Joani Blank's Personal Stuff

This is my Personal Stuff page. While you’re here, why not take a look at my photo album. Here you will find pictures of my family and me.

Wherein Joani is interviewed by herself:

So, Joani, tell us all the places you've lived.

JB: In the years since my birth in 1937, I have lived in suburban Boston (until graduating from high school), Oberlin, (OH), Honolulu, Chapel Hill (NC), Detroit, Concord (NH) Morgantown (WV) and, since 1971 in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is the best place I've ever lived, and no, I'm not in the least frightened by the potential for the big earthquake here.

Where did'ya go to school?

JB: I have matriculated (love that word) at Winn Brook School, Belmont Junior High and High Schools, Oberlin College, University of Hawaii and University of North Carolina. I think that college towns are nifty places to live, and even though I've never had any association with U.C. Berkeley, I'm enjoying living a few miles from Berkeley.

But I thought you lived in Burlingame (on the SF Peninsula near the airport).

JB: I did live there from 1971 to 1991. I lived in a wonderful cedar shingle house built in 1906, one of first two houses on Burlingame Avenue just west of El Camino Real. Most likely the house was first occupied by a family escaping from the destruction of the great '06 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Mark and I raised Amika in that house, and although neither of us owns it any more, we all carry fond memories of it.

Tell us a little about your daughter, Amika.

JB: Amika (pronounced AH-mi-ka) was born in 1977. She is married to Ivan Sergejev and they have three sensational children, Milan (Milo), (born 1994), Soleil (born 1997) and Blossom (born 2002). Please check out snapshots of these five, and other family photos in my photo album.

Besides being parents of your grandchildren what are Amika and Ivan up to?

JB: Ivan, trained as a chef, did that work for a while, then completed a degree in archeology and currently (2008) is doing archeological work on Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, where the family is now living. Amika is a direct entry midwife; she attended and assisted with close to 400 births before her 29th birthday. And she has taught me a tremendous amount about pregnancy and birth which I never knew before, in part because I've never given birth.

But you are Amika's mom, aren't you....?

JB: Amika was adopted at birth by Mark Wandro and me. Ours was an open adoption; we were in the hospital when Amika was born, and took her home when she was 2 1/2 days old. Amika has known her birth mother all her life, and although they saw one another very little until Amika was a pre-teen, she and her birthmother were close when Amika was in her teens and early twenties.

What about the rest of your family?

JB: My mother lived to be 90 years old. And my father lived to see the millennium. He died at age 98 in 2000. My sister Barbara (Bobbie) Hauser still lives with her husband Stuart in the Boston area as well. Bobbie and Stuart's son Joshua, a physician, is now living in Chicago with his wife Juliet and their two children, Jonathon and Emily. Ethan is a published writer and lives with is wife Megan in New York City.

Where did you go to school, and what did you there?

JB: I attended and graduated from Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio, in the last four years of the 'fifties. I majored in sociology/anthropology, acquiring my first serious appreciation for cultural relativism. In the spring of 1999 I attended my 40th reunion in Oberlin and enjoyed participating in a panel where I was invited to speak on "the sexual mores of the fifties." I have been back once since then to be a speaker at a small student-run sexuality conference, and expect to attend my 50th reunion there in the spring of 2009.

In 1962, after being "deselected" from the Peace Corps at the end of training and before going abroad, I headed west and didn't stop until I got to Honolulu. Might as well go to graduate school, I thought, and did so at the University of Hawaii, majoring in Asian Studies with concentration in Public Health. I received my M.A. in 1964 with a 42-page thesis on Health Program Planning in Indonesia. I loved living in the Islands, and were it not for "rock fever" (the feeling of being stuck out in the middle of the ocean), I might never have left.

While in school at UH, I learned to speak and read a little Bahasa Indonesia and took instrumental classes in Koto and Jamisen and dance classes in Japanese, Korean and Pilipino Dance. But leave I did and headed back east where I enrolled in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My special interest there was family planning--you can see the beginning of my slide into the sexuality field--and I received my M.P.H. in Public Health Education there in the summer of 1965.

