Prose and Poetry. My seventh grade English class reading textbook. On my bookshelf is a tattered copy with the first 18 pages missing. I love going back to it from time to time.

Thumbing through it, I realize how much of it has affected my life. The Man Without a Country, specifically, sealed patriotism in my heart and moved me anew as I re-read it today.

Miss Beck (Edna, I think) was our teacher. She was a funny little gal -- probably past when she should have retired. We joked about her. Some kids swore they saw her riding a bike to school with a beanie on her head (and I always pictured it with a propeller on top). Kids regularly acted up behind her back, and she was oblivious. I remember Joey C. looking up "prostitute" (and other naughty words) in the dictionary, and she'd come up to him and cluelessly tell him he was on the wrong page.

Once after I wrote a book report, Miss Beck summoned me to her desk after class for a private conversation because I'd written that it was interesting that a Negro character was named Mr. Black. This was before we used Black or African American. Even though I didn't have a racist bone in my body, she gave me a kind and gentle little lecture on respecting others of a different color.

I didn't need the lecture then, but I didn't forget it when I needed it.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28