Today three gentlemen from California arrived on the Elmira College
Campus, they will be performing a play here, Inventing the West:The
Dangerous Friendship of Bret Harte and Mark Twain.  One of these
fellows, Randy Maple, has been a dear friend to me for nearly a year.
We had lunch together then went to the cemetery where Twain and his
family are buried to share a pondering moment or two.  Ahhh, but what a
mess greeted us, the cemetery had been vandalized this past week, dozens
and dozens of markers turned over or knocked down, urns broken, stones
broken.  And the Langdon site was not missed, Ossip and Clara
Gabrilowich's headstones were toppled over, and the cement flower urn at
the base of the large marker on the plot was broken and strewn about.
Randy and I sat and contemplated the mess so many will have to deal
with; the TV crews were there, the newspaper people, and in the end we
realized - it does not matter - the spirit of the man lives on, the
lives the Langdon family lived and the evidence they left behind will
far surpass a reckless spree through a dark cemetery.  And doesn't he
start us out with a trip to the cemetery in the dark to bury a dead cat?
Did he not already see the crime in the midnight cemetery?  The sad part
- these night visitors were not looking for any sort of cure - worts or
otherwise, let's hope they found one.

From Elmira,
Jane McCone