One Good Thing One Creative Thing Day 14 & 15

Day 14

One Good Thing: Went sledding at kindercircle this morning, despite feeling awkward while I was there Alder and I had fun sledding down the hill.

One Creative Thing: I got back from errands and decided I should definitely start making this apartment a home, actually I was spurred into this idea the day before during the scary drive home past all the accidents. I am not a winter driver which means that we will be spending a lot more time in our house for the next few months.

I showed Alder all the fabrics that we had enough to make his curtains out of and let him choose. While he played 'boat' I ironed and pinned one curtain (they are ridiculously long).

Day 15

One Good Thing: The library had a copy of American Bloomsbury, a book I have wanted to read for a long time, since I heard and interview with the author when the book came out.

One Creative Thing: Kevin and I hardly ever get any time alone together so we have started a journal in which we respond to essays and poems together. One of us will read one and react and then the other will read the same article and write our own thoughts. We are starting with some Wendell Berry essays from The Way of Ignorance and What are People For? This morning I began my first response, unfortunately my writing was cut short by the people at the table behind me talking very loudly and distracting me from my writing.

One Good thing One Creative Thing Day 7

Quick note from work (I should be sweeping)

One Good Thing: Had a wonderful dinner with some of our family last night. The preparation for Thanksgiving starts now, Kevin is filling the wood bin and baking pies today with my aunt. Found an early twentieth century copy of this and read it late into the night.

One Creative Thing: I chose the yarn and pattern for my sweater (yes as in for me to wear). It's yummy Malibrigo Chunky in the Paris Night colorway (thanks Ab for the suggestion). Pictures to follow.

The World Made By Hand- a Book Review and Tangents

Our little part of Vermont sits in the corner butting up against Berkshire county in Massachusetts and Washington and Rensselaer Counties in New York. So, when I picked up James Kunstler's World Made By Hand I knew the setting intimately. Kunstler, who is more known for his nonfiction books takes draws on the ideas from much of his other writing, including the Long Emergency.

The idea behind the novel is that oil has run out, the United States has been ed in Washington DC and Los Angeles, and there has been two epidemics that have wiped out 1/3 of the population. But that is just the background. The story focuses on one small town in upstate New York and what life is like there. Told through the eyes of Robert who is a carpenter (at least at this point of his life) we see how, in a time when there is no power, no cars, and no centralized government, how the world of this small town evolves. While the plot of the story is driven by various conflicts and adventures Kunstler spends most of his time describing how, in a world without all of the modern "necessities" people get things done.

After reading the first third of the book one night I had to put it down for an entire week. I would get up in the middle of the night and think about the best way to use the land the family cabin is on, I made a list of all the skills I need to learn, I even figured out details about what strengths different family members had how they would be useful. I had to put the book down so that I could refocus myself. After a few days I went from the stressful 'Oh my god this is going to happen tomorrow' attitude to seeing that this isn't immediate but it is possible one.

Last night I picked up the book again last night and finished it. The stress of the week before had subsided and I was excited to find out about the characters. While it isn't a complex emotional story Kunstler does manage to make a reasonable transition from nonfiction to fiction with this novel. I've reviews that criticize his white only setting of the novel but I think it makes sense, he wanted to focus on how things would work, the only diversity is religious. But every book can't be everything, it is just one story so I forgive him the limits he put on the story. It would have been a different book if there were cultural differences that had to be addressed. This is a work of fiction it doesn't have to all things for all people.

The stress that World Made by Hand has left me with has transformed into an excitement that I haven't felt since childhood. While I know none of this is going to happen tomorrow or next month I get a thrill from imagining what exactly life would be like. As a kid I would spend hours imagining so many different realities for myself. What if I was a medieval knight on the road what would I bring? What would it be like to live in "olden days" (Little House on the Prairie)? These questions would fill my mind for hours, including much of my school days. But now I understand that it isn't just if these events happen to prepare for them but that some of these skills and approaches to life might actually be better for me.

All you hear about lately is local food and going green, change for saving our planet has been co-opted by fashion and popularity. What so much of the discussion about these changes forgets is how it affects us as people, right now. We've started making all of our bread products (with a few exceptions) this means that I spend up to an hour a week kneading dough. Not a big deal, except for me it is one of the best parts of my day, sure I could use the mixer to do it but there is something balancing about it, I look forward to it. A lot of these changes involve slowing down and taking more time to focus on ourselves, our families and communities, something that hasn't been important for decades. We live in a country where fame and excessive wealth is considered the apex of achievement. Children are spend more time with nannies and tutors than their own families so that everyone can spend their time 'getting ahead'.


