Surrounded by books in a well-trafficked bookstore, I sat down to coffee with a former student.  We’ve been meeting this way for many years.  By now, he is in his early 70s while I am staring down at 87.  Happily, we are both in robust health, and I always look forward to our con

Getting Lost to Find Home, my upcoming memoir, will reveal my childhood relationship with my father was a rocky one.  We didn’t make our separate peace until I’d graduated from college.  Even then, communication wasn’t easy.  He was an Indiana farm boy with an 8th-grade educa

My father lived with my mother and me until I turned 7.  Every Sunday, he and I would jump into the car, always an Oldsmobile, and we’d drive to the center of town to buy the newspaper.  If the first vendor we met was black, my father drove on, until he came to a white man