So much has happened, yet the basics have remained so constant, as to make it seem more like a week than *1* year ago that I was penning this letter's predecessor. After having the folks to Christmass Eve dinner, and after services at the Jail on Christmass day, Dad and Jessica drove me out to the airport. There we met my sister, arriving in from Pennsylvania for the holidays. After an hour at the airport with the family, I was off to Caracas, where the annual vacation began. Having been given introduction to diplomatic corps members stationed in Caracas, I had a super tour there of beaches, sights, and restaurants. No place for dieters (much less vegetarians!), Caracas: the beef there was about the best I've had. A half-hour flight away, Aruba gave me introduction to the Dutch Antilles. So void of natural resources is the island that the Spanish conquerors exempted its natives alone from extermination. There, the consequent language - Papamiento - is an intriguing amalgam of the native tongue plus Spanish, overlaid with Dutch and English. As the worldOs largest oil refinery and tourism constitute almost all of the Dutch Antilles' industry, I was in the perfect location for my annual recharging: the beaches by day and entertainment at night. I got over to Curacao in time for New Year's Eve, and thereupon occupied myself in assisting a group of stewardesses to dance out the old year. Being aware of the insidious fever of gambling, I took but a few dollars into one of the Island's many casinos: I found it much more entertaining to watch the pros go through (or make) bundles of money than to risk my own. The trip concluded with an idyllic visit to San Juan.

After *2* days there, back to the turmoil of introduction of a new payroll system at work. Having designed a job classification system for our 24,000 employees, I helped in the nursing of the computer as it tried to digest the totally new format. Eleven months later, the system is still being coaxed, but paychecks are being generated. When, in the Spring, we found that our manufacturing plant in Miami was having some personnel problems, I spent a week down there to lend a hand. Whether my not being invited to return for further work there signifies that I wrapped up the problems or exacerbated them, I'll never know. Quite possibly, the obscene spiraling of food prices that we've all been feeling has so taken the plant's attention that follow-up to the visit has been overlooked. Various brush fires (salary surveys, job analyses, manpower projections) were occupying me till this Summer, when departure of one of our key people led to reorganization of the personnel operation. I came out of it as personnel coordinator. One phrase that seems to conclude all position descriptions, - "performance of related duties as assigned" - is a fitting characterization of my new billet: without any specific ongoing responsibility, I'm into whatever areas of the company's personnel management are in need of problem-solving, analysis, assessment, or conflict-resolution. Who said a 9-to-5 job is dull?

Almost *3* years with the company, and having no experience of the operating situation of the vast majority of our employees, I decided to complement whatever personnel expertise I might have with actual on-line employment when Jessica left for the Summer. So I started in one of our restaurants as fountain attendant, then dishwasher, table waiter, host, cook (both opening and closing), cashier, busboy, and on through acting relief manager. What was to have been a few hours a week for a brief period ended as five months, averaging over 30 hours per week - this in addition to the regular work back at the office. While I grant that one doesn't have to solicit to be effective in counseling prostitutes, or to lose a leg to relate well to the handicapped, I so profitted (both personally and professionally) from the line experience as to wonder why more staff incumbents don't take the opportunity to get out where the action is. Partial answer is found in the observation that, now more fully realizing the nature and scope of our employees' problems, I see how silly many inflated personnel concepts and theories in fact are.

An unanticipated benefit of this line experience was as a source of funding for a painful, long *4* months of dental work that I had to endure. Every Wednesday morning during the period found me at B.U.'s Graduate School of Dentistry where a seeming army of specialists (perio-, ortho-, endo-, and every-other-o) probed, cut, drilled, capped, grafted, canal-rooted, crowned, sutured, and photographed. Although I've been assured that my teeth will now last till IOm 80, such guarantee does not have a concomitant surety for the rest of the body and spirit. If a dentist ever tells you heOll get to the root of your dental problems, be sure to determine whether he means to be taken literally.

