The Gift of Gab

Amedeo Modigliani, Nude, 1916

Location: The Kuhne house on Cobb Road in Shoreview, Minnesota.

Exchange: When I was growing up, the dining room table was pretty much the center of the home. I did homework here, ate here, and all important arguments were settled here. For just such occasions, we have a little bookshelf within easy reach: The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in two volumes, and the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, if one happens to be short on time. That's right. Etymology, linguistics, pronunciation, and usage... It's all fair game at the Kuhne household. Spice it up with colloquialisms from England and rural Minnesota, and you've got a regular hotbed of semantic and syntactic contention. Anyway. We're at the dining room table. We're eating, and I've selected Josef Beuys' Felt Suit (don't ask me why; maybe because they're both descendants of Eastern Europeans?), Jean-Etienne Liotard's The Chocolate Pot (do I really need to explain?), and Amedeo Modigliani's Nude. Mandy, claiming to be an ignoramus, chose Modigliani. Clearly, no one is fooled. The woman has excellent taste.

Characterization: This fierce-willed Brit gave me the gift of gab, and as for who gave me my stubborn determination, she's certainly one of the culpable parties. When I was a teenager our unbudgeable traits looked a little like bull-fighting, but since then we've set our horns and teasing capes aside. We can talk for hours, and I always come away feeling just a little bit smarter than I was going in. For the rest of ya'll, Mandy can be found quelling the fears and frustrations of academia, running marathons, and gettin' shit done. In short, she's what every teenage girl really needs: a woman role model with mission, conviction, and a deft hand.