The change from 0' F to 88'F was too much for my luggage: it didn't come aboard until 4 days later. What need for luggage, however, as long as I had my toothbrush, film, a T shirt and shorts? Nothing further was really necessary. Having come from ferocious cold, I was especially happy to spend the first night sleeping on deck [I've gotten that down to a science: each of the ships of the Windjammer fleet has a central place topside where Storytime in the morning and Swizzles in the afternoon take place: positioning my deck mattress near the Storytime table, I escape the occasional squall by rolling underneath . Further, this topside location makes easy my customary hosting of " first light breakfast" - Bloody Mary's, fresh coffee, and out-of-the-oven pastries.

Normal breakfast that first day: Eggs Benedict, while under sail towards Saint Kitts. Found the 110 passengers and 40 crew with whom I'd be spending the next two weeks a delight - all of us shepherded by Captain Jeoff, whom scuttlebutt said to be the best captain in the fleet. We spent Christmass afternoon on a remote beach (need a definition for idyllic?). That night, to the harbor of Nevis (remember Alexander Hamilton's birthplace?). There, I found a philatelist's treasure: in the postal shop were four copies of a first-day-cover postal card of the Polynesia, with a first-day-cover stamp of the Polynesia itself from 8 years before.

Had a neat time upon our return to St. Kitts: though our ship had reserved the berth at the quay for the night. the "Wind Song," one of the fancy new French "ships" with a computer replacing all real sailors aboard, non-functioning plastic sails, passengers effectively miming the sails, was in our berth, refused to depart. So Captain Geoff came upon her straightaway twice: no effect. Although (or perhaps because) a group of us eager 'Jammers had organized a boarding party to go aboard the Wind Song and disable her computer, Captain Geoff was able to get the harbour pilot to force it (I wouldn't dignify such a travesty by calling it ''her'') out to the harbour. As many of its passengers had not yet boarded, they were subjected to the indignity of having to come upon our upper deck where we were all reveling with a Steel Band brought aboard for the night, go down to our main deck - (would you believe some of us Jammers had the poor taste to moon them?) - in order to board their lighter.

The reveling ended at midnight, when we upped anchor, left the harbour en route to St. Bartholomew: did I note a certain wistfulness among the Wind Song's passengers on deck as we passed it? Arrived at Gustavia in St. Bart's early morning. Omen of the time: the battery on my watch gave out, forcing me finally to learn the meaning of the ship's bells. and freeing me from preoccupation with schedules and deadlines. From Saint Bart's to Valley in Anguilla, then back home to Phillipsburg, on our way to which I was allowed to join the crew in serving the Captain's dinner.

Now began a highlight: no other passengers staying for the next week, I had the ship to myself for 36 hours (who says I can't pretend to be Captain Horatio Hornblower as I make the rounds of my ship? While waiting for the other passengers to arrive, noted the Yankee Clipper coming into port, captained by Max (who had been my captain on the Mandalay the year before). As the Clipper was picking up a one-week charter due back in Phillipsburg before going up to Antigua to pick up its passengers, got Captain Max's okay for me to sail up with them rather than my scheduled flight up. So, three weeks without use of a single land- based vehicle!

Now it's New Year's Eve, and the new pax are arriving from the cold North: due to various difficulties, they didn't get aboard until 1/2 hour into the New Year - many were seasick before we even got underway! The entretemps did allow me to get all my postal cards posted (crafty: postage for cards from the French islands cost 3 times those from the Dutch islands!)

Spent a marathon night on deck with one other stalwart (a student from Stanford): neither the Ivy Leaguer nor the Californian willing to give in to an absolute tempest, with the rain coming down so hard that there was as much as an inch deep of liquid sunshine on deck. Somehow we survived, by first light had solved all the world's problems.

Now on to Gustavia, where my visit the week before had told me to bring a group to Jimmy's Buffet - 10 of us took over the pub, just barely made the last lighter back to the Poly! Again back to St. Bart's - no Wind Song in the way this time, a different Steel Band entertaining us. Had to acknowledge Stantord's seaworthiness the following night at Morgantown in Anguilla, where as one of the judges of the Toga party saw that he got second place.

Though I was looking forward to the Yankee Clipper the next day, was truly wistful to see all the Poly passengers leave, and myself being taken by lighter over to the Clipper. Again as she had debarked all her charter passengers and wouldn't be picking up the new ones till Antigua, I was again the sole passenger. Captain Max advised me that we would be hoisting every inch of sail for the overnight crossing to Antigua and were due for some real weather! Using a bit of caution, I lashed a leg to a mast as I bedded down on deck for the night. Well I did! At times the prow was underwater: the sea was constantly coming over the bulkheads: it was magnificent. I don't have the money to afford such a long-term rollercoaster ride.

