I have been noting that my Colby Community High School classmates had the class of 1963 fiftieth reunion in the cool Rocky Mountains rather than the hot, dry plains of western Kansas where we went to school... thus confirming at least part of my residual prejudice for the predominately flat experience of childhood & youth.
I did not attend, for any number of reasons, but now a small part of me regrets I did not expose myself to the possible soothing of those old abrasions. I was never actually wounded by classmates, nor do I have any particular scars... I simply never felt like I fit-in, or connected well with high school & have found many better life experiences over a half-century!
It was a great joy to have Catie & her partner Jacgues, travel here to visit Soundcliff after the reunion. She was the exchange student from France & was my senior prom date! We have been writing letters & have visited each other several times over the years... meeting Jacques when Stephen & I twice traveled to their village. The three of us [Stephen was in San Francisco with the film] had sweet quiet hang-time, celebrating her birthday. She conveyed news to me about the reunion.
Fifty Years Since CCHS...
[Open Letter to classmates.]
Congratulations to us! None... perhaps least of all myself... could have imagined our journeys to this significant time. That I write too late for this assignment demonstrates my perpetual propensity for procrastination. That is not my best choice to reintroduce myself, yet the intricate weave of my own knotty path to now has seemed too daunting to contemplate sharing, even as I’ve been writing it in my journals since turning 30. To address myself at 18 or 20... 30, 50 or 60 means opening so much which would be difficult to tell, much less explain.
All of you must experience similar conundrum.
Long Story Short:
Graduated with a BFA in painting from the University of Denver 1967.
Lived in Denver, painting & designing custom jewelry & gardening until 1974 when I moved to Sedona, Arizona, where I did not do much gardening...
I began a production line of small silver bells in 1983, which beings still keep me in their thrall.
Occidental [west Sonoma County], California, became home in 1989. Bells & a more serious coastal garden.
Following the bells & a great love I moved to Seattle in 1989, then to nearby Vashon Island, where I perch with my partner, Stephen Silha, celebrating 18 years together.
Cooking, gardening & entertaining, working with the bells, jewelry & calligraphy are my continuing passions. I’m recently playing with digital drawing/painting on my iPad’s touch-screen.
I have no children or grandchildren of which to boast or show photos... unless you consider the bells.
Now, if you wish more, I’ve written a much gabbier version:
