{"id":1289,"date":"1974-01-22T00:01:32","date_gmt":"1974-01-22T07:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2022-07-03T14:21:28","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T21:21:28","slug":"1974-january-22-letter-from-peter-to-gh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/1974\/01\/22\/1974-january-22-letter-from-peter-to-gh\/","title":{"rendered":"1974, January 22: Letter from Peter to G&H"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Four-page handwritten letter, on lined but not three-hole-punched paper.<\/p>\r\n

Content warning for mention of a stereotype about Black people, sigh. (But if I\u2019m reading it right, Peter seems to be disagreeing with that stereotype? I think.)<\/p>\r\n

Also content warning for another claim that \u201cthe more we give, the more we get\u201d (and related ideas).<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Jan. 22, 1974<\/p>\r\n

Hi folks\u2014\u2014<\/p>\r\n

I was sorry to hear about your hassles sending the organ\u2014\u2014having had years of experience as shipping clerk I appreciate the superior service of UPS\u2014\u2014it\u2019s funny, I always think of them when shipping commercial things, like Shaklee products, but hardly ever think of them when sending gifts to friends\u2014\u2014maybe because they don\u2019t handle letters, only parcels. At any rate, we enjoy the organ more every day: I bought a couple of music books, rock & jazz, and practice songs from them. The other budding organists in the house might be inspired to learn to read musical notation by this, because there\u2019re no numbers in these... I\u2019d very much enjoy x<\/strike> listening to a tape of some of your repertoire; no matter what style you played, to me it would always be \u201cpop music\u201d (groan...).<\/p>\r\n

It was heartwarming to read of your phil-anthropic (people-loving) work with the \u201cfree-store\u201d at Christmastime. I know that you both know the secret of being happy: to make other people happy ... and your gracious generousity and people-to-people social work have always inspired me & enhanced my love for you. I only wish more people knew this open secret, that the more we give, the more we get (\u201cwhat goes around comes around...\u201d)\u2014\u2014it\u2019s like sitting in a bathtub: if you try to pull the water to you it goes around & past you & piles up at the ends, away from you; but if you push it away, it curves around & comes right back to you ... also taught by the Master Jesus: \u201cto those who have much more shall be given, but to those who have little, even the little they have shall be taken away\u201d: if I act & think in a spirit of abundance<\/u>, the cornucopaeia-universe spills its riches on me; but if I think & act in a miserly, complaining (Yiddish: \u201ckvetching\u201d) manner, the universe withdraws its energies, & I am left with nothing.<\/p>\r\n

Note in margin of page:<\/span> P.S. Apropos of nothing, have you ever seen the movie \u201cSlaughterhouse Five\u201d? It is one of the very best, most life-affirming movies I\u2019ve ever seen, and I hope that if you ever get a chance, you would see it...<\/p>\r\n

We\u2019re glad you liked the \u201cHearthlight\u201c brochure\u2014\u2014we\u2019re very pleased with it, and just this morning we got our first \u201cbite\u201d on this \u201cbait\u201d\u2014\u2014a nice social worker from San Mateo called up & said he thought he might have one boy for us: one with emotional problems like, expressing how angry he is, all the while a big smile\u2019s on his face. Sounds challenging.<\/p>\r\n

Re sleeping bags: we won\u2019t need any until, at the earliest, spring vacation, and probably until summer. (Also, two hitchhikers left one in our car\u2014\u2014I didn\u2019t discover it until two days later, so there is no way to return it to them.)<\/p>\r\n

We\u2019re tentatively<\/u> planning to come North (maybe climb Mt. Ranier?) this summer, so maybe we can save you postage on things you wanted to give us. Jed has a carom board (got it for fifth b\u2019day), and I\u2019m not sure if we\u2019ll be able to trust our charges with the mallets & heavy balls of a croquet set x<\/strike> (some of them might, in a caveman mood, see them as clubs & missiles, instruments of mayhem: but we\u2019ll see...), but the rhythm toys sound very useful: I know that black kids are supposed to have a natural sense of rhythm (& white kids a natural sense of logarithm? ...), but I think that all<\/u> kids enjoy pounding & shaking rhythm instruments, just<\/strike> both to get more in touch with their own natural body rhythms, and to learn to harmonize these with their friends\u2019 natural rhythms... Also glad to hear you\u2019re interested in meditating\u2014\u2014this not only attunes a person to their inner rhythms & processes, but also (physiologically) relieves tension & anxiety by lowering blood pressure & lactase levels...<\/p>\r\n

One more thing\u2014\u2014if you\u2019re unable to get the information on the dates & causes of my grandparents\u2019 passings, would you please let me know so that I can get in touch with the vital statistics departments in Roy and Missoula? Thank you in advance: I think blessings will come to you as well as to us, when xxx<\/strike> my (your) ancestors have been formally honored.<\/p>\r\n

Love from all of us, Peter, Marcy, Jed & Joaquin<\/p>\r\n

\"Drawing
Drawing of heart with wings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Notes<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n
organ<\/dt>\r\n
See Marcy\u2019s letter about the organ<\/a>.<\/dd>\r\n
Shaklee<\/dt>\r\n
This is the first time in over a year that there\u2019s been any mention of Shaklee in these letters, and it\u2019s been about three years since the last mention of being Shaklee distributors; I had assumed that they had given up on that. (It\u2019s unclear to me from the phrasing here whether they were still sending out Shaklee products regularly at this point, or whether he\u2019s just talking about having done so in the past.)<\/dd>\r\n
\u201cyears of experience as shipping clerk\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
Until I read this letter, I had no idea that Peter had ever been a shipping clerk, much less done so for years. I\u2019m not sure when that was, but must have been sometime in the sixties, before he met Marcy.<\/dd>\r\n
\u201ccornucopaeia-universe\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
As I\u2019ve mentioned before, Peter\u2019s faith in the abundance of the universe always feels a little odd to me when he mentions it in letters to his parents, who were so frequently the source of the abundance that he received when he wrote to them asking for money to bail us out of whatever dire financial circumstances we had once again fallen into.<\/dd>\r\n
\u201ccarom board\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
See an earlier letter<\/a>.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter to George: \u201cI\u2019d very much enjoy listening to a tape of some of your [organ] repertoire; no matter what style you played, to me it would always be \u2018pop music.\u2019\u201d \u2026and other assorted notes and thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-peter","category-hearthlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1318,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}