The Yankee Clipper is one of the smaller ships in the fleet, with but 60 passengers and 25 crew- a rather different atmosphere from the larger ships. However, even on those over twice her size, I never had the sense of crowds (except at the swizzle bowl each afternoon); plenty of opportunity for communing with nature or for meeting a diversity of people - computer expert from Norway, pig farmer from Missouri, CIA worker from Maryland, retired soldier from North Carolina, dramatist from Colorado. and so on.

This my fifth pass through Antigua, it was the first I had a whole day to wander through St. John's, its capital. The Cathedral of Saint John, the oldest in the Western world, tells in the monuments to fallen heroes of the past the whole story of the colonial era and the subsequent Colonial rebellion. The other passengers arrived through the day. Had some trouble convincing them I wasn't part of the crew, as I felt it my duty to welcome each of them aboard my ship (validly, it seems, as I had more than earned my place with the baptism of the previous night's passage up from Phillipsburg, when at least half the Atlantic Ocean seemed to have washed over me!).

Unfortunately for these landlubbers. our first passage the next day was a rather rough 8-hour crossing back down to Gustavia in Saint Bartholomew. It was sure to come: once the first of the green ones got up rapidly from supper, he was joined by half the others. Left plenty of food for us hearty ones.

Must comment on how ship-shape the Clipper is: though all of the ships are well-maintained, none touches her flowing mahogany, her radiant brass, her meticulously coiled rope, her spotless decks. Once at St. Bart's. took a walk out to the airport : there, the arriving planes barely skirt over the intervening hills, account for the tire tracks which a few cabs from town are proud to sport on their roofs: seems that a last-minute dash to the airport along the road at the crest of the hill risks literally having the deploying landing gear of the incoming plane kiss the root of a passing car!

With the Polynesia also in port. the passengers from the two ships had excuse for a revel at the Select bar till well past midnight. Then up to Phillipsburg, on to Nevis. and (with a rainbow perfectly framing Nevis as we left), a final crossing back to Antigua. As the previous year, was delighted to reenter the landlubber's world with a few friends in Hollywood/Miami beach.

Back in Boston, urgent call from the office where I had been working at M1T: seems the temp who followed me in the office coordinating the search for a new president had used ball point pen to label all the floppy disks recording the search. Sort of like using a hose to clean the surface of the Declaration of Independence. A few weeks of my trickery there convinced the disks that their documents weren't lost, only hidden. Next stop, over to the office overseeing the Visiting Committees at MIT (these committees have members of the corporation and experts in the respective fields examine the work of each department at MIT every two years, see that the department is continuing the Institute's mission) - great opportunity to see what's happening all over campus.

The day before that ended, was called over to MlT's Project Athena. an eight-year collaboration between the Institute, IBM, and DEC, with other hardware and software vendors, now in its final year. that has resulted in innovative software, hardware, and systems coming together to form the largest distributed computing network in existence. It's scope is mind-boggling to all but the most jaded hacker: over 1,000 workstations (located throughout the campus and off campus in living groups, seven down on Cape Cod at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute!) all interconnected in such a way that any one day as many as 3,800 of its l0,000 users log in, exchanging over 10,000 electronic mail messages, accessing banks of data throughout the world, picking up assignments from faculty and passing them in through computer, having a more immediate contact with professors than the traditional turn-in-get-graded routine: there is such an intimacy and vigor to the instant back-and-forth! Not to mention realtime conferencing with hundreds of special interest groups.

I hope you can imagine what it's like for a computer tinkerer like me, especially since I've keen given entry to the "Testers' Group" in which new products in development are tried out. It got to be such a challenge to me to see if I could find a glitch in new pieces of software that one of the developers (jokingly, of course) warned me that if I didn't stop breaking his toys, he wouldn't let me play with them!

Apart from the technical wizardry of the Project. the people involved are delightful as fellow workers. Of course. having a large Group of truly cutting-edge computer thinkers massed together does on occasion produce a bit of interesting flow, but it's neat to be able to visit a workstation where the creator of a program you're having trouble with resides, rather than hitting the help button and getting cryptic or superfluous instructions from a machine to which English is a foreign language.

Finally gave up my "temp" status and became a member of the MIT family. When finally I am able to get back to the Jail, it's but one quick stop across the Charles River from my office in Cambridge.

