After graduation I went to TCU for one year and then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, at that time an all-female university, rather a strange experience! Spent two years there and then moved to New York City. After working at a travel agency and a hotel reservations agency, I ended up at Columbia University. I worked in the graduate dean’s office as essay and dissertation secretary, then the School of Architecture and Columbia College History Department, and also did freelance manuscript typing. I also took classes, majoring in art history as they didn’t offer a major in fine arts.
When I worked for the hotel reservations agency I was able to go to Antigua, Guadeloupe, St. Croix, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. While working at Columbia I took advantage of their charter flights to Europe – Amsterdam, Geneva, and England.
After 11 years in NYC I moved to Florence, Colorado, where I discovered I couldn’t make a living. (The Federal Pen wasn’t there then. Maybe I missed my calling as a prison guard!) So, moved back to Midland, worked for John Redfern Ill for awhile and then moved to College Station, this time majoring (for a short while) in Biomedical Sciences (pre-vet). I don’t think I’ve ever hated a course as much as I did chemistry! I also worked at Texas A&M College of Education and the vet school during this time and again did manuscript typing.
So after many years of education and no degree, I gave up formal schooling for good and ended up back in Midland.
I got involved in pure bred dogs while I was in College Station, Bassets and Rottweilers, bred and showed them, mostly the Rottweilers, for about 30 years. In Midland I worked for various attorneys and oil companies. After the bust in the 1980s, I worked contract until taking early social security at age 62. In 2003 I heard Tinariwen, a Tuareg music group from Mali, on NPR. I fell in love with the music and later the culture and made my first trip to Mali in 2007 for the Festival au Desert. I returned to Mali this year (a separate story), after an 8-day stopover in Morocco. Went to Festival au Desert for 3 days and nights and then to the north of Mali, Tuareg country, for 19 days – Kidal, Aguelhoc, Tessalit, the Tamadacht Festival at Anderamboucam, and Gao, before heading back to Bamako to fly home. The Tuareg rebels were fighting the government troops during this time so there were places I didn’t get to go. But I will be going back in December and plan to move there sometime in 2010. If you’re up to roughing it (and eating lots of stewed goat), come visit!
I went to Santa Fe in April to see Tinariwen in concert. (I had met several of them in Tessalit.) I was their guest and had a great time visiting with them, drinking Tuareg tea, and cementing friendships. I also got to meet Berta Benally and her son Clayton of Blackfire, a Navajo group from Arizona, who are very close friends with Tinariwen.
Oh, yeah, no husbands and no children. Just dogs and boyfriends©