E60 Retiring in Brittany, France

Mark Greenside grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. His mother was a teacher and his father a lawyer. He has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protester, Vista volunteer, union leader, author, and college professor.
He attended University of Wisconsin - and left Madison with two degrees, a teaching credential, a wife, and an unplanned honeymoon detention in a Chicago jail during the Democratic National Convention. He spent the first night at Lincoln Park with future Chicago 7 defendants Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. He spent the second night in jail. The third night he was in George McGovern's suite in the Sheraton Blackstone watching it all on TV.
He taught history and political science at a black university in Greensboro, North Carolina. Shortly thereafter, Mark moved to Berkeley, California. He was still married, unemployed, living on food stamps, and was accepted to law school but decided not to go. [His mother must have loved that decision]. He eventually started teaching history and political science at Merritt College in Oakland. He did that until he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to start an oral history project which got him involved in working with older people, which got him interested in stories and storytelling. Then he went to Vista College in Berkeley and set up what at the time was one of the largest and most comprehensive older adult education programs in the nation. After leaving that position, he held several jobs, got divorced, married again, this time to his current wife, Donna Umeki, an… Read More

Donna Umeki was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She’s also lived in are Oakland, CA, and Alameda, CA (where she and Mark presently live).
She attended Berkeley public schools: Longfellow Elementary, Willard Jr High, Berkeley High, UC Berkeley, completed a Bachelors in accounting at Golden Gate University (San Francisco, CA) and received a masters in Adult Education at San Francisco State.
She was employed as a staff accountant in San Francisco, CA, thereafter became self-employed as an accountant, and in the past 10 years, transitioned into overseeing her clients' accounting departments and annual audits, and consulting on personnel, dealing with clients' obligations to outside agencies, internal auditing, licensing & permitting
Donna is semi-retired in her business consulting, working about 15-20 hours a week and (1) given that she likes her work and her clients, and (2) they let her go anywhere and do anything (as long as she stays available) she probably won't fully retire, at least for a while....
Donna’s pre-covid interests include: seeing live theater and the arts, visiting museums, traveling, and flute playing. Because of the pandemic: she’s become an avid fan of SF Giants baseball, cooking, trying to grow indoor plants (has killed a few), writing and sending monthly haikus to say hello to friends and family, taking walks in Alameda and photographing houses and other sites that interest her, posting weekly on Facebook, and reading.
Donna adds that she and Mark have known each other since 1981, having met playing softba… Read More