Personally I'd like to slow down a little and spend more time focusing on being a family and enjoying our lives. Of course, that involves financial security but I am not willing to give up our happiness for a financial number that grows inversely to the amount of time we spend together or at least doing things we love.

Thoughts on Reading and Writing, a review of Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer

Until recently I did not really understand how to read and see what great writing was. I either was infected with the habits of a student, determined to find the meaning in every pieces of fiction or read things on such a visceral level that the story flowed into me more than being consciously read. This was also how I would approach my own writing. First I would write from the soul feeling as if I was channeling someone else's tale. Then as I rewrote I first attack the grammar and then try to match and place the meanings I wanted to get across, a messy and ineffectual process. I would be happy when I would create a good sentence but I saw it as a random and special occurrence rather than a goal.

Last week I read Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer. She starts the book focusing on words and works outwards through sentences and paragraphs and onto gestures, narration and further. Prose's main point is that great writers really do work to create great sentences, leave out whatever is unneeded and focus on the whole of what is presented. And, that readers today, especially in academia focus too much on meaning and not enough on the art of the writing. This does not mean that we should not search for meaning in the stories, only that it can be found through thorough reading not through a hunting.

Inspired by this and Molly, I picked up my copy of Fidelity by Wendell Berry. Choosing a story that I had not made notes in I read it for the words and feelings. I was left silent at the end.

This morning I picked up the same book and read another story, again for the words and feelings and was actually left with tears in my eyes by the end. Now I am beginning to understand what it means to write; and how much more than storytelling it is.

Afterwards, to amuse myself, I looked through one of the stories that I had marked up (thankfully in pencil) for an independent course on the importance of place I had taken a few years ago. First, I realized that I had no memory of the story. Then, seeing what I had underlined, it was obvious that my reading had been cursory, only reading for story line and 'relevant' phrases. Even in terms of the course I was taking this was unsuccessful, since much of the importance of place is found deeper not just in the sentences that mentioned place. There was so much more to the story than what I had seen during that first reading.

I realize now that so much of my distaste of certain books, most read for classes, was not because of the books themselves. Rather it was the method that we were trained to read them. My high school English courses resembled biology more than art. I remember specifically an entire quarter of ninth grade that was dedicated to Jane Eyre. This included two weeks spent on one chapter where we were given the task of dissecting and sourcing every single paragraph for meaning. At the end of the two weeks we took a test which we could bring notes to. My partner and I had ten typed pages of references and translations (and we were not 'smart' kids).

For what reason? I am sure at fifteen all I gained from the class was a distaste for anything written before 1950. This lasted until only a few years ago.

For those of you invested in your children's learning, especially at home, I suggest you read Prose's book. In someways it is a great form of parental deschooling. For that matter anyone who reads for pleasure should read it to see a new facet of any short story or novel. I think this is a book that I will pick up every few years as a reminder.

A Good Read

Rare two in one day post but I have to share about the book I am reading. More that I need to share about the author Gary Paul Nahban. The first book of his I read was The Geography of Childhood, a book of essays that he and Stephen Trimble wrote about children in place. It was a cold solitary winter when we were living outside of Mancos. This was years before we were even married or thinking about having children. But the book effected me deeply, it was in part how I became interested in the concept of place, and the importance of rootedness in a person's life. Since that book I have found authors like David Orr, Wendell Berry, Ron Miller and Mary Sojourner.

Then the other day while I was looking for a book online, Coming Home to Eat popped in to my view. It's he take on the importance of local eating and the process of eating within 250 miles of his home in Arizona. Sounds a lot like the Kingsolver book Animal Vegetable Miracle, actually they lived in the same region or years, but his came out in 2002. The point is that as with all his writing I was completely drawn in, and I can't wait until I have a few minutes to pick it up again.

All About the Books

I don't usually do memes but Camera Shy Momma "tagged" me and it's about books so who can resist.

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?
Paper back, I always need to have my book portable so I can pull it out if there is a spare moment.

2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it…
Rainy Day Booksellers, and we would have lots of comfy chairs and tea.

