Linda McNeil, the Education SIG Chair of MLMUG, began her "Color The World Beautiful" philosophy early in her life with her love of books and the media.

La Linda

With the advent of the Radio Shack Model I (which was lucky to have 5k of memory stored on a cassette), Linda started her connection with computers. Her first teachers were two seventh graders sent to her by the math teachers to show her what could break the machines that were in her possession. The boys took great delight in the role reversal of teacher/student. Her work with audiovisuals took her into multimedia presentations and then into computer presentations and technologies.

Linda has recently retired from the 9-5 world of managing a fully automated and networked library with two accompanying Mac labs. Currently she is teaching for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, developing innovative assessment tools for teachers along with children's and young adults' literature on the Internet.

She can be pictured just like that commercial where the woman is working from her home with her feet propped up in slippers and lounge wears. Java chat sessions and graduate courses.coms are a long way from the colonial octagonal schoolhouses (and historic buildings) that Linda likes to conjure up in watercolors.

As a child she played with every art medium, but realistically states that her career started in the early 70's when she had to make a choice between art lessons or piano lessons. She found art to be addictive. Her career took off in a swirl of color.

She is known for her Chester County landscapes, hand colored etchings, and serigraphs. Her work can be located as far west as Japan and as far east as Saudi Arabia. Handmade paper is just one of the unusual facets of her art. The paper contains some uniquely incorporated items raging from onions, cattails, flower petals to herbs and other imaginative substances.

Put this all together and Linda's fascination with special format books is not unexplained. Just give her some dried plants like iris leaves and she'll create an unusual accordion, tunnel, carousel, or pop-up book. Linda is also chairperson of the Tri-State Young Adult Review Committee. This is an organization comprised of professional librarians from Southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. They meet bi-monthly to review new young adult titles published by the major publishers for school age children.

As chairperson of this group she is responsible for creating an extensive computerized database updating it across platforms, and publishing it for the Pennsylvania Department of Education on an UNIX platform. This task not only keeps her computer skills current but it keeps her eyes strained reading and writing reviews for 40-50 books every two months.

Linda's most challenging personal hurdle is finding the time to do everything she wants in a 24-hour day. Therefore, she joined the Procrastinator's Garden Club for her gardening addiction. Linda's flower filled garden and fishpond abound with texture and color. She just hasn't gotten around to pulling weeds, which help to provide the uniquely textured filler needed to hold up the heavy flower buds.

Linda is an eclectic, chronologically challenged artist, who found a medium she prefers, working with books--a medium that is many years older than she is. [We're checking this out to verify the facts. --Ed.] She finds them exciting, challenging, and gratifying as they combine the various facets of her life's many foci (library, computer, art, and gardening, and crafts). She feels there is still lots of time to create her masterpiece. An artist's work cannot become stagnant unless she herself ceases to grow because nothing remains the same over time.

— Maria O. Arguello