Around the time that Marc stopped talking to me, Mahmoud’s wife came back from the Middle East. Mahmoud and I were walking back to the lab from some place when Mahmoud asked me to forgive him for what he was going to do – that he needed to advance in life. Shortly after, we were working in the lab and Mahmoud asked me to help him deal with the gas lines that fed the furnace.
There were a few different gases feeding the furnace. I told him to follow the lines from the tanks to the furnace. I think Ellen had labeled the lines with colored tape and said something about the gas lines being like the T subway lines – which are labelled the Red, Blue, Green, and Orange lines in the Boston area. I think Mahmoud took offense. I may not have understood what Mahmoud was asking.
Mahmoud left and came back with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology support person, who helped him with what he was doing. At one point, I asked him if he knew where something was. Mahmoud said he did not know where the object was. I accused him of lying. He interrupted what he was doing and found the object. I went into the office we both shared with John and told John I had just blown up at Mahmoud. Mahmoud followed me to the office and defended himself. John stopped us from arguing.
I got upset one more time, I think, in my belief that I was dealing with an attempt to drive me out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. John asked me to not get upset. After that, I kept quiet – for most of two years. I think that before this incident, John had been giving me papers to read and afterward, he stopped.
Like Marc, Mahmoud stopped speaking to me. (The thought recently showed up in my mind that his wife had asked him to not talk to me.) I will say I stayed angry at Mahmoud until recently.
From something Marc said, I think that Marc was making an issue of my making about $1000 a year more than Mahmoud (I started at $13,000 per year, I think). I had quite a bit more scientific work experience than Mahmoud, which I think was why I was paid more. And, from my training Mahmoud, I do not think he could have done the work I was doing. I think the harassers then, and I suspect now, had and have been making an issue of my poor grades at Reed.
For the next two years, I went to work, often getting to the office a little late, and did my work. Over lunch, I would do things like go to the library to read a physics textbook, walk around the Esplanade, or lie down in a ladies’ room. One of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology support people, Dick Stanton, befriended me, so I was not totally isolated. He was an older man and, I think, was mainly interested in a sexual relationship, but I was not interested, so we did not have one. He was a potter.
The opal I bought in Oregon split in two. I left one half on Marc’s desk on his birthday that first year. So, we were at least even with regard to money.
Mahmoud continued to work there for over a year. He was responsible, I think, but I did not talk to John about him, so I do not know. He started dressing like John. Mahmoud did end up getting fired – he was missing work because he was taking care of his father, who was dying. This was before the Family Medical Leave Act. I think, Dick told me what happened.
The first six or seven months that I was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology I was doing the thing I feared to do socially. After the trouble with Marc and Mahmoud, I reverted to my usual personality – withdrawn and not very social. I went into, what we call in Recovery, a setback (which lasted for years).
One of the people working in another lab on the same project, Bob, commented on the personality change – saying I started acting like a “school marm”. Little did he know that was the real me. Bob had asked me out once, but I was not interested in him, so I did not go out with him. Maybe it was just for lunch.
I continued to go to Recovery meetings. I made some friends in Recovery – did some stuff with the friends.
In October of 1981, Angela and Mari asked me to move out of our apartment. Anne had moved into an apartment in Waltham and asked me if I wanted to move in with her, which I did. While I was glad to move in with Anne, for me the help from Anne was a failure on my part. I had not been able to make my own friends – except in Recovery.
I recently had the thought that Marc had dropped me because he was interested in Angela. Could be true. She was attractive, cultured, and ambitious, though older.
Anne and I lived together for the rest of the time that I worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I do not think we spent much time together. She had to get up around 4:00 AM for work and went to bed early. I was taking night courses at the Harvard Extension and was gone for three or more nights a week between school and Recovery meetings. On the weekends, I think we went to our respective parents’ homes.
The fall of 1981, I took either macroeconomics or microeconomics and a course on operations research at the Harvard Extension. I think I continued my dance classes. In the spring of 1982, I took the other second year economics course and a course on linear regression. I also began looking at graduate schools. In the fall of 1982, I took Real Analysis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and either urban economics or international economics at the Harvard Extension. In the spring of 1983, I took Introduction to Abstract Algebra – which I enjoyed – at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and either urban economics or international economics at the Harvard Extension.
I had to borrow money from my parents to get the money together to pay for one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology courses – the courses were expensive. After I passed the course (for both), I got eighty percent of the tuition back. My parents gave me a hard time, but lent me the money, which I paid back. I do not remember borrowing money from my parents at any other time.
I also took the Graduate Record Exams, as well as the advanced exams for mathematics and economics majors, in 1982. I scored in the 96th percentile in the verbal side of the Graduate Record Exam and the 94th in the mathematics side. In the economics advanced exam, I scored in the 84th percentile, in the mathematics advanced exam, the 48th percentile. I am not a mathematician.
I applied to Yale University in economics and Stratford University and Iowa State University in statistics. I applied to Iowa State because Joy Castonguay (?) had said the program was a top program. Also, Iowa State was the top program in the country for applied statistics by reputation and I intended to do applied statistics. I was accepted by Iowa State.
My intension in taking statistics and economics courses was to prepare myself to do work on the economic side of getting us off fossil fuels. I will eventually do such work, but I have not done much yet. I took statistics because I thought statistics covered the mathematical tools used by economists – and I had had such a hard time at Reed because I did not know (had not had any courses in) the mathematics used in physics. In my coursework at the Harvard extension (and later at Iowa State,) I did better in statistics than economics.
At one point, John asked me to go to another lab used by the project on which we were working and to figure out what was wrong with a setup the other woman working on the project had put together. I found the problem, but the woman did not believe that the problem I found was really a problem. John showed up, I showed him the problem, and I think I went back to the lab where I worked.
Later, John had me go to the other lab to work with Bob. I was supposed to put together something metal with O rings, but I could not get the piece of equipment to stay together. Eventually Bob told me to stop trying.
I had a piece of equipment that I had programmed to sample a gas at certain time intervals. I was running the piece of equipment and noticed that the timing was off. I checked the program and saw that someone had changed the program I had written. I fixed the changes and finished the runs I was doing. I reported the sabotage to John. John acted like he did not believe me, which was frustrating. (I also reported what happened to the secretary of the department within which we were working.).
I had noticed a couple of days before that the height of the graphs I was plotting were lower in height than the graphs had been but had not tried to figure out why. John came into the lab to check out the setup since the program had been changed and noticed the lower heights. He took apart the piece of equipment and found some tissue stuffed in the tubing. I told him I might have left the tissue in the tubing when I was cleaning the equipment. Probably whoever sabotaged the program also put the tissue in the tubing.
Also, I had programmed the Apple II to fit data to a lognormal distribution using the Newton-Raphson method. I knew about the method from my physics background and had not yet learned about linear models in statistics. I found an algorithm in a book in one of the libraries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At one point, John asked me to fit an exponential model. I went back to the library to look again at the algorithm, but someone had ripped the section out of the book.
During the time I was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I did not believe that I was reading other people’s minds or that other people were reading mine. Looking back, I suspect those behind the sabotage willed me to check the timing of the program as I watched the program run so I would see what the perpetrators had done. I remember repeating something negative about Mahmoud in my mind many times. I think now that someone might have put the thought in my mind.
Toward the end of my time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mahmoud was gone and there was a new guy doing the furnace work, I think. I forget his name. I think he had a higher degree in physics.
During my time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I did not get involved with anyone except Marc until January of 1983. I think Marc trashed my reputation.
In January of 1983, a Pakistani man, who also worked on the project – in a third lab – and whom I had never met – came into our office and asked me out. His name was Ghulam Mohiuddin, nicknamed Mohi. He took me out to the No Name Restaurant on the Fish Pier, the pier that the fishermen used. The restaurant was famous in Boston. I had fried clams (which I love), I think. I may have paid for my own meal – on purpose
Mohi was interested in sex. (I think he was interested in oral and anal sex. I had stopped having both after Gerry – due to how references to both are used to insult people – but, with Marc, I did have oral sex.) Mohi and I went out twice. He acted very nervous both times, as if he were worried someone would see him. We had vaginal sex twice. After the first time, he asked me to shave my pubic region, which I did not do. Since I did not, he stopped having sex with me. We were working together off and on that winter, spring, and summer.
Bessie’s ignition key plug was giving me trouble in the spring of 1983. The ignition key plug is part of the ignition coil, which was a somewhat expensive part. I had to roll Bessie and jump the clutch to get the car started. Mohi came over once and we drove several miles so I could see if the problem was a drained battery. The hattery was not the problem.
