How is it that some days just become tender as the messages come from here and there with this one having surgery and that one broken hearted and this one with some old loneliness and another with no mercy for herself? And maybe partly I had a dream upon waking that puts me in the frame of mind where many things of the now remind of sometime ago when the world was different and I was different and there’s a tenderness to remembering even briefly. Just before school let out when I was in early grade school, getting off the school bus, I might catch a glimpse of old Mr. Roberts heading off into the woods with his ox cart to gather firewood, his two red-brown ox slow and powerful old friends of his who never needed the whip he carried. He drove horse teams for my grandfather when my family first came to the little Yankee town and were the darkest people ever to stay. My grandmother sitting by the pond shelling peas says quietly, “yes, I saw Buffalo Bill Cody when his Wild West Show came to town soon after I came off the boat from Italy. His hair was long and white and beautiful.”
Did anyone happen to notice that the new Mr. Empire State Leather, a very butch number indeed, used to be a Vermont Lesbian truck driver who transitioned with some obvious success? There’s a good interview him in the May issue of Out In The Mountains.
And speaking of trans, I’ve recently met a high school student who clearly identifies as being transgender and while he finds safety at school is running into trouble at home. Is there a Quaker trans MtF who might come forward as a resource person should this student choose to be in touch?
Spring here in Vermont seems to be coming slowly. I’ve recently been to NYC, SF, Seattle, and Ohio- all of whom have tons more blossoms and warm weather than Putney.
July 1939
Dear friend, 23.7. ’39
Friends have been urging me to write you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it is worth.
It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing you.
I remain,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. Gandhi
Herr Hitler
Berlin
Germany