Big Saturday.

Dorian and I are in the last throes of moving her junk (quite literally!) out of her apartment in Oakland. She's been living with me now for several weeks, but I've extended her tenancy long enough for us to have her supervise the taking-down of her living space of 16 years. She's done much of the packing and crating on her days away from NIAD, with my help and that of her once-a-week teacher. Psychologically, it's important that she dismantle her old place and not feel as if she's been completely taken over by others. To the extent possible, she needs to feel that this is a voluntary move. Not easy to accomplish, but possible, I believe. Today we have the help of a handyman with a truck. The end is almost at hand, phew!

Needed to stop long enough to say that the long-awaited Ed Bradley 60 Minutes piece on Stanley Williams should air tomorrow night. That is -- if some big story doesn't push it off the radar again. The last word Barbara received was that April 18th is the new date. We'll see.

Reactions are still coming in on Redemption -- and it's almost 99% positive. This may be the impetus needed to put forth that bill in the California legislature for a moratorium. Let's hope.

Yesterday's Rosie workshop was interesting. Am finding that my day-too-day interactions around important issues has barely diminished with my leaving my official position. My connections were apparently as much personally-driven as they were related to the state assembly and my role as a field rep. Were I younger, I'd try to convert this reflected power into a lobbying role for myself. Instead, I'm finding it just as interesting to continue connecting people to power in a more natural way. There was more juice there than I'd imagined, I suppose, and that's a pleasant surprise.

After two days of bathing in the past through this planning process with the NPS, I found myself last night pouring over boxes of accumulated "stuff" from long ago and dredged up a document that authorized my father to be a block warden during WWII, a publicity photo of myself and two cousins taken from a newspaper article showing us as beauty contestants in a Treasure Island World's Fair event, and assorted relics from the war. I was seventeen. What memories... these. Decided to donate to the Rosie collection a silver fox fur jacket ("chubby") that I've had hanging in my closet for lo these many years. It will go to the Rosie exhibition. Never owned any of those poor little animals that we strung together around our shoulders, but I'm sure some will turn up as donations. Glad we're enlightened enough to have grown past the need to wear animal skins as totem. Will drop off that fur jacket early next week, and continue to scrounge for other items. Hope those of you who are of my vintage will check out the Rosie the Riveter web site, tell your stories (or your mother's), and contribute items that may still be in old trunks in the attic. We need them all.

Now, off to join Dorian for an entirely different kind of scrounging... .

Betty