LynneRodgersMiller

Professional Notes: I have my own consulting business focusing on helping people develop techniques to assess effects of land management on resources. The emphasis of this work is looking at forestry and its effects on salmon. The groups I work with include representatives of the timber industry, Indian tribes, environmental groups and government agencies, and my clients have spanned each of these groups. We have been working for the last fifteen years or so to develop techniques that all these groups can agree on for objectively assessing forest practices and helping to plan for them.

The reality is that I spend much more of my time these days hanging out with my kids, helping teach their math classes, desktop publishing and planning to keep our old house from falling down.

Life since ISKL: well, everyone who’s attended a reunion has heard some of my update… I graduated from Amherst College in 1980 with a double major in Political Science and Classical Languages. The year I took off between high school and college makes my high school and college reunions fall on the same years: makes a busy summer each five years, but I can’t resist either of them!

Graduation from Amherst was followed by a stint in the Hawaii State Legislature and involvement with a Hawaiian-rights group, the Protect Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana, which sought restoration of the island used by the U.S. Navy for target practice since World War II.

My original notion of attending law school was soon eclipsed by

a) a reluctance to whittle away three years of my young life in law school

b) interest in learning about the technical issues in environmental protection

c) enthusiasm for geology field trips.

An interest in improving environmental planning by applying an understanding of the technical issues involved led to a much longer stint in graduate school earning me a Master’s in Geology in 1988. My thesis research on climate change and projected sea level rise was not only exciting; it was and remains somewhat alarming. My professional career has since taken on slightly more tractable problems and their solutions.

In graduate school I met and married my beloved Nebraskan physicist-turned-seismologist-turned-geomorphologist Dan Miller. We moved to Seattle in 1987, where we heard the skies were gray, the kayaking easy, and the opportunities in the geologic business plentiful.

After several years in the environmental consulting business evaluating soil samples, planning environmental remediation projects and researching the environmental history of properties as part of transfers, I jumped at the chance to work on the development of the watershed analysis techniques that have kept me professionally occupied since then.

What really captivates me: I am as entranced as anyone could be by the eccentricities and wonder of our kids: Helen (10/16/94) is ten: she is a studious pianist, drawer of odd and complex systems, compulsive reader, and a soccer and Nordic skiing enthusiast. Amelia (8/15/96) is eight and a seeker of companionship: “Can’t we just invite SOMEONE over?” and religion: “I’d like to go to church and learn a bit more about God. I think of him as this big guy with a beard and some powers – not just like Dave [our church-going neighbor with the bearded Einsteinien hairdo] not that Dave doesn’t have some good powers too…”; a classical guitarist and incorrigible crafter (not inherited from Mom) whipping up purses, powerpoint presentations, shrinky dinks, stuffed animals, novels, greeting cards, with any free moment and scrap of material.

Dan and I work together in home offices and appreciate the flexibility it gives us, but sometimes regret that we have to leave town to leave work behind. Our lives are full of fine family candlelight dinners, plans for our new backyard climbing wall (drop by this summer to check it out!) and lots of cross-country skiing.

The Future: I’m not sure that I’m thinking of the “second half” or our game yet, since Dan and I are only a quarter of the way through our 80-year trial marriage. The last few years have been jam-packed with little girls and their activities. I completed my first (sprint) triathlon this summer (a remarkable feat as anyone who remembers my athletic prowess in college can attest), and I’d like to do more. My larger goal for the next couple of decades, as the hum of our family activities begins to fade a little, is to try and devote the energies that have gone into them into improving other folks lives. Give me a couple of years to figure out what path that might take.

Top row: Zsuzsa (Steve's wife), sister Christie, me, sister Sharon, Sharon's husband Duncan; second row: Brother Steve, his daughter Rhiannon,my husband Dan, my mom Barbara,

Maile (Sharon's oldest), my dad Ted, Christie's oldest Sarah, our Helen, Christie's husband Bill; bottom row: Steve's oldest Nicholas, our daughter Amelia, Christie's Carolyn, Sharon's daughter Claire, Christie's Julia. Got everybody straight? There'll be a quiz. That group has since been joined by Steve and Zsuzsa's new son, Domonic (known as Domino).