Now back from Canada, KC continues her story with this entry from September 11, 1968 (a Wednesday)

She begins this entry by commenting on her final entry from Canada and that trip in general: 

    Actually, what I wrote there [the trip home from Nova Scotia to Readville] covers the space of about 3 days.  It was a good trip.  It was different. 

And then continues her Sept 11th entry:  

    Now, I’m back in school.  I went back the 5th, a Thursday. 

    I’ll write about school some other time. 

    I am watching the Olympics now, the 1936 Olympics, that is. 

    The Japs are doing (were doing) very well. 

    There is a peculiar grace to all this.  It’s quite beautiful.  (This is all Channel 2; a film.) 

    There is a big audience watching it all.  It makes me feel like crying.  Where are all these people now? 

    They just showed Hitler.  Apart from his moustache he looks like all the rest, quite ordinary. 

    So many, many people, from, it seems, every country in the world.  It’s really something. 

    I love anthropology and archaeology and paleontology.  Someday I’ll have to write more about it. 

    Bleah!  School is enjoyable but extremely tiring. 

    School religion is so much bunk.  All we get is “the paper-doll people” and the sooty, dirty factories and the horrible dictator billboards.” (that is not a direct quote but it’s the gist of what we’re getting.) 

    Personally, I like people.  I have never met two people who were exactly alike in my life, or who were “predictable” in their actions.  (I mean, within reason, you know.  And if you don’t, you should.  This “determinism” bit, etc.; I’m not big on that at all.  This “predictable” thing is one step away from a denial of free will, in my mind.  I know, when you’re familiar with a person you can often guess what they’ll say or do, but that’s not the same thing.) 

    I wish we’d get some nice sound theology or philosophy and really learn something.  Honest, it would drive you mad! 

    O. K. for the kids who go to Catholic colleges, but what about those who don’t?  When are they suppose to learn some of the good reasoning behind their faith? 

    Know, Love, and Serve God. 

   Philosophy and theology won’t help necessarily in exactly the precise way meant, there (thought they certainly might, and indeed, have, helped to a great extent.) but must we abandon them or confuse ourselves with false ideas?  I know from personal experience what value they (phil. & theo. which is Catholic) have. 

    But, anyway, I do not worry.  The Church will live on, in truth and faith. 

    Happy Friday the 13th ! 

    Ah, let me see.  I’m Arggh! 

    I was trying to write with my left hand but it’s driving me crazy.  I’m going to learn how to write left-handed as well as right in order to improve myself.  Honestly, I’m so clumsy with my left hand!  Besides sometimes we have a lot of homework and my right hand gets tired, so I want to be able to switch hands, so to speak. 

    I was looking at a *psychology (* I can’t seem to get anything right.) book last night and found out I’m the “Sentimental” type.  So much for me. 

    I’m so sorry that I get hard to read and vague when I’m writing about religion, but I’m trying to improve myself by reading a lot about the subject.  If it is possible to obtain them Fr. O. F. Dudley’s and Robert Hugh Benson’s books are quite good and worth reading.  Am getting a lot out of them myself. 

    And besides, I get angry at times and then the cork is out of the bottle. 

    Dad’s birthday and mine are coming up.  I’m getting the Wyeth book from Dad.  Mom bought me a watch and Helena bought me a nice pea-jacket for winter. 

    Then after that, Halloween and then Christmas.  Some other time I’ll tell you what we do then. 

    Right now I am babysitting because Mom and Dad are at Vissers, their friends.  Usually they go Sat. nights but they went today instead, this time. 

    We shall be away tomorrow.  Eileen is going in town with Helena, I am going to a movie the English nun told us we had to see, with some other kids, Mom Dad, and Bob are going shopping. 

    Right now my brain isn’t working too well, I’m probably just tired.  I get up at 7:00 every school morning, or earlier, depending on how much praying I do.  Personally, I believe in praying. 

    If you can get it, read “True Grit”, it’s really good.  I read it just this past month.  It was wonderfully written, very real. 

