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2001-12-28 | 2:10 p.m.

Spoke to Frank last night and felt a little surprised when he told me that D.B. Cooper had been a kind of hero to him in high school. I think I have been living in suburbia too long, or maybe I'm just too damn old for my own good. I shouldn't have been surprised at all. After all, I took a more than passing interest in outlaw criminals myself. Part of it was just the times (in the late seventies, even more than now, criminals were heavily romanticized in film, literature, and newspaper accounts, and therefore in the popular imagination) and part of it was my own anti-authoritarian core (which would have existed in me, I believe, no matter when I was born). I was deeply interested in the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the Hell's Angels, on account of proximity, but I also remember reading about John Dillinger and Wild Bill Hickok, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Parker, Lizzie Borden, Jesse James, and so on. And then when I got to Cal I started learning about the many outlaw heroes of the far left.

Have been asked to prepare lunch. More later I hope.

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