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I was born full grown in the middle of a hurricane and an earthquake on 10 September 1954, 12.52 P.M. When I found out that I had missed lunch, I gave such a shout that the Earth stopped and spun backwards two days. That's why I celebrate my birthday on 8 September.

I was born a year after Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic. Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes. I was very much an airplane boy.

Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

I was born in 1954. My parents were brought up in the war years, and life was hard.

When my mother, sisters and I arrived on the shores of America when I was 8 years old, the boat on which we came, a freighter, passed the Statue of Liberty.

I was born on the first day of January 1941 in the front bedroom of my grandparents' house in Rodborough near Stroud in Gloucestershire where my mother had come to escape the bombing in London.

I have a strong memory of the day I was told that my father had a weak heart and that he had to go to the hospital. He died when I was nine years old on the same day that Franklin Roosevelt died; it was his 45th birthday.

I was born in New York City on a cold January night when the water pipes in our apartment froze and burst. Fortunately, my mother was in the hospital rather than at home at the time.

I was born on an even keel. Family lore says I never cried, even at birth. I felt at ease on earth, in the right place. And like many children, I took comfort in life's regularity: Every few days it rained, the school bus came and went, and my parents were rooted in their union.