Hey CC, just catching up on the thread after
being busy a while "clearing my space."
I came across an old college notebook left by
my late cousin Jane who stayed with us while
attending the University during Fall '71.

I didn't know whose it was until I saw a page
with a letter she wrote to a boy from back home,
giving directions to their house. She was catching
a Greyhound bus and would be home the next day.
She signed her name but then wrote a big 'X'
through it. I called her younger brother to tell
him what I found, and he said they moved from that
house that winter. It was next to the church where
their dad preached and mother (my mother's sister)
played piano. I was looking at it on Google Map.
Our family gets together for Thanksgiving at his cabin
in the mountains and I told him I will bring it,
48 years after it was written.

A few pages further, on pink paper, she wrote this:
"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin
without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish
without knowing what you have written."

On the same sheet was this:
"Love is a folly of the mind,
an unquenchable fire,
a hunger without surfeit,
an agreeable, a sweet delight,
a pleasing madness,
a labor without repose
and a repose without labor."

I assume that's Thoreau since the other
pink pages are a thesis outline on him.
I had just turned 10 at the time and was
crazy about a girl that lived at the bottom
of the hill. She kinda looked like cousin Jane
now that I think about it.