and the body of the Pillsbury Doughboy
Diane Schirf at Illinois Beach State Park, north of Chicago
I grew up in Hamburg, New York, south of Buffalo, with parents from the central Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Thanks to my local public library and a five-cent manila paper library card with my name typewritten on it, I absorbed the works of Agatha Christie, Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Dickens, and T. H. White at an impressionable age.
At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park I studied:
- Anglo-Saxons
- Eastern thought
- Music appreciation
- Music theory (FAIL!)
- Chaucer
- Shakespeare
- Malory
- Latin American and Russian literature
- Silent film
- Modern drama
- A smattering of British and American history
I wanted to write my required paper on The Once and Future King by T. H. White, but when I got odd looks I switched to Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Success!
On a gorgeous Saturday in June, I graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in English language and literature and no plan for Monday — or the future. I’m still working pretending to work on one.
On weekends when I can, I point an iPhone 14 Pro and a Nikon D7100 with image sensor spots at nature and sometimes surprise myself.
I support our National Parks and public lands.
My life has been steeped in loneliness, Mr. Smithson. As if it has been been ordained that I shall never form a friendship with an equal, never inhabit my own home, never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception.
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
— Diane Schirf