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Today's Featured Biography
Deborah Klaus
Was hoping to find a 30-year reunion, but can't...Happy to see Jennifer Klunder's bio...she sat behind me in almost every row of desks--Yes, Jen, it is a great country! I have loved hiking through it on the Appalachian Trail when I was 19 for a year (500 miles in the south, 500 in the north), attending UW-Madison and living in hippie paradise co-ops, learning to make my own bread, yogurt, tofu and macrobiotic food; learning to sail, become politically active with prisoners and war resisters, and grooving to the very best live bands, especially Honor Among Thieves, while working summers on organic farms in Viroqua, WI; Loudoun Co, VA; and settling a while on a farm in Pittsboro, NC, with a friend after obtaining a B.A. in History from UW in 1992. Lived for a while in that friend's defunct chicken barn with a dirt floor, plastic around a stall, and a wood burning stove to cook on--all those farm days were the happiest times of my life!! But I saw I'd always work for someone else if I didn't finally settle down and get a "real job," so I reluctantly left the cool spring creeks of North Carolina and obtained a B.S. in Nursing from John's Hopkins (1998)... lived in beautiful Kensington, MD, while working in the neonatal-ICU of Holy Cross Hospital...Always an avid contra and ballroom dancer since age 18, I took up the study of Argentine Tango and flew to Buenos Aires, Paris, and New York in my spare time for intensified tango classes. I also remained an avid biker and explorer of urban ruins, and love all romantic writers (Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Tennessee Williams) 60's music, and eclectic pursuit of religion (Christianity, atheism, and Buddhism).
I chose to become a single mother by choice when I was 36 to a gorgeous daughter, Amelia, the light of my life! At that point, I moved back to Alexandria VA to be closer to my parents (they are still in the house I grew up in) and to take a job at Children's Hospital. I have a partner, but, both staunchly independent, we each live in separate homes...I became a proud first-time home-owner in 2013 after it took 15 years to save a 20% down-payment with no help from anyone thanks to the high cost both of child care and housing on a nurse salary in this area. I watched the housing bubble with particular fury as no bankers went to jail and my countrymen became homeless and jobless. And now home prices are higher than ever because nothing has been corrected.
Was sad to see Patrick Welsh retire... sad to see our school be demolished..sorry for the slights both that I perceived and perpetuated....they were all erroneous and I hope I can be forgiven by my peers.... Was happy to see Michele G's bio...yes, would love to catch up with the Wong sisters....Caroline M. is married with three kids, living in Paris, France.
In addition to my neonatal nursing work, I substitute in the Alexandria City schools as a nurse, including at George Mason elementary, my elementary!!....where is Dr. Krug (our principal) now? Always remember Ms. Loughren my kindergarten teacher, who was still teaching at MacArthur as late as 2013! Ms. Meadows, 1st grade, Ms. Jones 2nd, Ms. Carolyn Moya, 3rd, Ms. Lilimar Taylor-Willaims, 4th, Ms. Barnes, 5th, and Ms. Fava, 6th...will always love my elementary teachers for making my childhood nurturing and cozy....And no one told me integration had just started to be implemented, we thought it had always been that way! Entering in 1972, I was still one of the first integrated classes. And I still think we have a good ways to go, because the rich now all send their kids to private school, so how does that make a society that works together and understands each other? But the rich don't seem to stay in any one place anymore anyway, they own houses all over the world and are beholden to no country's laws, and are loyal to no neighborhood, and have bought politicians the world over to have laws written all in their favor, so they can live with impunity, owning more wealth than the 6.9 billion of the "rest of us" combined. Living in an age whose level of inequality now exceeds the Robber Baron age breaks my heart, but most other countries have it far worse (poor Venezuela right now!!). All we can do is the good we know, and pray to God we don't get nuked, just like I prayed when Ronnie Ray-gun became president and we were sure we were going down with Russia when we had enough nukes to explode the world 5 times over. Again, just shows how trivial and what a waste of energy practically everything I ever cared about in high school ever was. But regret can be absolved by trying to do better each day now, and that's what I try to do.
Sure hope each and every one of you is blessed on a sure-footed path through this lonesome valley. "Ain't no one else can do it for you, You gotta walk it by yourself." But my door is always open to the humble, forlorn, or outcast, as I have always viewed myself to be, pretty much from birth. And proudly so!
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