At that point, I knew that I was going to Iowa to attend Iowa State in the fall, and I was trying to decide what to do with Bessie. The man who took over Mahmoud’s work was interested in buying Bessie. I left Bessie with him for awhile, but he could not get the ignition to work, either. I, then, bought an ignition coil and put in the coil. The car started fine, so I drove Bessie back to Waltham.
There really is not much left to say about my time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bessie’s engine blew a seal on the way to Vermont when my father and I were driving to Vermont, but my father and I were able to get the car all the way there. I stored Bessie in Vermont.
In the summer, my parents, Erik, and I drove to the midwest. We left Erik in Lawrence, Kansas, where he was studying at the University of Kansas for a Ph.D. in philosophy. We then drove to Iowa, before going on to Minnesota to visit family and my mother’s hometown (Preston).
In Ames, Iowa, I went to the Iowa State campus and met the head of the Statistics Department. I also found a place to live, with a couple who rented a house near the downtown, about a mile from campus. I rented a room in the house. On getting back to Waltham, I shipped most of my possessions to the house in Ames.
Come August, I left for Iowa. Anne had gotten involved with a man named Joe Boucher. The night before I left, Anne and Joe went somewhere, and Mohi came over. We spent the night downstairs in the study room sitting on the floor, I think. At some point, we had oral sex. We had not before. I think he drove me to the bus station the next morning, where I boarded a bus for Chicago – where I got on a bus to Ames.
I arrived in Ames, at the bus station, in the late afternoon a day later, I think. My luggage had not come on the same bus, so I had to wait for my luggage to come. The bus station was about a mile from the house in which I had rented a room. My landlady and landlord – JoAnne Elliot and Jim Loos – they were married – came to the bus station to help with the luggage. We waited quite a while.
The temperature was in the 90’s and had been for days – even at night. JoAnne and Jim were nice, but rather with it. I was quite withdrawn and not very interested in socializing. The two did take me to see the Kate Shelley bridge west of Boone (where I later lived, and which was JoAnn’s hometown).
A block east of the house where I lived was a church where a Recovery Meeting met on Thursday nights. The first half of the semester, I had a class that met on Thursday nights, so I did not start going to the Recovery meetings until the middle of October.
In the first semester, I took the one-half semester course on using the computer for statistics (required), the general methods course (required), the statistical theory and probability course (required), and the econometrics course. I did okay, I received an A, an A, an -A, and a +B respectively. I also was a teaching assistant in one class, I think. I forget which one.
My landlord and landlady were friends with the man who had rented my room the year before, John Hallengren. They, he, and his girlfriend, Judy Parks, would socialize – like playing Trivial Pursuit. On October 30th, they set me up on a blind date with a friend of his, Clay Conard. John and Judy made dinner for us at their apartment.
When I lived in Massachusetts, sometimes I would go to a business in Quincy that sold astrology books and where there were fortunetellers. I vaguely remember taking my nieces to see the psychics and I had my fortune read. The woman predicted I would marry someone with a mustache in a few years and that we would be happy. Clay had a mustache.
Clay was taken with me. I did not want to get involved with him. I remember thinking when I met him that I hoped the future husband was not him. He seemed rather grey. I asked him not to call, but he would call. I asked him not to come over (he lived in Boone), but he would come over. Eventually (a week or two, I think), I decided that he was offering me both a relationship and a physical relationship – which I had not had in any stable way for over two years, so I stopped resisting.
Clay was married. He told me that his wife, Jane Conard (now Jane Rose), had left him and gone back to her first husband in August. Jane was his second wife. Clay’s first wife (Sandy Conard) had left him in the mid-70’s. There was a custody fight over his son, Darin, who was a young child at the time they divorced. Even though Clay was awarded custody in Iowa, his first wife – all according to Clay – kidnapped Darin from the playground when Darin was at school. Sandy had moved to San Francisco. She wanted Clay to join her there to become a rock musician – again according to Clay. Clay is a talented musician.
Sandy had sent Darin back to Clay the summer before I met Clay (I think.) Darin turned thirteen that summer. Clay told me that Jane left him because she did not want to help him bring Darin through adolescence. Clay had helped Jane get her two children (Jeanette and John Rose) through high school. In my experience, Darin was a handful to deal with.
I do not know what was really true here.
As of the summer of 2020, Clay and I had been married thirty-five years.
Over the last several years, I have developed some theories about why Clay pursued me. Possibly, they all are true – I suspect Clay has the dissociate identity disorder.
Darin’s mother had the bipolar illness. I am diagnosed with the schizoaffective disorder.
Not long after we started going out, we had sex – which Clay initiated. Later, I tried to break off the relationship again. As I remember, Clay and John Hallengren were at the house and Clay was assuming he would spend the night – a Saturday night, I think. I asked him to go home. He said no. This continued for awhile. Finally, John and Clay said the weather was too icy to drive. So, I let Clay stay.
I think things were going okay at school. I remember going to a department picnic and walking back to campus with an Indian student (before I met Clay.) He was attractive. He helped me get through the econometrics course – for which he was the teaching assistant. But he did not pursue more interest. I think now that the professor for the course – whose student he was – was interested in the level of my understanding of economics and had asked him to gauge the understanding. I remained attracted to him for the rest of the time he was a student at the university.
I went to a few more parties or picnics over the first few years, but I would feel very paranoid and isolated, so would not enjoy them.
That first fall, I took the bus to St. Paul to see my Aunt Alice. She would have been 77 years old at that time and was developing dementia, I think. The roads were icy, and the bus may have stopped for awhile on the way up because of the ice. The time was late when we got to St. Paul. I took a cab to my aunt’s house – which was in White Bear Lake. The cabbie had never been so far out of the city.
I made a throw pillow for Clay while at my aunt’s – navy blue velvet with a white flying clock appliquéd onto the pillow and “Time flies when you are having fun.” embroidered on the pillow. My aunt’s house had always been a safe place for me.
At Christmas, I found someone with whom to drive to Massachusetts – a woman. We drove straight through. She was on her way to the north side of the Boston area and my parents’ home was on the south side. Anne and Joe were living in the apartment we had rented – which was on the west side of the Boston area, not far off the intersection of Interstate 90 and Interstate 95. I think I called Anne to see if I could wait at her place for my parents to come and get me and she offered to drive me to Hull. So, things worked out.
Clay drove out about a week later. I think he drove straight through too. He arrived at Interstate 95 around rush hour and started south from Interstate 90 on Interstate 95. Rush hour traffic in the area was a horror at that time. The interstate numbering in the area is confusing, too. You go south on Interstate 95 to get on Interstate 93 (which is actually Interstate 93 North if coming from the north.) I think I had told him to go south on Interstate 93 to state highway 3.
Unfortunately, Clay ended up going south on Interstate 95 – towards Providence, Rhode Island, which is way out of the way to Hull. I think he called, and I gave him directions to go back up Interstate 95 to Interstate 93 North and to take the interstate to highway 3, then to route 228 – which goes to Hull. He showed up around 9:00 PM, I think, very tired.
I think he enjoyed himself. That first night when we were eating supper, he said something like he should leave and go back to Iowa. I guess he did not feel welcome. But we calmed him down. He did make a crude joke about Norwegians. Clay’s grandfather, who was from Sweden, did not think much of Norwegians – according to Clay. (My great-grandparents were all Norwegian immigrants – which he knew.)
I think that was the year when we walked the seawall a few miles to Nantasket Beach – a four-or-five-mile-long sandy beach that faces out onto Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We walked back on the bay side and stopped at my brother’s house to visit. This was not something I had usually done. I think my sister-in-law, Jill, was annoyed that we had just stopped by. Clay and I were both very tired. Clay loves bodies of water and will go out of his way to drive by water.
I think Darin might have been in San Francisco with his mother.
We drove back to Iowa in January. I know I tried to pay half of the cost of gas and the motel or motels, but I am not sure if I succeeded.
The spring of 1984, I took the second statistical theory course, the linear statistical models course, and the graduate level macroeconomics course. I think I was feeling or was ill that spring, and I dropped the economics course to lower my stress level. For the two courses that I finished, I think I received an -A and a +B – I am not sure which was which.
I also was a teaching assistant in one course, I think, and I think I began working with H. T. David (a professor) on a project for the Nuclear Engineering Department. Dr. David was an expert in operations research and decision theory – in which I am not interested. For the research, I had to find derivatives of a messy formula. The formula was to be used to estimate the variance of a maximum likelihood estimator and was based on the information matrix. I must have been supplied with the probability density function. We were looking at detector placements within a nuclear reactor.
