ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dilettante

Hi. I'm the author of "A Dangerous Garden". I was born in Hawai'i, grew up in the Pacific Northwest's greater Puget Sound Area, and am the eldest of seven children across three marriages. There is no curriculum vitae punctuated by Ivy-league enrollment, although I have the equivalent formal education of two Ph.D.'s. My education is characteristically whimsical and meandering, more broad than deep, and dilettante at best. If a comet were to strike the Earth today and send us back to the Stone Age, I'd like to think that my chances of survival are vastly improved over those of a psychologist, lawyer, or Silicon Valley software engineer.

​

Foreign and "dead" languages have always fascinated me. This fascination ties into my amateur interests in comparative and historical linguistics as well as comparative analysis of religions ("mythologies"). Although my background is predominantly Polynesian (Sāmoa, Hāwai'i, Tonga, Fiji, Filipino, etc.) Spanish is my first language--or at least was my first language until my family moved back to the United States in 1977. I have formally studied Japanese, and Mandarin. For the sake of work-related travel, romance, hobbies such as genealogy and comparative linguistics, and simple whimsy, I have studied Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Greek, Gaelige, Russian, Hindi, Sanskrit, 'Ōlelo Hāwai'i, Gagana Sāmoa, Lea Faka Tonga, Te Reo Māori, Na Vosa Vaka-Viti, Middle Egyptian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Hebrew, Hopìikwe, Mapudungun, and Quechua and have varying degrees of command of each language ranging from abysmal to proficiency. To sum up--I can find out where the bathroom is and praise a bartender for his fine selection of beers in Sumerian.

"One who eats birds and fish cannot sleep." (Sumerian proverb)

MUŠEN KU6 GU7-E U3 NU-UM-ŠI-KU.

𒄷 𒄩 𒅥 𒄯 𒅇 𒉡 𒌝 𒄷𒈿