Having a biopsy of the lung these days

still leaves you feeling as if Joe Louis had slugged you harder than he slugged Max Schmeling.

Old picture: BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN

All of these people are dead but one and that one is old.

A Scot happy to be in Scotland 1982

Scalini and the Quilt

It's time to go back to what should have been my career.

It's time to go back to what should have been my career.

Harrison Hayford and Ernest Samuels Lay Out a Scheme for Hershel Parker November 20, 1961

Harrison Hayford and Ernest Samuels Lay Out a Scheme for Hershel Parker November 20, 1961

Found in my copy of LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
As I describe in MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE, I took the qualifying exam in the Spring of 1962, not the Fall, and as luck had it thereby became eligible, the same week, for a new WOODROW WILSON DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP. They wanted former Fellows who had finished all requirements in 3 years. I think they had to relax the requirements. 

Scalini guarding the South Battlement

wth Maurice Sendak

Scalini--still in our thoughts

The way we look today

with Carvel Collins

Colin

With Meta Carpenter

Humor--"I will print this email because I want to keep it"

Sure, I want to keep it.  You just can't break the habit of thinking long-term.
What I really want to "keep" is a completed self-published volume of ORNERY PEOPLE.

Sandberg in 2013

Why my prose sounds just like Jane Austen's

Why I Sound Just Like Jane Austen

Thomas Leigh 1520-1571 & Alice Barker +1603 | | | Alice Leigh 1543-1621 Rowland Leigh +1596/ | | Thomas Coney 1561-1637 William Leigh ca 1585-1632 | | Elizabeth Coney 1592-1617 William Leigh +1690 | | Elizabeth Sharpe 1613-1652 Theophilus Leigh 1648-1725 | | Joseph Isaack 1642-1689 Thomas Leigh 1697-1764 | | Richard Isaack 1679-1757 Cassandra Leigh 1739-1827 | | Mary Isaack 1712-1759 Jane Austen 1775-1817 | Elizabeth Peach 1733-1797 | Joseph W Hill 1750-1806 | Henry T Hill 1776-1850 | Alston Hill 1816-1900 | Frances Emily Hill 1866-1929 | Luther Parker 1887-1969 | Lloyd O Parker 1907-1987

1804 Presbyterian burial equipment--People who know what is important

Learning learning: Received my first TEXT on iPhone. From oncologist, of course.

8 something last night. This is the Point Man, on top of things. Tumor in gastro-intestinal tract calling attention to itself, He will make an appointment for us,
Who would have thought it? We thought we were seeing little glowing hunks scattered higher than that.
I rise in the morning with half a dozen stories to look up and add. Up to 138 little stories this morning. Some up to 2/3rds of a page or more. A cousin's escape from Danville Prison and making his way all across VA and what had been VA and then almost getting thrown in the brig by a Northern fool officer for making preposterous claims of being a Union man. Now, that is a story about an ornery cousin who would not just die willingly in Danville. Now to add the will of the man dividing up among his children what became Silver Springs, Maryland. If there is plenty of time I have to find the best modern device for reading aloud and having it go into Word in biggish type. I tried hard to master speech recognition years ago. The Dragon device got a glitch where it would not learn from the day's additions and there was no support, so I gave up.  There must be much better devices now. I have a very good unused microphone. Any good simple ideas? Bad eye, reading from old newspaper texts on computer, very small but somewhat enlargeable images, so that reading aloud from them is quite possible, if the result can go into Word.
There is a slight sense of urgency now. The seamstress-in-chief (also the driver &c) is expanding the elastic on the eye patch right now.  Now on to those creeks draining into the Potomack.

Well, when your torso is full of little cancers and your good eye is brown from a cancer

•  You do the best you can with your sad left eye that has been an astigmatized sluggard for 84 years. But it sure does not seem up to looking just now at the 1822 inventory of Uncle Jonathan Price's estate.  Well, maybe I will need it and maybe I won't. But I sure hope the black cancer does not decide to take on the left eye too. Meanwhile, I see well enough to copy items from GLIMPSES (over 6000 items) to a working file for the first volume of ORNERY PEOPLE. There is a bit of a rush on this. This passes the weekend after which we should learn a little more.

