Hallo! I am so very pleased to offer you the Dissonant Weather column for Dissonant Times. I bring a raised-poor, working class, and Native raised-white perspective to this work. I am Chickasaw and Cherokee and feel a deep love for animals, plants, trees, clouds, the night sky, gurgling brooks, the ocean, and our exquisite, unique, precious, irreplaceable planet Earth.

Though I have no formal climate science education, I studied astrophysics as a young person. I became interested in ecology in 1977, then moved close to Glacier National Park, Montana in 1980 and fell in love with cryospheric science. I became active in the environmental movement in 1990–91. I've been a climate activist since the mid-1990s and also bring that perspective to the amateur weather forecasts for the Eugene area I've been posting on social media for many years.

Developing a global perspective on how the atmosphere works and interacts with the Sun, the oceans, the continents, and the Earth itself has allowed me to develop some intuitive theories about how climate change is affecting different parts of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, and I hope to share some of these insights with you from time to time.

Given the increasing attacks on the climate sciences, it's perhaps no surprise that I am beginning to see myself as something of a dissident amateur meteorologist and that has probably helped me get connected to this project.