What were the six jobs you had before your current job that gave you your work/life skills?

So about me: I’ve always needed money, so there have been far more than six jobs. I’ll skip the IT company I worked at to earn money for college, and the other IT company I worked for when I was considering giving up teaching, and the bit jobs, to tell you about the ones most closely related to what I do today:

1. Perhaps I was most successful at being a babysitter. I got an early start at 11 and basically owned the neighborhood. My grandfather had carved beautiful wooden puppets that my mother had sewn clothes for, and I’d put on puppet shows with the children. Or we’d go down to the Smithsonian to see the bees. We’d romp and go swimming and play games. No TV on my watch, but we acted out every cartoon character in the book. I told them stories that they’d have to help me finish. So I never really stopped being a babysitter.
2. When I hit 16 and was able to move on to minimum wage jobs (to support my expensive record-buying habit), I went into catering. First an icecream parlor that served sundaes with a political theme, called The Ice Cream Lobby. Then a deli. I branched out and did weddings on my own. During college I waitressed, the most challenging place being a football clubhouse just south of the border in Switzerland. Excellent prep for teaching, keeping a cool head among fans speaking Swizzerdütsch!
3. As a teen, I volunteered in France for two summers restoring monuments and sites with ICOMOS/ REMPART. I tell anyone who still has their life ahead of them: You haven’t lived if you haven’t volunteered abroad. I learned how to really learn a language. Obvious connection to teaching English there.
4. At college I was a research assistant (political science). Very heady. I loved it, but in time became skeptical about the value of academic learning. That kept me from getting yet another degree when I parachuted into EFL. I keep toying with the idea, to open the door to a more established teaching position, but…
5. After my MA, I became a coordinator/curator of exhibitions and educational programs at various museums. At the German Museum of Hygiene in Dresden I was involved in exhibitions devoted to Odol (a mouthwash) and Darwin and Darwinism, travelling to the US to research history and artifacts connected to genetics, immigration, racism, the Scopes Trial… Later I ran an exhibition project on the experience of migration at an archaeological museum, with an after-school program for teenagers from migrant families, along with community events, from a panel discussion to a street festival. Or: In Konstanz I worked with artist Rune Mields to develop a tour of her paintings depicting the myths of how the world came into being. Marvellous, life-changing years. Being interested in such a wide range of ideas, and learning to use artifacts to relate them, was probably the most valuable source of inspiration for what I do today.
6. Being bilingual, I’ve worked as a translator and interpreter ever since I came to Germany in 1981. Once, in Berlin in the mid 80s when I was working for the Museum at Checkpoint Charlie, I translated a talk Johan Galtung was giving in English into German and got it all wrong when I paraphrased in English “What he means is…”

Over to you! Now, please, don’t be shy!

On Sunday we built up the catamaran, our Dart 18, the Seebock. It’s now sitting down by the beautiful Ammersee, ready to go. Looks good, but could use a new trampoline and some lines. The water was 7.5 degrees centigrade, brrrr, so we decided to go and have potato-leek soup and tea (me) and dark beer (him) instead in the beautiful beergarden under the little medieval church.

It was First Communion Sunday, the girls in white and cream, the boys in suits, moms in purple and grandmoms in lilac… and a big sister being flaky in green and purple stockings. Photo ops against a blue-grey-green lake and sky. A few white sails. Flowerpots with pansies and forget-me-nots. Sparrows. Perfect.

I didn’t have anything to take a picture with. Sorry. I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Today I’m very honored to be a visiting blogger on Chris Adam’s Bits ‘n Bob’s Show ‘n Tell, as part of his Mirror Posts/ Through the Looking Glass series. A post in his great San Francisco blog about a very surrealistic art show, “Altered Barbie”, leading to an equally surrealistic day, set my imagination off. Like Alice going down that rabbit hole, I found myself remembering playing with Barbie, and the cheapness of her clothes, compared to the richness of my mother’s, which Muff made for herself. And then I went and dug out this picture. Sandy and I are playing dress-up one fine summer’s day, way back then, feeling glamorous and serious and strangely wise beyond our years. Thanks, Chris, for the trip.

Do you have any childhood games you remember? Any pictures to show?

Can you imagine having, or are you planning to have, your parents live with you and your family? There will certainly be more of that in the next years, as retirement homes will again become a great luxury. As for me, I’d like to find group living arrangements myself, with a small group of like-minded people sharing a house, and kind-hearted professionals to take care of our physical needs. Yet another utopia?

What about you? Are you struggling with arrangements for your elderly parents? Or are you already thinking about how you will handle your own last years?

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to care for someone/ something
to take care of someone/ something
to care about someone/ something
to provide care to someone
to be careful with
to be caring
caretaker
caregiver
a careworn face
not to have a care in the world…

… hopefully

You see, when I come here the subtext of everyday life in Germany, complaining, what the Germans call “Jammern”, is switched off. Life is harder in the US, you know, and you have to get on with it. Jammering won’t get you anything. Get things done and then go on and have a good time.

I think this might have been a note to myself.