1.

I remember the language

of my early youth, a bit

more colorful than today's,

when racism was prejudice,

feminism was women's lib,

and sexism male chauvinism

(or often, more colourfully,

being "a male chauvinist pig"!).

2.

I remember Inauguration Day

for Jimmy Carter, how bored I was

by the telecast which I was watching

on the black-and-white TV

of an elderly Italian lady

for whom my mom was briefly

a homemaker. The screen

was scarcely seven inches wide.

Or was that the TV I was watching

at home, in Mom and Dad's room,

after Mom (and I, who had been

with her for some reason I forget)

got home from the lady's house?

3.

I remember seeing The 700 Club

in TV Guide's listings with the simple

descriptor "Religion" and asking Mom

if I could watch, and her cautioning

(but not exactly forbidding me)

"I think it's a Protestant show."

I was far too young to know

that "Protestant" was a wide dragnet

catching everybody from radical

Episcopalian bishops to toxic

prooftexters and firebreathers.

I think I peeked at ol' Reverend Pat

and was bored stiff by his religion.