Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts.

My favorite part was when my grandfather and I would make a special trip to Firpo's Bakery for red and green Christmas cookies and fruitcake studded with the sweetest cherries I've ever tasted. Usually Firpo's was too expensive for our slim budget, but Christmas mornings they gave a discount to any children who came in.

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

Do you see my diamond-studded smile and passion-filled eyes? It's because I'm in that stage of my life where I have nothing to prove to anyone. There is no elaborate pretence and no lavish ostentations. Genuineness smoulders in yellow gold, and I carry integrity on my eyelids. I stitch virtue, ornately and intricately, in every feather of my powder silver wings, which thrusts me past the iridescent rainbow where my ambitions soar high amid the dappled blanket of the sky. This is I; the stronger me, the happier me and the empowered me.