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My family is like all military families. A great oppprtunity has been given them to see how the rest of the world lives. In my case, the extended world was Europe.
My father was an officer and a pilot in the United States Air Force.We lived in Morrocco, Germany, Belguim, New Mexico, Maryland, New York and New Hampshire.
Morrocco was still a French colony and Germany was in the clutches of the Cold War. While in Belguim, The Berlin Wall went up, Kennedy visited Germany, Kennedy was assasinated and the Beatles came to the States. All very heady stuff.
My parents are no longer living but I have a younger brother and his wife who live in North Carolina. When he is not engineering, he is building furniture ( a love since his teen years), houses (his own), and now is a general contractor in North Carolina.
The only children we have between us are my girls, Edisto and DeSoto (cats) and their brother (dog) named Tiger. At one point is our lives though, we had 15 horses with foals, 5 cats and a dog.
It's odd. We're all middle aged. That's such a strange notion. Tempus Fugit.
At some point in time, my generation left their church family and upbringings to FIND themselves. Well I found myself coming full circle, only this time it was with a different church family and roots. Even though I don't have a family history with this church, you would never know it. Warm, safe, secure and excepted.
As a child, I developed a love of drawing and painting. I suppose it was the one thing I could rely on as company when we moved to somewhere new until I made friends. So as far back as I can remember, I always loved art.
It was a natural direction for me to go to when it came to what to study in college. So even though the day job is about art, the night job and weekend job is also about art.
I love the Fall season. It's the best light for watercolors, and it is also great light for photography. We always took lots of pictures when we traveled so this too was a natural path to travel. I think black/white photography is it. And even though I think that digital cameras a wonderful, I still like going into my darkroom and manipulating the picture. I just has an effect on all the senses (not to mention that aftertaste of chemicals from the developing process).
Though my father was a pilot by trade, he was a tinker by night. Both sides of the family have contractors by profession in them and I suppose it was an offshoot for him to follow.
As kids (when we were State side) we would be a sites where family construction was going on or some sort of building and I think that this lead to both my brother and me being interested in building. He builds houses, I build potting sheds, fences, and rose arbors.
With all these projects going on there is also the yard or garden to contend with. At times it's more like land reclaimation as opposed to just planting a few bulbs. But it certaining keeps one active. Never a dull moment.
I think that my biggest accomplishment to date is that I was able to find a job after college and that I have had the same job all these years. No flash-in-the-pan, just years of teaching a subject that is close to my heart. That makes a difference to the students when they see this.
Being nominated by my peers and selected to be Teacher of the Year was just the icing on the cake. My folks would have been so proud.
That's what got into the Masters of Education-Educational Technology program at the University of South Carolina-Aiken in the first place. I was at a teacher forum when this program was first introduced. I thought hmm! maybe this is what I need to reinvent myself. Retirment is only a few years away and acquiring a new trade may very well be needed. So far we've all had to wear our seatbelts; it's an interesting ride.