Baby bunnies

Source: Flickr, user craiglambert

I remember searching for and finding handfuls of baby bunnies in freshly dug warrens in the Blaker’s back yard. Their house backed up to ours and we shared a fence line. Mrs. Blaker was a rather inattentive woman. She yelled a lot at her mean kid, smoked constantly, even when she was pregnant. But on a whim one day, she bought a few rabbits from a pet store.

She let the rabbits roam free in her back yard without food or cages or attention. After a few months,  as the old cliche would tell you, there were dozens of rabbits. They had become more or less feral. They started digging complex tunnels through the yard, where they would give birth to their plentiful young, finding shelter from the weather and the hawks. They ran around in their self-made, fenced-in village, completely unchecked.

When the Blakers were gone during the day, we would climb over the fence and go searching for the rabbits. I like to think that we kept them from becoming completely feral, because we handled them so often. We’d sneak them baby carrots and celery from home. We would gently and carefully retrieve the adorable, fluffy babies from the warrens, sticking our skinny arms down dark, animal-made tunnels, feeling gently for a warm ball of velvety fur. Miraculously, we never got bit. We’d sit back there and cradle these bunnies for hours. It was a paradise for an animal-crazy child like myself.

One of the Holland lop does gave birth to a beautiful litter of white and dusky brown babies. At this time, Mrs. Blaker finally realized she had a rabbit problem on her hands and started advertising free bunnies to the neighborhood children. We convinced our parents to let us get one. It was our first real family pet, because fish and finches don’t inspire too much affection; kids want something fuzzy to love. Mrs. Blaker invited a bunch of us little girls in the neighborhood to come play with the bunnies, probably to tempt us with them while our parents were unaware. Our bratty friends, Jennifer and Allison, started physically fighting over a pretty chocolate-colored bunny, grabbing at it like it was a doll, and snapped its legs. It died the next day.

We were mortified and swore we’d never play with them again. The next morning, we quickly picked out a sweet white-and-brown male from the litter. We named him Spencer (maybe because I’d been reading a kid’s version of The Faerie Queen? I don’t know) and told all of our friends that Jennifer and Allison were never allowed to hold him. I felt a great sense of pride that we had rescued him from his quasi-feral, neglectful situation. Dad built Spencer a big bunny mansion, a two-story hutch that sat against the fence. When we let him out, he would run against the fence with his still plentiful relatives. He once got bit in the face by his uncle and his little velvet nose was forever split in two.

Spencer was the best pet. We liked to think he played hide-and-seek with us. He playfully chased us around the yard. He never bit us, which was incredible, considering how we (especially Grace) tortured that poor bunny. Grace liked to smuggle him inside and put him in doll’s clothes, zip him up in purses and swing him around. He was always good-natured. He lived for many years until one winter, we found his still, frozen body on the ground floor of the hutch. I remember wondering if we had failed him, if we should have let him live inside, if we didn’t love him enough. I imagine these thoughts, a specter of Spencer, will always resurface when any animal of mine dies.

This post is dedicated to the memory of Spencer and to my god-bunnies in the United Kingdom, Indy and Felix.

The day my inner feminist was born

Click for source.

When I was about 15, I went to my first TeenPact camp in Raleigh. If you were homeschooled and a huge dork like me, active in debate circles, you were aware of TeenPact. TeenPact is a super-conservative camp that indoctrinates teens to become libertarian warriors, trained to infiltrate the government from the ground up. I participated because I was really “into” politics at the time, but after my first day at camp, I began to feel that something was terribly wrong with these people.

If you had the misfortune of being born female and wanted to attend this camp, you had to learn the rules first. Most important of all: You had to follow a Victorian-era dress code, which mandated that you had to be dressed in “business professional attire” for the duration of the camp. Except that their definition of “business professional” meant skirts well below the knee without any slits and all shirts baggy and well below the tantalizing elbow. (You can even read this ridiculous dress code here. They’re apparently still going strong. My favorite line from the Code is on shirts girls can wear, which outlaws any “tight” fabrics, requesting that “no shape [should be] too obvious.” Pretend you are not a girl! Breasts are SINFUL!)

The kicker is that girls are not allowed to wear pants–even pantsuits or trousers. Silly woman! Pants are for men! You can imagine how difficult this was to find any “business professional attire” to meet these standards, especially since I wasn’t one of the homeschoolers who made my own clothes.

