For a change, I made the Thursday morning train to New York in good time. Chatted with Joe Bevis & Herb Abelson of Opinion Research Corporation. A few minutes after ten I was at C. D. Jackson's office where we discussed amicably our prospective work for Pro Deo. He is a very large and intelligent man, who can be both cordial and hostile and wears both attitudes quite well. He was definitely nervous that morning, and as usual several theories can explain why: he is temporarily in a tiny office w/ his secy. since his big office is being prepared by workers who were momentarily on strike; he didn't like all the conditions I set forth in a letter to Steve Du Brul which he has read; he was in a sweat trying to get off on vacation for July. I might also say that we are not perfectly at ease with one another either, inasmuch as we have scarcely seen one another over the many years since we met.
Back at the office, I worked with Yaw Mann, a gentle, good-looking small dark gentleman from Ghana, on his proposed doctoral dissertation. I advised him to put aside his elaborate, rambling outline of the story of political parties in Ghana in favor of a new thesis delineating the shift of power from the tribal leaders to the rising bourgeoisie and bureaucrats, political parties representing the typical vehicle for the transition. He promises to work hard and I shall see that he does a good job.
Dick Ware of the Relm Foundation joined me at 12:30. We lunched at Minetta's and took coffee down the street at an espresso cafe. He told me that the Board might approve the grant of $30,000 asked for by IUSS, in Pro Deo if I would undertake responsibility for the program to be supported. I am much amused by the fact that first Father Morlion told me he had this money in hand for my work, then applied for the money using my name, and then the backfiring began by Du Brul, a Board member of Pro Deo and also of the Foundation, asking me to verify the whole business, and now the Board of the Foundation feeling that the grant should be provided only if I were to assume it and carry it along. The Pro Deo people are now wondering who has whose tail between the teeth.
Dick also resumed our old discussions about studying the compliance costs of business. I told him that a graduate student might be found who, working under my supervision, might prepare an initial inventory of all the ways in which government impinges upon the time, money, psychology, and operations of business. Once the problem were structured, new support would be given for a larger study.
At three, I called at 12 Perry St. upon Jean Pearson. She was pleasant. She has an astonishingly delicate and pretty face, perhaps a trifle hard. We spoke of this and that and parted in an hour on good terms. She will permit me to maintain my legal residence there and, if her sister does not occupy the place in the fall, will probably sub-lease it to me again. I did not ask her for a promise, however, since I wish to maintain some freedom in the matter of an apartment for next year. I picked up some laundry from my Chinese friend who asked whether I had been out of town. How intelligent so many Chinese are! They are capable of great cruelties (who isn't) but I often think that if all goes badly and we end up in a century subjected to the half-billion Chinese it won't be as bad as it might with other races. Of course also, a people can change from good to bad in the course of war cond conquest.
Returning to the office, I stopped at the Bookstore & bought Shakespeare's complete poems, George Thomson's "The Foreseeable Future," a collection of Russian proverbs (to out-Khrushchev Khrushchev), the Pocket Book of Modern Verse, and Piget's development of thought in the child. Only 1 out of 5 books I buy I've not read at least in part beforehand. I don't want anything around I can't study as well as read. I worked on correspondence and made phone calls until 8, then ate at a favorite delicatessen on 8th St. & McDougall. The beer and imperial sandwich of salmon lox, ham, Swiss cheese, cole slaw and pickle were delicious but I drank gallons of water for the next five hours.
At 9 I met Leo Connolly, Jerry Ullman, Gene Nixon and Bill Donner at Ullman's house. He is running fast & scared for Assembly from the 1st District. We laid out some of the strategy of the campaign. In politics, like war, you can think of many things that should be done, that would be neat, devastating, & clever, but end up doing a few simple things and praying that they will be well-executed & lucky. At 12 we dispersed and a hot, delayed train ride brought me to Princeton and home at 1:3- AM. Jill & I talked for another hour. She is still sick but likes to talk and listen.
Friday an inconsequential day. I worked on PROD all day long. What a pain to decide its new form! Getting a hundred thousand dollars for it would be too much to undertake now. I should have to abandon other jobs. Anything less than that might well be lost in failure. Even $2000 or 80 would be dangerous to risk & therefore I am about determined to go only a little way towards more expensive promotion and format. We shall simply publish a continuously better little magazine and watch for a financial or publicity break to move onto a much bigger plane. Paul Lyness, with whom I lunched at the Nassau Inn, is beginning to be interested in PROD, but I see nothing that he can produce at the moment in advertising, sales, promotion, editing, or money, that would markedly change my plan.
