OK: So I was born in a very small town in Texas (Graham, population 7,477 when I was born). I later went to high school in a slightly larger town in Texas, Wichita Falls. Outside of Texas, no one has heard of these places. (I just learned that Bud McFarlane, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, is from Graham. Not that that’s anything to brag about.) So that’s the background.

graham texas, the video!

I’ve been talking with one of my authors who lives in Australia. One thing led to another, and …. get this. He grew up in Graham. He graduated from high school in Wichita Falls. And we share an uncle. His uncle is my great-uncle, so I don’t get the whole cousin structure, but maybe we’re 2nd cousins once removed?

I stood with my mouth open, reading his email on my Blackberry this morning on the subway platform. We knew the same people. We’ve been in the same living room – Jim Vernon’s living room, right across the street from my grandfather’s house. In Graham Texas. My author got a scholarship to Stanford, and off he went – B.A. from Stanford, PhD from U Minnesota, then off to Australia for a professorship. But he and I both know that living room on the corner of Colorado Street in Graham Texas, because it belonged to our shared uncle.

This has left me shaking my head today at the wonder and mystery of life.

Also, I’ve arranged to trade my madelinetosh jodhpur for a skein of the same yarn, but in a blue-green called cousteau:

madelinetosh eyre light - cousteau colorway

I’ll mail mine to her, and she’ll mail hers to me, tomorrow.  I liked the jodphur well enough, but think I can do more with the cousteau. Pretty, right?