| Date | Recipient | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| May 29, 1949 | Charles Millott (in Australia) | "Nowl I hear that in the local paper there has appeared notices of applications for beer selling licenses.... I started the ball rolling and kept going before and I feel it is my duty to do so aga!n 'cause l've a feeling that the people here are so dead or biased that they don't care if the village becomes more and more drunken & debauched." |
| Feb 13, 1960 | Wallie Harris (in New Zealand) |
"Last November Father let himself be 'dragged' as he put it away from the Delhi home up to my sister Evelyn's home in Ottawa. He was there for about six weeks, but would never admit that he really 'felt at Home there' in any of the letters he sent back to me. I may have my yen for travel honestly enough from Father, but I guess he has passed that stage. Still I don't really think so for I expect he will be all anticipation when I tell him that I'm planning a cabin trailer trip out west to my Brother's place in '62, and that he'd better get ready and come along. It is just that he cannot bear to be any place where he cannot be of any use, except at Home. Really it is rare gift to be able to accept others gifts and assistance, without either 'being' or 'feeling' guilty of being just a 'sponger' or a 'hanger on'.
I'm philosophizing just there, or didn't you notice, -- and to continue, --- in this nasty old world where we've been brainwashed for so many generations into "instinctively" believing that we must "work" to live, to the extent of thinking that we should not even live if we don't work. Of course by not working I don't mean idleness, rather I mean "working for a living", apart from that glorious adventure that is real "living". That is the curse of the world, that men have to "waste" so much or all of their lives merely working for a living. Why the wild animals do as well as that, and who are we to lace ourselves into a straight jacket that permits us to be no better than the animals when by all accounts, Divine and Human we are the supreme creation upon earth!!! No I'm not married, and there is no reason to for me to add the word "yet" after that statement either, for I will not be married until I find a woman who is never 'idle' in the sense I put it above, and yet who is not too busy making a living, to "live". Under the term "idleness" as concerns true use of our lives I would include lives devoted to the vapid social whirl beyond the needs of recreation. Real living is not overly concerned about physical comfort, and though by instinct I am very orderly in my habits, (if not my hours) and so dislike ''mussy" people, still if their "mussiness" springs truly from their preoccupation with great and creative "living", then may they be mussy. Of course I can't imagine very many more than a minority under our present economic and social system, living with such freedom as I have, without even the fetters of an unearned income. Such an income is really a fetter today because of the social false doctrine that supports and perpetuates the "--you mustn't live unless you work--" idea. Such an income leads today to the "I am better than you" pride based on a man's worth measured with money rather than the true wealth of his God given ability, and life. Such thoughts are behind the concluding paragraph in the Duplicated letter. However the intelligent girls I've known are too fond of comfort of material things, and those who have not those comforts I fear merely stupidly yearn for them. I would like to be surprised by one of the dull round." |
| July 10, 1963 | Irene Moote | "'...if I hadn't put on the brakes I'd have hit you broadside,...no signal, nothing,----.' By this time I saw that the lights belonged to one of these nice white cars with black doors...." "Father's progress...was good when I called the Hosp." "Of course to me he moans the same as ever---I don't count. I'm not his 'public', the old codger!" "Now I must plaster my poison ivy with antiphlogistine...." |
| Dec. 14-19, 1994 | unknown | "...its too late for parcels to reach Japan before Christmas. But JCL says that neither Sunday nor Christmas are non-workinq days there. Rather New Years is the Annual Winter celebration." |
| July 17-Sept. 13, 1996 | Kathleen | News of numerous relatives. "...sister Evelyn had a full four day celebration put on for her 80th birthday, thanks to the ambitious imagination of her family." |