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

We can attempt to teach the things that one might imagine the earth would teach us: silence, humility, holiness, connectedness, courtesy, beauty, celebration, giving, restoration, obligation and wildness.
David Orr from "Earth in Mind"

4. The author (alive or diseased) I would love to have lunch with would be ….
Either Madeline L'engle or Michael Chabon. Of course I would be completely intimidated but in awe.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…Rooted in the Land because it is not only great but also diverse.
6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that….
would hold my book and turn pages for me as i lay on my bed and eat ice cream.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of….
reading during the summer as a child, when I spend hours reading what ever I could find around the house or my aunts' house and find a place outside and read only braking for food, swimming and occasional adventures along the stream.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be….
I can't choose, as a girl I wanted to be Allana from Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness Series. But I could also handle being Rita Female Nomad, traveling the world connecting through food and art, although I'd forgo the divorce.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is….
I'll be blatant anything by David Foster Wallace or Johnathan Safran Foer. I dislike authors who spend time tell you just how cool they are by the tricks they use, rather than letting their writing stand on it's own.

10. I hate it when a book….
ends weakly, as if the author only really had a beginning and a middle but didn't know when to stop or goes off on some extra tangent that doesn't stay with the main theme.

The way this works is that I am suppose to tell others to do this, so I guess Trish, Amanda, Aunt Amanda and Sarah (you two can just give it to me).

Madeleine L’Engle 1918-2007

I was going to write something different about eggplants and cooking them until they are nothing more than a sweet mass but the eggplants went bad. Then found out that Madelein L'Engle died on Thursday. She has been a writer that I have loved and looked up to for years.

I remember reading Wrinkle in Time on the floor of my summer camp's library. Not the first time but again when I was eighteen and a counselor. It was a rainy day off and there was nothing better to hide away in the library that was only used in the evenings. Over that summer I continued to re-read all of the O'Keefe and Murry family novels (think A Swiftly Tilting Planet or The Arm of a Starfish). It was the summer before college and I fell somewhere between child and adult the books were my escape.

Then a few years later a good friend gave me a copy of And Both Were Young commenting that Flip was me. It was the first time I had read a character that had spoken directly to me as a soul, and one of the few that ever has. I have read this book over and over again lending it out to people who want to understand me better. It probably one of her least known books but it will always be my favorite.

As a writer, and I have been making up stories since I could talk, she has been inspirational because of how she created an entire universe that was so magical and practical at the same time. One that was grounded in our world with a little Einstein, quantum physics, and mythology add to it. Like other loved books I marvel how she was able to write something that felt so personal to me yet was also loved by so many other people who I little in common.

Even now when I am dissuaded on adult fiction I drift back to her books as a respite in good writing. Don't just limit yourself to the children's books her adult ones are also wonderful. If there is a heaven like in the stories I am sure that god has reserved Madeleine's first century or so to discuss the inner workings of her world and the entire creation process.

...and the title was

I realized that when I wrote about words the other day I did not mention the name of the book that I was reading that was so inspiring. It is The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. It is the fictionalized story of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Tolkas' cook. From a first person point of view the story interweaves his current life as their servant as well as the story of how he came to France from Vietnam. It is both sensual and historical. What always amazes me is when authors are able to write a cohesive story without a strait time line. Truong jumps back and forth between three or four different periods in Bihn's life and it doesn't get confusing.

It even inspired me to pick up a copy of the Autobiography of Alice B Tolkas at the library sale I was at last weekend. [I was good... mainly... only two books for me, one for Kevin, and well fourteen for Alder]

31 Days a Walk Across Denver

Alder and I walked across Denver yesterday. We started out at the Tattered Cover, our favorite bookstore, where I actually splurged on a few books:

Simple Sewing Patterns and How To by Lotta Jansdotter

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowlings

Embroidery Techniques and Patterns by Marie-Noelle Bayard

Finding Your Inner Mama by Eden Steinberg

The Bake Shop Ghost by Jaqueline Ogburn

This is the most books I have ever bought without them being for other people, I know we can't really afford it but soon we will be without the Tattered Cover and their huge stock of books to browse through. Okay so I finished Harry Potter at 3:30 last night but that was worth it.

After Alder climbed the stairs, five times we headed west towards home visiting friends along the way. We also stopped into Stuben's for some lunch. And then headed into down town. There is something eerie and enjoyable about walking through a business area during the weekend when it's all quiet. Then it was past the train station where the cross country train was stopping for dinner. Over the train bridge, the south Platte river bridge, and the new walking bridge (see photo) to the slog up the long hill home. Five hours and seven miles later we were collapsed on the floor.

A friend of mine calls this sort of stuff urban spelunking but I think yesterday was more urban trekking. It isn't a replacement for being out in the hills or mountains but it can be fun.

