I was wandering through a refurbished bed-and-breakfast
in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. I was ten years old. The building,
formerly Daughters College, had been a nineteenth-century
finishing school for girls. As I explored the bedrooms that were
once dormitories, I noticed that the windowpanes had random
dates scratched into the glass, along with names of students,
suitors, and other scribbled sentiments. Later, I learned that
long ago, these young, upper-class women had engraved
this graffiti with their diamond rings. My fascination with this