compose—but I’ll miss walking home with Emma,

and I’m restless: What will I do with myself

once the applesauce and peas and beans

are all in their jars on the pantry shelves and

the storm windows are washed and fitted

back in place, and…? Once I start thinking

about it, I can see the list goes on and on—help Papa

butcher the pig and hang the ham and bacon

in the smokehouse; get all our winter woolens

out of storage and check them thoroughly

for moth holes that need mending; let down

the hems of all the skirts and dresses

Grace has outgrown since last winter;

make Christmas gifts for everyone. And then,

when the earth warms up next April—start all over.

My life could go on like that forever.

Unless …

I hear they need nurses in the army hospitals,

they need workers in the factories; they’re finding

out that women can do almost all the things

that men have always done. What if,

some morning, I walk down our path and shut

the gate behind me, keep on going down

the dusty road to town, get on a train to …

somewhere? Wouldn’t something interesting

be bound to happen?

The Tide That’s Drowning Millions / Emma

The Tide That’s Drowning Millions

Emma

School isn’t much fun

this year without Muriel, without

Ollie. Almost all the boys are gone now.

It’s spreading like an epidemic, all of them

following each other into the army, navy, air corps

(they all want to fly), or merchant marines. Whenever

one of the boys signs up, all the rest start talking big;

the teachers applaud the ones who go. Yesterday, Sig

Olsen left (when his sister brags about it, she never

says she tried to talk him out of going, of course).

Frank wrote to us: They’re hoping we can stem

the tide that’s drowning millions. But how,

I begin to wonder, will they set about

doing what no one else has done?

Unbreakable / Muriel

Unbreakable

Muriel

The paper has an article about Aunt Vera’s protest.

The day after she and seven others were arrested,

ten new women took their places on the picket line;

those ten were arrested that same day, and fifteen

more came to hold the banners. The articles

and cartoons are not complimentary—everyone

seems to think this is a big joke. When someone takes it

seriously, it’s only to chastise the protesters:

unwomanly, unpatriotic, a thorn in the side of the president

when he has more important things (The War)

to think about. But Aunt Vera managed

to smuggle a letter out of prison. (One of the

prison workers is secretly on their side.)

As long as there’s a shred of a banner

to hold up, Aunt Vera writes, there will be women

to stand in the rain (or snow, if it comes to that)

and hold it. We’re political prisoners—