MARCH 2015

Thanks for the letter to the class and your added postscript. Maybe somebody will look at those videos. It is as much of a surprise to me as to anybody that that informal shot on the yearbook page turned out to be exactly who I turned out to be. I could have the same shot taken today and it would be just as appropriate as it was then. You never know.

I don't know that you remember or knew that I taught a Friends for one year ('69-'70). They had turned down Steve Piro the year before so I never imagined I would be hired but, oddly enough, in the Spring of '69 they suddenly needed an asst. wrestling coach, an asst. soccer coach and a 7th Gr. history teacher. Just lasted one year, though. I couldn't get along with the extraordinarily un-Quakerly Headmaster. That, combined with my decision to decline the offer of an expense- paid holiday in Viet Nam, meant that suddenly I was looking for something else to do. Suddenly, after a year of traveling around the country, my hobby became something like my job. And has been since.

One of the things that this "work" does is take me away from home some. (I'll note here that I've never been a touring musician, that is, on the road most of the time.) Still things come up and sometimes it becomes either foolish or impossible to turn them down. One of those things is an annual visit to Old Bethpage Village. So being away in October means being on Long Island for two weekends, the second of which is the first weekend in October. So I should be able to get to a few events. All my events at Old Bethpage will be be during the day although there will be a few related requirements. Anyway, I should be able to make it to one thing, anyway. (The next three weeks after that will take me on a tour to N.C., D.C. and elsewhere. Nice coincidence here that I'll be on L.I.

Keep me posted, will you? You've got the e-mail address. I take it you live somewhere near Ithaca?

Cheers,
Jeff Davis

August 31, 2000

Dear Bob,

Thanks for the note. Thought I had better respond as soon as possible before your letter got buried. I will not be able to make it to a reunion this year. I will be on Long Island for nearly a week at the beginning of October; friends from Nova Scotia will be arriving on these shores on October 21; other friends arrive on the 23^rd; my brothers Hardin will be here with my father sometime before or after those visitations. It will be a busy time.

A busy time, yes, but not as busy as it has been for the last year or so. After seventeen years in Cambridge, after nearly two decades basking in the shadow of Harvard's Weidner Library, I have finally departed for less congested regions, to Connecticut's quiet northeastern corner. Quiet it is. I went for a bike ride this morning and in the more-than-an-hour that I was out I saw no more than ten cars. Of course, I wasn't on what Long Islanders would commonly call roads, at all, but on paths, dirt roads, and trails and hardly tackled the pavement at all.

Bigger news (and news that Doris Davis would have insisted should appear in a previous paragraph ahead of lesser topics) is that I got married a month ago, "skipping the messy first marriage", as a friend said. The fine woman in question is Lisa Davidson, a New Zealand-born Californian. We met three years ago on one of my occasional perambulations to the far shore. Lisa grew up in the mountains of California but this somewhat less dramatically vertical place suits her, and me, fine. She is a painter, crafts designer, and a dedicated collector of old books.

I am still doing music, performing here and there in educational venues (although festivals took me to California and Nova Scotia this summer); am beginning work on a solo recording; am still seeking out old songs from old singers and old collections as I can; doing school programs for Young Audiences in and around Boston; doing a little editing and writing for fun.

I bought my first instrument (a banjo) in the summer of '62 with my first pay check from my first real job. The inescapable fact is, then, that I have been involved with music (not including assaults on an innocent piano and an unwitting clarinet) for thirty-eight years. Way leads on to way, and I'm sure that had not Friends Academy led me to Anne and Frank Warner and to traditional folk music that I would have found something else interesting to do. But it has been such a grand time - one that has carried me regularly across this country to meet astonishing people - that it is difficult to imagine what else I might have done that would have been as stimulating or fascinating.

Brother Hardin ('63) has lived in Salt Lake City ever since the Army decided that it was a better place for him than Saigon. He has become the most voracious reader I know and is a championship bicycle racer. Sister Amy ('72) is now temporarily retired in Charleston, South Carolina and minding her husband and two kids. My father is still in Sea Cliff and is wonderfully well. For a quarter of a century I performed regularly with Jeff Warner ('61) until he moved to England for a time. He is back now and living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as is his brother Gerret ('64) and family. Steve Piro ('64) lived 'round about Portsmouth for years; he and his wife Emily just moved last month to Kennebuck, Maine. They were all here for our little wedding, so I had my family and oldest friends here to witness that which they thought they would never see.

Ever so briefly, that is the story from here. Sorry I won't be at whatever reunion comes off in October. Perhaps another year. Montour Falls, eh? Nice country up there...

Sincerely,

Jeff Davis