1949

Listening to the car radio on my way home this evening I heard a commercial extolling the literary efforts in an article to appear in Time Magazine this week concerning the multitudes who suffer what is called "Post Holidays Depression." Apparently, this malady afflicts a large majority of our population—l must report I find myself voting with the minority. As enjoyable as I find the Christmas holidays to be, after two weeks I find myself more than ready for a bland diet, a house free of guests and relatives, and the prospect of abject poverty. Even avid football game watchers experience gridiron satiation and television disipation. Welcome to 1973 with its quiet winter doldrums!

Despite the hectic activity surrounding the days immediately preceding Christmas Sam Kilner and I found a little time to meet with Tom Mikula who heads up the ABC Program at Dartmouth. Tom is interested in getting A Better Chance project started in New Canaan, Conn., using the facilities of its excellent high school. Sam and I volunteered to help try and get the project started which involves obtaining local financing, securing tuition waivers for non-residents, purchasing a residence to house ten to 12 disadvantaged youngsters and clearing a zoning variance. Any of you Forty-niners in the area plus non-49ers reading this column who would like to contribute his services, don't write—telephone. We'll need a number of sponsors. How about Dave Bergamini in Rowayton, Conn? Or Howie Wellman in Wilton, Conn? Bobby Amirault in Norwalk? Maybe Bill Chapman from Stamford, Conn? Undoubtedly, Mike Ireland in New Canaan itself!

Christmas brought a newsy card from LongJohn Mcllwraith, who boasts a longer John in the making, already pushing six feet at 13 and onehalf years. Nine-year-old Allen and eleven-yearold Jody broke five feet recently—looks as if a new basketball team is in the making in Carmel, Ind! L. J. reports he has been extremely active playing tennis and starting a "little theater" in town and directing its first play. Even made money on the first venture. And good wife Mike? She was most active in November politics getting recalcitrant voters to the polls and then rewarded herself with a short haircut to take family honors for abbreviated filaments.

A few months ago I was amply rewarded with a long note from long-silent Lou Clarke who recently trekked three thousand miles from California to North Troy, Vt., which is about as far north as you can live without paying Canadian taxes. I had always assumed North Troy, Vt., would be north of Troy, Vt.-not so, there is no Troy, Vt., but it is north of Troy, N. Y. After editing out some of Lou's choice phrases I gather that Lou was one of the many casualties of the aerospace recession in California and after two years of the usual "over qualified" cliches accepted a job just four miles from Jay Peak skiing with Space Research Corp. where he is re-inventing the cannon for the U. S. Navy, despite stodgy 1903 specification requirements. You might gather from this that Lou is cynical—not so! He probably has today a greater insight into our society than most of us due to his tribulations. In two years he learned more occupations than any of us experience in a lifetime: real estate salesman, employment counsellor, truck driver, landscape gardener, house painter, Fuller Brush salesman, Red Cross first aid instructor and disaster team member, and text writer on drug abuse. And what have you done lately? Lou and his new, young wife are now happy in the North Country and hopefully will make the trip south next fall to join our fall gettogether. I sincerely hope to become reacquainted with the person who wrote such a thought-provoking letter. Thank you, Lou! It made me give serious thought to the many philosophical issues we tend to avoid in our ordered (or disordered?) lives.

And where oh! where is old Doc Rooney? A New Englander, now with ten gallon hat and cowboy boots, is currently directing publications at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas (Cotton Bowl winner by upset). After 18 years doing editorial work and serving as editor-in-chief of social science text-books for Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston publishers. Doc was managing editor of a massive water quality criteria study done by the National Academy of Sciences for the Environmental Protection Agency in 1971-1972. Now, in his new position in Austin, Texas he will have the responsibility for shaping and focusing published reports that emanate from the school's faculty/student seminars, the Bureau of Government Research, and various conferences and symposia!

Since most of you do not subscribe to the NewCanaan Carriage Trader, I am certain you missed the front page scoop on classmate DaveBergamini. Dave, who now looks more like a symphony conductor than an author recently had an experience not open to 99.99% of us: he was guest for a month at the Hale Observatories at Mount Palomar in Pasadena, Calif. During his visit Dave viewed the universe through the world famous two hundred inch telescope gathering data for his new book en esse, "The Edge of the World." This book, which will be published by Reader's Digest Press, plans to follow the careers of Allen Sandage, Walter Baade, and Edwin Hubble, all leading astronomers in their times, and will be a history of the cosmological quest in our current century. Dave's host was Allen Sandage of Mount Palomar, one of the world's leading observational astronomers and an old friend of Dave's. The newspaper article not only reports on this recent escapade but also contains a condensed biography of author Bergamini's life including his family's tribulations in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation of World War II. Anyone wishing a Xerox copy of the story need only write and he shall be rewarded!

It has been a lean month for news. Anyone having current information on the life or times of Gunther Perdue please communicate quickly. He is missing again!

In parting I have only one deep, penetrating, philosophical observation to make ere we meet again: Barbara Kilner has a bruised coccyx!

Happy New Year, I hope!

Secretary, P.O. Box 731 Rye, N. Y. 10580

Treasurer,

Box 234. R.D.5. Laconia, N.H. 03246