"I decided early on in embarking on this book," says the novelist and poet Barry Sheinkopf, "that
I wanted to avoid mere chatter and to ask of every chapter in it, 'But so what? What did it mean to me, and what will it mean to a reader?' If I couldn't answer the first question, the second wouldn't be worth asking. The result may seem a patchwork. Some people who spent a lot of time with me and knew me well don't appear in it at all; others, whom I came to know only glacingly, do. But this is, for better or worse, a tale of aha! moments that together offer the whole of what I think my life taught me in my early years. I offer it for the amusement and entertainment of my readers, of whom
I hope my grandson may be one. But who knows--and so what if he isn't?"