Saturday. Most of the morning spent on a long letter to Dick Ware and one to Father Morlion, both concerning the Institute for Intergroup Relations. Rec'd a preciously funny letter from Robbie on Procchio, full of warmth, anger, irony and helpful information. Breakfasted on fried egg and tuna, toast, jelly, coffee. Lunch two hamburgers and a bowl of chicken noodle soup, w/ coffee. Supper, roast lamb, road potatoes, string beans, much fresh fruit -- peaches, nectarines, apple, grapes ... coffee. At 3, Paul and I played tennis -- he begins to get the ball back. I let him beat me to encourage him to practice more. At 4 we swam at the YMCA. He will beat me at the crawl in a year or two. At 5 we shopped at the A&P for the family's long weekend. Dinner 7-8. Helped John repair his twin outboard motors on a handsome model boat he received for his ninth birthday. he is growing fast & strong. (Chris incidentally climbed half-way up the tall pine outside the kitchen, hand over hand on a rope & using several nailed cleats on the tree as grippers. Paul could do this also at 6. Chris has poison ivy, Carl has a cough. Jill is getting well slowly. The Blumenfelds were by for a moment around 8 and introduced a New York federal district judge who was visiting with them. At 9:30 we watched "Paladin" on "Have Gun Will Travel" program on TV and since then I have repaired a light in the kitchen, sent the boys to bed, spoken some words of philosophy with Jill, talked over our travels in Europe in 1958, and written these words.
? Is God necessary to Political Science ?
Every age has its weakness of perception and dogma, and the most distinguished intellects that flourished from the Enlightenment to this time have been especially remiss in their view of God, even while they have advanced the capabilities and substance of the human mind incalculably far. Their work has been so great, in fact, that one cannot even develop his idea of God without depending upon them far more than they would be willing to allow, if they could control the effects of their ideas. Putting aside the major questions of a proper theology, however, we may inquire how a particular body of principles and operations, namely political science, relates to the idea of God.
Let us begin at the bottom, where Diderot, Voltaire, Bentham, Franklin, Darwin, Marx, Kroptkin, Freud, Lombart, Pareto, Trotsky, M. Weber, Dewey, Mead, Merriam and Lasswell leave us, and proceed upwards, leaving them in turn as we speculate on relations between God and political man that they would not easily imagine, tolerate, or endorse:
1. First that G doesn't exist & we should eradicate both the idea and any practical fictions that he does.
2. Then that G. doesn't exist, unhappily, and we have to make the best of the hard fact.
3. That G. doesn't exist but we should tolerate the belief *& encourage it, say many) because it helps people be content.
4. Fourth, that G. doesn't exist but it should be a legal fiction that he does.
5. That G. may exist but have nothing to do w/ man.
6. That G. exists but works his wonders in mysterious ways.
7. That G. exists and can be known thru his works, if not thru his intervention.
8. That G. exists & intervenes in man's affairs.
What type of G. -- a. Biblical God.
b. New Testament God
c. The God of universal law
9. That the definition of G. should be an affair of state.
9a. Policy about God
9b. Policy thru God's voice
10. That the definition of God should be an individual matter, or a non-statal, group problem
11. That the definition of God requires uniformity in society, even if not enforceable.
12. That God doesn't exist but religious leaders who have seemed to be Godlike are of the highest authority & should be followed as long as human circumstances seem to resemble those He talked about.
13. That God is well and good but religions are useless.
Contrary to the notion that the problem of 9. is only relevant to Pol. Sci. if it is phrased as 9a, 10 or perhaps 8 - 12, God is needed in Pol. Sci. from 1 - 12 to know and understand political behavior, and from 1 - 12 in applied political science, because of the ethical question that underlies all applied science. So the idea is needed in pure and applied science.
But won't science fall to pieces if we introduce a controversial and vague inoperational concept?
Show the range of behaviors affected by the idea of God.
Show how the philosophical problems arising in the study of God are needed in the study of political behavior.
Show how the methodology of social science suffers from 18th century dogmatism. (The scholars who, in the name of scientist, demand scepticism or agnosticism, deny it in religion, like the man who says "One can never be sure about anything." "Are you sure of that?" "Yes, I'm sure!"
