September 12, 2002

  • In memory of Kim Hunter,
    who died on 9/11, 2002:

    A transcription of a journal note from 1996…


    National Dance Week

    Thursday, May 2, 1996

    National Day of Prayer will be observed at noon today, Thursday, May 2, at City Hall.

    “Bush once joked that he picked Sununu because his surname rhymed with “deep doo-doo.”
    – Dan Goodgame, Time magazine, May 21, 1990
    For a time, Sununu wrote stories and poems for children. Concord
    lawyer Ned Helms recalls that when his wife fell ill, Sununu gave her a
    book of poems that he said he enjoyed, by Sylvia Plath.

    Do do that voodoo that you do so well.

    One summer when I played
    in a small stock company, after the last curtain had come down we would
    clear the stage and then put on records of Viennese waltzes. We’d dance
    wildly, joyfully…
    – Madeleine L’Engle, Victoria Magazine, November 1995

    We’re arranging to have the children baptized on Sunday afternoon,
    March 25, by the way. Although I honestly dislike, or rather, scorn the
    rector. I told you about his ghastly H-bomb sermon, didn’t I, where he
    said this was the happy prospect of the Second Coming and how lucky we
    Christians were compared to the stupid pacifists and humanists and
    “educated pagans” who feared being incinerated, etc., etc. I have not
    been to church since. I felt it was a sin to support such insanity even
    by my presence.
    – Sylvia Plath, March 12, 1962. Amen.
    [The bathroom door opens and Stella comes out. Blanche continues talking to Mitch.]
    Oh! Have you finished? Wait — I’ll turn on the radio.
    [She
    turns the knobs on the radio and it begins to play "Wien, Wien, nur du
    allein." Blanche waltzes to the music with romantic gestures. Mitch is
    delighted and moves in awkward imitation like a dancing bear. Stanley
    stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom. He crosses to
    the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted
    oath, he tosses the instrument out the window.
    ]

    Colby’s nickname among some of his subordinates at CIA is said to be “The Bookkeeper.”

    Alabama plans
    female chain gangs

    Friday, April 26, 1996, story:

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Montgomery prison system is preparing
    to snap shackles around the ankles of women prisoners, creating female
    chain gangs in the state that revived male leg-iron crews last year.

    I will try to finish my novel and a second book of poems by
    Christmas. I think I’ll be a pretty good novelist, very funny — my
    stuff makes me laugh and laugh, and if I can laugh now it must be
    hellishly funny stuff.
    – Sylvia Plath, October 12, 1962
    An engine, an engine
    Chuffing me off like a Jew,
    A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
    There’s a stake in your fat black heart
    And the villagers never liked you.
    They are dancing and stamping on you.

    1962 —

    Everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now;
    I know you’re gonna like it if you give it a chance now…
    So come on, c’mon, and do the locomotion with me!

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