I think there are rules here for these 5 things......so I'll start by copying Brian at Learning is Messy a super favorite blog....(actually I 'm in awe of the thought..."learning is a messy" such clear insight, it's complicated, sticky, drippy, sweet, sour, gurgling, a crumbly thing to paste ones' way into your tomorrows...that said...)

1. I have done some crazy things to make money.
I once filled an order for Macy's for 5000 silk purses I had designed (about falling over during a Christmas break) and definitely not making a profit,
I worked in a clown suit delivering balloons for birthdays at 30 dollars a stop,
I worked in a deli walking 12 miles to get to that job for 7 months daily,
I was a sign painter both for groceries and in store displays,
I've decorated name plates, designed and painted nursery walls, mural painted, art of every kind imaginable...
I worked in a shirt factory,
I spent summmers working in basketball camps,
I designed the Monongalia County Seal,
I worked as the Summer Recreation director 2 summers as a Monongalia County Park arts person,
I played piano,
I bartended,
I sold things in NY Galleries,
I made painted stools and furniture,
I tutored every subject and especially liked the calculus groups and adults learning to read,
I've worked summer schools all but one year of 23,
I've made hats,
and I've really just scraped along trying to find ways to ekk out a living.

What I want to do is teach art and make art and why I want that is it is a pure pleasure to watch a group of people create.

2. Okay who do I come from....my Dad was a McIntosh from the hills of EastTennessee. This through my grandmother Axie Seville Fender McIntosh makes me a direct descendent of John Sevier , first governor of the state. She's cousin to the Fenders of guitar fame and my favorite 2nd cousin to Tennessee Williams the playwrite who she met and knew. Now on Momma's side you have a family that owned the dairy in Doylestown Penn, they owned fruitstands in Wildwood on the boardwalk. Lucas and Himmelwrights...my grandmother Lucas was trained as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital was actually a Himmel and from this you see I have a Jewish tradition to honor too. In mom's grandparents were a grandfather who grew delphiniums and shipped them via train into NY and Philly. Her family had certificate makers, calligraphers, sign painters. Also Sunday artists, small businessowners...from England, Germany. One thing I always tell is my mom and Dad were in the Air Force. Mom could fly a plane and had her pilot's licence, though she never could drive a car. Dad was an Ag Economist....oh boy was that a mouthful....

3.Let's see ...umm I'm interpreting this to be things I can do
...I paint furniture, make drawings, love pencil drawing, like to crochet hats, I like to have flowers-violets are my favorite they are small treasures but dogwoods, lilacs, daffodils, irises, mountain laurel, fuschias,trilliums, zinnias, glads, dahlias, roses, orchids and more really make me happy and I like to paint flowers. Even dead ones and shoes.

I've pretty much lived the last 20 years feeling ridiculously out of place in ghetto life in CA which is oddly warm, sunny, violent, obscure, unconnected..so everything seems very temperal unlike my earlier life back east. I love Victorian houses and love drawing them. I really find portrait work that I love to do. I can cook pretty well and house clean and do domestic stuff. I do avoid the cleaning as much as I can. One secret is the state accidentally gave me a drivers licence that for years allowed me to drive any vehicle out on the road...that was something.

4.I've taught in West Virginia traveling art teacher in a junior high, and basically loved it teaching Ukranian egg designs, drawing BMX bikes, photography, doing sets for plays that were incredible..you name it we did it from candles to batik to weaving.....then I was asked by my husband and I went to California and taught in a place so dangerous, so violent it was a living nightmare. I'm sure it still it -the school was in the block with the most murders in a 15 year record I saw in the LA Times last year...there I learned the realities for poor black children born in Americas big cities.
I taught in a migrant farm community heart of the Salinas valley for 9 years mostly 4th grade learning the lives of immigrants and farm workers first hand, I taught in this district by the port in Oxnard in a hood school servicing a poor , mixed and badly interfacing group learning more about urban poverty and issues of immigrants. I love kids and teaching and I thinkI've really enjoyed all the literature, projects, walking trips, library visits, walks to shops, the trips to see missions, trails, CA history, art , chalk festivals, eagles nesting up in Lake San Antonio....it was a job where going , doing were so integral but under NCLB so much has disappeared most notably the integrity , drive, love of learning, teaching, the happiness , the discovery are dying or dead. I loved model economies in classrooms, learning Bucky Fuller for Geometry, I loved making the concepts and constructs live for students. I went broke practically channeling my money and time and life energy into helping and working on my classroom as a garden for learning...and now I'm treated at work really like dirt. And that's just the real truth. ButI care enough about education to try to work through this towards schools that give these kids access to technology, learning, opportunity...just like all kids deserve....I love to write poetry with children. In first grade children often are living poetry...so my work is an artform. I never forget this...

5. Hummmm. I want to see Alaska, always have. My uncle was stationed there and a long time ago my then boyfriend wrote me letters of the beauty as he hiked the Gold Rush Trail.Now my husband tells me it would "kill me" to walk it, but I want to try. I would love to see China I've read about China for 25 years having an affinity for it somehow...I would really like most of all to return to Vienne, France a city I stayed in for a long time after we were married. It holds for me an special kind of joie de vive. And I love Antibes and Marseille too...so I'm ready to go God Willing when I hit the lottery...

So...how's this...did I do this right????