A teen reader in Italy who is writing a report on my wife Loretta asked us for a complete biography. Loretta, or Lorry as most of us know her, wrote to her devoted reader saying that her biography and her husband's had sort of intertwined over the past 40 years of marriage, but she resurrected some family facts of her own and sent them off in an email. The teen reader wrote back her appreciation and said Loretta is a famous poet.

Loretta (and Gerald) take any and all felicitations, thank you, thank you. BUT, as Lorry just said to me, "I have never written a poem in my life!"

I reminded her that we have three current editions of one of our books (The Mythology of Dogs) in Italian, and that maybe the reader was a little confused. I also reminded her that I had a reader once who stated that I was a German citizen and worked for the German government and another reader who insisted that I was an American Indian high school teacher living in Orlando, Florida. In fact, I have a Hungarian-English background and we live in Bokeelia, Florida.

Readers -- and people in general -- get the funniest ideas about writers. I once had a conversation with a pizza delivery man that went like this --

Pizza Guy: What do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a writer.
Pizza Guy: Published?

For the record, and for Loretta's admirers, here are some interesting facts. Loretta's family came from North Carolina, traveled from there to Texas, and then settled in northern New Mexico in the 1880s. They lived in an earthen house called a dugout, basically a cave. This was in Questa, New Mexico where they eventually built a ranch house and raised cattle. When they sold their ranch the ownership passed to Mabel Dodge Lujan and she gave the house and property to D.H. Lawrence in exchange for the manuscript of Sons and Lovers. Members of Loretta's family traveled to the Farmington area where the town of Chambers was, and still is, named after them. Emma Chambers, Loretta's great great aunt remembered traveling from Texas to California in a conestoga wagon and meeting friendly Indians along the way.

By the way, although Loretta has never written a poem, she should. Her family history is an unwritten poem. And she -- all by herself -- is a celebrated line of verse.