Alms for Blissful Calm

It may come as a surprise for my friends to learn that for years I have struggled with the problem of exactly where to begin my career as a philanthropist on the grand scale. When I was in England not so long ago, I made up my mind on the subject. I decided (firmly as I thought) in favor of restoring the interior of the Royal Albert Hall to its original glory to what it was before the acousticians so arrogantly decided that being able to hear the music was more important than being able to see that magnificent ceiling.

You can tell from what I've just written that when I say "grand scale" I mean it. I have in mind the level of philanthropy made possible when the Getty Museum trustees decide that they just can't handle all that endowment money and need to hand over half of it to someone who can use it with flair and imagination for the public good. Or perhaps it all happens at that moment when someone discovers that D. K. Ludwig is that uncle of mine who left for America so long ago and was never heard of again.

The thing that's happened now, though, is that my return to Hanover opened up the whole agony of decisionmaking again. The tussle was quite prolonged, but I now know that the Albert Hall is just going to have to wait until another big batch of interest money comes in. Hanover, New Hampshire, is where my career begins.

What did the trick was my discovering something new about the Dartmouth campus. It's too damn noisy. I now realize that during my previous 13 years at the College I led a sheltered life, down there on the east side of the Hopkins Center where nothing louder than the occasional lawn mower or drumming ensemble ever penetrated. But my life since my return to the alma mater has been divided between two places fronting onto streets bearing traffic, and I am finding it harder to get my work done here than I did in London.

In my office it is more or less manageable, but my philanthropic urge was sparked (appropriately enough) in the Orton Hicks Room of Baker Library the place where I have been going twice a week to audit a course. The trouble has been that with the windows open during this summer's glorious weather, what I've mostly been auditing has been the unbelieveable racket produced by everything on wheels zipping along College Street. It seems to me now that if Dartmouth is to fulfill its manifest destiny of being one of the choicest of the groves of academe, that kind of noise has just got to stop.

Now, since I have very little clout around here it's obvious to me that I'm going to have to use my Getty or Ludwig money when it comes in order to make this the pedestrian campus it ought to be. Most of my first big benefaction, therefore, will go to two bits of construction. The first will consist of two throughtraffic tunnel-roads, one of which will go under Wheelock Street from the rise near Theta Delt eastwards to a spot just east of Alumni Gym, and the other.under North Main from College Hall to the Occom Inn. The other project will be an underground parking lot beneath the Green, entered from my tunnel-roads and from a ramp near the SAE house. (It strikes me that if they can put cars under Boston Common and Union Square they ought to be able to do the same thing here once I've given them the wherewithal.) Some money will be set aside to deal, one way or another, with any opposition to my plan.

The result of my munificence will be twofold. All faculty and staff will have weatherproof parking within easy walking distance (also along weatherproof ways) to their work places. More important, through traffic will be eliminated from the roads in the center of the College and we will then be able to think things through more clearly. Which is, after all, what we're all here for.

I might be inclined to wonder whether I am indulging in wishful thinking were it not for a moment I lived through some 17 years ago. I had just come to the United States to work at the University of California's new campus at Santa Cruz, and had been taken on that day to some surveyor's office in what passed for "downtown" in that sleepy city. The office had one whole wall completely covered with a map of the northern half of the state, and I said something like, "Wouldn't it be lovely if a fivemile strip along the entire coastline could be kept forever just the way it is now?" For the first time in my life I became the object of an exchange of glances which said, in neon as it were, "What kind of a lulu have we got here?" Well, the California coastline protection legislation went through not so many years later; and I have not the slightest doubt that the Wheelock/North Main underpass and the Green parking lot are ideas whose time will not be long acoming. My hunch is that the class of 1990 and its successors will be able to hear a professor in the Orton Hicks Room in the summertime (though I'm not particular about the date, give or take a year or two).

This big-time decision-making is a mysterious thing. I've just realized that while I've been writing about my first major benefaction I have subconsciously made up my mind about the first minor handout as well: covering the cost of fitting to all the College grass-cutters those batterydriven engines that make the mail delivery vans here so nice and quiet.

Now it's up to Mr. Ludwig or the Getty trustees to get off the dime.