Red Barn Nursery School – I think I got roughly as many valentines as my classmates did on Valentine’s Day; kindergarten, ditto; public schools in suburban Boston, very good ones; summer camp; family ski trips in New England; pretty privileged, but not super-privileged – my father got an ulcer worrying about money, but the lack thereof was the difference between my being sent to summer camp for one month rather than the two months the most comfortable got; progressive boarding school in Vermont for high school to escape depressed mother, forever cherished as the best part of my life; college – Radcliffe, largely squandered on dealing with the emotional wreckage of having fled and conducted war of attrition with depressed mother.

Right after college, I was a high school teacher, hoping to encourage teenagers to revel in the wonder and power I felt as an adolescent, despite everything. Then journalism, because teaching lacked status and all my friends were becoming lawyers and doctors. Also, it was a way of encouraging downtown development versus suburban sprawl and the spread of solar energy and pontificating about the dangers of nuclear war, etc. Dreams of reporting in Russia went unrealized because, out of fear, I passed up the opportunity when it arose. After it became clear I was not going to become the next Paul Krugman, I stopped being a journalist and wrote for a potpourri of nonprofits, financial giants and consulting companies.

Now I’m back in Vermont, within 20 miles of that idyllic boarding school. I have five sheep, a garden, I play chamber music (just like at the boarding school), do what I can to be a responsible member of a community and democracy and write. My husband and I are visited from time to time by our adult children from urban America.