Friends on Facebook the last couple of weeks have been playing a game called “25 Things.” It’s been great fun to read people’s lists.
Rules: Once you are tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about yourself. At the end, choose 25 people to tag.
I have no intention of tagging anyone, but here’s my list, on a Sunday evening.
1. I worked in non-commercial radio for several years in the 1970s. I began a show of music by women called “Herdles.”
2. I hate it when people misspell Frederick Douglass’s last name, and Mohandas Gandhi’s last name as well. Although with Gandhi, since it is a transliteration, it is less annoying.
3. I have been in five car accidents, never as a driver.
4. Because of one car accident, I moved in with the Saravia family in Guatemala City in the summer of 1967, learning Spanish and living under martial law.
5. I was in the Upward Bound program for teens in New Orleans in 1966, at Xavier University, because the houses of the families of the southern whites who had been recruited were firebombed.
6. That summer I thought about becoming a nun, which was an amazing idea for a Quaker kid.
7. I love cats, but have none at the moment. I like Labradors too.
8. My son was born two months prematurely. It was very traumatic for all of us.
9. My son turns 20 this year and is an amazing artist and actor.
10. My daughter is phenomenally talented in music and community organizing.
11. I had a miscarriage between my two children.
12. I am a pessimist, and usually rather subdued.
13. I do not believe in God, gods or goddesses, though I do pray: to what or whom, I don’t know.
14. I love to walk, in all weather.
15. I love to eat, too much.
16. I still think of myself as an art historian, even though I haven’t ever made (much of) a living that way.
17. I dropped out of high school in the spring of 1969. I was bored.
18. I started college at the school where my father taught sociology in 1969. I lasted four months. I tried again the next year and lasted six months.
19. I dropped out of college four times, I think. I took seven years to get a B.A.
20. During graduate school I was an editor at the American Bar Association.
21. Writing is extremely challenging for me, but something internal impels me to do it.
22. The best choice I ever made was to marry Reed. He is rather impatient in many ways, but very patient with me. I am so blessed.
23. I can be very hyperactive and distractable; that is a mixed blessing.
24. My father is politically one of the most radical people I know.
25. I still miss my mother, Betty, very much; she died in 1985.
