DEB CAVANAUGH

Washington State and Timberline Lodge

3/20/2019

Mount Adams

We finally arrived in Husum, Washington where my best friend, Amber, had just had her first child named Harvest. Amber had been with me for the birth of my first child, and now I wanted to be there for her. She was living in an old farmhouse on the side of Mount Adams with a beautiful view of the mountains. Her daughter was beautiful, of course. Her relationship with Harvest’s dad was not so beautiful, and he was mostly absent, leaving Amber to take care of everything by herself. Unfortunately, at that time, Paul and I were not the best house guests. There was no indoor plumbing, and Paul really didn’t know how to deal with that, so he made quite a few mistakes that added to the tension already in the house.

Timberline Lodge

In addition, we needed to settle somewhere, so he went looking for work. He finally found a job at Timberline Lodge, a ski resort on Mount Hood that had been built by the WPA during the Great Depression. FDR wanted to give artists and artisans employment, so he put them to work building this spectacular lodge. There are murals, wood carvings, tile work, stone work and much more. It is a beautiful work of art. There is snow on the mountain all year round, so it’s a popular place for skiing, even the Olympic teams have trained there. In order to get to work every day, he had to live there in the employee housing. However, he couldn’t bring his family, so Jessie and I stayed behind seeing him only on weekends.

We had a wonderful leave taking the night before he left for the lodge. At one point, I warned him that there might end up being another baby on the way. We both decided that would be fine and not much later, I was absolutely sure. In all of my pregnancies, I never got morning sickness. I always felt healthier than ever before. This one was no different. I would occasionally feel a tiny upset, but it was never very uncomfortable and didn't last long. However, my emotions were raw. Here I was living in a very stressful environment with a 2-year old and expecting another baby. We didn’t have our own home yet, and my husband was living on another mountain. Sometimes I would drive to visit him on a weekend and very rarely, he would come to Husum. Neither of us wanted to be there any longer, and we weren’t really welcome anymore either.

Zig Zag Inn

Eventually, we moved into a motel at the base of Mount Hood. We had two rooms and a bathroom for a weekly rate. There were other people living there, too. Finally, Paul found us a tiny cabin in the village of Zig Zag. This cabin also had two rooms and a bath but was even smaller than the motel rooms. But at least here, Jessie and I could walk to the Post Office and the little health food store for some socialization.

Hippies that we were, we loved knowing that our address was Zig Zag, Oregon. But that was the extent of the perks. I was very lonely and becoming more depressed every day. There were no neighbors, and I had no friends here. After a short while, Paul lost the job at the lodge and had to go looking for work in Portland. On one hand, I was relieved. I was going to be having a baby and had decided to have a home birth after the fiasco of my first hospital birth, and the clock was ticking. I needed to find a midwife. We hoped that we could move to the city soon.

Our car had broken down, and we had no money to fix it, so Paul spent the next few months hitchhiking to and from Portland for his job. He would leave at 4 am and get home late at night. Once again, the time we had together, which was very little, was spent fighting. And I wasn’t the best mother to Jessie at that time. I became so depressed, it was difficult to get out of bed. I had to force myself to read to her and play games, but I made sure that we went for our walk every day to and from the Post Office and up and down the little road we lived on. I forced myself to put on a good face, but she could tell that things were not the same.

We finally met a couple who lived on our road, only two cabins away. They invited us for dinner one night where I ate tofu for the first time. They cooked it in spaghetti sauce. They had friends visiting who were living in Portland and looking for a place on the mountain near their friends. How synchronistic! We were looking for a place in Portland. We were each paying $350/month rent and decided to just trade houses. Each of the landlords were pleased, so we moved to 10605 East Burnside Avenue when I was almost seven months pregnant. In addition to all of the other stressors, Amber and I were not speaking, and I missed my friend. Luckily, enough time had gone by from when we had dropped off Debbie and Steve after our nightmare of a trip, that we reconnected with them and started a new life in the city.

The new house was wonderful. We didn’t have access to the back rooms with the washer and dryer, but we now had two good sized bedrooms, a large living room and eat-in kitchen and a huge backyard. The house was set back off the main road on a little dirt cut away with another house on either side of us. Our neighbors were great with kids of their own, so we ended up taking down the fences between our yards giving all of the kids free rein of a lot of land. We were right on a main bus line making it easy to get anywhere we wanted. We were ecstatic! We were ready for this next phase in our nomadic life.

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On the Road Again

3/12/2019

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Wind River Canyon, Wyoming

One of the friends I had while living in Connecticut was a woman with the same name. That wasn’t unusual. In fact, Debbie was such a common name, I had multiple friends named Deborah or Debbie for short. This particular friend was looking for a change. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend who had fallen in love with someone else and moved away to be with her instead. When I told Debbie that we were planning to move back to the west coast, she asked if she could join us. She was one of the few people around whom we felt comfortable having our child, and we realized that it would be good to have another driver with their contribution to the fuel expense, so we said okay.  A few days before we were due to leave, her ex-boyfriend decided that he had made a mistake and wanted her back. She begged us to let him join us. After much back and forth, we finally agreed. I was worried about the fact that he had broken her heart which was still feeling raw, and we were going to be trapped in a car with them. Then there was the fact that there were now four adults and a small child, with all of the belongings we could manage to fit, in a Plymouth Valiant. Paul, always the optimist, assured me that all would be well. Boy, was he wrong.
          The trip was stressful even before we started on the road. We had a couple of meetings during which Debbie and Steve argued. We finally told them that one of the conditions of continuing on with us was that they agree not to argue in the car. So, they often took it outside. The car was packed so full that even the floor in the back was packed right up to the seat, so whoever was in the back had to sit cross-legged. Jessie was in the back with two adults, and I hoped that whoever was back there would help keep her occupied. That didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.  Steve decided to bring along his comic book collection. They were all encased in plastic sleeves and worth a lot of money, so he didn’t want anyone but himself touching them. Tell that to a two-year old. Not only was there constant tension between him and Debbie, who didn't actually fight inside the car, as per our agreement, now he fought with our two-year old in the car over his comics during the entire trip. He also ate sardines on the road, stinking up the car, making everyone nauseous, and there was no reasoning with him. I wanted to drop them off somewhere and let them find their own way, but Paul was insistent that we needed their monetary contributions and their driving abilities.
          When we got to Ohio, they wanted to stay for a few days and visit with a friend of theirs. We wanted to keep moving and had a friend in Kansas City, Kansas that we wanted to visit. We dropped them off in Ohio and drove to Kansas. The plan was for them to hitchhike and meet us in Kansas City by a certain date or we would go on without them. I hoped that they would decide not to come or would come too late and we’d be freed from this burden. Just as I started to breathe a sight of relief, because the rides had been in their favor, they showed up right at the last minute, so we had a full compliment once again.
          Paul and I wanted to get to Washington State, where Amber was waiting for us, as quickly as possible, but Debbie and Steve really wanted to see the Grand Tetons. We were traveling in May, and I knew from past experience that there was often still snow in May, but there was no deterring them, so off we went to Wyoming. We hit a snowstorm and ended up spending the night in a motel, an expense that we hadn’t expected or prepared for, but it turned out to be a good thing since Jessie had picked up some stomach bug and vomited all night long. By the time we reached our destination, I had a constant headache and was running on fumes from lack of sleep.
          We had a lot of grand adventures during that trip including a trip to Wind River Canyon where Jessie was picked up by the wind and carried off, causing her dad and I to chase after her, finally grabbing her foot as she went sailing through the air. We connected with old friends along the way and finally made it to Husum, Washington where Amber had just had her first child.  That was the most stressful trip we made, including one to come a few years later that, although it was stressful, there were lots of fun elements that kept us going. This one didn’t have a lot of fun.  Even Paul, who was very easy going with friends, had enough by that time, and was starting to fight with Steve. Once during the trip, I thought they would actually physically fight but thankfully, we were able to avoid that. We did manage to stay friends with Debbie and Steve, after a little time went by, and grew to really treasure that friendship.  They were both a big part of my first two children's lives. I'm so glad to know them.
          I’ve been taking these blog posts, expanding upon them, adding details and more stories and turning them into chapters for a book. I’ve been wanting to write a book for a long time and just felt overwhelmed by it. Where do I start? What do I write about? Now I figure I’ll write different themed books. One will be about my travels, maybe about my childhood, teaching, who knows. This first one will be “Recollections of a Hippie Mama.” I only have a few photos from that time, but I will include some of those as well.

