Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

In his journal entry for May 19, 1961, Indiana records that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were meeting in Vienna on the third and fourth of June (during the Vienna Summit) and that it was a "funny coincidence with [the] show in [the] country." The show he references was the Annual Art Exhibition of the Scarsdale Studio Workshop, in which he was included and which was scheduled to take place those two days. He writes that it was cool and cloudy, but that he still went into the country (Scarsdale), and that J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss) met him at the train when he returned. Kloss had just bought a Grundig tape recorder, and Indiana notes first using the tape recorder in the taxi ride home, and that once back at the apartment Particci (his cat) reacted "sharply" and was "very worried" upon hearing her taped voice. 

Indiana and Kloss had dinner in, and Indiana received a call from Fred Mitchell: they arranged to have drinks Sunday afternoon, and he notes that Friedel Dzubas would join them. Indiana also records that the rust had "deepened considerably on all pieces in [the] garden. Color weathered." He is referring to the works that were in the garden of the David Anderson Gallery for the Indiana / Forakis exhibition; the sculptures had just been returned to him the day before.