Qualifications
Mary helped me complete a memoir I’d been working on for months. She seamlessly merged previous drafts and did a great job polishing my final work. She provided insightful comments and careful edits. Overall, great job.
I had Mary review my blog content. She is thorough, and when she returned my work, Mary gave me tips that I now use to avoid several comma and spacing errors. She knows a lot…Great job!
Mary was the perfect person to review my novel. Set in the old west, Mary’s western heritage gave her a unique perspective to find and correct many nuances of language and word selection that other proofreaders would have missed. And technically, she did a wonderful job “cleaning” my prose. I feel much more confident sending my book out for reviews. Thank you, Mary.
Proofreading
Certificate of Completion, “General Proofreading: Theory and Practice, Proofread Anywhere,™” October 2019
Copyediting
Writer’s Digest University, “Introduction to Copy Editing,” Kim Catanzarite, Instructor, July 2018
Writing
Elephant Academy, Elephant Journal News and Social Media Apprenticeship Training Program. Absolute Best Advice for the Hesitant Traveler, published May 2018
Degrees
Bachelor of Arts
Masters of Science
Teaching Certification
Clients put in a Good Word
About Me
Education, work experience, and exceptional people have graced my life with great diversity. I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies from Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio campus. My required cooperative job experience at Antioch included semesters of teaching fourth grade English in rural Appalachian West Virginia, adult basic education English in Keene, New Hampshire, and Environmental Studies at Fort Morgan Community College, Colorado. I attended Stanford University for a summer studying geology and anthropology before returning to Antioch campus. My senior year, I studied marine biology, forestry, and ecology on Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada.
After graduation, I lived and worked in Los Angeles for three years in a pilot program for the University of California Cooperative Extension Service. I started community gardens and taught low-income families and seniors how to grow vegetables in Central Los Angeles.
I earned my Master’s degree in Range Science at Colorado State University. My thesis research, conducted on Kahua Ranch located in North Kohala on Hawai’i Island, measured grazing times and locations of cattle over several 24-hour periods. My thesis, Grazing Behavior of Cattle Under Short Duration Grazing, helped pioneer the acceptance of rotation grazing introduced by Alan Savory.
I met my husband, a native Hawai’ian, at that time. He returned to Colorado with me and eventually, we found our way to Ventura, California where I started several certified farmers markets for the City of Ventura.
We returned to Colorado and my family’s ranch to work with my father and brother. My three older siblings and I operated the ranch for the next 19 years before selling most of it. We four are close friends and and have all settled in Colorado. My husband and I live in Longmont, CO where we raised our son and still reside.
I am going to count this as a quasi-qualification: My mom raised my three siblings and me quoting Shakespeare. She threw in a few colloquialisms, too (she did marry a cattle rancher). In addition to music—she was a classically trained pianist who performed with the Denver Symphony Orchestra—English though, was her true passion. Growing up, dinner conversation would turn to grammar and often ended in diagramming sentences over the dishes. The cards were stacked when my big brother became a high school English teacher.
So, what does all of this have to do with you? I love words and I know how to proofread, copy edit, and write. I will support you in learning this, too.