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A Year in Connecticut

3/7/2019

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When we arrived in Connecticut, after finishing up my parents’ vacation with them in New Hampshire, we immediately hit up the local bar for a gig. It was a huge success with all of our friends showing up to support us. Of course, we were convinced that this was our big start, so we set up housekeeping in Connecticut. My parents were thrilled. They would have their only grandchild close by. Now, you have to understand that my parents hated my husband. He was not who they had envisioned for me. He was a long-haired hippie who had been on the road since he was 14 and had whisked me away hitchhiking across the country. But at least he had married me when I got pregnant and provided for us, so they began talking to him on our return.
        That doesn’t mean that things weren’t still tense. My parents were very conservative Republican, and my dad was quite influential in town. They knew that we smoked pot, which was a very big deal at that time. They also knew that we were very radical politically, and that was an even bigger deal. As a result, my daughter (Jessie) spent a lot of time with them by herself. Unfortunately, my sister was 16 years younger than me and became jealous of this interloper. She had been close to me before I left. Now I came back with a baby. How could I abandon her like that? At that time, they were both young enough that it was manageable, though that changed years later. Also, my mom still had a young child at home and wasn't available as often as I had hoped she would be.
Meanwhile, I took Jessie on walks around the neighborhood every day. We visited the firehouse which was only a block away and walked to the library. There was the park where I had gone to school with swings and slides. We also walked to the nearby vacant lot every morning. She called it the meadow. We would run and play, picking wildflowers and watching the butterflies. After a few rainy days, when we were unable to visit the meadow, we noticed that our apartment was vibrating - a lot! The dishes were rattling, and things were falling off the shelves. We finally got a sunny day and walked over to the meadow only to find that it had been transformed into a rock crushing operation. I looked at Jessie, worried at what her reaction would be. She looked up at me with awe and said, “Look Mommy! Now we can go to the mountains!” And we did, every morning. Luckily for us, they only worked in the afternoons and evenings.
        None of our friends had children yet, so it was difficult for us to acclimate into our old group of friends. Many of them were wonderful, but we just couldn’t go out on the town every night as we had in the past. We did have a babysitter that lived in our building and hired her until we discovered that she was stealing our pot and getting way too high while watching our child. Jessie was not in school, and we didn’t go to a church, so it felt impossible to meet other young parents. We also struggled with finding other musicians to play with. In California, we'd had a full exciting life where we'd grown up a lot and changed our views on many things. Now, we were back in a conservative environment where many of our friends had not changed at all, still living the high life with no responsibilities. We were quickly becoming dissatisfied with our current environment.
In addition to those struggles, making a living in Connecticut was just as hard as it had been when we left. The cost of living was high, and we were unskilled workers. Our friends, who had come out en masse to support our music soon tired of it and went their own way. Paul worked two jobs while I tried my hand at different jobs … a school crossing guard and a school bus driver. Ugh! Although I could bring Jessie with me to both of these jobs, they both turned out to be horrible.
        As a crossing guard, I was often the target of curses and had to jump out of the way of cars trying to run me down, sometimes while the kids were still crossing. Even with my little sign and vest, there was just no respect for that during rush hours. The school bus job was just as bad. I drove a short bus, bringing Jessie along for the ride. There were still no seat belts back then, and I was refused an aide. I had one girl who removed every item of clothing one at a time, throwing them out the bus window as I drove. Jessie soon learned to do that, too. By the time I reached my destination, I would have two naked girls. I had another girl who tried to run out of the bus every time I stopped to let someone on or off. I would open the door and lunge for her, holding her while she kicked and flailed at me and whoever was getting on or off. Once she got away and I had to flag down a passerby to chase her down and bring her back because I couldn’t leave the bus unattended. It was a zoo! Time and time again I requested back-up, but no help came. For a short while, the mom of a boy on crutches rode with me in the mornings. But that was short lived as he only needed the ride until he was off crutches.
        I finally gave up the bus driving job because they got tired of me complaining about the lack of an aide and decided to put me into the bus that drove to the projects. The woman who had driven that route before me had been attacked by the students and ended up in the hospital, so there was a vacancy. They assured me that I shouldn’t worry because they had now installed a radio, so I could call for help if needed. Although I enjoyed driving the buses, and mostly enjoyed the kids, that was the end of my bus driving career.
        Meanwhile, Paul was working nights at a high-rise private club as a chef and daytimes as a school cafeteria cook and manager. He had Sundays off and slept most of the day. Life had gotten very stressful there. We fought for much of the time he was awake, and my mother was once again starting to try to run my life, which was one of the reasons I had left originally. We realized that we needed to get out of there … again … so we started to plan the next move.

