Two-page handwritten letter, on three-hole-punched lined notebook paper.<\/p>\r\n
A note about the complications of figuring out the date of this one: Marcy just gave the date on this as \u201cAugust 10,\u201d but at some point Helen added \u201c\u201977.\u201d This letter does seem to have been written not long after the previous letter (from Peter) (which Helen also labeled as \u201977), \u2019cause I think that in this one Marcy is referring to returning from the visit to her mother that Peter mentioned in the previous one. As I mentioned in notes at the end of the previous letter, it\u2019s conceivable that both of these are from a year later, 1978\u2014except that by August 10, 1978, according to a later letter, Peter already had a new job. And in this letter he clearly didn\u2019t. So I think the 1977 date on this must be correct.<\/p>\r\n
Content warning for referring to a situation that sounds like it may have involved someone being abused by a partner; also for reference-in-passing to fictional rape.<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAugust 10<\/p>\r\n
Hi, folks.<\/p>\r\n
Just a quickie (you\u2019ve heard that<\/u> before, eh? preceding a 6-page tome<\/u>) to let you know we\u2019re okay, and wondering when you start your trip? and where? and all that.<\/p>\r\n
We are alive and swamped, as usual. Trying to take care of all the details I manage very few \u2014<\/p>\r\n
The trip back was not terribly eventful; took 3 days on an alternative bus similar to the green tortise; not near as much fun. Home to find a friend who needed a safe place to stay while she figured out what to do about her boyfriend,
xxx<\/strike> then to LA for a Johrei conference. Drovexxx<\/strike> down with Curtis, another member who is interested in Nature Farming, and goes along to work at the 10 acres that are cultivated with that philosophy at Camarillo - and a man who works with Peter (also programmer trainee) and is blind. We took turns reading a very funny book called Academia Nuts<\/u>, which consists of various logical interpretations of literary classics \u2014<\/p>\r\nlike: The Wife of Bath was a nun in disguise; she pretended to be old & much-married so she wouldn\u2019t be raped on the way; Lady Macbeth was pregnant; Oedipus married Jocasta but did not sleep with her; Beowulf was a homosexual; etc, etc. Some are very clever ideas, others are just superficial & funny.<\/p>\r\n
In the margin next to the phrase \u201c10 acres that are cultivated with that philosophy,\u201d Marcy wrote:<\/span> how do you cultivate<\/u> with a philosophy?<\/p>\r\n
Anyway, I returned from LA with Curtis and the son of some friends who have recently moved there; he\u2019s a few months younger than Joaquin, and has a hard time at home with a younger brother who is always after him, and parents who (tho they are good friends, I have to admit this) don\u2019t discipline him, or stop him from whining. So he is visiting for a week, learning a lot from Jed & Joaquin.<\/p>\r\n
But today we got up too early for him & he was tired, and \u2019Quin fell off an airplane wing (an old Navy fighter, painted blue and sealed and set in a huge sandpit and made safe for kid climbers) and I had to sit and judge the relative merits of their respective
xxx<\/strike> grouchinesses.<\/p>\r\nI was going to say, so I\u2019m pretty tired- but I fell asleep before I could write that part.<\/p>\r\n
Getting ready for a leap of some sort. The man who was interested in having Peter work for him is still in NY raising $ $ to start his company, so we are applying to a few other places; will let you know asap.
x<\/strike> We are considering going down to stay with friends & search down there, so as to be there when school starts. But this is not an ecnonomically sound plan at the moment; may look better later.<\/p>\r\nIf I hang onto this
xxx<\/strike> letter long enough to write more details it may never be mailed \u2014 so I\u2019ll end it here, for the time being.<\/p>\r\nlove from all<\/p>\r\n
Marcy<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
Notes<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n
- \u201cyour trip\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- Presumably George and Helen\u2019s big 1977 trip, except I had assumed that they had started that a few months previous, so I\u2019m not sure.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201cThe trip back\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- I\u2019m assuming she\u2019s talking about returning from a trip to Philadelphia with me and Jay, as Peter had mentioned in the previous letter.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201cgreen tortise\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- Weird that I apparently haven\u2019t mentioned this before; I thought it had come up in previous letters. Wikipedia says: \u201cGreen Tortoise<\/a> was one of several low-cost, no-frills \u2018alternative\u2019 bus companies established in the 1970s and based in California and the Pacific Northwest, providing long-distance bus service, but by 1982 it was one of only two still in operation. Also commonly referred to as \u2018hippie bus\u2019 companies during the 1970s, for their counterculture vibe and casual atmosphere.\u201d We took at least one trip on the Green Tortoise itself (maybe the Colorado hot springs trip?).<\/dd>\r\n
- Academia Nuts<\/cite><\/dt>\r\n
- Turns out this was a 1977 quasi-novel by Charles R. Larson, a professor of English and African Studies. I suspect that a 1968 piece in The Atlantic<\/cite> called \u201cCome to the Ship, Leggatt, Honey?<\/a>\u201d was one of the pieces in the book; it\u2019s about his (presumably fictional) student Clara LePage\u2019s interpretation of Conrad\u2019s The Secret Sharer<\/cite>. (Content warning for homophobia.)<\/dd>\r\n
- Larson was apparently influential in serious academia; for example, \u201cHis course in African Literature at the University of Colorado was the first one taught in the United States<\/a>.\u201d He wrote and edited several books<\/a> about African literature and Native American literature, among other things.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201cman who was interested in having Peter work for him\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- Presumably the millionaire named Duran who Peter mentioned in his previous letter. This is the last time he\u2019s mentioned.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201capplying to a few other places\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- When I first posted this letter, I wrote: \u201cAs far as I know, Peter stayed at his job for another year after this.\u201d But at that time, I thought the job he had was with the San Francisco school district. I later found and posted a letter from a couple months later in which Peter announced getting that school district job, so that may\u2019ve been one of the places that he was applying to.<\/dd>\r\n
- \u201cgoing down to stay with friends & search down there\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
- I\u2019m not sure where there<\/i> was. LA, maybe? At any rate, we didn\u2019t end up moving for another year after this.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marcy talks about various trips and plans and life updates. \u201cBut today we got up too early for [a kid who was visiting] & he was tired, and \u2019Quin fell off an airplane wing (an old Navy fighter, painted blue and sealed and set in a huge sandpit and made safe for kid climbers) and I had to sit and judge the relative merits of their respective grouchinesses.\u201d<\/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":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-marcy","category-cotati"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","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=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3069,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions\/3069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}