Category: Childhood

The smartest girl in the first grade:  Scout Finch

I’ve been reading To Kill a Mockingbird lately, by which I mean I read a paperback version put out for the 50th anniversary and then I listened to the audio book and then I started […]

Fear and Loving in Mississippi

Be afraid. From Cybershot Pics The Doll, whose name I don’t remember if indeed it ever had a name beyond The Doll, lives. It looks like something of a horror movie. Hollywood might want to […]

Tradition and the Individual Christmas

Tradition is a fluid process, not a fixed point. And so it is that we put away the remnants of another Christmas past, burdened by our efforts to please both tradition and present reality. The […]

Elizabeth Cottage:  A Place out of Time

I grew up cash poor and opportunity rich.  Maybe you won’t even know what I mean unless you too grew up in this way.  Some people are born poor without anything to offset the mental […]

Elizabeth Cottage: A Sense of Place

Meet Elizabeth Cottage, the house I think of as home when asked where home is.  I lived in six houses and a dorm room from birth to age 18, but this one was mine up […]