Our mother was a real dreamer and nature lover, and part of the late hippie “return to mother earth” homesteading movement  and while pregnant with me,  she read books on planting and  planted a garden where much food came out of by the time of my birth in September, the month of harvesting in New England.  My father arrived just in time from Chicago upon hearing he had a new born son, and arrived  for a fall harvest in the garden  after he  transplanted out of the City of Chicago, for a new found life living as a homesteader in a forest in the  country. Quite a change from an urban landscape to a dirt road path that led up to our home.  While my mother was in the hospital getting treated for cancer after my birth, my father with his first son, found his way to the garden to feed me fresh squash and pumpkins, corn, beets, cucumbers,  and many fresh vegetables my mother had planted earlier that year,  mushing them up and filling up empty baby glass jars which he fed me until my mother arrived from the hospital months later when the first snow came.  He spent 3 months feeding me, never having had to take care of a child before his whole life. He hiked up into the woods to build a stone well around a water spring which gushed fresh water out and I spent many years with my brothers and sisters unclogging the well of frogs and many animals we shared our fresh water  with in nature.

Mother raised bees, geese, and sheep, horses, german shepherds and many other pets and she got all of what would be her children of 8 into caring for animals, even making a sustainable fish farm on our property with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers and a grant she applied for.  The fish stocked there by the fisheries department,  were “our friends” and  everyday after school I would run out to see them in the lake we had built down in the fields below our home. Mother impressed upon me not to even kill a spider or bee, they were all part of the circle of the miracle life, something all of our mothers know maybe better than anyone on the earth. 

Mother’s immense compassion for nature, the oceans and every living creature and plant,  cultivated in me a love of nature and respect for what she called “mother earth” and “the great spirit” that created it all. And I had no idea I would be led into a career where for the past 20 years I have gotten to film so often in and around the oceans, and rainforests,  for television shows, surf television,  and documentaries I produced from my birth in the “Ocean State'' to travels immersed in documentary style filmmaking to the  greatest oceans and rainforests  around the world. Both my mother and grandmother are now gone , and it was only after this loss, that I realized how I had gotten here.  Every bit of the impact of my mother and grandmother childhood experience and love of the oceans and nature, art and writing,  led me here.  When my mother passed away in Connecticut in  2020, her last wishes for me, her son, and all of us siblings,  was to keep protecting our earth, the oceans and the littlest creature on our planet. So perfect that now on my  birthday  in 2021, I launched this project in honor and memory of a great mother,  photographer, writer , nature lover and giver of life who risked her life for my miraculous birth, and so she deeply  who touched and made me take off in my passions of nature and especially the oceans. 

When I was just five, I asked her how come the world was so messed up with wars and many issues, and she told me , “If women were allowed to truly lead and co create,  for sure we would not have such problems as they are deeply connected to water and all of creation”..  Thank you for passing this wisdom on mother, and the  torch you lit and  gift Mom and now I will gift it along to many others on my journey. And invite especially women, their children, to lead us all into restoring the world and its oceans,  after carrying us in their water. I hope that this platform will become one  where young and especially female  artists along with men,  have a platform to help promote their art and deep devotion to the earth and especially the oceans.