Warday

7:30 P.M. “Moon Over Morocco,” a cigarette, and a cup of coffee. My half hour of indulgence! That’s a delightful radio show. I must admit that I miss TV. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to feast my eyes on “M*A*S*H” just one more time. As a semipublic institution, we have some chance of getting a TV before too much longer.

The BBC is already beaming shows over here by satellite, and Ted Turner is getting organized again in Atlanta and L.A. Also, HBO

and the networks are coming back. Soon, please, and don’t neglect the half-hour format, because that’s all I have time for!

8:00 P.M. Meeting of the Charismatics in the basement of the church. I’m glad that Sister Euphrasia and Father Booth are both members of this movement! I can’t begin to speak in tongues. I can’t keep up with their intensity. Their faith is like fire. These are God’s people, these Charismatics. We are going to have to move our group upstairs. Three hundred people are too many for the basement. Might even be a fire hazard.

9:00 P.M. Meeting of the Knights of Columbus in the school cafetorium. Full-dress affair. I led prayers. We are making elaborate plans for the Christ the King procession upcoming.

10:00 P.M. A call from the man who was diagnosed as terminal Hodgkin’s yesterday. Met him in the church and we said the rosary together. He told his family over supper. He says they spent the evening singing and talking about how close the Lord is to them now. I suggested they go to the Charismatic meeting tomorrow night. They heal each other all the time, maybe they’ll heal him.

But I didn’t say that to him. I said, if he feels Christ in him so strongly, he belongs among them, and so does his family.

11:00 P.M. Breviary for fifteen minutes, and another fifteen reading the new Mailer book. Ghost Dance is a great statement on our lives now.

11:30 P.M. My five minutes in the shower. Father Moore snapped me with a towel. How I would like to be twenty-three years old again! These old bones…

12:00 A.M. Lights out at the St. Francis rectory. Silence. My cross, a darker shadow on my dark wall. The wind moaning past the eaves. Sleep, and a dream of long ago.

Documents from the Civil Defense

There goes the night brigade

They got no steady trade…

—Ezra Pound

HELPFUL HINTS FOR THE UNAFFECTED: BLUEGRAMS

You probably don’t know about Bluegrams. I certainly didn’t see any in Texas during the war, and Whitley doesn’t remember them from New York.

They are apparently called Bluegrams because they are printed on light-green paper.

There is an element of practicality about Bluegrams. Their distribution, however, appears to be limited to areas where they aren’t needed.

So, in case you might find them useful, I include here the two most practical ones we picked up.

One sees Bluegrams in all sorts of places, pinned to community bulletin boards or left in stacks on the counters of luncheonettes.

We could have included Bluegrams on control of radioactive roaches or on the washing of hot cars with sponges attached to fishing poles, but we decided to limit ourselves to material of at least some interest to people who live in the communities for which they were obviously intended in the first place.

Why don’t areas of genuine need get Bluegrams? Maybe the Civil Defense officials responsible don’t want to upset us, or—more likely—they’d rather stay in California than set out with their little blue trucks to that softly glowing world beyond the Sierras.