by K. Kay Shearin
(c) K. Kay Shearin 1992Contact: ks24@georgetown.edu
0: Paragraph 1 I didn't do very much research for this book —mostly I looked up spellings or dates in a dictionary or my 1972 'Funk &Wagnall's New Encyclopedia', but I also reviewed documents I wrote orreceived that described events at the time — because it's an account ofwhat I've seen and experienced myself. Where I've repeated somethingsomeone else told me, I've tried to identify that source and thecircumstantial evidence that makes me believe it, and I haven't includedanything that I don't affirmatively think is true.
0: Paragraph 2 Many of the things I've said here are unflattering tosomeone, but nothing here is actionable defamation, partly because whatI've said is true and partly because it's already been published intranscripts of in-court testimony that are public records. Nobody putme up to writing this, and I can't imagine very many people could behappy that I have, but I wanted the catharsis of packaging thesememories into a bundle so I can walk away from it and get on with mylife.
0: Paragraph 3 Nearly thirty years ago a mentor said to me, "Thereare two kinds of people in the world: those who get ulcers and those whogive them to others., Which do you want to be?" It took me some yearsto master the technique, but now I usually manage to get aggravationsout of my system instead of brooding on them. Oysters can turn theirirritants into pearls, and I'd like to salvage some pearls of wisdomfrom mine.
0: Paragraph 4 Many of my attitudes were shaped by my mother'ssister. My mother's abuse made any healthy relationship between usimpossible, so for about ten years from my parents' divorce when I wasthirteen, Aunt Ruth was in many ways my real parent. She was amoral andapolitical and a lot like "Auntie Mame," and she taught me to evaluatethings for myself and to measure them against my own standards andexperience. If she were still alive, she'd be proud of me for writing abook, but she wouldn't understand that it's payment of a moral debt.
0: Paragraph 5 My late Aunt Frances would, though. My father'smother died when I was an infant, so her youngest sister filled theplace of a grandmother for me. She was famous within the family forputting the words on people, and her words were often unsuitable forpolite society. From her I learned to call a spade a blankety blanketyspade and to stand up to anyone who had done me or mine wrong. One ofmy warmest memories is of the time I blessed Aunt Frances out for aninsensitive remark she had made about my father in front of him, and sheadmitted she had been out of line. That was the rite of passage thatmarked my arrival into adulthood.
0: Paragraph 6 I believe most problems between people result from afailure to communicate. On the theory that "If you're not part of thesolution, you're part of the problem," this book is my effort tocommunicate.
K. Kay Shearin
Elsmere, Delaware
June 1992
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1: Paragraph 1 Delaware is the opposite of the old cliche: not muchto visit, but a great place to live. To Amtrak passengers in thenortheast corridor, it's a station between Baltimore and Philadelphia;to drivers on Interstate 95, it's not even a wide place in the roadbetween Washington and New York; to its residents, it's one of thebest-kept secrets around — a pearl not to be cast before swinishoutsiders.
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