The experience of playing freely during childhood must imprint itself indelibly in one’s psyche.  So many artists and writers who grew up in small towns across America seem to have been fueled by these long lazy periods of spontaneity as children. I put Jill Brantley among those so endowed.  She was fortunate to live in a small town in New England.  No stoplights.  Church steeples rising above oaks and maples.  The whole nine yards.  She remembers walking to school, riding bikes in the dark on summer nights, roaming with friends from yard to yard inventing games as they went along.  Imagination sparking imagination.  And a mother ringing a special bell at dusk.