Katherine Bahnsen Stikkers has been both an undergraduate and a graduate student, earning BS and MS degrees from universities in charming but struggling Rust Belt cities. She is the daughter of an electrical engineer and the wife of a civil engineer. Her undergraduate degree is in industrial engineering. (Yes, IE. She can hear all you EEs, CEs, MAEs, and ChemEs out there snickering, and she does not care.)
In her academic and professional careers she wrote papers, reports, procedure manuals, and technical briefings. As a research assistant in graduate school she proofread journal articles for publication, and as a devoted wife she edited and proofread (free of charge) her husband’s doctoral dissertation in Engineering and Public Policy. Her favorite genre, however, is the personal letter. On paper. With a pen. (How quaint.) And now she writes this blog, which is expected to lean heavily toward her fabulous life as a parent and homeowner – since these two items consume most of Katherine’s free time and disposable income – but will undoubtedly address other subjects from time to time. (One can stomach only so many posts about how much she hates her hedge.)
Katherine loves languages and is fluent in English, with its richly nuanced vocabulary and unfathomable, exception-laden spelling rules (which she has gone to great lengths to embrace; speak not to her of this silly notion of standardization). She enjoys the challenge of describing technical information clearly and accurately, whether for an audience of experts or for the general public. And she absolutely adores writing in the third person, especially about herself.
In the past, Katherine has spent time as a community organizer, a local government analyst, a laundress, a data entry clerk at the dawn of the library bar code era, an English teacher for speakers of other languages, a caregiver for an adult with dementia, and a church treasurer. She misses some of those seasons of her life more than others, but relishes the time she now spends as mother to a small perpetual motion machine. He goes by the handle “DB” in the blog, which stands for “[adjective beginning with d] boy.” Often it’s “dear” or “delightful” or “darling,” occasionally “devilish” or “danger” (which is not technically an adjective but is SO appropriate for the boy who, at age two and half, is found standing at the top of a half-flight of stairs trying to decide if he can jump all the way to the bottom in one go). Once in a great while the D will represent something markedly unflattering.
The name of this website comes from the late Joan Sellers, under whom Katherine studied Modern Dance as a youth. “Run Run Leap,” an exercise in moving through space, was Katherine’s favorite way to cross the dance studio. Joan made a living doing what she loved, and Katherine hopes for that as well.