With *5* years behind me as chaplain at Suffolk County Jail, I've been gratified to see the courts finally take an interest in the inmates' situation during the past year - this to the point of decreeing certain reforms at the jail meant to improve the optimistic about their results. For example, the female inmates (and many of the men) have now been moved from Charles Street to a number of jails throughout the Commonwealth. One result is that inmates spending several months waiting trial will now get no visits from their relatives who are dependent on public transportation. Further, now that inmates can telephone direct, and that Sunday telephone hours coincide with the Chapel time, there has been a significant drop-off in attendance at services - both because the Chaplains are no longer vital couriers to the street for the inmates, and because phone calls have an obvious priority over worship to a confined person. Given the annual admissions/ releases at the jail, over forty thousand inmates have been through since I started work as a volunteer there. Thus, acknowledging that I know of only *6* for whom I have been a change agent with objective, long-range benefit would be a paralyzing inducement to despair if we were playing the numbers game. Rather, I take it to be a sign of society's lack of awareness of the inmates. Some programs I've become involved with (a pre-release program for the employment of convicts prior to completion of their sentence, and a self-development group of present and former inmates attempting to develop meaningful careers) show that reduction of recidivism is primarily dependent on societyOs treatment of the former inmate, rather than on his treatment while institutionalized.

Although my running had to be cut back during internship at our restaurant locations, I kept up my daily twelve-mile runs long enough to average *7*-minute miles. Beside the exercise's obvious value to health (reduction of general tension and blood pressure), it became an almost necessary adjunct of my commitment to consume as many as possible of our twenty-eight flavors each week. It has further reinforced my support of the notion that meaningful weight-control is possible only with a long-range program of deliberate hard exercise.

Having been a consistent blood-donor for some time, I had been discouraged to find it taking two years to make the *8* donations necessary for a gallon. Thus it has been rewarding to become involved in the Red Cross's new Platelet Pheresis program. Involved here is repose for a few hours, while the intricate new machinery spins the platelets out of my blood and puts the remainder back into me. As platelets cannot be stored or synthesized, and as they are essential for life to bleeders and people with leukemia, the need is obvious. As the removed platelets are replenished within hours, and because one donation of platelets harvests many of the goodies as are contained in twelve points of whole blood, the efficiency is appealing. Until, however, more of the machinery can be purchased and more technical specialists trained, participation in the program will obviously be limited. One last inducement: fifty platelet donations remove less protein from the body than does one whole-blood donation; thus, you can give as frequently as your outside commitments permit. I commend the program to you if you should be approached about it.

I got *9* fellow Brown alumni/ae together two evenings this Fall to work on telephoning our area alumni to raise pledges for the school. The results were great and indicate how much more effective for fund-raising a group working together and providing moral support is than the single solicitor out on his own. Add to that Brown's invitation to me to head up my class's fund-raising activities and my continuing participation in United Way activities and you see why many, when told I'm on the other end of the telephone line, are reluctant to answer. In fact, these involvements are motivated by the conviction that the money raised will be put to effective use. In this respect, my time is of greater value to the programs than are the relatively small sums I can afford to give directly.

Now that she is *10* years old, Jessica has had her year of catastrophes: she broke her wrist while bicycling with her cousin in Brussels this Summer. Happily, the break was so minor as not to inhibit her from swimming and climbing later in the Summer, when she got down to Switzerland. Once back here, she finally got her own bicycle. A car hitting the bike while she was walking it across an intersection caused some serious bruises, but luckily no more. Recorder and flute lessons have displaced ballet for the time; the plastic arts and reading seem to be her great enthusiasms at school; Tournesol and Tournedos (sunflower and lamb chop) have given her a GerbilOs-eye view of reality.

Though I had other bases for deciding the destination of this year's R&R trip, it is convenient that Sydney is about *11* thousand miles from Boston. Else, I don't know how I'd fit the trip into the numbering scheme of this letter. Following services at the Jail Christmass Day, I'll be off to vacation Down Under. As I'm planning to drive up the East coast of Australia and through much of New Zealand, you can imagine my relief to learn that gas down there is now at 15 cents per gallon. I'm crossing my fingers that my flight cancellations will all be on the return trip, not outbound.

As I'm out of news and steam, I'm glad that Christmass, at least in the classic calendar and song, has but *12* days. However, with the energy crisis, economic distress ahead, and a Lewis Carroll-like phantasmagoria in our Capital, I hope we can keep the feast's spirit of hopeful expectation, joy, and love alive every day of 1974.