1944

We don't look on this column as the place to debate Dartmouth's sunny or not-so-sunny sides of the street, but there is no getting away from the fact that the College has had more lousy publicity in the last year that it's had in the previous 100. Which leads us to sympathize and empathize with Walter Burke, chairman of the Board of Trustees, who has suddenly found himself being quoted in newspapers around the campus and the country. Not his idea of a rip-roaring good time, we reckon.

Feeling a little rip-roaring in another sense is Mac Morse in Dallas. Unhappy about seeing Dartmouth on the evening news night after night, he wrote a strong letter to President McLaughlin (with a copy to us) in which he decried the appearance of the shanties on the Green. He suggested that in our day the College wouldn't have even allowed the DOC to erect a "neat little model of a mountain shelter" on the campus to help recruit freshman to the joys of the outdoors. Mac says that life in semiretirement "is a pleasure, with a new granddaughter to brighten the routine. Cape Cod this summer."

Jim Locke writes from mid-state New York: "Retired from doctoring May 1985. Sold Utica home, moved 16 miles north to 20 acres and a trout stream. Planning an eight-acre lake to hold all those rainbows. Oldest son graduated from Bates College, looking at Tuck School; younger son a pre-med at Hobart. Having a lovely time with tractor and its attachments in the beautiful rural area of Barneveld."

From Howie Pennington in Lafayette, Calif.: "The Alaskan cruise was super. A new cruise ship out of Vancouver in midJuly, the best time. We moored or anchored in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Sitka and cruised Glacier Bay. The scenery was splendid; besides water and sky, there were always mountains, forests, glaciers, islands, icebergs, and we saw one whale. Next comes England."

Last fall from Stan Barr: "Isn't retirement the greatest! Can't recall ever being busier or enjoying life more. Spending a lot of time at my cabin in the Maine woods, and in between manage to play some squash, take a couple of courses at the Harvard Extension, and do a little traveling. Scotland last June and now I'm back from 10 days of fly-fishing in Montana. That is 'Big Country!' "

The übiquitous professor/translator Greg Rabassa keeps popping out of the newspapers and airwaves. From a NewYork Times review last September: "The translation by Gregory Rabassa is superb." At the International PEN Congress in New York in January, Greg was a featured speaker and got featured press, and he was interviewed two nights in a row by Susan Stamberg on the NPR evening news show "All Things Considered."

The John Berry sports center in Hanover is a-building, and John himself is getting pretty sporty. He has bought a 160- acre farm about 15 miles out of Dayton and installed five horses. He and Marilynn can be found any day out trotting hill and dale.

More comings and goings. On the plus side, a wedding announcement from BudPegler's widow, Nancy. She remarried February 22 in Stuart, Fla. On the un-plus side, Fred Potter died January 6 in Dover, Mass., and Dick Silberstein died February 3 on Staten Island. Also, Cy Thompson's widow, Phyllis, died in London last December; she was buried next to Cy in Switzerland.

As I write obituaries and go to more and more funerals, I fall back on Emily Dickinson's lovely quatrain: "That such has died enables us/The tranquiller to die;/That such have lived, certificate/For immortality."

That's it. Blessings.

Lovejoy Hill Cornish Flat, NH 03746