THIS WAS A DAMP SUNDAY MORNING in the Cotswolds, near Milton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, in November 2011. Although I was once born in England, I've lived in Canada since I was six weeks old, with detours to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, India, and the UK. I'm writing the biography of a brilliant American woman named Sarah J. Farmer (1847-1916). Her enterprise at Green Acre, a summer conference program in Eliot, Maine, became the centerpiece of her lifelong quest to free herself from the social limitations imposed on women, the constraints of rigid religious thinking, and the domination of powerful men. In doing so she succeeded in establishing an ongoing parliament of religions at Green Acre, and in pressing thoughtful Americans to negotiate with a kaleidoscope of spiritual beliefs, social ideals, and ways of life that distant peoples -- as well as homegrown Yankees -- were carting with them into the modern world.

And I'm doing it while trying not to starve.

In 2012 I created, edited, and co-wrote 239 Days In America, a social media documentary about 'Abdu'l-Bahá's eight-month-long journey across North America at the culminating moment of the Progressive Era in 1912. He reached across political, religious, racial, class, and gender lines to confront Americans with a vision of human nature, social unity, and the nation’s future that was 100 years ahead of its time.

Please join me on Twitter. And I hope you enjoy the Cotswolds.