The Feedsack Dress

Reading articles about Carolyn Mulford

As a journalist, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people for articles. Occasionally I switch roles, answering rather than asking questions.

The Feedsack Dress was the major topic of two interviews published in March. An article by Charlotte Atchley appeared in the Columbia Missourian and on the newspaper’s Web site at http://voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/03/05/write-stuff. Charlotte interviewed several women writers, each of whom has followed a different path. One thing I told her about why I became a writer: “When you’re fond of reading stories, you want to write stories.”

Phoenix, the national magazine of Alpha Sigma Alpha Sorority, published an article called “Alpha Beta alumna authors historical novel.” Cretia Rowlette, another Missouri native who served in the Peace Corps and settled in the Washington, D.C., area, interviewed me for that article.

One quote from that article: “To her delight, the book elicits a powerful emotional response from adults who remember the days of feedsack dresses. The book conveys a true picture of that time and of the timeless trials of adolescence.” 

I enjoy talking about the book, but I prefer to be the one asking the questions.

—Carolyn Mulford

Studying Latin

Today is the Ides of March, a day of infamy because of William Shakespeare’s account of the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar. In Rome, the ides simply marked the middle of the month, and the day when you paid your bills.

The day reminded me of the vanished prestige of Latin. Up until at least the late 1950s, high schools encouraged anyone planning to go to college to take Latin. Even then many students refused to study a “dead” language. Not many studied a “live” language either. The schools offered few opportunities. Most students didn’t envision themselves ever working, or even traveling, in another country.

In my little world, you rarely heard or read a foreign language. Latin seemed exotic, a key to a secret world. That illusion soon vanished, but I enjoyed studying Latin and found it useful for several reasons.

1.     Many English words come from Latin. Even a limited Latin vocabulary helps you decipher unfamiliar words.

2.     Learning another language teaches you how languages work, including your own. We learn our mother tongue through imitation and don’t analyze it. By studying the structure of a foreign language, we gain a better grasp of the structure of our own.

3.     When you study a language, you study a culture—another way of thinking and behaving. You expand your world and become more tolerant of others.

4.     Studying Latin prepared me to study other languages, particularly such cousins as Spanish, French, and Portuguese but also such unrelated languages as Amharic and Chinese.

When I went to high school, most people concerned themselves with local affairs, not a global or even a national economy. Studying Latin—or any another language—is still a good way to prepare to live in this larger world.

—Carolyn Mulford