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Recollections of a Hippie Mom - part 2

2/28/2019

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Continuing with my recollections of my daughter’s early childhood …

During our time in California, she was exposed to tons of music. There were always street musicians downtown, and we had music playing at home constantly. Her favorite song at that time was “Jesse” by Janis Ian.  Every time the lyric “Hey, Jesse” came on, which was the start of each verse, she would look up and smile or coo.  She also went to numerous concerts both in utero and as a baby. On New Year's Eve in 1975, when she was 4 months old, we went to the Keystone in Berkeley for a concert with The Jerry Garcia Band. Because it was a small indoor venue, I decided it was too loud for her little ears, so we went to a back room where the volume was much less but I could still peek through the windowed door and see the show. Nicky Hopkins, who had played with The Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, Quicksilver Messenger Service and too many more to name, was playing keyboards at this show.   At intermission, he came out for a breather to this back room and hung out with us, eventually asking if he could hold my baby. Of course, I said yes, and was thrilled as she cooed and smiled at this awesome musician.

When Jessie Lea was 8 months old, her dad (Paul) and I decided that we wanted to move to Oregon and try to get work in the orchards. In order to make that happen, Paul quit his job and hitchhiked north. Meanwhile, I moved out of our apartment, putting all of our possessions in storage, and lived in the park with our friend, Amber. She had a VW bus that we slept in and lived out of, but we spent most of our time outdoors. We had agreed that he would make phone calls to the pay phone outside of a nearby café, The Broken Egg Omelet House, every few days to let me know any progress he’d made and where to go when it was time for us to join him. This was well before the age of cellphones, so we set a day and time for the first call and planned the next each time we talked.

I settled into an easy routine with Amber and Jessie, thoroughly enjoying our gypsy lifestyle. Amber had planned a visit to Connecticut to visit family, and Jessie and I were going to travel with her, coming west again in a few weeks to meet up with Paul, hopefully giving him enough time to settle before we reunited. To see all of our grand plans to fruition, these scheduled calls and the timing in general were crucial. When Paul missed a phone call a few days before we were due to leave, I started to panic. What should we do? The calls were scheduled one at a time. We hadn’t thought about what to do if we missed one. I stayed close to the pay phone all that day and the next day. I wasn’t willing to live in the park with my baby alone and without any vehicle to sleep in but was worried about leaving on a cross-country trip without checking in with Paul first. How would I find him again when we returned? We were hanging out in the park, the day before we were supposed to leave, when a waitress came running up asking if I was Debbie Cavanaugh. Thankfully, Paul was calling. The pay phone was out of order, so he had finally called the café. He let me know that he’d been unable to find work and was on his way back to Santa Cruz. We waited for him and all left two days later in Amber’s VW bus for the long ride back home to Connecticut.

We decided to take a southern route since all three of us had arrived in California via the northern routes and wanted to see new sights. This was also before the days of seatbelts and car seats, so we set up a tiny play area on the floor in the back for Jessie. She actually took her first steps while we were driving down the highway. She could toddle back and forth in the moving vehicle but not on solid land, and I could see how confusing that was for her. I learned a lot during that trip about how to travel effectively with a young child. We made that whirlwind trip in three days, taking turns driving and sleeping, driving all night long, living on coffee.  I drew the short straw and ended up with the middle of the night shift, so for three days, I drove at night and catnapped during the day between reading and playing with our young daughter.

We only had one dangerous situation to handle during that trip but Jessie, who had been safe in the bus with Amber at the time, never had any notion of danger. We arrived in Connecticut only to find out that my parents were on vacation in New Hampshire.  Ugh! It didn’t take me very long to get an address for the house they’d rented, and off we went to find them. When we got to the vacation house, no one was home. “Oh, no! What do we do now?” I suggested that we park the bus out of sight, behind the bushes and break into the house, surprising them when they came home. Looking back on it now, like so many other things, I realize how stupid that was. It’s amazing that my parents didn’t faint or have a heart attack or something. But, they didn’t.  My mom screamed, then cried. My dad shook his head in disbelief then laughed. We had a wonderful visit and went back to our hometown with them. Paul and I got a gig at a local bar, had a great turnout and, in our youthful enthusiasm, decided that this must have been our “big break.” We decided to stay and left poor Amber to make the long drive back alone.   My family were thrilled and helped us set up housekeeping, providing us with furniture and household goods, all the things that were locked up in a storage locker back in Santa Cruz, which we paid on for years to come.

So far, in her first nine months, my daughter had hung out with many different people, lived in an apartment, in a city park and in a VW bus. She had learned to walk while crossing the country in a moving vehicle and was now settling close to her grandparents, who she barely knew, and moved into a very different environment. Luckily, she was raised to be flexible and was still quite young. At not yet a year old, she had already had more experiences than many adults have in a lifetime. Although I know she doesn’t remember these things, they helped mold who she would become.

Stay tuned for the next installment, “A Year in Connecticut.”

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An Unusual Childhood

2/24/2019

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at 3-weeks

4 months

4-weeks

at 8 months

I was talking to my daughter this morning, bemoaning the fact that I’ve been struggling to come up with blog topics. She mentioned that one of the things that enriched her life the most and has made one of the most long-lasting effects was her exposure to alternative people and lifestyles. For some reason, that had never occurred to me until today, but it started me thinking about her
childhood. She was born on the west coast after her dad and I had hitchhiked across the country. We weren’t really ready to settle down, as we had just started on our journey together, but we recognized the need to settle temporarily. We stayed in Santa Cruz, California for about a year and a half, long enough to acclimate to our new roles as parents. While there, we met all kinds of unique characters.
There was a hippy couple with a baby girl very close in age to our daughter. Jewel and I became new mom companions. We were both young and newly settled there. She was 18 years old with long red hair. Her husband, Rain, was an older guy with long white hair, and their little girl was named Honey Tree. We thought of many alternative names for our daughter but decided that in 1975, we still didn’t know where we would go from there and wanted her to have a more traditional name. We all had long hair then. The women mostly wore long peasant skirts or patched jeans. Somewhere, I might still have a pair of old jeans from back then. Sometimes Jewel and I would meet in San Lorenzo Park with the two girls and just hang out watching the world go by. There was usually a lot to see because everybody used the park.
The only homeless people that I had any real personal contact with were men. I don’t remember any homeless women, although I have a very vague memory of seeing a woman once out in the distance. A lot of people went missing in that area, so I assumed that the women stayed out of sight for their own safety. One of the regulars was a man who had at one time been a nuclear physicist and lost his mind. He had a steady, dependable income making a lot of money for that time. He had a loving family and was part of an active community. He woke up one day and realized what his job was actually doing in the world and just walked away from the whole scene. He now lived off the land, eating foods that were growing wild all around. He showed me rosemary growing wild in the park and in empty lots in town that I could use in my cooking. He was a very sad and brilliant man, eager to share his knowledge and his stories to have some personal connection, but he was tortured about his old life and couldn’t see past that sometimes.

