Darlene has occupied her time with everything from waitressing to political campaigning with banking, fundraising, owning and managing her own business and even working for the state in between. She somehow found time to raise a fabulous son who turned out to be a good guy raising a loving family himself now. She says “Who could ask for anything more?’ Darlene is an avid gardener and loves her home here in Martin County “as much as anyone can love a dot on a map”. Granddaughter to a farmer and daughter of a surgeon, she feels these experiences gave her the ability to see issues from many perspectives. Her passions are history and economics which she studied in college and continues to read. Darlene would still be attending college if she could “walk into a classroom without everyone assuming I’m the professor”. As we know, no college course can teach you the lessons and consequences of choices made in real life. And since wisdom hopefully comes with age, she looks at her present writing endeavors as the effort to “impart a tiny bit of that to others. And, if not wisdom, at least information.” Darlene feels that in this era of constant bombardment by social media and fast and furious information and “mis”information (“we used to call it lies”), she hopes that her short articles find a reader or two and tells them something they didn’t know. Further, she hopes in some way that the information is useful enough that the reader mentions it to someone else. That would be, to her, “the height of praise and the greatest of compliments.”