Jodie Foster is a member of the Manuscript Society, a senior secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Toward the end of each junior year, 16 undergraduates are "tapped" to be inducted into the society, which meets twice weekly for dinner and discussion (once per week with undergraduates only, once with alumni, honorary members and invited guests).
Undergraduates are selected for their strength in academics, extracurricular activities, character and commitment to truth.
Manuscript is known for having the best of the intellectual and artistic undergraduates among its members and calls itself an "Arts and Letters" society.
It holds the number 344 to be sacred.
Possible explanations of this include the fact that this was the date that the Greek philosopher and scientist, Aristotle, travelled from Assus to Lesbos to study natural history and marine biology.
[This is almost certainly NOT True]
The Society supposedly holds Enlightenment ideals, and the sun and sunflowers are both important symbols to members. The society also retained close connections with the campus literary society Chi Delta Theta in the early 1950s.
The society holds an annual gathering in its tomb on Halloween. A Manuscript event is described in the novel Joe College by Tom Perrotta.
An inverted/negative portrait of the Manuscript Tomb with its hidden insignia exposed.
Why Me?[ Jodie Foster | Esquire Magazine | 1982 December ]
My brothers and sisters called me Load because of the extraordinary capacity of my diapers. Apart from that fact and a few distinguishing details here and there, my vision of myself was pretty average. Not average so-so; just average...bacon and eggs, Volkswagens, southern California sun. Sometimes, though, I look back at my life, at the way it has slowly assumed shape and color, at the places I've seen and the flickers of people I've met, and wonder, Why? Why Me? Why, when the lists were made and the heads counted, was I always chosen? Why did I always find the chocolate basket on Easter morning? Mostly the applause felt good; damn wonderful, even.
To this day I still redden and warm when someone compliments my work or asks me for a date. We all need huge amounts of love, some more than others. But there are times now when a very small child creeps up within me and desperately moans, "Why?" This is the "why" of the romantic, the idealist, the vulnerable, the pure. This is the "why" of the struggling woman-child scribbling down explanations, sensations, incantations in the night. This is the "why" of poetry, when a phrase bursts through and pierces my control. A balloon slowly deflates over a calm pasture. This is the "why" they never saw, they never see, they never will see. This is my "why," my final and ultimate cry. This one's for me.
My summer of 1980 was spent in anticipation of what I was "going to be,"how I was going to walk into the framework of the Ivy League. I bought a good deal of Lacoste clothing, pumped my three-pound dumbbells each morning, played tennis in the afternoon. I wanted to be the kind of girl who's friendly, well-liked, social. To a point, you could say that that's anonymity -- the need to be wholly accepted as an equal and yet respected for the product of your efforts. Maybe I as kidding myself. Maybe I was trying to escape from what I felt was an undeserved image. In any case, I found myself, backpack in hand, playing "Muffin" in a world I knew nothing about. I'd never been to a happy hour, a lacrosse game, a cottage on the Vineyard. For years Ihad been growing paler watching double features with my mom, then eating Chinese food from paper cartons. I knew everything there was to know about distribution profits and how to handle meetings at the Polo Lounge. It wasn't that I'd lost mychildhood or become jaded; I just didn't have a clue as to how it felt to be out of control, completely lost, without prior experience. Yet there I was, never having stayed anywhere for more than three months, never having had to cultivate friendships with people my own age. I had but one childhood friend, Clara Lisa. She was a mover too -- to Paris, to Tahiti, to God knows where. Whenever we could, we'd meet places, giggle, and jump on beds.
Yale was different from any of this. I wanted to be approved of. I attended every freshman event, every college game to make them feel that I was okay, normal, just like they were. But as the weeks went by I realized I really wasn't. I had a job to go back to, lawyers to call, photographers to pose for. It wasn't until at least two years later that I realized it was okay to be different. Better, even. Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.
As I became less and less afraid of new experiences, my personality changed. I took on a screw-the-world dress code. I hung out with people I thought were unique, nonconformist, substantially complex. They were the kind you'd pass on the way to the commons and say, "That person' s interesting . I want to get to know him." I had my first and last bout with tequila. I did ska dances in the street, water-ballooned singing groups, philosophized and talked dirty until five in the morning. The control I'd had all those years was self-imposed and alienating. Now I was able to make mistakes. In the beginning of school I had tried desperately to be five foot four. Now I was five foot four. I was elated.
It was around this time I started questioning my career. I was passionate about school. I wanted to be at Yale forever, holding people, writing down literary revelations, reading from tales of men long dead, smiling from inside out. The idea of returning to a dressing from in a Winnebago, being called Miss Foster, seemed foreign, unnatural. I didn't want to return those phone calls from home, from agents, from polite employers. All those scribbled messages just meant that I was still dependent, still theirs to scrutinize, to admire. Maybe I was kidding myself. In fact, I'm sure of it.
I was sitting in the library in March. The first weekend of the play I was doing on campus, Getting Out, had ended. I had five more performances to do. I must have been a sight. My skin had erupted from greasepaint. My clothes were torn and rumpled. I didn't like sleeping anymore. It kept me from other things. My studies never suffered, simply because they were my first priority, the easiest responsibility to fulfill. Academics was a drop in the pond compared with the demands of the social process. The fact that I decided to do a play at Yale still astounds me. Theater scared me to death; I didn't know that first thing about it. But one of my best friends was directing and many of my buddies were in it. I suppose I did it for the wrong reasons. I wanted them to love me. he audience, the actors, my pals. I wanted to be involved in a common experience, something that would melt the already thawing barriers.