Then, there was “Moses”. I most often saw him in front of the Albertson’s grocery store. He was a very large man who would stand at the big windowed store front with his arms spread out above him, very loudly channeling the “Word of the Lord.” He’d go on for hours at a time, and no one could speak with him during those times. Sometimes little respectful crowds would gather. He was really interesting and cool to listen to. It always made the shopping experience unique to what I’d grown up with. I saw it as street art. When he was in the park, only a very few of us could actually talk with him at all. He was very peaceful and gentle-hearted but also withdrawn. He said it was exhausting having the word of God come through him. He told me that he lost control of his body at those times and was outside of himself not feeling any exhaustion in his arms until afterwards. He also usually lost his voice for a day or two after proselytizing. I think he spoke to me because I had a baby and was obviously safe. He mostly talked about spiritual things and first told me about the book Be Here Now by Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert (one of the pioneers of psychedelia).
Downtown there was a pedestrian mall where you could find street musicians and artists. I found my favorite Bread Book in a free box in front of a funky bookstore there. I saw Arlo Guthrie playing on a street corner and turned another corner to be confronted by a street performer dressed in full combat gear. There was a lovely café that had a jazz band outdoors right in the front so that they were accessible to everyone walking by. I even sang “Summertime” with that band one time. And, I randomly ran into “Michael,” a homeless man we had picked up hitchhiking before our big adventure a year earlier, while we were still living in Connecticut. It was easy to meet people because everyone just hung out in these public places, sitting in little groups on the sidewalks, on park benches or strolling along.
I learned things from all of the people I met there. Having grown up very shattered and sheltered, I was just starting to learn about life. There were activists, commune dwellers, musicians, artists, healers... In that short 18 or so months, I learned about wild foods, herbal healing, “health foods” and “whole grains”, motherhood, spiritual enlightenment, alternative politics, sexuality and so much more. My mind was not only expanding, it was exploding. I’m sure that it also had a profound effect on a newborn just discovering the world. In our lives were people of all shapes and sizes, all walks of life, all orientations, and that was before she turned one year. I wonder what she still holds with her from that specific time. There are other eventful and colorful times, but this was her earliest. She obviously doesn’t remember details, but the overall vibe of that time and place has helped mold her as it has me. I still grow rosemary because it doesn’t grow wild around here, and I’ve been used to having fresh rosemary since 1975. I practice spirituality rather than an organized religion and still own my copy of Be Here Now. I am comfortable with all people regardless of how they choose to live, and I have an amazing sense of danger when needed.
I think I’ll think about each “era” individually. They are so rich! They deserve separate posts, so I guess this will be a series of posts as I wade through my past travels and think about the life my daughter was surrounded by. So, stay tuned. 😉 Thanks, Jes.

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Childhood and Schooling

2/12/2019

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I had just turned 22 when my first child was born. I was just a baby, and my husband was even younger in years though he was older and, in some ways, wiser because of his many years on the road as a runaway. We had decided early on that, because of the cost of childcare at the time and other factors, one of us should be a stay-at-home parent, and he quickly admitted that he would be no good at it. I, on the other hand, thought I would be very good at it and jumped at the chance to be a full-time parent. My own parents parented with a mix of abuse and total involvement.
It was amazing that even though I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, both my mom and my dad raised my brother and me equally, playing with us, teaching us and including us in most things. We played board games and card games which taught us strategy and a healthy dose of competition. They played outdoor games with us that they remembered from their own childhoods, all of us laughing often stumbling or making mistakes but learning to recover and learning survival skills along the way. We learned history and social studies by going on family vacations to places like Sturbridge Village and the Boston area, including Plymouth Rock and Pennsylvania Dutch Country, including Gettysburg in the trip. We gardened, did science experiments, did minor medical things like applying butterflies to deep cuts. We went on nature walks, and we always had a dog.
We were included in dinner table discussions even when there was company. My parents’ friends were writers, politicians, lawyers, and other businessmen. Only a few of the women worked, but they were all educated, and they very smart and savvy. Most of those who did work were nurses. The conversations were timely and exciting. My comments in these larger groups, although not always agreed with, were always welcome. And … there was always music. Every one of our family of friends loved and followed music, mostly Big Band and Jazz. Some of them were living room musicians themselves, played quite well and loved it, but decided to go down a different path. I often say that I feel as though I learned more at home than I ever learned in school. Granted, I was not a good student and hated being there at all, but the richness of my home experience far outweighs any richness I felt at school. It makes me feel sad when I think about that. I wish I had loved school.
School is a child’s opportunity to go out on their own and discover a world away from their parents. That is such a valuable thing. We are born helpless and in need of constant care in order to survive. Over time we start to do more and more for ourselves until finally, we’re ready. It’s time to find ourselves as individuals. As parents, we’ve been so wrapped up in caring for our child, it’s very hard to let go and even harder to know when it’s the right time. But there isn’t really a “right time.” Letting go is a very gradual process. The first time I left my baby in a room alone, I had to let go. When I let them explore outside of my reaches, I was letting go. Sending them off to school or daycare was just part of the long process of sending them out to live their lives. That said, not all children are suited for school and not all parents are ready to let them go, where they will stumble around on their own and even trip and fall.
I was a child not suited to school and my mother was not willing to let me live my own life, though she did send me to school. Because my mother tried to control my every thought and deed, I was very shy and afraid when I went out in public. My school experience was fraught with peril. I didn’t participate in classroom discussions, had very few, if any, friends and was a target for bullies. However, my test scores and writing assignments, when I did them, were always stellar. I was very smart and very bored in school. I was already reading books far ahead of my grade level and understood things way beyond what was expected of me by my teachers. This was because of my upbringing which was a curse and a blessing. Even now, I get bored easily and lose interest in mundane things very quickly. It never ceases to amaze me that I ended up being an educator.
If my family were not so dysfunctional and abusive, I would have thrived in a homeschooling situation. I think I would have thrived in a performing arts school, even a boarding school may have been an improvement. As it was, I struggled throughout my school career, working with tutors, retaking classes and mostly trying to make myself invisible. My family thought that sending me to a college prep school would be much better than public school, where I had finally made a couple of friends, but that was the final disaster. It’s a miracle that I made it through those four years alive. Not everyone did. My savior was music.
There were no music or art classes in my high school until my senior year. However, I had been taking private piano lessons for quite a few years and started classical voice training. I went home from school every day and sat at the piano playing a little to unwind, launching into my required hour of practice then just playing for the rest of the afternoon. It soothed away all of the turmoil inside of me and washed away all of the abuses of the day. Mom used to say that she could tell what kind of a day I’d had by the way I played when I got home.
There was also a very cool Jesuit priest teaching in this Catholic high school. I wish I could remember his name, but I retained very little from those days. He taught yoga after school and started an afterschool guitar class/jam. My dad let me use his old no name steel string guitar that he had bought for $5.00 from the Red Cross when he was in the navy. The strings were like steel cables and the action was very high. I could barely press the strings down at all, but this was the only music in the school, so I was in. I worked very hard learning to play a few chords, my fingers bleeding sometimes from the old rusted strings, until finally my dad decided to buy me a classical guitar. In my senior year, the school hired a music teacher, and I excelled, tutoring some of the less able kids and making friends in this school for the first time during my four-year tenure.
School is a necessity and should be a time of discovery, a time to discover new ideas and discover ourselves. I am a firm believer in children going to school and, although I have homeschooled my children from time to time, they have spent most of their time in schools. However, it takes the team work of students, encouraging parents who listen to their children and address any problems, helping them figure out how to solve issues but not doing it for them, and caring teachers who are not restrained by unreasonable rules and expectations. There are so many wonderful teachers in our schools trying to navigate a changing world and do their best for their students. I think we should let them do their jobs.
But I don’t think that school should be the only place where we learn such valuable things as social studies, current events, science, health, art and music? I grew up during the Cold War and the Viet Nam war. We understood the tenuousness of peace and the realities of life. I don’t remember growing up terrified that the world would end because world events were talked about in school and at home. When disasters happened, we were aware of them. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, we were told what happened and were sent home from school early. We talked about it as a family, and we talked about it in school. When the Cuba Crisis was going on, we all shared the apprehension and survived. My daughter vividly remembers when the Challenger exploded. It was a traumatic event for many school kids watching the first teacher go into space. They got through it. It seems as though now, we try so hard to protect our children from the things that happen around them. We keep them indoors for fear of abduction, we keep secrets about the state of the world. We are failing to teach them the survival skills they will need as adults.
I’m not suggesting that we don’t protect our children. Of course, we need to do that. I’m suggesting that we not overprotect them. They will only know how to use their instincts about safety if they have practice. I can tell you from my own experience that I have drawn on the skills I learned at home, more times than I can count, to ensure my own survival. My daughter once said to me, “How can I make new friends if I’m not allowed to talk to strangers?” I would take it a step further. How will you be able to determine if a potential new friend is a threat if you don’t have the experience of listening to your instincts?

