Contributors

Rick Schertle (Air Rocket) has taught middle school for the last 15 years in San Jose, where he lives with his wife and young son and daughter. As a kid, he and his dad tried many things and became experts at none, but had a lot of fun along the way. As an adult, his projects have become bigger, like his latest, converting an old Mercedes to run on veggie oil. His family inspires his projects, and together they enjoy their backyard chickens, world travel, and camping. With a love of nature and simple living, Rick often wonders whether modern technology enriches or unnecessarily complicates our lives.

When Katie Dougherty (MAKE account manager) isn’t busy “convincing companies to get behind the DI Y movement,” she’s riding horses, traveling, spending time outdoors, or reading. She competes with her horse Willoughby, who “takes magic naps in his stall where he lays out like a dog and twitches and snores in his sleep — not normal for a horse!” Her passion for horses is well known at the office, but she’s also interested in sustainability and “knowing where my food comes from.” She’s famous for her mojitos and horse cookies, but not necessarily in that order.

Karen Hansen ( Tim Kaiser profile) is a Minnesota farm girl turned “urban junkie.” Blame it on dropping out of school at 18 to work in Paris and Berlin. Now an allegedly grown-up clarinetist and writer, Karen has studied in London and worked on assignment in Norway and Denmark. Her favorite jobs out of classical mode have been orchestra gigs with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in a granite quarry and with the Moody Blues engulfed in marijuana smoke, and interviews with musicians at the Bent Festival. Karen runs around the lakes in Minneapolis, where she lives with LOHL Bill and six clarinets.

Elena Dorfman (cover photographer) currently resides in New York, overlooking the busy waterway of the Hudson River. A photographer and filmmaker, she just completed a five-minute film on horse racing. This is her second shoot for MAKE, and she has enjoyed both experiences immensely. You can see her work at elenadorfman.com.

Doug Desrochers (Wind Tunnel) has been voiding warranties, often to his parents’ dismay, since early childhood. One of his passions is airplanes: he started flying at age 16, graduated and instructed at the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, and currently flies tests for ASEC, Inc. His very patient wife humors him, and his two kids are alternately amused and embarrassed by his maker antics, which include model rockets, basic machines, breadboarding electronics, and general goofiness. He has just about every type of tool in the book, after moving into a “money pit” five years ago and rebuilding the house room by room.

“A physician at heart,” Hugh Young Rienhoff Jr. (My Daughter’s DNA) lives on the San

Francisco Peninsula with his many-talented wife, three children, and “a variable number of rabbits.” When he’s not developing a drug to help children with beta thalassemia to manage their iron overload from blood transfusions, he makes waffles and builds radios with equal excitement. How does he feel about genetics? “The field is lost and needs to return to its roots of patient orientation. Too many people have genetic conditions that can be understood if we would only use the technology for their benefit.” But don’t worry, he says. “It will happen.”

10 Make: Volume 15