Ann went to public and private schools in Lexington. Kentucky. Her first memory of reading was in the first grade when she figured out the word “first” in a word ladder and received praise. Her much older brother liked to tell her about science on occasion. She loved to read—from storybooks to the “Book of Knowledge”. She went to Sarah Lawrence College for her first two years, loving not having to hide her curiosity and interest in learning, unlike high school. She finished college at the University of Kentucky, majoring in English.

New York called and she moved there, worked in an office, but ended up at the Catholic Worker where she learned many things about various sorts of situations and people. There she married and moved to Mississippi and learned about growing cotton, race relations, and other ways of living. The family moved to Piney Woods School, a black school near Jackson where she worked with some developmentally challenged students. On to Koinonia Community in Georgia where she did childcare and teaching members’ children as well as her own. The family ended up in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1961. As a mother, always curious, she learned many things herself and tried to figure out ways to pass them on to her four boys.

Ann and her children moved to Vermont in 1971 where they were involved in Shaker Mountain School, a Summerhill-type democratic school. She became a staff, counseled and taught students. After she left the school, she took courses at the University of Vermont in graphic design, art, and calculus.

Then she became fascinated with making a computer do what she wanted it to do. Using a TRS-80 bought with a son, she began programming and taking courses at the University. When she saw an opening at a startup computer company using Apples with four color, she was excited—not really wanting to do green on black for banks. She is still at Laureate Learning Systems, a small company which designs and sells special education software. She has done programming, designed programs and graphics, created 3d animation, and is now developing interface designs. Recently, they produced several iPad apps--an interesting and complex learning experience.

Ann has traveled extensively around the world, both working on Earthwatch volunteer scientific expeditions from Papua, New Guinea and Australia to Israel and Russia, and traveling from Antarctica and Patagonia to Egypt and India. She is always fascinated with various cultures, the different ways people see the world as well as the common humanness of us all.