1981

So I'm actually sitting here watching the Academy Awards. Can you believe it? I feel pretty base. Vulgar. Scummy. Somewhere between Dallas, polyester, and pink, plastic icons. I could be listening to Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony; or studying a Seurat at the National Gallery; or chewing on some extremely stale marshmallows; or playing doorbell ditch. I could while away the hours, conversing with the flowers, if I only had a brain.

Perhaps now you are in the mood to read the madcap antics of your pedagogic cohorts, your educational soulmates, your academic compatriots, and some of the tweezer brains you hung out with. I thought so.

Let's start right here in the nation's capital, shall we? Marvelous. I was sitting home about two and a half weeks ago, okay? And I was just picking my teeth and thinking about which part of the downstairs I would not get up and clean, when the phone rang. So, as is my usual custom when the stupid thing starts making all that noise, I picked up the receiver. It was Pete "Boot" Weller and B. Tucker Gilman two of the most frightening specimens it has ever been my trepidation to encounter. Tucker is teaching a slew of eighth graders (who undoubtedly believe every iota of his Groucho Marxist interpretation of American history), and he fell asleep three minutes into the call. Boot is struggling his way through Albany Med School, but having just returned from Tom Geiger's wedding (to Cindy Woodward '82), he was pretty much slugging his way through reality. Same as it ever was.

Anyway, Boot was able to patch together enough brain cells to mention that Brian Barrett, maestro of vocational hopscotch, was also in attendance, having slid over from Portsmouth, N.H. Chick Woodward 'BO, who is pursuing his Wizard of Astrophysics degree in Rochester, was also hanging out it was his sister, after all.

So ended the tete-a-tete-a-tete with the bain Albany, and I returned to my soft chair to contemplate still greater inactions. But on sooner had I oozed into a particularly comfort, able position when the phone rang yet again "Whaddya want!?" I screamed into the receiver. "Uh . . . Dirk?" It was Pancho Ryan, rising young architectural apprentice in a great metropolitan drafting firm. I calmed myself and placidly demanded why he had decided re interrupt one of the truly inspired acts of sluggery in our time. Pancho allowed as how he was having a party in the not-too-distant future, and wouldn't I like to come serve as a coat rack(l've hired myself out as various pieces of furniture before; I do end tables, andirons, and a perfectly delightful hassock, if any of you are so inclined.) So anyway, I accepted and slid back into my soft chair.

Ah, but perhaps you've guessed. I had not so much as closed my eyes when the thing started jangling again. So I threw it through the dining room wall. Fortunately I already had the scoop on the activities of a few more folks, or this whole gig might have terminated right here.

Jean Brown is leaning back on the west side of Manhattan. Having done some dinner theater in the Midwest and in upstate New York, Jean has ensconced herself in the Biggest of Big Apples. Auditioning, modeling, taking classes. It'd make a great T.V. show.

Okie Jim Randolph is a second lieutenant in the army, and he would also probably make a good T.V. show. He's on his way to West Germany, where he'll be stationed about an hour outside Munich. Now that's a great place to start. (What I'm not sure.)

Libby Myers writes that she and Hap Blakely will be doing one of those June wetding things up in Syracuse. Libby is finishing up a master of science at Cornell in the mechanical engineering department. She's beer, studying fluid dynamics (something all Dartmouth graduates are assumed to have studied prior to graduation). Hap is an information systems consultant for Arthur Andersen in Boston.

Nancy Baskin is living in Greenwich Village explaining the truth about mans legal relationship to man to her professors at N.Y.U The N.Y.U. faculty has been so impressed witNancy that they've excused her from doing work or taking any tests or reading any case And tomorrow at 9:52 there will be peace an harmony all over the world, too.

Also in New York, Glenn Havlicek appointed assistant treasurer at the Unite States Trust Company. Glenn has been spending time in the International Money Center, while residing in New Canaan, Conn. Some got it tough.

Bobby Van Wetter is hanging out with Gay Macomber and the rest of the San Franciscans. Bobby has taken off the skis, cut the hair, placed the perpetual smile upon his face, and begun his takeover of the Pacific Stock Exchange. As Bobby put it: "Life goes on, eh?"

Gardner Davis is the women's crew coach at Duke and reports a winning fall season. Martin Weinstein is running hither and thither (I've always wanted to write that) from the University of Virginia Law School, to the U.S. District Attorney's office, where he'll be spending a good part of the summer. I will soon pry the vile truth about Washington's decadent legal community from Martin's lungs, and you can bet you'll be the first to hear the sordid details.

Paul Dunne is also rumored to be in the Washington area, working for National Geographic and preparing to choose some type of rocks master's degree for next fall. And with a sudden circumvention of time and space, I will set you down in Manila, where Greg Slayton is on a Fulbright Scholarship, studying development assistance programs through the University of the Philippines. Greg reports that Kent Van Voorhis was through, and he invites every single member of the class to his house for drinks (that's drinks only, no food, 7:00-9:00, be prompt) sometime in July. If you happen to be tooling around Southeast Asia.

So anyway . . . oops ... I can feel it happening again . . . this is the same place where it usually happens ... I just suddenly stop writing . . .

803 C Street N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002