Rosa to Jessie Northcutt, 15 January 1943, Patzcuaro, Michoacan -- "patience tops all virtues in this wonderful country"

Looking back through letters, I think living in Patzcuaro in 1942-43 was the happiest time in Rosa's life. She was 25, completely in love, thrilled to get out of New York City, and was immersed in photography, art, and the kind of "figure it out" homemaking she always liked best. Knowing Murray would be drafted soon gave the pleasure an extra edge.
 

Dearest Mother,

Have just finished repairing my shower curtain. I don't mean to pass myself off as a pioneer for the accomplishment, but it isn't a bad curtain for 35 cents -- 20 cents for 4 meters of pale yellow stuff that looks slightly like linen, 10 cents for four pairs of large, rustproof earrings to hand it from, and 3 cents for a nice hand-whittled pole. Plus 2 cents worth of buckshot which, sewn into the hem, makes it hang beautifully.

The moonlight is always very bright here in the clear mountain air, with the reflection from the lake, but tonight it is especially effective from our windows. Yesterday Don Juan finished painting all the trees with white lime and tonight the whole orchard is shining silver, stretching in long rows like a ballet chorus. The trees are very small and will not bear very much, but one tiny peach tree is bursting into pink blossom, apparently unaware that this is January and there is frost nearly every night.

Bluey grows more like a dog and more lovable every day. Walking to the hotel for mail today, with Haj at his heels and Bluey rolling along at hers, Murray got ten offers for him which is about the daily average. When I saw he is growing to look like a dog it may be indulgence, because no small dog was ever so fat before. We were quite relieved when he first barked because it might well have been an oink instead of a woof.

... You would be amazed to see how many things your money bought in Patzcuaro. And I know it could have bought some pretty important things in Tacoma too, like a new rug. I'm awfully glad you made yourself a Christmas present of the Minton ware. Really satisfyingly beautiful things are never an extravagance. You are certain to get their value in pleasure from just looking at them. I confess tho, Mother, that I can't think of a group of seventeen people I'd like to eat dinner with all at the same time. Murray wouldn't let me buy a pottery set for eight because he said there weren't that many people he'd invite to dinner. Howard set the limit at four for Judy, but then he is really anti-social. Of course that was in New York, where hospitality is comparatively undiscovered. I wish you had my pretty coffee set to use with your China. My plates are very attractive, with incredibly childlike drawings of horses, cows, canoes, houses, etc. in the center, but they are half an inch thick and rather out of tune with the dainty, graceful sterling. It has to be graceful; I designed it myself.

Among the other good things 1943 has brought to the Morgans are the end of Murray's book, which has already been sent to Howard, and encouraging war news on our own small, but very satisfactory radio. We brought the radio back from Mexico City as a Christmas present to each other when we found we couldn't afford an enlarger. While most of our programs come on the shortwave band we get amazing reception at night on standard broadcasts. Tonight we heard the Fred Allen program exactly as you probably heard him. The president's speech was a clear here as it was in Washington D.C.

The familiar programs like Jack Benny and Information Please, and on New Year's Day, the Rose Bowl game, bring Patzcuaro much closer to Tacoma. The wonderful concert programs on every evening around midnight have filled the only real lack in Patzcuaro life.

Murray has just wounded my feelings by suggesting that the chocolate fudge I made today would be good with ice cream under it, the fudge being an unusually fine syrup. I think the altitude is to blame. I would be very happy to get the ice cream, but the nearest is in Morelia, the capital of this state. ...

Not only ice cream but cream is unavailable except on rare occasions in this country. Coffee is served black like most European coffee or with hot milk as it is in England. I have learned to like the hot milk combination. Anyway we have the coffee and it is cheap, abundant, and very good. Last week when the house was filled with the fragrance of fresh coffee roasting over the charcoal fire in the kitchen I thought of the one cup a day limit at home and felt very selfish but it is impossible to send a grain of it across the border.