I continued to see Clay. He would come over on the weekends and take me out to breakfast on Sunday mornings. At Easter, we drove to Minnesota and took my Aunt Alice to see her brother and sister (my Uncle Clarence and Aunt Myrtle) in western Minnesota. We continued to do this twice a year until she died. Maybe we did this because both Clay and me had grown up around at least one grandparent.
That spring, I sent out resumes to companies in the Boston area, looking for a summer job. I could not find one. My resume was not that well done. I was just learning to use word processing programs. The Statistics Department head asked if I would take a summer job in Perry, Iowa, at an Oscar Mayer slaughterhouse – writing a program to analyze worker performance. Boone is about 15 miles west of Ames and Perry is about 30 miles southwest of Boone. I took the job. I lived with Clay that summer and carpooled with two other workers (engineers) to Perry. I paid Clay $200 a month for rent and board, if I remember right, and used his car when my turn to drive came around. Clay had two vehicles and he lived three blocks from where he worked. Clay’s car was a gas guzzler. I believe I paid for the gas I used.
Oscar Mayer was not a good match for me. I had been used to working on my own with little supervision. Which I did at Oscar Mayer, but the management was suspicious of how I used my time – at least that was my feeling. One of the persons I carpooled with was a Republican troublemaker. I think his name was Jim. He often tried to bait me. Seems to be common behavior in Iowa, from my experience.
I wrote a BASIC program on a TRS-80 (Trash 80 – an early Tandy personal computer) to estimate the number of errors a worker was making within a certain level of confidence using exact confidence intervals for the binomial distribution – if I remember correctly. I remember struggling to get the program done on time. Also, the other person I carpooled with was critical of my BASIC technique. The person thought I should not be jumping out of loops – based on a class he had taken on writing code in BASIC. I had done quite a bit of programing in BASIC at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and often used the technique. The Statistics Department never offered me summer work again.
In the fall, my landlord and landlady and I changed bedrooms. The new room was smaller.
I tried to go off my antipsychotic medication that semester. Dr. Makman thought I was doing better and that I would be able to get off the medicine. I was thinking of getting married and having kids and the antipsychotics are not good for pregnancies. I got quite psychotic before I went back on my medicine – in November, I think.
I took real analysis (a mathematics course), microeconomics, and design of experiments. I did not do very well. I think I got an -B, a B, and a B, respectively. (After I graduated, I analyzed my grades by subject and whether I was trying to go off my medicine during a semester. Trying to go off medicine dropped my grade point by about one-half point on average.)
I had taken an undergraduate real analysis course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a B. The real analysis course at Iowa State was a graduate level course. The professor, Wolfgang Kleiman (?), was young and German. I thought he was attractive and had a crush on him – so I avoided him. I worked very hard in the class – writing tortuous proofs. From my current perspective, I think Darin was trying to learn mathematics through me and that was part of the reason I struggled so much. (I have had the thought that Clay got involved with me because he wanted to transfer my knowledge and mind to Darin. I remember Clay being in my bedroom while I was working on a proof and feeling like he was trying to block me – which did not make any sense to me at the time.)
I told Clay I was in love with Dr. Kleiman, I guess because Clay seemed like a friend to me in whom I could confide. I had no relationship with Dr. Kleiman. He had been rude to me in a help session, and I only remember going to see him once in his office – I believe at his request. I wonder now, knowing Clay better, if Clay did something to him.
Around this time, I think, an image flashed through my mind of myself bound and tortured. I think the image released me and that John Hallengren and Clay were responsible for the binding – which would have been on the emotional level. Clay and John are Vietnam veterans. Clay was not in combat, but John was, as was Clay’s brother, Charlie. Both John and Charlie, were messed up psychologically. I, also, have suspected over the years that John, JoAnne, Jim, and Clay were part of a coven and made some wishes at that time that have come true.
The professor for the design of experiments course was David Harville. I do not think he liked me and wondered if he may have been attempting to block me from learning. More likely, my difficulties were caused by my going off my medicine.
I know that, for the first time that I remember, I struggled for control of my consciousness. In the past, I let my illness be instead of trying to raise the flat, bound sensation across my heart. In my memory, the struggle left my mind in worse condition. I never got back to where I was before during my years at Iowa State.
There was trouble in the office where I was. I think one of the other students was Carol Gotway. There were two men in the office too, Doug Andrews and someone whose name I do not remember. Carol was just starting the program. I was still smoking at that time. I think that I was allowed to smoke in the hall at that time. Carol came in crying one day. She was also a smoker, I think. In my wanting to make her feel better, I started smoking in the office and erased a tally that was being put on the blackboard by my desk. The others had been treating me as if they disapproved of me. I ignored what I interpreted as their attitude. Anyway, I was switched to another office. Carol, I guess, was a very good student and received the Snedecor Award – the highest award for academic excellence given to Ph.D. graduates by the Statistics Department. She had gone to Bradley in Peoria, Illinois. She had a boyfriend who had gone to Harvard, I think. I had the thought that she had ties to the people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
That winter, I was honored by being inducted into the statistics honor society, Mu Sigma Rho. Clay and I went to the induction dinner. I was quite paranoid by then and remember saying something negative to Clay about my sense of connection to the other students.
I also got engaged to Clay when we were in Hull that Christmas. (I remember that the year before I had told my nieces I would not marry him because I did not love him.) That fall, I think, I was in a therapy group that the student health center had available. I was talking about my ambivalence about marrying Clay.
Also, I think it was that fall, I started auditing a dance class that the physical education department offered. Part of what happens when I am very ill is that my life goes out of control, and I stop doing my life. Studying dance got lost. And I never took another dance class.
I do not think I learned much in microeconomics. I am more interested in macroeconomics, though.
The spring of 1985, I took macroeconomics and a course on microeconomics and rational expectations. I also wrote my creative component. I think I got a A- and B+, respectively, in the courses and I passed my oral examination and had my creative component accepted. Dr. Yasuo Amemiya (my major professor), Dr. Wayne Fuller, Dr. H. T. David, and someone from Economics, I think, were on my committee. Dr. Fuller, I think, told me that they passed me conditional on my doing well in the Ph.D. level theory course – which is a highly mathematical course – since I had not done well in the real analysis course.
I moved into a basement apartment near campus since the owner of the house that I had been living in with JoAnne and Jim sold the property and the house was to be torn down. I kept the apartment clean.
In May, I flew to Norway to meet my parents and my Aunt Alice – who had been touring in England. We spent about a month visiting relatives and going to the farms from which my great-grandparents had come (all eight of them). My parents had lived in Norway after World War II for a year, on an American Scandinavian Foundation fellowship, and had gotten to know their cousins. Because I went to Norway, I did not attend my graduation – but I did receive my master’s degree in statistics.
My parents and I drove back to Iowa by way of Vermont and Wisconsin. We took our time. We took a ferry across Lake Michigan to avoid the Chicago traffic and stopped at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa to see the mounds. We got back to Boone toward the end of July.
On July 31st, Clay and I got married – at McHose Park in Boone. We had rented the shelter house and served a dinner. There were about forty people there. My parents, niece Jessica, brother Erik, and friends Anne (and Joe) and Margie Pecorella (someone I knew from Recovery in Boston) plus two of the people in the Ames Recovery group were there, as well as several of my relatives from Minnesota, my uncle from California, and a cousin from Chicago and her daughter. Clay’s son, cousin, mother, brother, and niece were there, too, as well as several of his friends.
The minister was a friend of Clay’s and was a plumber and a Mormon. Gene Crandall was part of the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints. When I was asked to say that I agreed to marry Clay, I said sure. Gene repeated the question and I said sure again. I guess the answer was okay. But a date was left off the wedding certificate, I believe the day that the certificate was signed, which was probably on purpose.
Clay and I had planned to spend the night at home. We had Margie and my parents staying with us, and maybe Erik. At the time, Clay had a travel trailer in the yard, where Erik would have stayed or maybe my Uncle Clarence. But we decided to go to Ames and spend the night in a motel, which we did. The next morning, most of my family were gathered at our house when we got home. We have a picture of them sitting on the porch and steps.
