Kerridwen Mangala McNamara is an Indian-American with a Master's degree in Bacterial Genetics who lives in Flyover Country (the far northern end of the US South) with her husband, The Professor, four of her six children, and three goats. The goats eat, The Professor plays chess, and the children largely unschool while Mangala writes. Mangala is a former professional bellydance instructor, currently coaches FIRST Lego League and model government teams, runs homeschool parent support groups, and used to enjoy knitting, crotchet and embroidering Temari balls but now is much more boring as she rarely does anything but write, argue economic theory with her 17 and 14 year olds, and wonder loudly if her 12 and 10 year olds do anything other than watch Minecraft videos. She owes her love of books and reading to her mother, who was a professional folklorist and could recite - from memory - stories from every nation in the United Nations.Mangala spent most of her life as a Math-Appreciator, but definitely NOT a Math-Enthusiast. To be honest, her tolerance for Math has its ups and downs these days, and that nasty old Fear Monster bites her in the butt whenever she tries to help her High School Senior with Calculus. (Higher math is not like riding a bike...) One of Mangala's major goals is for her kids not to share that Math Fear, however. Nor her fear of dogs and high places. All three topics are a work in progress with greater and lesser successes and failures, and aside from occasional nightmares about suddenly discovering she was registered for a college course she didn't know about right before Finals Week... it's going well enough that Child #3 (Calculus-kid aka Car-Guy aka "I hate math" Guy) was recently heard to be advocating for Math now being "fun" to a younger child and telling him to stick with it till the other kid gets there. (Note that Child #3 never said this to Mangala directly... it was passed to her through another sibling.)You never know...