On top of this stifling dress code, all of the speakers at all of the events were male. Also, if you were a girl, you were not allowed to lead a committee; only boy interns were allowed to lead committee meetings. Boy interns led all the discussions while the girls participated when spoken to. (Weirdly enough, however, girls were allowed to “run” for office. This struck me as a big contradiction in terms, but whatever.)

When I arrived, I was quickly made aware of the Dress Code Police, a militia of girl interns who ran around armed with needles and safety pins, scanning to make sure all of the girls were very modest and not violating any of the seemingly innumerable dress code rules. I showed up in a floor-length black skirt, which I thought was very safe. It hits the floor! It’s black! Totally unappealing in every way! But I was wrong.

Not half an hour after my arrival, I was taken by the elbow by a girl I’d barely met and pushed into the nearest bathroom. This girl intern looked me in the eye explained to me that my skirt was violating dress code. “Wait, how? It hits the floor!” I protested. She spun me around and pointed to the five-inch slit in the back of the skirt. The back! Apparently, the backs of my knees were a “stumbling block” to my young male colleagues. So, the slit had to be remedied. If you are a woman, you are well aware that to wear a floor-length skirt, slits are essential for movement. You cannot walk more than a half a mincing step if you have no slit. But TeenPact doesn’t care about that! She swiftly jabbed some pins into the back of my skirt and told me I was appropriate now.

My feelings were a little hurt, but I decided not to mind it. I hobbled along for the rest of the day and dutifully attended my committee meetings. My group, led by the cute boy intern, was going to take a field trip to sit in on the real House meeting. We were running behind schedule, probably because some girl was dressing like a tramp, showing a sliver of knee or something. Our committee leaders told us we needed to book it, because we were going to be late.

So, we set off for the House of Representatives. The boys in their pantsuits were striding ahead. We delicate ladies were trailing behind, because none of us could move quickly, as all of our slits had been taken away from us. We minced and shuffled along, trying not to rip our pinned skirts. The boy leader, yards ahead of us, suddenly turned around and shouted at us, “GIRLS! Hurry up! We are going to be late!”

That was it. My AWAKENING. I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked straight at him and shouted back, “YOU try to walk in a skirt that’s all pinned up!” He paused and then looked at us, a group of homely penguins. He even seemed to think for a moment. It wasn’t a great comeback, I know, but I was 15. And the clouds had opened.

This silly story is the first moment that I started thinking for myself and stopped being ashamed of having been born a girl. So, watch out TeenPact. You may have unknowingly birthed a whole army of late-blooming feminists.

(This post is for Lauren Lankford Dubinsky, who I think will know what I am talking about…)

Evangelizing

Source: Flickr, user jbtuohy

I remember being forced to evangelize on the streets of downtown Winston-Salem with a bunch of other teens from the apologetics summer camp. After sitting through a few lectures on the right questions to ask, the right answers to give, we were split up into small groups and set loose by the bus station. Our minds were swimming with fear and scripture-based acronyms. My group started wandering around aimlessly, passing people and trying to decide when to make a move.

I was the first person from our group to have the guts to go up to someone. I walked up to an older white woman in a suit, standing in a courtyard. “Excuse me, ma’am? Can I ask you a question?” She nodded, and, as instructed, I asked her what she thought would happen to her when she died. Her face suddenly registered rage. She drew back and screamed in my face. “How DARE you! How dare you ask me that? I don’t want to be preached at! Leave me alone!” I was startled and scared. Tears welled in my eyes but did not fall; adults never screamed at me. We backed away quietly and piously said amongst ourselves that we would pray for her.

After another hour passed, we stopped a young black woman on the street. She was the first person who listened to us long enough to hear our full gospel plea. One of the guys asked her if she’d like to pray to accept Jesus. She said yes and, thrilled, we all prayed the Jesus prayer with her. We went back to camp feeling victorious, glad that it wasn’t a total waste, that we could brag to our other friends that we’d been “successful.” Looking back, I think the woman said yes so we would just leave her alone.

When I got back in my room that night, I remember climbing up in my bunk bed and thinking to myself, “If this is how you’re supposed to tell people about Jesus, I don’t think I want to do it ever again. Surely there’s a better way.”

Seven things (that are now six)

I.