    Sometimes I just lie in bed at night in the dark and make up poems.  I love to do that. 

    One of my favorite poems is the Mother Goose one that goes like this:

                “Brickbats and tiles,” 

                Say the bells of St. Giles’, 

                “Pokers and tongs,” 

                Say the bells of St. John’s, etc. 

    My favorite bit of classical music is the “Peer Gynt Suite” and my favorite fiction is Louis de Wohl’s The Quiet Light.”  I would read that over and over again, which shows something, but I’m not sure what.  I’ve got a million other books and pieces of music I love, but those particularly.  My favorite artist is Andrew Wyeth and all his pictures are favorites with me. 

    There are many who say my paintings resemble A. W. and indeed, I suppose they are right, though I am far from being as good. 

    But I am not trying particularly to copy him.  I do, however, agree with his ideas about painting and what he paints.  I think that if I had never heard of nor seen A. W.’s pictures I would still paint the way I do.  This was a tendency I started to show even before I was particularly familiar with his work, though I have known of him since I was about nine. 

    It is a feeling for the Land I have, a feeling for the grass and the wind blowing through it and the animals and the houses and the men who live on the Land, and the water and the sky and the birds of the air and all that is my home.  These are the things that I want to paint. 

    But now I am so tired.  When will they come home?  Eileen and Bobby are in bed now.  All is very quiet in the house on Stanbro Street. 

    It is night, about seven minutes of ten. 

    I studied for a Latin test we are having tomorrow.  Blargh!

Christine, a friend of mine, went to Germany in the summer for five weeks, but she is very tired.  There is some reason to worry about her health.  She has an awful lot of homework.  If I had that much I just wouldn’t do it. 

    There are more important things in life than wearing your brain down to a pincushion.  Ach lieben! 

    School, school, school.  I like English the best.  We have Sister Christopher Marie.  She is great, etc. 

    Anyway…

    You should be here in the mornings.  Everything is rich warm gold and green.  Each morning a beam of yellow light comes in through a crack in the curtains, reflects on the mirror onto my face and hands when I get up.  It is so wonderful to hold sunlight in my hands, it’s rather a special feeling. 

    I fell down today and scraped my knee.  Such a fuss!  I am very clumsy.  The bottoms of my shoes are leather and very smooth. 

    I am listening to the King Rat music.  It is one of my favorite records.  John Barry is a very good composer. 

    You should hear me on the harmonica.  Actually, it’s probably just as well you don’t.  Au revoir (We’re having French this year.) 

    Long days we have now, in September.  The leaves are just now starting to turn, from rich yellow-green to a glowing orange.  Whenever you look out any of the back windows it is like a jungle; we have many trees around here.  It is quite pretty. 

    We have the most beautiful Biology book.  It is really great.  I don’t like Bio. in school but that is because I don’t like the way the sister teaches.  But what can you do?  (I sound so know it all, don’t I?) 

    I used to watch Captain Kangaroo when I was little and Rex Trailer.  They are part of my childhood. 

    A little kid with thick brown hair, slightly ragged bathrobe, shabby slippers on feet, spying around the corner to see if dangerous people were lurking about, feeling the thrill of adventure, careful, careful, padding into the great combination family room or dining room or parlor, and television room (or whatever we decided to call it), turning on the t.v., making sure it wasn’t too loud, and finding out, perhaps it was too early!  What chaos!  A hasty look at the kitchen clock, an hour to go!  Oh, what misery this life doth hold for the waiting! 

    An hour passed, fiddling around, and then Rex Trailer came riding onto the t.v. screen on his lovely palomino, Goldrush, and brought me into Boomtown. 

    And so it happened each Saturday morning for years. 

    But that is a long time ago, so long, so long . . .   Sometimes I wish I could go back, but it wouldn’t do me any good.  Really, I am as happy now as I ever was then, perhaps happier.  But . . .  I don’t forget.  And that is good. 

