Rain and West Branch Iowa and One side of the story

This letter mentions rain, which we are grateful for today in southern New Mexico, a fellow from West Branch Iowa and some things about Grandma that I can't figure out since we only have one side of the story here.
Rain. It rains a lot in Oregon but very little here. Today it rained. This isn't the first summer rain, which came in June and was full of the smell of the Creosote bush. I always forget that smell until it rains. The rains from now to September we call the monsoon season. I don't know if they really are monsoons or just a lot of rain. It's enough to start filling up the rain barrels and tanks that Tim has set up to catch the rain off of our roof and to keep the cats indoors. I picked up a friend at her trailer park to give her a ride today and she remarked at the people standing outside on their porches and I said, yeah we do that when it rains we come out. The breeze feels good and we can turn off the swamp cooler and just enjoy the cool air this evening.
West Branch Iowa. Dad was working with someone from West Branch. I first heard of West Branch when my friends in Colorado went off to the Quaker boarding school there. Scattergood School. There were only two or three of us teenagers who attended Meeting and both Esther Hinshaw and Eric Michner went off to Scattergood. At that time in the 60's there was a waiting list to get into the high school and the idea had never occured to my parents or I that I might be interested. By the time we had figured it out, it was too late to try and get in. Later Leonore Goodenow who was the head of the school in the 1960's moved to Denver as our Meeting House resident. She then began to do prison work and invited me along in the early 1970's to worship with prisoners and other Friends at the maximum security prison in Cañon City, Colorado. In 2004 I returned there to do my Basic AVP (Alternatives to Violence) training.
It has also been interesting to me that two young people from Las Cruces Friends Meeting have gone to Scattergood. Many circles and intertwinings in life.