You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.
By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.
As a person, I'm pretty much the same except that I've come to terms with who my real friends and supporters are. I don't get particularly friendly with new people at first go.
We didn't have a TV in the living room and all my friends thought we were kind of weird. When they'd come over, my mom wanted to talk to them about current events.
Everybody smokes! Models, actresses, everyone! Don't they realize that it's gross? I understand it's an addiction, but it still pains me to see my friends do it.
But friends invited me to a private screening of Emmanuelle and said I'd learn a few things. But I know all the swear words. I just don't use them. So I declined.
We have a group of friends of the museum who try to raise, if they can, periodically something to help us. Of course, the main thing about a building like this is its upkeep. It needs central heating and it needs central air conditioning.
Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.
It is, I think, harder for women. I haven't quite figured it out, and all of my women friends haven't figured it out -how the hell do you do this? How do you work and have families?