    Poor Christine, I am worried about her.  She must go to the doctor again soon, I think, if I remember rightly.  May God take care of her. (Not really wishing to sound pietistic but I hope He does.) 

    I should be studying my French, but I know most of it.  I had hardly any homework tonight besides that.  Ah, tomorrow, Friday, the day of release. 

    But I must go now. 

    A few red leaves glowed on the very end of the branches of the tree, like stoplights in a city of green. 

    I’m feeling ghastly.  I stayed home from school because I have a head cold.  How bleah.  It’s not that I’m physically sick, I’m mentally down. 

    It’s the first day of Fall, as you may have guessed from my opening paragraph, or at least from the date. 

    I love all the seasons of the year, each for different reasons, but I think I love fall the best. 

    Bob came home from kindergarten with a picture he had done of a tree. all torn up black paper, and he had two squares of red and yellow paper to make leaves with. 

    I never went to kindergarten and I’m very glad I didn’t.  I enjoyed my years of freedom, years of dreaming by myself, because there were few children I could 

play with, where we lived. 

    Perhaps those years made me an introvert, but I’m happy for it, it is the best way for me.  Because of those years I think I have always been more independent and self-reliant, which is good for a person like me.  I have my own way of life to travel. 

    It’s quite a lovely day outside, but I won’t go into that.  It’s also weather for hay fever, which drives me nuts.  Someday my nose will explode. 

    I am painting this gigantic picture in oil now: “Under the Apple Tree, September”.  May be December by the time I finish it.  I hope I do get it done eventually, though, because they’re going to hang it over the couch. 

    I think I took four tests today.  Oh, Boy! 

    It is only about 10 minutes of seven and already the sky is changing to a steely blue.  (Steely?  sounds weird)  The trees stand black against the sky, the construction work of their branches bare of color in places, where already God’s redeveloping plant has set to work, others with brick brown leaves or painted-greens still on their frame. 

    The autumn trees are a city waiting to be demolished, all inhabitants given at least a month’s notice, until reconstruction sets in, in the spring. 

    Just developing thoughts. 

    Someday maybe I’ll be old and all my friends will be dead and nobody will be able to talk with me of the things I remember, they remembering, too, and I shall sit and dream of the life I knew and all the small things.  No, I won’t necessarily remember dates and big happenings, but I’ll remember summer nights and the tree I climbed, and the music that stirred my heart, the books I read, swinging at night by the light of the golden full moon, the tablecloth on the kitchen table, the things we ate, the times we had, the ones we loved, all gone and buried in the minds of dead men and women; perhaps only the strains of our music will be heard by a sensitive ear and blessed is that one, who has the heart to love the past. 

    Oh, well, I’m a sentimental soul myself, with a deep love for the past and the people of the past.  Perhaps I owe that to all of the books I have read, historical fiction, in particular. 

    But I don’t want to bore you. 

    I read once how, around the year 1,000 A.D., everybody thought the world was going to end.  I wonder if people will think that in 1999, which isn’t so far away, let’s see, only about thirty years.  And before that will be 1976, a big year for our country, since it will be 200 years old. 

    I seem to have time on my mind.  Maybe that’s because if I don’t hurry up I won’t have time to finish my homework. 

    I’m doing a little better on my harmonica, I’m reading a Catholic theology book of sorts, and I was using my Rimmer’s anatomy yesterday.  That, Rimmer’s is very good.  I enjoy all three above things, anatomy most. 

    They’re rioting quite a bit now you know and Mrs. Hicks got chased out of Franklin Park, which I think is disgusting.  Dad says re the issue of wearing native African costume, he ought to be able to wear a kilt to school.  Why not?  By the way, if those Buckley clippings are here read them.  They are indicative of some of the problems we have today.  Very intelligent man, Buckley. 

    I’ve been in a bad mood today; feel like doing some dentistry on everybody else’s teeth. 