The irony in my day and what it has to do with Israel (long)

This morning I felt awash in irony. As I set of to Synagogue I listened on NPR to a report about the conflict in Israel and Palestine(link to the story). Even though I am coming into my Jewishness I can't find a place in my heart for Zionism or the current attitudes that prevail in Israel. The report was discussing how the Israelis were creating more check points rather than lessening the number, as they had said they would.

I can imagine the fear that people living in that country must have being surrounded by hostile neighbors. But continuing to keep an apartheid state where Palestinians can not travel between their lands is part of the problem. God given right or not the Israelis should have taken into account the response the rest of the region would have had in 1948.

Jews have never been colonizers (although we have been colonized often). It took the help of the British Empire (albeit their tail end) to help create and "mandate" Israel. However the times of governmental colonization were coming to an end. Where ever our ancestors were from the fact is we were primarily Europeans and Americans commandeering land in the middle east. Land that the Muslims also felt was theirs.

I don't mean to give a basic history lesson but it seems that often when this discussion comes up not everyone knows that Israel in it's current form has only been there since 1948. I find a lot of Christians that I talk to think that the battle on this land has been going on for centuries. It has but those were the Crusades not the Arab Israeli conflict.

Anyway back to the irony. After fuming for a few blocks about the conflict I resigned myself to acknowledging that there was little I could do about it. Before going to temple I stopped for some coffee and was reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union Michael Chabon's new book. In Chabon's book he imagines that Israel fails and the post war Jews end up in a temporary district in the panhandle of Alaska. In his book the Jews are about to loose their home (once again).

His story, in light of the news that I had been listening to, seems almost hopeful. That their might have been another answer (although this one is not successful either). Sigh... what can I do.

So I go to the Synagogue (which happens to be in a Methodist church) for the dedication of the new ark for keeping the Torah in. We sing a lot of songs all that seem to have to do with peace. We say the weekly prayers, which highlight peace again. While I know that there are many members of the congregation who agree with me about Israel (to varying amounts) the irony of the service strikes me.

How can we be talking of peace as something we hold so close to our hearts when we still remain in such a contentious position in Israel. I know that there is a lot I do not understand, both politically and historically, still I can't help but feeling the discordance of the entire situation in Israel.

I Need a Good Book to Read

I have hit a reading wall and I need help. Lately I have been enamored by poetry and have been reading lots of nonfiction but can't find any fiction that I read all the way through. It's gotten to the point that I am about to pick up the Dark is Rising series or A Wrinkle in Time to fill the gap. Not that anything is wrong with either of those I've just read them so many times since I was a child that I practically can recite them.

I'm looking for something that I can really get entrenched in. I think the last books I read like that was "So Far From God" by Ana Castillo or "The History of Love" by Nichole Krauss.

So please leave me with favorites!

And a poem for the day

from Like Singing Coming Off the Drums
by Sonia Sanchez

Blues Haiku

i ain't yo momma
but i am this lil mama
who knows how to burn.

Forays into Unschooling Thinking

Well were off as soon as we're packed! This will be a thin week for entries but I'll have a whole trip to tell about when I return. I am excited but tired, as Alder got up four times last night.

I'm just finishing organizing all our books it makes me think about how much there is out there that I have not read yet. I kept on thinking of other areas that I want to learn more about. The more I read about unschooling the more I realize that it is what I have been doing since I left school. I've learned so much more since graduating college.

I remember after the first year I Was out here in Colorado I commented to my father that I had learned more in that one year than during the four years of college. I had learned, how to camp alone, outfit a canoe trip, shoot a rifle, downhill ski, tele ski, measure frames for walls, roll joists, do my taxes, set up a rock climbing belay, become intimate with the Southwest Colorado landscape, hitch hike and lots of other things.

In retrospect that year was my year of Deschooling, I was fairly irresponsible and spent a lot of time partying, but after that year I began to explore more things that interest me. I've taught myself so much since then and what I haven't taught myself I found people to help me. All of this was before I really understood about unschooling.

But to get back to the present. Kevin and I talked a lot about unschooling this morning. We had established during our first date that both of us wanted to homeschool our children. I've realized that a lot of our want to unschool Alder is that we ourselves learn best that way and want to have time to enjoy it with him. A big part of our plans for the future have to do with going on adventures, some close by and some far away. One of our main goals with our business is to be able to afford an annual river trip in the spring. Both of us see that a trip like that is a much deeper education than sitting at a desk watching the minute hand move slowly.

