Ann Larson? Hi! What have you been up to?

I think of my life as a braid that has three main strands -- ministry, music, and social justice. I seldom engage in one without at least one of the others.

I graduated from Yale ('74, psychology) with no clear idea of what to do when I grew up. So, I went to Harvard Divinity School -- a great place to explore oneself and the big questions. Refound my Lutheran roots and finished my M.Div. at the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia. I was ordained 3/15/80-- and as far as I know, was the first woman ordained in a Catholic church--the Lutheran bldg was too small to accommodate the expected crowd.

My ministry has been nomadic -- campus ministry stints at MIT and Penn (while in seminary), and then Stanford, Indiana University , and Butler (which plagiarized Yale's colors, bulldog mascot and motto -- but does much better in basketball). I have an impressive beer mug collection. There were also a lot of interim positions in challenging Indiana congregations. Two of them completed major renovations started under my tenure -- after decades of starting and aborting projects. So I must have done something right--tho' I doubt they give me any credit :-)

After 9/11, I needed to come home to the east coast. I moved to Burlington Vermont area in 2002 for a parish position. (Chittenden County is practically a colony of the NYC region.) That put me close to family -- my sister and my twice-widowed mother -- for the first time in my adult life. After three years, the congregation's money and my health were depleted. So for the past five years I've pieced together p.t. and contract work and managed my mother's financial affairs. I do some fill-in preaching (I'm told I'm good -- the same congregations keep inviting me back.) I'm involved in Vermont's very active folk and classical music scenes and work on social justice issues, primarily domestic and sexual violence.

I've managed not to have any serious long-term relationships, nor children. But I'm a doting aunt, even if I don't see much of my brother's kids in California and Arizona--or even my sister's kids in Vermont (they're very busy teens). And I'm known as the pastor who likes to sing with kids. I'm a two-time cancer survivor (1990 and 2001 -- caught early, no chemo). I love living in a state where I am toward the middle of the political spectrum instead of on the far left. And I love having visitors for mini-reunions.

Welcome, Susan Shaffner!

Here's 40 yrs in 7 sentences:
I went to Oberlin College, but dropped out to change the world after a year. I didn't like the classist system of expensive colleges turning out the next generation of power-brokers. I visited some communes, and volunteered as a teaching assistant in Harlem, and then landed a job in Oberlin Public Schools for a couple years.. I followed a boyfriend to Boston, (short-lived romance) and settled there for 9 years, getting married, had my one son, and started Snake and Snake Productions, my cards and t-shirt business, which I still operate http://snakeandsnake.com. We moved to a backwoods cabin in the Blue Ridge Mtns in 1981, and after divorcing, moved the Durham NC in 1986, where we all still live. I started my second biz a few years ago, Pathway to English. Tutoring Korean school children is much more fun than printing t-shirts, and with the economy hurting my retail biz, I had to do something.

MarySue Moses says HI!

This is me in a nutshell: Majored in Theatre Arts in college (Case Western Reserve U., Cleveland), promptly became a waitress, then joined a Children's Theatre company in Vermont, went to drama school in London (transformative, hooked on Shakespeare ever since), joined Illusion Theater in Minneapolis (I have lived in St. Paul now for two decades), worked there for 17 years, then co-founded Theatre at Work (we do theatre-based training for businesses, the company still exists as a back-burner operation for me) after that. Oh yeah. I got married at age 33, but it was a dismal failure in most respects, and I stayed too long, but had a daughter, Eliza, who is a very bright light, now 23. Got divorced in 1995 and thought life couldn't be happier. Reconnected with my old high school best friend and boyfriend (well, the romantic phase lasted 3 weeks after we graduated from RHS) Phil Kilbourne (cousin of Ed) and we got married in 1997. Much happiness (and laughter, the guy is funnier than ever) ever since. He's an actor (fabulous), and I now work full time with persons with Alzheimer's and dementia at an assisted-living, doing activities, and coaching and training resident assistants. My mom had dementia (she lived with it for over a decade) and that inspired my career change. I got my Master's in Gerontology in 2008 and am now finding training opportunities for myself outside of my regular job when I can. Busy! I love working with memory care residents, it's a great joy. Sometimes I teach them Shakespeare. They can learn it, cause it's like music.