7 Random Things About Me(me)

1. My most frequented vacation spot is... Detroit. Since 2000 I have been to Detroit 9 times. Our dear friend, Grace Lee Boggs, of the Boggs Center is a 92 year old movement activist, who Maiya Grace is named after, lives there. After meeting Grace in 1998 at the Serve the People Conference at UCLA, Grace invited Tony & I to participate with Detroit Summer, and we helped to conceive and design 2 murals in Detroit. Then Great Leap, where I used to work, did a multi-year arts residency project called "I Dream a Garden" with the urban gardening movement. On one of my trips, I took Grace to the "Animating Democracy" Arts and Civic Dialogue conference in Flint and was able to introduce her to the national arts activists community before her keynote address.


2. I happily took a more than 50% paycut and gave up all my benefits and retirement plan 10 years ago in order to move from a corporate legal management position that I had been in for 12 years, in order to run Great Leap, a nonprofit community arts organization (with no experience whatsoever in the arts or in running a small business). It was a leap of faith, and one that I never regretted.

3. I bought my first condo at age 25. I wasn't making that much money, but I was a serious saver, so I saved enough for a downpayment on a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath condo with a 2 car garage. I took in 2 tenants to help me pay the mortgage (one was my sister, and one was my friend Alyce). I eventually became the president of the board of directors and helped to win a $1million lawsuit against the developer.

4. After having been a gymnast for over 5 years, I made the gymnastics team in high school, but I was the only person on the team who never got to compete once in two years. I could not do several of the required competitive moves, like a back handspring, a backroll to a handstand or a back hip circle on the uneven bars. I just didn't have the muscles to swing my little 95 pound body around the bar. I was proud to be the most flexible person on the team, able to do the splits in 3 directions, but in competition, no one really cared if you could do the splits or not.

5. I didn't eat ANY fruit or cereal or milk for over 10 years, probably closer to 12-13 years. This was probably from high school, through college and the few years after that. I still don't drink milk, much preferring soy, but that's not that unusual I guess. Then later, in the late 90s I didn't eat meat for several years. I started eating meat when I got pregnant for the protein. I am thinking about going vegetarian in 2008. It's not so hard since I don't like meat, never really have.

6. I have been a JA community activist since 1992.

7. I have been blogging since 2002. Here's another snapshot from Dec. 02. It's fun to have that digital archive to go back and reflect on life 5 years ago.

NaBloPoMo#24: This blog is from Yam's tag. I don't have the energy to tag more people to pass it on, but feel free to do your own if you like. I have another ABC Meme in the works which I'll try to get to before the NaBloPoMo is over. Tired and going to bed. Toodles.