Yesterday morning rowed for three hours on Lake Carnegie with Jessie, Paul & John, hunting turtles and fish. We caught four turtles and returned at 11:50 AM. Worked on PROD in the afternoon. Tom Freylinheusen came by for drinks at 5. Chong-Ik Kim and Mr. Lam of West Michigan S. College at Kalamazoo, who took his PhD work in Chinese history under Arthur Wright at Stanford drove in for an hour's visit. Supper of baked chicken, rice & gravy -- excellent -- Jill is recovering fast. I began to assemble letters & papers for some ultimate coding & compiling & then walked with John, Carl & Chris to the fireworks display at the Stadium. We ate ice cream on our return. I read for an hour. Bed at 12.
While editing Shah's piece on Bhave's Bhoodan movement, my mind goes from the simple village economies that Gandhi & Bhave want to the giant integrated economies of the Western world and I think the first is segmental (like the paramecium & earthworm), whereas the latter is organic, like man. Then I think how complicated is the cell of the paramecium itself, and then how all of man is contained in the sperm & ovum, two cells, fusing indeed into one. The mind balks at the staggering burden such complexity lays on the shoulders of data & theory -- logico-empiricism, that is. Explain it all, as we are about to do, as it happens. Watch it! Stop it! Start it! Modify it! But still it is stupendous & to observe it is not to understand it. Can there be some profound simple explanation such as God, call Him Teleological & Ontological Nature, if you will. Evolutionary theory will not suffice even for the how much less the why of existence. The staggering statistics on the universe & biology that spew from the mouth of man carry disbelief in their very enormity, like the wild ramblings of a drunk.
Beaux Arts Hotel, NYC, July 8, 1960 9 AM
Heraclites vs. Parmenides -- the theme of my days. How to keep the full-rigged schooner's sails up and neat in the gale. The thought of death would not dismay me now. So many breezes have stroked my cheeks & ruffled my hair. I have touched so many events and ideas. I am for the sergeants who used to shout at the hesitant recruits: "What's the matter, you bastards, you want to live forever?" Not that I am tired. I am full of plans and thoughts. But I also feel that I am completed. An imperfect job to be sure -- let us say that my original investment has been returned and I am speculating on profit.
At eight-fifteen yesterday morning, I drove speedily to Philadelphia International Airport, the long cool-green Pontiac station wagon eating up miles on the average of one a minute. At the same moment Dad & Mom left Chicago by DC 8 United jet, enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and descended on the runway five minutes after we waked in, at 9:35. They were joyfully received by Jill & the children when we arrived in Princeton. Brother Ed came in a little while later to stay for the weekend. He is in NYC w/ IGE, just begun four days ago, and we dined together Thursday night at Peter's Backyard and the Pompeium Inn (for coffee and dessert) on roast beef and spare ribs. The food was not prima nor well received, since I was quite tired from three rather vigorous days without much sleep (I sometimes wonder now whether I shall be a crabby and complaining old man and think I should take steps to avoid that possibility. It comes out of the demand for perfection & impatience at failure. To be demanding and good-natured -- that is the nice trick!)
The Advisory Board of the American Behavioral Scientist, formerly PROD, must now be organized. I reached Lasswell at Yale by phone. He accepted. Then, impromptu, I invited Bill Wheaton, Director of
A regimen for Un-Institutional Man
(A set of mental, physical, and social exercises designed to alleviate the deleterious effects of over-bureaucratization of man.)
Premises: a. Instits. are often good
b. They have intrinsically vices also
c. Habits have to be broken
d, e, f. Habits have to be created
Exercises Early in Life
- exercises of independence
- exercises of self-reliance
- resistance to group
- non-participation
Adolescence
- rebellion vs. peer gps
- solitude
- wandering
- writing poems & prose
Manhood
- credo
- resign
- lead a revolt within an Institution
- lead an opposition from outside.
Senescence
- resign from everything & rejoin selectively
- write
- train young
Women Men
Organizing the Corporation for Work Abroad.
The tide of business moving abroad, -- e. g. paper mills, GE, GM ... Engineering
The mystique of international boundaries.
The character of domestic management.
The traditional orgn for work abroad: the separate corp. e. g. IGM, IGE
The quantitative, not qualitative (or the diminishing qualitative) differences between foreign and domestic ops., e.g.. legal, communication, tax, production control, public relations, decision-making, personnel, transport, e. g., 1 case of each of above.
