Reunion Notes

Today (April 25, 2008) I find myself marveling at the sailboats beginning to put in just as the ice is disappearing from Lake Minnetonka. I left Minnesota five months after graduation from Macalester intending to spend one year in Nagoya, Japan, with former roommate Kimiko Kato. Strangely enough, I have just moved back here 25 years later. An intended year of teaching became a career in intercultural communication that evolved throughout a dozen years in Japan; another decade in Portland, Oregon, and two years residing on an Ohio farm with 26 adolescents at a Montessori land school. Now, here in Minnesota, I have started a company with an old Macalester friend, and the intercultural winds continue to fill my sails -- selling products from Denmark and interpreting for a Japanese transnational. My son, a dual-national, Japanese and American has spent his sophomore year of high school in Mexico and does not seem particularly interested in being either Asian or norteamericano. Ah well, it was my AFS experience in France that brought me to Mac. One never knows where those winds will blow.

My Mac Memories:

• Living in the French House on the corner of Summit and Snelling with Stephen Frenkel, Andrew Arthur, Denise Mauer, Michael McDonnell, Maureen Chiapetta and my whole surrogate family. (Can anyone else remember $15 for five dinners together each week: Fabrice's pork chops and lots of white bread with lubricant -- a.k.a. cheap margarine?!)
• Mme. Peters for her discipline, Dave McCurdy for his inspiration and insight, Peter Weisensel for his support during the Newberry Library Program
• Patty Christensen, Stephen Frenkel and Igor Pilko who have remained dear friends through the years
• The Hungry Mind (need I add "bookstore"?)
• Beach parties in February (Can you say Bacardi?)