Greetings,
I have enjoyed scrolling through the class photos and I am surprised how many faces I recall after so many years. Some people I hung out with after school mostly because I was always suppose to go straight home from school and help my mom but what I really did was dawdle and hang out because it was a lot more interesting. Anne Hamel's house was the best because it was way more interesting than mine. I remember her mom had a painting easel set up that I always thought was cool. Mary Schoenert was an only child and a latch key kid and we'd go to her house, which was so incredibly quiet compared to mine, and eat sardines out of the can. Terry Davis's older siblings had good albums and Patricia Lawrow had a fascinating older hippie sister. Paul Schoenecker gave me my first kiss down at the flats in the bushes. It was kind of juicy and squeekie ha ha. I remember slow dancing to Hey Jude with Greg Nelson. Mary Kay Staples and I had the same birthday but I was a year older because in Richfield in kindergarten you had to be 6 by Sept for enrollment so I had to wait a year because my bday was in November. Anne Marie Larkin had a nice mom who answered questions.I remember moving on to Regina HS with Jeanne Hartle, Mimi Murphy and Jane Hannaman. I made my Sunday Mass attendance selection according to who was the alter boy so I had something to think about besides the Catholics.
My family spent summers at our lake cabin outside of Kimball, to my complete dismay, leaving me stranded from my peers. After a year at Regina HS we moved to Kimball for a couple years and then I finished HS in Litchfield. It turned out to be a lot less traumatic and a lot more engrossing moving to several high schools. I met some real characters along the way.
I ended up being a bit unconventional. I opted for VoTech in St Cloud and got a Dental Assistant certificate. Private practice was way too boring so I worked for the Feds with the Indian Health Service in northern Wisconsin on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation living the subsistence lifestyle of gardening and harvesting maple syrup and wild rice. I transferred that position to the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage in 1984 for a maximum of 2 years as an itinerant DA delivering dental care to small villages via small Cessna bush planes. Good grief, after a couple months I realized I really didn't need to go back to the Midwest, it seems I found my spot! I had some National Geographic moments from that experience and I got to visit some fabulous places in the state.
I decided to go to collage in Anchorage but alas the ceramic program they had was so lousy, I took classes for a bit and ended up going back to work with some potter friends back in my Wisconsin neighborhood for about 3 months and returned to AK. I relocated outside of a very fine little place called Homer about 220 miles south of Anchorage where I have been a studio potter since 1990.
I've been really lucky and have met and collected a wonderful tribe of friends from my wanderings. I built ( paid for carpentry... can't hit a nail to save my life) the house I live in and my partner Mark joined me here in 1998. I'm healthy and happy and I have a great life. I didn't have children but I have a great selection of nieces and nephews and now many of them have families of their own. We have a spoiled Australian Shepard named Izzy. I love making pots, hiking, cooking, harvesting wild food like halibut and salmon and blueberries, which are all high on the priority list. I'm an obsessed river runner either in a paddle raft or a single inflatable kayak. We try an do a 1-2 week river trip once or twice a year. My photo is from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Marsh Fork of the Canning River in the Brooks Range. Magnificent place. Just got back last week.
Blah, blah, blah.... Too much info, not enough time. I am sorry to not be joining you for the party but I have to say that a true Alaskan has the sense to stay put in the summer and enjoy the land of the midnight sun after the very long and dark winter!
I wish all of you the very best.
PS By the way, I changed my first name from Mary to Marie years ago. Marie was my grandmothre's named and I liked it better.