Solution: in extreme cases (Arctic or very backward & isolated places) or completely different products (shoes-mfg in US & fist Co. in Morocco), sep. corp. may be needed.
De jure corp. may also be needed on occasion (but lines of coord. & command should pass thru this corp. like air thru a light curtain).
Otherwise: call on extended services in each of the appropriate categories of domestic orgn: & by recruitment & INSERVICE training REEDUCATE
July 14, 1960 ? 2 Broad Bwl Green 19th flr.
Form typifying % of all "research" and study projects. "Methods of group study & reporting"
Negotiators
* Administrators
* Advisory (kick it around comm.)
* Drafting Personnel
* Supervisory Bd / often same as Ad Bd.
Publication
What are effects of this highly important folkway?
Good -- A fair extension of an average individual ability
Bad -- 1. Not really group research
2. A good man is hampered. Tends to weaken specially
the ability of the drafting personnel.
True gp. research.
I am a true anarchist. Discontented with everything, even while I enjoy everything. I see all sides and like and dislike them all. Whenever anything steps forward, I lop its head off. I promote any laggard, even while I reproach him. If these statements are astonishing in view of my conduct, it is because my conduct is controlled. For 40 years I have been testing and constructing a network of dikes, deviations, sand bars, piers, and all manner of elastic and absorbent responses, guards, and transformers.
Conservatism -- everything has been discovered & is known. True. Must be believed. To be happy is to hold this belief. But: the permutations of the partly known, of the big things that have thru history been known, are the source of a greater happiness and furthermore of a sense of new achievement, lacking which man lies in the dirt road like a house turd of last week.
We remain uncertain of the day of my departure to Europe. The 27th now appears likely. Cathy writes from Tours of a typical scurrilous French landlady at her pension and anticipates warmly my arrival before the end of the month. But David Danzig is delayed in Rome, C. D. Jackson is on vacation & there is pressure not to leave before the next week or two. I may depart anyhow. I don't care much whether the Pro Deo University people are pleased or not. I'll take a vacation if nothing else.
Ed was in New York City last week and I spent two nights at his apartment. He, an amusing but rather terrible lunatic friend of his named Bill Ballard, & I watched the nominating speeches on TV. Victor was in L.A. working hard and well for the losing candidate, Adlai Stevenson. Earlier the same evening I met with my Analysis Sub-Committee of the Rep. Party of NY County and presented to them a plan for a series of public opinion probes and issue presentations for the next year. They were enthusiastic & sense that we may move forcibly into the center of the Party struggle via this means. Present were Leo Connolly, Marv Rosen, Marion Steinman & Bill Reynolds. Stephanie Neuman was with us earlier. her study of the Rep. party leadership of the county, based on interviews of the major figures shows the smallness of the elite and its brittle character. The Republican Party is a token establishment. A few men of vested interest run it without inspiration. I am sorely tempted to spur right into its midst but how can I without having a more valid claim to NYC residence. As soon as the struggle is engaged, one becomes committed for 4 to 6 nights a week, not one or two. To straddle NYC & Princeton so completely is impossible. Something would have to give away. I don't have the money for a full double residential life, bringing the family in more or moving back & forth constantly behind the facade of an impressive residence. I looked over a dilapidated rooming house on Stuyvesant St., the other day, thinking perhaps to buy it and, since the neighborhood is improving rapidly, to remodel it and gradually occupy it. But it would take all my cash to do it and I cannot gamble on the single shot yet. perhaps I should write a short, sharp book on the problems of NYC. But when? I am already over-committed to write this & that.
PROD, now the American Behavioral Scientist, has taken much time lately. The changed concept & format, the need to build a new Advisory Board, prepare advertising materials, arrange printing, etc. eat up great gobs of time and energy. On top of it, the Administrative Sci. Q. sent back my 120 pp. mss for a final review of editing & criticism & I have given it another dozen hours. It stands up well, but when oh when will I see the last of it. Galleys & pages still to come. What a pure form of philanthropy such writing is, but since it is also so much a part of my mission in life I hardly regard it so.
