Fun Facts

I once travelled in a coach from Valencia, Spain to Calais, France with a retired British showgirl who regaled me with stories of her glamorous life. At the end of the trip she asked me to carry two bottles of hooch through customs for her. Once a showgirl, always a showgirl.

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I became a writer in junior high while walking beans with my dad and sister. We spent day after day in the summer walking up and down rows of soy beans cutting down weeds with corn hooks and machetes. They say walking is good for writers, and it’s true. All that time just walking and walking looking for weeds and being in nature. It gave me the meditative mind to dream up plots for scripts and plays. Come afternoon and the hotter temperatures, we’d go home and my sister and I would work on the stories together.

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I was an extra in the movie Fargo. I’m in the Carlton Celebrity Room scene. You can’t see me because I’m in a booth in the back in a corner in the dark. But I did get to see the Coen Brothers direct José Feliciano. And, standing outside in the cold and snow during a break, I got to see Steve Buscemi arrive for his scene. So, win win!

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I was a big Peter Max fan when I was in high school. I cut out panels of his work that were featured every week in the Sunday funnies. I bought a pair of hotpants from his clothing line. In more recent times, I was standing outside my employer’s building waiting for my husband to collect me after work. Lo and behold, Peter Max parked across the street and moved some paintings from his car’s backseat to its trunk. I know it was Peter Max because he was going to be a guest on Almanac (one of my employer’s shows) that night. He walked into the building. I was tongue-tied and missed my chance to tell him I owned his hotpants.

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One of the TV shows I did show design for that won a Peabody was NewsNight MN. Oprah devoted an episode of her daytime program to it because of its earnest mission to serve the community and avoid sensationalism. One of the items I designed was a weather map that a variety of people would be able to update every day with icons from a font I created for it. I tried very very hard to be original and not commercial. I grew to hate my noncommercial map. I’ve never been on an acid trip, let alone a bad one; but, if you asked me to describe this map, that is what I would say it looks like. During Oprah’s show, the one piece of video they showed that included my design work was that maniacal weather map! It is both my proudest and most embarrassing television moment.

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I grew up in a town of 300 people. My mom was a Registered Nurse. She helped deliver a baby in a lady’s kitchen.

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The other show I worked on that won a Peabody is Liberty! The American Revolution. It includes actors portraying people of the era reading letters they’ve written. One of them is a young Philip Seymour Hoffman. The producers/director of this program have a stellar filmography. One of the documentaries they worked on is Grey Gardens. Guess what design work I did for it? Maps! There is nothing cringe-worthy about my Liberty! maps. You can visit the Liberty! website.

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I have Nelson Rockefeller’s autograph on a hat made from a folded-up newspaper. When I was ten, Mr. Rockefeller was the guest of honor in Worthington, Minnesota’s Turkey Day Parade. He rode on the back of a convertible with then-Governor Harold LeVander. I folded the newspaper into a hat because I thought he’d be more likely to sign it that way. As if a politician wasn’t going to sign an autograph for a child during a parade!

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I did animations for at least two shows that won Emmys. SciGirls and Newton’s Apple. Explaining science visually and accessibly (and hopefully entertainingly) is a fun and challenging bit of puzzlesolving.

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I lived in London for a year as part of my college education. This allowed many wonderful travel opportunities. During a late October excursion to Cornwall, I went for a hike along the rugged seaside cliffs between St. Ives and Zenner. My aim was to hike from one town to the next town and secure lodging. I misjudged how long it would take me to reach my destination and ended up tucking myself beneath and betwixt a large shrubbery and boulder overhang. I did spend the night there. I did not die of hypothermia. Hurrah!

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I won a Broadcast Design Award for creating the animated open to a show about Minnesota weather. It still makes me happy. The Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap played on the open’s theme song which was orchestrated by Chan Poling of The Suburbs and The New Standards fame. I treasure the memory of watching them record the track. The entire show with MORE (!) graphics can be viewed here.

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I held hands with Bob Eubanks, the original host of The Newlywed Game, (and several other game shows) because a company was shooting a game show pilot at my employer’s studios. They were testing out lighting and audio and cameras with Mr. Eubanks. They needed someone to pretend to be a contestant. I was nervous. It was a bit of improv for me and I’m not good at that. I need to ponder things. (That’s probably why I’m a writer and not an actor or comedian.) Mr. Eubanks took hold of my hand, and you know what? I became calm.