AT KING'S MOUNTAIN 2007 pointing to Uncle James Johnston's name

The White House claimed Friday morning that the media was mischaracterizing Trump's comments suggesting exploring disinfectants as a possible treatment for coronavirus infections

Oh my, oh my, and all night I have been drinking laundry bleach mixed with 2% milk. He is my great leader, so whatever he says I will do. If bleach is good for the Trump Virus it surely is good for lymphoma.

We can now see water on either side of the Cypress tree across the road

I paid the men $400 one time to get them to trim the tree so we could see the water. The last 15 years or so, they have cut a dip out of the north-south center, leaving higher branches on east and west, so we had no view of the Pacific over the trees. Today they were at work as the driver pulled us in. I went up and got a piece of paper and wrote on it, "I just learned I have cancer, lymphoma. Any chance you could cut a little lower so I can see the water?" I went out with a hat over my mouth and handed it to one of the workmen and went back inside. I'm not sure if you can see it, but we can now see Rock and water to the south and some water to the east, though not through the middle of the tree. I learn fast how to manipulate healthy younger people!

"Riddled with cancer"? Apparently lymphoma scattered around

SLO establishment is on the case. 13 or so vials of blood an hour ago, including one to see if the 1950s TP could be reasserting itself. Lymphoma is not certain but the little red circles in the PET scan are certain. Treatment is coming after biopsy next week. Days pass, and of course the formerly good right eye is getting worse, but the establishment is indeed on the case. I am happy about the local oncologist we met today. There is some chance that the cancer can treated and there is some chance that some vision from the formerly good eye can be saved. The word seems to be that the formerly bad eye (so for all my life) is healthy, just still suffering from astigmatism, and the hope is that it will not be invaded by the cancer.

I made it clear that I require sufficient vision and sufficient time to do ORNERY PEOPLE. If nothing else, the first book of the proposed series will be 400 or so ten-line to half-page to two-page stories about kinfolks in years between the early 1600s into the mid 1950s. Usually, the stories illuminate some historical movement in the South, like Jefferson leaving a note to Madison demanding that he burn us out again. There's lots of family anecdotes and lots of violence and one example of alleged bestiality punished by burning and beheading. The stories are all from documents. You might be surprised at how many hundreds of actual speeches of kinfolks you can bring together in four centuries: I was. Anyhow, I am working on the table of contents every day, as strength permits. I have been saying for weeks that the little surgery on February 10 and its long aftermath, not to mention packing Boxes, had taken all my stamina. Something sure did. We did not see this coming!

Had to get iPhone7 after silence of earlier one. First photo, just now.

In Santa Cruz last Tuesday--Sheltering Together

A Sendak Treasure Acquired by Resourceful Molly M

Microsoft's Interfering Monster QUICK ACCESS has hijacked some of my best files

It is taking my 6000 item GLIMPSES out of chronological order. How can I totally delete quick access from my computer?

"BOOZE. POT, AND ONLINE GAMBLING SURGE"! What, everyone is not watching Shakespeare plays on Netflix and Prime?

Booze, pot, and online gambling? Impossible.
Though I hear our local Rite-Aid says booze sales are up 400%. That has to be just us.

Several Minute-long MSNBC interview with Andy Bashear

KY Gov. asks churches to not have in-person services: 'Some of your church won't be there by Christmas'

"Live Oak, with Moss," which I first made public in an anthology--Now a book

I negotiated with the editor of the NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE to put in my section Walt Whitman's "Live Oak, with Moss." I was marketing it as a brave gay manifesto written by Whitman who then realized he could not publish it and took it apart and stuck the sections haphazardly into CALAMUS, where they could not be recognized as a separate work of art. A member of the gay hierarchy was upset at what Whitman had written and took the scattered pieces from CALAMUS and put them together. The problem was that among the other slight changes Whitman had made as he tore apart the little masterpiece was a phrase that could be interpreted as a serious downer. The gay hierarchy wanted the sequence to be about the oppression of homosexuals. In fact, what Whitman had written was a celebration of a love affair which ended, leaving the poet dashed for a time, but resolutely going on.  I had to defend the sequence Whitman had written, but over the years everyone started anthologizing this previously untaught poetic sequence.

Now Molly Mailloux has spotted a 2019 printing of the poem. I have not dared to look at the text yet, with one eye working, but have copied some material.

Henry Dargan McMaster

So the Republican Governor of South Carolina is a DISTANT cousin. As Lois says, in the South if you are not kin you are connected. Kin, this time. Now, Andy in KY, there is a man to be proud to be kin to!