The Democrats have nominated Kennedy & Kennedy has chosen Johnson for VP. I believe that Nixon can beat this ticket. I should like to recommend that N name Ralph Bunche as his VP. B. is now supervising the delicate Congo UN operations. he would work marvels around the world in cracking the image of America as a racist country without sympathy for the ex-colonials. He would do what N. as done as VP but much more effectively. Russia could offer nothing vs. this coup. But I'm afraid the idea is impossible, if only because B has, I believe, a Democratic record. More than that, it is perhaps too late to swing around. Furthermore, would a great many whites take umbrage? I doubt it, but how to persuade people that they won't.
Seventeen people for dinner tonight. Bus' 3 from Washington, 6 of ours, Ramon Santiago (staying with us for a month as he did last year), Lorna Jackson (Vic's mother-in-law), Vic's 6-yr-old boy, Bruce, who was delighted being with his many cousins for the first time, Dad & Mom, Don Helferon, a friend of Lorna, Jill & I. I carved a large turkey roast for the occasion & we ate out on the patio. I am so glad for the peace of the late evening now, however pleasant it was.
Beaux Arts Hotel 8 AM July 20, 1960
Gide's Si le grain ne meurt begins the story of his life beautifully. A sad darkened parlor overstuffed, but that is his mind. He was not loved robustly. How fine his remembrances of live years of age. The agates, the first gramophone, the father. Can it be, as we believe, that there is a life where events drop like gleaming pearls thru a mist? Or is it Gide's magic selection, born in a day when all things were not equal. See how Thomas Wolfe exemplifies the American world of perceptions -- everything is on his page, moving restlessly. It must be style. One who shuts out everything save the Thing, the other who admits all including perhaps the Thing, but if not, oh well, never mind, it'll come in next time.
I am trying to edit the articles going into the American Behavioral Scientist's first issue. The task is not pleasant and diversions of thought & action occur. Yesterday it was a long alcoholic lunch with Gordo Derardi & Fred Veiler of John Wiley & Sons at the Harvard Club. I am trying to persuade them to put out a new edition of my American Way of Government with a couple of new co-authors. They would like me to write a completely new work in the same field. I say I would do so but would like the extra income from the old text while experimenting with the new. Later in the afternoon I had cocktails with Stephanie Neuman. Cathy calls her beautiful -- and she is in many parts, if not conventionally. She has a great jet-black mop of hair, a very slender figure, large breasts, big brown eyes and a dazzling smile in a generously sized well-shaped mouth. She is tan with a grey, not brown cast, & has high cheek bones. I had reproached her for not digging in to the tough innards of her study of Republican Party leadership in N. Y. County and she was momentarily angry. But then she recovered, spent several days of productive labor, and is now contrite and happy about it.
For a week, since the nomination of Kennedy & Johnson, I have thought that Ralph Bunch would be a perfect nominee for Vice-President alongside Nixon. yesterday I mentioned the matter to the publishers at lunch and they leapt to it. After dinner last night I called Neil Cotter in Washington and he liked the idea too, and urged me to phone Charles H. Percy in Chicago. I caught Percy and he said nothing one way or the other but he can hardly afford to do so. yet he was appreciative. I tried to reach Gil Bettman in Cincinnati but he & Liz were out. (I spoke to their daughter Louise, daughter also of my roommate Bill Evers who was killed in the war; I could sense the strong bond between Louise & myself, even while surprised to be talking to her.) Laura Bergquist of Look & Murray Kempton of the NY Post are apparently on vacation; I wanted to get them into the picture. Now what to do? Bunche would give us immediately a psychological victory such as we have not had since winning World War II. He would also help assure a Republican victory. it is very late to do anything now though. Still Nixon may not have made up his mind. Thurston Morton is after the job hot & heavy, pleading that he South needs recognition paralleling the nomination of Lyndon Johnson. Rogers, Attorney General, and Mitchell, Secretary of Labor have good claims. All three are good men. But Bunche's nomination would electrify the world. It would be a therapeutic shock for many Americans. If we wait longer we may get a fatal shock as a society & nation. Few understand how dire is the national health. I cannot afford to start up this agitation, but yet feel driven to put forward the proposal. I fell asleep, disturbed and hot, reading Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts, a scurrilous work whose obscenity places it beyond the pale of greatness, alas.
Most of yesterday went to testing the candidacy of Ralph Bunche for Vice-President. Soundings in several directions report that he is in many ways wonderfully qualified. I could write a book on the interaction of the suggestion with the ideology of 1) Strong Democrats 2) traditional Republicans 3) Negroes and sundry other strata penetrated by my initial inquiries. I have never considered the chances even fair, but his name is nevertheless before the leaders of the Convention, or will be emphatically when we dispatch a telegram this morning to Richard Nixon & Nelson Rockefeller. At the very least some expressions of pleasure by people at the idea of his candidacy might please Bunche & many others.
Cocktails with Prof. Charles Glicksburg of Brooklyn College & the New School for Social Research, and his daughter, Stephanie Neuman at the Grosvenor. He was pleasant and amusing. He has had three strip-tease girls in his literature classes recently, and went off at five, his white hair flowing in the breeze, to meet one of them.
Dinner guest of Richard Eells of GE at the Metropolitan Club joined by John Stanlaker, President of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. (Creativity - what - how - is their largest problem - tho not the source of their public relations problems. Most of the latter come over technical content, cut-off points, and other minor matters.) The food was superb -- shrimp, an inch thick slice of rare roast beef, water cress, blueberry pie a la mode, much Scotch and coffee. Later on I walked to Sutton Place to Dick's apartment for Kirsch and ice, a look at several nicely hung paintings and some late conversation
(July 1960) [something missing]
the Urban Studies Center at U. of Penn, and he accepted upon my assurances of a minimal expense of time and detail. This is precisely how I wish it to be. I phoned Herb Simon at Carnegie and he affirmed his acceptance, and on Wednesday I visited Angie Heckscher at the new E. 70th St. offices of the 20th Century Fund. Angie loves his new building. We talked of several things. He is anxious about Sebastian's not completing the Leisure book & I reassured him of Buzz's intent and my favorable estimate of the results. We agreed that Nelson Rockefeller was fumbling the approaches to the presidency. He joined the Board also. Then I wrote letters to a dozen other top-notch social scientists of the country & will, I am confident, have an excellent Board in a couple of weeks. I also drafted publicity for PROD, to go out in about 20,000 pieces of mail. I should send out a half-million but have no money. There is a rush of work to be done in the modification of the journal.
Wednesday afternoon, Dick Smith, Arthur Schwartz and I met in the latter's sumptuous office on E. 70th to talk of the Republican Party's plans for next year in the City. I suggested we set up a sample survey group to dig into opinion locally and shape the findings into a set of tough proposals for the good of New York. The idea will go, I feel. Eric Javitz' sub-committee on issues isn't working well. He is writing a book on NYC problems and letting the Committee slide away. Worse, he has nothing but corny ideas -- clean up New York; turn the rascals out; and all that clap-trap. So perhaps my committee will expand into his Lebensraum.
Dick Pear, fresh from London, met me for dinner, after which we drove to Princeton for the night. His curly red hair is much thinned but what is left behaves exactly as if it were full & luxuriant. He is cheerful and talkative, much more of both I've noticed now and in Rome in 1958 than he was at the University of Chicago in 1940 when we first met. He reported Cathy was in good form and, owing to the strike of Air France, had last been seen aboard the night train from London to Paris. He liked her and thinks she is a couple of years more mature than the average. We talked of the London School of Econ. & Pol. Sci., and compared it with other English & American Universities. I received for once a detailed account of the workings of the British university system. It appears unlikely, as I had suspected, that great advances in either pedagogy or science can come about through the system, though creative individuals will make their way. The London School professors, I learned, double their incomes by lectures and chores for the BBC and other groups. Few are paid enough for a comfortable living. The less-known universities -- Manchester, Exeter -- are excellent, he tells me, and vastly underrated at home & abroad. He told me that he was planning to edit a book of readings on politics. I suggested that, if the plan should not develop and in any case, he might wish to join me in publishing a book of readings on the rule of law. Nothing on this order is to be had, I pointed out, whereas dozens of books on civil liberties, politics, and regulation of business are available. He was taken by the idea, and we shall probably go ahead.
Next morning I drove Dick into New York. He was to leave for Los Angeles and Chicago, to attend the party nominating conventions as an observer. The day was clear, calm and comfortable so I picked up Steve Colt and we drove to Bay Shore where we rode the narrow launch to Fire Island. We swam in the cold water, walked far up past the large wooden structures of a wealthy summer colony, and rested quietly on the beds of the cottage while a thrilling breeze edged gently in through the windows, smelling of sun, sea and hot wood and grasses.