So did you end up working in the family planning field?

JB: Yup. Did that in Detroit, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and eventually, California, finally arriving here in 1971.

So how did you find yourself in the sex field?

JB: Through a lucky chance, I met someone who was starting a women's consciousness-raising group which I eagerly joined. She was one of the three courageous women who started San Francisco Sex Information, and I had the privilege of being in the very first group of volunteers. I subsequently worked and received further training at the Sex Counseling Program at University of California at San Francisco, and the rest, as they say, is history.

How about travel?

JB: Just after graduating from Oberlin I took a very long trip--all the way around the world--staying in India for six months and visiting several other Asian countries for a total of more than 11 months. At the time it seemed like no big deal to me to do this (though as a matter of fact, traveling by myself was pretty darned lonely), but as I look back on it, it looks like a huge adventure, and I learned a whole lot--about the world and about myself.

Word is that you are a singer of sorts.

JB: Within weeks after moving to California in 1971 I joined the chorus at the (Community) College of San Mateo. At the time there were fewer than 50 singers in the group, but we always performed with professional soloists and orchestra. At its largest, the Masterworks Chorale grew to 180 singers, and we performed all the well-known, and several lesser-known major chorale works in both San Mateo and San Francisco. I stayed with Masterworks, under the sterling leadership of Maestro Galen Marshall, for 25 years, and recently calculated that during that time I attended well over 1000 rehearsals. I also had the truly thrilling experience of singing with Masterworks in Lincoln Center and in Carnegie Hall, and traveled with them on three concert tours as well: to China, to Spain and to Central/Eastern Europe.

What moves you now in the way of making music and/or dancing?

JB: I played taiko drums for several years back and sometimes wish I was still doing it. I'd like to take up international (especially Balkan) dance again; it was a major love of mine throughout the sixties. Ever since high school I've been a recorder player, and in 2001 I joined the East Bay Recorder Society, and am enjoying the monthly playing sessions a great deal. After a short break from singing with Masterworks Chorale, I joined the chancel choir in my church, a really strong choir with a sterling director, and I'm deriving a lot of satisfaction from singing regularly. My newest musical venture is into the world of English handbells. I've been in the church bell choir since mid 2006.

Did you say "church" choir? Have you become a churchgoer? I thought you were Jewish.

JB: Yes, and yes I am Jewish--a Jewish Unitarian-Universalist. I was drawn to First Unitarian Church of Oakland in 1992 because of its commitment to social justice especially in its downtown neighborhood, the wonderfulness of its two ministers, Janne and Rob Eller-Isaacs, and the strength of the community that has formed there. I participate in the life of this congregation because doing so reminds me what's important. Rob and Janne left our congregation in 2000 to serve a large congregation in St. Paul, MN. Our current minister, Kathy Huff, is inspiring and an absolute joy to worship and learn with.

This interview's getting awfully long. How about just mentioning a couple of your other interests and sending your bleary-eyed readers off to check out the links on your Other Stuff page.

JB: Oh, all right. I converted Good Vibrations and Down There Press into Open Enterprises Cooperative in 1992, at which time there were fourteen owners (including me as an equal owner) I am no longer an employee nor an owner. In 2006 when the company ceased being a worker coop, there were over 70 worker-owners.

I am a strong proponent of socially responsible investing, and I have a very broad idea of what that phrase encompasses. I'm affiliated with United For A Fair Economy an organization that educates the public about the growing gap between rich and poor in this country, and its subgroup Responsible Wealth made up wealthy people who are willing to use their financial resources to support this work, and their voices to speak out about this profoundly important societal problem.

So, what will you be up to in the coming years?

JB: I'd very much enjoy traveling to do sexuality workshops here and there around the U.S. and Canada. I'm finishing up a long term as Tours Coordinator for the Cohousing Association and continuing to contribute a lot of volunteer hours toward work with that organization. Since Down There Press has been sold to another publisher who plans to reissue only one of several still-viable titles that I've written or edited, I hope to find an alternative way to make those books available to meet continuing demand. Finally, I hope to spend more time with my grandchildren before they get too much more grown up!