Dear Clark,

Humorless and lacking in imagination? Hardly. Now, there may be some here that may fit that description, but I can attest to your keen, dry wit. I'm sure it also takes great imagination to be a geophysicist.

My older son was graduated last June with a degree in geophysics from the U. of Oregon. He's throwing in the towel. He's 24 and an excellent jazz pianist. (And no, I didn't have him when I was 17. Ten years later and married to, what we casually refer to around here as the sperm donor.

Anyway, Christopher is going for art over earth. One morning he woke up in rainy Eugene and came to the epiphany that of all the scientists he'd studied under (he used to be an astrophysics major), not one of them seemed happy.

So he's doing the Joseph Campbell number and following his bliss.

I look back on my days teaching at a very lovely, well-endowed private college in Kentucky. I had the Ph.D. and was dept. chair, but all the men in the dept., all with only M.A.'s and M.F.A.s were paid more than I . They refused to give me an equitable raise even after I divorced the sperm donor, who immediately quit his job and became a pizza boy to get out of having to pay more than $50.00 a week in child support. (I didn't ask for alimony.)

So I quit after four years and followed my bliss back to California, having come to the conclusion that my fear of earthquakes was just a metaphor for feeling out of control, which I definitely felt in KY. (Long history I will spare you.)

So now I write. Get to wear jeans and T-shirts all day until the kiddlies come home. (Last three are adopted, ages 7-15. Son #2 is 21 and lives in San Diego.) Alas, I have no image to maintain, and I love it. No more high heels, stockings, skirts and dresses, and robes and mortar boards twice a year as the faculty was paraded in front of students and their parents. I can go months without make-up if I want. What freedom!

And speaking of synchronicity (you see, I am rather humorless myself), before he married my mother, my father was married to Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane for a couple of seasons of "Superman."

So, as you see, there really are only a few hundred people in the world and they cross paths at the strangest of places, as you will see when you read "Rocket City." Will be mailing it tomorrow. How would you like me to inscribe it?

Fondly, Dr. Jekyll (But then, you, too, should be Dr. Hyde.)