M-ongst Ourselves: Members at a Glance |
Contact Susie with a Glance at yourself at SKilgard@aol.com or 954-0326!
M is for May and for Mensans who Move Around. Every one of our Glances this month has travel in his or her recent past or future. So get out your maps and your passports and take a Glance at your fellow Mensans.
Our first Glance is in the direction of John Jensen, who teaches math at Horizon High and is a consultant for the College Board (the organization that certifies Advanced Placement courses and administers the SAT). He’s been teaching 28 years--all math--and says teaching the same topic does not get tiring when you have new and different students to teach. I asked him how high school students today are different from those 28 years ago, and John said they are now more worldly, more "on their own" (less supervision, more latch-key), and are brighter than ever. Their interest in math has stayed about the same, though to a degree changes in technology have increased interest in computers and also in math. As a College Board consultant for the regional office in San Jose, John gives workshops for teachers who are teaching AP classes, especially Calculus. This gives him the chance to travel frequently, often to California. Other recent trips have included Vienna at Christmas (which hosts a magical festival during the holidays) and Honolulu in February.
Another Mensan who has done his share of traveling (and maybe the shares of a couple other people, too!) is James Ophir Martin, Jr., whose visits have included pretty much the world over, from Singapore to the Middle East to India to Europe to Samoa and more. Formerly in the Navy, James later lived in Africa, serving as a lay missionary for three years to fulfill a promise he made when his brother appeared to be dying from an incurable disease (from which he miraculously recovered). Today, James still enjoys traveling, as well as painting and writing. He writes science fiction and children’s stories, while his painting (mostly acrylic and some watercolor) focuses on seascapes. Lately he has started to paint the pyramids of Egypt, as well, inspired by time spent with the nursing-home roommate of his father. This roommate was born in Cairo and spoke Arabic, which James previously had studied in Italy. They were able to communicate with each other, and James found a new subject for his art.
Still hungry for more tales of travel? Then Bea Page is the woman for you to contact. Recent years have included trips to Russia (including a 10-day trip on the Volga), Turkey (where a daughter lives), Ireland, the Galapagos, Scotland, and China. She’s visited every state except Alaska, spent six years in Hawaii and lived in Paris for three, and spent seven months on Johnson Island ("before it was nuked," she added). Next month she’s heading off to Egypt. When she’s not traveling the world, Bea has been teaching statistics at the University of Phoenix for the past 15 years. She says the fear students have of stats is often unreasonably strong at the beginning of the class, but most feel pretty comfortable with using them as problem-solving tools by the end of the course. Bea’s aim is not to make these business and nursing students into statisticians, but to allow them to review others’ work with more understanding and to evaluate the use (and misuse) of statistics. (The most common problem she sees is the use of a test that is inappropriate for the type of data, by the way.) Bea also loves computers; one web site she’d recommend to others is the House of Representatives site, which she says is excellent and tells you clearly just what is going on out there. You can also find out how best to contact your Representative by inputting your ZIP code.
Mark Wuori recently changed ZIP codes when he moved out to Phoenix about eight months ago. He is still recovering from a nasty broken ankle suffered during a tree-trimming stint in Pennsylvania. One of the limbs of the tree swept his ladder to the ground and Mark fell 20 feet. What was he thinking as he was ground-bound? To thrust the power saw he was still holding away from him. (He did, and good thing, as it was still running when both he and it hit the ground.) Needless to say, some bones were crushed; they were replaced with cadaver bones, which the body uses as a model as it gradually recalcifies and grows a new bone over a matter of years. Not long after this incident, Mark and a neighbor drove more than 50 hours out here to Phoenix--he drove with one foot, and the injured one propped up on the seat! Add to this the newest cargo--his cat and her four kittens born just the day before the trip--and you’ve got the makings for a very interesting cross-country trek. Anyway, Mark is still recovering from his fall and after his recuperation he plans to work in computer systems programming. If you’d like to cheer him on as he returns to life without crutches, OR if you know of a Mensa coffeehouse gathering on the West side (Mark’s a big coffee fan), please give him a call at 580-9746.
That concludes our Glance at ‘round-the-world Mensans for this month. And speaking of conclusions, the June M-ongst Ourselves column will conclude a full year of Glances at our local membership. It will be the final column in this series, so if you’ve been putting off contacting me with a Glance at yourself, you know what to do. Until June, then.....