An altered reality

My last post, a week ago, I was celebrating the fact that I finally had had a chance to get to the Amherst College Library. A great deal has changed since then. Wednesday morning, Savanna tested positive for COVID. She had been exposed to it through her friend, Dusty, who did not realize she had gotten a rebound case after taking Paxlovid, and did not have symptoms. That meant that Ellen might have been exposed Tuesday afternoon while I was at the Library, but she was sitting with Savanna. It hit Savanna hard and she was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, and the next day she was transferred to Bay State in Springfield, MA, and there they discovered a serious infection, not COVID-related, but a complication of her cancer treatment. All of a sudden, Savanna was critically ill, and the doctor was preparing Katie for the possibility that she might not survive the weekend. She was receiving antibiotics - three different ones simultaneously, via IV - but with uncertain outcome. This meant that Ellen and I were needed for support in Shutesbury, for both Katie and Brendon. We tested negative for COVID Thursday, and again Saturday, so we felt we could be with others. We felt fine. So that is where we have been, and we have indeed been helpful, I believe, in a variety of ways, some very practical, some more emotionally and spiritually. I personally have not seen Savanna, but Ellen has, and I get reports. We slept one night in our clothes because we had not come expecting to spend the night. But we have gone home a couple of times since, and now we have bags in the car all packed with essentials just in case. The car is still running - held together still by bungi-cords - and we are using the back way, though we have used I-91 going back home at night and not going over 50mph. I'm just not sure how how high speeds and wind gusts could effect the bumper which is quite loose. So far, so good. We have yet to learn whether the car is fixable or totaled. That is another uncertainty we are living with. I don't know what will happen if we lose Savanna. It is bound to affect our lives significantly and perhaps profoundly. Right now, we are just taking things a day at a time. This past week I have had a fair amount of time by myself at the house in Shutesbury, and I have used it to good effect. I have done a final proofreading of a book I've been working on for years, about Ellen's father, titled An Untold Story: Frederick Barnes Tolles' Unpublished Manuscript About Early American History and the Story Behind It. Her father was contracted to write Vol. I of a 5-volume History of the United States for Alfred A. Knopf. He started to write it, but was unable to finish because of a medical crisis which proved to be disabling. This was back in 1958. He died in 1975, and left behind a 279-page MS which I discovered in the Friends Historical Library in Swarthmore. It is about 1/3 of what he would have ultimately submitted to Knopf, had he been able to do so. There were four other volumes, and four other authors contracted to write them. But the entire series was never published by Knopf. I wondered, "Why?" Why did Knopf not replace Prof. Tolles, pass on his unfinished MS to a new author (which Prof. Tolles offered to do) and eventually publish the entire series? Ellen and I found the answers to that question when we visited the Knopf Publishing Company's archives in Austin, Texas a few years ago. It made a fascinating story, and I wrote it, typed up the entire unfinished MS - four chapters plus a bit of a fifth - managed to deduce a Bibliography of Works Consulted from Prof. Tolles' notes, and topped it off with a detailed chronology of Prof. Tolles'life, including a complete listing of all his published books, articles and book reviews - 200 altogether. It makes a book 300 pages long. I have not yet published that book, because there were minor corrections to be made. I have now mostly made those corrections (I still have to figure out two uncertainties in Prof. Tolles' footnotes) and I can publish it for the family. I also want to give a copy to the Friend's Library at Swarthmore. I plan to have it printed at the Bridgeport National Bindery, in Agawam, MA, where they do very attractive and durable hard-bound copies for a reasonable price. I've had both the Guilford Church history (Safe Thus Far) and the collection of Shirley's children's stories (I Invite the Children to Come Forward) printed there.

Last Christmas at Katie and Savanna's. Savanna is in the red shirt sitting in a blue chair at far right. Ellen is behind her, Katie is standing in an apron to her right, and Brendon is the young man standing in the back row just above and to my left.

Frederick Barnes Tolles, c. 1958.