Ms Minerva Jane Cracks Her Whip

I'm Minerva Jane. How did I get that name, you may ask?

Well, long long ago, in the late '60s a woman named Rose Sgarlat met a man named Snuffy Myers. (I wish I were making it up, but alas...) They married and had a baby named Jessie. When Jessie was two years old Rose went back to school for her PhD in Child Development. The dissertation that ensured focused on Jessie's adventures in daycare, her struggle to accept her new baby sister, and her grappling with the sudden death of her childhood friend from leukemia. (All of this is true, btw. I remember nothing of Jennifer's death itself, but I do recall going over to her house to play with her dog, a particularly stupid airedale terrier, so he wouldn't be lonely. Until the day he got run over by a UPS truck. Oh, and Jennifer's grandmother drove one of those old hippie VW vans.) To protect her daughter, Jessica Lynn Myers, Rose renamed the character in her dissertation Minerva Jane Miller (Minerva as in the goddess of wisdom; Jane as in "Dick & Jane"; Miller as in--well, Miller). And so here I am, Minerva Jane to my friends, MsMinervaJane to strangers.

Someone once told me Ms MinervaJane sounded like either a porn name or a dominatrix's title but then he was a skanky old man with bad teeth. Plus he smelled like moth balls. (Ugh.) So I ignore him.

I have my mother's notes from her dissertation--two old fashioned Composition Books filled with two years' worth of observations.... and someday when I get the chance I'm going to transcribe them and post the text here. (Maybe, if I'm lazy, I'll just scan the pages.... We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?)