Billy Buckley and defection, or degrees of separation or something

I last "hung out" with William F. Buckley, Jr. in November of 2003. We were all in black and navy blue. It was my aunt's memorial service at Caramoor in Katonah, NY. My aunt, born in 1912 (a great-aunt, really) , had been pulled from Juliard to be the Buckley's music teacher. She taught Billy piano, harpsichord. He spoke of his crush on her and riding in her car's jump seat when he was not yet 10. My Aunt's best friend was Patricia Buckley Bozell (a younger son), who had two sons. Brent Bozell runs the Conservative Communications Center and his brother, Michael, became a Benedictine monk in France. At Auntie's memorial there was a photo of her with Patricia and Michael at his grounds in France. Michael truly has marmalade colored hair. Thirteen years ago Auntie sent three of my stories to Billy. I may still have the note he sent back in 1994-- in handwriting already tremorous and angular with an aging hand. At nineteen I really didn't know who he was or why he was important. I somehow let the info that he "ran for mayor of NY" dissolve into the red wine and brie cheese conversations around me.

How do we get to where we are in our lives? Like most people, I want to trace the path of familial attachments, ideological evolution, moral coding and inheritance. It is difficult to find the sense for me, especially coming back from a family trip into North Carolina two days ago. I am reading and rereading Wendell Berry, a man grounded in the concept that we are place, that the co-evolution of people and their land is what makes modernity so fractured and sad. I am a product of my time here in Alaska -- my choice fifteen years ago. Or something. Or something else. I'll write another book about this, I suppose.