    Oh, yes, we got our old chair redone, a sort of rusted orange and green.  Very nice. (the chair was Ma’s, Helena’s mother.  Originally it was a brocaded red, at least I thought of it as red, Dad called it orange.  Maybe it was both, it was a funny color.  Everyone’ here’s very pleased with the new one.)  Right now we’re sort of on a rejuvenation of the house kick. 

    Christine told me (She goes to Latin School.) that one of her teachers said T.S. Eliot was trash.  Now, really!  And what about e.e. cummings?  Him, too! 

    There was this movie on the other night, “Becket”.  Was good. 

    Someday I want to go to Canterbury and see the cathedrals of France.  Awful shame, the English churches being desecrated like that. 

You’d think after what the English have done to the Scotch and Irish, I’d hate them, but I don’t, queer enough.  And the thing of it is, I’m very loyal to my background.  At the risk of sounding somewhat over-pious, “Love your enemies”.  Not that the English are my enemies.  I don’t have anything generally against them. 

    Golly, I wish they would not look down on Americans.  But, of course, I come from New England and I’m not sure that the rest of the country is in as good? condition as we are in. 

    At least, I don’t think much of some of the ideas generating from the West Coast.  All this hippie nonsense.  But then, we have hippies on the Common.  Didn’t do any personal harm to me. 

    A lot of kids are fascinated by them.  I’m not.  They’re just people.  I can see a lot of interesting people around here.  More original people. 

    (My apologies to all English West Coastans and ex-hippies or present day hippies.  Just referring to them in general and have nothing against them in one sense, ‘cept don’t always go along with actions.) 

    As you can see, I’m bein’ real brief with language, this is the way we talk around here, pretty much.  Like farmers.  Like talking in telegrams. 

    Tomorrow’s Dad’s birthday. 

    Lots of confusion in the country.  I hope it settles down.  I’m afraid we seem to think that because our country is based on such things as “equal rights for all” and “freedom of speech” that this land will pull itself out of trouble.  I thought so myself, but I’m beginning to wonder.  Ancient Greece’s government, too, was based on democratic principles, and yet where is it now?  Are democratic principles enough? 

    No system of governing seems to be lastingly successful.  Perhaps it is just as well I couldn’t explain myself very well without going into a long thing, and if I don’t explain myself well I might as well not bother at all. 

    My country is very big.  She may get more powerful and gain more possessions but she’ll have to be careful her powers in proportion to her possessions.  Biting off more than you can chew, you know. 

    I can see possibilities of a war, a civil war, but not like our first one.  Something more in the line of the Spanish Civil War.  A lot of individual groups gathering into two separate groups fighting against each other with fighting in the individual groups. 

    We have militant Negroes, and non-militant Negroes who think the whole business is shameful.  We have doves and hawks.  Communists vs Christians.  Anarchists, socialists, drop-outs.  All we need is a few Napoleonic men to choose teams and we can start playing “Red Rover”. 

    I have no idea what side Catholics would be on because I have no idea what the sides would be.  In W.W.II we fought with the Communists.  That was a very short time ago.  Now we’re against them.  Or, at least, I think we are. 

    In the Spanish Civil War Catholics fought against people who actually had some legitimate complaints but in principles they (legitimate complainants) were wrong.  And what they did to the churches is an example of what happens when those principles are manifested. 

    Sides change, people change.  The Catholic Church does not change.  You say we fought with the Commies in W.W.II?  Remember who we were fighting against, first.  The Catholic Church did not condone Communism at any time, however.  Besides, at the time, it was Russia we were fighting with [i.e. allied alongside them], Russia as a nation. 

    Not that one can say much for the U.S.S.R. as a nation.  At that time, however, I suppose it was the lesser of two evils.

    With friends like me, the Church doesn’t need enemies.  But, I’m learning, that must be apologetics.  Ooooh! 

    Re: the above.  Some is true, I imagine, but if you are looking for the truth go to someone who knows their stuff better.  “Seek, and you will find.” 

