I thought a lot about what to say before creating this blog. What's the draw? What can I contribute? What can I say that someone else hasn't already said? And who cares?
Well, there's no telling, yet, now is there?
The description of the blog includes a reference to one of my great aunts, Virginia:
She was one of six children, three boys and three girls, all of whom went to college when women didn't. She became an English teacher at a public school in Honolulu and wrote and travelled all her life. When as a child I wrote her a letter, she would send it back with corrections ("Don't write on the last line of the stationery." "'Stationery' has an 'e' as in 'letter', while 'stationary' has an 'a' as in 'stand'.") She visited us frequently between her world travels to see starving children in third-world countries (no joke). During one visit (I must have been 8 or 10) she asked what I had been doing. I replied, "Oh, going to school and stuff like like that." She asked, "What kind of 'stuff like that'?" I responded, "Well, piano lessons, playing with my friends, and stuff like that." She asked further, "What kind of 'stuff like that'?" After three or four iterations of this, running out of 'stuff like that' to explain, I realized that she didn't want me to keep talking. She was pointing out that I should be clear and concise in my communication and put language to good use.
So, here goes.
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