Letter 18 11/07/1952 Puppets, Potatoes, and the Core of Everything

Show Notes:
November 17th, 1952 — Joyce writes this letter from inside Dr. Shuri’s class, half listening to a heated discussion about replacing algebra, languages, and history with a new “core curriculum” of mental hygiene, family training, citizenship, and consumer education. Her thoughts jump between the debate, her own looming values report, and the cozy chaos of dorm life.

She’s delighted with the duck puppet her teacher gave her but confesses she has no idea how to manipulate it — so she “steals” a potato from work to use for the head of her own sock puppet. Dorm rearrangements leave her freezing by an open window while Connie and Winnie are snug in the corner. Joyce debates grad school, Boulder's organ program, and the possibility of an instructorship if the counselor’s job doesn’t pan out.

Evenings are filled with knitting socks for Earl, studying for a brutal genetics test, and laughing off men who try to pick her up at the Chuck Wagon café. But beneath the daily details is a crescendo of devotion — Joyce closes with one of her most intimate declarations yet: that she was born for Earl, that he is the person who gives her life its purpose and joy.

Topics Include:

• Core curriculum debates in Dr. Shuri’s class
• Preparing the values report and genetics test
• Duck puppet for class project and potato-sock puppet plan
• Dorm furniture rearrangements and freezing by the window
• Considering Boulder grad school or an instructorship
• Knitting socks for Earl over Thanksgiving
• No ride to the Mu Phi Epsilon banquet
• Jukebox dimes and men trying to pick her up at the Chuck Wagon
• New apron from her mother
• A powerful reflection on finding purpose and being “born” for someone

Transcript

Dear sweetheart, November 17th, 1952, dear sweetheart, you'll never guess where I am right now or maybe you can. I'm in Dr. Shuri's, I think I've been saying it surely, I'm gonna have to go back and correct all that, okay. Excuse the cul-de-sac. I'm in Dr. Shuri's class listening to someone expound his theory of the core curriculum which is.

teaching mental hygiene, family and marriage training, consumer education, general math, health program, scientific method, citizenship, and social values and morals. Along with vocational skills and guidance, those doing away with algebra,

geometry, foreign languages, and history. The colleges should not have entrance requirements, and there should be separate high schools for those who are going on in the fields of which need languages, math, algebra, chemistry, history, et cetera. But he hasn't said whether this other school is to be public and state-supported.

Our report on values is to be given in the three days of next week. What a week this will be in getting it put together, but I'll be glad when it's over. Don't let me forget to give you pop and this is on notebook paper.


Sutt's books this weekend. It's not so cold this morning and the snow is just about right. Gee, I'd love to go out and play with the kids in the snow. Did I show you the puppet my dormitories teacher gave me for our class project? It's a duck dressed as a fussy old lady and really cute. But I've never manipulated a hand puppet in my life and I have to make a very simple one for Wednesday. So I stole the

I stole a potato when Johnny wasn't looking for a head. I'll use an old sock for the body. That's so funny. She stole a potato from work to be the head of the puppet. Somebody just said it would be better to have the core curriculum in the mornings and the specific study like algebra and chemistry in the afternoon for those who want it. The kids have charged.

have changed the furniture in the apartment and I'm almost unhappy about it. My desk is so I can't sit at it unless there is no one at the table and to make matters worse,

Connie and Winnie are fresh air fiends and so are our Maryland's and my bed is right by the window where the wind blows right on our heads. Guess where Connie and Winnie have their bed? Way over in the corner where they insist it's stuffy. Last night Connie opened both windows as far as they would go. I could have killed her and felt justified. Sounds like they should switch beds.

