A Conversation with Elizabeth
1998
Hello

From:          Elizabeth
To:            Larry.m.mixson@bvs.com
Date:          3/2/98 12:53pm
Subject:       Hello
 
The weekend was too short. I caught up with my Laubach student for two hours on Sat. aft., and that seemed to fragment my weekend. Sometimes I think she has really made progress, and she has, but then there is always the shock of what an "illiterate" person doesn't know--things we take for granted. For example, in an exercise, she spelled "daily" as "dayly." When asked to make the plural of business, she wrote businesses. She said she "thought" the word was too long. That's understandable given the complexities of English.    This morning I have been working steadily since arrival.
 
Did you get Turkle's book?
 
Did you say bald, or nearly bald? My mental images of you are more strongly of the pre-UCF time. I know when I saw you at UCF you said something about your hair, which you were starting to lose. I still vision you as you were, probably in your 20's, but occasionally I will slightly image you from UCF. My hair is still brown, with only one or two, possibly now three single strands of gray, which are kind of wiry, and stand out. I leave them in as a badge of my journeys. Neither of my parents grayed with age. Length--I looked at my Green Belt award pictures from about 77. My hair was LONG. When I left for UCF I got it cut way back to chin length. Over the years I have never let it get as long as it once was, but I have let it grow past my shoulders several times. Usually I try to keep it about shoulder length. When I moved here I got an awful haircut in Montgomery and drove all the way to Tuscaloosa to have it redone. The redo was above chin level. I don't like it that short. Fortunately it is still healthy enough to grow back fairly quickly. I ruined my hair a while back swimming two to three times a week in the Therapeutic Rec Center, where I go to exercise. Even with a cap, the water seeped in and it just fried my hair. Now I go, but don't swim and get my hair wet. Its recovered now and the fried parts have been basically cut off. Enough on hair. Have you thought about Rogaine? Just curious. They have it for women now too.
 
Friday before leaving I looked on the net for MOOS, MUSHES[1], and found MUSES, and many other variants. I was amazed. I had never heard of them before reading Turkle. There is actually a MOO or MUSH set up by some librarians--a virtual space. I have no idea what they do there. I went into some type of MOO or MUSH which could be accessed via the web. There was only one other person there and I got entered as "CRABAPPLE GUEST." I didn't know what to do, so I left.
 
Hope you had a good weekend. Our weather was quite beautiful. I had a nice walk on Sunday. Also, I finished A Civil Action. I got a copy of Snowcrash from the Public Library and read a little. It didn't hook me instantly, but I read a chapter or two. There is a MOO or MUSH set up on "Snowcrash" apparently, as I saw it when I scanned the list. I'm still reading parts of Turkle. I don't know what book I will read next, as what I really should be doing in all my free time is getting ready for my finals in law school, which will be all too soon.          EJ

[1] MOOs and MUSHs were early text based online games often used for posting messages and chats. 

Baldness