Generally Speaking

Behind me stretch four generations of military lives. This book is for the most part, the story of my life as the daughter of a two star general and the wife of a three star general. It recounts the fascinating lands I was either fortunate enough to reside in or visit and as an adult I went into these civilizations and continents with fire in my belly to capture the cultures, the landscape and the people with my two Nikons hanging off my neck. Even after retirement it was hard to shed my peripatetic life style so I went to China, Bali, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

It's a story about doing the best you can with the cards you are dealt, about making your way through difficult moments and supporting your children and your husband and keeping it all together. The military is not an easy life but it is a good one. And I do not hesitate to recount some of the more wretched events.

For the most part it has been a charmed life. I write about unique incidents: having a gun fired at my car on an early morning trip to the airport in Bangkok. Of a shoot-out in a Pamplona, Spain square and of being reunited with a childhood friend in Oslo, Norway - then a young prince - and at the time of the visit the Crown Prince and now the King.

During our two year Italian Odyssey we received a letter from the Countess Chinigo of Ravello for a dinner at her villa above the Amalfi Coast. We did not answer. But on the second effort, we did and thus visited her numerous times in her little gem of a villa.

I was a lucky, lucky woman.