1941

50-1 Woodlake Road Albany, NY 12203

Ask Bill Hotaling if you don't believe me: the Third Annual Alumni Winter Festival was a lot of fun. Scheduled the weekend after Carnival, this year's program attracted more than 300 alums. (Previous scheduling coincided with Carnival, and I can't imagine how that worked out logistically.) In spirit to whisk you along with us after the fact, here is a quick rundown of the doings of Dickie and Monk: Friday afternoon and evening—exhibits at the Hop, the Hood, and the Library, dinner at D'Artagnan's, and a production of The Normal Heart, a powerful play about homosexuality and AIDS; Saturday—special lecture on "China: Old and New," a brief gander at swimming, gymnastics, and squash, concert by the Gospel Choir, and the men's basketball game against Cornell on the new court in Berry; Sunday—a cross-country lesson with Scott at the golf course. You received the Festival mailer, of course, but it probably didn't mean too much if you couldn't take part. I hope the foregoing gives you some sense of it, an experience quite different from regular reunion in the spring or a mini in the fall. For one thing, only a winter visit recalls the season around which each of our four undergraduate years was wrapped. And here I was, 50 years later, skiing again on the golf course, still marveling at the way the tots, seemingly younger than ever, zoom all over the place on their boards. My main task is to relearn how to fall without breaking any parts of the body.

The current recipient of scholarship aid from our class is Eric Wellman '9l, who hap- pens to hail from nearby in this neck of the woods. I'll be looking him up to write a piece about him for the column. Mean- while, as Bob Harvey reminds me, we have to ante up some more to fulfill our pledge of $50,000 to fund this project. The "easy way to give," as Bob writes, "is to add a few bucks to the annual class dues payment ... we get from Hugh Kenworthy." Alternatively, some '41s have sent checks, payable to "Dartmouth College" but earmarkefor the "1941 Scholarship Fund," to the Director of Stewardship, 210 Blunt Alumni Center, Hanover, NH 03755. And a matching gift program occasionally doubles the donation. Bob chairs this program for the class, and he needs our help as indicated. (The timing of this pitch may be about right in light of the action of the Trustees to hike tuition, room, and board for next year by 6.9 percent to the tidy little total of $18,199.)

While I think of it, friends, I did send for Legacy of Love, and it looks like a valuable resource for anybody concerned about the inevitable process of death and dying, including information and forms to use in order "to take death out of the closet and deal with its realities." The author, Elmo A. Petterle, writes in his introduction that the book "will show you, step by step, what can be done before a death and what will need to be done by survivors later." For those of us who tend to avoid this subject because we like to think we'll live foreveror perhaps because we find death unpleasant to contemplate—it might be well to give this book, or something similar, to a loved one who knows better and wants to be as ready as possible when the old geezer's light goes out for the last time. Write the publisher, Home Book Service, P.O. Box 650, Bolinas, CA 94924; the tab is $12.95 plus $1.50 for handling. If you go for the deal, I hope it helps. Peace and Joy.