Dot drops a quick line to let Dart know she’s thinking about him. She just returned from a weekend in Cleveland with friends. She tells Dart she had a date with a guy named Bud Doyle who was two years behind Dart at Shaw High School. “He was nice but the comparison between you and him makes him look rather sick.”

While in the big city, Dot saw the movie “Madame Currie” with Greer Garson. It must have been a great movie because it made her want to study chemistry! Speaking of which, Dot announces with some surprise that she has passed both her lab and her written exam in chemistry, so she’s done with that subject forever.

She called Dart’s mother while in town and closes the letter by sending all her love.

Dot’s response to the news that Dart is sick again is to tease him, flatter him, and finally distract him by telling him the news from Andrews School for Girls. Throughout, she chides heself for being a) too well “insulated” to get sick, b) a lousy typing student, c) terrible at French, d) not very good at chemistry, e) fearful of her upcoming report card.

She tells Dart that “This month I’m on display at the retail store…”  I take that to mean that she as been assigned to the display tasks in the school store and must come up with ideas for Valentine’s Day displays. She’s asking for any ideas he may come up with.

I think she is unaware that he has been diagnosed with measles because she makes no mention of his delayed leave.

Well, Dot’s sure mad now! Mad, sad and bitterly disappointed. She’s responding to Dart’s latest news about measels, confinement and his delayed leave.  “I have now abandoned the theory that ‘Wishing Will Make it So.’ Because if ever I wanted anything in my life, it was for you to come home the end of February so I could see you.  Every time I breathed, I wished that, but it now seems to have been a silly waste of time.” (Note: Dot will finish her schooling in February and then probably return to Greenwich, Connecticut for several months to do her practicum. Distances in 1944 were much larger than today, so her chances of seeing Dart anywhere but Cleveland were slim.)

Deciding that such sad talk was probably not doing Dart much good, she switches gears. “Today we inexperienced, just plain no-good typists had our second lesson. I like it more every time I hit a key (which is, unfortunately, comparitavely seldom.)”

She also mentiones a new movie called “Dust to Dust”  which Andrews girls are barred from seeing. Apparently the headmaster of the school sent an editorial to the local paper and the Cleveland “Plain Dealer,” stating that it was not a movie for ‘nice young girls to see.'” (Makes me want to rush right out and find it on Netflix!)

In typical Dot fashion, she ends the letter on an up beat. First with a cheeky definition of a sailor, and then with a cartoon drawing that depicts one of the food shortages folks on the homefront had to endure.

Here’s a cheerful, ebullient letter from Dot, guaranteed to bring some cheer to a blue, quarantined sailor.

She talks about two old movies she saw tonight; “In Old Chicago” and “With a Banjo on My Knee.” It sounds like they weren’t great movies to begin with, but by 1944 they were so dated and corny that they seemed funny to Dot and her friends.

She reports that she was thrilled to receive a phone call during dinner from none other than Dart’s mother. She was calling to say that Dot shouldn’t be concerned if she didn’t hear from Dart for awhile because he was in quarantine. Dot is so impressed that Mrs. Peterson would think to call her. She says she’s getting so eager to meet this lovely woman, if Dart doesn’t get home soon, Dot says she just may drop in to see his mother herself.

She mentions that she had two companions for the school’s official date night – namely her roommates Andy and Cathie.

Claiming total fatigue after a long day, Dot ends the letter, sending “get well quick” wishes from all the girls in her house. She signs the letter with a typical teenage girl closing – Puddles of Purple Passion, Dot.

Today’s offering from Dot starts with a sassy little get-well card, done in a kind of Brooklyn accent. She chose it so Dart would be reminded of the Brooklyn Boys in his company. Next comes a stunning pencil sketch of a glamorous woman, drawn by Dot’s roommate Andy. She’s sending it to Dart as a temporary pin-up girl until “the real thing comes along.” Finally, we get to the actual letter, which Dot is writing from study hall on a Sunday night.

She describes her day where she did “nothing of consequence,” including her K.P. duty preparing a Sunday dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes, squash and graham cracker pie. She tells a cute story of cleaning out her dresser drawers: “Judging from what I found it was about time. When I got down to the newspaper liners, all I could find was the outside edge and mice tracks all over the place. Looking a little further, I found a note saying ‘Please clean these out soon. We’ve eaten all the good part of the paper. You see, we don’t like the crusts.'”

She goes on to tell about the upcoming tradition of February graduation of last year’s seniors who have completed their eight-month practicum. The former seniors return for prom on Friday night, bringing dates if they can find them. (There’s a war on, you know.) After the dance, they return to their old cottages and occupy their former rooms. Current residents must either double up or sleep on the floor. Dot has been elected by her roommates to take the floor. Saturday brings a pancake breakfast for the “old girls,” served by the faculty. Dot writes, “Saturday night is the Alumnae banquet with more eats (for them – probably Jello for us.)  And finally, “if any of the poor bloated girls are left, they receive their ‘release’ from Andrews Institute sometime Sunday night.”

As part of the celebratory weekend, the glee club will sing several numbers, and “right now, we smell like Roquefort cheese!”

She tells Dart it’s okay for him to be polite to all his beautiful nurses, but she asks that he mark himself “TNT” so they don’t get too friendly.

One quick observation – Dot writes a line on the back of the card she sent where she issues an order that he get well quickly. Then she adds a quote which reminds me of the mind-over-matter woman who is my mother. “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Dot’s brief note mentions some excitement in the ranks of senior retail students today. First, one of the girls was walking across campus when she spotted a sailor. She was so intrigued by the sighting that she continued to watch him instead of the sidewalk. She realized her error when her forehead made abrupt contact with a flagpole, requiring three stitches and a new pair of glasses. Another student slipped on the ice getting out of a car and broke her ankle. Let’s hope there are no more casualties!

The only other news of consequence was that her mother wrote to Dot sending particular greetings to Dart.

The letter ended with the admonition to “…sleep tight and stop that scratching!”