The following hazy Monday afternoon I was skipping hand in hand across campus with my best friend. Someone yelled as we went by, "Hey. Did you hear? Reagan got shot." We continued on. At dinnertime everyone was asking if we'd heard what the President's condition was. Well, my radio had been busted for three months and my friend's was terminally glued to the local reggae station. "Come on. This is college. News can wait." No one seemed to mention Brady or the assailant until late into the evening. I finally sauntered home around ten-thirty. My roommate opened the door before I could get my key in.
"John," she said.
"John who?"
"John Hinkley."
"What about him? Did he write me again?"
"He's the one, I think. It was on the radio."
"Bullshit. You're imaginin things."
The phone was ringing. I answered it. My dean said, "Don't be upset." He explained that my pictures and address had been found on the arrested man. Ifelt the tears welling up in my eyes. My body started shaking and I knew that I had lost control... maybe for the very first time in my life. I was to meet the FBI in his office as soon as possible.
"Give me a couple of minutes," I said. I ran to a friend's. I waited for her to get out of the shower as three or four loud boys listened to the news down the hall. They were drinking beer and I carried on with them for a few minutes to prove to myself I could do it. I laughed and made jokes -- like a good little actress. Then my friend closed the door and questioned me with a glance. I started to cry a bit, then my tears turned to laughter. I couldn't stop laughing. It was simply too funny, too incredibly bizarre, too painful. She thought I was going crazy. My laughter was strange and hollow, and I couldn't control it. It was beyond me. My body jerked in painful convulsions. I hurt. I was no longer thinking of the president, of the assailant, of the crime, of the press. I was crying for myself. Me, the unwilling victim. The one who would pay in the end. The one who paid all along -- and, yes, keeps paying. That kind of pain doesn't go away. It's something you never understand, forgive, or forget. It is a pain that can never be healed with a kiss from your mother's lips or a "Sssh, everything's okay." Everything's not okay! It's not.
But I didn't have the time to feel it then. There were things to be done, secrets to keep. I was supposed to be "tough," like cowboys, like diplomats, like "unaffected actresses" -- not because anyone asked me to but because I wanted to show them (God knows who) that I was strong. I wanted to show them all that Jodie was so uniquely "normal" and "well-adjusted" that nothing could make her fall. I think I believed all this, my subconscious propaganda. But the truth was that in the crunch, when the chips are down, in a time of crisis, you resort to strength you'd never dreamed you owned, like frantic mothers lifting their children from under two-ton trucks. The will to survive is stronger than any emotion in the human system.
The next afternoon I was rushed to the home of one of the bigwigs in the Yale administration. So these grown-up Yalies -- the men in hornrims and with law degrees -- were called to advise me. But nobody quite knew what to do. These academic wonders were reduced to schoolboys. There was no time for typed speeches and haughty jargon. We had to pick up the pieces, to act. I started making my calls. I talked to lawyers, to the FBI, to DAs, to anyone with some sort of experience in these affairs. They all gave me different advice and none was too sure whom I should speak to. Things were being leaked so fast that the news stations knew more than any of us on the inside. I had to read a local newspaper to learn most of the details. Maybe this is what scared me the most -- the descent of the media. They scooped up headlines and swarmed through the campus like a calvary invasion. I couldn't protect myself from being trampled.
But I organized my press conference, wrote a statement, all against the will of the officials. I wanted it over with as swiftly as possible. For the press my presence was almost superfluous; it was the story that counted -- the twisted, bizarre headliner. A compromising photo, a brief comment was all they needed. I can't say that I didn't feel exploited by these friendly men and women with Nikons and with mikes clipped to their lapels. Suddenly they were allowed to destroy my established life because it was their "job." Public figures should just expect it that way, I've been told. But the interesting thing is that -- beyond their flashbulbs, note pads, and video cameras -- the reporters were scared, too. Their faces were desperately trying to mask their terror, awe, guilt. When I saw them assembled before me, I knew that these were the faces, the uncomfortable, fascinated eyes, that I would have to meet for the rest of my life. When I saw them waiting silently and solemnly for my statement, I knew I had to play cowboy -- once again. I was Mother and they were to be reassured that nothing could interrupt my flow of life. If they wanted weakness, I wasn't about to give it to them.
After the details were delivered and the crews went home, it was time to fact the world. Until now, everyone had been kind, sympathetic, availing. My mother would take my hand and say, "Don't worry." The administration assured me that I was not alone and that they were available at a moment's notice. Even the reporters I'd come to know would pat me on the back and say, "Hang in there, kid." But their offerings only stressed the fact that I was completely alone.
I strapped on my backpack, put on my dirtiest jeans, and headed back to university life. People were pretty good about hiding much trace of interest. Some of my friends wanted to respect my privacy of the moment, some smiled and went their way. But I knew that there were two Jodie Fosters. There was one as large as the screen, a Technicolor vision with flowing blond hair and a self-assured smile. She was the woman they had all been watching. But the second Jodie was a vision only I knew. She was shrouded in bravado and wit and was, underneath, a creature crippled, without self esteem, a frail and alienated being.
