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.)