'...long strange trip' seems somehow inadequate, but it's a starting place :D
Not sure if I'm going to make it back--some last minute 'issues'--so in case I don't, here's my last 40 years, Readers Digest Condensed version...
Like Cathy Zimmer I transferred in from Catholic School (Magnificat--joke told back then: Q: What is the difference between Mags girls and garbage? Garbage gets taken out) in 10th grade and by the time I figured out where I fit high school was over. I had some friends who were also nice Catholic girls like my old "Hi Du Cathy Masse" buddy, a few who were crazy Protestants (yes, Fran Mitchell, I'm talking about YOU ;), some artsy types like Chris Larcey and the late Pete Laughner(who is now more famous than when he was alive (I think he's even in Wikipedia) for his protopunk days with Rocket from the Tombs; I got back in contact with him the summer he died and he's never been far from my mind). Spent many hours debating the meaning of life with Les Hoagland (whom I wish I could find) and Bob Novak (who last I heard circa 2001 was in Topeka). The summer after high school was the fabulous trip to Greece and Italy with Mr. Wichman, Dave Sinkler, Eric Sandstrom, Hac Conrad, the late Tom Day, and Claire Kranz (from our class). Have been trying to get back to Greece ever since, might actually go in the fall as I have a friend whose father lives on Lipsi near the Turkish coast (Pat Carlson Love said she lived in Istanbul? Email me please if you read this!)
After that I worked my way through college doing fun things like emptying bedpans, which made me feel I had a right to get an unmarketable degree in Cultural/Intellectual and Medieval Islamic History. Made me well rounded, and my baklava and dolmades are second to nun. Also meant I was mostly broke for four decades except for a brief detour into law school, where I did so well and made so much money I of course had to leave and go back to wage slavery to assuage my Catholic guilt :D. Worked in magazine publishing, took the Pub Course at Stanford in 1984 and moved out to the Palo Alto area where I managed two Silicon Valley bookstores for awhile. Landed in an emotionally abusive relationship that threw my old joke about 'battered women' coming in regular and extra crispy back in my face with a vengeance. Fled to rural Michigan and lived on my cousin's working worm farm and in a double wide trailer, a nice corrective to Silicon Valley. Returned triumphant to CA only to go two rounds with breast cancer (from which I was supposed to die, but was too ornery to), 8 years of CFIDS, many bouts of depression (inherited from my pack o'loons family). Some good stuff too, spent a year doing theater conservatory and taking improv and solo performance courses in Frisko, went to work in financial publishing. Over the years I traveled a lot for work and play (drove cross country several times, up the coast from San Diego to Seattle, all over California, a state which I did and do love profoundly except for most of the people in Silicon Valley who were bout as interesting as the back of your thumb if you weren't a techy and greedy too. Had some great friends there though from around the world, from a mad Tasmanian blacksmith to a poetic elderly Iranian who loved to sing 40 year old Iranian pop songs and reminisce about evading the Shah's secret police.
Eventually (after 22 years) I noticed I couldn't afford to live there (I'm not one to catch on in a hurry) and fled again to Pennsyltucky, to Lancaster County, where I had some co-worker who had moved back to their hometowns here (my company was based here) from California and kept telling me I'd love it. I'd liked it when I traveled here for business but I honestly considered myself unfit to live outside of California, what with being a weather wimp, unable to tolerate smoking within 12 miles of me, addicted to things like Whole Foods Dalmatian fig jam and of course sourdough bread. Coming to the land of the Amish, of buggies instead of Ferraris, shoofly pie and other fattening delights, where the nearest Whole Foods is hours away in King of Prussia, where most people actually think Windows is a real operating system not a bad joke somebody perpetrated to sell Macs, where lots of places aren't open on Sunday because most people are busy with church and family all day, where there are delightful things to do that have nothing to do with networking or making money, like cakewalks and an alpaca petting zoo and some of the most amazing old architecture (I live in a Greek Revival townhouse built in 1850, where they recently excavated the old privy and found artifacts going back to the Civil War. I'm going back to school in the fall to get my master's in history, because I think that what I really need around the time I turn 60 is another unmarketable degree.
I'm still working on the novel Mrs. Kellam was waiting to read 40 years ago, and may continue to do so as it's become more a hobby than an actual writing project. I have half a dozen volunteer jobs, mostly library or historical society related, just started a new arts/heritage alliance for the 'rivertowns' here on the beautiful Susquehanna between Harrisburg and Havre de Grace. Most days I have breakfast at a drug store lunch counter that looks unchanged from the Fifties but has food to rival any cafe in Silly Valley, only with a nicer class of people. My house is overflowing with books (I'm always one bookshelf behind my inventory) and cats (my two orange tabbies who were both supposed to be boys weren't and the one who wasn't dropped 8 kittens). I got really fat like my Grandma, I look like Shelley Winters post-Poseidon Affair, and wouldn't mind except it's bad for the old knees, and I want to be able to hike around if...WHEN...I finally go back to Greece. Oh, and I finally got the depression under control through a doctor who realized I was severely iron, B12 and folic acid deficient probably from birth and put me on supplements, plus recommended full spectrum light bulbs because I am abnormally sensitive to sunlight (thus enabling me to survive outside sunny California). Makes me sad to think of all the pain and missed opportunities in my life because I didn't know those simple facts, but I'm happy with my life now and some people never get over depression and die of it, like my aunt, Pete Laughner, and a lot of famous artistic types.
On my 'bucket list', besides Greece...I'd like an Oscar for Best Screenplay based on my novel, but I have to finish the latter first. I'd like to find a farmhouse across the river in the hills. I'd like just once to have bookshelf space for every single book. I'd like to get my idea for an international food stand at the 100 year old Market House here off the drawing board, and introduce folks from the land of red eggs and chow chow to Iskender Kebaps and Gambian chicken. I'd like to lose 80 pounds and lose the 'grandmom' jeans.
Oh, and I'd like to know, Christopher Francis, what did you do with the e in PIEPER?????
:D
Sorry you, Dave and I never were able to get together when you were in Napa, he was running Uncle Mame and I was in Silly Valley. If I don't make it this weekend, I hope both of you will drop this exiled Californian a line :D.
Likewise anyone else who feels moved to do so. Whether or not we were all friends in high school, those of us who are alive and have had fully lived lives, whether or not we achieved the dreams we had back then, are very lucky. Rest in peace Tom, Pete, Linda B., Sister Debbie, Ann, Jim, Wink, and all those who are now folded together, as T. S. Eliot put it, in the single party of death. May all of us here now make it to our 50th, where we can have Hoveround Races and compare cholesterols instead of golf scores :D
Go well and stay well, as they say in the Middle East.
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