We, Amelia mostly, made tamales too last week, a much more complicated process than you imagine. Since our corn hasn't even been planted yet we had to buy the grain, a thing that wouldn't happen to most of our neighbors. The first step is a lye bath for the corn, very short so that it doesn’t turn into hominy but is slightly softened.

Wood gathering in Erongricuaro -- credit: Rosa Morgan

The next day the corn spends sunning on a large pottery tray in the back yard. On the third day it is milled in a little hand mill which also handles the coffee and is an extravagance justified by the back-aches which accompany grinding in the stone metate. The materials which went into the sauce, however, were ground in a large, three footed, hollowed stone with a smaller stone, called a molcajete. Tomatoes, onions, garlic, a "mild" dried red pepper, cloves, something like sage and bayleaf, and a dozen other spices, all of which Amelia purchased in little twists of brown paper, went into the most fragrant and piquant, and also the hottest sauce you ever tasted. Also into the sauce went two pounds of well-cooked pork loin. The secret of good tamales, Amelia said, is beating. And for an hour and a half she stood beating, hard, the shortening into the corn meal. Amelia is not big but I think she could cure Glenn of his handshaking tricks. To finish the tamales, meat and sauce go into the cornmeal, which is spread in well-washed white corn husks and each neat package is fitted into our biggest olla (pottery jug) and the collection is steamed rather than boiled for about an hour. It must have been discouraging for Amelia to see the results of a day's work disappear in a few minutes.

Mother, will you look up the recipe for butterscotch, banana cream pie in the cook book from Hoquiam and send it to me, along with one for biscuits and any others you can think of? As I mentioned before, there are no prepared or semi-prepared foods, especially desserts like jello, chocolate pudding, and Hostess cakes or ice cream, so I need a cook book like I never did before. I have one printed in Spanish but, as if that didn't complicate it enough, the measurements are in grams and kilos instead of cups and teaspoons and I have no scales. Besides, the results of most of the recipes would be as unfamiliar as the ingredients are, and I would never know whether I had a success.

So far I have no oven, except for a small cast-iron Dutch oven which hasn't been too successful, but I hope to bring one back from Guadalajara where we are going tomorrow.

We had a turkey here on New Year's Day, or rather served at the stroke of midnight, with Bill and Carmella as guests but it was baked in a bread baker's oven, a friend of Amelia's. It was a good turkey but not quite a U.S. one. The stuffing, Mexican style, had carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and chopped zucchini squash in it, but it was flavored with sage, among other things, and it had pineapple slices centered with cherries around it. Absent were sweet potatoes, cranberries, pies, mince or pumpkin, and other turkey trimmings.

We had a wonderful Christmas dinner at the Fords' house. Jacqueline is a genius, and besides that, she has eight people working in the kitchen. I've never tasted a better mince pie. And I've never seen such a pretty tree as their long needled pine tree with colored bows tied all over it. The walls were decorated in surrealistic confections in colored paper which are more appropriate for a festive, celebrating air than any holiday trimmings I've seen. All of these things including the fact that Gordon gave us one of his pictures, made especially for us, didn't make the day seem like Christmas, but as Murray said, it was like a very nice Thanksgiving.

The carving came back, along with Bill and his 4-F. I have it now

We said goodbye to Bill [Fett] and saw him off on the train to Laredo and his army induction four days ago. He was miserable about leaving Patzcuaro and we were sorry to see him go, only partly because he took with him a beautiful wood carving which he had loaned to us and we had grown to feel possessive about. Standing above our fireplace it gave a special character to the whole room which is gone now. We still have a head carved by Bill and two of his pictures and we will see a lot of his wife, Carmella.

...

The General's promised horse has not arrived yet, but I expect it any day. It has to come by train, I think, from Mexico, abut 200 miles. When it does arrive I will need something to wear on it. Slacks are not worn here, where the women wear their skirts to their ankles, and I have none. (Slacks, not ankles) If you could roll up my old green breeches and send them to me, care of the hotel, I don't think the duty will be too much. They were only $2.00 new and they are well worn now. ... Boots will probably be cheaper here than the mailing cost and duty.

