100 Things List #'s 26 to 50 and this is getting hard!

Some More of Me (100 Things about me)

Here's some details of events in my life that could be interesting --or not.

26. I was 2^nd chair French horn in high school and college bands

27. My first time vote in 1961, I admit I voted for Nixon!

28. I was a teenage bride.

29. I didn't have a car until I was 21--then it was a 2 cylinder Lloyd.

30. I was a lifeguard on Lake Michigan and was the only one who would pick up the dead alewife fish. (cleaning up the beach was part of our job)

31. During the Vietnam war, I was a draft counselor for the American Friends Service Committee.

32. In 1968 we were the first family in our county to succeed in having an interracial adoption. It took 2 years of fighting the adoption agency and making them follow the law.

33. In 1970, my husband and I sold most of our belongings, loaded our 4 kids in the truck and moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, on top of a mountain, to start a school for delinquents kids. It would have been what we called "a Summerhill" type of school with Quaker leanings. It never came through, but, hey it was the 70's, early 70's. We were into changing the world.

34. I won a Citizen of the Year award from the city I lived in during most of the 70's, for working to start a daycare center, serving on the community theater board, working on the community festival, starting a program in elementary school for children to be paired with nursing home residents for weekly visits and readings, and starting a youth theater.

35. I can play a couple dozen musical instruments, but mostly for my own entertainment, though kids love it. Keyboard instruments, French horn and recorder are the only ones I play by reading music, the rest by ear.

36. I call and teach old time square dances, while playing my accordian to accompany myself.

37. All during the 70's and part of the 80's we lived on a farm, which we supported by teaching. I milked my cow Silver Betty, and each kid had chores before and after school before they got to play. One of my favorite memories on the farm was that the children would sit down at the dinner table and one would shout out "yep, everything on the table, we grew it!" Pretty neat, huh? Full cycle of life. That pleased me no end.

38. In the 80's we left our jobs, moved to a settlement school on the "far" side of the mountain, in Appalachia and I worked as a community organizer. Job was 7 am until 11 pm. Besides being a community center, it was a environmental education center.

39. Once I picked enough wild strawberries to actually make a strawberry shortcake for 4 people. I LOVE to pick berries. Once I picked 2 washtubs of blackberries every day for 2 weeks at the farm. I was in my glory and full of scratches and bites. Well, I love to eat berries!

40. I have two stainless steel knees.

41. Everybody calls me to tell me they have "their mother's old sheet music" and "do you want it?", and I actually take it! I have two rooms full of every imaginable music book. And I can usually tell you which book or pile has which piece somebody's looking for. I've got a lot of really rare music books too. They're so cool!

42. I have done research and taught classes on singing games and play parties , which are essentially the song/games of our childhoods, from all over the world. My favorite is "Four In The Boat"!

43. One of the neatest vacations I've ever had was with 2 of my grandchildren. I gave the girl an American Doll--Felicity--the Colonial girl, and made her and the doll matching costumes and made the boy a "Yankee Doodle" costume too. I took them on a weeklong camping trip to Williamsburg. People kept asking these 6 and 7 year olds if they worked there.

44. I have way too many CD's and they're probably going to change the technology so they'll be useless. I already have way too many LP records, and have to keep two record players out in the barn, in case I want to play them. (I did get rid of the '78's that I had.

45. I loved how my mother would make either rice pudding or baked egg custard for anybody in the neighborhood or in her church circle if they got sick. She always thought she wasn't a real valuable member of the community. But she was a friend and listener to everyone who needed it. She was my heroine!

46. Thank God I haven't had any flea infestations in the house in the past 20 years. On the farm it was yearly. God, I hated that.

47. I nearly flunked out of German class in college because I couldn't ever get up for the Saturday 8 am class.

48. I still remember getting mixed up on compound words (age 3) Couldn't remember if it was cycle motor, or motorcycle; market super or supermarket.

49. I'm starting to get the language mixed up again. Oh no!

50. Jack and I like to drive down "seasonal roads" just to see where we end up.