Picture in a book I am packing--Landenberg--with Sendak in 1993

Well, you just never know. Not melanoma because growing too fast?

Now, that is not as reassuring as it sounds. The wisest ocular oncologist on the West Coast thinks, to put it politely, that they eye could not have changed so fast if it had not metastasized from a cancer elsewhere in the body. I had a picture taken in January, just by chance, instead of a dilation--so there is a perfect record of a happy right eye. The idea that I am riddled with cancer? A joke. But Stanford could not do scans till Friday so I am home trying to arrange pet and cat scans immediately to find the cancer elsewhere than the eye. What's a pet scan? Well, I can spell metastasize now so I can find out the same way. And if it is melanoma after all they will try to save the eye and even some vision. I have been having night sweats for weeks now so after waking up with a damp top I went to the Internet and yes that can be a sign of cancer.  Scans here we come, today, I hope. The local eye man was interested enough in the case to get me to the great man up north. He will do what he can. 4 am now. I will find some way of doing ORNERY PEOPLE. Stubborn. I am thinking of tricked old grandpa Solomon Sparks tied hand and foot in a canoe on the Yadkin being hauled down to Patriot headquarters near Salisbury. They had not gagged him so he kept shouting, HURRAY FOR KING GEORGE. After all, the Crown or the agent of the Crown had given him his land in the 1750s and he did not drink tea and what was the fuss about? Riddled with cancer? This we did not expect at all.

TIAA-CREF--Just what I needed--unimaginable incompetence with my remaining money

I sent a form to TIAA-CREF a couple of weeks ago asking that changes be made in my contingent beneficiaries. Two names are very similar, so in my ultra-cautious way I said, in the English language, that two names were not the same as the other names. The changed forms arrived today, wrong.

Jody Hincher: I very very clearly specified that two names of my beneficiaries were not the same as the other names. I wrote very very clearly that Ziah's last name was Packer, not Parker, and that Dalyon's last name was Packer, not Parker. I called attention to the possibility of error. My efforts went for nothing. In the form I received today my grandsons are listed as Ziah Parker and Dalyon Parker.  Can someone be trusted to make the corrections to Ziah Packer and Dalyon Packer?  My fear is that the incompetence previously displayed may result in the other four names being changed to Packer. Please, let someone with  little attention change only the 2 names of the grandsons to Packer? I tried so very hard to make it hard to make these mistakes! Please, pay attention! I want only these 2 names corrected.

To:

Rob Leuffen

From:

HERSHEL PARKER

Subject:

Divorce, Survivor Benefits, or Other Life Events: Contingent Beneficiary Information

Date:

4/13/2020, 5:56:55 PM

Message:

Rob, I tried very very hard to make it impossible to make errors--but someone did just what I asked not to do. This is what I just sent to Jody Hincher.

I very very clearly specified that two names of my beneficiaries were not the same as the other names. I wrote very very clearly that Ziah's last name was Packer, not Parker, and that Dalyon's last name was Packer, not Parker. I called attention to the possibility of error. My efforts went for nothing. In the form I received today my grandsons are listed as Ziah Parker and Dalyon Parker.  Can someone be trusted to make the corrections to Ziah Packer and Dalyon Packer?  My fear is that the incompetence previously displayed may result in the other

four names being changed to Packer. Please, let someone with  little attention change only the 2 names of the grandsons to Packer? I tried so very hard to make it hard to make these mistakes! Please, pay attention! I want only these 2 names corrected.

Rob, please step in and make see that these corrections and only these corrections are made? I find it very hard to be patient since I was so very very clear.

Hershel Parker

Well, Well, Sanders is acting like a Mensch after all!

High time, but better now than later!

Watched THE HIGHWAYMEN last night--Not the 4 mighty singers but Kevin Costner & Woody Harrelson & a superb Crew

Sunday, March 31, 2019 [Revised 13 April 2020]

Thank you, Stephen Kiernan, for the heads up on Facebook about the Netflix showing.

I had never heard of the movie but after THE BAKER'S SECRET I trusted Kiernan's judgment and made a note to watch it. I just finished it. As I said, I had not known who was in THE HIGHWAYMEN. Kevin Costner was. His father was my 2nd cousin, so I look at Kevin's ears and nose and listen to his voice carefully, thinking of Uncle Andrew. I think he must be one of the bravest movie stars working now, to let himself look like a believable Frank Hamer. 

