Letters

The September Issue

The September issue seemed to me to be one of the best. I can't remember when I have gone cover to cover in one reading and with such satisfaction. I guess it is a human trait that we are more apt to take pen in hand when we have criticisms and complaints and less often with compliments.

There was a note of sadness to realize that some stalwarts are retiring from positions of great responsibility, but we are assured that they will continue working for the College as just ordinary Alumni like ourselves.

Would there be any advantage in identifying the author of a letter at the head instead of the end? I like to know the person and Class before I read the comments and it frequently means turning a page.

Glens Falls, N.Y.

Vonnegut (cont.)

For the College to get successful writers like Vonnegut to visit and share viewpoints is a plus. No doubt by using humor, Vonnegut was better able to convey his views. But after everyone had a good laugh, it is odd that the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, representing a liberal arts college, failed to challenge a statement of Vonnegut's that was both intellectually shallow and false, not to mention clownishly irresponsible.

Vonnegut says when you get right down to it, people prefer slavery to death, In that statement hides the view that freedom is okay if you never have to put your life on the line. As the basis for choice and action, that view eventually undercuts the same conditions of freedom that let people like Vonnegut wander to campuses to say dumb things.

The Magazine's editors should know that to ensure quality of life in the 4th century B.C., Athenians put together the first liberal education. It was "liberal" because it fitted free people to govern themselves.

To those Athenians only a free life was worth living. And while they would also die to preserve it, their writings show no romantic notions of glory in dying. Still they preferred death's finality and nothingness to enslavement.

Furthermore, there is another people that clearly puts human life first. When politically or otherwise organized they have gone down fighting rather than risk seeing what happened if they didn't. These are the unsentimental Jews from whom we claim to derive our best values.

Usually, people who are already prisoners

or slaves prefer living over dying. This only shows that without much control over their lives, slaves have few choices.

Nowadays, thirty years after Senator McCarthy's excesses, some still believe it is un-chic to worry about our main world competitor, the Soviet Union. The real concern is not that the Soviet Union and countries copying its methods don't like us. The concern is that if those methods become widely spread, our way of life will cease. Paradoxically, a bigger ignoramus like McCarthy was more subversive toward our way of life than the subtler, undisciplined Vonnegut.

Yet, had Vonnegut considered the cultural sterility of slave nations like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, he might have figured our way of life was worth dying for. And if he had troubled to think that far, he might have also figured it was worthwhile to let such nations' leaders know clearly how he felt.

Houston, Tex.

[We do not find it appropriate to censor orcomment upon an individual's remarks, especially since we do represent an Ivy Leagueinstitution. Rather, we rely on an intelligentand well informed readership to make up itsown mind re: the veracity of certain statements. Ed.]

The Right Kind of Dog

What happened to Bob Bell's raccoon when

it took off from the car? (See Bell's "Justifiable Pesticide," June '83.) Back to the house, I'll bet. They're persistent rascals. Particularly where there's free steaks at today's prices.

I suggest that Bob is moving in the wrong dog What would a Golden Retriever know about raccoons? Now the right kind of dog is something else. A coon hound, that is. Around Chester, N.H., where I dairy farmed for a number of years, a good coon hound is a highly regarded individual. And rightly so, what with the high price of eggs. They are particularly adept at treeing these individuals on moonlight nights, although any time of day or night will do. If the coons are not readily available for treeing, they root them out to make them available.

When the coon shows up again, an inquiry or two at the garage in the center of Chester will locate able and willing coon dogs along with able and willing coon hunters. If nothing particular is going on like haying or spring plowing, Bob will have a combination of expertise that no coon can stand up under. However, if the dogs have to dig the coon out, Bob may have to put in a new foundation. But that's better than putting up with the coon.

As for any laws and regulations getting in the way of corralling coons, that never happened in my time. I spent a lot of time at the state legislature getting a Bang's Disease law passed that dairy farmers like myself could live with. There were a lot of yarns swapped among the legislators about the astuteness, durability, and cunning of their coon dogs, and how they outsmarted the coon, and all that. We also heard about the instant response of coon dogs to a bugle call from one of their colleagues who had just run across the scent of a coon. The transition from coon dog dozing off in the shade of the barn to animate object with flying ears, tail, and legs disappearing jet-propelled into the woods in answer to a call is something to see. My own coon hound was asleep by the kitchen stove in the middle of winter when a call came, so my wife says, and went through the window in the pantry, pane and all, so fast that she didn't see him go. The breeze from the pantry at 12° below was something else.