We are now arguing about what to do in the afternoons with kids who don't know what they want to do. I'll bet you're enjoying these paragraphs that keep bouncing back to the class discussion. Class time is up in five minutes, so you won't have any more Ed Soche, I hope, unless our group gets in on an argument about values in our after class meeting. Miss Bell should answer my letter soon.

or I'm going to just go up and see her in the office. If we get the job and then I don't get into grad school, won't that be sweet? Maybe I could.


register as a special student. Would that count? Boulder's organ department is better than piano. I'd like very much to talk to the dean of the music school personally before I put in an entrance application. Someday I'm going to skip classes and work and everything and trot up to Boulder. I think I'd like to look into the possibility of getting an instructorship if we don't get the counselor's job.

Class is over, so I'll probably finish this tonight. I haven't heard from my pi epsilon, from mu pi epsilon, whether any of the kids from the neighborhood are going in cars to the banquet. I can pick, oh, or can pick me up or not. If it's cold and snowy, I'd about as soon stay home, especially since it's $2.75 for the meal.

I'm still debating about looking for a private room or share a room off campus. Just for kicks, I think I'll look. Dorm life can be very nerve wracking, especially when the other kids have no sense of personal responsibility and considerations for everyone's feelings and convenience. If I knit real hard over Thanksgiving, I can just about finish your socks.

by December 1st, that's my dad's birthday. This is 8.40 p.m. I have an evening meeting with the kids in our group project Wednesday night. So even if George does come, I won't be up. I'm sorry sweetheart, but I'll make it up to you Friday night. I got a new apron to wear to work. My mama made it and sent it to me. It's a light.

print of red and green and white with green facing at the sleeves. For Wednesday, we have a test in genetics and evaluation on 12 chapters and all our genetic problems. Joy, joy. And some of these chapters are complicated. George said, I'm still trying to figure out why an English major is being forced to take genetics. I mean, maybe she just likes it. I don't know. George says they left the dance.


early Saturday night. He said they get in on the wrong road coming home or something and 
They had a gay time. I didn't ask him what they did. He probably had his hand in it. No one from the dorms with a car was going to the mu psi epsilon banquet, mu phi epsilon. She wrote it in Greek and now I got to remember mu phi epsilon banquet. So I'm home, which is a good thing because I have to make a puppet and study. Well, there, well, here I am on the

sixth page and I haven't told you I love you yet. I do love you very much and I feel like I know what somebody or other meant when he said the completion of an individual by the compliment of their other. Some little so she she invented it before Jerry Maguire. Some little man was trying to pick me up in the restaurant today. He kept giving me drinks to put our dimes. He kept giving me dimes.

to put in the jukebox, which I enjoyed immensely, playing all my favorite pieces. It always tickles Johnny to death when the men try to pick me up. He stands out in the kitchen and snickers. But my darling, they always leave as alone as when they came in.


I just discovered we've got a lousy dorm meeting tonight and I was going to sleep tonight so I could study late tomorrow. Barb Bishop came in the chuck wagon to see me tonight. He's the one, Bob Bishop came in the chuck wagon to see me tonight. He's the one Johnny told you about. He's also the one who had me call up a married woman for him. I told you about him in one of my letters. I never.

I knew him at Aspen. Tonight I'm going to put my mom in my scrapbook along with making the puppet. So I'd better be saying goodnight and getting busy. Somehow I just can't bring myself to stop writing because I feel so near to you. But the time has come, I guess. If you were here, I'd kiss you and kiss you and kiss you and hug you and kiss you some more.

I also feel so sorry for people who don't have someone to love with all their hearts and souls. Someone to make life have a purpose. Someone to love for and work for and make all the clouds in the past seem unimportant. You are everything I've ever wanted or yearned for all my life. Always I've never really been happy.

And sometimes I think it's because I'm not complete without someone who means more than life itself. Someone that whom I could be a part of. And when I wake up and realize that you and only you could be that person, it was as if I had suddenly found myself, my purpose for being born. That's why I say I was born for you. And every day with every thought of you,

You become more a part of me and never will I be separated from you again. My darling, good night and all my love and thoughts are with you. Love, Joyce.