Tuesday night, standing on the porch and about to walk in the front door, I heard the distinct sound of hooves. I looked up and, to my delight, there was a horse-drawn carriage moving up the street. Two fawn-colored draft horses pulling a glossy white Cinderella-style carriage; two drivers, a man and a woman, both wearing black top hats. I watched from the porch until they passed out of my sight, but I went inside very happy and amused.

II.

These days I am dreaming a lot about the house we are hoping to find when we move in May. I have vivid dreams about specific floor plans. In one dream, the house has dingy pink carpets throughout. In the next dream, the house has forty rooms but looks the size of a double-wide on the outside. In another, the house has a perfect farm-style porcelain sink but no cabinets of any kind. In another, the house has immaculate interior design but is covered in mildewy siding on the outside, surrounded by a chain-link fence in a scary neighborhood. The only consistent feature among the multiple dream houses is that they all have gorgeous, lush lawns. I hope this is the part that will come true.

III.

We become very affectionate with each other while we’re waiting in the grocery checkout line. I’m not sure what inspires this. We joke and laugh and kiss each other’s cheeks and try to guess how much we are going to spend.

IV.

I am not very skilled with Roman numerals. I remember one of our friend’s annoying little brothers bragging that he could do all of his math problems in Roman numerals if he wanted to. I told him, “That’s stupid. Why would you ever need to do that?” He was crestfallen. I felt a little guilty, looking at his wounded face. He was so proud of his obscure talent.

V.

Shaun and Ann-Marie are coming to visit this weekend!

VI.

I have a beautiful drive to and from work. Coming down the hill every evening, I have a panoramic view of the Blue Ridge mountains. This is something to be daily grateful for.

Red clay

Source: Flickr, user laurabell

I remember making “pottery” in the back yard at Ash Cove from the plentiful red clay. Mom, tired, would send us outside and we’d start digging holes. We would snatch Tupperware bowls and containers from the kitchen and fill them with water from the hose. We’d mix in clay and begin to shape little bowls and plates. We’d leave them on the brick patio to dry and in the morning, we would have creations. Sometimes we “glazed” them with Mom’s clear nail polish, so they’d last longer.

Once, our childhood nemesis, Micah Blaker, asked to join our pottery session. He lived in the house behind ours and we shared a fence with him. We’d always hated him. He was mean and fat and aggressive. He once threw a rock at baby Grace, who was a mere three-year-old porcelain doll baby at the time. We stared at him through the fence, astonished at his shy request. I told him he could come over and he climbed over the fence. He sat quietly at the plastic picnic table and made bowls with us. That night, we ran inside and told our parents everything, how nice he was now, how he didn’t yell at us or try to push us in the mud. It was our first lesson that people are not always as bad as they seem, that even people formerly written off as evil had good inside them, too.

Catching newts

Source: Flickr, user madrat

I remember catching buckets of newts on the edge of the Van Eerden’s largest pond. We separated them into male and female buckets, guessing—rightly, I recently found out—that the males had the flared tails and the females had straight, tapered ones, like the tails of a Dalmatian. We planned to establish a comprehensive spotted newt breeding program, and wouldn’t our parents be delighted when we suddenly had thousands of baby newts hidden in the back of the garage?

While we were daydreaming, Samson, that great, lumbering black lab, would stick his head in the newt bucket, like he was bobbing for apples. He’d come up with a face full of writhing newts, squirming in his white teeth. We’d squeal with terror and try to pry them out of his jaws, but he’d take a quick gulp and they were gone. From then on, we made the littlest sisters stand guard over the buckets and block Samson from any more snack attacks.

I remember the large puddle that was packed with wiggling black commas: tadpoles squirming for life. We would scoop up handfuls of them, dump them in other red buckets, and wait for them to turn into frogs. They never did. When the sun went down, we would trek to their house up that long, winding driveway, tired and content, feeling like conquerors. We hardly ever saw our parents.

Why I’m looking forward to being 50

Woman Seated in a Garden, by Henri de Tolouse-Lautrec

As I have grown, I have become very interested in the renaissance of life that occurs for women when they hit 50.

I see it often happening in this way. A mother spends the bulk of her young life caring for her children. Even if she has a job, for the most part, she is more intimately concerned with raising children because of the joint demands of biology and cultural tradition. This is not true in all cases, but the majority of women have to make life sacrifices in parenthood that men are never asked to make. Although I have seen exceptions to this, it seems to me that men may keep their hobbies and be fathers; mothers are not so lucky. A mother’s entire life is wrapped up in her children and she does not have any time to think of herself.