I was prepared to be moved by a movie that takes place in the Depression just where this one is set. I have been steeped in Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma in the last months. For I few years I have been publishing about the American Revolution, mainly events that involved kinfolks I never knew about until recently. That is, I am learning Southern history by finding relatives who were involved in momentous events, and even are in historical records, sometimes. Following Hill cousins, one a Texas Ranger, I recently wrote an article on the 1862 Great Hangings of Gainesville, Texas, that is published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. (I found an unknown very early history of the hangings. Cousin Aaron Hill does not come out well.)  Kevin and Woody cross the Red River on a long, long bridge near Gainesville. Lately the Texas Revolution has been on my mind, particularly Nacogdoches, where my Revolutionary veteran cousin William Sparks died in 1848.  I sent off a thing today, an unknown piece written in Nacogdoches by a participant in the so-called Runaway Scrape. The first portrait in Frank Dobie's OUT OF THE OLD ROCK, Cousin George McGehee, was in the Scrape at the age of two months. George told his mother's story, a thrilling tale involving another McGehee cousin. I did a longer still unpublished piece on the 1836 flight to the Gulf ports and the Sabine. 

The Panhandle of Oklahoma has been on my mind. I explained to a cousin the other day that the "IT" she found in a document did not include Guymon--that was OT. In 1952 when I was an apprentice telegrapher in Red Rock, OK, we had OT and IT tickets on big solid brass hooks in the AT&SF depot, printed before statehood and still valid. Coffeeville, Kansas, where Frank and Woody go, is where I had the AT&SF physical exam in 1952 before becoming a telegrapher apprentice. Two Mississippi brothers went out to Oklahoma Territory around 1900 and homesteaded near Guymon, my grandfather Gene Costner and his older brother Mode (Moses Amariah) Costner. Mode stayed there and died there. There were years when the only kinfolks the children knew were the two Costner families. My parents appear at Guymon in the 1930 census--something I learned recently. They had been in the Panhandle of Texas during some of the worst of the Dust Bowl. Guymon in 1930 must have been a brief stay. After I was born near Comanche, Oklahoma, they got to a private oil field in Escobas, on the Rio Grande, in 1936, and stayed for four or so years. You can rely on the censuses. I know because I am in the 1940 Federal Census as born in 1930. We did a lot of Model A driving across Texas in the Depression. You would not believe the number of bullfrogs that thronged a flooded underpass in San Angelo once.

When the War ended in 1945 we went to a farm a few miles north of  Wister, Oklahoma. The county seat, Poteau, was part of the Bonnie and Clyde story. After the Eastham prison raid Barrow's next robbery was in Rembrandt, Iowa, on 23 January 1934. The next, after one of Barrow's longest drives, was in Poteau two days later, the 25th. Pursuers lost Barrow's car somewhere "in the hills near Wister." How near the farm none of the neighbors knew, in our time.

I have been thinking about Texas and Louisiana for weeks because the flight to the Sabine in 1836 put the Texian refugees near places I worked at on the Kansas City Southern starting in 1952--Noble, Zwolle, Many (you say it manny), DeRidder, Dequincy. I was in a TB warehouse east of Shreveport, out toward Texas, one summer. The doctors had not heard of streptomycin. We could see the kitchen staff shoulder hams and beef quarters to carry away in their cars. I escaped the warehouse found a place that had heard about streptomycin. For two years I was night telegrapher (8 pm to 4 am) on the Kansas City Southern at Port Arthur while I went to school in Beaumont. I am so old that when I graduated with highest honors in 1959 (I see a photograph in the Journal) Dan Rather read my name aloud--on the radio, in Houston. Had he ever been on television? \

I thought for the last several years that my Melville Collection (books and research files) would go there, to Beaumont. That fell through early in 2019 and after much distress my first choice, the Berkshire Athenaeum, under a new young director, came through with a welcome to the books and research files--an enthusiastic welcome, publicized at once.  I will not have to put 60 bankers' boxes at the curb, after all. Well, I thought 60 but on 13 April 2020 I am working on Box 91, and trying not to go more than a couple above that.

So, I was all set to be powerfully moved by a Depression movie that took place in Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma and that starred Kevin Costner. 

