I was raised in Massachusetts, but I now live in Maine. I went to Rochester Institute of Technology in the School of Graphic Arts and Photography and majored in Printing Science and Management. I worked in publishing for almost two decades, including at Condé Nast, publishers of Glamour, Vanity Fair, Vogue, et cetera, first work out of college.Rochester, New York was a nice area when I went to school, but it took me two years to really dig it. My favorite places were: where I lived - the East Side of Rochester; horseback riding in Genesee for my gym class; the newspaper store World Wide News; a supermarket, Wegmans, on the way to Pittsford (Friday evenings free sample tour: gourmet, health food...) Restaurants? The former Mucky Duck on the Erie Canal ('Mucky' changed its psychedelic decor with new ownership).
I moved to New York City's Washington Heights, then to North Huntington (Halesite), Long Island. The seagulls there are smaller than in New England. If you're from coastal New England, you know our breed of large seagulls and their calls make you feel at home.
I didn't do too much after New York's Condé Nast. I worked tons of jobs freelancing in publishing. ...learned to draw realistically (impressionistically) at Montserrat College of Art, mostly with George Gabin (from New York).
Finally, I met the man of my dreams, Rory Goff, at a grocery store. He was staying with his brother and sister-in-law in Salem, Massachusetts. He had just moved from Washington state. I was praying for a long-term meditator (I started meditating when I was 16 yrs. old) and he was delivered to me, it seems, from out of the Sky.
We're married and have been together for nine years. It wasn't all pie and ice cream at first. We had to adjust to each other for the first two years. It worked out, though. We had a store in coastal, home-of-the-loud-seagulls, Salem, and sold metaphysical books. Rory designed the back room into 12 seven-foot panels of archetypes describing his canon, The Primordial Tradition. It was a hit!
He is also a talented artist. He has a piece of his artwork on The History of Salem in the Peabody/Essex Museum in Salem. I'm proud of him; that probably shows!
My past-time is collecting cookbooks. They generally range from late 1800s to the 1970s. I worked with Meals-on-Wheels on Martha's Vineyard for a while. That was a kick and integrated my love of kitchens with my delight with Elders. . . .
We finally moved to Maine, where Rory grew up, and it is home to us after much moving around. I work at a newspaper, and Rory and I are working on some fun projects at home -- art archives and reprint publishing. Maybe we'll have a business again sometime.
There are other interesting activities (designing web pages, reading books, healing and visualizing) that are there to fill the time also. On the web, I've been designing a page on the symbolism of furniture arrangement. Don a hardhat and walk through the construction site, Home Symbolism, at your own risk!
This World Wide Web is the best thing that's happened. Isn't it?!
