After looking up Alvin Ailey, I really appreciate your kind words, dcarch and everyone. Now, on to Daughter-san. Her year has been consumed with the college application process and with finishing high school. Getting into college is not what it was when I was a kid; it is much harder and more stressful today. Kids seem much better prepared, admissions are more competitive, and college costs are an order of magnitude higher. It is easy for kids and their parents to get sucked into the vortex of expectations, ambition and status. We got pulled partway into that mess, but thanks mostly to Daughter-san's level head, we got through it. She will be attending the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. It is a smallish liberal arts honors college of 700 students, with their own building, faculty, advisors, and dorm, in the midst of a 30,000 student university. I think she'll have the best of both worlds - a small school with personal attention, and a big school with a diverse student body and endless things to do. She'll be about two hours from home, which seems to me like a nice distance, and will allow her to come home when she wants to, to have her little brother visit, but keep mom and dad mostly out of her hair. The university has a biology program, which is her science interest, and also a full fine arts program (BFA, MFA, design, etc) which is her non-science interest. There is talk of a double major. Finally, Eugene is one of the most livable towns in Oregon, where a bicycle is accepted and adequate transportation. Naturally, I look forward to fitting out her bike for college duty; any excuse to wrench on bicycles is welcome. Because we'll pay in-state tuition, and she's getting some scholarships by reason of being a National Merit Scholar finalist, the cost is manageable and we'll be able to send her to study abroad as much as she'd like. I've suggested that she brush up on her French! Daughter-san had an interesting high school "career" which is how the kids refer to it. She started as a shy, introverted kid who was very much a study nerd. During high school she did a lot of drawing and photography, had a two-month solo exhibition, took most of her friends' senior portraits, and ended up being voted "best photographer" by her class. Her favorite model was her brother, who was even willing to dress in drag and bite .38SPL cartridges for her senior photography project, which was a photographic interpretation of Truman Capote's "Other Voices Other Rooms". (Unfortunately for him, that project is being kept by the photography teacher as an example for future classes.) She did some interesting things, like embroidering photographic prints. She also got involved in Speech & Debate, went to tournaments, became one of the team's officers and placed second in State in her event. In senior year she started doing theatre and made a whole new set of friends among the "drama kids". During the summers she worked as a cook and later assistant supervisor in the Berkeley camp in Yosemite, which involved responsibility, a lot of hard work - cooking 8 hours in a commercial kitchen during 100 degree heat waves - and, I'm told, some vigorous partying on days off. So Daughter-san is leaving high school as a much more outgoing, confident, social person than she entered. Her high school GPA is perhaps not, err, quite as good as it could have been had she remained less social, but it is pretty good, enough to get her into a good range of colleges. By the time she graduated from high school, she was Miss Popularity, with a whirlwind of parties and outings during the last month. She told me that, while fun, being so social was exhausting and she had started to turn down most invitations. Which was a relief to me, since I would like her to be a serious student in college in addition to having fun. She's back at camp cooking for half of this summer - a different Berkeley camp, after the Yosemite camp was burned to the ground last summer. She'll fly back to Oregon for college orientation in the middle of the summer, then will have the last month of summer free to relax and play with her brother before heading off to college. So there we are, all caught up. SWMBO and I are kid-free for a few weeks and even after DS gets back from his trip, life should be less hectic and I might even be able to do some cooking. Not that we've been starving, but the cooking here hasn't been interesting - just utility cooking. Hoping to change that this summer. Here is a link that might be useful: an online portfolio

Books? Ipads? Nah. The real way to save money is to make the kids buy slates. Or not even bother educating them at all! Kids know far more about computers and how to treat and use them than we do, and can teach us a thing or two. My three-year-old gdtr made a little video for me on my brand new tablet. Imagine my surprise and delight when, several days after she had gone home, I was learning to use my tablet and came across her sweet little video, her sweet voice singing a silly song, her beautiful face bouncing around on my screen. I have no idea how she did it; I was consulting my manual, reading step-by-step, trying to figure out how to make a video when she popped up! Maybe I will ask her how to post it here next time I see her, so you can see for yourselves. As a book lover, I am sad to think that books, of all things, are not permanent! But I do believe that computers are the future. Kids will have their school-pads AND their personal pads. And cell phones. And fuel-efficient vehices. And everything else, as things come along. We will still have our slates and buggy whips, our gas-guzzlers and short-sightedness. My great-grandmother, born in 1873, would have nothing to do with airplanes!

Amber has been designing and making her own outfits (school, prom and dance) since fifth grade when we bought her a sewing machine and got her lessons. She designed and made her three prom dresses ... starting literally, the day before the prom. And people want to know why I have an ulcer. LOL This is a dress she designed and made two years ago for her 24th birthday party. She's the one on the left. The gal next to her is like another daughter to me, and she was in the middle of a blink, not the middle of a coma. :-) Jodi-

we're Jewish; we just dance:) weddings are especially seen as a must-occasion to dance whether you move gracefully or not; most dances are fast; one has to be happy..and more than that, make groom and bride happy. so folks really go out of their way and just dance..on my first wedding that was a traditional one (it was not a big wedding but still around hundred people; we chose one of the cheaper hotels as our venue mostly since it had a view on Jerusalem hills..) and many hotel guests from other countries just came to watch the wedding. since guys made a huge rope out of hotel napkins tied together and were jumping that rope:) also since one's supposed to make a bride and a groom happy and to make them feel even more elated one of the traditions is to put a bride on one chair, a groom or another-and then several strong guys raise the chairs and dance with you in the air while you try to hold hands...when you're not holding onto that chair for dear life..:) that was kinda scary. But they didn't drop us. So if I sound sometimes like I've been dropped in my childhood too many times-it didn't happen on my first wedding:) (after the wedding, one Brazilian lady-who was amongst the enchanted watchers- talked me into giving her my wedding bouquet , with tears in her eyes, because, per her explanation, she needed good fortune or something. I saw her for the first time in my life and kinda wasn't inclined to..kinda at all..but she was so hysterical I of course gave her the bouquet..lol) (second wedding, I just put on my best jeans and we went to the local City Hall..so no wedding:) but I remember the first one quite warmly of course. even though the Rabbi was unexperienced, it was his first wedding ever and he was so anxious that he told us after the wedding it will be his last one too. LOL