I have always admired Lucinda Foote,
That highly qualified bluestocking beauty,
With sparkling eyes and hair so sooty;
What was the fate of Lucinda Foote,
Who, it was noted by Thomas Woody,
Was examined at Yale by solemn Divines,
Reciting perfectly all her lines,
Which delighted them, and also vexed,
She was clever no doubt, but wrongly sexed!
What did she feel, that redoubtable dame,
With the extra letter to her name,
When her mind was analyzed to the root,
And no college would open to Miss Foote?
"Alas," said she, "I should have been a newt
On the sole of Emily Dickinson's boot,
Instead of the anachronistic Ms. L. Foote."
Lucinda went back to her father's house,
Sat in the garden, and sewed a blouse . . .
Born two hundred years too soon,
She wrote lost sonnets to the moon,
And thought of the day at staid old Yale
She made the professors quake and quail,
To see such intellect in a small female.
 

Frank's extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally  to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. Frank and Dorothy live in Colorado with two very senior citizens of the feline persuasion. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it