Letter from mom, postmarked September, 1962. She sends a check, and tells me to spend it only on essentials, and to give her a report. I doubt that I did. She asks if I have gotten a job (I'm in college, so it would be a college job). I don't remember having one. With my daughter now working her way through college on student loans, and with almost no money myself anyway, I can NOW understand her concern. In those days, parents just had money. We all thought they did. And mother - she's all set to "wash windows today. I got yours and Joan's rooms done on Tues - even washed and ironed the curtains - so they are nice and fresh now." It must have been at least 15 years later that I tried to do the same thing for my children. I do it today. I wash windows. I think in terms of nice and fresh and clean. My daughter is 30, and her room looks like it hasn't changed since she was 15. Even though we've moved. Someday, I tell myself. Someday it will kick in. These are the days mom talked about when she would say, "someday you'll have a daughter of your own....."

October 1962. Letter from my friend Mary. She's in Chicago, just out of the hospital (nervous breakdown hospital), with a job teaching swimming, "6 days a week, 6 hrs 5 days, about 4-5 on Satuirdays...$50 a week." I believed she is living in an attic apartment on Chicago's Gold Coast (paid for, probably, by her parents). She mentions walking on Michigan Avenue in the rain. She says she talked to "Kunze," another friend of ours, another one I can't find today. I think I said I visited her once in that garrett apartment. Tiny, it was. She was, if I remember correctly, drinking heavily. I was uneasy. I think I backed away. No guts. No glory for me.

"Hi Doll---" As soon as I see that phrase, I know it's my old boyfriend type from Luther League convention, years ago (even in 1962 - at least three years ago). He's in the airforce. Think I mentioned him once before. He's got a girlfriend, but he still writes to me. He called me about 10 years later, when I was married and living in Green Bay, before THAT divorce. I may have mentioned this before too. He was married then, and his wife was out of town. I wonder if he's still in Richardson, Texas. He says "Jerry" dropped a 4-speed transmission in a '61 Chevy. What a dope, he says. I know nothing of the implications of this. Except that the Chevy is now only a year old. He mentions a "dinky 2-barrel and mild cam on the engine!" I have trouble with his writing. Does this make sense? Was this such a bad thing? :)

Beautiful day today, 2004. JB and Michael visited yesterday. Good things both. Will write two more pages today. Wonder if that's enough to get these characters killed off. Maybe almost. Have to work on Colin's memorial. It's all coming along.

Ack. Forgot the most important part of Saturday. Hooded mergansers.

Just a little note from mom enclosing money. Knowing me, then and now, the note was extraneous. Some things never change. Of course, she no longer remembers who I am, much less remembers to send me money.

My weekend was altogether wonderful. Saturday, off to Nisqually, since I had the Vancouver Dalai Lama trip coming up on Sunday. A breezy, somewhat chilly, partly cloudy (but also partly sunny) day (long description of an ordinary day). An anomaly. A white goose. No one is certain if it is an albino Canada, a "white-fronted goose" or a feral goose. Feral geese? Someone off the farm thinking, I want to fly, I want to fly. I empathize.

Sunday: I wandered (with friends) to Vancouver to hear the Dalai Lama make a public appearance. What to our wondering eyes, not only did we get H.H., we also got H.G. His Grace, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who introduced the Dalai Lama. They shared the stage together after that, with Archbishop Tutu sitting (nestling, is more like it) in a huge arm chair to the D.L.'s left. They brought the house down several times. At one point, the Dalai Lama was talking about letting go of attachments, and living a simpler life - using both Buddhist and Christian monks as examples. He turned to Archbishop Tutu and grinned. "Of course, I don't know how it is for Archbishops," he quipped. Tutu burst out laughing.

The love and compassion and joy emanating from that stage was indescribable. He spoke of remembering that even our enemies want happiness. They both spoke of terrorism as something we must seek to understand, "look for the root causes," and exercise compassion instead of anger. His Holiness invoked ideas from all the major religions, and then reached out to non-believers as well, saying that we need to develop a system of "secular ethics." Compassion for all.

Richard Brender, Caroline Welch, Marc Daniels (Zappa) and his friend Amy, and me. Whadda crew. They held us at the border for an hour (Zappa was bringing a boxful of CD's to trade to friends in Vancouver and had a plastic baggie full of old Canadian money from his last trip (about $25.00 worth) - very suspicious), but finally let us all in. Chinese food on the waterfront after the session. A long drive home, conversation with friends. A wonderful day.