Further Mention

"The Wildfire," a poem by Alexander Laing '25 in The Nation of April 27, may appeal to readers on a variety of levels: chauvinistic and international, pragmatic and experimental, ethical and spiritual, and medical and dermatological. Crossword puzzle addicts needling the ignorant who don't know what blebs are and speculate rashly about spiculate will not accept an opportunistic I-want-to-make-it-perfectly-clear answer: "Spiculate means shaped like a spicule."

THE WILDFIRE

Take this flame in your hands. Yes, it will sear.

Shape it until it stands cool as a spire.

Turn it. Study the flaws. Blow from heart's heat new, spiculate fire. Cause the wound to shut.

Then, as your hurts abate, let the skin taughten. Needle the blebs - and wait. Your scars will whiten.

Doc. en Droit, Litt. D. H. C., Ramon Guthrie, deceased Professor of French Emeritus at Dartmouth College, a poet whose static increases with the passage of time, is the subject of a poem by M. L. Rosenthal in The Nation of May 11.

FURTHER TO THE POINT OF MIRACLES

(In Memoriam: Ramon Guthrie,

The man has spent a lifetime watching for God God must appear, or he must speak, in such a way as to reveal himself unmistakably.

And God sees the man watching and yearning toward him.

Oh, but perhaps God cannot make himself visible? or cannot understand what language means for men?

But then the man dies. God believes that the man has reached him at last.

He smiles and says, in God-language: I heard you. I saw you.

But the man cannot see or hear. God does not understand this.

Rudi Blesh '21 has selected and written an introduction for 81 piano rags by such farmous musicians as Scott Joplin, James Scott, jr. Joseph Francis Lamb, often praised by admirers as the Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms of rag. Entitled Classic Piano Rags: Complete Original Music for 81 Piano Rags, containing the original sheet music covers, this is a 1973 Dove: Publication (181 Varick St., New York, N.Y 10014, paperbound, $6). Blesh has provided not only the best of rag but also a wide and diverse selection from the earliest periods of folk song and dance to the later classical period.

If you insist on purity, a swallow of water may be dangerous in the future. A shower bath in water supposedly fresh and wholesome may become even more of a hazard. In his WaterFacts and Figures for Planners and Managers (Geographical Survey, Circular 601-1, Washington, D.C., 1973) John H. Feth '34 tells us why. Facts: water is about 97% in the seas, 2% in glacier ice, chiefly in Greenland and Anarctica, and man on earth is left with less than 1% of liquid fresh water to sustain his needs. Every new "building must rely on domestic water and on facilities to dispose of waste water. Every industrial site must have provision for drinking water, for process or cooling water, or both, and for disposal of wastes. Every city or rural park requires water Unless planning is wise, every piece of land may permit seepage of pollutants into streams, lakes, or bodies of ground water someone else wants to use. The future looks grim.

Chairman of the Department of Religious Studies and Charles A. Dana Professor at St. Lawrence University, Daniel W. O'Connor Jr. '46 is author of a major scholarly article, "Saint Peter, The Apostle," in the new, 24-volume" edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in April. fully documented with a bibliography it points out that the only very early sources of information about Peter's life are limited to the New Testament: the Four Gospels, Acts, Letters of saint Paul, and two epistles bearing the name of Peter.

Despite many uncertainties, Professor O'Connor believes that he did actually visit Rome in late life that he was martyred under Nero, that he was buried somewhere in the large cecropolis on Vatican Hill, and that he was the recognized pokesman for the Disciples.

A specialist in the Old and New Testaments, the life and teachings of Jesus Christ the archeology of Palestine, and archeological excavations in Israel. Professor O'Connor is author of Peter in Rome: The Literary,Liturgical, and and Archeological Evidence published by the Columbia University Press, 1969.

Germany has been glorified as the Nation of infinite and hence the Nation of Death, and Professor I. D. O'Hara '53 of the University of Connecticut attempts to explain why in the NewYork Times Book Review of April 21 with the help of The Guiltless by Hermann Broch. It contains a group of stories, some dating from the 1930's and even earlier, brought together by Brock in the late 1940's, which show a half dozen characters "whose interconnected lives sketch a portrait of guiltless complicity in Germany's surrender to Nazism."

As a translator from the Spanish, Professor Gregory Rabassa '44 gets high praise from the reviewer of Paradiso by Cuba's leading poet José Lezama Lima. The novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 466 pp., $12.95) strikes the reviewer, Edmund White, as being "a daring, even preposterous, manipulation of language." According to the reviewer, scarcely a line could be mistaken for any one else's writing - or for prose in the familiar sense of the word. Hence the praise for Professor Rabassa: "The skilled translation alone must have been a monumental task."

You may feel strongly about education in the past because as a classicist and disciplinarian you have well articulated feelings about how it can guide the present world. Or you may welcome the present because it only has relevance. Now you may update yourself with Learning for Tomorrow: The Role of the Futurein Education, edited by Alvin Toffler with the help of 18 leading psychologists, educators, futurists, social scientists, psychiatrists, and humanists. Among them is H. Wentworth Eldredge '31, Dartmouth Professor of Sociology, co-author of the Appendix, "A Status Report: Sample Syllabi and Directory of future Studies." It provides information about the design of future oriented curricula with materials, resources, ideas, and contacts. A sample of actual course syllabi covers 15 college-level and four pre-college courses, along with three "learning modules," designed for futurist activities lasting one to three weeks. A listing of about 200 courses offered at about 140 instilutions is classified to enable students and facuities to locate courses of interest to them and to make possible direct contact with others in the field. Included are also a reading list of the 75 books most frequently used in future courses and the names and addresses of several organizations especially interested in the field of national futuristics. Published by Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Learningfor Tomorrow costs $2.95.

The indefatigable, prolific, and scholarly Wilton S. Sogg '56 continues to produce and benefit law-school students, candidates for bar examinations, and lawyers desiring to keep abreast of their specialties. Co-author with Myron C. Hill Jr. and Howard S. Rossen, he complements Smith's Review, Legal GemSeries, with Remedies Equity-Damages-Restitution, produced by the West Publishing Company of St. Paul, Minn., 1974. With the table of cases and index, it runs to 190 pages, some blank for note taking.