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Growing up on a military base, she says in our interview, "you live in government housing, which is usually not wonderful, and it's like living in a small town—you can't avoid people—but you do have the opportunity to peek out at the world.'' Life abroad wasn't always so broadening, though: "The truth was, you're 15 years old and you sort of wish you knew what people were wearing back in the States and doing back there, and you spent some part of the time wishing you could be part of that.'' Her mother put out a base newspaper and organized a thrift shop to raise money for charity, then late in life went back for a master's degree and became a librarian. Elizabeth also loved books and wanted to teach American literature. "What I really wanted was to teach people to love to read.''
What she says about her favorite writer, Henry James, probably explains the Edwardses' consistently long-view attitude toward an awfully short campaign season: "You've got to have patience, but if you're a reader and you love baseball, you love James; it's a little play here and there, not constant scoring. The truth of most anything is not in some big statement but in small things, and that's what James recognized. That and the fact that we're constantly making moral choices.''
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