    Well, maybe all of this sounds irrelevant or something but these are our troubles today.  But, somehow, I doubt that our problems shall be so terribly irrelevant, or, at least, without meaning.  The people of the future will have their troubles.  Meet them with bravery, fight them with truth and faith in the Church and you cannot lose, in fact, if you are most lucky, you will bear the Folly of the Cross and no one can triumph in a higher way.  This is true, if it weren’t absolute truth, it would be complete and utter bosh, but would God, Who Is Truth, lie?  And don’t just believe me, believe God. 

    Big preacher, me. 

    Now there are leaves all over the sidewalk, shuffling along like old men’s feet, pushed by the wind. 

    Each day I come home, carrying my books, thinking of the tiring day behind me, looking forward to the rest of the evening and I walk down Colchester street, beneath the suspension bridge of trees overhead, walking along the bank of sidewalk, which holds back the black river of the street, flowing beside the houses, big and small, boats pulled up on dry land with masts of antennas and chimneys and square portholes of windows, captained by fathers, crewed with children, first mates, mothers. 

    The Doge of this Venice sits on the corner of Colchester on a small wooden chair, watching the old man Mahoney who fixes bicycles and sharpens skates and has a Santa Claus in his window in July. 

    You’re a fine place, Readville, shabby as you are.  You’re old and that’s good and your people are good.  You are brick buildings and cracked sidewalks, gnarled trees and men, a cellar Church, a lilac tree outside the Communitarian place, you are the old paper store and the small grocery, and the big puddle in front of the billboard opposite the gas station and the puddle at the entrance to Colchester St.  You’re nothing special, and that’s exactly why I like you so much. 

    Well, today was Dad’s birthday and I think he had a good time and we had a fine birthday cake, white frosting and chocolate cake, very fine, and every one said what a grand cake it was and went on about it. 

    Dad got a nice book, an historical atlas.  It’s beautiful maps of the ancient Roman empire and the Greek states and the countries of the East, places with rich, rolling names that make me dream of old stories.  There are maps of Great Britain and central Europe at the times of the great kings and rulers, and of the world during the last war.  It’s a beautiful book; fit to carry a person’s dreams. 

    Mom and Dad go on about all the disturbances in the country.  Dad says it’s the media, the media, the media.  Well, I can see that.  People depend a lot on what they read in the papers, especially people who don’t read much else. 

    “The way this country is going …”  It sounds awfully redundant yet that’s the phrase that comes to my mind. 

    Each morning I lie in my dreaming, in a grey haze, lost in a fog of pillow and spread and sheets, warm and floating.  Sometimes the sun points a finger through my window and then there are days where outside it’s as clouded as my early-morning mind. 

    Around here the fog in the streets is very thick, making the sun no more than a glowing moon at times. 

    And then the alarm rings brassly loud and sets me jumping. 

    And I do all the things one does in the morning, mooning about the room as I button my uniform blouse and pull my skirt over my pin-curled head, listening sometimes to clatter of pans and giant voices from the people next door, or perhaps to Eileen and Bob singing their noteless song in the room beside mine.  I hear Dad’s feet bumping against the floor over my head and I guess that he will be down before I get to the kitchen where Mom is making oatmeal muffins for us. 

    We eat breakfast and I keep turning my head to look out the window at our other neighbor’s roof and the pigeons who sit there always, cousin to the sky in colour, most of them, perhaps a bit darker.  I look at the upstairs windows of that house and watch the white shades to see if there is anyone observing me, but there never is — Just the pigeons. 

    Dad reads the papers, drinks his tomato juice and eats his buttered. red-jellied muffins and I read a book, maybe, or stare around at what’s going on.  Bob sits in his high chair at the head of the table and makes observant remarks, a bit loud for the morning ear.  Eily reads, too, and doesn’t say much, except when I pull her hair to tease her, then she pretends to beat me up and we play for a minute. 

    And then breakfast is over and I rush for things, here, there, like a hen after worms. 

    Dad drives me to school through beautiful countryside and grand houses.  The sun is just rising and poking its fingers into trees and windows of houses and the corners of people’s eyes. 