This was certainly true for my mother. I realized she didn’t have any time for herself when I was about 9. That year I was charged with writing the family Christmas letter. I went around the house and polled everyone on their favorite hobbies so I could write about what they did for fun. Kelsey told me about gymnastics; Grace told me about fashion and painting; Sam babbled about basketball, football, soccer; Dad played tennis.

I asked Mom what her hobbies were. “Umm… well,” she said, thinking. “Raising you kids?” I frowned. “That’s not a hobby, Mommy.” She smiled. “Well, I don’t really have time for hobbies.” And she didn’t. She didn’t do anything that wasn’t directly related to raising us, homeschooling us, and running her retail business. I think I finally made something up and wrote in the letter that Mom’s hobby was making scrapbooks. I was sad about this, even at the age of 9.

Mom, age 52. Source: Grace Farson photography

This why I find so much joy in seeing women become empty nesters. After 20 to 30 years of child rearing, these women finally have some time to themselves. If anyone deserves a peaceful retirement, it’s mothers. I imagine that it could often be a frightening stage of life, though–to have poured your whole self into parenting and then, suddenly, you are left home alone and wondering what your life calling is now.

My mom still has Sam at home, but he’s the strong, silent boy, and so she’s eased herself into early mothering retirement. Today, she has a plethora of life-giving hobbies. She is a prodigious gardener and her plots are the envy of the neighborhood. She took a beekeeping class and is planning on acquiring her first hive soon. She is becoming an amateur birdwatcher. She goes to daily yoga classes with her new set of friends, a group of similarly emancipated mothers. And it makes me extremely happy to see her doing all of these things; no one deserves time to themselves as much as my mother does.

I also think of my friend Catherine’s mother, Janet. Janet is a wonderful example of this life-after-50 renaissance. Janet went to law school after all of her kids had left home. She wrote a book about the dire need for conservation of Falls Lake. She turned Catherine’s old bedroom into a Room of Her Own and put a sign on the door that reads, “The Falls Lake Center for Social Justice.” She is fun, sassy, beautiful, and opinionated — and it is delightful to see her enter into this new stage of living.

All of this to say, I am looking forward to being 50. Not that I want to skip over the whole process of being young and raising kids, but I am excited about the freedom that American women are allowed to experience once they are middle-aged. One day, it will be good to be old, to acknowledge that my life is half over and not to balk at it, but to be gracious, to take heart in it.

My life in chapters

Source: shdwbxng.tumblr.com

Chapter One: A blissfully happy childhood, in which my greatest concerns are how many library books I am allowed to bring home and how many baby rabbits we can smuggle over from the neighbor’s back yard.

Chapter Two: The dark days of middle school, in which I fill up many dramatic journals and feel murky and confused inside.

Chapter Three: High school, in which my weirdly conservative debater identity takes hold; in which I feel that I am very popular, even though I am homeschooled and my entire social circle is about 40 people.

Chapter Four: Freshman year of college, in which I feel elated and totally excited about everything; in which I date a boy for the first time; in which I am still very judgmental.

Chapter Five: My sophomore year in college, in which everything falls apart and I am rebuilt again.

Chapter Six: My summer in Tokyo, in which my entire worldview is broadened; in which my Japanese language abilities make exponential strides; in which I have never worked harder in my entire life.

Chapter Six: Junior year in college, in which I am in love with Guion and find that he changes everything; in which I am happy, genuinely happy again.

Chapter Seven: Summer working for the Denver Post, in which I become an adult; in which I find a new, bold, extroverted self emerge, a self who makes new friends and invites them hiking every week; in which I am more fit and joyful than I have ever been before.

Chapter Eight: Senior year of college, in which Guion decides to marry me; in which I live in an almost constant state of stress; in which I learn that living in a house with six other women is difficult but has its benefits; in which I finish my thesis and feel very accomplished; in which I plan my wedding and graduate.

Chapter Nine: Our first year of marriage, in which we are excited to be together every single day; in which we move to Charlottesville; in which I get my first full-time job and he starts graduate school; in which we fall in love with a town and its people.

Chapter Ten: Our second year of marriage, which has just begun; in which we think we might just stay here forever, for who could feel this content?

Monday Snax

Well, I don’t have any pictures from this weekend because I’m stupid.

