Jane Austen in Phoenix
Jane and I would both have Sanpellegrino prickly pear & orange sodas by the pool, as any other place in Phoenix is barely tolerable by mid-March. She would say of Arizona (à la Miss Crawford), "I do not like my situation: this place is too hot for me." Naturally, we'd gossip shamelessly about all the Lydias (and Lady Susans, for that matter) I have known and loved in almost 20 years of public education, and have a giggle over Britain's Jane Austen banknote and its un-ironic use of Caroline Bingley's quote on reading.
While I do love Lydias, the vaguely sociopathic and perpetually awkward Mr. Collins is a darling of mine, and after decades of high school dance chaperoning, I can truly say with Mr. Darcy that "every savage can dance."
Merry Gordon is a wife, mother, occasional writer, and veteran high school English teacher. She is a freelance editor with Pink Umbrella Publishing. Merry is currently busy editing an anthology to celebrate 150 years since Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She lives in the suburban sprawl of Phoenix, Arizona, making sport for her neighbors and laughing at them in her turn.
Merry with her husband. As Jane might have said, he is here expressing himself "as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do."
