About the Author...
Mary Margaret Maxwell Russell was born on Valentine's Day, 1947, in Dallas, Texas. Her parents divorced when she was eight, and her childhood subsequently was divided among the very different venues of big city Dallas, her grandmother's small town home in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and her aunt's rural dairy farm, an experience that taught her to look at life from many different points of view. She graduated from East Texas State University in 1969 summa cum laude and received her master's degree in English from the University of Dallas in 1972.
She taught public school for 10 years, time again divided among locales as diverse as suburban Richardson, Texas, cowboy culture-oriented Mesquite, Texas, and Kaiserslautern, Germany. In 1978 she married William Russell and in 1980 retired from teaching to be a full time wife and mother, a much loved job in which she continues to this day. They have two sons together who are now 23 and 24.
Besides mothering, she has been involved in home schooling, landscaping, gardening, waterfall building, masonry, architecture, decorating, animal husbandry and training, farriery, ecological restoration, and international hospitality. All of these varied interests have contributed perspectives that are reflected herein.
Ultimately, this book derives from a class in urban geography Mary taught in 1976, but it is the culmination of 31 years of life experience and observations, and it has evolved through 10 specific years of probing reflection, hard research, and close analysis.
