Hello everyone,
If you think this is a good idea, please post! News, contact info, photos :-) ANYTHING you think the others might be interested in! I didn't start this so that I could advertise myself. In fact, I feel a bit uncomfortable being out here in the public eye. I started it so that all of us could come together.
It's not my blog. In fact, I don't see it as a "blog" at all. It's a bulletin board -- a cyber "Centre Californien"! (Wish I could pass around one of Mr. Garcia's wonderful boxes of assorted cookies!)
I retyped the list of all of us that Candi and Bob sent, and have spent the last couple of days trawling the Net, trying to "fill in the blanks" (married names for women, email addresses, mailing addresses, other miscellaneous info...). There are still more blank that filled-in blanks, but Wow! what an eye opener. So many of us are doing so many amazing things. When you look back at the photos taken in 1968-69, we all looked a bit like clones--maybe not quite so much as students in former years had, but still. Most of us surely came from similar backgrounds, went to similar high schools and were majoring in similar subjects on relatively similar and not yet totally disrupted UC campuses. (Those of us at UCSB hadn't yet burned the BofA.) --It seems everyone has gone out and broken the mold! I don't imagine any of us turned into Donna Reed (bless her heart, didn't we all love her) or her masculine equivalent -- even those who opted to become part- or even full-time stay-at-home-parents. We broke the mold when we boarded the Aurelia. So, what's your story?
Leslie Gerson keeps up with one of our "monitrices" from Pau, Nicole Grangé (now Mme Jacques Palard) and I'm sure I can find contact information for Maryse (Mr. Garcia's secretary who filled his shoes after he retired). I will invite them to joins us also, if they'd like.
Eh voilà. Assez pour aujourd'hui. A vous, maintenant. (Post an old photo of yourself when you write in so everybody can put a face with a name, or describe where you are in the group photo.)
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Thank you, Anna Kay, for setting this up.
ReplyDeleteThat year in Bordeaux was certainly transformative for me in many ways. Things I did there and people I met set the direction for the rest of my life.
I met Jacques Janson at the "resto-u" in Bordeaux. We fell in love and decided to marry. He couldn't easily immigrate to the US; I couldn't easily immigrate to France. Jacques spoke no English. I remembered seeing in high school a film about a place in Canada where only French was spoken. It turned out to be fairly easy for both of us to immigrate to Canada. So off we went, to a land that neither of us had ever even visited. It seemed perfectly logical at the time . . .
The marriage ended after 10 years. We have two grown sons. Born in Montreal, both have now settled in California. They each have two delightful little girls. Jacques worked for a couple of French-language publishing companies, then for the Canadian government, as an editor and speechwriter. He also holds an elected position in the French government, which is enlightened enough to have seats in the legislature to represent its citizens living outside the country. We are still on cordial terms.
After a successful career in translation and public relations, I semi-retired to Vancouver Island a few years ago. I do some free-lance writing, mainly for the local newspaper. Some of my poems, short stories, and essays have also been published over the years. I spend winters in California, to be closer to my family. If I can ever figure out how to get affordable medical care in the US, I will probably move back.
I think of the people I was close to in Bordeaux from time to time, and wonder how their lives turned out. I'm not in touch with any of them at present. It would be nice to hear.
Regards to all,
Florentia Scott
(Fifth from the left in the front row)
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