"My mom says there's no reason why we can't write our own stories if we're bored with what we've got," Erin says, and I am left speechless, staring out the living room window of my parent's mobile home. There's a cat curled up in the wheel well of my father's truck, and the neighbor's Arabians are threading their way up the muddy hillside across the road.

It was like being hit by lightning. It was a few years before I said as much to anyone else, but I knew right then. I wrote my first story later that day, and my first poem a few weeks later. My grandmother still has the poem, I think.

I lost track of Erin after I left home, but I'll owe her (and her mom) that forever.

2. What do you imagine your life to be like when you are 70 years old? Here is what I hope: We are still healthy and happy and madly in love. We are retired to our cozy little farm where we pretend to be serious gardeners. I keep a couple of horses and cats and dogs around and spend my afternoons writing. J has his darkroom, I have my library and we have our brunches and teas on the front porch, watching the roses grow and listening to the birds in the trees. Our many happy and healthy descendants visit frequently and for long periods of time (as do our friends, and their descendants). J is the small town's friendly old man with lots of funny stories and I am the cantankerous and ornery but mostly good-hearted writer who spends a lot of time by herself in the woods.

We're making good progress, at least on that last part. I suspect J wouldn't mind if our friendly little town was on the moon, or Mars.

3. If you could solve two world issue/problem, what would it be? Good thing you specified two, my dear, because I could go on forever. But the first two are easy (if broad), and I'll be brief:

1. Guarantee access to basic needs of food, shelter, and health care for every person on the planet, regardless of gender, race, religion, nationality, political beliefs, sexual orientation, age, or class status.

2. Stop the pollution and destruction of natural resources and wild places. Not the use of natural resources, but the abuse and mismanagement. We need to be responsible for our actions and mindful of our impact on the world around us.

4. In what ways are you like / unlike your mother? Oh boy, did I have a knee-jerk reaction (I'M NOTHING LIKE HER!!!) to that one. We've only just begun speaking again, you see, after a number of years of only speaking at family gatherings. It is tentative and I am wary; you are either with her or against her, and when I drew hard boundaries I became one of the "against her" crowd It's been okay so far but I am always on edge and waiting for the nasty remarks and the passive aggressive commentary. I think she has finally figured out that I will not be treated badly by anyone, and is trying to behave herself.

I have always been different from her in that I never backed down when faced with a fight. I never let anyone else tell me how to live my life, and I never believed anyone who told me I wasn't going to amount to much. I don't shove the responsibility for my failures onto anyone else's shoulders. If I am angry with you I will say so, and I will tell you why, and I will accept an honest apology and get over it. I won't be snarky and hold a grudge. I recognize that I am solely responsible for the direction of my life, and that if I am unhappy I am the only one who can do something about it.

Honestly, though, I think I used to be a lot like her. I was afraid and resentful of anyone in authority, I was deeply uncomfortable in my own skin, I was so full of rage and fear that most days I was just barely functioning. These days, I'm merely suspicious of authority figures, I am much more present and at ease with my physical being, and I've put the fear to rest. The anger is harder to lose, but I am no longer directing it at myself.

There are ways in which we are still alike: we both believe in giving to those in more difficult circumstances, no matter how difficult our own may be. We are both always available to our friends, for whatever they may need. We both require a lot of time to ourselves. We love to garden, and can not resist stray creatures in need of care, regardless of species.

5. If there is one thing in your past that you could alter (not fertility-related), what would it be? I would have kept my husband home on September 11, 2001. Through a mean little coincidence, on September 10 I had what would turn out to be the last of the big arguments with my mother (after being harrassed by a creditor trying to convince me to pay her bills. Nothing like being told you're an ungrateful, heartless and cruel daughter by a total fucking stranger- and yes, those were the words he used) and we'd considered taking the 11th off to straighten things out, as she'd convinced some collection agency that we were somehow responsible for her debts. I calmed down and decided we'd deal with it later, and we both headed off to work. I was in a photo studio by 7 am; he was eating breakfast in the basement of the WTC when the first plane hit. I know how lucky we are, and I will always grieve for the thousands of strangers that died there, and for their loved ones. For a long time, I was constantly haunted by thoughts of how close it had been: a few minutes later and he might have been in front of the elevators when the fireballs came through. Or trapped in one of the elevators. On the street when the debris began to fall. I know we are lucky, but I wish I could have saved him from that experience, and the aftermath.

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Good questions. Thanks, sweetisu.

No, really. This is so far beyond despicable I start to sputter when I try to talk about it. It does not make any sense whatsoever, even if you try to filter it through a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint. The combination of extreme invasion of privacy with the utter misogyny of such a bill is astounding.

I kept trying to find something that would prove it's a hoax. Still looking.