Covers themselves suggest a story

As I went through my early journals, I started paying attention to their covers, originating in classroom notebooks. I don’t know about you, but trying to write down the meanderings of a college course presentation was usually frustrating. These spiralbound volumes, adapted to my personal life, seem to be no exception.

Still, their covers and endpaper entries provide some perspective of their own.

For consistency, let me say all of them were 8-by-10½ inches unless otherwise noted.

For example?

Vol. 1, undated, cost 49 cents. Upper right-hand cover had a Chiquita Bananas sticker. On the flip cover, I wrote, “The Kid – Yeah!”.

Vol. 2, undated, was a 49 cent Composition Book.

Vol. 3, undated. Indiana University 3-subject divider. Presumably from my first serious girlfriend in retreat. Some Wright State University notes, including French, logic, and Dick Allen’s advanced writing course, which wasn’t yet call creative writing.

Volume 4 included three loose pages from an earlier spiral notebook. First entry had dateline of New York, but was probably from Upstate enroute to Montreal. I’m thinking we took the Thruway to Syracuse and then I-81 due north to the Thousand Islands region. Pittsburg, Toronto, and Cleveland were likely on an earlier trip.

Vol. 4,  undated, though mostly spring ‘70, meaning English L 381, contemporary American novel with Prof. Terence Martin. Met 4:30 MWF in Ballentine 460. The Progress Line, 50 sheets, 35 cents.. It’s the source of an earlier post.

Vol. 5, undated, also spring ‘70 / political science 665, Frontiers of Public Policy and Action, a grad-level seminar with Vincent Ostrom, 3:30 Wednesdays in Woodburn 345. Classmates included Brian Loveman, George Strump &/or George Stein, Paul Wogaman. Remember, I was only a senior.

Vol. 6, undated, third of the Progress Line spiralbound notebooks. Only the first eight pages were used. The remaining pages remained blank.

Vol. 7, green IU Bookstores, 100 sheets, 60 cents, beginning in Bloomington (fall?) 1968, but ending (after a big gap) post-Nicki in Binghamton, Upstate New York.

Vol. 8, blue IU cover / undated, but seems to begin summer ’70 with Sloth story.

Vol. 9 / 50-sheet Progress Line Urban Geography notebook, backing up to IU. (No memory of ever taking a college geography course … don’t think we ever touched a map there, either. Turns out to be Geog 314, urban geography – anything as long as it’s related to the city.)

Vol. 10, fat, three-section Harpur College tan cover, 85 cents / still no dates! essentially winter of 1971, with phone number at back for “yoga – Steve, 723-7226, 7:30, 131 Clinton St”

Vol. 11, Harpur yellow cover / leaping into yoga. Starts Feb. 28, 1971.

Vol. 12, first of the Cornell books, which I long recalled as legal size – except that I now found they weren’t. Were these among the $20 spree I mentioned in one of my previous Ithaca trips? These do have the extra-wide left margins, about 3 inches, which I still love. Starts in late April ’71, with a bold NIJINSKY in black on the tan kraft cover.

Vol. 13, the Cornell series starts with fyr playing with an old English variation of “fire,”  with date, 22:V:71 and photo editor’s death in newsroom on a Saturday night.

Vol. 14, Harpur white cover, starts with 26:VI:71 and a red Sivananda Camp Retreat Poconos rubber stamp image (I’d used one or two within previous notebooks).

Vol. 15, red Harpur cover. Really settling into a journal now … some verse, some encounters, some intellectual speculation, starting 26:VII:71 – huh, I filled the previous one in just a month earlier?

Vol. 16, yellow Harpur cover, starting 28:VIII:71.

Vol. 17, black Harpur cover, starting 17:XI:71, the night I met Celeste.

Note that I was consistently using that style of date notation by this point.

Now I’m observing that laptop computers no longer have a cents sign – instead, hold down the Alt key and type 0162 or some such, thought that no longer works in later versions of Windows.

While the ashram did eventually have an IBM, with its  Selectric ball (which you manually place into the typewriter) each one with its distinctive typeface, all of that was a step ahead in the chronology.

Does any of this serve as a recap of the earlier postings?

You can see why I’m calling these episodes “spiralbound experiences,” hippie and otherwise.

And pricing et cetera really have gone haywire.

God, I am talking about ancient history even within my own lifetime.