Five Things You Don't Know About Me

My friend "Other Lisa" over at The Paper Tiger tagged me with the equivalent of blog chain-mail. See her post for the details. And her background. She's one of the coolest people I know. She and I worked on Jerry Brown's presidential campaign about 1000 years ago (or 14, if anyone's counting). It's hilarious when we go out together because people ask our names, and instantly get confused.

I feel that, having been online quite vocally since 1993, there's very little of importance that people don't know about me. Much of my life has been an open book. If you know me at all, you probably know about my New Year's Eve dance with Hugh Jackman (during his show "The Boy From Oz,"), my $5000 screenwriting award (that's in descending order of importance), my European speaking tour on the environmental damage after 9/11, and certainly, my long hard years in the trenches researching and debating the secret history of the assassinations of the sixties. But I thought I'd take up the challenge and try to think of five things most people don't know about me. So here goes.

1. I skipped two grades, although it didn't really feel that way: one was Kindergarten, and the other was my senior year of High School. My mother was a schoolteacher so I learned to read very early, and the other kids in Kindergarten were evidently upset that I could read the captions on all the film strips, so I got booted into the first grade. Re the High School skip, I had spent the summer before studying harp at Tanglewood, a music camp set in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. When I came back, I had so enjoyed living on my own that I wanted to go right to college. My parents, amazingly, said OK, and worked to make it happen. (That also means I graduated college in under four years. What was the rush, I wonder now?)

2. I mentioned the harp. I was actually pretty good. Soloed with the prestigious Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra. Played Debussy's amazing Danse sacree et profane with a string ensemble in college. Won a couple of contests. Played a bunch of weddings and restaurants, but tired of two things: having to park a station wagon in LA, where spots are only big enough for a Honda, and having to load the dang thing into the car with the help of whatever stranger happened to be passing by. If I'd had a BIGGER station wagon I could have loaded it myself (and had an even HARDER time finding a place to park). And besides, you can't argue the details of the Kennedy assassination when you're dressed in a flowing gown and have a harp between your legs!

3. I was accepted into law school at one point. I managed to get a perfect score on the logic section of the test, probably because I had been doing logic puzzles since I was a child. I was one of those kids that actually loved to take tests in school. I looked forward to exams. I read Stephen Hawking for fun. Yeah, I'm a geek to the core. (That's why I love ABC's "Ugly Betty," by the way!) I spent a summer running around, talking to everyone I knew or could find in the legal profession, trying to find out if they liked their job, if I was making the right move. When all but one told me DON'T DO IT(!!), I swallowed hard. It was going to be a huge amount of student loans for something I might not enjoy. The one guy who loved it was fairly new at the job and predominantly working on pro bono cases. Yeah, I would have liked THAT, to be sure. They all said you'll love school and you'll hate the practice. So I ditched that idea at the last minute. I'm sure there are lots of lawyers who love, or at least, don't hate, their jobs. But I couldn't find any that summer, and I took that as a sign, for better or for worse.

4. I got to view Mars through the huge Griffith Observatory telescope one night! I was the last person in line, and so the guy running the telescope allowed me an extraordinary amount of time. He brought me a pad and paper and had me sketch what I saw (essentially light and dark areas--it's not exactly close). Then he pulled down a book of Mars photos and maps so we could figure out what part of Mars was facing us. That was so cool. The cosmic experience I had that topped that was an incredibly clear viewing of the incredible Leonids meteor shower. It was like watching fireworks at a low angle, all in white. I'd never seen anything that stunning until I saw the Aurora Borealis glowing and dancing and changing colors in the sky in Vermont one night. That was the eeriest, most beautiful natural phenomenon I have ever witnessed.

5. I have seen more wild animals in Los Angeles than in any other place I've ever lived, which is odd, but welcome. I've seen -- in a single sighting for each grouping -- six parrots, three gray whales, twelve dolphins, a large herd of deer chowing down on someone's backyard lawn just below Griffith Park, a coyote, a little red fox (near Fox Hills Mall, no wonder), and a wild bobcat (a fierce little devil - he/she killed a squirrel right in front of me), all in fairly residential areas of Los Angeles (except the sea mammals, which I saw just off the coast in Malibu). The whale sighting was the most magical. Two huge creatures and a baby lifted their heads vertically. Some people on the beach saw them, and an amazing number never even looked. Those who did all stood and stared for what felt like hours as they spyhopped, checking us out from not more than 25 yards offshore, before diving back into the unseen depths and continuing their yearly migration.

Now, because I don't believe in chain letters, I'm going to end this here. BUT - if you want, please post five things I don't know about you, either in the comments or linked from the comments. That might keep us all from suffering under some dreaded curse from having broken the blogmeme!