This is a response to my email opinion. Seems like good news.

Dear mr xxxx xxxxxxx

Yes, the item is available.

Please see the following links for accessing the Bancroft Library collections:

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/access.html

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/hours.html

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/registration.html

Please submit requests for items in advance of your arrival by using our online request form: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/storreq.cgi .

To avoid delays please submit your order(s) at least one week prior to your visit.

**You will not be contacted when items are ready.**.

We will accept multiple prioritized orders. Any limits we must impose will be based on staffing, shelving space, conservation or restriction issues. You will only be contacted if we have problems accommodating your requests.

We endeavor to ready items for the morning of your first day of visit. They will remain available for pick-up till your last day of visit. You may extend use, as needed, by making arrangements at the circulation desk.

Restrictions:
One form per call number/collection
One form per container type
5 vols/years/containers of one type per form

Submit separate requests if more than 5 items are needed; if different types of containers are needed from the same collection, or if you have different call numbers/collections to request.

Cameras may be brought into the reading room to take reference images (for a daily fee of $10): http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info/camera.html .

All best,
Dean Smith

Does that mean you can check the book out or do you need to read it at the library? I realize I do live closer than most, here at the forum, but Berkeley is still more than 125 miles from me and they are not easy freeway miles, more like a 3 1/2 hour trip each way.

BTW, Mr Lowe thanks for getting the info!

Does that mean you can check the book out or do you need to read it at the library? I realize I do live closer than most, here at the forum, but Berkeley is still more than 125 miles from me and they are not easy freeway miles, more like a 3 1/2 hour trip each way.

BTW, Mr Lowe thanks for getting the info!

Ross’s Brother Jon may be up for checking this out for us since he lives in Bekeley…..just kidding. Seriously though I hope somebody can get this material. Maybe Zamantha and/or Sandy may be close?

Mr. Lowe, this is good news. Thanks! All hope is not lost afterall.

Mr. Lowe, this is good news. Thanks! All hope is not lost afterall.

Yes i hope its sitting on a shelf in Dewey Decimal order waiting for you. Alas many a book has gone missing. all the best.
edit .good part is you can take a camera.

Mr. Lowe, this is good news. Thanks! All hope is not lost afterall.

Yes i hope its sitting on a shelf in Dewey Decimal order waiting for you. Alas many a book has gone missing. all the best.
edit .good part is you can take a camera.

Dewey Decimal kicks ass!

I can’t go personally, though. Never been to California. Worse case scenario, I can ask my brother to go since he is moving to L.A. in a few months.

Fun fact about Linda Emblen: She is a somewhat well known pianist/organist and has also done work as an illustrator.

Remembering Don Emblen: http://sonic.net/~art/DLE%20memoriam/DL … Sheaf.html

Don in 1969 (was in his early 50s) actually had a few similarities to the Stine sketch. Some of the same facial features that is. But his hair is not even close.

In the category "utterly obscure and probably highly irrelevant Z topics" I reintroduce this:

Turns out the source I mentioned a while back was right after all: Swinburne does refer, sort of, to the sea as the great gray mother of us all: "Mother, great and gray…" and so forth. So, it would seem the phrase comes from him.

The only other instance of someone fairly high-profile using it, however, is Pynchon (as mentioned before).

The question still remains why Fred opted for that title. Swinburne’s phrase could be taken to mean that we all, in a manner of speaking, come from the sea (primordial ooze, or soup, or what have you) – and Pynchon may be using the phrase in that sense too (it appears in a scene which has something to do with the docks, that’s all I can be bothered to establish at the moment). But what Fred is referring to is, presumably, the prison system – not the sea.

Anyway – that is all for now.

In the category "utterly obscure and probably highly irrelevant Z topics" I reintroduce this:

Turns out the source I mentioned a while back was right after all: Swinburne does refer, sort of, to the sea as the great gray mother of us all: "Mother, great and gray…" and so forth. So, it would seem the phrase comes from him.

The only other instance of someone fairly high-profile using it, however, is Pynchon (as mentioned before).

The question still remains why Fred opted for that title. Swinburne’s phrase could be taken to mean that we all, in a manner of speaking, come from the sea (primordial ooze, or soup, or what have you) – and Pynchon may be using the phrase in that sense too (it appears in a scene which has something to do with the docks, that’s all I can be bothered to establish at the moment). But what Fred is referring to is, presumably, the prison system – not the sea.

Anyway – that is all for now.

