“Rock Art in Australia rocks to an ancient beat…” I heard from a number of you who enjoyed the Native Australian rock art I’d mentioned in my blog a few months ago, so I’m expanding on the topic. One of my great pleasures of living in Australia was the rock art at places like the Kimberley in Western Australia. So let’s find “gunbim” to admire! That’s the local Aboriginal word for rock art. The Kimberley area has paleolithic art estimated to be at least 40,000 years old. And some paintings looked so fresh, I thought I’d stumbled into a studio where the artist had stepped away momentarily to cl ..read more