I went to classes, laughed, joked, pulled all the tricks to make everyone feel comfortable. I tried not to admit that I had noticed the change. I was a returning war hero to be paraded. But I didn't want their awe. I didn't want to be a political figure, a victim of society. So I limited myself to a few companions: the boy I loved and my assigned bodyguards.
With the boy I loved I sat most of the day at the window in the Cross Campus Library. We poked fun at and successfully alienated every person who walked by. We were obnoxious. This boy and I decided, in our self-destructive, eighteen-year-old subconscious, that we needed only each other, that the rest of the population was disappointingly affected by the events of the shooting. Neither of us stopped to think that it was we who were affected. We were both escaping through our intellect, not our emotions. It was I who chad changed, not them. In time I asked myself, Why me? Why not someone like Brooke Shields? The questions made me feel uglier-- and the uglier I felt, the more difficult it was to resolve.
Six days after the shooting of the President I was onstage for the second and final weekend of my play, Getting Out. The Yale police were sent to guard the auditorium. At my request the audience was frisked for cameras. The cast was instructed that the show must go on...no matter what. It was something I had to do, some damn foolish thing I had to prove to myself. No one could just change my life, my plans, without asking me. No one could keep me down. I'm really not sure whom I was trying to impress or what I was ever doing up there in the first place. I had sworn never to do theater at school. I was going to be anonymous, remember? But it was too late for that. As long as everyone was going to stare, I might was well play the game full out.
The show went on, with the squeaking walkie-talkies and the general awkwardness of the crowd. It was the best performance I had given. The audience applauded for reasons I am still unsure of. The rest of the cast was shaky. They knew that the people in the seats were laughing at the wrong lines and keeping their eyes conspicuously toward my end of the stage. The crowd wasn't lying, they were simply impressed -- as I had intended them to be. They were in awe. I was embarrassed for them. Why did they clap? Did it really mean anything at all to them?
The second performance of the play began. Click, click, click, I heard. I could recognize a motor drive on a professional camera better than my own heartbeat. It was coming from center left -- a perfect position for anyone who had the pluck to get past the frisk in time to choose the most advantageous seat in the house. Well, you asked for it, I thought. My most vicious lines of the play were coming up and they were to be directed to this particular spot in the house. I decided that the villain was one of three people. I directed my character's biting insults to all three, until my eyes narrowed to the bearded man in the middle. No, he was not the photographer. His hands were calmly folded and his eyes were fixed. But there was something unnerving about his emotionless stare, something I didn't trust. He became the sole subject of my dialogue's abuse; but he did not flinch -- not once. The next night, again, I heard the click of the motor drive, coming from a different position in the house. The strange man I had noticed the night before was again in the same seat. "In theater," the adage goes, "one is not supposed to glance through the audience, noticing who comes and goes, who sits where." But I only knew movies. So I noticed every light change, every yawning friend, every item of clothing worn by every boy and girl, every bearded gentleman with a ceaseless stare.
At the third performance, no clicks and no bearded man were to be seen or heard. However, during intermission a note was found on the lobby bulletin board to the effect that "by the time the show is over, Jodie Foster will be dead." Iimagined something was amiss when the security guards were suddenly standing with their backs to the actors, surveying the crowd. The note had proved to be a prank, a devilish trick pulled by some bitter spectator who had found himself frisked by two college jocks at the entrance. It was ten-thirty. I was still alive, no harm done. In fact, I had made a bigger ordeal over a stray photographer: "How did you get in? Who do you work for?" (This was perhaps the beginning of a flash phobia that would follow me throughout the next year.) I found out a few weeks later that he had been let in by the producer of the play. The very same producer who confided to the press that I had a few acting problems that would iron themselves out with a little help. The tactless person who said, "At least the publicity did wonders for the receipts." And, finally, the same producer who -- as the explained with a British affectation he had picked up somewhere -- let the photographer in "because...wahl...thar was simply nawthing I could doo. Sorry, luv."
A few days after the show closed, a note was delivered under my door --a death threat in the finest sense of the term. I picked it up neatly by the corners and handed it over to the proper officials. My mother, who was leaving on the next plane to Paris, was frantic. She wanted to take me with her, "to stay...to walk to classes with you...anything!" She desperately wanted to protect me. I told her she was only making me nervous and that the rotating bodyguards were more qualified to watch me than she. This was my first life-crisis had I had to show the world that I could take it like a pro. That's what they call you when you make it to the set by five-thirty A.M. and don't complain.
The next morning I arrived at my English class a bit early Five minutes later my man with the squeaky walkie-talkie told me to stay in the corner of the class until it ended. "He has been apprehended." Ap-pre-hended, I thought. Okay, apprehended. Who?
His name was Richardson, he was from Pennsylvania, and he had a beard. The police and Secret Service had worked nonstop tracking down the letter writer, found him, followed him to New Haven station, where he had boarded a bus bound for D.C. He was picked up at Port Authority in New York with a loaded gun, hoping to fulfill his threat to shoot the President. I was too pretty to kill, he had said as he was arrested. He saw me in my play and simply couldn't. The bearded man in center left? Ten feet from death? Ten feet from a loaded pistol held by a sick and perhaps "insane" man? Ten feet? I don't care to know for sure. Richardson was released a year later on parole.
