About

I’m a librarian by day and a writer obsessed with blues music and Linux by night.

These are admittedly disparate strands, with the common thread that all of these areas lend themselves to deep dives, a wonderful thing for an always-curious person.

I am endlessly fascinated by my library world. I spend my days supervising the acquisition and organization of book and ebook purchases as professor/coordinator of Technical Services at LaGuardia Community College, part of the City University of New York. After years in library administration and web services, I’m energized by working with the physical collection, while also learning how to integrate everything, print and electronic, into our discovery layer, where patrons can search for and find what they need. I learned that while I love to lead, I’m not an administrator, so I moved to my current role, leading a major area in the hands-on, day-to-day work of librarianship. This work is a perfect fit for me.

I write extensively beyond academia. My music writing almost exclusively focused upon blues artists. I’m interested in conversations about their creative processes, as blues artists often don’t get enough respect in terms of their songwriting. I wrote about this work on my site, Working Mojo. I also regularly wrote for No Depression, Blues Rock Review, and Blues Blast Magazine.

That writing is on hold while I focus on raising my two young daughters. However, to scratch the writing itch, I’ve been working on short fiction, something I haven’t really done since I took creative writing as an undergraduate. It’s different work, but it’s been interesting using a different set of writing muscles.

I’m also a long-time Linux user. For years, I wrote The Linux Setup, my collection of interviews with desktop Linux users about their Linux setups. It informed my book, Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches, which teaches non-technical users how to use Linux for everyday tasks. While I no longer write Linux Rig, Linux, and free and open source software, is still a part of my life, something I use every day to do pretty much everything.

This site collects my writing around these areas.

I’m always happy to chat with anyone about these interests, especially how they intersect.

updated 2.15.24