Later, when most had left, we opened our wedding presents. We had requested no gifts, but we got quite a few. That Friday, I think, we were to leave on our honeymoon in the evening. We were renting a houseboat on the Mississippi for a week. In the late afternoon, my mother stepped out our front door and her ankle broke. Her foot was sideways. We called 911 and they took her the the Boone County Hospital, so we did not get to Dubuque until quite late – after midnight, I think. But we were able to rent the boat on time the next morning. My parents stayed with Darin while we were gone, and my father took Margie to the airport
At that time in my life, I was depressed enough that I slept or lay in bed most of the time during which I was not working or doing schoolwork. When we got the houseboat (The Sum Fun, I think, was the name of the boat) I figuratively dropped from exhaustion. I slept a lot that week. I did some swimming. Clay was able to manage the boat okay. When I yelled at Clay when I was helping him pull the boat up to a pier, he asked me not to yell at him. I did some drawing. We both enjoyed ourselves, I think. If we could afford to, I think we would buy a houseboat now.
The fall of 1985, I once again tried to go off my medicine. I took Order Statistics from H. A. David, a 400-level advanced calculus course that counted toward my degree, given by Dr. Lieberman, and a course on count data, given by Dr. Koehler. I also was working for Dr. H.T. David on the nuclear engineering project as a research assistant. I became more and more psychotic as the semester went on. In the middle of October, Clay had to hospitalize me. At the time, I was sitting on our bed, chain smoking Camel straights, and screaming at the top of my lungs. I think the police came by.
In Dr. David’s course, I struggled with the first homework assignment. I worked very hard on the problems and thought I had done a good job. I also thought I had found a mistake in Dr. David’s book (which we used as a text) and tried to give a proof based on what I thought I found. Dr. David asked me to come in to see him to go over my problems. As we went over the problems, I could see I had done a very poor and messy job. I did still think I was right, I guess, and tried to defend myself. Now, looking back, I believe that someone was working through me when I worked the problems, maybe my stepson and behind him, people I worked with at Aerodyne and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Apparently, I really upset Dr. David.
I was in the hospital for about two weeks, I think. My doctor, Dr. Dodd, an Ames psychiatrist, put me on Haldol, which brought me out of the psychosis. Back at school, I finished the advanced calculus course, and got an A, but dropped the other two. I was particularly disappointed that I did not finish the count data course. Dr. Dodd recommended that I drop out of school for a while. I took the spring of 1986 off. I continued to work with Dr. H.T. David on the nuclear engineering problem. I went back to school in the fall, against Dr. Dodd’s advice.
Sometime that fall in 1985, I forget why, I was questioning my marriage, I guess. Darin must have said that Clay married me as part of some attempt to prevent me from doing what I was doing and that we were not really married, or I heard the thought in my head and attributed the thought to Darin. Clay was going to the file cabinet to get the marriage certificate and his divorce decree from Jane. I stopped him and told Darin to cut the shit. But my suspicion was raised.
Also, Clay would go bowling once a week, on Wednesday nights I think, and would come home somewhat drunk and I think we would usually have sex. (I believe he is an alcoholic. We drink rarely.) I think it was in September when he came home and forced himself on me and Darin’s consciousness collapsed onto mine. At least, I think that is what happened. The consciousness is still in my consciousness. I suspect what happened was an accident. I have dealt with the strangeness and difficulties using Recovery. Over the last several years, my body has been healing, as I have been following an alternative treatment regimen for my illness, and the problems are not bothering me the way that the problems did before. My consciousness is more normal now and working better.
I think it was the summer of 1985 and Darin, Clay, and I were camping, probably at Cutty’s in Des Moines. Clay and I slept in the trailer and Darin slept in a tent. The three of us were sitting around a campfire, as I remember, and talking, and I was thinking about planetary geometry – with regard to astrology. I felt a visceral removing of my visualization of the geometry of the planets from my mind and a blocking of my sense of geometry, like Darin was taking my way of thinking visually over. Since then, I have had a hard time visualizing planetary properties. Before, I did not – as I remember.
I think now that Clay is likely part of some extremist far right group. That is his business. People have a right to believe what they believe. His second wife is Mormon. I have wondered if the Mormons have a belief that women are vessels for men to control, rather than free individuals. Such a belief would explain some of the things Clay and his friends have done.
My brother Erik was living in Kansas at the time. He was either still going to school or working at Fort Leavenworth. He lived in Bonner Springs. We would visit now and then. We went to a Renaissance fair one time and a play another time.
Clay fell very much in love with me.
The spring of 1986, I spent most of my time in bed, sleeping. I was masturbating a lot. Darin would come home from school with his friends and come into the bedroom. I asked Clay to ask him not to do that. I think he stopped. I think he was trying to get his friends to try to have sex with me.
I think I bought my first computer the summer of 1986. I bought the computer through American Express. I had applied for an American Express card in 1985, before I went to Norway. The computer was a Tandy computer with two 5 1/4 in floppy disk drives – one for the operating system and one for a slave diskette. Hard drives were just coming in then. I also got a printer with the package and a monitor and keyboard. I think I spent $1700 and bought the computer on time – the first and last time I did that. I made sure Clay would pay for the one month I might not have been able to pay my bill out of my resources (school pay and savings).
I do not remember if I wrote my programs to create astrology charts that summer or the next summer. I know that I had bought a book on computer programs to do the calculations to find the placements of the lights, planets, and other points, as well as house cusps, that are used in astrology, before I bought the computer. The book was written by Michael Erlewine. I bought the book in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (I remember going to an astrological bookstore and asking if they had an ephemeris that went back to 500 years ago. That is probably when I bought the book.) I was interested in the cycles of Pluto and Neptune. They form a conjunction about every 500 years – the last one being in 1891 and 1892 and in Gemini.
We went to see Kiss of the Spiderwoman. I think the movie was about us. Clay wanted to see the movie and he does not like movies – except those with broad humor, like Airplane or Caddyshack.
The fall of 1986, I took a 600-level course on multivariate analysis with Dr. Amemiya and a 600-level course on statistical methods with Dr. Oscar Kempthorne. Dr. Kempthorne was a prominent English statistician, and he was quite old. This was the last course he would be teaching, as he was retiring. I do not think he liked liberals. He made a joke that the cottage industry of literature was writing books about the Bloomsbury group. Actually, the cottage industry of literature is writing romance novels. He liked Proust.
Dr. Kempthorne would not let me, or anyone else, take notes. I think he wanted to be the center of attention. Most of the students had taken the 500-level course with him – so he knew them. I did not get much out of the class, since taking notes is an important part of my learning process. But Dr. Kempthorne said he would give an A to anyone who could find all the solutions to a problem – which I was able to do using my computer. He gave me an -A. Everybody else got an A. I got an -A in Dr. Amemiya’s course, too. I think I was the teaching assistant in the 400-level course for sociology graduate students that year. I was the teaching assistant in the course about five times. Dr. Fred Lorenz and Dr. Carl Roberts alternated teaching the course – both were joint with sociology.
In the spring of 1987, I took the 600-level theory course from Dr. Glenn Meeden (?), a 500-level course on sampling from Dr. George Battisse (?), and a course on nonparametric statistics with Dr. Sukatme (?). I tried to go off my medicine again. I remember going with my parents, Clay, and maybe Darin to visit my Aunt Alice in White Bear Lake and up to New York Mills to visit my Aunt Myrtle. I was very psychotic. I remember my period started when we were at my Aunt Alice’s. I remember looking in a door mirror and thinking I was possessed by a goddess. Strange. I think it was Easter or spring break. I went back on Haldol before the semester was over and finished the semester.
I got a -B in the theory course, an A in the sampling course, and an -A in the nonparametric statistics course. Because of what I had been told when I took my orals for my Master of Science degree, I thought I was out of the Ph.D. program. I almost did not take the nonparametric statistics final after seeing the -B grade. I remember asking Dr. Isaacson (the director or acting director of the department at the time) about the program. He told me I was still in the program. Before that, I had a fight with Clay about being out of the program. I was rather emotional. I felt like a failure.
I am not sure for what course I was the teaching assistant that semester.
In the summer of 1987, I think, Erik and a Swedish woman, Elisabeth, got married. Clay, I, and Darin went to Hull for the wedding. That was the first time Clay was in Hull in the summer. A cousin of mine, Del Hagen (whom Erik knew), came to the wedding and sang for the ceremony. Clay, I, Del, and Darin drove to Plymouth to see Plymouth rock. Clay was surprised to see how small the rock is. We drove back along the coast as much as we could. (The towns between Hull and Plymouth on the coast are Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield, Duxbury, and Kingston.) The weather was very nice for the wedding and the drive to Plymouth. It was nice to be home in the summer.
