ARCHITECTURE
Professionally, architecture is both a career I enjoy and a means to support my other passions. I enjoy the variety, the people, and helping clients end up with just what they need. Almost all of my work has been with other's firms, but occasionally residential projects come up that provide a very different and exciting challenge (see Personal Projects).
My 1986 Master's Thesis ended up setting the foundation for my future intellectual understanding of architecture - see especially Chapter V.
PHOTOGRAPHY
It seems that I have always been interested on photography. My first camera was a folding bellows camera for 120 film. I discovered the darkroom as a freshman in college and couldn't stay away. It used to be all slides with my all-manual Pentax ME. Now it is all-digital with a Nikon D90 and Adobe Lightroom...
FOLKLORE and DANCE
Dance, music, and singing have been my passion since discovering folk dancing on Friday nights at Reed College as a high school student in the 1960s. Recently, the dance ensemble I helped start in 1976 (and am still dancing with), The Radost Folk Ensemble celebrated its 42nd anniversary. "Dance every day of your life!"
I love teaching dances from the balkans, especially the older traditional dances of Slavic Macedonia and regional dances of Bulgaria. See my Dance Notes for my favorites.
The folk-music recordings available in the 1960s through the 1980s, while usually of excellent quality, were often very difficult to find. Over the years I have collected many Eastern European recordings for use in teaching. When it became easier to share out-of-print recordings digitally, I decided to share the database of my collection on-line: FolkloreDiscography.org. The collection has now grown to over 2000 LPs, 45s, 78s, and CDs.
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Folklore Discography .org
My on-line database of recordings from eastern Europe: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and countries once part of the former Yugoslavia.
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Dance Notes
Dance notes were written by me for use in the various workshops I have taught.- Bulgaria
- Slavic Macedonia
- Greek Macedonia
- Romania
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Great joy is found by supporting one's community.
BCHCS is a relatively new organization that supports the growing local Bulgarian community. I have been a member of the board since its inception in 2011.
The Garfield High School orchestras, under the direction of Marcus Tsutakawa, is one of the finest high school orchestras in the country. It has been a privilege to head the parent support group, FOGO, for the four years my youngest daughter was a member of the orchestra.