During the past few years the Institute has made an effort to dispel its perhaps univocal concentration on technology by providing its students with a month between semesters when they engage in an independent study period (ISP). One who had learned of my suicide work suggested I propose a seminar on making suicide focus comfortable. I did so, was initially greeted with skepticism and hesitation by various powers at the Institute, got their support when I was able to present my background and perspective.

As there have been suicides here (like everywhere people live) turns out that my limited-enrollment seminar will have to go into extra sessions. Campus police, the medical department, the Dean of Students office, and resident assistants have all encouraged my effort. Can't pretend that I don't see this initial small tentative possibly leading to enablement of a deliberate commitment by the Institute to working proactively on the ever-present suicide dimension. Who knows what will come of it? Perhaps it's no accident that Project Athena is due to end in June, with only a portion of our people being merged into the overall information systems division.

Jessica continues with her diligent studies at Mass General Institute towards her health care degree. Like the majority of us who have undergone arduous academic studies in order to be qualified for delivering a service, she sweats over the academic work (in her case. made more arduous by weekend work at the Hospital to abate ever-present financial pressures), wishes she could get more directly to the task of nursing. With her focus on studies and career, she and I don't see as much of each other as we might wish. Her arduous efforts, however, have been bearing remarkable fruits: academic results are substantially better than were mine when I was in grad school.

Now my home for eight years, the cooperative in which we 47 families live seems to have come of age. Resignation of the clerk of the corporation led me to taking up that billet pro tem, adding to my commitment to the external relations and security concerns of our
community. Increasingly the people moving into the co-op are committed to the common effort; those who are living solely for themselves are leaving.

Part of my community relations role has involved me in a major effort by the residents of the Fenway/ Back Bay to prevent the business and institutional interests from subverting the residents' interests. Our community assertiveness has led the city powers to take us seriously, to acknowledge that we are part of the planning and zoning process. It's rather frustrating to continue a fight in which we are without resources and strength; but finally the business and institutional interests are acknowledging that they cannot develop without us.

The Parish of the Advent, my church home for the past 33 years, has been an increasing focus of my work and enthusiasm. One would have to be deaf and blind to be oblivious to the ferment shaking all religious bodies world-wide; here in our little corner of the Anglican patch, the parish has become increasingly focused on the traditions first brought back from neglect during the Oxford Movement of the last century. Thought there is much controversy throughout the Church, the faith which we and apparently increasing numbers of people throughout the Church rejoice in is one of affirmation, not of denial, one of faithful respect for our tradition.

In that vein, a Synod of traditionalist Anglicans has been evolving during the past few veers: our meetings, our literature, our movement is again one of affirmation and strength rather than of division and alienation.

The wretched lawsuit I've been pursuing for over two years now seems to be without end. The funny thing is that, even if I win the present suit, it simply gives me a right to know and speak to the reasons for my termination.

There is an irony here, however: through a national referral agency I've begun being called as an expert witness on jail suicide by attorneys in several states. If any profit comes of these efforts, the will come out of my lawyer clients to pay off the lawyer who is representing me in my action with the Sheriff.

First time away from Boston since last January, I was delighted to have four days over Thanksgiving with friends in Maine. It was calm. quiet, refreshing; and my scale upon return to Boston well showed that I certainly enjoyed the bounty.

I continue to refine my knowledge and utility of the personal computer that's been with me for fifteen months now. However, like most computer users, I find the system which five years ago would have been considered state of the art to be quite limited: no multitasking, no high level memory, limited hard disk. etc. But it's actually such a quantum improvement over my pen and ink/typewriter days that I'm quite content.

My expert witness work and other economies have made it possible for repetition of my annual Yearend trip. So. off I go again, leaving on Christmass day (for the 22nd year). I'll be starting this year with friends in Sarasota, FL. Though I had intended to go directly to the Windjammer's M/V Amazing Grace, can't make contact with her till January, shall spend the week waiting at the Club Med Paradise Isle in the Bahamas. That will be a new CM to me. Then boarding the Amazing Grace (formerly a British Navy vessel tending the lighthouses in the North Sea and serving as a weekend retreat for the Royal Family) in Freeport, we'll go down through the Caribbean, meeting and supplying each of the five sail ships in the fleet, ending up in Grenada.

Then back up to Boston for only God knows what 1991 has in store for us. I repeat last year's request that you continue with a special prayer for me and for the people of the jail, that we might get this horrible time behind us. In turn I try constantly to thank God for your good will, and to ask Him that you be blessed in your journey homewards!

I send much love to you at your home!