Is Bob home now? I would like to hear from him and from Glenn. According to a report in Time, most of the fighting against the Japs in the jungles of New Guinea, a mosquito and fever filled, truly unpleasant place, is being done by former members of the Washington and Oregon National Guard. I'm glad my brothers weren't plump enough to be eligible for that particular part of the war.

It's very late now, nearly 3:00 and here in the country we go to bed early usually. Tomorrow we will leave for Guadalajara. We've planned the trip since Christmas, or rather since the scholarship check arrived, but had to postpone it daily waiting for one tire to be repaired in Morelia. Patience tops all virtues in this wonderful country.

Love,

Rosa and Murray

P.S. Give my love to Dad Morgan. Constance Ann sends out most of the correspondence from that end now. She said in her last letter than you were looking beautiful.

From Jean and Gene Elliott, October 1948-- "everyone here talks French"

Once out of the army, Gene Elliott moved to Paris with Jean (known to their circle of friends as she-Jean) for graduate study at the Sorbonne.

Dear Rosa and Murray—everyone here talks French and we stumble after with our pitiful little burden of simple sentences which we try to feed into gaps in conversations but usually our opportunities have swung way behind us while we are still sorting out pronouns, subject-verb agreement, etc. We sit at the table of our pension nodding and smiling from time to time and sometimes getting a chance to say yes or no or thank you or the soup is very good tonight. It’s pretty maddening—we’ve discovered how really addicted we are to conversation. To correct our ineptitude as quickly as possible, we are taking an 8 to 10 AM daily class in French taught entirely in French at L’institut Panthéon, a class that is a little too hard for us so that we have to study about six hours each night. I think it’s helping.

Jean Elliott at the Lake Union houseboat, 1945

We have been homesick for people and animals but not for home so the obvious solution is to import les gens et les animaux, n’est-ce pas? And we’d like to start with you. Paris is a marvelous place to be in spite of some lack of comfort. We live in a fairly large room on the fourth floor; our windows are on the street and we have a fireplace which we will be able to use at some vague future date after the chimney is swept (we shall not have coal but maybe wood although it’s high because of the coal strike). There’s a washbasin behind a screen but no hot water at all, a toilet down the hall and not a bathtub in the house. We bathe at the public bains et douches in a private room for the two of us: we each have, for about forty cents altogether, two big European tubs, chin high, in which we sit for half an hour in all the hot water we want and chat as we wash. We both think it’s a very fine, unboring way to bathe. Our meals, included in bill here, are good. A maid brings us café au lait, which is neither coffee nor stimulating but good, and the dark Paris bread (without butter) at seven-thirty. We gagged on the bread at first but have, fortunately, developed a taste for it.  

 

Bread was rationed in France into 1948; the loaves that were available were made from the sourdough starter and unrefined “gray flour” now used to make the priciest of pain de campagne loaves. 

 

At noon we have a big meal with a vegetable hors d’oeuvre and fruit or cheese or yogurt for dessert and at seven we have another dinner (dîner—I think it means supper) with soup to begin with, salad and same kinds of desserts. We always have meat at noon, often at both meals. And always vegetables. This is costing us a little over $60 a month including tipping. 

Heat and light are something else. One night the electrician of the house came into our room, asked if we had warmth in our radiator. We said no, and he put his hand on it and said oui, oui, you have the heat. It was a little warmer than body temperature. That was a week ago and apparently just an experiment with the heating system because we haven’t had heat since and the days are getting quite cold (they’re like Seattle’s cold, frosty days only a little damper). The lights in the hall are so dim that often we’ve reached for the button before we realized that they were on. … The bathroom light is not automatic but is so unfunctional that we have to take a flashlight in to see what we’re doing. Our  reading lamps are slightly better, but only if we are huddled under them. But these few discomforts are nothing compared to the joys of being here. You know how incomparably beautiful it is (didn’t you once hang from the netting of the Eiffel Tower?). We’ve been doing some organized sightseeing, that is—organized by us, such as going to a famous place outside the city each Sunday: Versailles, Chartres, Chantilly, Senlis, St. Germaine en laye. And then, of course, we wander the streets constantly. If we don't watch ourselves, we spend two hours getting

