Mark D. Thellmann

I was just thinking about my life last night and re-reading some journals that I kept in the 70's. The 70's were great - that whole decade was phenomenal for me: travel, exotic adventures, lived two miles up in the montains of CO for a year running a restaurant and bakery with Ron & Tania Teke, lived in Atlanta for two years writing for High Times and covering the drug culture in the south, traveled throughout Europe, worked for a newspaper in southern Ohio (which was the best job with the best people thus far), traveled throughout the U.S. for a solid year, etc. I moved to NJ in late 1979 in order to make films with a guy I met in college, named Luther Conant, whom some of you may remember. He hung around the Manor a lot, but never pledged. We created well together, being both writers, but we never could get the mega-bucks to bring any of our ideas to fruition on the silver screen. In late 1999, he came down with ALS (Lou Gerig's Disease) and I wound up taking care of him and helping his family out. Maybe that's why I was here for 20 years. Maybe that was part of my Karmic mission. Who knows? Luther died on June 7th, 2001. He documented his illness from start to finish on his web site: www.lutheroutloud.com. Google called him the Mark Twain of Cyberspace. If you find an area called "Adventures of Luther" (it's a small blue link), you can read the three pages I recited at his memorial service. I did settle down a bit and got myself hitched at the age of 37 to a girl I met at the men's sweater rack in a T.J. Maxx (she says that she got the minimum for the maximum on that day - HAH!) It's a long story... We have no children, but do have three worthless cats and live in an old (150 years) three-story Victorian that we renovated ourselves. It had no heat, water or electric when we bought it - none that worked anyway. The first year we were married, the house was in such bad shape, we didn't even live together. I was a freelance writer/photographer when I first moved out here and then I fell into teaching and have been a full-time instructor at the Art Institute of Philadelphia for the past 20 years. Marriage and a full-time job have clipped my travel wings, but I did make it to Bangkok in 1992 (I photographed the wedding of a Thai princess) and I was hired to do a documentary for 10 days in England in 1994, traveling with hypnotherapists undergoing advanced NLP training. I'm now working on my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts through a low residency program at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT, while teaching full-time and running my own business called Show & Tell Communications. If you do a Google search on my name, you can see some of my artwork carried on other sites. I'm still working on my site. I had a great time at OU and I had a great time being a Teke. I remember all you guys! MT

email: showtellcom@aol.com
address:
137 E. Park
Merchantville, NJ 08109-2512
phone: 856-488-9093