Then it hit me. It felt like a ton of steel dropping from the top of a thirty-story building. Death. So simple, so elementary, so near. Pulling a trigger is as easy as changing the TV channel with remote control. What was I trying to prove by performing a college play three days after one of the most bizarre assassination attempts of our time? Who was I trying to impress? Why was it so important to look death in the eye and hurl victorious insults? Because I was the one who always found the chocolate basket on Easter morning? Because I always wanted to be the best, no matter what, no matter how?
In the time after Richardson's "ap-pre-hension," a great change came over me, or so I'm told. I started perceiving death in the most mundane but distressing events. Being photographed felt like being shot; it still does. I thought everyone was looking at me in crowds; perhaps they were. Every sick letter I received I made sure to read, to laugh at, to read again. People were punishing me because I was there. They were sending bullets, pulling triggers, exercising the simple law of cause and effect. They were hurting me, intentionally, without any physical contact. They were manifesting a need to wound, and I just happened to be the victim. They could seemingly witness the falling star -- once stalwart and proud -- bend to their aggression. The words, the threats, the accusations were irrelevant. They all wanted me to react, to stop playing cowboy; they wanted to bring me down to their level from the great silver screen.
I could feel death by alienating and insulting the people I loved or at lease enjoyed. I could feel it by hating myself so much that I hated everyone around me for liking me. I died when I looked at myself in the mirror, the body that no longer slept, the clothes I no longer cared for, the mismatched socks, the tired expression, the reddened eyes, the languid stare. My prior identity -- the actress, the enthusiastic collegiate -- no longer existed. I became suspicious of everyone. I suppose I thought they were al informing for People magazine. There were a few, of course, who were. Maybe that People article of April 20, 1981, was the greatest death of all. An ambitious Yale senior, whom I have never met, submitted a manuscript. People simply couldn't turn down. He offered a scoop: what I was in the habit of wearing, my favorite eating places, my friends, my classes, my dating habits -- the works. And this ambitious Yale senior confirmed what I was dreading -- I had been watched. I was being watched from the first day I set foot on campus. They all noticed the color of my Dolfin shorts on the day of orientation. They had noticed which chair I preferred in the library. Strangers had scrutinized and analyzed me without my permission, even without my knowledge. No, the Hinkley ordeal did not destroy my anonymity; it only destroyed the illusion of it. Every man or woman in this world had the right to stare at, point at, and judge me because... that was my job. That's what I got paid for -- to take my lumps. I can be rejected for physical reality, the audiences's perception of who I am. Consequently, I become the property of my judges or I risk rejection.
When my freshman year came to an end in May 1981, I packed up m remnants from the "psycho single" I had been assigned -- a single dorm room reserved for emergency security risks -- and returned to L.A. For two weeks I went hiking and stayed at a health farm in the mountains. When I descended the mountain I jumped back to work. Things were essentially "normal." People were afraid of me and for quite some time I made no effort to ease their awkwardness. I just listened and watched. I heard that Martin Scorsese had been phoned by Maureen Reagan, who expressed her condolences. Her condolences! I'd even heard he'd hired a bodyguard -- something I refused to do. When people recognized me in the street they'd say, "So what, this guy write you letters or something?" They'd say "Too bad," or they'd say "Great publicity, kid." It all seemed so hilariously sad at the time. I smiled inside and felt pity for all of them -- all the people who either thought they understood or thought they knew me. I felt sorry and embarrassed for them as they simultaneously felt sorry and embarrassed for me. It was a confusing time for everyone. And if this was show business, I wanted no part of it. I didn't belong there. I didn't belong anywhere -- except Yale, maybe. Maybe. IN any case, I was glad that the shooting had happened while I was at school. Who knows what mistrust and violence I had avoided by removing myself from Hollywood. There's something about a freeway at rush hour and backdrops of ghost towns that make L.A. untrustworthy. It simply isn't a place you'd call familial or safe. If anything, Yale had been safe.
I went back to school in the fall and found everything back to normal. I started making efforts. I dressed better, I returned phone calls, I kept my room dusted and my toys in place. But by the end of the semester I found myself watching movies every night. I was getting restless. "Just school" wasn't enough. As if by a stroke of fate, a script arrived, one I liked. A Manhattan location. Starring Peter O'Toole, A chance to sing. I was ecstatic...and, for the first time in two years, in love with a project. And Svengali proved a thoroughly fun film. It made me fall in love with acting again. It cured me of most of the insecurities; it healed my wounds.
More than a year after the day of the shooting I found myself in a Washington, D.C., courtroom waiting to give my deposition. It was all very orderly, very efficient. I brought my briefcase and answered questions with a sobriety and cool that seemed appropriate. No one had told me before I arrived in Washington, of course, that Hinkley would be present. But I played cowboy and got through it all the best way I knew how, thinking this would be the end of it.