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Orion

1/24/2019

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I have always been fascinated by the sky. I was raised Catholic, and when I was a child, I believed that God and heaven were up there beyond the clouds, beyond the stars. I grew out of that belief eventually, but there was still that overwhelming fascination. When I was very young, I was sure I could see my grandmother that had passed on waving to me from the clouds. This would often bring tears to my mother’s eyes. One time, as an adult newly relocated to Albany, NY, I was having dinner with my husband and two children at the Gateway Diner on Central Avenue and had to run out to the car for something. As always, I looked up at the sky. I was amazed at what I saw! The clouds had spelled out, in cursive writing, “Frank L.” I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t a sky writer. They were big puffy clouds in that shape. It was unbelievable. Of course, I ran inside to show my family. When I did, others came outside, too. We all looked up with amazement. I remember thinking, “Wow, I’m so glad that’s not my name!”
As an adolescent, I became enthralled with Greek and Roman mythology, especially the stories about the constellations. This was the era of NASA’s space program which excited me even more. I no longer believed that heaven was up there, but really wanted to know what was. I knew that we would someday inhabit the stars along with who or whatever else lived up there. I grew up watching Bob Hope entertain the troops overseas while with the USO and decided that I would join the first USO traveling into space. Of course, things didn’t progress as we all thought they would, and my dreams to be in an interstellar USO were dashed but I never lost the fascination with the sky and outer space.
Because of my love of the sky, of course I watched the lunar eclipse the other night, long after my partner had gone to bed. I tried to get photos but couldn’t hold my camera still enough and didn’t have a tripod for it, so I took other beautiful photos anyway. One of them was a photo of Orion, who I've always had a special relationship with. It’s not my favorite story, but he always seems to be leading my way when I travel. I guess one reason is that I’m often traveling in the late fall, winter and early spring months. Orion has become my beacon, always leading me home and has shown up in a lot of my songs over the years. Every songwriter has recurring themes, and I am no exception.
Going back to his story though, it is pretty gruesome. According to many sources, Orion was the son of a mortal woman and Poseidon (God of the Sea). He was reported to be the most handsome of humanoids. Unfortunately, that beauty and noble birth must have gone to his head. He fell in love with Merope, daughter of King Oenopion who refused to give Orion his daughter’s hand in marriage. Orion then raped her and was blinded by Oenopion. He was then led by a servant to Hades where Helios (the sun) healed him. He went on to be the greatest hunter in the world, often hunting with Artemis, but upon threatening to kill all of the animals on earth, Mother Earth sent a giant scorpion to kill him. Upon his death, the goddesses all asked Zeus to put him up into the heavens where he remains. Two of the most well-known stars are in the constellation, Rigel (the base of his left leg and brightest star in the constellation) and Betelgeuse (his right shoulder).
He doesn’t sound like a very pleasant character, but although I don’t like his story, the constellation is very easy to find and was always the first one I taught my children and grandchildren to recognize. Once you recognize Orion, it’s easy to find Taurus and others. His belt is very recognizable and is noted in other cultures as well. Most European cultures also see him as a hunter. However, in Spain, the three stars that comprise his belt are known as "Las Tres Marías" (Spanish for "The Three Marys"), and in Puerto Rico, the three stars are known as the "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (Spanish for The Three Wise Men).
According to Wikipedia, the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Native Americans call this constellation Kabibona'kan, the Winter Maker, as its presence in the night sky heralds winter. To the Lakota Native Americans, Tayamnicankhu (Orion's Belt) is the spine of a bison. The great rectangle of Orion are the bison's ribs; the Pleiades star cluster in nearby Taurus is the bison's head; and Sirius in Canis Major, known as Tayamnisinte, is its tail.
Another Lakota myth mentions that the bottom half of Orion, the Constellation of the Hand, represented the arm of a chief that was ripped off by the Thunder People as a punishment from the gods for his selfishness. His daughter offered to marry the person who can retrieve his arm from the sky, so the young warrior Fallen Star (whose father was a star and whose mother was human) returned his arm and married his daughter, symbolizing harmony between the gods and humanity with the help of the younger generation. The index finger is represented by Rigel; the Orion Nebula is the thumb; the Belt of Orion is the wrist; and the star Beta Eridani is the pinky finger.
There is always a lot of brutality in these stories because it was a brutal time, and the plight of women was as chattel to be bought and sold or just taken to serve men. I almost wish there was a different constellation to be so attached to, but this is the one. I’ve followed it from coast to coast, written many songs and poems in which he figures prominently, welcome his arrival every fall and miss him in the summer. Maybe someday I’ll rewrite his story. Maybe he’s not even male at all. Maybe his sword and club are something else entirely. This might be an opportunity to write an empowering new story for women. Meanwhile, I’ll keep getting my inspiration from the stars.

