Miriam's Life List - Goals and Accomplishments

If you want to know what this is all about, see my journal entry from 31 December 2000, "On Goals". I've done related entries (updates on progress) on 1 July 2001, 28 July 2002, 5 September 2004, and 31 December 2005. Items marked with an "a" after the number are ones I added after making the original list.

Travel

1. Do a Volksmarch in every state capital and in Washington, D.C.
2. Go to every National Park in the U.S.
3. Hike the length of the Appalachian Trail
4. See the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion (on Mayotte)
5. Go to every U.S. territorial possession
6. Go to every remaining country in the British Empire
7. See Angel Falls in Venezuela
8. Go to the Cape Verde Islands
9. Walk the length of an historic pilgrimage route in Europe
10. Ride a bike across the U.S.
11. Go to Timbuktu
12. See a tiger in the wild
13. See a komodo dragon on Komodo Island
14. See every species of penguin in the wild
15. See a narwhal in the wild
16. See the ruins of Carthage (in Tunisia)
17. Search for the Loch Ness monster
18. Go to Samarkand and Bukhara
19. See Iguacu Falls from all three countries it touches
20. Go to Babeldaop (main island of Palau)
21. Go to the Faroe Islands
22. Go to the geographic and magnetic North Poles
23. See Cappadocia in Turkey
24. Cruise the length of the Northwest Passage
25. Go to Suriname
26. Go to every Canadian province
27. See Shackleton's grave on South Georgia Island
28. Go to a game at every major league baseball stadium
29. See Niagara Falls
30. Take tango lessons in Argentina
31. Kiss the Blarney Stone
32. Visit the cities my ancestors lived in in Lithuania and Poland
33. See the bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns
34. Take a cruise on a tall ship
35. Attend both Winter and Summer Olympics
36. Walk the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral
37. a. See the temples at Angkor Wat
38. a. Go to Ethiopia
39. a. Go snorkeling in the Maldives
40. a. Take an Amazon cruise
41. a. Go to the spa in Hershey, Pennsylvania and have some sort of chocolate spa treatment
42. a. Go to every country in the former Soviet Union
43. a. Have a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul, Ireland
44. a. Go to the desert music festival in Mali
45. a. Go to the World Sacred Music festival in Morocco
46. a. Go to a baseball game in the Dominican Republic
47. a. Go to Yemen

Creating

1. Perform at the National Storytelling Festival
2. Make a storytelling tape
3. Perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
4. Write a one-woman show and perform it at least 12 times
5. Finish my essay collection on "How to Add More Stress to Your Life"
6. Write an entire story (at least 5 pages) in verse
7. Have an essay published on the op-ed page of the New York Times
8. Have an essay published on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal
9. Have a travel book published
10. Write a novel
11. Write a cookbook
12. Make a drum
13. Learn to play the didgeridoo
14. Learn to play Uillean pipes (Irish bellows-blown bagpipes)
15. Play all of Mussourgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" on the piano
16. Conduct an orchestra
17. Knit a sweater without using a pattern
18. Make an afghan for every year of my life and donate them to a homeless shelter
19. Take a glass blowing class
20. Go to a crafts retreat/workshop program (at least one week)
21. Make a gingerbread house
22. Make a pousse-cafe with at least six layers
23. Enter the Pillsbury bake-off
24. a. Build a dollhouse using the blueprints for the house I grew up in
25. a. Take a ceramics class
26. a. Learn entrelac (a knitting technique)
27. a. Make an entire afghan in afghan stitch

Other

1. Teach somebody to read
2. Go sailing
3. Become fluent in Spanish
4. Learn to speak an Asian language reasonably well
5. Learn to read the Arabic alphabet
6. Learn to read heiroglyphics
7. Fly in a glider
8. Build my own house
9. Teach three people how to bake bread
10. Ride a unicycle
11. Read Dante's Inferno in the original Italian
12. Read all of the books on Howard Haycraft's list of significant mysteries
13. Read everything on the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society's list of classic science fiction novels
14. Read everything in Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan
15. Read everything in the New York Public Library's Books of the Century
16. See every movie that's won a best picture Oscar
17. Eat fruit from a tree I planted myself
18. Go fly fishing
19. Read all of the Bible (in translation)
20. See every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
21. Work on a political campaign
22. Be a museum docent
23. Taste a durian
24. Take a martial arts class
25. Volunteer at Travelers' Aid
26. Learn to identify all of the major constellations
27. Trace my family tree back to at least the 18th century

Done

These are in reverse chronological order. Note that some of the dates before 1996 are approximate, but will be within a year or two.

• Take a "volunteer vacation" - 2008
• Take the mail ferry up the coast of Labrador - 2007
• See the giant stone heads on Easter Island - 2007
• Go to Chelm, Poland - 2006
• Go to a minor league baseball game - 2006
• See a total solar eclipse - 2006
• Go to a Sondheim musical on opening night - 2003
• Stay at an ice hotel - 2003
• Attend the Mount Hagen Cultural Festival in Papua New Guinea - 2002
• Have my photo taken straddling the equator - 2002
• Go snorkeling - 2001
• Go to the Galapagos Islands - 2001
• Go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown - 2001
• March in a parade - 2001
• Learn bookbinding - 2001
• See the aurora borealis - 2000
• See the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba - 2000
• Have an article published in Storytelling Magazine - 2000
• Go to every state in the U.S. - 1999
• Walk a labyrinth - 1999
• See Victoria Falls (Zambia and Zimbabwe) - 1998
• Go to Zanzibar - 1998
• Go to every continent - 1998
• Go to Antarctica - 1997
• See the Taj Mahal - 1996
• Learn how to make French knots (an embroidery stitch) - 1994
• Take a fencing class - 1991
• Get a Ph.D. - 1990
• Get on Jeopardy! - taped 1988, aired 1989
• Fly in a helicopter - 1986
• Swim a mile without stopping - 1983
• Perform in a dance recital - 1968