Eudora Wilting, or, Why I’m Glad I DON’T Live at the P.O.

I know laziness is its own punishment, but I don't feel like hunting down the link to this week's NY Times article about the grand public opening of Eudora Welty's house.  Miss Eudora's essay, "One Writer's Beginnings", graced the first section of my Writing Fiction textbook in college.  It was as colorful and genteel as her fiction.  I have to say that Welty and I have very different notions of that "Room of One's Own" that Woolf recommends.  I wouldn't want to live in a house where everyone knew whom and where I was, and I'm not up for signing autographs while a fan is jogging in place.  Nor do I share her enthusiasm for non-air conditioned office quarters in the dead of summer in the Deep South.  Let's just say that I spent one June in a country house near the Mississippi border, and I gained eight pounds…not because I ate like a Delta Queen, but because my exercise in the oppressive heat was limited to running to the freezer or the shower. 

Unlike the heroine of Welty's most famous short story, I can't squat at my workplace.  Oh…wait…I live at my workplace now.  It's called Home.  Just like Eudora Welty's.  Except with air conditioning and anonymity.