In 1967 I was living in Chevy Chase, Maryland with my brother's family. Working in Bethesda at Macco of Bethesda-an art supply store. I was selling art suppies, stretching canvass and enclosing pictures in picture frames.

We lived in a two-story brick house on Bradly Blvd and I walked to work everyday.

My friend, who lived in Southern Oregon, wanted me to live with her. She wrote me about the Eden like beauty of Oregon. She lived in an old house that had been converted to duplex and was attending Southern Oregon State College, as it was not yet a university. She wrote to me about her adventures (lovers). One of which was a man who was a poet and had published his poetry in a little book-like publication.

As I had written a lot of poetry and wanted to do the same, I wanted to meet this Greg Keith and talk more about how to go about printing my poetry. And as I was increasingly worried about falling in love with a business man and being stuck for the rest of my life around Maryland or worst-Washington D.C.

Off to Ashland, Oregon. March 2,1968. Sunny, quiet and peaceful. No cars on the streets, no people on the sidewalks. I found the Rolling Pin, the restaurant where my friend worked. I was seventeen and Carole a year older.

Oregon was in poverty then, but the natural beauty was something that money could never buy. And I would only really notice the poverty because I had to leave at the end of summer every year. I didn't have family there and there was no work to be found outside of mill work or orchard work.