The Bronzed Project: Should My Uncle John be in Your Public Square? is a 200+ page free collection of essays and program guides that follow my travels around the US to visit statues of my various relatives in public squares. As I examine if they belong there or not, I interview people about race, class and the decline in our public discourse and craft essays and lesson plans for use in classrooms and library programs. How can we improve our public discourse? What do I learn from talking to people I don’t agree with on political and social issues, including my own extended family? I have worked with the Connecticut chapter of Braver Angels and hope to expand my work with them

Working with the Gerontology program at Central Connecticut State University, I started a story archive for state residents ages 60 and older. The goal: How did they handle major challenges in their lives, especially social and political challenges, and what can we learn from their resilence today?

I integrate community engagement work into many of my writing classes at Central Connecticut State University. I ask my students to use their writing, editing, and interviewing skills to story gather in their communities and then produce magazines or other print projects. The most ambitious project involved interviewing Gold Star mothers, who had lost sons in the Vietnam War, and producing a magazine of their stories and a traveling museum exhibit for the CT Veterans’ History Project and Connecticut’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the war.

Teamed with Photographer Susan McElhinney, Photo Editor for the National Wildlife Federation, and former Photo Editor for National Geographic, to produce a photo/image exhibit for the Visitor Center at the Petrified Forest in Arizona of the employees, volunteers and visitors who use the park. Two- week assignment resulted in an exhibit at the center and the first art exhibit at the National Park Service’s Wolf Trap cultural center in Virginia.