I am not so hip to the blogland lingo but apparently I have been “tagged” by
Risa from Garden and the Good Life blog tagged me with an Honest Scrap Award. That means I have to tell you you 10 things about myself that you would not find out about me on my blog. So here goes. ( ugh) 8 (plus two), ugly things you don’t know about me.
1. Even though I bitch alot about the publishing world and the promise of a digital one, I collect books and have a fetish for magazines, in fact, I spend as much on magazines as I do on food, and my library is immense with stacks of books that drives everyone crazy.
2. I have this fantasy of leaving my fast-paced life behind, and moving to Vermont to live in log cabin with no electricity ( except for my computer!) for one year so that I could slow life down and just note the migration of birds and listen to the rain.
3. I had this brief career as a contemporary artist in the mid 1990’s with kind-of-an-‘important’, as they say in the art world, museum exhibition ( Matt Mattus-LURE) at the Worcester Art Museum, and one at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art ICA. I guess some of my work is in some permanent museum collections, nothing major, more like the Wellsley College Museum, I was interviewed on All Things Considered though, and was also voted as a Boston Now artist by the ICA. Not sure why I stopped, I think I was freaked out by my German curator’s not so artfully written catalog which was panned by ArtNews, I quit and haven’t done any work since.
4. My AP photo with Me and Jimmy Carter. Yikes. This 1978 Kansas City Times newspaper cover captured me and Jimmy in color, was a bit of an accident since I was just attending a national conference for the Future Farmers of America, in KC, ( I was even funnier, the state president for FFA for Massachusetts). All 50 state presidents were allowed to sit at a press conference on stage at the Kemper Arena when protesters gathered outside after hearing about the start of the hostage crisis in Iran that started that day. The doors we’re locked, and I had my Forest Gump moment. Security got tight. I was pulled out of line, but allowed back it at the last minute, and the only seat left on stage was the one next to the President. All I could think of was “I’m gonna get shot” and “what should I do”. Everyone saw me on National news, with Walter Cronkite. It was all about me, and not Jimmy Carter.
To add on add people to have my pic taken with, something I am not into, really, but “just happened to be there”,I can add in Michael Jackson and Mohamed Ali ( separate occasions), when they made a secret visits to our offices at Hasbro.
5. I have a very real phobia about snakes. I even spent extra money to make the foundation of my greenhouse 4 feet deep, and raised up 1 foot off the ground so that you have to step up and over the sill, to keep snakes out. Last year, I saw a garter snake on the walk to the greenhouse, and I screamed like a big girl, it freaked me out so much, that I wouldn’t walk that way dark all summer unless I had a big stick to bang. Weird part is, I am only afraid of Garter snakes ( they are the most horrible) and small, skinny New England snakes, not Boa’s or Pythons, or Rattlesnakes even. Just fast stripey skinny beige snakes. Can’t even look at a picture of them. I don’t feel bad, I hear that Dan Hinkley shares the same snake phobia. of course, I have planted rock walls everywhere!! I’ve created a snake haven!
6. I’m a foodie, but the only thing I don’t like to eat is Kidneys and zucchini. Kidneys stink like pee, Zucchini squeaks when you eat it.
7. I went to College in Hawaii. Majored in Classical Piano, but I wanted to be an ornithologist when I was growing up, but my brother ‘advised me’ that although I graduated with a Biology degree from Maine, that I wouldn’t really make any money at it, especially in research if I went on to Cornell to continue banding migratory Red Knots (Sand Pipers) in the Arctic ( my thesis), so since I played piano too, I got a piano scholarship to University in Hawaii. My brother still won’t talk to me about it. He ended up being a biologist. I’m now a creative director for a toy company, go figure.
8. I’m allergic to cats, and I really don’t like em either. Don’t know why.
Now, I need to tag others…hmmm…
I tag:
1. Judy Glattstein
2. Stephen Orr
5. Mike Slater
Matt,
Thanks for making me laugh, especially about the kidneys!