Ginkgo Gal
My blogs
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Industry | Education |
| Occupation | educator, presently retired |
| Location | Bloomington, IL, United States |
| Introduction | A breast cancer survivor since 1986, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. I met my husband Ed in 1965 when we both sang in the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, a large ensemble that still performs with the Pittsburgh Symphony. We've continued singing all these years, presently with the Civic Chorale at Illinois State University where my husband was made Distinguished Professor in 1997. My career was in teaching and specifically gifted education. Both of us have been retired since 2000. We have two adult children, Laurie is an attorney, is married to an attorney, has 3 adorable daughters, and lives in Grapevine, TX. Neal married Carla Merkow on his 40th birthday, is a geochemist, and lives in Seattle. They joyfully welcomed Gabriella Riva Hines, born on August 4, 2014 at the Puget Sound Birthing Center. Carla gave birth to Eliza June Hines on June 17, 2017. Ed and I have 5 granddaughters!!!!! Besides Pittsburgh PA and Bloomington, IL, we've lived in Cincinnati and Columbus Ohio( Ph.D at Ohio State)and in upstate New York. And in Manhattan when Ed did his Master's at Columbia -- Laurie was 2. |
| Interests | Being with my husband Ed, gardening, hot-air ballooning,choral singing, reading, photography, Fair Trade, our Unitarian Universalist Church which used to support New Life School in rural Uganda (where I visited), cooking, public radio, travel, Downton Abbey. I completed the University of Illinois Master Gardener Program in 2003 and remain active. |
| Favorite movies | Close Encounters of The Third Kind, The Sound of Music, Dirty Dancing, , Quartette, The Birdcage, It's Complicated, Ricki and the Flash, Into the Woods, The Secret of Roan Innish, The Proposal, , Maudie, The Shape of Water, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Guernsey and Potato Peel Pie Society, Bohemian Rhapsody |
| Favorite music | Anything composed by Phillip Glass including his opera Satyagraha,the Ring Cycle, Peaceable Kingdom by Randall Thompson, Joan Baez who influenced my learning to play guitar to accompany my singing folk songs, The Gospel Mass by Robert Rey which Civic Chorale will perform once again this April 2017, The Children's Mass and The Magnificat by John Rutter, |
| Favorite books | There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Green (about the Aids Orphans of Africa), A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,The Guernsey and Sweet Potato Peel Literary Society, Midwives, Seedfolks, Sign of the Seahorse, Dinotopia, Squashed by Joan Bauer, Out of The Dust, Candide,The End of Your Life Book Club, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Cutting for Stone, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, The Illusion of Separateness, anything by Ann Patchett other than Commonwealth, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, When the Wind Blows (James Patterson's first book about the winged children), A Man Called Ove, Scrappy Little Nobody (Anna Kendrick), Born with Teeth (Kate Mulgrew), Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts both by Erik Larsen, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo, American Dirt, Project Hail Mary by and Weir |