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Need an introduction? Here are some tidbits to
ponder:
Education
Russian
Growing Up
Today's Nonsense
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Education
I've been teaching at
Highline
since 2002. Prior to that, I was an M.F.A. student in poetry at the
University of Washington, where
I also taught poetry writing classes. Before I arrived in Seattle, I
spent nine years in the cold, bitter state of Iowa. Why? Insanity?
Well, I was working on my M.A. in English at
Iowa State University while
teaching first-year composition. My first post-high school experience
was as an undergrad at Drake University,
where I majored in everything from drama to vocal performance. In the
end, I graduated with a B.A. in Music with minors in History and
English. |
A common snowy day in Iowa |
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Summer and Winter Churches in Syzdal
Catherine's Palace in St. Petersburg |
Russian
While at Drake, I took Russian
classes. I loved it so much that I continued to study the language
after I graduated. While studying Russian, I studied abroad in the
summers of 1994 and 1996. In 1994, I studied in
St. Petersburg, and in
1996 I studied in
Minsk,
Belarus. In addition to meeting many friends with whom I still keep
in contact, I traveled to
Moscow,
Vilnius,
and Prague. I would like to say
that I visited
Bratislava and
Frankfurt, but really, I was just in those airports. At one
point, I was fluent enough in Russian to go to
Paris as part of a tour which was
conducted exclusively in Russian. While in those countries, I was never
accused of being an American. (Weird). Most people thought I was
either
Kazakh or from the east in
Siberia. Ah, those
were the days of carefree traveling!
Nadia, me, Misha, Vera, and Lyuba in Paris |
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Growing Up
On the homefront, my mother’s family is from
South Boston; my father’s is
from the Big Island of
Hawai’i; and I was raised in
South Central
Los Angeles. I was born in
Inglewood,
approximately three blocks from the old
Forum where the
L.A. Lakers used to play, and
shortly after I was born, my family moved to
Gardena. Little did I know
that Gardena was one of the
biggest Japanese American communities in Los Angeles. It still is.
My father is a sansei,
third generation Japanese American. That makes me yonsei, fourth
generation. In Gardena, there were a lot of nisei
(second generation), sansei, and yonsei, and I was part of that community, as was my dad, who was a basketball and
baseball/softball coach in his spare time. I started playing
competitively when I was in 1st grade, and played through
college on city teams, school teams, adult teams, co-ed teams, j.v.
teams, varsity teams, and intramural collegiate teams. Obviously, my
size dictated that I be a point guard in basketball and lead-off
hitter/shortstop in baseball/softball. I grew up a sports fanatic, but
I’ve strayed in the past few years. One of these days I’ll get back
into it and start playing again. However, I didn’t wear glasses until
college (too much reading), so I don’t know what I’ll do about my
eyesight if I’m throwing a ball to first or shooting a free-throw! |
Gardena, California
Me at shortstop, about 9 years old |
My "Lakerettes" basketball photo, circa 1980 |
Do I still look like this? |
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Today's Nonsense
These days, I spend most of my time working on
classes or projects for
Highline.
If I’m not doing that, I’m hanging out with my
dogs,
my spouse, and my two sons. I do a lot of reminiscing about my
departed guinea pigs
and
rats. We do a lot of hanging
out, playing music, going for walks, working in the yard, and planning
vacations we can’t afford to take yet. I also write for the
Pacific Reader
and International Examiner, and
occasionally have
poems published in journals. I need to start doing
that again. In addition:
Here's me sitting
on a Kilauea lava flow on the Big Island |
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