Observations from an adventurous and aging type 1 diabetic woman in transition. Join me on the journey.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Sunday, March 6, 2022
Journey of Old Journals- 1983
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Journey of Old Journals- 1983
It’s 1983. Do you know where your country is?
Reagan thinks justice is “just us”.
Up your arsenal, Pentagon.
I also included a short tidbit about a direct action I took at the ROTC military ball in April 1983. I noted the date, which made it a lot easier to reach out to the reference librarian at my alma mater and ask her to send me some images of the day.
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Journey of Old Journals-1982
My love of flow charts! |
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Journey of Old Journals-1982
However, it became clear at this point that I was using the journal for my own best friend, a practice that remains true to this day. This new format also facilitated some more flow. There's a page where I gush on and on about the ability to just free write on anything. I wrote about what was happening In my mind, not what was happening in the world.
Here are a few things that happened during this time:
- I became increasingly concerned and “radicalized” around the issue of Mutually Assured Destruction, which was the banter of the military justification at the time.
- I supported the World Peace March as the group traveled through Buffalo and Fredonia. What I didn't write about, but remember vividly, was the very strong proposition from one of the young men in the group. He did his best to entice me into a wild field clear we could just get it on. his hips vibrated wildly in desperation. It felt pathetic.
- I was coming out as a lesbian and fell in love with H. New emotions, intensity, navigating an unfamiliar path. I also felt accepted and part of a group, the first time since my party-buddies in High School.
- I wrote about being away for the weekend with the gal team and coming back to find obscenities written on my dorm door.
- An across the hall dorm neighbor stole a couple of my syringes for drugs. I have lots of letters from her, too. We were close for most of college and a couple of years after.
- I moved off-campus for the summer~ I didn't return to Poughkeepsie for the first time in my life. I found a job working with my buddies on a vineyard In Western New York where I trimmed overgrown grapevines grown for the Welch brand amid asparagus gone to seed and the miracle of ladybugs piled on top of each other, everywhere.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
Journey of Old Journals- 1981?
This journal was an assignment for a "women in literature" class; the professor directed us to read and respond to the text we were reading at the time.
In hindsight, I can see my beginning as a feminist and as an advocate for peace. I remembered a detail– I’d put effort into setting up Draft Counseling Center on campus, resurrected when the registration requirement resumed in 1980.
I wondered if children could write poetry on an LCD screen.
I wrote about my mother, who worked so hard in her first term at Community College. She received a D+ on her first term paper. Mom did her homework at the kitchen table. The phone rang, the dog scratched to go out, J asks where his jeans are and B returns from a liaison with her boyfriend. The phone rings again, and dad asks a monetary question. Mom thinks about what to have for dinner, about tomorrow's errands, the dog's vet appointment, and her mind drifts back to the empty page. Her letters are rushed, I observed and thought to myself that she deserved a desk and a room of her own.
During a discussion of the Sapphic meter, my Latin teacher asked the class what female poets were called. “They are poets,'' I replied and elaborated that it was there was no use in using a diminutive term for those of the female gender. My classmates thought I was radical.