December 15, 2005
Thursday

Above is a picture of Landes Hall on the campus of Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. In the school year of 1967-1968, my junior year, I lived in Room 126, its window seen here on the second floor, first one in the long row to the right of the brick wall that marks the end of the lobby/lounge area.

That’s my car. The parking area looks deserted because this picture was taken on a Sunday in late May, during the first summer session. No one was living in this building then. No one will ever live in it again. In fact, if you go to the Millersville campus today, you won’t find it looking like this. The section I lived in has been razed (demolition began not long after this occasion) and the section that juts back from that front door will be remodeled as a new classroom/office building

I think the picture symbolizes May for me because I spent the month remembering things. I posted 11 times to The Silken Tent, three of the posts essays about people I’ve known who died. On 050505 (May 5, 2005), I posted “five fives,” among them a list of five places I can’t go back to because they’re not there anymore. (Landes Hall was not on that list, I guess because it had not yet fallen to the wrecking ball.)

And I was well out of my funk. I was reading about Wyoming. And I was writing again. I turned my notebook* on May 31, and set my course for Wyoming.

The day I turn the book is a measure of my productivity. Turning it in May is good. This year I opened the second volume in September. I’ll make the turn of that one before the Feast of Stephen. The goal for 2006 — fill two.

*I use top-bound lined spiral-bound notebooks for my paper journal. I buy them by the armload at Millersville because the first time I wrote steadily for more than a few weeks, the first time I filled a notebook, was in 1992, in a notebook with a blue cover and the Millersville logo on it. Each notebook has 80 sheets. I write on the fronts of the first 75, then turn the book over and write on the backs, for a total of 150 pages.

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)