That must have been the year we towed Bessie back to Iowa. Clay found a garage in Des Moines that worked on Volvos – East University Imports. They rebuilt Bessie’s engine and fixed her brakes. I paid for the work.
The fall of 1987, I took a 600-level macroeconomics course and the 600-level theory of methods course. I think I got Bs in both courses. I would have been a teaching assistant in the course for sociology students.
The spring of 1988, I took the 500-level multivariate statistics course, at the recommendation of Dr. Amemiya, and I took my written prelims. I think that about that time I was starting to panic about my approaching getting my degree. I went to class, and I tried to study, but I spent a lot of time lying in bed. Clay had bought me some crystal animals, each about an inch and one-half high. I had some other crystals too. Before the prelims, I put all my crystals in water in the crockpot and kept hot water on them for a few months, I think. I ruined the crock pot and the crystals. I figured raising the temperature would make the crystals more atomically disorganized. I have no idea if the temperature would have been high enough – or if the experiment had any effect.
I got an A in multivariate analysis and conditionally passed my prelims. The condition was that I had to take the theory of methods course over and raise my grade. I felt bad that I had ruined the crystals, particularly the ones that Clay gave me. I do not remember for which course I was the teaching assistant or what I did the summer of 1988.
The fall of 1988, I retook the theory of methods course and got an -A.
While waiting for the results from the prelim exam, I remember hearing a thought I attributed to Carol Gotway making fun of me for what I was thinking about my performance on the exam.
I was looking for a major professor for my Ph.D. No one wanted to work with me. I was going to work with Dr. John Eltinge, but he never came back to Iowa State to teach. Next, a visiting professor from New Zealand was going to come back but did not. Finally, Dr. Sengupta was coerced to work with me with the help of Dr. Wayne Fuller.
I had wanted to work on an economics-oriented problem and had asked Dr. Fuller if he would be my major professor. He refused. He was the only professor joint with Economics. Since I could not work on an economics problem, I thought I would like to work on a sampling problem. Sampling interests me. The summer of 1988, I think, I began reading in sampling. I thought I would be working with Dr. Sukatme, but she backed off. Someone, I forget who, told me that Dr. H. A. David was angry enough at me that they would have recommended that I go to a different university if I were not tied to Iowa with my marriage to my husband. I started working with Dr. Sengupta the summer of 1989. He left in the summer of 1991, I think, and I ended up working with Dr. Fuller. Working with Dr. Fuller was not my intent (since he would not work with me on an economics problem.)
The spring of 1989, I took a course on quality control from Dr. Robert Stephenson. I got an A.
I was terrified by my approaching the finishing of my degree and my thoughts and behavior were becoming more chaotic. Dr. Sengupta was a man whom I found attractive. I was resisting working with him before I saw him. The summer of 1989, I began working with him. I have a vague memory that I thought he was telling me he was in love with me in my head. I thought it was real and felt in love myself. I remember washing dishes in Clay’s and my house and feeling happy about the love. I am not sure what was going on astrologically.
I decided, since I was attracted to him, I would try to get to know him. I worked with him for a year or two, I think. I am not sure when he left – to go back to India, I think. He resisted my attempts to get to know him. As he resisted, my mind became more and more extreme in reaction. At that time, I was resisting thinking minds communicate with each other – but I was trying to figure out if the impressions I was getting were true. Eventually, he left. I found out later he had gotten married. I think he was single when I was working with him.
At that time, Clay was working on Bessie – painting her and replacing body parts. I guess people noticed my attraction to Deb, because I think there was a lot of gossip. Also, my mind was running, and I think Clay and Darin heard my thoughts. I eventually told Clay I was in love with Deb but that I still loved Clay. I guess my feelings toward Clay were more of his being a best friend I could confide in. I think he got very jealous and very angry at me.
Sometime around this time a woman, Sharon Hastedt (?), started coming to the Recovery meeting. She lived in Boone. I began giving her a ride to the meetings (which were in Ames – about 15 miles east of Boone.) Clay had been going to meetings with me, too, I think. We would eat at Hickory Park (a restaurant in Ames) before the meeting. When Sharon began riding with us, we would all eat there. I later thought that Clay (or someone else) had hired Sharon to investigate me. Sharon and I did things outside of Recovery, too. Sharon was going to college and was working at being an artist.
The summer of 1988, Darin graduated from high school. He went to Spencer, Iowa, to stay with his mother – who had come back from California to be with him, I would guess. (Darin had surgery to correct his underbite before he moved. Darin’s mother came out to stay with him at the hospital.) Darin had turned eighteen in May, so he was an adult. That fall, he signed up to go into the Navy. He was accepted into the nuclear program and went to boot camp in Orlando, Florida. Clay and I went to his boot camp graduation on our way back from our Christmas trip to Hull and Richmond. Darin’s mother was there too. Clay and I went home by way of the Gulf coast. I had never been in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana before. The coast is beautiful.
Darin went to school near Albany, New York, for specialized education in the nuclear program. He was a machinist mate. Clay and I helped him move in on the next Christmas trip (?). If I remember right, Darin, who had found a girlfriend in Florida, had his girlfriend come live with him. I do not think Darin had gone out with anyone in high school. (Neither I nor Clay had gone out with a person in high school either, at least essentially.) Laura was a flibbertigibbet. After school, Darin was assigned to the Enterprise, which was dry docked in Norfolk, Virginia. The was in 1990 or 1991. When Desert Storm started, he was in port and stayed there – since the Enterprise was still in dry dock.
Clay began getting back into ham radio in 1989, I think. He was not active when I met him.
Around this time, I took a correspondence course in astrology. The course taught natal astrology, covering chart interpretation and forecasting using transits and secondary progressions.
The fall of 1989, I took a second course in survey sampling – from Dr. Sengupta. I got an A, but Dr, Sengupta was not much of a teacher, so I was disappointed in the course. I was the teaching assistant in the sociology statistics course again. I also took my preliminary oral exam for the Ph.D. program.
The fall of 1989, I was falling apart and did not keep my office hours well for the statistics for sociology course. The spring of 1990, I lost my funding. Dr. Sengupta was not having much success finding me a problem on which I could work. I began meeting with both Dr. Fuller and Dr. Sengupta and I began working on a problem in variance estimation when data from a finite population is missing at random. The summer of 1990, Dr. Fuller found me funding as research assistant to support my research, so I was funded until I graduated. The spring of 1990, I took my last course, Time Series, from Dr. Fuller. I got an A.
For the next two years, I worked on my Ph.D. thesis, plodding in a very detailed way, through finding expectations and variances of estimators of totals for samples from finite populations. Since the only distributional assumptions were that the values of the observations were fixed, and that the stochasticity came only from the sampling – except that some points could not be sampled. The missing points were imputed from the observed sample – where imputation classes within the sample were sampled randomly and with replacement to find values to be assigned to the values missing within the imputation class. The imputation classes were assumed to be formed in such a way that the missing observations were missing at random from the class – that is, every observation in the imputation class was as likely to be missing as any other observation in the class. Finding the expectations and variances involved doing finite sums of messy formulas.
My Aunt Alice died in 1991, I think. We went up to Minnesota to see her before she died and for the funeral. We were living in Boone at the time. My father gave me some money from his part of the inheritance. I bought a recliner for Clay. The old one was wearing out.
Around this time, I bought a data set from François Gauquelin (the wife in a couple that were known for their research in astrology.) The data set was the heredity data set, a collection of birth dates, birth times, and locations of birth for parents and children. The data set was gathered by the Gauquelins in France (they were French.)
The summer of 1991, I think, Deb left Iowa State and I began working just with Dr. Fuller. The psychiatrist that I saw in Massachusetts, Dr. Makman, had thought I tend to come on the males when I talk to them, and I have noticed myself doing so on Zoom and Webex meetings this last year (2021.) The habit is not one of which I had been aware and I was quite offended when Dr. Makman made his comment. I had also noticed that older men tended to fall in love with me. Dr. Fuller is twenty years older than me. So, I made a not very serious decision to try to attract him – as part of getting through my degree. Doing such a thing goes against my sense of ethics. Pluto was transiting square my natal Pluto – when people tend to violate their standards.
That last year, Dr. Fuller was gone a lot, since he had been elected to be a Vice-President of the American Statistical Association. I continued with my work. I think Dr. Fuller and I were acting more and more like we were in love with each other and that there was a lot of gossip. In reality, there was no relationship beyond a student-teacher relationship between us. Dr. Fuller wanted me to take another semester to finish, but Dr. Isaacson (the acting Department head at that time, I think) asked me to finish up, so I did. Also, my parents were already planning to be in Iowa at that time for the graduation.
