www.edgybear.com

• Black Bear photo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, public domain.

Founder & Editor

Jim Anderson, Ph.D., founded the EdgyBear Community in late 2007. He has earned a living by playing the trumpet, making movies and TV commercials, doing photography, and writing. He also worked—in the belly of the beast—as a speaker, trainer, consultant, and executive coach. His clients were mostly senior executives in corporate, non-profit, and Government organizations, including Presidential cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEOs, COOs, presidents, board chairmen, directors, and senior vice presidents. Lately, he's been a political strategist and grassroots organizer. (Someday, maybe he'll figure out what to be—if he ever grows up.) Jim also served in the U.S. Army, including a tour as a Captain in Viet Nam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. Since the 2000 election, when George W. Bush got appointed President, Jim has worked fervently—at local grassroots levels—in efforts for progressive change and in campaigns of candidates for local, state, and national offices. He has a kind heart, sharp mind, and creative spirit, plus a daily spawn of the wickedest puns you'd ever want to groan at. An honored client once said that Jim brings people "rigorous truth in a caring way."


Contributing Editor

Donna Strickland is a devout, conscientious progressive activist. She was born among the liberals in California; was raised on military bases across the country; has been married for 30 years; and has one son. Donna has earned degrees in Business Management and Computer Technology. She is a graphic designer who runs her own business. She is vigorously active in local politics and grassroots causes. She puts her beliefs into action by attending major gatherings for peace including at Fort Benning's School of the Americas; Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, Oak Ridge; and Aerojet, a manufacturer of depleted uranium penetrator cores. She has also attended several major anti-war protests in Washington, D.C.--which provoked a local "Letter to the Editor" suggesting she should move to another country. But, forget that--she will not be moved. She thinks the most influential gatherings are on local street corners, proving the power and potential of grassroots organizing. Spiritually, she believes we each travel our own unique path, while we all strive to arrive at the same destination: no one path is superior to another. Her hobbies are hiking, reading, and meeting live bears on trails in the woods. Among her friends, she is known as "Peaceworker."


Contributing Writer

Dr. Graham Leonard received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in education with a focus on linguistics, psychology, and Arabic. He has devoted much of his life's work to the Middle East, where he lived for almost 40 years. He has taught at numerous institutions, including the American University of Beirut, Peking Normal University in Beijing, the University of California at Irvine, and Oxford University in England. In 2004, he ran for U.S. Congress in the First Congressional District of Tennessee (where his family has lived since 1760). In 2005, he spent six weeks seeing Iraq first-hand, embedded as a journalist with Tennessee's 278th National Guard. In May 2007, he returned to the Middle East to visit Beirut and Jordan. He is a strong advocate of the Touchstones Program—a discussion-based educational method that empowers students to read, write, and think more effectively than other approaches. He has introduced this method to the West Bank and Gaza, and to students in the United States. Most recently, he also introduced the method into the educational system in Jordan. Dr. Leonard currently lives outside Washington D.C., where he spends time writing on current affairs, lecturing on the Middle East, and doing innovative work as an educator and commentator.


Contributing Writer

Kitty Manscill was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She was raised in the National Park Service and thus comes "naturally" by her intense feelings for the natural environment. While a student at the University of New Mexico, she worked in the campaigns of two men running for seats in the state legislature, one of whom later became one of New Mexico's most progressive governors. After graduating from the University of New Mexico and working at a number of different jobs, she became an Historian at Colonial National Historical Park. She married a Park Service employee, had two children and, when her husband died, went back to work with the NPS. She retired as Museum Curator at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She is a member of the Sevier County Public Library Board of Trustees and volunteers in the Genealogy Department of the Sevierville Library. She is an active member of her local community Episcopal Church, where she is also a hard-working member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, an organization working for peace and non-violence in the whole world.