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On Aging

1/17/2019

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I had to get a new phone last week and encountered, once again, a young person who assumed that because of my age, I was ignorant about technology. I am not. I have always found the best deals on things like recorders, mp3 players, stereos, wireless speakers, etc. Often people have questioned my purchases then, after researching them, bought the same device themselves. I love technology, am very competent and aware of what I don’t know, asking for help when needed. I am constantly learning and love progress. I learned this from my dad.
Dad was the editor in chief of our local newspaper, which had won awards for journalism since his tenure as editor. He also loved technology and was responsible for the newspaper buying computers and getting rid of the printing presses. Because he was also pro-labor (though anti-union) he had all of the men who ran the presses trained for jobs in this new technology, keeping them on as employees. He was a proponent of solar energy back in the 70s before it was popular. Dad also bought every new device that came out almost as soon as they were released to the public. He believed in the future and just had a 6th sense about what was a good product. It seems that he has passed that on to me.
In 1984, I purchased an Apple IIe. Back then, we were using big floppy discs, and you had to do a lot of the programming yourself. I used it mostly for word processing but insisted that my children learn that early and simple programming. I could see it was the wave of the future and didn’t want to be left behind. I have always owned a computer since then and have come to depend on them. I have a desktop, smart phone, digital recorders, I-Pad, Kindle and more. I know how to use them and can often troubleshoot, solving my own issues when possible. I often have friends, who are not as tech savvy, ask for my help. When I do need tech support, I can follow their directions easily and can talk to them intelligently. However, when I go into a store dealing with technology, I am often discounted. It could be partially because I’m a woman, though that is thankfully changing some, but it is mostly because of my age.
So, back to my new phone. I love my service and loved the phone that I accidentally dropped into the bathtub. The phone had been getting glitchy anyway, so I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get a new one. The new one is fine, though a new device always takes a little getting used to. I went to the phone store to see what my options were knowing that I had saved up enough “rewards” points to save $55 on a new device. The first thing that occurred was the young woman who was working, started out being a little condescending, so I decided to set things straight right off telling her that I was quite tech savvy and knew what we were talking about. She proceeded to get into my account by using my passwords and made a comment about being surprised at how great my passwords are. Strike one. Why wouldn’t they be when I told you I’m tech savvy? Then she started showing me the demo phones but didn’t offer to let me try them out, which I did anyway. Strike two. Next, she told me that my rewards weren’t accepted in the store. I found out later from customer service why that was, but she didn’t explain it to me at the time. If she had, I would have gone a different route. But I let that one slide. It wasn’t like I had spent money for those rewards but accumulated them by paying my bill. Eventually, I asked to buy a case. The old case I had was like a wallet with a flap that had slots that held my license, credit cards, cash, whatever I wanted and folded over the screen secured with elastic. Even when I dropped my phone, it was protected by the case and I never had a cracked screen. Because I was sick and tired of all the bullshit by now and had been in the store for over an hour, she managed to convince me that the newer screens were less durable and sold me a screen protector with no case for more than twice what the case would have cost me. She also talked me into a device that hooked into my car and would cost me no extra money because since I was getting that, she could discount something else evening it all out.
When I got home and invariably dropped my phone because it has no case and is thin and slippery, the screen protector cracked. So much for it being more durable than the phone screen. Then, I noticed that my data was very slow, much slower than usual even for a cloudy day. While in the store, I had explained to her that I lived in a solar house off the grid and couldn’t always use the power necessary to turn on my desktop. I told her that my data is very important as is the “hotspot” that gives me WiFi. When I spoke to the customer service rep on the phone about removing my activation fee as a courtesy, she explained that when I got the car device, my data was bumped down to satellite service and my hotspot was reduced. STRIKE 3!!!
The next day I went raging into the phone store and spoke to the manager. Fortunately for me, the story has a happy ending. Unfortunately for the young girl behind the counter, I suspect it does not have such a happy ending. It is very frustrating that after having dealt with sexism for many years, now that things are finally changing for women, I am now 65-years old and dealing with ageism. It’s hard enough to have new aches and pains and medical issues that require constant monitoring. But now, I am ignored or talked down to pretty regularly. Do you wonder why some old people are so grumpy? Try living in their shoes. We’ve been around for a long time, learning as we go. We’re smart and experienced. Why do younger people assume we’re not? We can be very engaging conversationalists. I had a wonderful chat with an 85-year old woman in line at the grocery store the other day. She was fascinating and fun. Everyone else ignored her. They had no idea what they were missing out on. It was the high point of my day. Please talk to elderly folks. Many of them are lonely and, hopefully you’ll be there one day. You can be the change you wish to see.

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Cars

1/11/2019

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Here's another older memoir piece originally written in October of 2014, with an extra story added today.