I really do not remember much about that last year studying at Iowa State. The problem on which I was working was for the National Resources Inventory, a survey taken by the Unites States Department of Agriculture.
My parents came out for my graduation, and my brother and his wife came down from Minnesota. Clay’s mother and niece were there. I had a small party. Dr. Fuller and his wife came, as did Dr. Amemiya. An office mate from Iran was there and a Greek student I knew also were there. Terry, the assistant leader of the Recovery group in Ames, and his wife Lynn, were there. I think Sharon Hastedt was there. And my family and in-laws. I think that was it.
After graduation, I presented my paper at the Joint Statistical Meetings – which are always in August. The meetings were in Boston, so I stayed with my parents and took the boat into Boston each morning. I think the Statistics Department paid for my airfare. Clay had not come out to Massachusetts but decided to fly out the last day of the meetings. I met him at the airport and then decided not to go back to the hotel where the meetings were held (at the Prudential Center, I think.) I felt alienated at the meetings.
During the time I was working on my thesis, I took the correspondence course in astrology. After graduating, I took a correspondence course in writing for children. I decided after that that I would not take any more courses – at least until I started using what I learned. I have not taken any more courses.
In September of 1992, I began working part time for the Statistics Laboratory at Iowa State. Dr. Fuller, if I remember correctly, had told me he would have work for me if I was interested. I did programming for the National Resources Inventory – to put my variance estimator into a program that imputed data into a data set.
By then, I think, Darin had married Laura and had lost his job on the Enterprise because he was caught doing something he should not have been doing. Over the next several years, he was stationed out of Norfolk, then New Haven, Connecticut. He was on an oiler and sailed in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. He was out of port a lot of the time. Both he and Laura had affairs and Laura had a baby that was not his (in the late 90’s, I think.) Clay and I would see them on our Christmas trips, and they came out to Iowa once or twice.
Dr. Dodd, the psychiatrist I was seeing, tried me on risperidone. The drug was not a good match for me. On the drug, I was quite confused and was tripping going up stairs. Under the drug, my periods stopped. I believe this was in 1994. After my periods stopped, I had two pregnancy tests about a month apart. The tests were about $30 (because the medicine affects the cheaper tests, and those tests cannot be trusted.) After that, Clay and I stopped having sex. We have never restarted. Eventually, Dr. Dodd put me back on olanzapine.
Also, during the wars associated with the breakup of Yugoslavia, I saw a picture in Ms. Magazine of a group of women who had been raped. The picture looked like a visualization of some of my fantasies. I decided that fantasizing about something that was coming into existence is not a good thing, so I stopped masturbating. I have never started again.
Around the time I graduated, I saw a doctor, who was a fertility specialist, about having children. Clay and I had not been using birth control since before we were married. I had not gotten pregnant. Clay gave a sperm sample. His sperm count was fine. The doctor found nothing wrong with me. But Clay did not want more kids by that point, so we never took it further than that. Looking back, it was just as well because I do not think I would have had the flexibility to bring up kids. But I had always thought I would have kids. I really have not missed them. When I see stuff on television about women who desperately want children, their feelings seem strange. The doctor did say that I should not get pregnant when on risperidone.
Sometime around then, my parents, Uncle Clarence, Clay, and I took a trip to the Black Hills. We stayed in Hill City and explored the area. We loved the area, as most people do.
We continued to go to Massachusetts and Virginia during the Christmas holidays – driving and seeing my brother Erik and his wife and, also, Darin if he was in port. We started using the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel and going north through Maryland and Delaware to avoid Washington, D.C.
In the spring of 1993, Clay and I looked for a place to which to move. Our house in Boone was not very large and the lot was small. I wanted office space and Clay wanted a large enough lot to put up amateur radio antennas. We wanted to find a place that would be somewhat close to the job market in the Des Moines metropolitan area. We ended up buying an old but well insulated farmhouse in Stratford on a 3.93 acres lot. The price was right. I think Clay really wanted a ranch style house, but I like the house we got. Stratford is farther from the Des Moines area than Boone, though. The property has a detached garage with heated office space for me and a large, unheated shop building for Clay.
We moved at the end of June. The moving day was a very windy day. The day after we moved most of the furniture, I flew to Boston for my niece Caity’s wedding. My sister-in-law, Jill, had taken over my parent’s house and the wedding reception was held there. I stayed with a neighbor. I had fallen when we were moving and had a very scabbed knee.
The night before the wedding, there was a rehearsal dinner to which I was not invited. No one had bothered to see that I had supper. I do not think I had access to a car to go out and get dinner. Since food and control was an issue that I had growing up with, I do not always recognize when I am hungry or what to do when I am. I think I snacked on something.
During the wedding, we were in the place where the wedding was happening and I felt like we were being slighted and knew I was about to burst out in tears, so I went out to my parent’s truck. Erik came out and, I think, we drove to my parent’s house. At the reception, I sat with some friends of my sister-in-law. The friends owned a land survey company. Since I had been out of work for around seven months in 1978 and 1979, I was angry that Jill had not referred me to them. It was Jill’s problem, not mine.
In November of 1993, I took over the leadership of the Ames Recovery meeting. Arlene Jutting, who had been the leader since the 1970’s, I think, was dealing with an illness her husband had and stepped down.
During the fall of 1993, I began preparing to take the technician class test to get a technician class amateur radio license. At Christmastime, I had my father quiz me on the possible questions that would be on the exam (the exam is multiple choice, where about one-fourth of the possible questions are on any given exam.) In February of 1994, I took the exam and passed. I received my license and call sign (kb0mpl) in May. I wanted a way to contact others if my car broke down when I was driving. I was regularly driving to Ames and Des Moines for Recovery meetings. At that time, to go further in amateur radio (get a higher class license) I would have had to learn Morse. Since I have a lot of trouble with hand-eye coordination, I did not think I could learn the code.
Around this time, after I took the correspondence course in writing for children, I decided to not try to write for children because I have such little contact with children.
While I was working at Iowa State, there was a young woman who was a graduate student – Kelly Fox was her name, I think. I was directing her and another person to develop a computer program. I was not doing a very good job, I guess, and she went to the computer science department for information. I began to feel she was messing with my mind and told Dr. Fuller my feeling. He asked if it would be okay to take me off the project, to which I agreed.
I worked part time for the Statistical Laboratory until the spring of 1994. I do not remember much of my time there. I believe, at that time, Sarah Nusser was head of the Lab, or maybe Roy Hickman was still the head. Sarah had been a contemporaneous student with me, starting after me and finishing before me.
I remember feeling like my awareness was going out of control toward the end of my time working there. I think I was laid off because my part of the work on the National Resources Inventory was done. I think now that a group of people in Stratford were messing with my mind, too. (More later.)
For most of the rest of 1994, I prepared to open my own business as a consultant. I went to workshops about starting a small business and talked to the Small Business Administration people. I remember talking to a man from the Small Business Administration in my office. At the time, my patents were visiting. I remember telling him that I did not know if I could force myself to get up and out to the office in the mornings, I think. In November, I opened the business – Vanward Statistical Consulting.
As it turned out, I did have trouble keeping office hours at that time. Part of the problem, I know now, was the furnace. There was an old gas furnace in the car stall part of the garage that heated the office. We found out in 2010 that the furnace chimney was not connected. The furnace exhausted to the garage. So, I would get kind of woozy when I worked in the office and heat was necessary.
Clay had bought me a Tandy Sensation computer and I bought a command line version of S-Plus. Unfortunately, the Sensation did not come with a lot of memory. We had to buy another hard drive. I think I ended up working with two hard drives. I believe it was Andy Tang who did the work of setting up the hard drive. The Sensation had an early version of Windows. I still use the computer.
The Sensation had an answering machine program. When I opened the business, I spent money on some office equipment, including a used copier and an answering machine system. I had a business phone line put in for the business. I think the answering machine system was connected to the Sensation. Unfortunately, I was not keeping office hours and the answering system was not working right. If I remember correctly, I lost many calls.
After buying the data set from Mme. Gauquelin, I corresponded with her for awhile. I worked with the data set and, in 1995, I wrote a paper on the research, which Mme. Gauquelin published. She had asked me what computer I would be using, and I described what I would be doing before I bought the data set, I think. The result would have been just significant at the five percent level for a one-sided test, but I decided to do a two-sided test. I am wondering now if she did not set up the result in the data. The last letter I sent to her had a plot with an unusual artifact in the plot. I never heard back. The data set has been published in five volumes. I have three of the volumes, but the data set is over 25,000 records, and I have not gone back to check the data set against the books.