Contributing Writer

Erik Plakanis was born in Kendall Park, New Jersey, to a post-WWII immigrant father from eastern Europe and a mother whose lineage traces back to the Mayflower, probably long enough to make his family "legal immigrants"— unless you ask a Native American. Somehow, Erik was a Reagan Republican until he figured out trickle-down economics was a hoax. He graduated from Georgia State University, then worked in Atlanta as financial controller at a post-production video facility, mostly making TV commercials. Finally, he and his wife (both lifelong naturalists) decided to make their passion for the outdoors their life's work. They formed A Walk in the Woods—an outfitting service for backpacking, guided hikes, and other nature programs, dedicated to raising people's environmental awareness by direct encounters with nature. Since the 1970's, Erik has worked to protect the environment in non-violent direct actions, lawsuits against major polluters, grassroots political actions, and national campaigns. Today, he lives with his beautiful wife in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains, trying to change the world, one person at a time.


Contributing Writer

Vesna Plakanis is a dynamic, highly-skilled progressive activist. She is well-known for storming windmills, fighting the power, and shouting the emperor has no clothes. As an evil-doing liberal, she opposes prayer in the schools and secretly heads the international "War on Christmas." The right-wing conspiracy falsely accused her of spray-painting church steeples and knocking over creches. She has run for public office, in a red conservative district, on the Lunatic Left platform (getting minus 12 votes). Once, she chased her husband in the streets with a carving knife after he made a positive remark about George W. Bush. Like all tree-stroking environmentalists, she is committed, sincere, and thus dangerous. Vesna comes from a long line of world-changers. In France (where else?), her brave partisan grandmother singlehandedly won World War II by leading the French resistance. Vesna convinced the Governor of Tennessee to listen to citizens before constructing hideously-ugly roads through their communities. Before Vesna, the state authorities acted without listening. Now, they listen a while, before they do any new uglifying. Vesna is a lifelong naturalist and can tell a bear from poison ivy or a hoot owl from a hemlock. She often leads a wilderness getaway for women, called: "No guys! Great, now let's talk!" But seriously, Vesna Plakanis is a brilliant, passionate eco-warrior who says: "To save ourselves, we must save our planet&mdashnow."


Contributing Writer

Darrell Whitchurch watched the U.S. civil rights movement start down the street, in the seventh grade in Little Rock, Arkansas, when President Eisenhower sent troops to integrate the local high school. During later years, he has worked as a proud union member with the International Photoengravers and Lithographers. he has also been a beer and wine store owner, real estate agent, and political organizer in Kentucky. He and his wife, Patricia, met while attending Kent State University in Ohio, where they were political activists. Since Patricia was a gifted artist, they opened a gallery in a beautiful mountain area—in the "reddest" political county of eastern Tennessee. That's how Darrell, the near-socialist lefty, ended up in an ultra-non-progressive area. When Patricia battled cancer, they learned very personally that the U.S. health system is dysfunctional and broken. When Patricia passed away, Darrell took up skydiving and got active in local politics. Today, he serves on government boards, civic committees, and grassroots political action teams. On a good weekend, Darrell hangs his feet in the clouds. On any other day, he still keeps his head there.


Contributing Writer

Don Williams is a widely published columnist, blogger, short story writer and the founding editor of New Millenium Writings, an annual literary anthology published since 1996. He is working on two novels plus a 2nd printing of collected journalism, Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People. His articles have appeared in Poets & Writers, Writers Digest, Crescent Review, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Chattahoochee Review, Smokies magazine, and many others. As a journalist, he's won more than two dozen awards for his features and columns, including a Golden Presscard Award, the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize and a National Endowment for the Humanities award. As a writer for magazines and newspapers, he has interviewed or profiled John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, William Kennedy, Ken Kesey, Lee Smith, Larry Brown, and many others. he has interviewed presidential candidates, entertainers, street people, adventurers, prisoners, schizophrenics, participated in war games, covered manhunts for murderers and rapists, and interviewed 10 of the 12 astronauts to walk on the moon. Don lives with his wife, Jeanne, a special education teacher, their children, and assorted pets in a secluded valley in Tennessee.

Copyright © 2008
by EdgyBear