5 Things You Never Knew About Me

Picked up from Waldo's blog, who was tagged by Book of Joe. Like Waldo, I'm not going to tag in turn, but if you read this post choose to participate in 2007's first tagging mania, it would be cool if you left me a link in the comments.

I've been in, from, and around the area since 1972, so I sometimes feel my life is an open book that's been read by the entire population. But lately I've come to realize that, even in this microcosm called Charlottesville, one's current incarnation tends to wipe out the past. So, here are five things most people don't know or remember about me:

(1) As a child growing up on Rt. 795 in Albemarle county, I wanted to buy Morven stud farm and turn it into a wildlife preserve. Kluge bought it instead and thus ended the dream.

(2) I was once a card-carrying member of the Music Teachers National Association, back when I was a group education director on keyboard instruments. Why didn't I become a concert pianist? Because in 1983, Hyun-Sook Park moved here and became a friend of mine at AHS. It's rough when you think you might be good at something and then someone so brilliant moves into your territory, competing against you at every level. She wiped the floor with me at regionals our senior year; my musical self-esteem and classical ambitions never fully recovered.

(3) In Summer 1986, I worked as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theater Festival, under the direction of Nikos Psacharopoulos. There was an underground betting pool in the UVa theater department's GSO as to whether I'd get into the excessively competitive summer stock that had previously apprenticed such luminaries as Chris Reeve and Santo Loquasto. Everyone I knew bet against me.

(4) Just like every photographer in a 40-mile radius, I supplemented my college income by shooting for Chuck Lane. My first 3 jobs post-college were in photography.

(5) The first political campaign I ever worked on was Gary Hart's run for the 1984 Democratic candidacy for President. The Donna Rice photos ended his 1988 run, but it's nice to know we were shocked by something as simple as a photo of a leggy blonde sitting on a Senator's lap--a picture that could probably be taken at a thousand D.C. Xmas parties and wouldn't even cause Wonkette to snigger. Nowadays, our greed for grist and threshold of intolerance is much higher.