    It is morning here, day has begun. 

    People are thinking about who will be president of the country next. 

    There is Hubert Humphrey, the jolly boy, or Richard Nixon, he has a clothespin nose. or George Wallace, and they draw him bad. 

    Dad will probably vote for Wallace. 

    Now the sky is grey, as it is before snow, but I find this incongruous, since the trees, though changing, are still yet green.  It looks like angels might come flying by, to be observed by late homecoming persons just off the Wolcott bus. 

    Already I am beginning to feel the Christmas atmosphere, the child-like excitement I have every year, months beforehand.  To further my feeling there are always Catholic school bazaars, or bizarres, if you please. 

    They are held in big rooms, perhaps an auditorium, or a gym.  There are people everywhere, and though the bazaars are held in October or November, there is similarity with these folk and those persons doing there Christmas shopping on Tremont St. in town.  Only, not quite. 

    There is tissue paper, always, on the ground, to tangle one’s feet in and ghastly, pretty home-made cakes in Bingham boxes or Jordan Marsh boxes.  They have counters covered with clever things of net and ribbon and soap and white elephant tables which reminds me of a slave auction where all the slaves are dead or almost so.  And always they have statues, holy statues, and beautifully dressed Infants of Prague. 

    Old women with red lips and white hair sell their precious wares.  At our parish bazaar they are Italian, at Fontbonne they are Irish.  And of course there are nuns or parish priests to be said hello to. 

    Of course they have lotteries and chance tickets but they cost too much for me, perhaps 75¢ or $1.00 a chance.  And, besides, who wants a basket of canned vegetables taken from neighbors’ homes, all wrapped up in colored cellophane and bright paper ribbons? 

    Not often do I spend my money, I have too much Scotch thrift in me.  I’m very careful on how my money is spent.  My mother says I am calculating.  That may be so but I am not out for my own gain at others’ expense.  At least, I don’t think so.  And remember, I am being honest with you and so you think badly of me, but you might admire a person for virtues they told you they had, but in truth did not.  That is the way it is. 

    “The moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin . . .” 

    That’s how the song goes.  It is fascinating to me to think that the moon that shines on my fair town shone on the first man, on the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, on the Jews as they fled to their Promised Land, on Christ and His apostles, on the saints and on the sinners of the ages past, from then until now, the object of many’s affections, worshipped, poetry and song written of it, and now, scientifically observed.  And if we explore it as I imagine we will, its mystery will be lost, the last threads of superstition shall wear to dust. 

    I am reading a theology book.  It is very interesting, though I imagine I won’t finish it for a long while yet.  Being a teen-ager I feel quite qualified to say that I don’t think we are getting the religious education we should.  We need it.  Desperately.  There are many ideas in the world.  Some are good.  Some are not.  Unfortunately the good ideas are not as widely publicized as the bad ones.  The kids of today read a fair amount, see a lot of television, and listen to the radio, and to records.  These sources are not the best for a religious education. 

    The catechism must be explained. 

    The questions we have must be answered.  Not by a disc jockey, or a newspaper article writer, or a rock singer, or by a television. 

    From the Catholic viewpoint. 

    Because that is the best viewpoint. 

    Not in matters of science but in matters of doctrine.  Though sometimes what we believe in and what science says contradict.  Then we must find the truth. 

    What I said above contains truth.  I know it does.  Now for my personal opinion. 

    The system of religious education to which I have been recently exposed is asinine.  The Catholic kids have to have a good religious education to meet the worldly forces that oppose them now and that will oppose them for the rest of their lives.  The foundation must be a strong one or the house will fall at the first blow of winter’s wind. 

    They often say that teen-agers are rebellious, that they are going through a stage which is necessary for their proper growth.  For a time I thought there must be something wrong with me since I didn’t feel very rebellious about anything.  Well, I am.  I am rebelling against what I consider a rather foolhardy system.  Perhaps I am wrong.  Twenty years time will tell.