Michael N. Castle

They were often the first students in their family to go to college and the very idea of higher education was still foreign to them. They had to make a conscious and often difficult decision to come to college.

My grandma actually put me in girdles when I was around nine or ten because I had hips even then, and she didn't want boys to be attracted to me. Having hips meant you were a full-grown woman, and I was too young for that.

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way.

We continue to be exasperated by the view, apparently gaining momentum in certain circles, that armed robbery is okay as long as nobody gets hurt! The proper solution to armed robbery is a dead robber, on the scene.