Here’s the story. We went down to Winston-Salem for Allan and Abby’s beautiful wedding this weekend. On the way down, we stopped at Subway just outside of Lynchburg for lunch. I proceeded to leave my purse (containing my wallet, keys, cell phone, camera, and a library book) at said Subway — and did not realize I had done so until we were 2.5 hours away. Commence many tears, panicky declarations, frantic calls, et hoc genus omne.

All this to say: I have the good employees of the Rustburg, Virginia, Subway and my brother-in-law to thank. Win, who has a heart of gold, woke up at 7 on Sunday morning and drove 1.5 hours to this hole-in-the-wall spot to retrieve my purse and take it back home for me. He definitely receives the Best Brother-in-Law of the Year Award and I am forever indebted to him. I think I owe him my first child or something like that.

ANYWAY. Aside from me being totally stupid, we had a nice weekend. It was great to see old friends from UNC and get to party with them at this lovely wedding. Whew. I still feel exhausted from the whole weekend right now; we got in last night around midnight. It may take me a while to function like a human again.

A few Snax with a lot of caffeine:

How Much Do Interns Earn? Having worked as an unpaid publications intern before, all I can add is a hearty AMEN to this article. It’s a crime. (Full Stop)

Beauty, Islamic Feminism, and Choice. I really appreciated reading this post, especially after having read Half the Sky, which does not paint a pretty picture of the way women are treated in Islamic countries. The author, a self-described “Muslim feminist,” writes about what it means to have choice and be an empowered, beautiful woman in Islamic culture. (The Beheld)

Lauren Lancaster’s United Arab Emirates. A haunting and fascinating collection of photographs of the UAE from New Yorker photographer Lauren Lancaster. (Photo Booth, the New Yorker)

“Where the Children Sleep:” A Round-the-World Tour of Children’s Bedrooms. I feel like I’ve seen this photo project before, but I don’t really care, because it’s always extremely fascinating. The disparities are numbing. (The Atlantic)

Language Mystery: When Did Americans Stop Sounding This Way? We watched a lot of films on Turner Classic Movies growing up, and I’ve always wanted to know the answer to this question. Why did American actors in the 1930s and 1940s speak in that stilted, quasi-British way? The Atlantic has the answer. (The Atlantic Monthly)

Paintings by Morgan Allender. Dark, lush, floral. I like. (ii ne, kore)

A Heart So White. I’m still six years old at heart: I will always be enchanted by photographs of white horses. (Eye Poetry)

Wales, Circa 1880, in Color. I wonder if Wales still looks this magical today. (How to Be a Retronaut)

Keep It In Your Pants: Smartphone Etiquette at Every Age. A guide on how to not be a total jerk with your iPhone, Crackberry, etc. (Also, is “smartphone” one word now? I hate that.) (Good)

In which my father gives me an “F”

Night Fall, by Nelson DeMille.

Back story: My Dad is always getting on me about being an incomparable literature snob. I am. I totally admit it. I’m always telling him that I wish he, a very smart man, would read smart literature, too. Instead, he sticks to the likes of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton–and Nelson DeMille. So, he devised a challenge for me. We each had to present the other with a book of our choice to read as a challenge to broaden our literary horizons. I decided to make him read Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) and he gave me Night Fall, by Nelson DeMille.

Our family-wide e-mail discussion on Night Fall follows.

________________________________________________________________________

22 July 2011, 8:20 a.m.

FROM: Dad
TO: Me, Mom, Gran, Aunt Shelly, Kelsey, Grace, and Sam

There are now 4 of us who have read Nelson DeMille’s epic, sure to be a classic tale Nightfall.

In 100 years from now it will be taught as a single semester long course, mandatory requirement for all English Literature grad students.

Here is the course description:

Nightfall501.  A probing, in depth look into Mr. DeMille’s crowning literary achievement.  The student will dissect DeMille’s complicated allegorical content and real-life metaphorical observations during that tumultuous year (2001) where disasters, civil unrest and uncertainty were close to the hearts of all Americans.  Only DeMille can capture the spirit of the American society during this period..  What can you say about John Corey?  What can’t you say about John Corey?  This is a graduate level 5^th or 6^th year level course – not meant for the undergraduate student or lesser developed student, maturity-wise.

