Well, here's another mystery. A letter from someone I don't remember thanking me for favors I don't remember, mainly discussing someone I don't remember. I think it may be a girl who was considering coming to Carthage - she mentions staying in our room while visiting there - maybe some little recruitment program the college had. She's from Cedar Rapids, IA. She liked to talk about Terry.

October of 1962. A letter from my pal in the airforce - my major love interest at Cornell the year I went to a Luther League convention there when I was 16. We remained friends - well, pen pals - for a long time. I have just written him about my engagement - or am I engaged yet? I don't remember. He tells me about a "girl back home." He says my letter indicated that I had finally found my spot in life. He says "I always thought you had yourself and your "goal" figured out." I wish I remember what that was. And whatever spot I had found in the fall of '62, I had lost by the following year.

He says to say hello to my mom and pop. I don't remember if he actually met them. I don't remember seeing him since the bus rolled out of Cornell that summer. He says "I'm an airman second class now. Another fouorteen dollars a month will help."

What did I tell you about the dark ages?

My mother died yesterday. I think that's the post I'll put up tomorrow.

A 6-page letter from Jan at St. Olaf. Chiding me for not writing. For good reason, I'm sure. She says they have gone to see George Lincoln Rockwell, then leader of the American Nazi Party, who was speaking at Carleton College, in the chapel, of all places. She quotes him: "Negroes simply are not equal to the white race. they're like your children. You love them and all, but you certainly wouldn't let them sit at your formal dinner table or attend a business conference." The powers that be at Carleton, she says, "removed the hymnbooks from the pews for fear the students would start heaving them."

She confesses to having slept with two guys in Minneapolis. Well - she slept on the floor of the boys dorm with her boyfriend and a friend of his - the key word here being "slept." This event took three pages to describe, and she worries throughout that I will think she has no morals. They had gone up to the cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) to "mung around" (and I wondered where I found that phrase - I still use it). They got caught out after hours, and had to sneak into the dorm to sleep. Back at St. Olaf's, her roommate stuffed her bed with pillows so she wouldn't get caught at bed check. Yes, this was college in the early 60's. Not a low-security prison. Well, not exactly.

She goes to see Peter, Paul and Mary, and meets them backstage, amazed at how young they seem. "Mary, by the way, is a big girl. 5'9" at least, and large boned."

She gets her own campus radio show of folk music, and goes to and organizes hootenanies ("hoots") all around, thinks about transferring to the University of Illinois (why, I have no idea - if there was a perfect Midwestern 60's lifestyle, she certainly found it at St. Olaf).

Slowing down a little. June is here. Hot weather. Well, 80's. That's hot in Seattle. And lots of summer stuff to do. Like go to the annual Salmon la Sac party. I had not been going in recent years, since it seemed to have begun deteriorating into a gathering of drunks I neither knew nor liked. I went up a few years ago to see Charlie a couple of months before he died. I think I went up for a day last year (because that's when Morey gave me the Dean for President sign), but that was primarily to see Pat and Kerin, whom I don't see that often anymore. This year, Kerin reintroduced her old Saturday afternoon cocktail party in honor of Pat's recent graduation from The Evergreen State College. David was coming up from Wishram. I decided to go for the whole weekend. Lots of folks there, including a very good contingent of the old crowd. I drank absolutely no alcohol the entire weekend, imbibing only a couple of long swallows of mushroom tea on Saturday night, still going to bed by 2 a.m. Three ex boyfriends, and one of 'em (the youngest and cutest, if not the most annoying) was hitting on me, which was pleasant to a point. All the same, I went to bed alone each night with a good book, and that was fine with me. I pitched my tent beside the river, and did yoga there in the morning, looking up at the ridge over which I have seen so many sun and moonsets. Richard there with his new (well, only for the last three or four years or so) girlfriend. She's lovely, and obviously adores him, so I'm very happy for him. All the same, remembered the old days, with me and Richard and Charlie, Jacques and Doc, up all night on LSD, through moonset and sunrise along the banks of the Cle Elum River high (in more ways than one) on the slopes of the eastern Cascades. All dead now, save for Richard and I. I stood at the main campfire and named them all, saw their faces, smiled hello. Told them I would never forget.

The box item today is a little card from my fiancee's parents. Very sweet. Any regrets I feel occasionally over that past opportunity is drowned out today by the memories of other times, other friends. Times and friends I would never have known if I had stayed.