Bee [Lucille] Shepherd, Puget Sound, 1948: Rosa Morgan photo

from our school ten blocks away back to our house. Books and art books are everywhere and we covet nearly every one we see. Also decanters, pottery, hand-woven material—almost everything. We have also become addicted to pastries of which there 486,000 varieties, each one better than the one before and all very inexpensive. We’ve had some meals in restaurants and they’ve been wonderful. The French say that food, wine, pastries are below pre-war standards and if that is true it is impossible for me to imagine what they were like because all of it now is almost the best we’ve ever had. You should come for next year or sooner.

Shep (Charles) Shepherd, Port Ludlow, 1948: Rosa Morgan photo

The Shepherds overwhelmed us with kindnesses. In the first place, they met our train [in Chicago] at some awful morning hour, eight-thirty I think. Then they brought us presents, beautiful billfolds wrapped up in tissue and ribbons. We had coffee in the station, took a taxi to the art museum and looked for Bill’s [Bill Fett] watercolor but it wasn't on the wall ... so we went through other rooms. Then we went back to the station a little early to try to reach Bill's family on the telephone. 

B’s family was not at home. We had a drink, bought a copy of the NR looking for the answer to your article (wasn’t in it) and then we caught our train with deep regret at having to leave. They are truly lovely people. You should bring them here when you come. They also gave us prints of their pictures of the weekend at Ludlow including a very fine one of the bottom of your feet, Murray. Objet d’art.

Howard Daniel was not home at all. Nor Howard Lewis—at the paper we were told that he was in Paris but flying back to NY the 26^th; we sailed the 24^th. We looked for a plane overhead Sunday afternoon and Monday morning but didn’t even see a wing-tip to wave at. We talked to Ann [Ann Elmo, Murray’s agent] about how she was (she had a strained back) and how we were (we were fine) and how you were (you were fine too) and how Agony was (Agony  was not fine but she said that she’d like us to try rewriting the last chapter). One nice piece of news we had for her was that we had seen, the first day we were in the city, a fairly prominent display of Dixie Raider on one of the tables at Brentano’s. (How is DR going?) …
 

 

If the house caught on fire, we would first save each other and the toss to decide whether to grab the typewriters or the Baedeker next. I can’t find words, French or English, to tell you how much we’ve needed it, relied on it, enjoyed places because of it, used it to find things or to keep from getting lost or to get unlost, loved having it and read ourselves to sleep with it. I shudder to think how different our lives here would have been if you had believed us when we were protesting that we really couldn’t accept it from you. God.

This 1948 image of the Republican Members of the House Un-American Activities Committee included, from left to right, Representative Richard B. Vail of Illinois, Chairman John Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, Representative John McDowell of Pennsylvania, Robert Stripling (chief counsel), and Representative Richard M. Nixon of California.

 

 

 

 

Our ballots came just as we were about to give up and so we voted Monday, mailed them back. Liquor for the State of Washington, Wallace for president: the perfect life. Please, please, please write us about the Canwell Committee’s fate (and that of their victims). As far as the letters we’ve received are concerned, the whole business never happened. Harry and Jo Fugl told us on their arrival that two of the committee-men had been defeated in the primaries which is excellent but we’d like to know more about all of it. [Harry Fugl, director of the activist Pacific Northwest Labor School in the late 1940s, was called before the Canwell Committee.]

