A vignette is a little story recalling an incident from the past that the author remembers well enough to describe in some detail. This book is a collection of such stories. Though this may sound like an autobiography, it is much more than that. Each story has a twist at the end that reveals something meaningful about the writer. The book is full of humor, and readers often find stories that relate to their own lives. The stories are arranged around the seasons. Childhood is spring; marriage and children are summer; career ...
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A vignette is a little story recalling an incident from the past that the author remembers well enough to describe in some detail. This book is a collection of such stories. Though this may sound like an autobiography, it is much more than that. Each story has a twist at the end that reveals something meaningful about the writer. The book is full of humor, and readers often find stories that relate to their own lives. The stories are arranged around the seasons. Childhood is spring; marriage and children are summer; career occupations are autumn; and winter starts when the author stops driving and centers down to the deeper meanings that happen when age creeps in. This book is a work of deep introspection. It is also the record of a truly remarkable life. Deborah James is eighty-nine years old. She is still living in the house she and her husband built themselves in the do-it-yourself craze of the nineteen-fifties. She started writing vignettes when she was teaching psychology in high school. She wrote the curriculum for the course she was teaching and her curriculum was used in all the high schools in the county. After ten years of teaching she resigned because she was so upset over what the public school system was doing to the students. On the basis of her teaching experiences she wrote The Taming: A Teacher Speaks. The book created such a stir that she did not try to go back to teaching. She had technical writing jobs for the next ten years. At the age of 63 Mrs. James single handed the family's Tartan 27 sailboat from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.
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