The proceedings went smoothly; there seemed to be very few surprises concerning the case, or so I thought. I went to my hotel room alone, flicked on the Oscars, and watched the lights of Georgetown grow dim before me. And it was that moment, as I watched the suited dolls below my window and the Pan-Caked presenters doling out prizes, that I knew I wasn't the only one playing cowboy. I thought about how every dealing with another human being was an unconscious act of bravado. You blink; I understand that you're thinking. Human relationships are forms of acting, only the players aren't aware of it. Interaction is a form of lying. So how can anyone trust the words "I'm not scared," "I love you," "Go to hell" if they are issued from the mouth of someone who can never be aware of his true feelings, of his underlying motives? Yes, I thought, we are all liars; it's a humancondition. I decided that night that good actors are essentially good liars. I raise my eyebrows, you think I'm sexy. I dart my eyes, you think I'm smart. Actors and nonactors all manipulate. An actor simply has more personalities and techniques to draw on. And more people to manipulate. But the most frightening thing is that when we "turn on" to the camera -- when we insult it, make love to it, comfort it -- we aren't only manipulating a lens and some glass fragments. We're talking to ten, twenty, or perhaps thirty million people. We're manipulating and influencing them all with every careless gesture and gleaming smile. That's art. That's mass media. A man can buy a poster, pin it on his locker, and imagine the most minute details about a slinky starlet. He'll know her through and through. He'll possess her external reality. So of course Hinkley "knew" me. That woman on the screen was digging in her bag of tricks and representing herself for everyone to assess, to get to know, to take home. The most intriguing actors are those who hold back and keep something -- whatever that may be -- for themselves. They are at once tangible and intangible, accessible and inaccessible, readable and mysterious, friends and strangers. And people are both attracted and extremely angered by something they can't quite "have," whether it be a piece of chocolate cake, a multi-million-dollar corporation, or an aloof young actress. I guess you'd call it playing hard to get. I guess that's what actors do. I guess that's why other people often "love" them and sometimes feel obsessed by them.
Love. Quite a word. I am sorry for people who confuse love with obsession and hurt by those who have inflicted their confusion on me. Love should be sacred. It should be uttered in a soft breath, on misty mornings, in secret hideaways. Love does not exist without reciprocation, hugging that person and feeling the meeting of two minds, two hearts, two souls, two bodies. Obsession is pain and a longing for something that does not exist. John Hinkley's greatest crime was the confusion of love and obsession. The trivialization of love is something I will never forgive him. His ignorance only prods me to say that he's missing a great deal. Love is blissful. Obsession is pitiful, self-indulgent. This is a lesson I've learned. I'll always be wary of people who proclaim their love for me. I know what love is. Do they? I've even been obsessed, which is -- you'll pardon the expression - -insane. But any emotion carried to excess is insanity. Does that make it a legal defense? If so, we all stand acquitted. Why are people so afraid to admit that they have it in them? I could pull a trigger. Am I crazy?
Now it is all supposedly over. I walk down the streets, go about my business, and don't look to see who's following. I don't look over my shoulder or sweat if I ride the subway. After a period of death-dodging you learn to believe that you've been picked for survival. Someone's not going to let it happen. There have been too many almosts. Still, there are times. I was coming back from the Svengali set one night with tonsillitis and a broken clavicle and in a fit of depression. I'd had to dodge paparazzi by lying on the floor of the company station wagon and I couldn't talk from laryngitis. It had been a bad day. So I stopped off for a coffee before packing myself into bed for a few days. It was six o'clock, rush hour, and the place was mobbed. Suddenly a flash of light blew up four inches from my nose. At four inches ,the photographer was just trying to harass me. The next thing I knew I was running down Eleventh Street, crying and tearing at this down jacket and slugging away. I slipped on the ice, right on my clavicle, and lay in the street sobbing. The photographer laughed and yelled, "I got her! I got her!" I couldn't talk because my throat and body throbbed with pain. I cried all the way home, all the way to my hotel room, all evening and into the night. I couldn't stop. It hurt so much. I hurt so much. The only thing I could whisper through my wrenching sobs was "It's not fair. It's not fair." Some days the anger and pain swell up in my and I can't hold it in any longer. My mother will hold me tightly, my fists clenched around her neck, my tears staining her blouse. She'll say "Sssh. I know. Everything's going to be all right." All I know to say is "It's not fair! It just isn't."
Someday I will look back and muse upon the curiosities of history: acting and politics all mixed up together. Anything's possible in a world in which media rules all. But for the time being the wounds still ache, the battle goes on. It seems that things calm down just as you think you can't take anymore. Then something else happens, some new event, and I find myself "taking it" once again. A stranger will approach me in the street and say, "Ain't you the girl who shot the President?"
ANGEL NUMBER 344
Number 344 is made up of the attributes and energies of number 3 and number 4, with number 4 appearing twice, amplifying its influences. Number 3 adds self-expression and communication, optimism and enthusiasm, skills and talents, friendliness and sociability, growth, expansion and the principles of increase. Number 3 also carries the vibrations of the Ascended Masters. The Ascended Masters help you to focus on the Divine spark within yourself and others, and assist with manifesting your desires. They are helping you to find peace, clarity and love within. Number 4 resonates with practicality and application, hard work and responsibility, traditional values, honesty and integrity, patience and inner-wisdom, and diligence and determination to achieve goals. Number 4 also relates to our drive, passion and purpose and resonates with the energies of theArchangels.
Angel Number 344 is a message from your angels that the creativity and joy you have to put into your work and daily life has brought about positive energies, making things run smoothly for you in your life. Your angels, Archangels and Ascended Masters applaud your efforts and encourage you to continue on your current path. Know that the work you do is of great value and your determination and persistent efforts havemanifested many blessings in your life.
Angel Number 344 asks that you acknowledge the determination, patience, discipline and hard work you have put into your endeavours in the past, and know that they will have long-term benefits and rewards for yourself and your loved ones. Take heart that your will and efforts have been well worth your while, and your angels encourage you to keep up the great work you have been doing.