So the three of us love it and were left speechless after reading it.   One of us not so much.  Looking at the last sentence of the Nightfall501 course description I see why this is so:

… “ not meant for the undergraduate student or lesser developed student, maturity-wise.”    Abby Pratt (she is no longer a Farson because of her poopooing Nelson) lacks the mental dexterity and maturity to understand this book.  Don’t think less of her.  When she reaches literary maturity this book will blow her away.    Feel sad for Mrs. Pratt.  Pity her small, undeveloped pea brain.

JmF

—————————————————————–

22 July 2011, 9:49 a.m.

FROM: Me
TO: Dad / CC: Gran, Mom, Aunt Shelly, Kelsey, Grace, Sam, and Guion

FINAL PAPER:
NIGHTFALL 501
“John Corey and the Role of Misogyny, Machismo, and Just Plain Awful Writing in Night Fall”

John Corey, the protagonist of Nelson DeMille’s novel Night Fall, barely deserves to be called a character. Rather, he is a walking stereotype of the worst form of American machismo. Corey does not act unless the action can be construed to make him look like a badass. He speaks in a repulsive stream of cheesy puns and arrogant claims about his prowess as a detective, his ability to kill anyone, and his unstoppable libido.

Corey is unbelievable as a human, and yet we feel that we have met him before. This is because DeMille has created Corey as a Frankenstein of Hollywood’s most exaggerated and absurd action heroes. Think of all of the worst, most predictable lines ever uttered from the likes of Nicolas Cage, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Keanu Reeves–and then imagine those lines in a book. They’re all coming out of Corey’s mouth–with no sign of stopping. The man is incapable of saying anything that is not a macho jab or a pompous play on words. Like most crazy people, Corey also likes to refer to himself in the third person. “John Corey wasn’t going to just stand there and let it happen,” and other patent absurdities like that pepper the novel, despite the fact that DeMille stupidly picked Corey as his narrator.

Corey is the least complex character in modern literature, and yet DeMille seems content to have him remain this way. As a stylist, DeMille writes with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. He relies exclusively on “gotcha” puns for all of his characters and he does not develop them beyond a mere archetypal role.

Speaking of stereotypes, let’s consider Kate Mayfield. Mayfield is a thrilling example the gross misogyny that permeates so much of American pop culture today. Let’s ignore the fact that Corey calls her, his wife, by her full name throughout the novel. (“Kate Mayfield got out of the cab and walked towards me,” he says, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be calling one’s wife by her full name throughout a 500-page narrative.)

In short, Mayfield is every American man’s dream: She’s presumably smart, but more than that, she’s sexy and really just needs a big, strong man to solve all of her problems.

Mayfield seems like a nice person, despite the fact that she seems to cook only in “tiny teddies” and that her most impressive quality is her silky blonde hair and “amazing body.” Corey tells us that Mayfield is a great FBI agent, but we never get any evidence of that. Rather, we only see her crying softly on his shoulder when her womanly emotions get too much for her. Kate Mayfield is a convenient wife for John Corey to have. She’s sexy and she has the appearance of being smart and driven–even though she is actually incapable of accomplishing anything. In the end, she has to have her case solved by her strong, mule-headed, macho husband. She sounds like an independent woman, but Mayfield is just another wilting damsel in distress.

In conclusion, Nightfall is a brilliant example of what is wrong with most of popular culture today. We should be grateful to DeMille for giving us such a stirring example of the appalling machismo that motivates so many novels and films. For this, we should regard him with appreciation.

In short, I think Twilight would have been more bearable.

—————————————————————–

22 July 2011, 10:11 a.m.

FROM: Dad
TO: Me / CC: Mom, Gran, Aunt Shelly, Kelsey, Grace, Sam, and Guion

OMG – this is the greatest email of all time!  I have tears in my eyes from reading this.  Priceless.  I am printing it out and hanging it on my office wall.

…

As the professor of Nightfall501 this is the kind of passion and drive I look for in my students.   Unfortunately, Abby Pratt is a retard.

Abby Pratt clearly read the book, but clearly didn’t understand a word of it.   Again the maturity (lack thereof), is evident in that the simple brilliance of the novel eludes her.

Ms. Pratt should stick to monosyllabic reads like Twilight or Old Yeller.   I suspect that her husband (Fine Arts emeritus – UVA 2012) wrote this FINAL PAPER for her.

I give Miss Pratt an F for the course.

John M. Farson

Prof. of Fine Literature and Good Things to Read

Oxford University

A 2001 Nelson DeMille Fellow

____________________________________________________________

Happy weekend!