Joshua Fogel:
CLASS OF 1988
Robbinsdale Armstrong High SchoolClass of 1988
Plymouth, MN
Madison Area Technical CollegeClass of 1997
Madison, WI
University of Wisconsin - SociologyClass of 1994
Madison, WI
University of WisconsinClass of 1992
Madison, WI
Joshua's Story
Life
Performance activism, boyfriend since '97, Radical Faerie, traveler, nurse: I lived nine years in Madison, Wisconsin following HS graduation, mostly in a housing coop/hippie-slacker house which was family. I did a lot of traveling and got a toilet paper degree at UW (Sociology), took a year off, then went to nursing school. I did a lot of political/social volunteer work and in '97 moved to New York City to be with Christoph, the love of my life. I am part of the Radical Faerie community which I consider family. Amongst other travel, I go to two Faerie gatherings per year at a commune in Tennessee, and visit my blood family frequently in Mpls. Fro three years I co-produced OutFM (dot org), a progressive queer radio show on WBAI, New York's Pacifica (listener sponsored commercial free)Radio I do random political performance art, hang out with friends, travel, and work three days per week as an ICU staff RN. I also volunteer as a nurse at Sylvia's Place, an emergency shelter for queer and trans-gender youth. My name is now Jonas J Cricket. My stage name is Peter Jonas. Christoph and I are hoping to spend more time in Berlin at some point.
Together, Christoph and I canoed in the Canadian Rockies and through flooded forest in the Amazon. We camped in Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in northern California on an oceanside cliff with a herd of elk. We hiked in the Alps, climbed Notre Dam, ate home made tempura in Osaka, and bicycled through Berlin. We celebrated our 10 years together in June of 2007 up and down Alaska's Inside Passage via their ferry system, viewing arctic wild life, fjords, and glaciers. We spent three weeks in Japan, and three weeks in China, the latter being one of Christoph's projects as he does photographic art. I also accompanied him on shoots in Scotland, Potsdam, LA, and up and down the Ohio River. His work focuses on issues of over development as he shoots highways, monoclonal housing, and power plants. Christoph was born and raised in Germany and we visit there often.
School
I had a lovely time in high school. I had a terrific group of friends who I was quite close with. We spent a lot of time at Katie Kiffer's house and at Perkins smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. I managed to have a lot of fun while at the same time taking school seriously enough to get into college. In answer to the generic quistions: I had crushes on many boys, like Dana Guard and AJ Rivizzo, for example. My most inspirational teacher was Meg Delapp of Social 12 fame. I only have two regrets: I should have taken Spanish rather than waisting my time in French, and I should have hung with the New Wavers rather than the Metal Heads. Oh well. Those headbangin concerts were fun. It was fun and interesting being in plays, like playing Demetrius in Midsummer Night's Dream. (Next time, I'll be Puck.) Oh, and then there's Rocky Horror, every Saturday night for months. I played Frank N Furter at the Uptown theatre--there's a pic of us in one of the yearbooks--I think from junior year. Spring Break in Chicago was adventurous for us suburban teens. And working at Kentucky Fried Children, er, no...Chicken, with Michelle Rucker, Mike Bruneau, and others. At this point I haven't eaten animal products in over ten years, but at the time, it was seventh heaven.
College
I went to college at the Univ of Wisconsin Madison. My first year was an
explosive one internally, as I was lambasted with political consciousness.
I lived Freshman year in campus housing with rural
Wisconsonite Republican he-men. Didn't quite fit in.
By this time, I was more hippie than headbanger. I had
very long hair and a very big political mouth. I made friends in the dorm
but I also spent the year in heavy heated political arguements and debates.
Dukkakis vs Bush, Salmon Rushdie, capitalism vs. socialism, gay rights, and
on and on. It was actually tremendously good for me. Prior to that year, I
didn't know these people existed, and at this point I was learning why
Reagon got elected, among other things.
