My cousin, Barb Wieser, whom I love dearly, has just been visiting me, showing me as she always has, one version of the risk-taker's life. Barb is amazing: she's a skilled trekker and wilderness guide She kayaks around the Alaskan coast, making camp wherever she sees a flat bit of shore. She started two presses; the second, Aunt Lute Books (name for our shared great-aunt, Lute) is still an active small press. For over two decades, she ran the country's oldest bookstore, Amazon Books in Minneapolis (no connection to the behemoth, which came along after Amazon Bookstore had been up and running for more than twenty years).
And now she's turning her life in yet another direction: at sixty-plus, she's joined the Peace Corps and is heading for Ukraine. Barb is a warm and loving woman, a bright presence in the lives of the people who know her; I know her Ukraine experience will challenge and change her, but that she will bring all she has to the task, and that the people she works with will be richer for her presence, as I and her other friends are, too.
We're the same age, Barb and I, but here I sit, tight in my little ball, while she opens and takes in the world.
I'm trying to learn to change that, so I'm wondering what risks others have taken, things I can learn from and grow. Let me know.
