1981

I've kept my cards close for the last year or so, but I must come clean: I quit my teaching job more than a year ago. The main reason? It's a big world out there, and I felt as if I was only scratching its surface. Sure, working with kids is wonderfully invigorating-but only to a point. After 16 years I felt I had reached that point and needed to look for new challenges. So I did. And I found 'em. Writing a theater-focused curriculum for a youth education and employment program sponsored by the D.C. Housing Authority. Research for Merlyn's Pen, a magazine of student writing, on how teachers use the magazine in the classroom. Recruiting teachers and writing curriculum for the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Policy Study, a new charter school in D.C. Things aren't as predictable as they once were, but big worlds are that way, aren't they?

Janet Jakobsen lives in that big southwest country, and she remembered me, sort of, when I e-mailed. "Couldn't quite bring myself to call you 'Abner,'" she wrote. "Although I'm very used to people calling me 'Janet,' it still seems a little funny to see it from someone who knew me long ago."

With recently received tenure at the University of Arizona, Janet is an associate professor of women's studies and religious studies and the co-coordinator of the Committee for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Studies. She also just published a book this past spring, Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference.

"While it focuses on feminist movements," Janet said, "it's based in part on my own participation in alliance politics while doing anti-apartheid work in D.C. for the Washington Office on Africa in the mid-1980s." This year Janet is on sabbatical at Harvard Divinity School as a fellow at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life.

Also in Massachusetts, Larry Dunn has talked with me about charter schools. "Some other parents and I have thought about starting one here in Plymouth," he told me, unhappy with public school options, "but there's no guarantee that your kids will get in once it gets going." (Since they are public schools, charter schools, if they are oversubscribed, must run a lottery for admission.)

Larry and his wife, Cindy, have three daughters Reilly 13, Bridget 10, and Aileen 6—and our classmate waxes philosophic about the powerful genetic mojo that's produced women, women, women in his immediate family.

"My wife's one of four girls," he boasted, "and her sister Lisa has two girls, as does my brother."

When not trading bonds and managing fixed-income portfolios for Mellon Private Asset Management, Larry plays as much soccer as he can, taking on ex-pat Brits who work for Reebok.

Sean Bersell likes leaping out of airplanes. No, it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that he and his wife, Heather Norris, have a bi-coastal commuter marriage, as he's the director of public affairs for the D.C.-based American Institute of Chemical Engineers while Heather lives in L.A. and works on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Al Franken's late Late Line, and other TV fare. No, this in-flight plane-exiting is voluntary.

"New technology allows first-time jumpers like me to free-fall rather than use a static line, he told me. Bound to an experienced sky-diving instructor, Sean and a friend tumbled out of the plane at 10,000 feet and fell for a mile before chutes were pulled.

"I screamed the entire way," he admitted. I guess I would've done the same and wet my pants. Thankfully for each instructor, your back is tight against his or her chest: the other way around and the instructor becomes deaf and sodden.

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