A teachers in alternative schools we saw our ideals decay with the constant impositions of the administration and the parents. It was hard to teach in a school where every time a parent read a new educational theory they came to me wanting it implemented. It was the schools policy to take parent's requests seriously, regardless of what was working well with all the children. I liked some of the parents very much but it was often a struggle to balance their needs and continuity in the classroom. Especially when over half the class was partially unschooled. In retrospect the best method I could have used would have been to unschool the three students I had every day. But since I had not been exposed to many of these ideas yet I rallied against them. Now they seem so natural to me, although I am not sure if they belong in a classroom setting with out the entire school being a Free school.

Now seven years since that first date we are already beginning the process. Everyday we watch as Alder explores our world, we've baby proofed the house only removing the truly dangerous items from his reach the rest we let him touch and taste. While he still loves to put things in his mouth he is starting to manipulate them in his hands first.

This morning he pulled himself up to standing at the couch, I had my first fleeting feeling that he is growing up quickly. We never had to show him how it was done or that it was something important. Why should we ever dictate why of his learning. Of course I want him to learn how to read, write and do math but I am more interested in getting him to want to do these things because he is curious enough about something that he sees that these skills are important to figuring things out. I also want him to read because it is a pleasure to get lost in a story. But I want him to do it on his own terms at his own pace not one set for his year and month.

He is part of our lives now I don't really understand the idea of corralling him off in school for six hours a day in the name of learning. The first, and only, time I breached this subject with my Dad so far his only comment was "Why would you want to waste your time? If you want to teach him stuff just spend time on the weekends doing it" If Alder was going to school the last thing I would want to do is take his precious play time away from him.

This could bring on a whole other tangent but Kevin keeps popping in here to see if I'm finished so this is all from now. I'll come back from Santa Fe with pictures and stories.

Stacey

Finding My Flow

I've been thinking a lot about my writing lately. I've been trying to push forward on the Eli and Hannah story but it has gotten a bit stale lately. I still love the plot and the characters but I feel like I am not getting anywhere as I write it. I think it might be time to shelve it for a little while and just stretch my writing muscles.

Part of my need for change is that I haven't had much time to write since before the Holidays. It seems like all of my free time, when I get any, is spent on other things. This means that when I do sit down to write it doesn't flow naturally. This is what I want to get back. The rhythm of writing where hours can disappear while you are caught between your mind and the paper. That's why I write to be in that 'zone'.

Of course it is easier to procrastinate on project in particular than to move forward on less concrete project. But that is the direction that I am heading. I took "A Writer's Book of Matches" out of the library and I'm going to use it daily for the next few weeks. If I find that the prompts are helping me to reenter writing then I might actually buy the book.

A Feel For Books

From house of books

It's a cold day here in Denver. The sort where reading is really the only thing you can do to whittle away the hours as you nurse a cold and watch your kid (who also ha a cold) sleep. So I picked a book out of my library bag and settled down at the table to read. Today it's Eternal Network, a book about mail art. Yesterday I read Troubling Love, and The Essential Hip Mama. The day before was Garlic and Sapphires. And Dirty Sugar Cookies as wells as the Lafcadio's Adventures the day before. [I've linked these because I wanted to share] Interspersed with these have been the books I read Alder. Add to this mix Kevin's books and text books you get a house piled with books.

All of these books are starting to have an effect on Alder. The same way he knew how to use a spoon the first time we handed him one he now knows how to handle a book. Well except that following flipping pages he tries to eat the books. Giving a new meaning to devouring a book. Sometimes when he's playing he tries to pull about out of my hand. Instead of giving it to him, I read what ever I'm reading to him. He continues playing but glances up if I lapse into silent reading. I know he doesn't know what I am saying but it's clear that he wants to be included when it comes to the books.

I guess this is one of those "rich environment" things they talk about. Alder is surrounded by books therefore he will have some relationship with them. If he sees his parents enjoying them he will think that they are for enjoying. This makes me think of the story Sam told me about the school he used to work where the students now spend six and a half hours a day reading and writing. The district's idea is that they will become excellent readers if they spend all their time doing it. The unintentional drawback is that none of these kids enjoy reading. They won't ever just pick up a book for pleasure because all they associate books with is being stuck in a desk all day and being forced to read.

