I look back on my days at Roosevelt HS with great fondness.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to the reunion, so I thought I'd send an email with my greetings and a brief summation of what's become of me.
I'll begin in 1984, when I was living in a tiny rent-controlled
basement apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area), and became a street musician for the next seven years. In 1988, while playing flute and guitar duets at the Park Street Station Metro Stop with my best friend Matt Turner, I met Jacqueline Lemonnier - the woman who would become my wife. Jacqueline was getting a Masters in
Communication at Boston University. She had an assignment to do a field observation, and - very fortunately for me - she decided to ask if she could observe and write about Matt and I performing in the subway. Later I wrote a song about it called "Park Street Serenade". I also wrote a song called "The StreetMusicians" about my over-all experience as a Boston street musician. I send copies via attachment of those two
lyrics plus one I wrote for my daughter Clara.
After Jacqueline finished her Masters, she got a job in Arlington, Virginia (Washington, DC area). We got married and moved to Arlington. Our daughter Clara was born in 1992. Raising Clara turned out to be
the most meaningful and important experience of my entire life. When Clara was six, I wrote a song for her that uses the North Country imagery of my youth. The "North Woods" of the first verse was a farm in Aurora owned by classmate Tony Hill, who was the drummer in a band I'd been in.
At some point I had to face the fact that I was not going to be
able to make enough money with my music to contribute sufficiently to supporting a family. So I became a freelance editor. The way this work is done today is through email. My clients send me the work via attachment. I do the work at my home computer, tracking all of the changes. And I send the completed work back to my clients via attachment. My editing work is mostly international technical
documents in areas such as transport, health, poverty-reduction, and economic development. I do continue to play music, and I must say that it is a relief to have freed the music from the shadow of financial
pressure.
I was deeply involved on the grassroots level in the state of
Virginia in the two Presidential Campaigns of Barack Obama. I'd never done canvassing before - I wound up knocking on thousands of doors. I also took on the role of lifting everyone else's spirits when things got really tough. Working in these two campaigns was by far the most meaningful and fulfillingpolitical experience of my entire
life.
Clara is now 21. She is majoring in Civil Engineering at Georgia
Tech. She is staying here with us this summer - she has a paid internship with a company called HNTB that has a branch here in Arlington. She will be graduating from Georgia Tech either in December or May (depending upon how certain opportunities play themselves out). Clara has truly forged her own path - both
of her parents are humanities/social science types, and she's studying hard-core math and science.
I hope that you all have a wonderful time - know that I am
thinking about you. Love, Rob