1960

It's getting so The New York Times can't bring us the bad news about the stock market without Bob Freedman. As a professional quotechaser, I can tell you why: he has a pungent way of puttings things. A front-page story on August 24 ("U.S. Stocks Plunge on Heavy Selling Over Crisis in Gulf') quoted Bob describing the mood of the market as "ultimate pessimism, extreme nervousness...

It seems like people are throwing out money just to get into cash. It's panic selling. " Chief portfolio manager for John Hancock's equity mutual funds, Bob was cited again in mid-September as saying that the Gulf crisis and uncertainty about budget deficit talks had done "a lot of damage to a lot of stocks." To see how tough things are likely to get, I called Bob ana was pleased to hear he thinks we're in for no worse than a shallow recession this year and a rebound next, assuming no catastrophes in the Gulf and some action in Congress on the budget.

Bob passed along news about classmates: Mickey Straus is doing as well as a Wall Streeter can, managing the Tudor Fund. In Massachusetts, where Bob lives, Tom Trimarco is back in politics as a top campaign adviser to the Republican candidate for state treasurer and as a potential cabinet officer if the GOP takes control of the governorship, which is a real possibility given antiincumbent ire in the state. Bob saw Tom and newly-married Dick Harrison at an open house thrown by architect Bob Heineman, who has just fulfilled his dream of owning a home overlooking the ocean (or, in this case, Gloucester Harbor).

From the other side of the country, Dr. Marty Weiss of USC is making news as lead researcher in the one federally-approved study using RU486, the French abortion pill but not for abortions. RU 486, it turns out, shows dramatic results in treating tumors and may also be effective against prostate cancer. He's irate that "right wing crazies" are blocking wider availability of the drug. Marty is just back from South Africa, where he toured two medical schools training black doctors and two for whites. While apartheid remains abhorrent, he said, middle-class blacks with insurance are now admitted to white hospitals; and black hospitals, while inferior, are dramatically better than those to be found elsewhere in dub-Saharan Africa and are not much different from big city charity hospitals in America. (Which says something pretty deplorable about the state of medical care for the poor in this country.) Marty attended a reception this spring hosted by Haley Fromholz for L.A. area high school seniors admitted to Dartmouth, and ran into Ken Reich, who covers the economics and politics of sports for the L.A. Times. He's also run into Tay Weinman, now practicing ophthalmology in San Pedro after a career in the Air Force, and Joe Mandel, back practicing L.A. law after a sojourn in the oil business in Northern California.

Back East again, Phil Kron reports that in our youth Trinidadian Dave Farfan used to visit the Kron family cottage in upstate New York. He did so again, for the first time in 33 years, over Labor Day weekend, with his wife, Brenda, and son Darren. Dave runs Pereira & Co., an office machine export-import business. Five other classmates (once denizens of the top floor of Middle Fayerweather) and their wives make an annual tradition of spending a weekend together in Woodstock, Vt., each September Dave Farnsworth, Dan Gordon,Bob Derderian, Chuck Kaufman, andMark Schachter. This year all but the Kaufmans and Schachters made it. Dave is school personnel chief in Oswego, N.Y. Dan's in the computer business in Atlanta. Chuck runs his family's dairy in Jamaica, N.Y. Bob operates a cement plant in Waltham, Mass., and Mark is a shopping mall entrepreneur in Huntington, N.Y.

Finally, GQ magazine brings us this class news: too much coffee makes you drowsy. That's the finding of Dr. Quentin Regestein of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who reported in the American Journal of Medicine that caffeine addicts, like other addicts, take ever higher doses of their favorite drug, get strung out, experience "nerve circuit overload" and feel exhausted. It sounds familiar.

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