|
I am Bret S. Beall, MS, PhD (Cand)
and CEO of GOD-DESS. Welcome! I’d like to share
with you part of my Path that has led me to you.
I was born in California’s
San Francisco Bay area and lived there until I was seven.
During this time, my family often took vacations to
the seashore and to the redwood forests. There, I first
felt the great interconnectedness of all life. At seven,
I moved with my family to St. Louis, Missouri, where
I continued my environmental interests (including growing
houseplants). When I was twelve, we moved to the Ozarks
of southern Missouri, where I lived on a farm and witnessed
intimately the cycle of birth, life and death. We raised
cattle, ducks, geese and rabbits, and I worked on our
neighbor’s pig farm; we also grew a variety of
produce and I first learned about preparing and preserving
food. It was also at this time that I truly began acting
on my interests in art, design and esthetics.
I did my undergraduate work in geology
at the University of Missouri - Columbia, graduating
with general honors and honors in geology; my coursework
included a typical array of liberal arts courses (art,
philosophy, history) along with the sciences (geology,
physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology). By living
in an off-campus efficiency, I learned the basics of
simple cooking and living. After graduation, I went
on to Masters and PhD work in evolutionary paleontology
at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; my studies
included geology, paleontology, biology, ecology and
evolution, all presented within the framework of proper
scientific methodology.
Ann Arbor has a terrific Farmer’s
Market, which inspired me and helped me to act on my
interest in ethnic cuisines and entertaining; this had
to be done on a budget (given my graduate student salary)
and efficiently (given my graduate student time requirements).
I satisfied my artistic inclinations by doing extensive
scientific illustration to accompany my original research.
Teaching courses and speaking publicly at student seminars,
at national and international meetings, and at various
clubs and organizational meetings provided a level of
excitement I had not experienced previously as I shared
the information and data that I had collected. “Sharing”
was the key, I realized, and this is when the seeds
of GOD-DESS were planted.
|
