I came along late in my father's life, in his forties, and he was always an angry and occasionally a violent man. That's just the way it is the way it was. His meanness hurt and the sudden, unexpected blows, but it was his ready ridicule that twisted me up worst of all. It inflicted such pain. It generated such anger.

In the streets of Washington DC I joined hands in a circle and chanted: peace, peace, peace.