Bluebead Mountain Trading Co.'s better and far worser halves, partners and directors Linda & Mike Woal

Linda Kowall Woal, mild-mannered reporter/Superwoman

Linda's version: Linda's bio is under construction; she's on the phone.

 

Mike's version: Hi, This is Mike, Linda's husband. We lost Linda this March 29. 2007. She was 56. She was a newspaper reporter, internationally published author and museum exhibition "curatrix." Her field was mass culture in general and, especially, early, silent film history. You can "Google" her to see some writings or visit www.bluebead.com, our website. Linda, of course, founded the business and the website.

Other? An M.A. in film history from S.F. State U. and an immersion in Native American/Navajo/ Southwestern culture and art. Linda founded and directed the Gallup (NM) Film Festival, 1993-98 and the "Eyedazzlers" Navajo weaving exhibit at the Sedgwick Cultural Center in Germantown, Philadelphia in 1989. I used to call her "Last-Minute Linda." More than once, she'd work for 75 hours without sleep on, say, an NEA grant, and then I'd chase the FedEx truck to get the copy to Washington by deadline! Before I knew her, in the mid-80s, she curated the famous "Peddler of Dreams" show about early film (Phila's Sigmund Lubin Co.) at the Phila. National Museum of Amercan Jewish History. (She was about the world's authority on such stuff!) Linda and a few friends saved Glenside, PA’s famous Keswick Theater from the wrecking ball. (She put up an $8000 claim award for a spiral knee fracture suffered in a fall!)

And yes, she was a hero in the face of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since babyhood. Linda was a miracle! What she didn't get to teach me then, she's teaching me now.

We were married in 1989, and that's almost 18 glorious years of, every morning, "Good morning, Sweetheart; I love you. It's a beautiful day" (even when it rained!). We lived in San Francisco, Gallup NM and, since 2000, Glendale, by Phoenix.

I'll never find anyone like Linda again. It is a heartbreaking blessing to remember her.
For Linda,
Mike

 


A mirror image of Linda & Mike

 

White Shell and Black Jet (named for the eastern and northern sacred mountains of Dinetah', the Navajp homeland) are Bluebead Mountain's interns, customer support representatives and beta testers. Here, they are doing what they do best.

<<Back to Bluebead's "Welcome" page

Mike Woal (all organizaton, but substance?)

Mike’s years living and teaching in Gallup, NM, with his wife, Linda, brought many dear Navajo friends, both from the town and reservation communities and from the University of New Mexico-Gallup Campus. (About 75% of UNM-G’s students are Native American, almost all Navajo.) Living among Navajos, and teaching English composition, as well as mass media history/survey courses, to Navajo students, was a profound immersion in a truly “Native” American culture. Mike also taught at Gallup’s alternative Central High School, an eye-opening exposure to the situation of today’s generation of Navajo adolescents.

For several years, Mike was faculty editor/advisor of the Red Mesa Review, UNM-G’s literary and arts magazine, whose mission was to give voice to young, fresh American Indians writers and artists. With his wife (the director), Mike helped found the annual Gallup Film Festival and sustain it through its 4 years. The festival featured Western, but especially American Indian, films, and many American Indian filmmakers and artists came to town for its gatherings (as did Navajos from the Gallup area, many of whom, and their relatives, had appeared in these films).

Talk about a misspent life!: Mike has degrees in English and American Literature, and in Radio/Television/Film and Mass Communication. Having moved from Gallup to the Phoenix area, he currently teaches English composition at Glendale Community College and Arizona State University-West in Glendale, AZ.) Mike has published widely in areas such as aesthetics, mass media research, and film history and social criticism.

Apart from wandering in academia, Mike participated in ”Berkeley in the 60s” (and 70s), trade-work (farming, construction, etc) and homesteading in the Pacific Northwest thereafter. His interests include Southwestern and American Indian culture (!), travel, computing and “classical” music (i.e., Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead).