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March 12, 1990 Dear Jack (and Carolee!). So good to hear from you. I do appreciate your letters in more ways than one: it renews my confidence in writers of working-class origin. It makes me happy to know there are people who will writer letters in this day and age when a lot of folks don't even writer anymore, let alone for a friend, and it makes me want to continue the rewriting stage of my second novel, which always seems difficult. (either you think you aren't capable of writing anything or that the first draft is so awful you can't improve it) So you and Carolee give me couarge. Reminds me, that one of the four main characters inthe novel is Coralee, named after a women I used to work with in a NYC hospital. She was brave and very sweet, and we lost touch. I hope someone is making he happy somewhere. I recall that she and I and another psychiatric tech. marched down to the basement engineering office one day to present a petition to rehire a harrassed worker. Haven't thought about that in years. You would think that a school nurse job would be quieter than a hospital. In some ways it is. I spent many months writing and rewriting my short stories and novel while on the job, but mostly while working summers, when there's nothing to do. I am able to write letters, such as this one and, if I'm careful, have unlimited use of my phone. But with the principal we have now, I am lucky to be able to think while at school.* This creep was promoted to the downtown Board of Ed, while there wrote up the official Attendance Improvement Policy (which harrasses teachers who're out more than three days when we're entitled to 15 sick days, and which includes funeral days in those absences, which we're also entitled to), made everyone hate his so much at the Board even so, that they demoted him back to the schools--to our school. Since here, he stopped me from circulating a petition to the parents about the unhealthy cafeteria conditions, he put crazy glue in the lock of a teachers door so she can't lock it, closed another teacher out of the building because she left from the wrong door and threatened me when the security guard gave him a leaflet against the invasion of Panama that he'd stolen from off a teacher's desk. The ways in which he makes work unbearable for everyone are numerous, but as yet there's not a unified effort to get him out. He's been focusing his fire on some of the biggest mouths (those not necessarily the most honest people, who themselves shortchange the children and who fight back in an individualistic way with him). One of these is the shop steward, whose form of revenge is to call in sick rather than call a union meeting. She herself calls meetings to outline how the union itself is going to be used as an instrument to keep the teachers from smoking anywhere in the school building, including in the bathroom! Another of these (on whom he focuses his petty bull____), is the vice principal, who is drunk 4 days out of 5. And another is a quiet, kindhearted clerk who spent the last two days under his orders typing up every minute of each date a teacher was late, back to 1988. At the end of 2 days, he told her it was all wrong. He criticizes her work every day until she is in tears.

• I have gone back to my practice of getting up at 4AM to write. It keeps me sane.