Life on the Edge

Biography

Stephanie Sonnleitner

Photographer, physicist, woodworker, healer, radical activist, witch...

After being raised in Wisconsin, I migrated south to Illinois for college, then all the way to the East for a bit of graduate school in chemistry, then to the magnificent Southwest for some more graduate school, this time in physics, and finally out to the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains of California, where I now live with my dear, dear wife, Rebecca Morn.

I have probably done a little of almost everything in this circuitous course through life, starting as an erstwhile young scientist. Shortly after beginning graduate studies in Chemistry at MIT, pot and the war happened. Well, wouldn't you know that I had to do something about that war, so I left graduate school to be a full time anti-war activist in Boston, working with the New England Resistance and the Boston Draft Resistance Group. Around about then, the Women's movement and the Gay movements were getting started and throughout the many following years, I have been more or less active in Women's and Lesbian rights causes.

Soon, however, it was time for a little spirituality to sprinkle itself into my life, so, along with so many others of my era, I got religion, so to speak. I was introduced to Zen Buddhism, and to New Age beliefs, did a short stint as some kind of New Age Christian, but then over the years, settled comfortably into Goddess worship, Wicca, and a bit of Buddhism. In the middle of all this, I decided to continue my graduate studies, but this time in Physics. I went to the University of New Mexico from 1975-1980 and earned a Doctorate in Theoretical Physics. Then, of course, after so much science, it was time for some more politics and religion!

During this period, I became a member of the Albuquerque pagan community, and eventually started several Women's circles there and worked to bring the Goddess more deeply into that community. At the same time, I was active in radical Lesbian politics, off and on. I also started my study of T'ai Chi in 1980 and practice to this day. I credit this practice for my excellent health and for my ability to center and ground and heal.

Ok, enough religion and politics, now it was time to be a real ordinary citizen. My aging mother moved in with me in Albuquerque and over the next 17 years or so, I just made a life for us, working here and there, making money doing this and that, until I met the love of my life, Rebecca Morn, and moved with her to these wonderful mountains near the ocean. In 1996, I kicked my 89 year old mother out, since I decided she was old enough to be out on her own by then. Actually, she was tired of being dependant and also felt I had done my share in taking care of her, so she got herself an apartment. I am happy to say she is still going strong at 96! I have two more sisters living in New Mexico, so she is not alone. I think she also realized that I needed some privacy of my own to pursue relationships and other things. I guess she was right, since I met Rebecca in late 1996 and moved in with her in 1997 - gotta love U-Haul. As for mom, well, we recently gave her our red Saturn as a replacement car for her old one and now she has new life, racing about the streets of Albuquerque, terrorizing whoever dares get in her way. Did I mention that she is feisty? And to think she came out to New Mexico in 1978 to die.

After a few years of maintaining a house in California and New Mexico, and then in California and Nevada, we finally settled into our current house on 10 acres of Redwoods up in the hills above Boulder Creek.

Photography

My journey into photography began at an early age, with a little Brownie camera. I never had enough money to buy film in those days, but the seed was planted and when I could finally afford a camera and film for it, I found myself in Boston, in the midst of a massive social upheaval in our country. My first efforts with a real camera, a Mimaya-Sekor 35mm camera, came as I attempted to document the happenings in and around Boston as we fought to end the war in Vietnam. At the same time that I was taking pictures of our rallies and compatriots, I was experimenting with artistic photography. Almost all my work in those days was in Black & White, with only a few forays into color slides and color negatives. I did all my own processing and managed to get a little time in darkrooms here and there in Boston during those years. Along about 1973, I managed to get a decent job at the University of Massachusetts which afforded me access to a very fine darkroom. I took my first paychecks and bought a Kardan Color-S 4x5 camera and a Schneider convertible lens. This is the same camera I still use today. I have carried this camera up into the high Sierra, into the mountains and forests of New Hampshire, through the High Desert to New Mexico and many other places. During that period I also purchased another 35mm camera, a Pentax, but I had to disable the meter in that one in order to be able to preview the depth of focus. Nowadays, I use the 4x5 and a very nice digital camera we picked up last year, a Canon 10D 6.3 megapixel.

Science

Ah, science, such a tempting and elusive muse for me. I have always been of a scientific and mathematical mind. It seems to run in our family, with several of us being attracted to the mathematical and scientific areas. All but one sister and one brother (out of 8 total) ended up in some form of mathematically related  pursuit. My first interest was chemistry, either because I liked the teacher or because I was really interested in it. I simply am not sure any more. My next younger sister also went into chemistry for a bit, but shifted to programming and eventually became an MBA. I worked diligently to make a career of this, but ran into some minor roadblocks when I hit graduate school at MIT in the mid 60s. There were more important things to do and I realized as well that chemistry just didn't have the answers I needed. I was beginning to realize I wanted to know more about what was really behind everything than I wanted to be a scientist doing scientific things. After my sojourn into politics and religion in the late 60s and early 70s, I decided to give science one more try, this time as a physicist. I was sure there was some answer there that would help me understand existence and all those esoteric things. Well, there wasn't, really, after all, but it was a fun ride. At one point, when I was deeply embroiled in Radical Feminist politics, I mentioned to my advisor that I was thinking about leaving graduate school, because I didn't see how physics was relevant to anything in my life or the lives of women in the world. He had a simple and elegant answer that kept me at it. He said, more or less, 'Well, even if you do not see the relevance, you have to remember that people are more likely to listen to you if you have a PhD than if you don't. This may not be realistic or deserved, but it is true.' He was right, of course, so I stuck it out and got that silly degree. And now, lots of people who shouldn't listen to me, do.

Over the years, however, I found that I was constantly drawn back to science and so today, I still play around with it a bit, when I have time. I keep up with the major scientific issues of our times.