The repeating Angel Number 344 is a message that you are being protected and guided by the angels, Archangels and Ascended Masters. Give any concerns or worries to the angels for healing and transmutation, and trust that all is well in your world.
Develop a peaceful, loving relationship with yourself.
Number 344 relates to the karmic number 11 (3+4+4=11) and Angel Number 11.
| Name | Yale Class | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew Bruccoli | 1953 | Preeminent expert on F. Scott Fitzgerald[1] |
| Ted Morgan | 1954 | Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist[1] |
| Michael Pertschuk | 1954 | Consumer advocate, author and former government official[1] |
| David Calleo | 1955 | Intellectual historian, political economist at Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University[1] |
| Henry Geldzahler | 1957 | Art historian and curator[1] |
| Anthony Lapham | 1958 | CIA Lawyer[1] |
| Stephen F. Williams | 1958 | Senior Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit[1] |
| Richard Maltby, Jr. | 1959 | Tony Award-winning director[1] |
| Richard Rhodes | 1959 | Pulitzer Prize-winning author[1] |
| H. John Heinz III | 1960 | US senator[11] |
| Dale Purves | 1960 | Neuroscientist, Director of the Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders program at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School[1] |
| Robert Glick | 1962 | Former director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research[1] |
| David Gergen | 1963 | Presidential Advisor and Political Commentator[1][11][12] |
| Robert Fiore | 1964 | Film producer and co-director of Pumping Iron, a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger[1] |
| Paul Steiger | 1964 | Editor-in-Chief of ProPublica, formerly the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal[1] |
| Charles Derber | 1965 | Professor of Sociology and social critic[1] |
| Juan NegrÃn Fetter | 1967 | Director, Wixarika Research Center, founder of the Party of the Left at Yale[1][13] |
| Richard H. Brodhead | 1968 | 9th President of Duke University[1][11] |
| Alan Bernheimer | 1970 | Poet[1] |
| Rodger Kamenetz | 1970 | Professor and certified dream therapist[1] |
| Soni Oyekan | 1970 | Leading chemical engineer and inventor[1] |
| Jane Maienschein | 1972 | Director of the Center for Biology and Society, at Arizona State University[1] |
| Eli Whitney Debevoise II | 1974 | U.S. Director of the World Bank[1] |
| Rosanna Warren | 1976 | Poet and scholar[1] |
| Karl Zinsmeister | 1981 | Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council underGeorge W. Bush[1] |
| Byron Kim | 1983 | Minimalist artist[1] |
| Cheryl Henson | 1984 | Puppeteer and President of the Jim Henson foundation[1] |
| Jodie Foster | 1985 | Actress[1][11] |
| Tamar Gendler | 1987 | Professor, chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy[1] |
| Scott Peterson | 1988 | Author and journalist, Moscow bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor[1] |
| Jen Banbury | 1989 | Playwright, author of novel Like a Hole in the Head and journalist[11] |
| Anderson Cooper | 1989 | News Anchor[11][12][14] |
| Jonathan Zittrain | 1991 | Professor of Internet Law at Harvard University[1][11] |
| Noah Bookbinder | 1995 | Professor of Law at George Washington University, chief counsel for Sen. Patrick Leahy[1][15] |
| James Prosek | 1997 | Author and naturalist[1][16] |
| Maia Brewton | 1998 | Child actress and lawyer[1] |
| Elisabeth Waterston | 1999 | Actor[1][17] |
| Brooke Lyons | 2003 | Actor[11] |
| Zoe Kazan | 2005 | Actor and playwright[11] |
| Josef Albers | Hon. | Artist[1] |
| Cleanth Brooks | Hon. | Literary Critic[1] |
| Robert A. Dahl | Hon. | Professor of Political Science at Yale University, considered the "Dean" of political science[1] |
| Vincent Giroud | Hon. | Historian of French Opera[1][18] |
| Gary Haller | Hon. | Professor of Chemistry at Yale University and Master ofJonathan Edwards College[1] |
| Cyrus Hamlin | Hon. | Literary critic and longtime Yale professor[1] |
| E. D. Hirsch, Jr. | Hon. | Literary critic and proponent of Cultural literacy[1] |
| Patrick McCaughey | Hon. | Former director of the Yale Center for British Art[1] |
| Ved Mehta | Hon. | Author and advocate for the blind[1] |
| Wallace Notestein | Hon. | Sterling Professor of English history at Yale[1] |
| Richard Rephann | Hon. | Former director of the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments[1] |
| Duncan Robinson | Hon. | Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Chairman of theHenry Moore Foundation and Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum[1] |
| William Kelly Simpson | Hon. | Art historian and Master of Timothy Dwight College[1] |
| Richard Selzer | Hon. | Surgeon, author and professor of surgery at Yale[1] |
| Steven Smith | Hon. | Political Scientist and Master of Branford College[1] |
| Robert Farris Thompson | Hon. | Art historian and Master of Timothy Dwight College[1] |
TESTS SET FOR MAN CHARGED IN THREAT
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
Published: April 9, 1981
A Federal judge yesterday ordered a psychiatric examination for the 22-year-old unemployed man who was charged in Manhattan Tuesday with threatening to kill President Reagan. Other authorities said the man had indicated he was motivated to commit violence by a ''prophetic dream.''
The accused man, Edward M. Richardson of Drexel Hill, Pa., told of the dream in a letter that was delivered to Jodie Foster, the actress, at Yale University last Monday, Federal law enforcement officials said.
