Article Contributed on: 7/11/2008 1:59:48 PM
Cindy Carlisle, candidate for Senate District 18
My age: 62
My family: Husband
Baine Kerr, lawyer and novelist; daughter
Dara Kerr, human rights activist who has been working at Equality Now in New York, but is continuing grad school soon at Berkeley in journalism and Latin American studies; son
Baine Kerr, who just finished his second year at UCLA School of Law. He is working this summer for California Attorney General Jerry Brown and plans a career in public interest environmental law.
Education: B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Colorado.
My favorite place in town to hang out: The Trident.
What I like most about living here: Colorado 's splendid mountains and plains and waters and all their inhabitants, and the like-minded company of Coloradans who love this place.
My interests and hobbies: birding, hiking, wilderness and the poetry of Yeats, the Great Plains and short-grass prairie, marine invertebrates, and Hawaiian ukulele and slack-key guitar.
My favorite thing to cook: (has to be more than one) brownies, bourbon spiced pecan and key lime pies, and grits soufflé.
People who inspire me (and how):Eleanor Roosevelt, by being rhinoceros-skinned tough and the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; CU professors emeriti
Al Bartlett and
Jo Arnold who make me a better person every time I talk with them;
Henry David Thoreau and
Wallace Stegner, by their having lived lives commensurate with their art and environmental values.
How I have contributed to the community: twenty five years of civic involvement on Boulder City Council and the CU Board of Regents, directing the Grillo Center for Cancer at the Boulder library, serving on countless boards and committees like the Homeless Shelter Task Force, the Boulder/CU Working Group, Boulder's first transportation committee, the steering committee for Campaign Finance Reform Boulder , and the boards of the Center for Energy and Environmental Security, Ecocycle, the CU Art and Art History Advisory Board, the Boulder AIDS Walk, and New Era Colorado.
The biggest issues facing our district now: the interlocked imminent crises of water, energy, and climate disruption; a Federal administration that has brought down our economy in countless ways; lack of healthcare and affordable housing
Why I am running: I've been fortunate in that my years on both the Boulder City Council and the CU Board of Regents were times of transformational changes that put places I love in the vanguard of national leadership-Boulder as an environmental pioneer, and CU as a model in higher education for transparency, accountability, and women's safety. I am immodest enough to see myself as a change agent. I'm running because I hope to play a part also in the state I love in transformational changes that take Colorado to national leadership. And because, as Martin Luther King said, "the urgency is now."
To read Rollie Heath's Q&A, click here.