I love being in cars. Cars have always been, for me, a symbol of freedom. As a teen, I didn't really have a life away from my family, no friends and no parties. I wasn't allowed to work or get my driver's license until I was 18. I was pretty much a captive in my parent's house. Then, on that magic 18th birthday, my life changed. I got my first job bringing in my own money and started learning to drive. I learned to drive in my dad's 1965 Plymouth Valiant. The transmission was three on the column. I loved that car. It was the same car, from another memoir, that ended up nose down in someone's creek, through no fault of my own. Though, I did manage to do a lot of damage to that poor car in my earlier driving years, it always pulled through.
The day I got my license and was going on my first drive on my own, my dad insisted on guiding me down the curvy driveway. I knew I had better go along with it, if I wanted to take the car out that day. He waved me back, back, back, then … “Whoa, stop! Stop!” as I hit the neighbors’ drywall sending it into their yard like a line of dominos, that same domino effect from the “Traveling On” memoir.
Another time, I was driving around with a friend, partying in the car. There were no places to go hang out when I was a teen other than our cars or the local ice cream parlors. Obviously, we couldn’t party in the ice cream shops, so we drove around. Traveling down Frog Town Road, a particularly windy road, my friend instructed me to hold the wheel straight and lean her way for a minute. My attention was diverted for a few crucial moments as I did as I was told, taking a good strong hit. When I sat back up, I noticed that the car seemed to be kind of bumpy, and I was having a hard time controlling it, so I pulled into a side street and got out. I almost fell over when I saw that the whole driver’s side front fender and hood were destroyed. The reason it was bumpy was because the fender was cutting into the tire. I quickly took the crow bar out of the back and bent the bumper out enough to safely drive it back to the scene of the accident, where I discovered I had taken down a telephone pole. It was lying across the road, blocking both sides. We quickly went on to the Dairy Queen where a few friends worked and where we often hung out in the parking lot. The whole gang was there, and we came up with a plan. We washed the creosote off, pulled the wooden splinters out of the frame and bent the fender more so it looked like a vehicle had hit me. I concocted a story about being at Friendly’s when we heard a crash, ran out and saw a truck racing away. It was a hit and run. It was moving too fast to see the license plate, but my dad took me down to the police station anyway to file a hit and run claim. As we were getting ready to leave for the station, he bent down and picked out a stray piece of wood that we had missed. I explained that the truck had a homemade wooden bumper, and off we went to file the report. That car was eventually turned over to me years later and almost made a cross-country trip. I have so many fond memories of it from two very different times in my life.
The first car I ever owned was a 1960 black VW Bug. I had it during the first big gas crisis in 1973. During that time, you could only buy fuel on odd or even days depending on the last number of your license plate. There were ridiculously long lines at the pumps with tempers flaring occasionally, but many places offered free coffee to make the long wait less painful. This car didn’t have a gas gauge, but it did have a little lever on the floor that gave you access to another 1-gallon tank. Being a girl raised at a time when math didn’t really matter to the female persuasion unless used for domestic chores, I didn’t know then that I should figure out my mileage and usage mathematically and ran out of gas all the time. Sometimes my extra gallon was enough fuel to get me back home, but often I ended up calling my dad, late at night, to come rescue me. He came every time with his gas can, grumpy and put out, but he never did teach me that simple calculation to avoid having it happen again.
I knew absolutely nothing about cars then except that if I put gas in it and turned the key, it would go. And, by that time, I was a pretty good driver. I was driving that Bug to Avon, CT on the Merritt Parkway with my future husband Paul in 1974 for a concert when my car slowed to a stop. Eventually, some State Troopers came by. One of them was an older German who had collected VWs for years, having worked on them in Germany. He looked it over then drove us to his house where he grabbed some tools, a fan belt and some other items, then back to our car where he fixed it right there on the shoulder of the road. After checking the engine and asking me a few questions, obviously very irritated at the condition of the car, he finally asked if I ever checked the water in the battery. I looked at him blankly. “This car runs on gas, not batteries,” was my honest reply. I thought he was going to arrest us or have a heart attack on the spot. Finally, after sputtering half in German and half in English, he told me that my car wasn’t even fit to drive on the sidewalk and instructed us to move along, warning me that if he ever saw me or my car again, he was taking us both in.
We got back in the car and waited for them to pull off. They waited for us. Then the same cop came up to the window wondering why we weren’t leaving. I had to explain that in order to go, we would have to jump start the car and asked if he and his partner would give us a push. This time he ranted and raged only in German but did help push the car. We decided to change our plans and just head for home. We got off the next exit and reentered the parkway going back the way we came when the car broke down again, directly across the road from the first breakdown site. At that point, we didn’t wait around for certain arrest and who knew what else. We took our things and hitchhiked home, leaving the car, hoping it would find a home with the State Trooper. A year later, when my parents got a bill from the towing company for towing a storage, we found out that it did indeed go home with him after spending a few months at that garage.
So, back to the Plymouth Valiant. I now owned the car, and Paul and I were preparing to make another cross-country trip. It was 1978 and, after living back in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut for a year and a half, we were ready to go back out west. Our friend Debbie wanted to go with us, and we were heading out in two days with three adults and our 2 1/2-year old daughter. I decided to drive out to North Stamford to visit my best friend’s mother one last time and say goodbye to her. On the way home, my beloved car broke down. It made a hellacious noise, then a big clunk and stopped dead. I was able to roll onto the shoulder then hitched a ride home for me and my daughter. Ugh! What would we do now? After calling a garage, who agreed to go get my car right away, I called my mother, who had fingers in every pie and was well-loved by many. She found us a car that afternoon, another newer Plymouth Valiant. It looked like we were all set to go.
However, the next morning, as we were packing the last of our belongings, we got a call from our friend and traveling companion. She was getting back together with her ex-boyfriend and wanted him to come along. Now the car would carry 4 adults and a child plus all of the belongings we could manage to cram in. We finally agreed to take him along, knowing it would be tense but also welcoming the extra financial help. I hung up the phone when the doorbell rang. At the door were two local policemen. They wanted to arrest me for leaving the scene of an accident. It takes a lot to make me break down, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I collapsed into a puddle of tears, leaving Paul to step outside and talk to the cops.
Apparently, the tow truck never came and overnight the car was pushed into the ravine probably by some mischievous teenagers. It crashed through the residents’ stone wall and came to a stop nose down in their river. Now the police were here to take me away. We managed to get the garage to admit their failure and, probably in no small part sue to my dad’s notoriety in town and my mom’s persuasive ways, they let me go. We successfully made the, not uneventful, trip to Washington State with the truck full and the floor of the back seat packed level with the seats. But that’s a story for another time. As we were packing the last few items, I removed the spare tire to make more room. This horrified my mother, who was already horrified at the prospect of us embarking on this latest adventure, taking her only grandchild with us. I assured her that it would be fine. “Don’t worry, Mom. We won’t need it.” And, we didn’t.
I’ve owned many cars since then and have learned how to maintain them. I know where the batteries are, though I no longer have to check the water level. I check my tire pressure and my oil and other fluid levels. I understand how they run and have even done minor repairs such as changing various lights, windshield wipers and even the fuel filter. I’m so glad that girls are no longer expected to be dumb and can now learn about these things in school. Having more knowledge would have saved me a lot of hassles, but then I wouldn’t have had some of these stories to tell.
          Here’s a video of one of my songs about driving preceded by a story. This was recorded live at The Eden Cafe in Loudonville, NY.

