Ever since I was a child listening to my Austrian-born grandfather tell stories about his twenty-four years living in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, which was Indian territory before Oklahoma became a state, I have been been mesmerized by the stories of real people. In those early years I also often accompanied my pysician father on house-calls. I saw that patients are real people who have real lives, not just symptoms. They had yards littered with bicycles and kind words for a child. The idea was reinforced in me by my father that people's illnesses were only a part of their lives, just as their lives may be a part of their pain. With that knowledge, a therapist-writer was nurtured in me.

I am the author of two books, "Too Young to Remember," and "Oral History and the Holocaust," based on survivors' stories, plus various poems, plays and several one-woman performances which I performed nationally. A televised cutting of Sarah's Song, the musical for which I wrote words and books, was nominated for a regional Emmy.

"As Far As the I Can See" is my first memoir. It is based on the`year I spent working and living at an exotic jungle hotel in Mexico's Costa Maya, learning many life-shaping difficult lessons.