I loved Madison. It was a college community of 40,000 in a small city of
120,000. I made a lot of close friends fast (most outside of the dorm) and
could not walk the street without running into one of them. As my politics
gelled, so did my aspirations to be a teacher. I tied everything to the
importance of education, with plans to teach kids to like themselves in
which case they could respect each other and work together rather than
against each other; and most importantly, to think for themselves and to
question and process ideas being thrown at them. This was the basis, I
felt, for a stable functional society. As a camp counselor and Sunday
school teaching assistant, I had already played with different types of
learning exercises, many using...Expand for more
dramatics, with such goals in mind, and at this point decided that
this was the revolution. I had also had training in infomal/alternative
education via my progressive synagogue in a leadership
training program on youth retreats. I got really enthused about using
dramatics and other techniques for values clarification, team work, and
critical thinking skill building.
Yet even though not officially in it yet, I was already frustrated with the
school of education at Madison. I knew that I would have different goals
than mainstream ed--in the schools and with those who trained the teachers
in college. I was already frustrated, but at the time willing to put up
with it, knowing I would get myself into trouble down the line.
I spent the summer after freshman year in Alaska working at Denalli Natnl Park.
I went back to Madison for Sophomore year and moved into a hippie house. It
was a housing coop callled Nottingham. There were many coops in the city,
but this one was unique as it was totally independant and not dominated by
students. It was more a community of slackers. And I loved it. It became
my second family for the next 8 years, not all as an actual resident. And
as the college years went on I became more and more politically minded, to
the point of annoyance. I spent my junior year abroad, in Jerusalem. At
the time I was a progressive Zionist. Now I'm a recovering Zionist. I
basically did tons of traval during those years, within and without the US.
I was an obsessive sociologist/anthropologist on a several year field study,
just eatin' it all up.
Okay, so I'm running out of characters. I did Semester at Sea which is a floating campus that goes around the world, studied for a month in Poland, volunteered at a teen crisis center as a counselor, ran workshops with Men Stopping Rape for high school and college students, worked in nursing homes as an aid, realized I didn't have the stamina to be a full time teacher, ran a program called Alternative Breaks to send college students out to comunites in struggle throughout the country to work with and learn about them, finally graduated, took a year off, worked with severly retarded in a state institution, discovered the Radical Faeries (a nation wide and beyond community of queer misfits), went to nursing school, met my current boyfriend Christoph while vacationing in New York, then moved to NY.
Workplace
Yes, I am a registered nurse. No, I do not define myself by my work. When people ask me "What do you do?," I do not answer first that I'm a nurse. I talk about my radio show, about my performance art, about my traveling. I'd say the biggest draw to nursing for me was and is about the hours, pay, and job security. I wanted a way to make a living that is not only fullfilling and keeping my hands dirty but not to confining. I wanted to be able to do my art and activism and travel on the side. And I can and do. I work three days a week as an ICU staff nurse. The rest of my week is free for non-work related life. I get a lot of vacation. Yet with my three days per week schedule, I can take up to eight days off without using vacation days. I leave town nearly every other month.
After I got out of nursing school I took the summer for travel, after which my new boyfriend Christoph picked me up in Madison and took me to New York where we still reside (hopefully not for too much longer). For some reason I decided to graduate during a massive hiring freeze. It was a short break from the nursing shortage crisis. Good timing for me. Not. I did not find a job until January, when someone went on maternity leave. I was an RN supervisor with an organization of group homes for retarded and autistic adults in Harlem and The Bronx. I loved the residents, liked the staff, and hated my job which was about boring meetings and a beeper and tedious paper work and grown-up clothes. Yuck. After three months Ms. Maternity leave decided not to return and I said so long anyway.
I have been at the same hospital ever since. And, lucky me, it's a 25 minute walk from our West Village/Chelsea apartment. Starting in '98, I did Hemetology/Oncology for three years, and ICU since. First I did Surgical ICU on nights, and now Medical ICU on days. I'm quite comfortable and appreciative of where I am for many reasons.
If we at some point take up partial year residency in Berlin, we'll probably need to come back to the US periodically for three month travel assignments. There's no nursing shortage in Germany. The good news is there's plenty of nursing travel companies that pay for travel and housing for short term assignments.
One of my writing projects is my nursing memoirs.
Military
Now what makes you think I would do such a thing? Kill and maim to protect our stolen wealth? Not for me.
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Reunions
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