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Today's Featured Biography
Jon Lipman
The facts of our lives appear straightforward, though we all know how complicated they were as we lived them. On the professional side, I got through the academic sequence to a Ph.D. and taught East Asian history at Mount Holyoke, in western Massachusetts. I wrote books and essays about Islam and Muslims in China and a textbook of modern East Asian history, with much time spent in Taiwan, Japan, and China. On the personal side, an early marriage with two children (Avi born in 1974, Mia in 1978), divorce followed by half-time single parenthood, a second marriage in the 1990s, a second divorce, and (finally!) starting in 1999 a contented partnership with Ann Pemberton, a friend since 1956. Ann has added not only deep, daily delight to my life but also a stepson, Mike, his wife Vickie, and their four children—Cody (14), Sierra (11), Olivia (9), and Adrian (8). Avi has a stepson (August, 14) and a daughter (Winter, 3), so that makes six grandchildren, all living in Oregon and Washington. So in June 2015 I retired from Mount Holyoke, and we moved to Corvallis, Oregon, a college town 80 miles south of Portland, to be close to the family and do old and new things, as we choose.
I still play acoustic guitar, mostly rhythm, and listen to music from Renaissance to Reggae, leaning heavily to jazz. Following family tradition, I love to produce fruits and vegetables when I have space and time, as I now do in Oregon. Cooking remains a daily pleasure, along with reading, trying to stay healthy, herding grandkids, and spending the evenings with Ann. I hope to continue writing, including scholarly stuff, and studying East Asia with K-12 teachers. We plan to travel, with New Zealand our goal this year, and to become thoroughly acquainted with the local wonders of the Pacific Northwest—mountains, high desert, coastline, forests (including temperate rain forests), vineyards, towns. My mom, now 95, still lives in Bethesda, so I visit when I can. She’s independent and stubborn, and I want to be like that when I’m her age, though maybe somewhat more mellow, as befits our generation.
Jon Lipman
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