"I have to go to my guilt meeting," I heard my mother say one night when I was five or six years old. My father's newspaper rustled in the other room, and he replied calmly, "What time?" I froze. For a minute I was all tingly, thinking I had heard something I wasn't supposed to hear. What on earth had my mother done that was so bad she had to go to guilt meetings over it? And just what went on at guilt meetings, anyway? It wasn't long before I figured out that guilt meetings were really guild meetings―once-a-month gatherings of my mom's friends who had looms or spinning wheels and who wore funny-looking homemade clothes. They were all members of the Columbia Weavers' and Spinners' Guild in Columbia, Missouri, one of the oldest, best (I am told), and continuously active guilds west of the Mississippi―and they served great cookies. I knew this because sometimes I was dragged along to their meetings where I would try to eat as many of them as I could.
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