Patty is a native of Sodus Point and boomeranged back to Rochester with her husband Dan McIntosh in late 2017, just in time to enjoy her first upstate NY winter after many years in Los Angeles.  An anthropologist and journalist by training and university degrees, she taught anthropology at Keuka and Cornell before working on numerous projects as a writer/photographer/editor/field producer for National Geographic magazine and books.  She has worked free-lance for various publications and museum projects.  Her book High Exposure: Hollywood Lives, was published by the Los Angeles Times.

Her anthropological fieldwork includes working with traditional potters and musicians in North Carolina, the Tlapanecs of Mexico, the Kayapo on the upper Xingu in the Amazon, and three years on the excavation of the Great Temple of the Aztecs in Mexico City.  A co-founder of ACCESS, Community Arts & Education, a small consulting company in LA, she spent five years co-leading a major federally funded project to create effective strategies to re-introduce the culture of the arts, including music, back into the elementary school curriculum in the state of California.

Patty is thrilled to be back living in this area, appreciating Sodus Bay in the summer and taking advantage of the fabulous arts and music opportunities that surround her.  She is loving being close to Eastman where she commuted in high school to study oboe.  Patty and Dan have two children, Robby and Douglas, both music lovers and creators, who spent their childhood summers sailing here and love to visit.  Her mother was a chemistry major at the U of R.