I was just thinking… maybe the title is about his grandmother who spent time in prison as an old lady. She would have probably been pretty "gray" and Fred considered he like a mother I believe. I dunno, just a thought.

I stopped in today and flipped through this book, in case I spotted anything that might interest this forum.

It is manually typewritten and has a nice hand-drawn pen-and-ink cover, and two or three full-page ink illustrations throughout the book, each one depicting some kind of wrapped torso like a dressmaker’s dummy.

The dedication ("to the author himself") at the beginning said something about being published posthumously in recognition of [something about the author, can’t remember] "and the courage of his life." I don’t think the dedication said who it was from.

The story seems to be about a man teaching some kind of writing class in a prison. There are a couple of violent episodes, like some kind of riot and/or escape (I skimmed each of 181 pages, but didn’t read any of it closely), but they are impersonal (one is seen on TV, I think). Something about running over an animal (maybe a person? sorry should have read closer) with a car.

There’s a passage where the main character contemplates suicide with a "ballet leap" from a bridge but decides against it. He asks himself, "is the suicide brave?"

The only other thing I noticed that might interest anyone here was an essay from an inmate with misspelled words ("dyie", "basebol", "sience", "lye" and "dye" for lie and die respectively, "unerstan", "wright" for write) (p. 29).

After the last page is a copy of a poem "The Word" by the author, reproduced from the collection "Loon".

I probably missed a bunch of interesting stuff.

That’s interesting lime_klipspringer, thanks for taking the time to look at the book. Did you get a sense of why Manalli titled the book The Great Gray Mother? The owner of the Franz Valley property where three of the SRHM victims were found was an elderly woman named Vera Gray.

There’s a passage where the main character contemplates suicide with a "ballet leap" from a bridge but decides against it. He asks himself, "is the suicide brave?"

Sounds like The Mikado. "An echo arose from the suicide’s grave".

Did you get a sense of why Manalli titled the book The Great Gray Mother?

Sadly, I realized shortly after leaving the library that I should have paid more attention to this point. All I have is a visual recollection that somewhere within the first twenty or so pages, in the top third of the right page, he refers twice in quick succession to "the great grey mother" (spelled with an E, while the title on the cover uses an A). The main character is ruminating about something, but I don’t recall what. I had the impression it was alluding to the prison system, as someone in this thread suggested earlier.

I stopped in today and flipped through this book, in case I spotted anything that might interest this forum.

It is manually typewritten and has a nice hand-drawn pen-and-ink cover, and two or three full-page ink illustrations throughout the book, each one depicting some kind of wrapped torso like a dressmaker’s dummy.

The dedication ("to the author himself") at the beginning said something about being published posthumously in recognition of [something about the author, can’t remember] "and the courage of his life." I don’t think the dedication said who it was from.

The story seems to be about a man teaching some kind of writing class in a prison. There are a couple of violent episodes, like some kind of riot and/or escape (I skimmed each of 181 pages, but didn’t read any of it closely), but they are impersonal (one is seen on TV, I think). Something about running over an animal (maybe a person? sorry should have read closer) with a car.

There’s a passage where the main character contemplates suicide with a "ballet leap" from a bridge but decides against it. He asks himself, "is the suicide brave?"

The only other thing I noticed that might interest anyone here was an essay from an inmate with misspelled words ("dyie", "basebol", "sience", "lye" and "dye" for lie and die respectively, "unerstan", "wright" for write) (p. 29).

After the last page is a copy of a poem "The Word" by the author, reproduced from the collection "Loon".

I probably missed a bunch of interesting stuff.

wow thanks for sharing! I would love to read this book, from what you have posted it’s sounds like Fred’s writing about his own life experiences, I’ve often thought Manalli definitely sent the letters and correspondence in this zodiac case but also of a team zodiac scenario that Fred had partner or two that he had met in jail. Didn’t Zodiac tell Brian hartnell he had escaped from montana jail during a breakout? I’m sure Fred committed suicide too when he died in a car crash, had Fred already considered suicide before? Just to add I think the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders are connected to the team zodiac theory which of course Fred is a big suspect I wonder if the ex con was from Montana prison? I think it was seagull who posted on another thread that the ex con who was also considered to be a suspect in the SRHM was a Richard Anderson, ( he also committed suicide), the “zodiac your partner is in deep real estate advert right after Fred’s death, plus the “dr guidini your prescription good” message sent to the paper in I think the swindles case. In my eyes these messages adds weight to this theory of multiple people involved, definitely food for thought, hopefully one day it will all come out into the open