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P.M. The public schools around here are absolutely abominable, & the parochial schools though plentiful & scholastically adequate are quite rigid & old-fashioned in their approach. I hear that they still force left-handed kids to write with their right hands, & that went out with the bustle. There are a couple of well-regarded private schools in Cambridge, but I'm not sure that they're not just secular versions of the parochial schools. Boston College, which is run by the Jesuits & isn't far from where I go to school, has a Montessori School, & I'd really love the kids to have the experience of starting their educational experience under that technique. It would blend well with the advanced approach of the schools, public & Catholic, in the Palo Alto area. They start them at around 3 in a Montessori school & they progress at their own speed in an ungraded situation. I haven't looked into it yet, but I'm sure going to give it a try before getting involved with anything else. You don't suppose Chas. McKee has any pull there, do you?
This summer is what we're really looking forward to. I'm going to get the kids signed up for swimming lessons somewhere, & we're going to take advantage of all these ponds & beaches around here. The kids already got their feet in the Atlantic, at the
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7 beach at Revere. Somewhere right around us is a school where they teach Judo, to women and & kids yet, & I'd like to get us into that, too, if possible. One of the girls from the office will be finishing up at Howard in Wash. D.C. in June, & we expect to see her and & show her the areas as she plans to come thru here on her way home in June. Tootie will be big enough to do more walking by then, & she won't be such a literal burden on excursions. On the way back from the Children's Museum, she slept thru a 1/2 hr trip on a very crowded streetcar, kept snoozing while we transferred from a streetcar to a subway train, & awoke refreshed from her nap while I was pushing her from the subway to our apt. I was pooped! Pooh is really a great hiker, & we can take her anywhere. Bus-drivers, subway conductors, & assorted salesmen all flirt with her, & she finds this pretty interesting. She's got the idea that a lady responds politely, pleasantly & keeps moving, but it's fun anyway. Flirting with policemen is the most fun, but that can be dangerous, since they shoot them down in the street around here at the rate of about one every other week. Aside from being a charming center of culture & education, redolent with American history, Boston is a filthy, poorly planned
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8 inadequately maintained graft & crime-ridden center of corruption & decay. It makes Palo Alto look like a cross between Disneyland & a Parade of Model Homes. The Irish & the Italians are slugging it out for control just like the Irish & the Brahmins did 40 & 50 years ago. An Irishman sure loves all his charm when he gets to be an upwardly motivated, upper-middle class, status-oriented stuffed shirt guess everyone else, including these battling Italians do, too. The Brahmins never had any charm, because they were English to begin with. The Irish incumbent mayor just wiped out the Italian city councilman in the mayoralty elections two days ago. There's a Brahmin in the governor's mansion & the possibility that victorious Mayor Collins will oppose him, which should be interesting.
Well, give my best to Madame [?]. She passed thru here to give the Harvard boys a thrill, before she went to Beverly Hills. That was just a few days before JFK sneaked in one afternoon, to dedicate the public housing project named after him, about 1/2 block down from our bldg. Jim and the kids were napping & I was at the grocery store so we missed the whole thing by about 1/2 hr. We really felt cheated & may yet write a letter to Caroline.
Hope all goes well with Virginias school. She ought to make Phi Bete!
Love, Marcia
