.MTYzOQ.MTQ0Nzgz

-2- The extra $300 raise given me at Pembroke State University after my return from Abilene. NM

The raise in salary was a kind of end-of-year present. Actually I have to say that your salary compares pretty well with salary payments anywhere, especially if, as I presume, rents and a certain kind of expense are a little less there than in an urban situation. You deserve more but I am at least glad you are getting this. I was also glad to hear that there was at least a possibility that the Pembroke Magazine might have another issue. I hope you can manage to wangle some funds out of the University for this before the coals cool altogether.

Most students at Pembroke are not enthusiastic about anything! NM

I was much interested in the circular letter, which you sent from the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. There is certainly no great enthusiasm for Nixon here, anymore than in Pembroke. However the Eastern seaboard is one thing and the center of our country is another. Perhaps the silent majority is more vocal there. At least I know that this particular speech was received in Minnesota a day before it was given, and the telegramed answers to it actually prepared before the speech was heard. I only wish the silent majority could express an affirmative opinion for poetry.

Skye Macleod

You must thank Sky too for adding her letters to the archives. What a rough time you had of it in Santa Fe. I was glad of your explanation of the details. Savannah State College, thanks to your mother, sounded much easier. It was a real tribute they paid her putting her photograph in the yearbook.

I'd be happy to write a generalized letter of recommendation to go in your file at the University of New Mexico; but as an old cowhand let me say that it is much better if a job comes in sight for me to tailor a letter particularly to that job. So say that you know I'll be glad to write them about you, and they'll ask me if they want to. Then a letter stands out; in a dossier it become invisible. I am sorry to seem to have rushed this but the last few days before Christmas are hardly tranquil ones. Do have as good a holiday as possible. I know that Skye and your Norman will help to make it so. Affectionately, Norman

Note- Dear Norman: with reference to you paragraph one in this letter- most of the poems in "Family & Flying Apart" were started, begun again, and were written in part or in whole about forty times- mainly at one sitting- although some changes were made later. I meant to keep the "Bless you " as the last line of poem in memory of Margret Thors?- but in crossing out the "god" I seem to recall that in my haste I crossed out the "Bless you," too, & I didn't mean to do that. Norman Dec 29, 1969