In 1995, I also published an article in Today’s Astrology, a monthly publication of the American Federation of Astrologers, on using statistics in astrology and an article on the “A” index in the amateur radio journal, The Low Band Monitor, that a friend of Clay’s was publishing.
In 1996, I got involved with the county Democratic party when I went to the caucus (which occurs in February.) I think I have been to every election year caucus in the years I have been in Iowa, and many of the off-year caucuses. In 1996, Clinton was running against Bob Dole. I was a delegate to the county convention and was on the county platform committee. Then I signed up to be a delegate to the district convention and, maybe, the district platform committee (in March or April), then to the state convention and state platform committee (in June.) Platform committees take a lot of effort.
At that time, my parents had moved to Minnesota for a year. They were helping my Uncle Clarence to move from the family farm to town and to get the house emptied. (I got some of the furniture.)
The farm was homesteaded by my great-grandparents in the 1870’s (my father’s mother’s parents.) My father grew up there and my uncle took over the farm from my grandmother, probably when my grandfather died (in the 1940’s.) I think he bought it from her. He never married and had no children. My parents found an apartment or house to rent in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The farm is north of Ashby, Minnesota. I think it was very painful for my uncle. He sold the farm to a cousin on my father’s father’s side of the family. Clarence moved to a senior apartment in Ashby. So, we were up to Minnesota quite often that year.
My parents had rented the house in Hull to a couple with young children. They never paid any rent. I think they were trying to get possession of the house by a law that says if they live in the house for a year, I think, and the owners know that they are there, they can claim ownership of the house. My parents went back to Massachusetts in the spring, although they had planned to stay longer. My parents’ house has downstairs bedrooms and a basement that have outside entrances and no connection to the upstairs. The couple was still there when my parents got back. It took a few months for my parents to get the couple out. My parents spent some time in the basement rooms and some time in Vermont. In the summer, I flew out to spend some time with them after their ordeal. I think I was there about a month. They did not try to prosecute the renters. They just let what happened go. But many lifelong possessions were stolen and sold. My parents thought the renters were using drugs.
The fall of 1996, I worked for a seed company, Limagrain Research, as a laborer. We pulled soybean plants by hand and threshed them, keeping the plants separated. The company was renting a business property in Stratford and had rented land in the area for research. Since Clay was supporting me (I had little or no other income) and Clay hates the American Civil Liberties Union, I wanted to earn money to pay my ACLU dues (and to buy Christmas presents.) My dues came due in October at that time. The Limagrain job ended in November.
At some point, I began looking for full-time work. No one was interested in hiring me. I think that in the next fifteen years, I sent out hundreds of resumes and interviewed for 30 to 40 jobs.
I have always had trouble finding work. I think those of us with schizophrenia do not make a good impression. The unemployment rate for people with schizophrenia is between 80 and 90 percent.
In 1997, I am not sure what I was doing, other than looking for work. In the fall of 1997, I started tutoring statistics at Iowa State. I could not get textbooks for the classes I was tutoring and was not very successful. The university did not ask me back. At that point, I felt very much like a failure.
The spring of 1998, the Statistics Laboratory at Iowa State asked me back to do programming again for the National Resources Inventory. The work was part time, hourly work. I worked until May 1999, I think. When I was laid off, I filed for unemployment and was approved. Since I was on unemployment, I sent out a resume regularly. There was a job listing in Grimes (a suburb of Des Moines) in the newspaper for a (land) surveying aide. I applied for the job and was hired. I was not really in good enough shape physically for the job and only worked a couple of weeks. But I do like that kind of work. Iowa State called me back to work on the National Resources Inventory, so I left the survey company.
When I lived in Portland, I bought a textbook at Powell’s Bookstore about land surveying. I gave the book away that summer to a person who had been hired for the crew.
I worked at Iowa State until November. I think I shared an office with a man named Jamie that fall. I think he was still a student. His wife/ fiancee (?) was a student. Jamie, when talking on the phone, called someone a bitch. When he hung up, I told him that I did not think the word should be applied to women, that a bitch is a female dog. After that, we talked some – but I do not think excessively. I suspected at the time that he had the bipolar disorder. His judgement seemed to be off a bit. I do not know if he has the disorder.
Since I am interested in astrology and Jamie was curious, I did natal charts for him and his wife/ fiancee (?). Then, they dropped the interest for an unknown (to me) reason, so I never read the charts for them. I think the rumor around Iowa State at that time was that I was a witch (I am not.)
Around this time, my Uncle Clarence died. I went to Minnesota to see him shortly before he died. My father was also there. Clay and I went to the memorial service later. I inherited about $30,000 from my uncle, most of which I applied to our mortgage. I also was using part of my paycheck from Iowa State to pay off the mortgage. Clay, of course, had been paying the bank monthly checks. We got the mortgage paid off within a year, I think.
Sometime in November, Sarah called me into her office. I had looked at my palm when walking down the hall and saw that the M that had been prominent in my hand for years, was gone. Sarah started talking about people not working when at work – which was not something that I thought applied to me, so I wondered what she was talking about. Then she, what I thought, laid me off. I told her about my palm.
I worked a day or two the next May, but since then have not worked for Iowa State. I did not file for unemployment. I had decided to restart my business, so was not looking for work. I went to workshops put on by the government and bought a book on the history of statistics. It took me a month or two to write a brochure. By the winter of 2000/ 2001, I sent out the brochure and a letter to businesses who I thought might have need of a statistician. I had one customer. I drove to Valley Junction in West Des Moines to visit with him. I do not think he was happy with the consultation.
Around this time, Dr. Dodd, the psychiatrist I had been seeing since 1983, retired. I started working with a female psychiatrist who was from India, Dr. Parulekar. The clinic where I saw her, Central Iowa Psychological Services, had ties with the Catholic Church, I think. This did not bother me, as I feel a person’s religious beliefs are their own business and I tend not to discriminate with regard to religion.
Clay and I had been going east for Christmas each year. At some point, I began to call my parents each week. The way we had grown up, we only called loved ones on holidays like Christmas. The spring of 2001, I began looking at assisted living communities in Iowa for my parents and my parents were also looking in Massachusetts.
The summer of 2001, my brother Rolf called to tell me that my parents could no longer live on their own. A friend of my brother and his wife’s, who had stayed with my parents for awhile, had visited them and found they needed care. My brother’s family was vacationing in Massachusetts at the time and Jessica, my niece, had taken on the responsibility of staying with my parents until I could get there. I think I flew out at the end of July.
Before I left, I had arranged for my parents to move into Athens’ Woods, a low-level assisted living community that is behind the nursing home that is across the highway (which is two lane town street in Stratford) from our house. They were moving into a two-bedroom apartment with a living space, bathroom, and small kitchen.
For the next month or so in Hull, my mother, then my father, needed nursing care in a skilled nursing establishment. We bought plane tickets for Iowa a few times and had to cancel them. Clay flew out and, maybe, my brother Erik stayed with my parents while Clay and I drove a U-Haul – with my parent’s car towed behind – to Iowa. The U-Haul contained furniture for the apartment.
In Iowa, we moved my parents’ furniture into the apartment. A resident, Mr. Swanson, helped us. At the time he was friendly, but later he was diffident. I flew back to Massachusetts. We rented a car.
I became aware that my brother Rolf’s father-in-law, Arthur Dwyer, was seducing my mother’s feelings. His wife had passed away. I do not think my mother (and maybe my father) had been able to explore love within the structure of her life, which left her vulnerable. Mr. Dwyer was a Gemini (who are known for flirtatiousness and fickleness.) I told my mother not to romanticize Mr. Dwyer. Mr. Dwyer later told me that he was looking for a wife. My father’s reaction was to flirt with a friend of my mother’s – which made me angry at him. (I suspect my spending much of my early life exploring love and sex probably was the working out what my parents were not able to explore love and sex within the structure of society during their lives.)
I remember trying to empty the house of personal things. I threw out a lot of papers, including my mother’s writings. She asked me to. A lot of papers went to Iowa. Any clothes that did not go to Iowa went to a thrift store. The pictures in the house that my brothers did not want went to Iowa.
I turned 50 on September 1st. My father was in the skilled nursing establishment and my mother was home but confused by developing Alzheimer’s. I bought myself two Hostess Snowballs to celebrate.