The movie never had a false move until the slapstick ending, the exchange of drivers. What is phony about it is that Mr. Gault would have had to pee when they changed drivers. Did they shoot two endings? 

Thank you, Stephen, and congratulations to your friend, the writer John Fusco. It was a splendid movie.

---P. S. I had to check. If you are Southern you are either kin or connected, Triple Cousin Lois says. Clyde Barrow is my 8th cousin 11 times removed, through the Knoxes. Mississippi cousins, deal with it. Well, Kevin is my 2nd cousin once removed, descended from Mode, the brother who stayed in Guymon, while my grandfather was Gene, who sold out his homestead and went back to Mississippi, then Texas and Oklahoma. I knew him in Duncan in 1945 then in Heavener in this last years before he died in 1951 at 79. At 84 now, five years older than Grandpa Costner lived to be, I remind myself that I am twice the Costner that Kevin is, being of his father’s generation. It is a great gift to an old Melville scholar to share DNA with a movie star who pads his belly rather than cinching it in and who dares to choose roles that explore episodes of Southern (or Western) history.

I love my Cousin Andy. Distant, OK, but obviously Kin

After Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) required anyone attending a mass gathering, such as a church service, to have their license plates recorded and self-quarantine for 14 days, state troopers waited outside Maryville Baptist Church, one of a few that offered a service in person, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.

One damn thing after another!

As if we had not been facing enough problems, we have a more serious one. My good eye, the right one, began hurting before I was quite well of the virus so I ignored it till I was better. Last Friday I realized that if I put my hand over my bad left eye what I saw was nearly solid brown out of the good eye. Saturday the brave young optometrist came into the empty office and examined me. Afterwards she sent pictures to a colleague of hers in San Luis Obispo. He arranged to see me yesterday at 8. The driver sat in the car in the rain for 4 hours because family was not allowed in. Everyone was masked and gloved.  The good young man looked at many pictures and said I would have to be sent north to a great specialist. Today that was arranged. We will be going up next week. There is a lump in the eye that is leaking the fluid that blackens the eye. 

Now, we are concerned because the great specialist deals with ocular oncology. The visit will be diagnostic.  We know no more than that the lump is suspicious. Apparently it is not what we first thought, macular degeneration, but worse.

Now, we have several days. I don't have much strength because I had to stop exercise soon after the surgery (2 months ago today), but we have a mission. We are going to pack the 12 or 14 boxes we have in the garage. We can do 5 in an hour. We will check with the PO and start mailing them early in the week if the PO here is taking boxes and if the BA can receive them. 

I have very little left to pack--mainly things I am reluctant to let go of forever, but it's time, and they will be easy to pack. I am finished sorting through the piles of letters.

I will feel better doing something constructive with the next days.

Today I talked briefly to the doctor who did the surgery on Feb. 10, two months ago, because I could not go in to see him. I cheered him up by saying the affair was, it seems, a great success, something that became apparent only slowly, during the virus and during this week of eye trouble. He is happy. The rheumatic specialist in creatine finase is not happy because we cannot get in to do anything about the results of the MRI (hips inflamed somehow) but that has to be ignored till we know more about the eye and something is done about it.

I want very much to do ORNERY PEOPLE and will be very annoyed if I don't get to. Meanwhile, the long packing is about over and we should be able to tape and mail in the next days. 

They come not single spies . . . . 2020

Prithvi Mruthyunjaya--next stop on the murky vision front. They are using very dirty names for possible identification of the lump in the good eye. Driver sat in car 4 hours yesterday, in rain, forbidden entrance to the eye place. Driver remained cheerful, saintly. Meanwhile, we are delaying the results of the inflammatory hips MRI (we can't Skype) and the weird, lengthy, but apparently successful urology front (though we may have telephone communication today), and who even remembers the neuropathy exam? Probably I have forgotten something? The Trump Virus did not last long, and Tylenol kept the fever down. Like in 1937 when I had measles and was ashamed of saying to mother that I could not eat the scrambled eggs she made. Again, eggs suddenly repulsive, and sense of smell gone. That's when the eye started hurting, not so much as to demand and get attention. You can't take care of everything at once. So far since January, no broken tooth. A broken tooth right now just might be the straw that . . . . Mush, grits, oatmeal, very soft rice? No, take chances. Aunt Louise's peanut brittle from Sheldon? Sure.

I wrote out a January-to-present summary but I don't believe what I wrote.

