My Familiars

Not that you particularly care, but I do have a family. An intact pair of parents -- approaching forty years of marriage, if you can believe it -- and a sister.

My dad is a "Medical Information Officer" at the National Library of medicine. (Yes, it's a work picture. He astutely avoids all normal photos.) He loves to spend time on the top of a mountain in West Virginia, and he loves collies. The current famimly dog is a tricolor collie named Tucker.

Mom is a teacher at a Quaker elementary school. And yes, we're Quaker. In fact, Quaker on both sides, back at least 250 years in one branch. Her school has recently purchased a tract of land to build on, and she's involved with making the designs as environmental and educational as possible. The picture's from our trip to Greece, by the way, on Crete.

My sister Heather is finishing up her PhD in art history. In fact, she's moving to Santa Fe to begin work as an Assistant Curator while she finishes writing her thesis. I'm just a wee bit jealous that she's moving somewhere cool, getting a job that she wants, and will have a salary and the possibility of permanent employment. I can't really complain too much, though. But you know sibling rivalry isn't subject to rationality.

In addition to the above, I also have three uncles, two aunts, two first cousins, and several more relatives of the nth-removed cousin sort. One or two of them I've even met. But generally, our family is pretty nuclear. In fact, I think I've only met my cousins once, when I was too young to remember.