Monday’s Le Monde carried a short paragraph about M. Parnell Thomas, among the loveliest French we’ve ever read. Maybe it is just a Democratic Party move and maybe he does get a closed session in contrast to all the public reputation-feasts he’s officiated over, still it’s good. [Thomas, head of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, was convicted of fraud for putting friends into phantom jobs on the Congressional payroll in exchange for kickbacks.] We’d like to know more about that, too, if you have time.

 

Gene wants space. We miss you deeply. Send a note as soon as you can and seriously think about how happy you’d be here. 

Love, Jean

…

Dear Water-dwellers: we have not yet found the Keplers or Kepples (choose one) [it’s Kleppers] but will give you all the dope soon. In the meantime we are constantly reminded by seeing the boaters on the Seine, some with those double-bladed paddles and some with sails, having what is apparently the time of their lives. Jealousy gnaws at our vitals, or would if it were not for the fact that there are so many land-borne pleasures at every hand that we don’t stand still long enough to be gnawed. Harry and Jo arrived (as implied above) and are settled near the Boulevard Saint Michele, very happy. Better come over. Study threatens. Much more soon. Love to you both.    g 

                                                                                                                                                          

For more on Parnell Thomas:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAparnell.htm

For more on the Canwell Committee hearings at UW:   

http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec97/red1.html

Canwell biography:   
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9887

From Phyllis Goldschmid, 11 March 1946, Shelton, Washington -- "you can loll in the sun all day"

Murray and Rosa were in Washington, D.C., finishing up Murray's Army duties.

Dear Murray and Rosa, 

We were very glad to get your letter and to hear that you are well and doing interesting things. We too had started many a letter to you, but now Johanna is at an age where she is worse than a household pest and is scampering all over everything, so that she requires a great deal of watching and so our firm vows turn to nothing.  Apparently I had you on my mind so much that I had a very interesting dream about you and Carmen and Bill. You

Bill Fett's fighters

were, in my dream, fighting a very uneven war on the side of the dark people of the world who were trying to get rid of their yoke…and somehow you received one of my frivolous letters after a horrible battle in which the opposition had thrown in some terrible professional troops and you were very hurt that under those conditions I should chide you for not writing a letter to us. Really, it was very sad and very real and it made me feel bad for days.

We were very interested in all your news… we would love to hear more of Howard’s travels in Europe… Did Leila go to the University of Chicago and do anything with her Soc.  I remember how worried I was about a girl who went to school without planning to use it…her training, you know…but now I see her point of view much more clearly.

We hope that you are planning to spend at least a month in Shelton when you get back. We can give your privacy so you can write and loaf…we are fixing up the backyard with that in mind… You can loll in the sun all day and Johanna will be trained to leave you alone…really.

Phyllis and Johanna, probably by Rosa Morgan

Our move is still in the dim dim future now the rumor is two or three years… and we are hoping by then they will have some sense.

We heard Paul Robeson talk a couple of weeks ago at a Spanish Refugee… African Affairs rally. He was wonderful. For my money he doesn’t have to sing. We looked up at home the Woolcott profile on him in While Rome Burns … if you haven’t read it or have forgotten it it’s worth reading again.

We are getting more and more unhappy at the anti-Russian talk. There may be things wrong there, but I don’t think that it’s anything that Mr. Churchill and his crowd can fix. 

This is not much of a letter, but I have to go to the dentist. We are looking forward to seeing you.

Very much

PG

Attu, 25 April 1945 -- Who's the daddy?

EFM telegrams were designed to streamline standardized messages for Armed Forces use. They used numeric stand-ins for words and phrases describing news common to separated families: packages mailed, birthdays, anniversaries, and babies. Rosa sent one to Murray to let him know of the arrival of their friends Phyllis and Otto's first child. It didn't occur to her that he wouldn't immediately know who had given birth to little Johanna, but Murray wasn't much interested in babies and had forgotten the birth was imminent. He thought the telegram was a not-funny prank. 

EFM example: http://atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/Services/index.htm

My wonderful wapiti...

