Welcome!

... to the go-to location for details and updates about my upcoming memoir, BOOTSTRAP: A MONTANA ORPHAN'S RISE IN SILICON VALLEY.

In this issue

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, I've included a related essay and poem,

• JAMESTOWN. A creepy visit to the once-named "North Dakota State Hospital for the Insane" and the place where my father's father died.
• MAN ON TWITTER WHO ISN'T YOUR FRIEND looks at the importance of friendship, even if it's with a stranger.
• REMINDER: Sonora Poetry & Prose Crawl on June 5, 2026 will feature a reading of BOOTSTRAP'S Prologue - FREE EVENT.

A Bootstrap Update

I met Casey Cowan, President Roan & Weatherford Publishing, during a writers' conference in Denver, Colorado. Women Writing the West sponsored the event. As the name implies, WWW serves a niche market. It was exactly the right target for my manuscript, except that Casey was looking for fictional stories about the more historical western themed heroine. Still, he kindly listened to the BOOTSTRAP pitch about my unlikely journey in Silicon Valley during the Seventies and Eighties. When I finished, he slowly nodded and said he wanted the book. I'd learned a long time ago to stop selling once you hear yes. I fought the urge to keep talking. I fought the urge to laugh and cry and scream hurray. We shook on it. About a month later, he sent the publishing contract. That was the beginning of a journey that I never dared dream possible. And guess what? Casey serendipitously (and unexpectedly) published his advice for a book pitch last week. Click here to read it.

In 2019, I traveled to Jamestown, North Dakota to visit the North Dakota State Hospital (NDSH). Though it was once named the Hospital for the Insane, locals referred to it as Jamestown.

I became curious about the institution after reading correspondences between them and my father's mother when my grandfather and uncle were committed.

Before leaving California, I called NDSH and learned they had a museum open to the public. I timed my visit around museum hours.

Jamestown is a ninety minute drive west of Fargo where my mother's sister lives. At one-hundred-years old, Bertha is my oldest living relative. After dining at her favorite place, The Tavern Grill, I slept in a motel-like guest room in her assisted living home.

The drive from Fargo to Jamestown was flat and straight like the rest of North Dakota.

As prearranged, a hospital administrator met me at the back entrance. She opened the door to a stairwell. We walked up four flights of steps until we reached our destination. The starkness of the entry made me wonder if I'd made a prudent choice.

The hospital’s museum was housed in a long hallway. Along the walls hung several patient restraints, white jackets with sleeves tied in the back, and stiff jackets that hindered movement. One particular chair unnerved me. Seat belts drooped from the arms where unwilling patients were likely restrained.

Sixteen hundred patients resided at Jamestown during my grandfather's and uncle’s incarcerations in the 1930s.  

It was the onset of the Great Depression and farming communities were financially hard-hit. In a moment of rage, my grandfather burned down the neighbor’s haystack. His temper was, in part, sparked by poor economic conditions. When the neighbor reported him to the authorities, they forcibly took him to Jamestown. 

Around the same time, my twenty-year-old uncle had been diagnosed as deranged and schizophrenic and sent to the hospital. In a letter to his mother, my uncle wrote with childlike enthusiasm about his plan to return home. He regretted not seeing his father who had recently arrived. 

By 2019, there were only two hundred patients in the hospital, all were considered extreme cases. Weeks before I arrived, a patient murdered his cleaning attendant. Details of the shocking homicide were published in a Fargo newspaper the day after my visit.

While the population of the state was steadily increasing, the patient population at Jamestown decreased substantially. Benign patients, like my grandfather, were no longer admitted. Sadly, he never made it home. His heart failed while bending down to tie his shoes on release day.

Conversely, some patients may have needed more time. Tragically, six years after his release from Jamestown, my uncle committed suicide.

I never met my dad's father, mother, or oldest brother. I know their stories through letters and hospital record.

Contrary to my ancestors, I was free to leave when I wished. Even so, my heart was unsettled when I departed the sanitarium. 

I understood more deeply that a person’s ability to overcome a bad experience was paramount to good mental health. Each day brings opportunities and challenges. We can be rejected, angered, saddened, or unjustly treated. During times when our calm and sanity are pushed to the limit, we need to believe that nothing can break us.

And when we can’t calm our mind, or can't let go of an infraction, we have to recognize our frailty as a human being and ask for help. 

As I think about Mental Health Awareness Month and reflect upon my family’s struggles, I’m struck by something unexpected. In addition to sharing light with someone consumed in darkness, it’s also a time to take inventory of my own mental health.