Welcome to my blog. It's brand new, today. Welcome readers, writers, friends. May you find something here that's interesting, helpful, entertaining or just worthwhile for you. Join me, please; add a note so I know I'm not alone in the blogging world.

I have just self-published my first novel, Plum Bottom, with Amazon CreateSpace. It is listed as literary, coming of age. My protagonist, Laney Mahler, comes of age in the 1940's and 1950's. Since I write knowingly of that era, readers will surmise, rightly, that I was living then, and must be old. I am old—I'm  81, as I start this blog. But, just because I grew up during those years, don't assume that I've written about myself. Laney Mahler is not me; Plum Bottom is not a memoir.

Today, when I think back to those early years, it seems that they were almost benighted. There was less higher education than there is today, particularly for girls. There was more racial discrimination, more ignorance about health and medicine. Having no public education about sex, young people regularly learned more about "the birds and the bees" from their friends than they did from their parents. With this prevailing ignorance, people were easily embarrassed about sex and modest to the point of being prudish. I recall that I never even used the word "sex" in our home; my parents considered it a bad word.

But, paradoxically, though that era seems "backward" in many ways, I remember it now as a delightful time in which to grow up. I think of freedoms I had that seem amazing to me, now. I could walk from my rural home to events in town, in the dark, alone. Without fear. People had guns for hunting, and ate what they killed. We considered the town's policeman a friend and neighbor. In our agrarian society, few people went hungry. When occasionally a "bum" came to our back door, my mother gladly gave him food and wished him good luck.