MORE OF MARCH, 1975

March 10. 1975
Monday morning and the dawn sky is as blue as the wings of a butterfly. My song sparrow is singing joy in the morning, but there’s light frost on the cars. Have the grapefruit sectioned for the boys and the animals fed. Now must scramble eggs for French toast. And call my lazy sons one more time. My feathered songster is a veritable star and sings the most complicated routines with ease.
March 13, 1975
Think the new bank loan is squared away after all, so will have to go with Pete about 9 a.m. tomorrow to sign the papers. Then we can pay the damn taxes up to date!
Last night Sherri called, wondering if I’d heard the latest news flash—which I hadn’t. [clipping pasted on this page] This item in today’s paper explains what late reports revealed last night. Two children were found shot to death in a remote part of McIver Park; each shot 3 times but no trace of their mother. I had a case of the ‘willies’ reading this because I’d hiked in McIver Sunday and the report said the children had been dead about 3 days! I wonder if my thoughts and uneasiness that day were dim ESP blips, especially as I recalled the man I saw walking through the brush. These events cast a shadow on that fair piece of land, though don’t believe it was anywhere too near my favorite haunts. Doubly glad for Nushka and the fact he is rarely out of my sight during our hikes.
Theories abound, as the mother had taken the children from their father for a day’s outing and sometimes, horrible as it is, parents will murder their own children in order to punish their spouses. Of course, there’s also the rumor that a nut case could have disposed of all three.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it’s a sad, uncomfortable feeling. On the brighter side, a “brand new” fossil was discovered in Texas. [news clipping pasted on the page]
“The flying creature has been dubbed the Texas pterosaur and is the largest flying creature now known. The fossil remains indicate the creature which lived more than 60 million years ago had a wingspan of 15.5 meters or 51 feet, larger than the 38 foot wingspan of an F4 fighter jet and about double that of the largest such creatures (known) up to now.” [article by Brian Sullivan]
Very exciting! Perhaps there will be new discoveries to fill in the evoluntionary gaps between Leakey’s prehistoric humans and other branches of our species.
Later in the day: “It’s not a matter of risking failure; it’s giving triumph a chance.” H. Wheldon on Bill Moyer’s Journal—Channel 10. Isn’t that a marvelous way to see that old dichotomy freshly?!

March 15, 1975
Persistent rain today. Very gray. The search continues for the mother of the dead children at McIver. And yet daffodils and crocus are splashes of pure gold. Peach trees burst with pink popcorn blossoms, and I see that the sweet young braids of the weeping willows are green and graceful again. Spring goes on despite human tragedy.
Thus I gaze upon my winter aconite. Their tiny yellow blossoms are opening, and I must soon take a hand with Nushka to keep the villain from making mischief with my plants. I am in constant anxiety that he will lie down on the burgeoning tips of my peonies and break them off!
March 17, 1975
St. Patrick’s Day, Begorra, and another week socked in with rain. Such a hunger to write today—to stay home and listen to the talk of wind in the trees. I’m drenched with the kind of feeling I had when writing Volunteer—Oh, damn work!!
Later: At home, sitting by the kitchen heater watching rain scrub down so hard the world seems wrapped in a gray veil. Smoke puffs rising from the chimney add to the blue-gray exterior.
March 19, 1975
“Heredity deals the cards, and environment plays the hand.”
March 21, 1975
If ‘one swallow does not a summer make’, will the date on a calendar suffice for spring? Gray with the promise of continued rain marks this equinox.
March 22, 1975
Have been glancing over an old, incomplete manuscript, “The Fall of the Year” and am both appalled and encouraged. The writing in so much of it, especially the earliest pages, is so trite and immature that I wonder how I considered it worth adding to, but the fact that I so clearly see its flaws surely indicates an improvement of some sort. Can I ever progress so far beyond my present state that TCH and even VFG will be embarrassing to revisit? An exhilarating thought on the one hand, though I wince at the potential damage to Volunteer. Oh, God, how I wish I could begin my new novel now!
*TCH: The Carriage House, my first novel, unpublished
*VFG: Volunteer for Glory, my second novel, published, still in print