3-15-13 RMB Remarkable…Beautiful

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

I shared your letters with another friend today. Four out of four are encouraging me. So if I am crazy, apparently my friends are as well.

This friend is one of your contemporaries, maybe a couple of years older than you. While you were making a stand on the east coast, she was marching for similar causes on the west coast.

She is an artist that lived a colorful life. She continues to encourage others to think outside the box, to remember the past and to seek a better future. She introduced me to the work and life of Peace Pilgrim. In a community church I watched plays she directed and helped produce about survivors of the Nazi regime.

Although her efforts are more altruistic than mine, I thought she most of all, would understand the letters. I called her a couple of days after I sent the letters to inquire if she had read them. She exclaimed “Yes I did. I have got to read some Rita Mae Brown books!”

That was the most perfect response I could have hoped for. In actuality, she knew of your work. She had told her daughter decades ago to read Rubyfruit Jungle. But, just as old friends sometimes do, she lost track of you. She has some catching up to do.

I find nearly all of the people from all walks of life that I mention your name to have heard of you, some for a certain series of books or your novels or your activist work. Most know of you in some way. They are all intrigued that there is more. It is like resuming a conversation began at another time. “Oh, you have read that, have you read this?” They are heartwarming conversations.

The responses have all been positive, even down to one gentleman’s observation when I showed pictures of you in Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser. After hearing me go on and on about your work, your writing, your mission, his initial comment was “Wow, she was a really pretty woman.” He is such a guy.

It could be that you hear this kind of stuff all of the time. I hope you enjoy hearing it now and don’t mind me relaying more. You are a remarkable and beautiful woman through and through.

Respectfully,

Loraine