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in pencil in top margin Field, Ben

St. Patricks Day 1981 Dear Jack,

     Jeanette and I have just gotten home after a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we are senior volunteers, having buffeted a heavy flurry of sorry Marchers in the Annual Parade and scores of drunkards.  One bloody souse, crossing the street, picked up a beer bottle and broke it, met me at the curb in a get-together that almost ham strung me.
    I hope things were quieter in your town!   
    How have the publishers been treating you?
    In the past, I would get rejections.  Now they simply ignore me, and thereby save postage stamps.  After a while, one gets hardened to the situation.  Before the skies clear, there will be more than flurries of snow.  We are living in the Reagan Era, and so one continues banging away on the typewriter.
    Just got the report over the radio that there will be a March on  the Pentagon May 3!
   Our warmest regards to Gladys.
   The above is just a how-do-you-do?  to one of my favorite Irishmen.

Sincerely, Ben