{"id":37,"date":"2016-08-10T18:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T18:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/?p=37"},"modified":"2016-08-10T18:00:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T18:00:27","slug":"margaret-griggs-anderson-61","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/2016\/08\/10\/margaret-griggs-anderson-61\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Griggs Anderson \u201961"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An
An early love of books and other cultures inspires a life spent learning and living abroad. Photo courtesy of Chattman Photography.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a day student at NSFG, Margi Anderson fell in love with books and other cultures. No wonder, then, that she would live her life by the same themes: living abroad for many years with her husband, exploring communities in Asia, and reading every book she could. After NSFG, Margi earned her political science degree from the University of Wisconsin and then a master\u2019s de\u00adgree in social work from Fordham. She now splits her time between New Canaan, CT, and a farmhouse in New Hampshire. She\u2019s involved in several Japanese-American book clubs, volunteers on a domestic abuse council, and participates in an academic lecture series.<\/p>\n

Who at Williston had a strong impact on you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mrs. Cantarella, who was legendary. She scared the daylights out of all of us. She was about 4\u201911\u201d and she had this huge voice. She always called us by our last names. And she would read us the Riot Act if we didn\u2019t do something. She wasn\u2019t afraid to tell us the writers that she hated, like Hemingway. Bottom line, we did a lot of reading and writing and she exposed us to a lot of good litera\u00adture. Some that I still groan at, like Moby Dick<\/em>. We spent so much time chasing a whale that year.<\/p>\n

How did NSFG impact you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here was this very, very small school. It was tiny. But there were girls from all over. There were girls from Japan. Girls from the Clarke School for the Deaf. There were girls from South America. Girls from different parts of the country, and then local girls. I felt like, in a funny way, I was exposed to people I wouldn\u2019t have been exposed to if I had been at the public high school. Considering I spent so much time in Asia, it was interesting to think how it opened me in ways I didn\u2019t know until hindsight. I think there was an acceptance of all people, and that\u2019s what I picked up from Miss Whitaker. That people are people and they\u2019re interesting because they come from different backgrounds.<\/p>\n

How did you spend your social time at NSFG?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We dated guys from Williston. We had mixers. Oh, geez. You\u2019d sign up on a list and the girls would always be 5\u201910\u201d and the guys would be 5\u20192\u201d, and hopefully you\u2019d get matched up with somebody your size. They were painful. You\u2019d ride on a bus and get matched up with someone you had nothing in common with.<\/p>\n

How have you maintained some of your friendships from NSFG?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once a year in the summer we just get together and we have lunch together. It\u2019s very nice to reconnect with these women whom I knew when I was 14, 15, 16 years old. And we see where our lives have taken us, all in very different directions. They\u2019re all the same people under\u00adneath it all. It\u2019s really lovely, and it\u2019s very rare. We laugh at how weird we were and how awkward.<\/p>\n

What are you up to now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m involved in a Japanese-Amer\u00adican group in New York and we organize small events. The idea is that there are Japanese women who travel here who might not have an opportunity to meet American women. We want to extend our friendship to them. It\u2019s important to me because when I was in Japan, a friend introduced me to a women\u2019s group. They welcomed me and helped me to understand what was so special and unique to Japan, and I felt like I wanted to give that back. It was such an important part of my life. There\u2019s a commonality to the women who live overseas. You look at the world a little bit differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a day student at NSFG, Margi Anderson fell in love with books and other cultures. No wonder, then, that she would live her life by the same themes: living abroad for many years with her husband, exploring communities in Asia, and reading every book she could. After NSFG, Margi earned her political science degree … Continue reading Margaret Griggs Anderson \u201961<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-margaret-griggs-anderson-61"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/profiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}