I left out the packing of several dozen boxes of books for shipping to Massachusetts and (together with saintly collaborator) the taping of most of them and the mailing of most of them. A dozen are in the garage, un-taped, not mailed

They come not single spies but in battalions.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

The vainest of the vain, Bernie Sanders has not dropped out of the race to make way for Biden

Oh now, just as he used "HIS" devotees to wheel and deal at the convention so as to weaken Hillary and guarantee Trump's election, now he want to stay in the primaries so as to amass more delegates so he can wheel and deal at the convention so as to weaken Biden and guarantee Trump's re-election. The headlines are saying he DROPPED OUT. That is not what he says. He is "Suspending" his race.
Vanity above principle. Vanity above all.

One damn thing after another--bubble on right retina

A brave optometrist saw me yesterday, both sheathed. The first sign of macular degeneration. Out of the lifelong good right eye the world looks all Choctaw. Out of the bad left eye the world looks dazzlingly Caucasian. Presumably a needle can temporarily drain the bubble.  Meanwhile can't read TLS.

So grateful to be (however slowly) on Box 88. We have a dozen to be taped and mailed when the time comes.

The doctor yesterday remembered seeing me in January and asked about the creatine finase. Oh, I said, one thing at a time. We had the MRI but could not talk to the doctor about hip inflammations because we could not Skype. We have postponed that.

You have no idea how much I want to do ORNERY PEOPLE.

Distant cousin Andy Beshear a hero in Kentucky and the nation.

Beshear's early actions in Kentucky became the subject of viral graphs by local educator Stephanie Jolly that chart the dates of Beshear's actions, such as declaring a state of emergency on March 6, and those of neighboring Tennessee's governor, Republican Bill Lee -- who declared a state of emergency and closed schools about a week later than Beshear. The graphs show that coronavirus cases have spiked much more dramatically in Tennessee than in Kentucky.

He is even working for the good with McConnell.

Someone laughed in the kitchen at the obscene Sendak fax on the refrigerator

Well, we had forgotten it. By November 2001 the world had changed but (Norton Critical Edition on hand since September 10) I still had the second volume of the biography to finish. I don't think we laughed much at the obscene amalgam of me and the young sailor of the cover of Volume One. Now, laugh when we can. And leave messages.

One Damn Thing After Another--Right Eye seeing Brown after Bad Bump

This goes in the category that you can only focus on one bad thing at a time, or at most 2. At some point a month ago or 5 weeks ago I whammed my right orbital bone and maybe the eye. As I finally tried to get back to work yesterday there was and had been a lot of eye pain but I had dismissed it as something that happened when worse things were going on and that it would heal itself, the way Trump healed coronovirus. But feeling even a tiny resurgence of stamina and resuming packing the long abandoned Box 88 (the forlorn reminder of where I was) meant having to focus on the eye. Dammit, the good eye now shows brown and the bad eye shows Caucasian flesh color and the pain last night was terrific. So, first thing on a Saturday morning a call to the surgeon who in March 2014 put in the intraocular implants. I have blessed him every day since then and it is not his fault that I did something really bad while dealing with something else that demanded full attention. I left a message. In 2018 when the ear cancer was horribly botched there were consequences you would not believe if you had not experienced them. One was damage to two teeth from trying to lie on the safe side. Well, the crowns look better than the ones I had did. But one damn thing can start a Downward Spiral when you are very old. In 2018 I slowly fought my way out of that Downward Spiral. I had been running 2 miles a day before the ear surgery. No more. Now, every difficult thing from December 2019 on seems to have turned out astonishingly well, after many grisly weeks. Except the good eye. Well, I left a message.

Finally able to resume packing. Found an obscene Birthday Drawing from Maurice Sendak for 2001

What I say in my diary is very careful: "Maurice Sendak faxed me a Birthday greeting--a fax not the original."

Sabrina

At Max Gate 1984

Letters from Leyda glued into copies of LOG &c

Alex and Ann-Marie all the way back beyond Kathy and Ruth to Mrs Zak in 1962--Thank you!

I trust we will be ready to tape and mail a dozen or two boxes (5 at a time), including the last, once the systems are up locally and nationally.  The latest number on a box is 88 but nothing is in it yet. The gift yesterday was inspiriting. I did receive it in state, lying down, but I decided yesterday that I had, as they say, turned a corner, and one into a brighter street.