The meme is: Seven Weird or Unique Things About Me

1. I was part of the charter program in my school’s “gifted” program and was invited to apply to join Mensa by our Superintendent of Schools in fifth grade.
2. I read books while driving (but at intersections with longish red lights).
3. I have panic attacks if I run out of book before I can get another.
4. I wrote some very popular gay erotica on Usenet back in 1987-1988 on a dare. (I was 19-20 years old at the time.)
5. My earliest clear memories are from before I turned one years old.
6. I once finger painted a butcher block in my sleep with food coloring paste.
7. All car trips when I am the driver, no matter how short, will probably involve a different route to and from the destination.

Now, I think I am supposed to tag a few more people. So, lets try Claire at http://crpitt.blogspot.com, Alan at http://libdrone.info, Will at http://willtaft.com/blog, Mark at http://markstoneman.wordpress.com, and Anok at http://identitycheck-anok.blogspot.com.

My answers:

Male:  My great grandfather J.L. Carpenter  (age 95) started worrying about the great depression in the early days of the depression and chose a different path from most people in the part of Kentucky he farmed.  While everyone around him increased production to try to make up for the declining farm prices he instead cut back drastically on his tobacco production and switched his land over to food production to ensure that his 9 children and their spouses and children would not go hungry and he refused to sell his excess for export out of the area. Instead he sold and bartered food locally at cheaper prices than the larger produce distributors and gave away any excess through his church to make sure it went to needy families with small children.    I would love to know what gave him that idea and why he was so willing to give up a cash based farm and switch to a system that fed his family but also forced them to step back 50-60 years in terms of the rest of the country because it severely limited their access to real currency to the point that his wife and daughters made all of the families clothes.  I think I may have just answered that question for myself.

Female:  Margaret Dardis -  She was an English prof of mine in college who left home at 15 and traveled to New Orleans and lied about her age to get a job working on a steam boat that traveled the Mississippi.  She eventually met James Michener and became a research assistant for him. (I used to know which books she assisted with for research but I don’t remember anymore) I would love to know how she felt and what it was like being a young woman working on one of those floating mansions running back and forth on the Mississippi before the depression.