Doesn’t seem possible, 40 years. I guess it’s not too surprising to see all the twists and turns in the stories below. Well, here’s mine…After graduating from Middlebury College in ’72, and a winter ski bumming in Jackson Hole (the dawn glow on the Grand Teton still seems like yesterday), I returned to the east coast with a true ‘60’s commitment to help make the world a better place. Spent a decade in Cambridge, taking city kids out to the mountains for camping, canoeing, and skiing adventures for a couple of years, organizing a food coop, starting a woodworking business that I pursued on and off for about 15-plus years, and creating a traveling solar energy show that toured New England for a few years. Over the next few years, marriage and the birth of a child inspired some changes, primarily to leave the city life behind. For a couple of years, I had the good fortune to run the maintenance operation at a 20 or so building conference center on Star Island, 5 miles off the coast of Portsmouth, NH, where my job was mostly about keeping a large crew of high school and college students from burning anything down. Somewhere in there I figured out that education seemed to be a theme, and found my way through a graduate degree and teaching certification at Antioch-New England, in environmental science. Between projects involving the Sudbury River, Lake Cochituate, and student teaching at good old WHS (Mrs. Baker, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Mauger still in attendance), my return to our old stomping grounds was a stop on my return to Vermont. I’ve been here now in the same old converted summer cottage by the lake for 24 years. Taught science for four years at Enosburg Falls HS, a stone’s throw from the Canadian border. Conducted field research on Vermont wetlands for the state, and spent a few years as the water program director for a Montpelier-based environmental advocacy group, doing policy analysis and legislative lobbying. After my first marriage came to an end, I found myself a single parent to a five year old… who has since become a wonderful 27 year old, but along the way, whew. Especially those teen years. And yet somehow, I find myself again in the midst of that age group, teaching again, at Winooski High School, for the last 14 years (about when some of my current students were born!). Although I’m always thinking about moving on to whatever’s next, I love my job more each year. It’s Vermont’s most urban community, with all the economic and social challenges, but small enough to make a difference. One fifth of our students are refugee immigrants -- Viet Nam, Bosnia, Congo, Sudan, and now Burma. I married Nancy about 14 years ago as well, and we now have 2 awesome boys, 8 and 12, so life is full of soccer, cub scouts, and whatever other excitement our Vermont landscape offers, hiking and camping, cross country skiing, and the bike path down to the Burlington waterfront is always a favorite. I’m likely to be found coaching soccer or Odyssey of the Mind, stacking wood, or (not often enough) finding a little peace in the woods or by the lake. My activist yearnings have not left me; I’m just wrapping up several years chairing a national campaign on climate change for the Sierra Club. Life is not dull. I see I have not included any paragraph breaks. That’s about how it feels.
Looking forward to seeing old friends, and many thanks to Valerie, Dennis, and others for pulling this all together.
