Winter Fundraiser 2014, Day Two
When the Baron suggested “Odd Jobs” for our theme, it made me smile in remembrance. So many creative ways to keep the wolf from the door. Or, in our case, the coyotes, since they are becoming more common in our area. They must be attracted by the hordes of white-tailed deer.
Who would’ve thought all those years of doing varied temporary work would have been the perfect preparation for riding the intertubes on Gates of Vienna? Had we not gone through decades of economic uncertainty, living by the Baron’s sheer persistence and optimism, would we be able to do this now? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect those years prepared us for this incarnation. Who could ever have guessed?
When I met the Baron and moved to Virginia, it was a culture shock. No central heat or air conditioning, isolated from the busy-ness of the city, living among people who’d been here for endless generations… I was a long time coming to terms with a new way of life. Heck, I was a long time figuring out what people were saying!
The Baron chose the Middle of Nowhere and I chose the Baron so that was that. What impressed me back then still does: his optimism, his complete integrity and his persistence. All of those qualities would end up serving him well when we began this blog. However, when we started it was meant merely to serve as a distraction for me and as a connection between us while he was away at work during the week. Never did we intend it, ten years later, to have become our daily center of gravity. Sometimes it feels as though Gates of Vienna is a child, an eternal child who grows and changes but will never be able to get around without a guiding hand.
We’ve described before how we got here, now the time has come to talk about how we managed to stay and even to prosper after a fashion. This part of Virginia is a good place to be if you want to scrape by while you spend your time doing something you want above all else. For the Baron, that was painting landscapes — dozens and dozens and dozens of them from the age of seven until his eyes gave out. In the beginning he kept careful records of each one, when it was painted and where it went after it was sold. I’m not so sure he was that meticulous at the end, when he knew his sight was changing. [Note from the Baron, who did the final edit: Yes, I kept complete records right up until the last painting.]
The Baron always (or nearly so) painted on the scene; he wasn’t ever interested in studio work. So when it became too cold to paint, he turned his attention to making enough money doing something else to get by till the warm weather returned.
And that was my intention also: I didn’t want to set the world on fire, I simply wanted to keep bringing in enough fuel to keep the home fires lit. My jobs were, for the most part, pedestrian. I did enjoy working as a chef until the owner started pitching small tomatoes at me during some tense times in the kitchen. And I loved community work — being invited in to teach small groups about the Nurturing Parent Program and how it was designed to reverse and eradicate child abuse. It was easy to be enthusiastic about a program actually designed to create a practical, workable peace, one (formerly damaged) family at a time. No utopias, thank you. Meeting the founder, Dr. Bavolek, was a turning point in my life. Had my mother not been forced to come to live with us, I’d have stayed with his program continuing to teach facilitators how to implement this life-saving program in their communities.
Perhaps it would be best to back up a bit and start with the academic or teaching jobs from early on. Those two words aren’t always synonymous, but in ideal circumstances they work synchronously. While the Baron’s time doing this didn’t play a large part in our lives, during the years they lasted the experience gave us enough background to choose home-schooling when our turn came to educate our own son.
I think this era began when the Baron saw an ad for a company that sent out private tutors to people’s houses. Given that the academic year mostly coincided with his non-painting time, it was a good fit. His academic skills were valuable, particularly in Math, where there is a perennial shortage.
Sometimes he found the jobs and sometimes they found him. These ‘academic’ assignments were a string of referrals, though I don’t quite remember how they were sequenced. I’ll let him remember that. At any rate, he’s a patient teacher and was always skilled at math. Later on, when the tutoring group folded, he went solo for a while. Some of those students were indeed Missions Impossible.