On September 4th, a week before 9/11, we flew out of Logan Airport. I drove the rental car – stuffed full of luggage – to Logan. My friend, Anne, met me there – at the rental car place. We transferred the luggage to her car, and she drove us to the terminal. We unloaded the luggage and she left to find parking. We had the maximum amount of permitted luggage.
If I remember right, we were told the flight was cancelled but a skycap took control of the luggage, got wheelchairs for my parents, took us to the front of the ticketing line and through ticketing, and, I think, helped get us all out to the gate. We had to wait a few hours, but we got a flight to Minneapolis, where Rolf was to meet us. Anne came back into the terminal and stayed with us until the flight loaded.
We landed late in the evening or early in the morning. There were not many staff or passengers around the airport. I do not think we got much help getting my parents to the entrance, that they walked from the gate, but I am not sure if that was true. This was before we had cell phones, I think, and my brother had a hard time finding us. He did eventually find us, and we spent the night at his house. I think that the next day Rolf and Jill drove us to Stratford (or Clay came from Iowa to pick us up) and we got my parents into their apartment. They were happy to see the familiar furniture.
For a bit over the next year, I took care of my parents. My mother was developing Alzheimers Disease and my father was quite blind with macular degeneration. They both had several other health problems. I made breakfast and dinner for them every day and lunch on the weekends. Athens’ Woods provided lunch during the week. (Athens’ Woods had a woman who came and did basic cleaning once a week in all the apartments.) I was glad to help them and to be with them.
I took them to their medical appointments and for outings. We went to Preston, Minnesota, – my mother’s hometown – in the fall. My mother was not to steady on her feet. We went to the cemetery to see her parents’ graves. I left her standing in the cemetery to look for the graves and she toppled over and skinned her arm. Bad judgement on my part. Neither of my parents made an issue of the fall. We visited with the last of my mother’s old friends still living and stayed at a local motel.
I had my parents go to the Methodist church in Stratford, since they were Methodists in Hull, and the Methodist Church is the church I grew up attending. I think they would have preferred to go to the Lutheran church, since they grew up Lutheran. I drove my parents to church each Sunday – I do not remember if I went in with them when my father was alive – and we went to church functions. The people at the Methodist church were not friendly.
My father passed away in April of 2002. He had congestive heart failure and was getting weaker and weaker. He was in Boone County Hospital in December with pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs), I think. My brothers and nieces and nephew came to see him. Darin visited, too, when no one else was there.
On Friday, April 5th, or before, my mother had a test that involved a dye and that required her to go off her Metformin. She needed a test to see if the dye had cleared her system before she could go back on Metformin. I thought she could get the test on Saturday morning at the McFarland Clinic office in Webster City. On the Wednesday before, my father had asked if he could skip his heart appointment since he had a cold. By Saturday morning, my father was quite weak. I do not think he could sit at the table to eat breakfast. I remember feeding him, but that may have been for lunch.
I think I had a dual and divided will here, whether to take my mother to Webster City or to get some help for my father. I think I had called my parents’ local doctor, Dr. Lowry, the night before. I decided to take my mother to the clinic. My father was sitting on my parents’ couch. I thought that what he needed was rest.
At the clinic, the building was mostly dark and empty. There was someone there, but they were not expecting my mother. I think the person was able to do the test though. Maybe not. When we got back to Stratford, my father was still sitting up. He was not up to sitting at the table to eat.
I think I asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital and he said no, but that is a typical answer for his family – they (and I) do not want to bother people. I left the two of them in the apartment and went back to my house, where I was working on a computer survey I had taken for the International Society for Astrological Research – pro bono.
Around 5:00 PM, I went to the apartment to make supper for my parents. Their neighbor, Mrs. Patterson, met me in the hall. She had heard my father gasping for breath, I think, and had tried to call me. The number she called was my business number and the phone rang in the office, not the house. I was in the house.
My mother was sitting at the dining area table and my father was still on the couch – but my father was gone. I called 911 and the operator kept me on the phone until the emergency management technicians came. She asked me to see if I could help my father, but I am frightened of dead bodies and could not bring myself to try anything. When the technicians and Dr. Lowry came, I called my brothers and Clay – I am not sure in what order. When the technicians were ready to move the body, they had me take my mother into the bedroom.
After my father died, we had a funeral in the chapel at Athens’ Woods. Quite a few relatives came, and the residents of Athens’ Woods were there. The funeral was open casket, and the remains were cremated – as had been my father’s wishes. The estate went to my mother. Neither parent had written a will, nor did my mother later.
I think my mother was angry at me after that. I do not think she said much of anything to me in the next seven months until she passed away. When I would go over to make meals for her, she would not put in her hearing aid. The people at Athens’ Woods did not make friends with my parents, as far as I could tell.
I did not know why she was angry. Three suppositions were – that she blamed me for my father dying – that Mr. Dwyer did not get in touch with her (I do not know if Jill told her father that my dad had died and I did not ask Jill if she had) and it was breaking her heart – that some of the fellow residents at Athens’ Woods had spread to her the falsehoods that had circulated around me at Iowa State (one of the American graduate students had found a job at the Boone newspaper and some of the residents had ties to Boone.)
When I was living at home in the 1970’s, my mother would try to get me to take walks with her for my mental and physical health. I did the same for her. After breakfast, when the weather was okay, I would have her walk with me on the grounds of Athens’ Woods. She was having pain with walking, in her hip I think, and used a walker. She could not step up even small steps by the end.
In May, she flew to Virginia to spend a week or so with my brother Erik and Elisabeth. In August, Rolf and Jill came down from Minnesota for my mother’s birthday and Clay’s mother came down from Alta. We had a picnic at a local park (Brushy Creek) with a lake. There was a Norwegian movie playing in Des Moines and I took her to see the movie. She enjoyed the movie and thanked me (one of the few times she talked to me) and said she could understand what was said.
I continued to take her to medical appointments and went to church with her. I think I drove her up to Brushy Creek quite often. In Hull, the view of water was always present, so seeing an expanse of water would have been a bit like being in what had been her home for almost fifty years.
I did not find her not talking to me strange. Throughout my early life, at least, people I was friends with or casual acquaintances with stopped talking to me for reasons that were not known to me. (I think Clay and his mother consciously did so too for a while.) My personality had developed to not make an issue of the silence either within myself or with others, and to not blame myself for the silence. I just thought I was different in some way. Also, that the silence was normal.
My mother developed pneumonia in October or November, if I remember right, and was in the hospital and then in the skilled nursing facility across the road from us. She was able to return to her apartment. Toward the end of November, I went to get her breakfast and found that she had sat all night in the armchair and had peed on herself. I must have called 911. She was taken to Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames (about 30 miles away.). I think she had pneumonia again.
After a few days in the hospital, I think she had a stroke that harmed her ability to breath on her own. (Her mother’s family had all died from strokes.) The hospital put her on a breathing machine, and I called my brothers to come. That first night, I sat with her. I guess I felt it was my duty and the right thing to do, but I was glad to do it. The assistant minister from the Methodist church came to see her and stayed with her while I returned to Stratford to get my medicine. The minister also stopped by – the next day, I think.
Clay had to go to the airport in Omaha to put his mother on a plane to Texas, if I remember right. She was going to visit her daughter in Houston.
I remember talking to the phlebotomist (the person who manages the breathing machine) about my father’s death. He said something like “Some people just let their loved one die.”, to which I said something like “We had to do that with my father.”. Since I have had symptoms over this comment and have had the thought that some of the violence that occurred later was because of the comment, I will say that I was making conversation – that the comment was not literally true. There was no ‘we’ involved. The decisions around my father were mine. Also, I did not make a conscious choice to let my father die and was surprised and a bit shocked when he did.
My brothers arrived the next evening, I think, and spent the night at the hospital, I think. On the morning of November 24th, the breathing machine was turned off, and while Clay was off elsewhere running an errand and my brothers and I were standing by her bed, my mother passed away.
We had the funeral at the chapel at Athens’ Woods. Again, many relatives came, and the residents of Athens’ Woods were there. The funeral was open casket and the remains were cremated – as my mother had wanted.
After both my father’s and my mother’s deaths, there were a lot of tasks to do. Thankyou cards had to be sent out. Bills had to be paid. Medical appointments had to be cancelled. Accounts had to be closed.
We had to wait for the legal issues to be resolved before we could access my mother’s money. Mostly, that was not problem with the creditors, but the administrator of Athens’ Woods started acting like we would not pay some money that was due. I think his attitude was a result of the Iowa State-Boone-Athens’s Woods connection that I suspect had spread a false impression of my behavior and character.
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