When I was growing up, we moved around a few times. My father had graduated from Austin Peay State College in Clarksville, Tennessee, where I was born (I don't remember much other than what I remember seeing in the old super 8 movies), when I was four, then we moved to Clemson, South Carolina, where he was accepted into a doctorate program in physics. We were there for three years, the most wonderful, care-free time of my memory. We lived in a rented farm house on a hill, across from a corn field; we had thirteen cats; there were jasmine bushes outside my window, which I remember was always open, and the breeze always seemed to blow into the room.

My father wanted to go to Clemson because of the research in superconductivity, but also because his personal hero, Albert Einstein, had been to Clemson to visit another professor (Schoedenger, I think) in the late 1930s, and had walked through the very woods, and had driven through the very roads that he now drove on as a student. Dad had Einstein posters in his office, and small Einstein tokens around the house. Later, when he got his PhD, and a real, full time job as a professor at Memphis State University, he had a large Albert Einstein portrait with the caption "Who ich das Memphis State?" on it.

So I actually grew up on the campus of Memphis State University as a "faculty brat." It was fun, it was home. I knew most of the science faculty, both Physics and Chemistry. I knew most of the English Department, because many of them lived in our neighborhood. I knew the buildings, I knew the football and basketball teams. I even knew how to pick classes, where to go for guidance and Administration, and Finance... all before the 7th grade.

Did I say it was home? Yes, I did. So was Clemson, so much so that I didn't want to leave. When I got old enough to actually attend Memphis State myself, I majored in music. I loved the student life, the freedom. I actually did well in some classes, but very poorly in most, and I had to leave. I found out really fast that the "home" of university is a thin veneer, that it doesn't last long. What made it feel like home was the moment of freedom, the moment of people, the moment of independence, the sense of purpose. Any one of those moments melt away, and so does "home."

When I got my second chance, I got my degree at an extension of the University of Idaho as an adult student. U of I was not home, home was where my family lived, and where all my money when to pay the bills. Oh, well. I still have good memories of U of I, and Idaho in general, but they are part of my memories of life, not of an isolated figment of it. And besides, I got to take a video course from Dr. Margrete Von Braun.. Werner Von Braun's daugther.