Angular Embrace

Sylvia Cavanaugh grew up in a red brick row house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with neighbors always close at hand. Irish coal-mining relatives lived about an hour north in Schuylkill County, and the family frequently left the city to visit these immigrants in the mountains. There, Sylvia encountered enormous trees that turned red and gold in fall, cavorting hordes of beagles, bee hives, introversion, tin cans strung up in trees, long abandoned Fords, a boy turned to stone, shotguns, and strip mining. Sylvia attended undergraduate school in western Pennsylvania, then moved to the Midwest and earned her M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin. After working in health care planning and marketing for a few years, she went back to school to become a social studies teacher. She teaches African and Asian history and cultural studies in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and has been the advisor for the breakdancing and poetry clubs. The poetry club has been actively involved i