1 result for (book:tps1 AND heading:"introduct by rob butt" AND stemmed:california)
[... 25 paragraphs ...]
I’m married now to a very beautiful, intelligent and much younger lady who in her own unique ways offers me invaluable love, assistance, and reinforcement. I often feel that Laurel Lee Davies, a native of Iowa who came to me from California on August 23, 1985, 11 months after Jane’s death, helped transform me. No coincidence, that! After we had corresponded for a while I called Laurel on February 2, 1985. We met at the hill house in Elmira on August 25 of that year. From the very beginning our relationship seemed perfectly natural, as though we had always known each other. (We feel reincarnational relationships but have yet to explore them.) Laurel helped revitalize me; our years together have been full and creative and productive—and yes, at times controversial. But always she has helped me, just as, I trust, I have helped her. I’m still amazed by the challenges two human beings can create and resolve for themselves within the inconceivable beauty and mystery of All That Is. Each one of us springs into creativity while All That Is gives us the supreme privilege of doing so—and thus, I feel, constantly surprises itself.
[... 94 paragraphs ...]
My parents lived briefly in Elmira, and then moved to Sayre in 1923 after having traveled to California. Hardly strange, then, that I found work as an artist in Elmira, and that Jane and I moved there in 1960, five years after our marriage. I still have third-and-fourth generation relatives in Elmira, although I’m not close to them. This is as much my fault as anyone else’s. Jane and I became so wrapped up in our own little worlds that we didn’t try to reach out. I tell myself that I should try to do that, even now, however.
[... 34 paragraphs ...]