Who is Moxie Cosmos?

Moxie was born around 1970, fully grown, with three young children, and on her way to... well, Moxie knew more about where she didn't want to go than about where she wanted to be.

She was an observer of rapidly changing society and a critic, writing letters to editors and letters of complaint. Her targets were ministers, doctors, lawyers, ex-husbands — and lest you think they were all male, let me tell you that she had her own mother as well as some ultra-feminists in her sights.

She was inspired most by Jesse B. Semple, or "Simple," the innocent bystander whose insight and undeniable logic made Langston Hughes' Chicago Defender columns so popular in the 1940s.

Like Simple, Moxie is no fool, though her job is to raise questions, not to offer pearls of wisdom. The existence of Moxie explains why Karen has chosen to be an Independent Writer, generally interviewing other people about their ideas, especially artists, architects, builders, developers, designers — also doctors and nurses; and educators. Her field of interest is broad. You might even say, "inconclusive."

Understanding life is Moxie's life work. It is Moxie who interviewed "Women Who Has Lived in One Place 50 Years or More" in the 1970s. It is Moxie who crafted "Making Connections: A Family History Workbook" for the Tucson Public Library; Moxie who decided to create a kids program called "Utopias" so they would learn to vote; and it is Moxie, disguised as "Sophie George," who, in a testy relationship with a police detective, helps out friends and acquaintances when they get into trouble in Karen's occasional attempts to write mysteries.

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