A Little about Us

Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Tom used to be an Aussie. He still pronounces some words funny. He spoke Hungarian before English, so arguably he was born a Hungarian. His father's memoirs of Hungary, the War (the one after the one to end all wars), and the Australian years, some of which Tom translated from Hungarian, are available through Lulu online. His books on Shivabalayogi and his translations of Hungarian historical novels are available on Shivabalayogi.org and Amazon respectively.

Tom moved to Seattle in December of 1966, lived in Madrid for a half a year, then lived in Seattle some 34 years collecting a high school diploma and two college degrees. He spent about a year in India over nine visits in the 1990's and has authored several books on Shivabalayogi.

Tom is a 1976 bicentennial naturalized citizen of the U.S. of Vespucciland and a real Merkin.

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Shari was born in Taft, California, and grew up in Golden, Colorado, and in Ankara, Turkey. She has also lived in Libya, Madrid and Ibiza. Shari lived on Whidbey Island since the early 1970's until we moved south to the Old Pueblo.

Shari has worked many years as a massage practitioner and professional Middle-Eastern dancer and teacher.

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We met in 1998, married in India in 2000, then moved from Ballard to Clinton on Whidbey Is. Having lived in Puget Sound (a/k/a/ Lower Alaska) for four decades, we know a little something about cold, dark, damp weather. Which is why we became snowbirds in 2006, migrating in autumn to spend winters in Tucson. Oddly enough, we came to the realization that owning and living in two houses isn't fun, so we settled in Tucson full time in 2010.

Being newcomers, we still have curiosity about the desert, and still spend as much time as we can outside, whether gazing at the stars or dipping in our cement pond. We also like to irritate friends and family back in Puget Sound with weather reports from the Sonoran Desert on account of they don't see the sun very often.