1981

Here is the sort of news story that I've always had problems with: "Having obtained bits of Einstein's brain from the pathologist who conducted the autopsy in 1955, a scientist at Berkeley has discovered that the organ had 73 percent more support cells for every neuron than are found in the average brain."

Now, as someone who has gone a long way towards the eradication of his own "neural support cells," I protest the undue adulation heaped upon those who were biologically blessed with an extraordinary brain cushion. Sure, Einstein's General Theory revolutionized the way I look at the world; but so does a little too much tequila.

All things considered, I suppose it is doubtful that you really care about my cerebral degeneration. I imagine, however, that you would be interested in the backsliding brainwaves of our classmates, to which end I shall now surrender my manic monologue.

Robert Goldbloom has made a concerted effort to shake off the googoo-gaga of gray matter. "Last fall," he writes, "I quit graduate school at Columbia I just couldn't get excited about chemical physics. Then I bummed around Europe for five months, and now I've landed as an actuarial trainee with New York Life."

That's what I call a commitment to the quotidian over the quantum.

By contrast, Justine Cassell reports her completion of a master's in linguistics at Edinburgh. Justine says that she spent the summer on a research gig at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands (ah, the academic life) and is now enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Chicago's are you ready for this Committee on Cognition and Communication.

Hey, maybe they could do something about my cerebral gridlock!

Anyway, enough of all this anti-intellectualism. I'm reminded that I had quite enough of that in college. Instead, let's talk biz.

Stephanie Parsons writes that she is working at the circulation desk of Harvard Business School's Baker Library. No, she says, she is not a librarian and has no desire to be one. Stephanie adds she'll be heading toward B-School or the land of litigation in the nottoo-distant future.

Already at Wharton Business, Paoli Torti reports that he will be out in 1986; and StanSmith writes that he is in his first year of Cornell's MB.A. playoffs.

Meanwhile, the ever-vigilant marriage watch takes us a little further east, to Hanover you know the place. Ingrid Shmakel turned into Ingrid Shmakel Stallsmith in Rollins Chapel last October. Kim Young and Kathy Bourque were among the party, and Becky Randall was reported thereabouts as well. (Ingrid is working at "Joseph's Waterw orks," her husband's restaurant in Norwich.)

Vows were taken a few weeks later by Loren Weeks, who married Terry Langan at the end of last year. Both are economics instructors (which assumes, I guess, that you really can teach that stuff) at colleges near St. Paul, Minn.

Out on her own in the wide, wide world, Candie Miller sends word from Okinawa Island, where she is working for the USO on a Marine Corps Base. "I'm currently learning Japanese but have not acquired a taste for sushi," she says. (Smart woman. I don't care if it is brainfood, I ain't gonna munch raw fish.)

Just north and east of Candie is David Person, who is living in Japan, having finished a stint in San Francisco doing the public relations thing for the Japan External Trade Organization. Quota the raven, nevermore.

That last report, by the way, comes from Nancy Green, who is writing for the noon and six o'clock news at KPIX-TV, S.F.'s CBS affiliate.

Back thisaway, we got some '81 boys who are trying to get their faces on the other side of the camera. Jeff Bannon has been getting some critical attention for his various bits in Forbidden Broadway, currently being produced in Boston. It's a fast-paced-musical-comedyreview-type-show, and Jeff is apparently happy to have broken free from the radio commercial/supper club singer circuit.

Also walking the boards with some success is Elliot Scott. Elliot spent last fall touring the country in the National Theatre of the Performing Arts production of A MidsummerNight's Dream. Elliot took up the challenge of playing Bottom, a part in which some thespians have really made asses of themselves. Anyway, Elliot had been paying his dues the year before and spent the summer at Dartmouth as a member of the Players Rep.

Unfortunately, boys and girls, I'm going to have to cut this puppy short about here. It's sunny out. I'm inside. And my brain hurts. Send Band-Aids.

What could be better than a coffee mug to illustrate the motto of the First New Hampshire Bank affiliatein Rochester, N.H.: "We always have time to talk." According to the January 1985 issue of New England Monthly, the inflatable mug was provided by the sister company of London's Impact Inflatables, based in Marblehead, Mass., and co-owned by Toby Reiley 81. Reiley said the firm s creationshave included outsized beer cans, monster ski poles, a gigantic work boot, and Impact's hallmarkan enormous octopus. Impact sells or rents its sculptures and helps assemble them, take them down,and deal with calamities such as wind or punctures.

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