1900

As a result of an enlightening conversation with Alice Proctor, widow of CharlesProctor, my confidence in the peace, quietness, calm, and serenity of the Yosemite has been a bit shaken. It appears that the valley has bear trouble. These magnificent inhabitants of the high Sierras love to roam the valley in the summer months as if invoking some primitive ancestral rights of the bear tribe. This summer the ranger service noticed that the many directional signs posted about the valley were being licked clean by bear tongues. This was a great mystery until, after chemical analysis, it was found that the paint used contained banana oil. Evidently banana oil is a prized delicacy of bears, so these directional signs were a sort of gourmet's paradise for them.

Then on one occasion, before Alice's arrival in the Yosemite, an especially venturesome bear with malicious intent and in a felonious manner forcibly entered the Proctors' kitchen, gorged himself on a freshly baked pie and cake, made a sort of shambles of the place, and without as much as a thank you beat a leisurely but not inglorious retreat to some place of safety best known to the bear fraternity. In the absence of the younger Proctors, Alice was carefully instructed as to the appropriate action she should take if she heard any unusual disturbance about the house. It was impressed on her that if she heard any loud noise coming from the direction of the kitchen she was to immediately telephone the ranger service. Now it happens that the telephone is located in the kitchen, so what?

It was indeed a pleasure for the Goodhues to have dinner and a long, delightful conversation at the Hanover Inn with the Arthur Virgins. Arthur and Jeannette were on their way to visit Arthur's sister in Concord, N. H. From Concord they went back to their farm in North Hatley, Que. On account of the early opening of the New York opera season, they were planning to return to their apartment in New York about the middle of October. At this writing they are undoubtedly enjoying all the glamor of the Metropolitan as well as the theatre advantages of the great city.

Also in late September your secretary had a very pleasant call from Lena Fletcher, widow of "Pete" Fletcher. She had just closed her cottages at Stinson Lake, Rumney, N. H., and was on her way to spend two or three weeks with her brother and his family in Groton, Vt. From that vantage point she hoped to enjoy again the almost ethereal beauty of a New England autumn. About the last of October she was driving back to her winter home in Winter Park, Fla. Lena very generously brought me a booklet of "Pete's" short nature stories for children and poems - two of them in dialect. Many of these stories were told to children at Stinson Lake during the 19305. This copy will eventually go to the Archives of the College.

Through the courtesy of "Ken" Beal, Secretary of '99 I have learned that John Ash, who was ninety years old last January, has been placed in a nursing home at Corvallis, Ore. One of the sad things about John's situation is that his attention wanders and his memory of people, places, and events fails. In most ways, however, he is quite content. The one really disturbing factor is that he can no longer go fishing.

A note from Edmund Jonakowski, who for many years has made his home in Sarasota, Fla., amidst oleander, hibiscus, wistaria, magnolia, and perchance orange blossoms, in a very laconic sentence says, he is not too well himself but "he manages to get around." We know "Jonnie" has limited vision, and so we are sure that just getting around must be a source of satisfaction to him.

Secretary, 3 Pleasant St., Hanover, N. H.

Treasurer, 20 Chapel St., Brookline 46, Mass.

Bequest Chairman,