Story of My Life
Once upon a time — 9 a.m., Monday, 1 October 1984 — I was born. I grew up in Kansas, though my home was not on the range. It was on Ohio Street and later Wagon Wheel Road, whose rugged name should not fool you. The only buffalo I ever saw were in the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. My early life was comfortably middle-class, which I never minded until high school, when I learned what bourgeois meant. Then I became a frustrated bohemian who read Oscar Wilde and listened to the Rent album for hours each week. Eventually I broke out: B.A. in Classics at Columbia University (NY) and an M.A. in Classical Studies at the University of Missouri. Now I live in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, known for its canal, which is even more polluted than the Kansas River!