Tuesday, September 6, 1994 A letter arrived in my mailbox today. While anxious and nervous about whether or not it would come, I was, nevertheless, hoping for it. You might even say like father, like daughter, or words similar to that. So here's what it said: My mom told me that I received something from you in the mail and I felt both anxious and excited waiting for it's arrival. When I discovered that it was only an address I was disappointed - NOT because I was expecting anything from you - I am not. But because it dawned on me that I would have to rewrite a letter that took me forever to write the first time. Here goes... For the second time I am trying to understand why I am writing to you after all these years. The thought first crossed my mind in 8th grade or so yet I never put pen to paper - or if I did I didn't mail it. Assuming I finish the process this time around - I am still bewildered as to my motives. I can tell you this. I don't expect anything from you in terms of a relation- ship or even a letter back - Indeed, I hope that you don't _expect_ that from me should you decide to respond to this letter. Right now this process is about me. I guess what this boils down to is that I am curious about you - what you do, what you think etc. I wonder if we are similar. I'm thinking so much now so I am going to end this letter and mail it. - Cheyen --- - ------ --- --- ------- CA 90020 P.S. I am also _really_ curious about how you imagine me - If you do... The letter writer is, of course, my daughter Cheyenne, who I've had no contact with, directly, since she was about 2 years old. She graduated from college last June, and celebrated her 22 birthday on June 6. Can any of my correspondents in LA tell me something about where 90020 is located? For some reason I was reminded of the Uncle Reamus story about the time Brer Fox finally caught Brer Rabbit. So the Fox has Brer Rabbit by the ears. And the latter says something like, I don't care what you do with me Brer Fox, just don't throw me in that briar patch. You can skin me alive. You can tear me to pieces. But DON'T throw me in that briar patch. Anything but that, Brer Fox! So Brer Fox throws Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. The next thing you know Brer Rabbit is happy as a clam - because the briar patch is where he was born and raised. Well, that is the first image that came to mind on reading her letter. Several weeks ago my mom called to say Cheyenne had visited her in Wyoming for a few days, while on the way to California and a new job. Cheyenne re- marked about having sent me a letter but it was returned by the postoffice. I don't know what address she sent it to unless it was Dorchester. She knew of that address because my mom stayed with me there in the Spring of 1990, or was it 1991? Anyway, Cheyenne and her boyfriend of that time, Ben, gave her a ride home one evening. Ben helped my mom to the front door with her things. But Cheyenne stayed in the car. Anyway, I sent a note to Cheyenne's old address at Colby College, from which she recently graduated. It was then, apparently, forwarded to Cheyenne's mom here in Boston. So the first line of Cheyenne's letter to me read just like the first line of my letter to her: "My mom tells me that you sent me a letter..." A bit of that old Twilight Zone theme music, please. Now she is living in California, and about to start a job as an elemen- tary school teacher. Or so I am informed. My letter to Cheyenne to follow... Thursday, September 8, 1994 Here is the letter I wrote to Cheyenne: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 Dear Cheyenne: Your cousin Mitzi once told me she was filled with anxiety about visiting her father after no contact for some years. But she decided to just go ahead and do it. I recollect her suggesting something similar to you regarding me. Well, I too understand this anxiety about meeting one's father. It happened to me around age 19, I think. We hadn't seen each other for some years. Not much came of it, but one doesn't know till you step out into the traffic. There's this metaphor from a cartoon: the dog of love starts across the 8-lane highway of life. While I've not been present during most of your life, I've also not been absent. It was the Summer of 1986, I think. Me and my typewriter were sitting in Harvard Square typing away, when along came half a dozen 12-14 year olds from Brookline (I didn't know this at first). They wondered what was going on. They see this man sitting at a table typing away, with sheets of paper taped to the front of said table. So I explained it as kind of a literature-of-the-public-moment project. We talked and I learned that some of them knew you or of you. They had nothing bad to say and seemed to think well of you. Oh, and earlier this evening, I think I saw Sandy Margolin. She was once married to David Kelston, your uncle. That was in Porter Square, Cambridge. Cynthia and I were in the Tags hardware store for some materials to attach a silkscreen to a wall. That wall, it turns out, is right behind me at this very moment. Another coincidence just like encountering Sandy? Probably not. Sandy didn't recognize me and neither does the wall. Oh well. Anyway, the Brookline kids and I chatted for a bit and then they were gone. Perhaps they mentioned it to you. And then, your last year of high school, I think, Carl informed me that you were still at Brookline. He was in the guidance department there, I think. Well those are a couple of stories about what I've heard of you over the last years. But mostly my mom, your grandmother, and your great grandmother have sent me pictures and told me bits of news about your growing up. So I have had a considerable amount of imaginations about you. On the other hand, that is not you. One of my inventions, The Portrait Project, which takes place on the Internet, is about just this question. Your phone rings, you pick it up and say hello. The other person answers. Many people immediately form an image of what that person looks like. Seldom does it turn out to be close. Sometimes you have an idea by the gender or age of the voice, or the accent. But mostly it is all imagination. So I imagine you, but, on the other hand, I have pictures, so I imagine, in that sense, something very close to how you look. On the other hand, how you are as a person is a bigger part of the picture I imagine. So I imagine that you are, as a person, somewhat modest, conventional, anxious about the future and finding a place for yourself in the world. Not the revolutionary represented by my side of your family, but not without social concerns. You picked a small liberal arts college which says you have an interest in the world at large as opposed to a strong orientation in say, science, art, politics. Growing up in Brookline would also orient you more to seeing yourself as a part of the world and less as an individualist. At one time I heard that you thought of medical school. (If you have a strong stomach for the operating room remind me to tell you a story I wrote about you and me in your first dissection class.) In your letter to me you are trying to be a very careful person. You don't want to startle or spook. You want to be very careful! It is not improbable