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| Dave Masterjohn and his wife Jan answered this ad and corresponded with me with several long letters and even gifts. Later I spent a week with them and took this picture. |
Ann Katherine Weed - Fremont CA
Becky Ridley - Woodinville WA
Billie Jo Foster - Olympia WA
Bob Grinstein - Thomas City WA
Candi Eustace - Seattle WA
Cindy - Everett WA
Cindy Wilson - Seattle WA
Dana Rea - Medina WA
Dave Masterjohn - Kent WA
Debbie Johnston - Bellevue WA
Debbie Wyckoff - Everett WA
Debie Sherman - Mount Vernon WA
Diane Strand - Seattle WA
Dianne - Seattle WA
Dorrit Jensen - Seattle WA
Dyanna Laing - Seattle WA
Gail Smith - Seattle WA
George Moore - Seattle WA
Jan Fox - Tacoma WA
Jan Masterjohn - Kent WA
Jan Shroy - Seattle WA
Janet Heineck - Seattle WA
Janet Holman - Spokane WA
Jay Hershey - Olympia WA
Jennifer Lynne Alexander - Seattle WA
Jinny Byham - Seattle WA
Joey Elizabeth - Seattle WA
Kas Snodgrass - Tacoma WA
Kathy Lantz - Seattle WA
Kathy Owen - Bellevue WA
Kathy Rowe - Renton WA
Kenny - Seattle WA
Laura Crocker - Seattle WA
Laurie Hurja - Bellevue WA
Linda Dordness - Mountlake Terrace WA
Linda Dukes - Seattle WA
Linda Schneider - Seattle WA
Lonny - Seattle WA
Lorie Phelps - Tekoa WA
Lorna Woodward - Seattle WA
Lynn Adams - Kent WA
Margaret Goring - Seattle WA
Margaret Parkinson - Seattle WA
Marilyn Simmons - Boise ID
Mary Archey - Everett WA
Mary Holmaren - Seattle WA
Melissa Queen - Bellingham WA
Mona - Olympia WA
Nancy - Seattle WA
Patricia Murphy - Poulsbo WA
Patty Sprinker - Tacoma WA
Rex Kennedy - Edina MN
Richard Minor - Spokane WA
Robert Burrell - Olympia WA
Roberta Young - Monroe WA
Ronnie Boyer - Kent WA
Shar Carter - Auburn WA
Shelle Lyons - Mercer Island WA
Shirley Prather - British Columbia
Steve - Seattle WA
Steven Doyle - Bellevue WA
Sue Howard - Seattle WA
Sunshine - Walla Walla WA
Tim Madison - Marysville WA
Tom Whiting - Fort Lewis WA
Trinidad Foster - Olympia WA
Vernon Jackson - Seattle WA
Veronica Tomaszewski - Seattle WA
Many others also wrote to me. During the loneliest time of my life, soon after my girlfriend Penny died and while still in the Army overseas, more than a hundred people helped to cheer me up. And not only did they write, several more than once, but I later got to meet some of them in person. I was invited to join four communes, five girls wanted to ride with me in a motorcycle club I was thinking of starting called Gross Inc., and I felt happily overwhelmed by friendship.
Sp/4 Dale E. Lund, 833rd Ord. Co., HQ Platoon, APO San Francisco 96231 - How are you? A little bit of help from your friends, is that what you need? Yes, we are here and love is thriving in Seattle today as we set type for the upcoming issue of Northwest Passage and in Bellingham tomorrow as we return to do the paste-up for the printer.
I spent the last winter in San Francisco where the hip-scene has deteriorated fantastically (there were 18 murders, not deaths, just plain old murders, in the Haight-Ashbury during the first four months of this year). The hardest thing of all was just to keep my head together - to remember that there are people all over who are learning to do their thing, their very own thing, and are really beginning to dig just being alive. Just to lie on your back on Mother Earth and look out there on the rest of the universe is really a trip. To swim in the waters of the sea and feel them supporting you, holding you up, is sensational.
I can do these things now, kick sand, pick up rocks on the beach, watch the sun rising and setting, in a way I couldn't then. And you'll be able to also again, if you can't right now.
I left San Francisco in June and found my way to Bellingham (you may know of it) where the people are warm and the weather is peaceful and the grass is green (and occasionally gold and red!). Yes, we're here, doing our thing, working on building the world that we all want to live in and waiting also for the people who also want to help build that world to join us.
What most of us have decided, I think, is that there's no point in trying to destroy the old world before starting to build the new. Going off on a destruction kick only puts our heads a little further behind the starting point. And so we put out our underground newspapers and hold free university classes and create a community school for our children, doing all of these things in the spirit of love and helpfulness and closeness that we want to be a part of this world we're creating. The old question of the ends justifying the means is no longer even a pertinent question. The thing is that the ends and the means work together. You can't gain loving, peaceful ends through destructive means. And so we've just thrown the ends and the means together into the same bag and out comes our new way of life.
All of this is quite new to me and so I think about it a lot. Which is also why I write about it, too. Ten years ago, a lot of us used to march around the campus with signs protesting atomic bomb testing in the atmosphere, compulsory ROTC and all the rest of it. We didn't get very far, needless to say, but we also knew that we couldn't just sit around waiting for the world to change. Maybe we should have at that, just waited until we were able to see that the thing to do is just start building the new world - ignore the old, learn to use it in the ways that we need to, and to hell with the rest of it.
You know, it really feels good to be free - free of the compulsions that made me finish high school, even finish college, and even join the system that I felt to be rotten (rotten in the sense of rotten fruit). It feels great not to wear a bra, not to feel compelled to use lipstick, eye shadow, deodorant, not to work at an 8 to 5 job, not to worry about what time it is, even. It also feels great to realize that I can wear a bra if I feel like it, go back to work if I want to, even - well, whatever comes into my head to do.
Anyway, that's where I'm at and if you feel like writing, I, too, like to get letters. There are 13 of us living together in two houses, and lots of others living in other houses that form the community in Bellingham. So, if you need someone to talk to (write to), we're here waiting for your letter. Will try to send things from time to time, but if I don't get around to it, you can be sure that we're just all of us very busy doing our own thing. And even that is a hopeful sign.
Remember the old adage, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
Love and peace,
Melissa Queen
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