Diamond Dust

by K. Kay Shearin
(c) K. Kay Shearin 1992 Contact: ks24@georgetown.edu
0: Paragraph 1 I didn't do very much research for this book — mostly I looked up spellings or dates in a dictionary or my 1972 'Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia', but I also reviewed documents I wrote or received that described events at the time — because it's an account of what I've seen and experienced myself. Where I've repeated something someone else told me, I've tried to identify that source and the circumstantial evidence that makes me believe it, and I haven't included anything that I don't affirmatively think is true.
0: Paragraph 2 Many of the things I've said here are unflattering to someone, but nothing here is actionable defamation, partly because what I've said is true and partly because it's already been published in transcripts of in-court testimony that are public records. Nobody put me up to writing this, and I can't imagine very many people could be happy that I have, but I wanted the catharsis of packaging these memories into a bundle so I can walk away from it and get on with my life.
0: Paragraph 3 Nearly thirty years ago a mentor said to me, There are two kinds of people in the world: those who get ulcers and those who give them to others., Which do you want to be? It took me some years to master the technique, but now I usually manage to get aggravations out of my system instead of brooding on them. Oysters can turn their irritants into pearls, and I'd like to salvage some pearls of wisdom from mine.
0: Paragraph 4 Many of my attitudes were shaped by my mother's sister. My mother's abuse made any healthy relationship between us impossible, so for about ten years from my parents' divorce when I was thirteen, Aunt Ruth was in many ways my real parent. She was amoral and apolitical and a lot like Auntie Mame, and she taught me to evaluate things for myself and to measure them against my own standards and experience. If she were still alive, she'd be proud of me for writing a book, but she wouldn't understand that it's payment of a moral debt.