that you are filled with the very old feelings of any child, in any time, who wants to find a lost parent. I know this feeling haunts me still. With me you don't need to be so careful. Perhaps I am just insensitive. Maybe I don't know better. But it is ok to say everything to me. I do not have a list of taboo topics. It is ok to look around for just how you want to say something you have never said before. At the moment I am living here right in the middle of beautiful downtown Somerville, Massachusetts, with Cynthia. She has a daughter, Erika, who is 24, and currently serving in the Navy, in Japan, in a position something like Mitzi's job in the Air Force. Cynthia is the Executive Director of Documentary Educational Resources, an anthropology film producer and distributor organization. DER is the home of films about two of the world's oldest and most interesting groups of people: the Kalahari !Kung and the Brazillian rainforest Yanomamo. DER was formed as an umbrella organization for the two filmmakers who produced this material. I work part-time for DER on computer related areas. The !Kung have interested me for nearly 20 years, and long before I knew Cynthia (who has been there for just over a year) or DER. I have enclosed a copy of my resume and a current list of my Internet projects so you can get some idea of the sort of things that have interested me over the years. For many years I have written what you might call a diary or journal. Some years ago I sent a copy of writing done in 1981 to my mom. She burned it. Not long after that I sent a copy to my aunt Rosemary (my father's sister). She got it in the mail one day while home from work. She sat down to read it. Eventually the kids came home from school and asked for something to eat. She pointed to the kitchen and continued reading. Still later her husband came home and asked when dinner would be ready. She pointed to the kitchen and continued reading. She read till she finished it--all 250 typed 8.5 by 11 inch pages. There are some things about you in it. There are some notes about the first year or so of your life. You can have a copy. But you have to ask. Last night I tried to get Cynthia to pose for some pictures with me. Those pictures will be a while in coming. I send them off to a place in Seattle for developing. But I will include a few Polaroids from the time my mom and Mitzi visited Boston. You must return those to me. However, should you find one or two that particularly strike your fancy, well, then you can keep them. What do I think? Well, quite a lot, actually. And about quite a lot of things. Some of which I write about. Let me put one of my recent ideas to paper just for you. I have talked about it with only three or four others. You will be the first to see my written words about it. My idea begins with the question of why white European's have come to so dominate the world while being the actual minority of all peoples, or close to the minority in racial types. This question has long interested me--and many others. A possible answer came to me while reading a story from the June 1, 1994, New York Times. A copy of the story is enclosed. In big typeface it says: Cause of Cystic Fibrosis Is Traced to the Stone Age. It turns out that CF, like many so called genetic defects, also has a potential useful result. Sickle-cell anemia is one of those things with an advantage. It provides some protection against malaria. Tay-Sachs seems to provide some protection against tuberculosis. The CF gene, furthermore, seems to only be present in the white population. Only in Caucasians. It seems to have been around for a long time. This implies that there must be some sort of advantage that it confers on carriers. The idea of just what that advantage is came to me one day while reading about the cholera epidemic in Rwanda. Cholera causes loss of fluids. Loss of fluids causes distortion in the concentration of electrolites (things like potassium and calcium--required for the proper functioning of nerves) in the body. It causes major losses of these electrolites. Since populations all over the world, and probably throughout all of history, have had things like cholera, anything that gave one population an advantage, a resistance to water loss, and upsetting electrolite balances, would give an advantage in the form of a more stable nervous system. And in thousands of competitions between warriors, for example, the steadier nerves, all other things being equal, will give a small advantage. And in such a situation, a small advantage is everything. A small advantage means victory. So the Europeans, by my theory, marched around, got sick, along with the local populations--but not as sick as they were, and beat them to the draw, so to speak. Also, a relatively small number of people could eventually overpower a much larger number burdened with this condition of being slightly sicker. Well, that is the gist of the idea. It is something I have thought. Now you will have to answer the question about whether or not we are similar. What do you think? Richard Gardner Box 381067 Harvard Sq Stn Cambridge MA 02238-1067 (617) 628-9749 September 6, 1994 Friday, September 9, 1994 It was a dark and stormy afternoon. At 1:47pm lightning struck. A power line across the street from my office was hit. It broke, both ends burning and flailing about like giant summer sparklers the size of pythons. And all the colors of the rainbow. That lasted less than a minute. The lightning continued down to the ground, and entered, or, technically speaking, left, at a point where the granite curbstone met soil and the base of a tree. That burned for half an hour or so. The granite boiled and bubbled till it looked like foamed stone with a slightly greenish-black coloring. The site smol- dered till evening and was still warm the next day. An eight inch diameter chunk of the granite/earth/whatever material sits in my office. The power went off for three hours. I got a piece of the burned cable from the power company crew. The power line actually broke/burned in several places within about 50 yards of my office. It was just moments after the strike that I called the office just downstairs from mine. Someone picked up the phone and touch-toned three numbers. I said hello. A frightened voice asked if this was the police. Nope. Richard, I said. That's when I learned that all the above had happened. She was trying to call the police and fire department for help. I hung up and left for my office. There were fantasies in my head of the whole building, old and made from wood, being nothing but a smoldering pile of charcoal. A block away I saw some sort of emergency sign in the road. Cars were being diverted. But it was only the power company come to fix the wire. The telephones in the downstairs office were working--for outgoing calls. The phone company provides their own power. However, the ring in this office comes from another power supply because 6 or more phones have to ring at the same time. That power supply was out with the broken wire. So it was just chance that someone picked up the phone as I called. They told me no calls had come in since the lightning strike. Moments later the power came on and the phones started ringing again.