To a young boy, even a medium sized city like Minneapolis seems like an entire world - and within the limits of a city there are smaller worlds neighborhood worlds, street worlds, house worlds. The day my sister DeeDee and I left our dads house on Oliver Avenue North, our worlds changed. All the years and all of the households we lived in and events of our lives. led up to that incredible moment. The life we lived with our dad was like a sinking ship; the weight was too much to bear. Leaving, we had decided, was the only way out. Even jumping into a lifeboat is risky, but when you are a kid, you have to do what you have to do to survive. My mind keeps drifting back to that momentous day when DeeDee and I shut the door behind us and entered an unknown world.

I am a retired state entomologist, born and raised in Minneapolis MN. My degrees are from the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Riverside. I have lived in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, Vietnam, Morocco, California, Poland and Pennsylvania. I live in Minneapolis and I am adjunct entomology professor at the U of M.