Your EFM caused considerable excitement and not a little confusion here at the office. I was putting in a shift in the Inner Sanctum [Murray was a censor and a code specialist for the ACS, and took turns on those jobs. Coders were locked in to a special room while on duty] which is really another way of saying that I was working on the Aleutian opus, when Bill Ross, the saxonish censor on duty, stuck his head in the door and asked, "How long have you been up here now?" I told him a year and a day and he backed out looking puzzled. A little while later he came in and handed me the telegram, neatly translated and typed out with the EFM figures down at the bottom so I could confirm them personally. He then asked for cigars. 

I was pretty deep in the Aleutian opus. A little while before our OIC, Hoban, had been talking with a couple of friends about sending an EFM and I rather thought that Ross had overheard them and decided to play a joke. It seemed a little corny to me and I said so. Bill said the telegram had really come in and I said "Oh hell yeah, I don't doubt you a bit." He left. I could hear the boys talking in the other room, but I couldn't figure out what they were saying. Whenever I put my head out later in the evening, they kidded me but not much.

Gene came over round eleven. I told him about the bum gag, and he grinned and said they were trying to rope him in on it. It seems that Ross had phoned him at the other building and told him about the telegram and asked if it could possibly be true. Gene had assured him no. But Gene, too, thought the whole thing was something that had been cooked up in the office. Ross said that I seemed upset and that he had been afraid maybe he shouldn't have said anything. Gene told him that I was probably upset at being interrupted in my writing. 

Ronnlund, who is in our hut and is a pretty good friend, told me that the message really came in. Since all such gags are ridden pretty hard, I thought he was kidding too. I'm afraid I was a bit impolite. That evening Gene and I were playing chess on my bed and talking about the gag. Gene said it was just possible that someone in the states had sent the telegram as a gag. I said no, we didn't have any friends who would be doing something like that; none of our friends thought having kids a joking matter. And then, of course, came the dawn. I don’t know how I happened to forget about P and O, except that I've been thinking only of you and the book. 

Phyllis and Johanna, after the war

The next day I spent apologizing to Ross and Ronnlund. I also sent Phyllis and Otto a telegram (EFM) refraining from using number 119, which, translated, is "Good luck. Keep it up."

...

For the last few days I've been getting ready so I can get out of here as soon as my orders arrive. Niel Atkinson, who is at another station but as you will remember came up with me, got his orders the other day, and so did another of the men who came up. So mine should be along at any moment. I can't really expect them to arrive until this weekend, but I keep hopefully watching the teletypes. When they come in I have to pass a routine physical examination, an examination in military courtesy, and turn in my equipment to supply. That usually takes two days ... After that I turn in my request for transportation, and from then on it is just a question of whether the weather is good enough for the planes to get in and out. I'll phone from Anchorage on my way down. ...

You've mentioned in your last couple of letters that I shouldn't change, Nunny, and I've been trying to figure out if I have changed much in the past year. I really don't think so. I think I'm a little less exuberant in conversation, and I know that I am a little more anti-social. I've developed a passionate hatred for radio and a pretty strong hatred for most popular music except Latin-American and, upon occasion, real swing. I know better than ever before that I have no use for popular opinion, of me or of anything else, and that most important thing in the world to me is you. But all of these things are just intensifications of old attitudes. I can concentrate a bit better than before, and I believe I take more pleasure in writing. I think you will recognize me. Somewhere between now and Seattle I must take the precaution of removing my camouflage. It is really quite luxuriant now, and Jimmy Maceda, a new man in our hut, refers to me as Uncle Joe, because of the full-lipped foliage. [With his wavy dark hair, brown eyes and olive skin, Murray did slightly resemble Stalin.]

I'll write to Bill [Fett], explaining that I did not mean to be facetious in my reply to his Fourth Dimension letter. But I can't say a lot more than that because, re-reading it, I still can't figure it out at all. ...

