“In the United States, female fisticuffs were marginalized, first as erotic vaude…” — Katherine Dunn

My background is standard American blue collar of the itchy-footed variety. We're new-world mongrels. The women in the family read horoscopes, tea leaves, coffee bubbles, Tarot cards and palms.

American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

We came to Portland because there was a good alternative public school. Friends who lived there told me about it, and my son loved it. I left his dad and went to work slinging hash in a breakfast diner and working nights tending bar in a biker tavern.