I've been tagged -- five odd facts that most of you wouldn't know

Michael Kruse tagged me (as in "tag, you're it") with this challenge -- list five odd facts that most people wouldn't know about me.

For those of you not in the know, this tagging game is a regular thing that goes around the blogosphere. I'm supposed to answer the five questions and then tag five more people. I'm not going to tag anyone else (unless you feel so led to share your five things, in which case feel free to set up a trackback back to this post so I can see what you posted).

Finally, the "most people wouldn't know" is tough since readers of this blog include many old friends and mom (who probably has forgotten more than I know about myself). Those ramblings aside, here are my five facts for you:

1) I still have an active FCC radio license from my days as a radio announcer on WFDD, 88.5 FM, an NPR affiliate in Winston-Salem, NC. I earned my spending cash in college by working the late night shifts reading news and announcements and occasionally running a jazz show. I can still rattle off the station's positioning statement in my sleep.

2) Growing up in Columbia, SC, I lived just up the street from novelist and poet James Dickey, most famous for writing Deliverance. I had my encounter with fame one Christmas when I went up to his home to get him to autograph a book that I was giving my English teacher. We talked about track and field, guitar, and poetry.

3) My junior year in high school, I was given the leading role in Anything Goes. We had a very tight cast, including a very talented 8th grader named Allison Munn. Alison told me that her parents were planning to transfer her to AC Flora next year and we concocted a desperate plan to try to keep Alisson at school. So one night, Alisson's mom recieved a call from "Wilson Fisk", who claimed to be the chair of the Richland County school board -- he told her that Alison was far too advanced to go to Flora and that she needed to stay at Hammond. Needless to say, the ruse didn't work. Good thing for her, too. She's had a great career on broadway and is an up and coming TV star. (and an unofficial no-prize goes to the person who can correctly identify the source of the name "Wilson Fisk")

4) In college, I produced and directed an independent production of CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, featuring 4 actors (2 men and 2 women) who dramatically interpreted the letters through the lens of a different "type" of person for each letter.

5) I am a descendent of Jacques de la Fontaine, a French Heugonot who recorded in his memoirs the daring story of his escape from France and battles with pirates in Ireland, finally settling his family here in America.

Excelsior
Russell