Good coon hunting to Bob.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

On the Air

As another recent graduate and veteran of

Dartmouth radio, I must take issue with a point raised in Michael Berg's letter (September 1983). He asked whether FM programming represents "a profitless compromise between students favoring an all-rock format and the stations' Board of Overseers, which insists on 'serving the public' with classical music." Classical music on WFRD is not 'profitless," nor is it supported only by the Board of Overseers. Certainly classical announcers are in the minority at the station, but there are many students and other members of the community who enjoy classical programming. It is not the case that classical music is heard on WFRD only because of some mandate from the Board of Overseers, as Mr. Berg implied.

Stanford, Calif.

Second Opinions

Regarding "The Dartmouth Disease" (September 1983), I gather the author had a chance to monitor the Dartmouth scene for a number of years. As a parent of an " '83" and a graduate of an excellent, albeit spiritless, technical institution, consider my dismay in observing the transformation of my bright, serious, and sensitive daughter whose only concern for college was a good education into one whose blood runs green, who refers to people by class year (not by name, or department or even country of origin) and to whom the chorus of "Men of Dartmouth" is more familiar than her father's address.

Consider the parent observing and contracting the Disease at a time of life when you thought you were immune to almost everything. Try to imagine explaining to colleagues whose children are attending other schools what the Disease is like. It's as elusive as the male menopause.

I don't know if people "are too nice in Hanover" and I never lived there during the winter months, but the Disease can only be caught there and, based on limited research, there is no cure. In fact, in the letter from Debby which accompanied the copy of the Disease article, reference was made to a number of "alums" she met recently at a tailgate party at Stanford. None of them had names, some were "cute" but there was another '83, a few '78s and one or two from the 50s.

Don't examine the Disease too closely. One wrong move and you might find a "cure" and that would be so unfair to the '84s, '85s, '86s 'n's.

Portland, Ore.

[The following letter reached "DartmouthDisease" author George O'Connell via our office. We requested permission to reprint. Ed.]

As a '35D I've been reading Alumni Magazine issues a decade longer than you ('45M), but never have I been more rewarded by an article than yours, "The Dartmouth Disease." Thank you for spotlighting "the Disease," or what my wife has long called all of us in my '35 class, "perennial undergraduates."

I had only three years up there, transferring to Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism for our family publishing business. But I grew no roots at all out at NU; I do send a five spot annually to Evanston, but I eat my heart out for Hanover, having been a news letter editor and the Fund gopher. And now picking up our old senior yearbook, I've become aware that there are some 200 fellow classmates listed, including me, who did not graduate (518 did). Among these 200, I see many current friends I've never realized also didn't graduate your Dartmouth Disease simply having tagged them as, say, loyalists without sheepskin, as it did me.

Over my years in business, I can recall innumerable occasions when I quietly would announce to anyone listening, "I'm Dartmouth," never referring to the school that graduated me. The feeling for Dartmouth has been there, but what I didn't realize is it's a disease, and one I hope remains incurable.

My dictionary at the word [disease] reads: "abnormal structure in the living organism as a whole." Abnormal? Ah yes. And next there is a list of synonyms for disease, the leadoff being "affection." No word can better describe the basis of your article.

Bronxville, N.Y.

The Bouchard Retrospective: Caught in Time

I read your Bouchard Retrospective (Sept. '83) with great pleasure but what really struck me was the photo of the canoeists on page 38. I am the stern paddle in that photo, and for some years I had a print which Bouchard had given me but I had lost it along the way, and given up hope of ever seeing it again.

I cannot really remember who the bow man was. I never think of canoeing at Dartmouth without thinking of my classmate, Ike Weed, but I am fairly sure it is not Ike because I never canoed with him except on one trip from the Canadian Lakes down to Hanover (Spring of 1939). I was a last-minute-substitute for Ike's planned companion and after carrying me through three arduous days of canoeing, I am sure he would have never willingly gotten into a canoe with me again.

Your notes say the photo is in the year 1938.1 would be inclined to say it was taken in the spring of 1939.1 was working on the Dartmouth Pictorial from the fall of 1938 until graduation in 1940, and Bouchard was some what our guru. We used many of his photographs, much of his help and advice, and his encouragement.

I remember stopping by his little shop in a nook-alley off Main Street, and he showed me the photo, saying "That's you." I was surprised, not realizing we'd been photographed, but Bouch had been perched up on the high bluff under the trees, just waiting for us to move into the sun path. He didn't go much for posing, and having made his shots, he moved along looking for the next.

What can I do to get another print of that photo? I would really love to have it.

Tucson, Ariz.

[We have passed along your request to AnneScotford of Photographic Records. Ed.]