THE DAY ROBIN MORGAN CAME TO FAYETTEVILLE

Arkansas Spellbound, Summer 1974

I've been trying to write the title line as a country lyric for many years, but I have come to understand that to do so would require the ability of someone who could have composed "Desolation Row." I have been telling bits and pieces of this story to people over the years, but it never struck me to write this true story as a whole until yesterday, when I was telling a fragment to my daughter and son-in-law at their Queens condo pool, when it felt like a gummy kicked in.

It was a long summer weekend, 1974. Unemployed but being paid severance all summer from my first job, I traveled to California to spend three weeks with a woman from the University of Colorado (she was my date to the Elvis Presley concert in Denver) who was a friend with hints of possible romantic connection. You remember those. Sometimes they worked; this one didn't. She was working on her PhD thesis; she was a dedicated scholar, and became a provost at one of California's great state universities.

I returned to Boulde…