I've been so many different people in my time. I once typed up a curriculum vitae, in imitation of somebody really important, and it was 3 pages, single spaced. As I said, it wasn't really official, just a list of things I'd done or special notice I'd gotten. But these weren't anything that anybody else would consider significant. Well, actually there were a couple. But one friend teased, "Oh, couldn't hold a job?”

I had helped out in a silkscreen shop. I mixed colors for Corita. I measured yard goods at a discount fabric store. I washed test tubes at the National Institutes of Health, checked books in and out at the American Friends Services Committee library, raised kids on Forest Service stations (my own), took care of others' kids when I couldn't do anything else but stay home with mine. We took over our cousin's giftware manufacturing plant and made plastic bowls and trays with gold painted bamboo and butterflies inside.