My mother's father was of German background and also tyrannical, creating in my mother an enduring resentment of male dominance. He was my political grandfather, stumping the Oregon countryside on behalf of public power, subscribing to agricultural journals from Communist China, and supporting the Progressive Party in the time of Henry Wallace. He was seminary educated, spent time as head of an Oregon boy's shelter, and finally settled as a small farmer on the banks of the Willamette River. This farm was to be the landscape of my childhood.

Both my randmothers made their escape before I arrived, their bodies shutting down with the strain of it all. My father's mother departed in a cloud of barbiturates prescribed for Parkinson's disease and my mother's mother perished the year I was born of kidney failure due in part to overuse of medication for migraine headaches. Both were reportedly gentle spirits clearly overshadowed in the match for family influence.