In the letter, Mr. Richardson indicated that in the dream he had received instructions to kill the President from John W. Hinckley Jr., the 25-year-old man who has been charged with attempting to assassinate Mr. Reagan in Washington on March 30.
''I will finish what Hinckley started,'' the letter said in part, according to the law enforcement officials. 'A Wave of Assassins'
''RR must die,'' the letter continued. ''He (JWH) has told me so in a prophetic dream. Sadly though, your death is also required. You will suffer the same fate as Reagan and others in his fascist regime. You cannot escape. We are a wave of assassins throughout the world.''
A number of parallels between Mr. Richardson and Mr. Hinckley have emerged. Both had apparently been captivated by the 18-year-old Miss Foster, the star of such films as ''Taxi Driver'' and ''Carny.'' Both stayed briefly at the Park Plaza Hotel in New Haven and sent letters to Miss Foster. Both had recently lived in Lakewood, Colo., just outside Denver. Both had been unable to find work and appeared to have been drifting around the country with little purpose in the weeks before they allegedly took action against the President.
But Federal authorities reiterated yesterday that they had found no evidence that the two men had ever met. Furthermore, the authorities said that Secret Service agents administered a polygraph, or lie detector, test to Mr. Richardson, which indicated he had no connection with Mr. Hinckley.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Washington said yesterday afternoon it still had been unable to learn where Mr. Richardson obtained the gun he was carrying when he was arrested. Gun Sold March 20
But in an interview, Paul Eichenberg, a gunsmith at the Llanerch Gun Shop in Drexel Hill, two miles from the modest white house where Mr. Richardson lived with his parents, said that Mr. Richardson had purchased a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson with a four-inch barrel from the shop on March 20, 10 days before the attack on President Reagan for which Mr. Hinckley has been charged. Mr. Eichenberg said Mr. Richardson paid ''$80 to $85'' for the used weapon made in ''the 1930's or earlier,'' and picked it up on March 27.
In addition to the letter that was delivered to Miss Foster, the police and Secret Service agents found two other letters Tuesday morning in Room 608 at the Park Plaza, where Mr. Richardson had been staying since the previous Friday. One of the letters repeated the name ''Jodie'' over and over followed by ''I love you.''
On Mr. Richardson's first evening in New Haven, four days after the attack on President Reagan, he attended a performance of a play, ''Getting Off,'' in which Miss Foster plays the role of a tough woman recently released from prison, the New Haven police said. He saw the show for a second time on the next evening, the police said. Letters Left at Hotel
In the other letter found at hotel, Mr. Richardson said he was leaving for Washington ''to bring to completion Hinckley's reality.'' ''Ultimately,'' the letter continued, ''Ronald Reagan will be shot to death and this country turned to the Left.'' The letters in the hotel had been left in plain view on a night table, along with three .32-caliber cartridges. They were discovered by a maid shortly after Mr. Richardson left the hotel without paying his bill. He was arrested in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan a few hours later, armed with a loaded .32-caliber revolver.
In Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday, Mr. Richardson, the son of a retired postman, appeared alert and calm as Judge David N. Edelstein ordered his psychiatric examination and directed that the study be carried out by Dr. Stanley L. Portnow, a forensic psychiatrist at the New York University Medical School.
When Judge Edelstein asked if Mr. Richardson had any questions, the young man responded in a firm but polite voice: ''You honor, I just ask the court to bear with me and try to understand who I am and what I believe.''
Mr. Richardson said nothing further to explain his request. The judge replied, ''I'll do my best.'' At Upper Darby High School, Jean Smith, an English teacher, recalled Mr. Richardson as one of her favorite students. He had graduated in 1976 and returned to visit her last spring.
He seemed ''disconnected from reality,'' then, Miss Smith said. ''He was incoherent,'' she continued, ''He seemed to have lost the thread of his life. He seemed lost. He didn't seem aggressive and hostile.'' ---- Another Arrested in a Threat
RALEIGH, N.C., April 8 (AP) - A man convicted of threatening to kill Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford was arrested today on charges of threatening to assassinate President Reagan, the Raleigh police said.
The man, Harry Thomas Smith, 34 years old, of Siler City, allegedly told an off-duty Raleigh police officer last night at the Greyhound bus terminal that ''President Reagan won't live long ... if I get my hands on him,'' according to James Blackburn, the United States Attorney.
After spending 15 of her 18 years in the glare of show business, Jodie Foster desperately wanted to be just an ordinary college freshman. Her choice of schools was not that surprising. With its mock-Gothic spires, ivied courts and boola-boola spirit, Yale has always seemed like a Hollywood version of a tranquil college campus. Foster, by all accounts, was eager to shuck the nymphet roles she had developed in movies for the studious life of an Ivy Leaguer. "Yale actually invited me—little smog-ridden me—to sink my blond teeth into its dusty brick and ivy," she joked in an article she wrote for Esquire last fall. "I'm trading my lifeguard shades for that good ol' New Haven grime."
Armed with an Olympia electric portable, a reading lamp and her dream of normalcy, Foster came East to the Connecticut campus last September—and, except for the fact that she paid the $9,000 tuition, room and board fee out of her formidable acting earnings, she began doing a creditable interpretation of an average Jane College. After an initial period of discreet gawking, Foster's fellow Yalies quietly decided to accept the star of Taxi Driver and The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane as one of their own.
