I took a peek at your "Swag" site and I was really excited to find that my painting seems to go along with another one of your collectors series of water colors!   Feel free to share mine on the "Swag" site, as well.  Or.... at least, share it with the other collector.  I think my painting sort of ties the series/story together! Thanks so much and all my best!
Heidi Imbus ~ San Francisco

PAGE 2 of a letter from ERB in Hawaii to daughter Joan back in California
July 15, 1941

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2.
. . . been, to whom I really mean nothing. I suppose that had I been sick elsewhere, I would have found equally kind people; though it scarcely seems possible. None of these people are under any obligations to me; in fact, quite the reverse; yet there is nothing that they won't do for me. I wanted to tell you these things, so that you wouldn't be too sorry for me. I want you to be a little sorry, but not too sorry.

I have a good doctor, and I am getting better slowly. My hind legs don't track very well as yet, and my left hand doesn't know what my right hand is doing. In fact, God alone knows what it is going to do when I try to write longhand.  The doctor thinks that it is is the result of all the dope I took in the hospital and the enormous doses of sulphathiazole he had to give me. I am perfectly normal at the typewriter (hitting the usual proportion of wrong keys), and I drive my car the same as usual.

Wayne Pflueger has been a wonderful host. Anyone would think that I was doing him a favor by occupying his guest room and eating his food. I can tell you that when you are in trouble you learn who your friends are.

Well, I think that is about enough of Old Burroughs. Naturally I think a great deal about all of you. I am always wondering about Jim's flying. He must be a crack pilot. I imagine that he would like to fly bombers to England. God! What a thrill that would be. I was reading something the other day, and I can't recall where, about the relation between age and efficiency in pilots; and I thought of what you said about Jim's age being against him. But this article emphasized the fact that under certain conditions the older pilots were the better, and that a man could fly as well at sixty as at twenty if he still retained his health and his faculties.

I should certainly like to see some of you over here; but Hulbert shouldn't think of making the trip, as that would mean that there would be two of us to get home again instead of one, and the Lord knows that it is going to be quite a problem getting home.

Your home must be lovely, from what Ralph and Jack and Jane tell me. I am so glad that you have a real home at last; there are few things more satisfying. I am glad that it is not in the city. The Valley is a great place to bring up children. It is also a great place for antediluvian do-dos to live. I wonder if it has changed much in 14 1/2 months.

Thank you again for your sweet letter and for your very kind invitation. I needed a letter from home and yours came just in time; it was the only one I got.

Lots of love for each and every one. I am certainly blessed with the swellest children any man ever had.

Aloha nui nui!
Papa