1977

J.B., Kari, John '79 and Amy Cammann Cholnoky welcomed Robert Rhody C. on February 2. "Born on his father's birthday, we now have two groundhogs in the family! ... Three children feels like a serious family and sometimes we look around the kitchen at dinner hour and just start to laugh—it's a three-ring circus."

Here we are, primed for mid-life crises, and the undergraduates around here are just getting cranked up on post-baccalaureate or summer jobs. Fortunately for them, there's a parachute (where's mine?!), courtesy the Career and Employment Services office headed by Skip Sturman '70. One common problem: balancing idealism with the afterDartmouth world. Writes Skip: "Many students I talk to are ... torn by the desire to do something meaningful with their lives. Many believe that the choice comes down to taking a vow of poverty ... or selling their souls and hopping aboard the corporate merry-go-round. This mentality often blinds people to the variety of ways that service can be factored into a working life. As Oliver Wendell Holmes taught us, 'Every calling is great when greatly pursued.' Enter any building ... and you ... encounter faculty, staff and administrators whose nocturnal activities include school board and town meetings, fundraising and other volunteer work for museums, day cares and social service agencies."

Skip made obligatory references to Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Newman's Own as corporate examples of socially-conscious business. Then, lo! Two '77s. Gary Mayo chaired the recent United Way of the Upper Valley campaign. Scott Cameron takes his convictions a step farther: he's a staff member with the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C. Pray, how came these to 'conviction'? Well, Scott oversees the $2 billion earmarked for the EPA's Clean Water activities. He assures that "OMB is loaded with Ivy League types, most with graduate degrees. It's also a very young agency with about three quarters of the staff between 25 and 35."

Imagine all that the next time you fix your leaky faucet.

This from an anonymous California contributor: Mike Mosher was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle recently. Mike is a muralist around the Bay Area, but with an unusual reputation. Seems all but one of his publicly-commissioned murals has been obliterated. Working for the S.F. Art Commission since 1979, Mike doubles as a graphic designer at Apple Computer. The S.F. County Jail Visitor Center was pepped up by scenes of vibrant streets, complete with "cafes, musicians, pretty women" (a woman wrote the article). Change of jail chief: goodbye pleasantries. One wonders what else befell prisoners' visitors. An ode to the Mission Reds baseball team lasted five years, erased about the time Bob Lurie was thinking out loud about moving the Giants. Geometric faces adorning a housing project lasted four months.

Mike has learned from these, however. "The City's Music" enlivens an area of Laguna Honda Hospital also used for monthly recitals by the SF Conservatory of Music. Bing Crosby, Yehudi Menuhin, Janis Joplin, Enrico Caruso, and The Grateful Dead are part of the entourage. (Only in a mural!) "To avoid tempting fate this time, he painted the eight panels on plywood and then mounted them on the wall."

Gosh, it's fun to look you all up again in The Freshman Book 1977. And, no, I don't look like that anymore, either.

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