Family and Friends

(update of July 8, 2010) I had a really a good time being when I went back to work. I was working as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) at Augustans College here in Sioux Falls. where I was involved in supporting a program called Service-Learning, through a consoritum of colleges in support of Service-Learning here in the Midwest. The concept of Service-Learning, sometimes called experiential learning, is hardly new. Teachers have done it for generations except they call it practice teaching. Medical students call it rotations, but it is the same idea applied to science, humainities and other higher ed programs. Working as a VISTA was fun because it didn't carry the same responsibility level as some of my prior jobs. I got to do things like help prepare the content for Augustana's Service Learning site and work on the Facebook page. It also didn't pay very much, just a stipend. I'd make more bagging in a supermarket. But that's why it is called volunteering. Unfortunately, the divorce put all my assets in a frozen state and I needed to go out and find some realy paying work. So I had to , sadly, leave the VISTA position behind.

Here are a couple of pictures from Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota where I spent three years as the Director of Development for the Dakota State University Foundation. That means that I was the chief fund-raiser (so what else is new).  My main job was to raise the scholarship endowment so lots of kids who couldn't otherwise afford it, can attend college. The first photo is of General Beadle, long-time president of the college. The school once bore his name. The other picture is Beadle Hall, the College of Liberal Arts made from native stone and the oldest building on the campus. 

In August of 2000, I restarted my new century with a new adventure working as the Development Director for the Washington Pavilion of the Arts and Sciences in Sioux Falls.  This was my first foray into fundraising for arts and culture and I was very excited about the opportunity.  Sometimes things things were even more exciting than I'd bargained. I'd stopped writing for too long.  So I left in July of 2003 to start a new adventure and continue writing a bit more regularly.  Learn more about the Washington Pavilion by clicking on their own web site.  I joined Volunteers of America, Dakotas in December of 2004, ready for another "normal" job. (I wonder when I will find one of those.) Left there in December of 2008 vowing to retire from full time work, do only consulting, writing and resting. We'll see........

  This nice sunset is from the cabin site. But the cabin on Lake Shetek is not part of my life anymore. That went also with the divorce. Still, photography is another hobby of mine. Years ago, I earned my living with a camera. I like the picture so I am leaving it on the site.

Hosting visitors is a favorite Mid-West past-time. Sandy and Linda Gallanter of San Francisco, my uncle (my late father's brother) and aunt who came to visit one summer. They are the only guests we've had (so far) who arrived in their personal private airplane. However, our first visitors, my Aunt Toby (Sandy's sister) and Uncle Dave Schenerman brought their own house and parked it behind the Tyler house for a few days. They stopped during their "we're going cross country in a trailer to celebrate our retirement" trip. They returned to visit without the trailer in June, 2008.

Other brave folks who have made the trek since we left the East include friend and partner in direct mail work, David Litwinsky of NYC, our friend Jay Siegelaub who lives in Westchester County, New York (and has visited twice) ; Barbara Reimuth, our downstairs neighbor in Ossining who now calls Southern Indiana home; Lorna's sister Susan (three time visitor) and her husband Hunt, New Jersey people; Lorna's brother Al, his wife Janie (also came multiple times) and their children Christopher and Larissa, also New Jersey folk my daughter Dr.Tisha Gallanter from Jacksonville, Florida; and, of course, Lorna's dad Loren (numerous times before he passed away)who lived... where else... in New Jersey. Bill Curtis of Olympia Washington dropped by for a couple of hours. Bill is an "Internet" friend. We'd never met before. Jon Wennerberg of Marquette, Michigan, an M-Rider (Mensa Motorcycle Club) and who I'd also never met before, stopped for coffee on his way from the Black Hills Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. 

As mentioned, I am now living in a trailer house without much room for guests. I put up those pictures soon. But there are the other outside activities... going to synagogue, joining the Lions Club, trying to make the South Dakota Mensa meetings,  dabbling in local politics, watching football games at the local colleges, attending concerts and ballet performances at the Washington Pavilion, and keeping up with the good movies. 

(The photo is Currie, Minnesota, near the lake cabin, population about 300. I took that picture because I just liked the look.)

In New York I worked a block from the World Trade Center (but there is no longer a WTC web site for obvious reasons), raising funds for The Legal Aid Society, who needed more money each year because they got less and less from the Legal Services Corporation. I heard the bomb go off in 1993, but that's not why I left New York. I escaped from the big city for lots of reasons, but if I had to pick only one, I would probably say it was because "Jose Sent Me" closed down.

Jose Sent Me was a Manhattan Tex-Mex bar and restaurant right around the corner from where David Letterman tapes his TV show. It was a quiet place, with a young Moroccan bartender who made first-class margaritas. The joint had a wonderful juke box and 1950s furnishings taken from a old hotel that closed down in Hudson, New York. Most every Friday afternoon I would go there with some fundraising colleagues to talk business and trash. The place closed because the proprietor (not the young bartender, but the almost always absent owner) was dealing cocaine and the feds seized the three restaurants he owned. He didn't need the money. The restaurants did quite well. He was dealing drugs because the illicit profession gave him prestige within his group and a measure of excitement. The day "Jose Sent Me" was closed down, I knew that New York and I no longer understood each other and I was leaving. I didn't know where I was going. I just knew I was going. The rest of the story I'll be telling as the factual part of a fantasy novel I am writing called "The Daydream Believer." Oh, but now we're back to talking about writing again.

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