1970
Address of the Class Secretary Upon the Occasion of a Newly Undertaken Volume of News Notes:
What warmeth the lowly scrivener's cockle, dear friends, is some meager, yea even the minutest evidence that his words do not go entirely undetected where they lie helplessly pinned in the black folds of the closed book - that occasionally an inquisitive, oh! even a misguided hand lays open the delicate volume and discovers, on either smooth, white leaf of the sudden, complete, even immodest spread, each humble, word happily surrendering up its very meaning to the fleeting pleasure, solace, joy, worse - the arcane amusement, of the binocular interloper! Do we jest? Do we exaggerate?
We do. We must! Extremism in the defense of News Notes is no vice!
Speaking of which, and as a flawless transition, we must again report (with reluctance) a disconcerting lack thereof - of vice, that is - among recent lore of uniformly aged and aging classmates. An abundance of virtue, however, which fast threatens to become our collective fatal flaw. Please, please try to remain in step with the vogue, lads, and do something of which we can all feel properly ashamed.
Perhaps farthest out of step at the moment is one Ernest J. Babcock, who, in cahoots with wife Sally, has caused to be born one son - Josiah Hanson - April 27 in Brattleboro, Vt., "not far from the Hanover Plain." Guilty of laudable conduct, Babcocks, compounded by the graduation of the progenitor himself from B.U. Law School and his subsequent gainful employment in the law firm of Pierce, Atwood, Scribner, Allen & McKusick, Portland, Me.
We find further that Jim Zimpritch and spouse Gigi are arrived in the same location, there to conspire with the self-same dangerously high-minded mob. We have been led to expect worse of Duke Law School.
Word has filtered down from the summit of Dhaulagiri, the "White Mountain" of the Himalayas, that as of last May 17 Todd S. Thompson, Andrew Harvard '71, and 16 other condemned men were "making good progress" (a gem of journalese) toward scaling that outcropping via the once-conquered northeast ridge. Whether they have by this time scaled it, we do not know, although somebody must. More importantly, whether they have returned from the mountain we do not know. [Todd and Andy were not in the group which made the final ascent. They have returned to the States - ed.] (In 1969 seven men did not, among them David Seidman '68.) Dhaulagiri is 26,822 ft. tall. We may be uninformed, but we aren't ignorant.
Bill Dabney, upon his return to Hanover, has won a Marcus (creative arts) Award for sculpture, which carries with it a stipend of "not less than $100." That, Dabney, is just plain bad taste.
Jim Aukerman is married. So is the former Karin Maria Nilsson, alumna of Indiana University and personnel executive at the ChristianScience Monitor. They married each. Isn't that appalling. Committed in late June, Kingston, R.I.
The docket contains another transgression of similar nature. Samuel G. Billings and Barbara T. Lawton were married June 23 at Hartford, Conn. Barbara was graduated from Colby Junior College and the Montessori International Training Program in London. Sam is nearing completion of a degree in landscape architecture at U. Mass.
That should be sufficient. Got here a lengthy list of lately-degreed characters, but haven't the strength to continue. Further, until somebody gives us a definitive resume of the present circumstances of peeping Tom English, we refuse to print one more word from his notoriously accurate and punctual missals. He must be running for class secretary the man is utterly daft.
Class Secretary, rue Stanley 65 B-1180, Brussels, Belgium
Class Treasurer, Spanish Quarters, 3675 Gaslight Curve Montgomery, Ala. 36111
