He said: I met him twice when I was a student in Connecticut. He was an imposing man with his beard and his glasses and his chanting and the way that people were attracted to his calmness and to his center. He waned peace, just like we all then wanted peace. He would come to some of the protests at the University and his presence would attract people to come to them as well. He would play a kind of squeeze box with his feet and sing along. He would remind people there to pick up trash before they left: to "do your kitchen yoga" as he called it. I was amazed that he would come all that way from the city to spend the time with young people. He was, after all, quite famous for various things. We all had read his poetry and was familiar with the fact that he had helped create a whole new kind of writing years before we were aware of him. I was always struck by the book about his mother, who was ill, who was committed to institutions and who died in one. I remember his telling of a letter that she sent to him in the last few days of her life, where she told him where she was going and where she would be and where he could find hope and the strength within him to carry on without her, because it was time for her to leave him. She told him that the key was in the window of their apartment in New York. The key was in the window, in the sunlight in the window and would always be there for him or anyone who needed it. That was her gift to him and also to me, whom she didn't even know existed."

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