"All kids in literate societies learn to read." David Albert wrote. He explains the obvious exceptions of children who have organic brain syndromes, visual problems and ptsd, used in the broadest sense. But his point is valid whether or not we set about to teach children the act of reading it is part of our development in literate cultures. In the microcosm of our house Alder will read because there are words all around him and he will want to make sense out of his environment. I'm not concerned if he learns to read at four or seven only that the process is pleasurable and that he never looks at reading as a punishment.

Like so many other things that he is learning reading is already beginning. I don't have any misconceptions that he understands what the markings on the page mean, but he does understand that there is something in these compilations of paper that attract his parents. He knows we look at the pages and that we go from one page to the one next to it. As a practical proof of this he know flips the pages for a while before sticking the book in his mouth. Of course he still puts everything in his mouth... eventually.

What is it About Cooking in the Winter?

I'm at it again. I've been cooking and baking all week. I can't seem to stay out of the kitchen. We've had stews and curries and tons of veggies. Each meal is becoming a narrative, a story that I tell myself as I cook. Some are just reconstructions of the day in others I am cooking in an eighteenth century farm house as the blizzards rage outside. The cutting and measuring has become the crafting of sentences; the braising or sauteing character development. When the meal is finally on the table it is the tale that I had been creating.

This literary turn of thought sent me to the library to find books about food. Not cook books but narratives. There are lots. I picked up "Dirty Sugar Cookies" by Ayun Halliday and "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell. They were both satisfying and motivating. I think I might write a piece on one single meal and its creation. But the author who I really need to pick up is MK Fisher, the grand dame of food writing. She was more of an eater than a cook but her writing pulls you to the seat next to her and hands you a plate.

Bread has been coming out of our kitchen fast, but not, it seems, fast enough for those of us who are eating it. I've given up on the original french bread recipie that I have been using. It has begun to taste like plain white bread. Instead we've had a Potato Whole Wheat bread that was so good that we finished the two loaves in as many days never even bothering to make sandwiches. Alder was a big fan of gnawing on the heel of that one.

Yesterday I tried a Pugliese. I liked what making a starter first did for the flavor. It gave it a strong wine taste to the bread. However, the amount of rising time as well as the various methods for each step were tiresome (I started at 3pm and finished at 11pm). The theory behind all the care put into the rising was to enhance the size of the holes in the bread. Wonderful, but honestly when I put effort into my bread I want it to be for the flavor or for it's height. As it was the bread never even reached three inches, its not supposed to.

Jobbing

I just finished reading Job Hopper by Ayun Halliday. She was the woman I always wished I could be. I'm sure I have had as many jobs as she has but I was never as brazen about my slacking during work. I always tried to put on a good face. In retrospect I could have probably enjoyed some of my jobs more if I hadn't been so concerned about either the people I worked with or my bosses.
The book got me thinking that I should make a list of all the jobs I ever had. It got more and more amusing as it went on so I thought I'd share it here.

Middle School:
Mowed golf course in someones backyard
Washed Cars
Baby sat (I some how became the babysitter to a lot of Israeli bankers in our neighborhood, they would usually just hand me a fifty and say they didn't have change).

High School:
Day Camp Counselor
Museum Art project teacher
Tutor
Preschool Aide

College:
Camp Counselor (Camp Treetops, still the most amazing place on the planet)
Cook at campus pub
Dean's Intern for Women's Issues
Mat Cutter for Art History Department
Women's bookstore clerk
Capital Children's Museum, general slave

Since College:
House painter
Envelope Stuffer (I did that on and off for 6 years Nick Wolf was one of the best bosses)
Telemarketer (I lasted one call)
Ticket Checker (Purgatory)
Snow Removal (Purgatory)
Hostess/Waitress/Dishwasher
Ski Boot fitter (purgatory)
Adaptive Ski Instructor (trade for ski tickets)
Teacher of:
7th grade Special Ed
6th-7th Reading
Art
High School Sociology
High School Design
Substitute Teacher
Multi Age Elementary School class (K-4)
Middle School Geography
Middle School Girls Studies
Life Skills Specialist for Developmentally Disabled Adults
Primary Care Giver for Developmentally Disabled Adults
Assistant Manager of Day Program for Developmentally Disabled Adults
Barista/ bookseller
Coffee shop/ bookstore manager
Shipping and Receiving
Nonprofit Director

That means that I have had 37 jobs since I turned 10. Of course some of them have been at the same time. Someone once told me that the average person changes jobs seven times during their lives. I've already surpassed that by nine times. I'm not sure what this all means.

Stacey