Further Mention
Dr. Radford C. Tanzer '25 is known in New Hampshire as The Clinical Professor of Plastic Surgery, Emeritus, Dartmouth Medical School; in Vermont as a consultant for the Veterans Hospital, White River Junction; in the country as a whole as past president of the New England Society of Plastic and Reconstruction Surgeons and past president of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons. His renown transcends that of the United States. Trained in London, he has played a leading role in a Hawaii convention with other surgeons from Brazil, Switzerland, and Spain. In Japan at the Congress of Plastic Surgery, he has lectured on the treatment of persons born without ears and deformities of ears damaged in accidents or by burns, illustrated by a series of demonstration operations how an ear may be constructed out of a patient's own tissue, and visited centers of surgery in Tokyo and Kyoto.
Many of these world-wide experiences are now condensed in a book of which Dr. Tanzer is co-editor. Entitled Symposium on Reconstructionof the Auricle, it runs to 312 pages, contains essays by leading surgeons, offers 611 illustrations including one full-color plate, and costs $42.50.
"The isles of the South Seas - bathed in warm sunlight in the midst of the vast Pacific were surprise enough to their European discoverers. But more astonishingly, they were inhabited! And the tall, soft-featured, lightly clad people who greeted the Europeans possessed graces they could only admire, and skills at which they could but wonder.
"How had these brown-skinned people reached the many far-flung islands of Polynesia? When? And whence had they come? The mystery lingered for centuries."
So begins the leading article in the December 1974 issue of National Geographic. The dean of Polynesian archeologists, Kenneth P. Emory '20, in "The Coming of the Polynesians" pieces together the story of one of the monumental explorations of all times, the peopling of the isles of Polynesia. Not until 1920 did scientists fan out over the vast field from Hawaii in the North to Easter Island in the Southeast to New Zealand in the Southwest in the search for answers. Emory took part in many of these expeditions. Long clouded by mystery and legend, the past of Polynesian ancestors comes dramatically to light with the publication of the Emory essay, the first of a four-part look at the Isles of the Pacific. To establish details of Polynesian origins and of the dramatic first conquest of the Pacific Ocean, Emory drew upon disciplines as diverse as archeology, linguistics, and botany. One two-page spread is breathtaking. In color it shows three beautiful daughters of an American father and a Polynesian mother, dramatic examples of the loveliness of women poetically extolled ever since the days of Captain Cook.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher was not the only one who praised Contrary Country: A Chronicle ofVermont by Ralph Nading Hill '39. In 1950 she wrote: "A savory mixture ... with Mr. Hill's conscientious regard for historical accuracy, lively appreciation of the grotesque and unexpected, and a sound sense of proportion." It matters more than a little whether Vermonters were native or adopted. Born and brought up in small valleys, none large enough to hold more than a minimum of contrary characters, Vermonters regarded incoming settlers as peculiar, and the newcomers enlarged on the compliment with more verbosity and less veracity. The valleys are still compressed enough to heighten individuality and wayward understatement. With an insatiable curiosity about past and present, Ralph Hill, born in Burlington, casts a discerning, amused, and sympathetic eye on a great variety of contrary characters ranging from the earliest settlers facing with dour doggedness present and future to eccentric religious sects; from Matthew Lyon, the Congressman against whom the Alien and Sedition Acts were specifically aimed to farmers laconically attuned to northern winters whose cows were innocent of sedition; from cracker-barrel philosophers to old maid school teachers with razor tongues capable of cutting down would-be miniature hellions. Indeed, so many Vermontiana buffs have echoed Dorothy Canfield Fisher's sentiments that.the book has been reprinted by the Stephen Greene Press of Brattleboro for $7.95. If you complain about the high price, you are a Hill contrary.
If you believe that society is slow moving and relatively predictable, you are wrong. Sudden changes and sudden awareness of changes have created the need for different response mechanisms, different research tools, and different approaches in planning. Edited by David R. Godschalk '53 and published by the American Institute of Planners of Washington, D.C., Planning in America (240 pages, $10 prepaid, paperbound) describes itself with becoming modesty as being "thought provoking, controversial, always stimulating, and full of considerations affecting every planner." Chapters written by nine experts discuss theories, methods, and practices and examines the effectiveness of education in preparing contemporary planners for work in a society constantly turbulent.
A recipient of a Danforth and a Woodrow Wilson, Lester K. Little II '57 combines superior and rare talents as teacher and scholar. Previously on the faculties of Princeton and Chicago, now at Smith, he has conducted courses and seminars in the History of Western Civilization and the Middle Ages. With enthusiasm he attempts to stress the values of accurate scholarship, individual inquiry, the fruitfulness of interacting disciplines, the fascination and relevance of remote times and the continuing challenge of liberal learning. The titles of his works suggest the depth of his scholarship. A recent article of which he is co-author is "Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicate Spiritualities," in Past and Present:A Journal of Historical Studies published in Oxford, England, and printed in London. Elaborate footnotes refer to medieval authorities writing in English, Latin, French, Italian, and German. Little himself who writes almost as easily in French as in English is also author of "L'Utilité Sociale de 'la Pauvreté" in Etudes, Tome 8, a publication of the Sorbonne. Other works by him are a translation of Marcelle-Marie Dominique Chenu and "Nature, Man, and Society in the 12th Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West."
B.M. Bennani '68 has selected and translated Arabic poems written by Mahmoud Darweesh in a book entitled Splinters of Bone (60 pages, $2.95, The Greenfield Review Press). Born 1942 in Barwa, a Palestinian village east of Acre, Darweesh, who lived in Haifa under house arrest until he could establish himself in Egypt, may be called a cultural activist in that he has dramatically combined peaceful resistance with art and journalism. Richard Eberhart '26 finds the poems delightful and enlivening. ...Splinters of Bone are like arrows aimed at objects. They go swiftly and directly to the mark."
This striking silver-point portrait ofRobert Frost '96, whose centennial yearthis is, has been presented to Baker Libraryby Meylert M. Armstrong 111 '58. It wasdone about 1920 by Ercole Cartotto.
