Graduation - June 1998

In the summer of 1997, I went to the University of Oregon Archaeological field school in Eastern Oregon. We excavated at Carlon Village, a late Holocene sedentary living site. The site had been heavily looted and the data we recovered mostly consisted of small projectile points (microliths), groundstone tools such as manos, metates, and net weights, obsidian and basalt flakes (debitage), faunal remains, charcoal, and other "worthless garbage." This is a photo of house ring 2 after the excavation units were filled in. At the end of our field work, we actually used a crane to right the stones of this house as an example of how they were arranged by their native american inhabitants. The boulders are too large for people to lift unaided and it is a marvel that they were moved here and arranged in these rings.

This picture was taken of the whole crew at the beginning of the school. We were quite a large group as you can see and it was an experience living and working together out in the desert for 6 weeks. We learned a lot about the prehistory of the Northern Great Basin, survey techniques, excavation theory, methods, and stages. We also spent many nights talking around the campfire or heading down to the local watering hole in Christmas Valley.

My partner, Michael and I love to do projects around the house together. This year we built some raised beds for veggie and herb gardens. Michael also built a green house this spring and we grew our own starts for the vegetable garden. We are still working on a pond with a waterfall. We also have lots of fruit trees which we planted when we lived here 4 years ago. They have grown very tall but the only fruit we get so far is lots of apples. This year we put in a grape arbor, if we are here 3-4 years from now we will enjoy the Concord grapes. We work on the yard together a lot, I do the planting and Michael does the construction and wood working, he is building on a little bird house right now.

We both love music. Michael has a piano, a Peavey keyboard, and a guitar. He has been playing since he was in fifth grade. He mostly uses the keyboard for composition, plays jazz improvs and his own blend of songs on the piano, and the guitar is just for fun. I started playing the violin in 4th grade and I gave it up in High School. I recently got a clarinet and we are both learning the basics of how to play. We are terrible but are having fun learning. We hope to play piano/clarinet duets together some day, but it will be a while.

I was an art major my first year of college at the University of Utah. I dropped out of the program and began painting on my own in 1992. I painted steadily for about 3 years, had work in various restaurants, coffee shops and galleries around town. In 1994, I joined the New Zone Cooperative Gallery here in Eugene. I really enjoyed being part of the gallery and being in a community of artists. The gallery was closed in 1995 because the building we were in was not up to code and EWEB wanted to renovate the space into high cost commercial rentals. When the gallery lost it's space I stopped painting for three years but I recently rediscovered my balanced and am enjoying painting anew. I am also currently working on getting an old kiln into operation and I would like to get into sculpture again.

Michael and I love animals and we have two dogs and a cat, hopefully we can get pictures scanned and put them up, we have lots of them. Our dogs are Jack and Bandit. We've had Jack for 2 1/2 years, he has been with us through many adventures and experiences. He came along on a trip across America in our van in 1996. Jack loves to swim and that summer he swam in the Puget Sound, the Mississippi, the capitol reflecting pool, a New Jersey creek, the Olympic Park in Georgia, Flaming Gorge in Utah, and Lake Shasta. Bandit is the latest addition to our family. He is a big fluffy border collie and he is usually very excited. The two dogs love to play together and get in trouble digging up areas of the yard and/or eating the azaleas. The kitten's name is Sage and I brought her back from archaeological field school near Bend, OR. She is very sweet and absolutely adores Michael, who recently built her a cat house with a hammock. Sage is a new momma... she had three kittens this summer (1998). They are just getting old enough to play and drive her crazy. They are very sweet and Jack loves to lick them when their momma will let him.