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Happy New Year!

1/1/2019

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Photo by R. Valentine Atkinson http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Project_One:_Pueblo_in_the_City

New Year’s Day is a special day for me, filled with memories. On New Years Day 1974, I met Paul Cavanaugh, the man who shared his last name with me, the father of my three children and the one with whom I had such grand adventures. We met through a friend of mine I had known since 7th grade. She and I smoked our first cigarettes together, walking to and from school every day in 7th and 8th grade. I took my first acid trip with her, and she set me on the road to unbelievable adventures when she brought me along to play music with an man she had just met in a laundromat. You can find that spoken word memoir, and the song I wrote just after he died, on my home page.
The following New Year’s Day (1975), Paul and I took off from Stamford, Connecticut hitchhiking across the country with a very loosely set goal of reaching New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. We had gotten rid of most of our possessions, including our amazing record collection, and packed everything else into an old navy duffel bag, that had belonged to my dad, and an aluminum framed backpack. New Year’s Eve, we threw a huge party in the apartment we were leaving, staying up all night with friends, playing music, drugging and drinking. The next morning, we took our packed bags and my nylon string guitar and took our first ride from our friends to just outside of New York City. After standing by an island with our thumbs out for an hour, we started to get paranoid that we might get questioned by law enforcement, so we hid our “on the road” stash in some bushes. After quite a few hours of standing in the cold, we hopped into the car that finally stopped, forgetting all about our stash. We were about to clean up for the first time in a few years.
That ride took us all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We had one harrowing moment in the Pennsylvania mountains when we stopped for gas and got chased down the road by large men with tire irons. Paul and I ran really fast to make it into the car before our ride left us behind, fearful for their own lives. Other than that incident and one other, the rest of trip was nothing but pleasant, though not uneventful. We stayed in Pittsburgh for a couple of days, visiting Paul’s friends and family then headed out west. Unfortunately, the rides never took us south and, it being winter and us being low on funds, we followed the rides, wherever they led. It was an adventure after all. We also knew that Paul’s sister was living in San Francisco in a hippie commune, and we could always land there temporarily. We met lots of very interesting people along the way, stayed in a few homes and stayed in an old historic hotel in Nebraska where many of the beat poets and eccentric characters from the 50s and 60s had stayed. Then, in Big Springs, Nebraska, where I-80 branches off to take you through Wyoming or continues on through Colorado, we got stuck in a blizzard for 42 hours.
All the way through Nebraska, we had been blown over by large semi trailers speeding up and pulling into the far right suddenly to create a huge gust of wind that sent us and our belongs scattered along the shoulder. We finally got a ride that dropped us off at the truck stop in Big Springs. We were trying to hitch a ride to Wyoming since we knew that hitchhiking was illegal in Colorado, and the cops were known to brutally enforce the law. Lots of people stopped and offered us a ride as far as Denver, but we turned them all down, determined to go the northern, and we thought safer, route. After a couple of hours, the staff at the truck stop informed us that we were no longer allowed inside to get warm unless we bought a meal. We had been buying coffee all along and even bought a meal once, but our money supply was dwindling, and we were reluctant to spend it on more food. Luckily, one of our going away gifts was a “space blanket” that probably saved our lives. We took turns huddling under that blanket, making quick trips inside for more coffee and still trying to get rides. Finally, a woman explained to us that all the roads to Wyoming were closed due to the weather and offered us a ride to Denver. Once we had that information, it was an easy decision to take her up on her offer. She took us to the bus station in Denver, where we sang and played while the older people danced to our music inside the terminal. We made a few tips and Paul, after trying in vain to convince one woman that he wasn't who she thought he was, even signed an autograph for a woman who insisted he must be John Denver. Somewhere in Colorado is a John Denver autograph that was actually signed by Paul Cavanaugh.
We took a bus from Denver to Salt Lake City and decided to air hitchhike at the local airport. We were mostly walking with our thumbs out as an afterthought, feeling pretty exhausted after our harrowing blizzard experience. At this point, we wanted to get to San Francisco as soon as possible where we could rest and recuperate. Miraculously, a car stopped very quickly and offered us a ride all the way to Sacramento. He had one requirement. He would pay all of our expenses, put us up in a motel overnight, pay for all of our meals and even give us money for gambling in Nevada. All we needed to do was listen to his stories, and wow! He had amazing stories from his time in the navy, welding underwater in every ocean and every sea, and from his work on the Alaskan Pipeline. It was an awesome ride! I told a young hitchhiker, that I picked up a few years ago, about him. That memoir piece is here.
Although we did get stuck in Sacramento for about 12-hours, we finally made it to San Francisco and found Paul’s sister at Project One. That place changed my perceptions about too many things to name here. I was a young and naïve 21-year old arriving in this mind-blowing place filled with radical activists, musicians, artists and other forward-thinking people. I had my first introduction to healthy foods, holistic healing, real radical politics, public nakedness, and so much more, I could never even list them here. Though I was already leaning in those directions, and had never felt comfortable in my parent’s world, I feel as though, in that short time in Project One, I grew up overnight. Here is a previous memoir that touches on that. And here is an article with photos, including the photo above of the public bathtub on the third floor where I was living at the time and another one with a photo of Fred, who was building an airplane out of found parts.
I soon found out that I was pregnant and, as much as we loved living there, we knew it was not the best place to raise a child, so off we went again. This time our friends, Chipps and Jodi, the same ones who gave us the ride from our old apartment to that place outside New York City at the start of our adventure, randomly found us busking on the streets of San Francisco and took us with them to Big Sur and along the coast. We ended up settling in Santa Cruz long enough to have our daughter and prepare for our next journey. Over the years, we lost touch with them, but I think of them often and at least at every New Year.

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Washington State and Timberline Lodge

On the Road Again

A Year in Connecticut

Recollections of a Hippie Mom - part 2

An Unusual Childhood

Childhood and Schooling

Orion

On Aging

Cars

Happy New Year!

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