The Keeper: Brief Notes, as recorded by Anon.

The Keeper of the Tower, it seems, is known as Christine. She grew up in Redding, Connecticut, graduating from Joel Barlow High School in 1992. Deferring college for a year, she spent ten months as an AFS exchange student in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In September of 1993 she began her studies at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. From the beginning she knew her major would be Russian and East European Studies, and declared at the end of freshman year. (The program has changed some since then; if you'd like more info, go here. Sophomore year she signed up for an intermediate music theory class, which actually turned out to be a beginning music composition class, and by the end of the year she was hooked on that too. Her music studies had to be put aside for a time, however, as she spent her junior year abroad on the American Collegiate Consortium in Smolensk, Russia.

Middlebury offered Christine a myriad of exciting groups and projects to be involved in, including:

The Middlebury College Russian Choir
The MamaJamas (a capella group formerly known as the Callbacks)
MOQA (formerly known as MGLBA)
The Slavic Club

Christine graduated cum laude from Middlebury in May of 1997 as a double major in Russian/East European Studies and Music Composition. She moved in with two friends for the summer, and began work at IBM in Essex Junction, Vermont. At the end of that summer she moved in with her girlfriend Meredith (Middlebury College '95).

Christine and Meredith stayed in Burlington until September of 1999, when they moved to Haslett, Michigan. Meredith is currently in the MBA program at Michigan State University, due to graduate in May of 2001. Christine worked for a time at Capital Area United Way, then for the City of Lansing Transportation Department. After 3 months working behind the counter in the parking ticket office (no joke!) she decided it was high time to go back to school. In August of 2001 she graduated from the Middlebury College School in Russia master's degree program, which is comprised of a 6-week summer session, 9 months in Moscow, and another 6 weeks in the summer. She wrote her master's thesis - 30 pages in Russian - on the use of citations from other works in the poetry of Karolina Pavlova, a 19th century Russian poet (considered by some to be the first female Russian poet).

After graduating, Christine moved to the Portland, OR area with Meredith, who was hired by Intel. Upon arrival Christine promptly sat in front of the television and didn't get up for six weeks, until the stress of watching September 11 footage twelve hours a day threatened to overwhelm her (as it would anyone). She served a brief stint as an Americorps VISTA volunteer at the Regional Drug Initiative. RDI lost its funding after 3 months, and by a stroke of luck Christine came across a job posting for a position at the World Affairs Council of Oregon . She now works for the WAC as a program coordinator for Community Connections . She brings over 4 delegations a year from the former Soviet Union for individual internships or group trainings, which means (gasp!): she actually found a job in her field! (Quick, somebody tell her Mom.)

Christine and Meredith bought a house in May, 2003. It's a huge project, and will keep them both busy for a long, long time. While living in Burlington, Christine developed an interest in medieval history and recreation, and fell in with a group known as the Society for Creative Anachronism. Here she hopes to further her knowledge of Russian culture and folklore, specifically in the Smolensk region. For more info on this, take a peek at her SCA page. While in Moscow she was also involved with a medieval reenactment group called "Nasledie Predkov," or "Legacy of our Ancestors," which is great fun. You can check them out here, but be warned that the page is in Russian. Change your Character Set (under View) to Cyrillic (Windows-1251). She now resides in the Barony of Three Mountains (Portland) in the Kingdom of An Tir (the Pacific NW).


This page Copyright © 1997 by Christine