A letter came from Carmen [Fett] a couple of days ago, but there was a mistake. She enclosed one she had written to Alfredo. I'm sending it back down to here and, since it has to go through military censorship and the base censor's (it's in Spanish) I read it. I was surprised at how little trouble I had with the Spanish. It was pretty much like a letter to me anyway, for it dealt mainly with the American attitude toward Spanish and Latin-American writers, and with Steinbeck and Hemingway. The line I liked best was that the Mexicans shouldn't feel superior to American literature because Americans know only machines and money. That is not true, said Carmen: their business is one thing and their literature another. 

That reminds me that I haven't told you about the wonderful, drunken bullsession that Dave and Gene and I had a few nights ago. Dave was doing a diabolic word portrait of a kid who was up her for a while who had pretensions of culture with the C upper-case. Dave defined his attitude as being, "If it isn't art, fuggat." A little later Dave was asking about the cost and time of a Mexican divorce. He wanted to know how long after a Mexican divorce one could marry again. I said I didn't know but I believed immediately. Dave said "Oh, gloryosky! A double ceremony."

And now I must write a couple of other letters that I have delayed for months, my love. Oh so soon, so soon. Hasta prontissimo.

                                                                                                                Your adoring,

                                                                                                                 M

from Bill Fett on Orcas Island to Rosa, 22 January 1945

Umnak, 28 December 1944 -- "three months, three weeks, three days"

Darling Darling…

Except for not getting a letter from you, or an answer to my Christmas telegram in which I asked you to wire me, this was a very nice day. What do I have to do to get you to write or to wire, little one? I’d like to come down there so that you wouldn’t have to bother, but really, I can’t.

 

"Future of the Falcon (early version 1), 1947, Gordon Onslow Ford. Weinstein Gallery

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really shouldn’t complain for the mail brought many nice things. There was a package from Mom [Rosa’s mother, Jessie Northcutt]; a book called The Feather Merchants and a box of Almond Roca. There was a stack of Oregonians, two New Republics, and a Harpers. In the letter line there was a nice one from Gordon, which I enclose. [Gordon Onslow-Ford was a Surrealist and Impressionist painter, friend of Andre Bretón and Gertrude Stein. He and his wife Jacqueline lived in Patzcuaro at the same time as Murray and Rosa in 1942: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Onslow_Ford]  

But the high spot was the arrival of one of Bill’s [Bill Fett] Mexican watercolors, “The Blue Flower,” a really beautiful job. I’m still trying to figure out where to hang it. The painting reminds me a great deal of the New Year’s one he painted at the Patzcuaro Shangri-La. I so wish we could see it together, little darling, but it makes me feel close, just being kin to those we have on the houseboat walls.

Mexican watercolor, Bill Fett, c. 1944

And tonight, instead of the rather weak symphony we usually have in the middle of the week, there was Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s First and Eighth. To make matters perfect, there was some trouble in the operating room and the maintenance man who usually butts in on Brahms to tell me that there is going to be liver for lunch or Friday was off at work. I don’t remember being impressed by the First before, but today I found it wonderful, especially the third movement. 

Later there was a good comedy program on the radio, the first that I can remember in a very long time. It was a shortwave special for the services, and Danny Kaye did a one-man satire on soap opera …I laughed until I cried. No one else thought it very good, though.    …

I did not get in quite as much writing today as usual. I’m on KP this week, and since it is the midnight dish trick, I work alone. It takes a bit more time than usual. But I did finish a draft of the first three pages in “The Sea” section. I think this part will be of special interest to you. It branches off into a history of the Pribilof Group and a review of the big Bering Sea diplomatic controversy which at one time threatened to involve us in war with Britain. I find the material fascinating. (You’re fascinating, too.)

Did I tell you, in my rehash of the mess here Christmas Eve, that Art Wyle, our GI character with the sailor stride, was roaming around glassy-eyed assuring everyone he was Linda Darnell? 

The radio just announced there is fighting going on on an island in the Danube within the Budapest city limits. It makes the idea of a bull in a china shop seem socially meretricious.

After today three months, three weeks, three days,

M