Then, cruelly, the bullets that threatened the lives of President Reagan and three other men in Washington two weeks ago also shattered Jodie's academic idyll. The disturbing suggestion that alleged assailant John Hinckley Jr. may have been motivated by an erotomanic obsession with Foster so exposed the 18-year-old to the spotlight of public attention that Yale's appalled President A. Bartlett Giamatti called it "an ancillary horror to what happened in Washington." Foster has been forced to leave her dorm temporarily for more secure quarters and to accept plainclothes protection. Then, in yet another bizarre twist, 22-year-old Edward Michael Richardson, who according to the Secret Service shared Hinckley's obsession with Foster, was arrested last week in Manhattan while carrying a loaded handgun. He was charged with threatening the President's life and reportedly had written a letter to Foster. Federal prosecutors said Richardson also admitted to telephoning a bomb threat, demanding the release of Hinckley, that caused a brief evacuation of Foster's dorm. Understandably, as the pressure has mounted, Jodie has missed classes. "She can't do her work, it's really too much," one friend reports. Says Yale junior Artie Isaac: "Everybody here feels sorry for her."
John Hinckley's particular motivation may never be understood (see following story). A family acquaintance has pointed out that his mother's nickname is Jodie and that Foster bears a striking resemblance to Mrs. Hinckley when she was young. In any case, Hinckley has haunted Foster for months. Last fall he wrote to screenwriter Paul Schrader, author of Taxi Driver, the 1976 film about a crazed cabbie (Robert De Niro) who tries to assassinate a political candidate to prove his love for a teenage prostitute, played by Foster. In the letter, which Schrader ignored, Hinckley requested an introduction to Foster. More recently Hinckley dropped a series of notes into the actress's mailbox and pushed others under the door of her suite in a Yale freshman dorm. Although Foster receives hundreds of fan letters a month in her box at Yale's postal station, most go unanswered. But Hinckley's scrawled hand-delivered protestations of love alarmed Foster so much last month that she showed them to her dean, who turned them over to authorities. Foster never received Hinckley's last love letter. Found in his hotel room after the assassination attempt, it read: "Dear Jody [sic]...there is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan...I love you very much." The New York Times reported that Hinckley may have taped a phone call he had with the actress (although she could recall no such conversation later).
Fan interruptions are anathema to Jodie, a serious-minded student who graduated class valedictorian from Los Angeles' rigorous Lycée Français. At Yale, she is enrolled in such courses as upper-level French and diplomatic history. A proud accomplishment: an A on a freshman English paper. "I chose Yale basically for writing and literature," she says. "Of course, you can't be sure—you get your first D and could decide to be a chemistry major."
Dorm food and midnight pizzas—plus forays like a pajama-clad visit to a campus sweetshop—have added 20 pounds to her slight frame, and college has changed her style of dress as well. "When I first saw her, she wore gauzy tops and brief briefs," says one Yalie. "Now she dresses in muted colors, in kind of a preppie health-food look." Scoffs another—apparently disappointed—fellow student: "She doesn't look like a movie star. A lot of the guys here don't think she's as special as she's supposed to be." Foster has no steady boyfriend; although she dates a variety of Yale men, her evenings are more likely to be spent in the underground bunker-like Cross Campus Library, where she prefers the smoking section.
Foster lives modestly on campus. She shares a newly rehabbed, loft-like suite in her 1891-vintage dorm with three randomly assigned freshmen women. A good friend is producer Ely Landau's daughter Tina. Next September Jodie will move to Calhoun College, an upper-class residence with a jockish cast whose master, Davie Napier, is a professor of Bible and ministry. Nor has she demanded special privileges: Foster handed out programs at a Bonnie Raitt concert and auditioned like anyone else for a role in a local production of last season's off-Broadway hit Getting Out. She got the second lead—the part of a prostitute being released from prison after serving a term for robbery and murder—but only after proving herself to censorious fellow thespians. "She had a couple of problems at first intrinsic to her work in film," the producer, senior Andrew Paulson, says. "She didn't project and she understated. But shortly after rehearsals began, these problems vanished." The play was halfway through its two-week engagement when President Reagan was shot; Foster finished out the run. It was, she said, one of her favorite roles: "I got to scream a lot, which I've never done before. The parts I've had almost always are as an articulate kid who is brighter than her years, like Bugsy Malone."
As the shock waves of the assassination attempt subside, Jodie will once again attempt to fade into student obscurity. Even now, she is preparing for next month's final exams—though this summer she will be filming O'Hara's Wife, co-starring with Ed Asner. Friends report that she has regained the poise that was temporarily shaken after the shootings: "She's cool as a cucumber," reports an admiring Paulson. All of Yale seems to share that admiration—and a determination to give her the protected student life she wants. "She's just a normal student as far as I'm concerned," says senior Lawrence Hatch. "I grant that she's news—but she shouldn't be disturbed." Foster's unassuming demeanor has earned her that kind of loyalty—and Yale's president is proud that his college has rallied around her. "Students here have always been a kind of family," says Giamatti. "That's the way it should be."
In 1981, Jodie Foster was freshly pledged to Scroll & Key, the most prestigious of the Second-Tier Yale Secret Societies, second only to Skull & Bones.
Newhaven, Cn. is the City of the Nine Squares - and it's more than just a little bit Devilish.
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