The people who have supported and encouraged this enterprise are legion, and I can only repay them in small measure by thanking them here. Some I have already mentioned in the introduction to this work. For others, especially my family, there is little I could say that would even begin to describe my appreciation: my wise, funny, long-suffering husband, Rod Coltman; my talented and delightful children Esther Pasternack, Ethan Pasternack, and his wife Siobhan Rix; and my parents, of whom only my incredible stepmother Laura Uhlmeyer has survived to see the end of this project.

The primary debt lies in the gifts bequeathed to me by my father, Tom Uhlmeyer, my mother, Barbara Hoard, and my grandmother, Clarice Tate Uhlmeyer. My father and grandmother instilled in me my profound love of the Owens River Valley and my respect for family history. They nurtured my affection for the natural world, and encouraged me to pursue a never-ending education in order to keep satisfying an unsatiable intellectual curiosity that they helped to engender. To my mother I owe my imagination and my thanks for her insistence on living among the people in whose countries we were guests when I was growing up. Few American children have been blessed with the opportunities my family provided for me, and these lie at the core of how I have come to understand the world.

As both an educator and a perennial student, I also recognize the role that teachers can play in their students' successes. Mine have also been instrumental in guiding me toward the telling of this story: Victor Worsfold, Daniel O'Kane, Nancy Tuana, Charles Bambach, and countless others have inspired me to write and think over the years, and to make the kinds of connections that led to the ideas expressed by my "utopians."

The most challenging and inspiring model I've encountered in my travels through the life of the mind, however, is William Morris himself. He was the embodiment of the Renaissance man, and the consummate artist/designer/thinker/doer. His "nowhere" might not have come into being as he had hoped, but his ideas continue to inspire us to think about how we might live. My tale is only one small effort in that direction, but the supporting links on the website provide considerable evidence that Morris's views are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago.