LETTERS

Air-Gooled Wisdom

Am I to understand that Nelson Ham's gate camp has been "scrubbed clean and bare" ["The Gatekeeper," September]? OUTRAGEOUS! That front porch was an important source of invaluable worthless information.

A trip to the Grant required, rather demanded, a few hours with Nelson and the trivia posted on the front porch wall at the gate camp. Where else, when the weather was too nice to go and get lost in the Grant, could you go to learn about the mating habits of jackalopes or copy the blueprints of a B-29 bomber? The wall's wealth of bedrock two-a-penny pedantry should have been preserved not turned into some fool phone booth.

I have not paid much attention to all this talk of a changing Dartmouth and old traditions failing. But this senseless act, this, this, this disgraceful destruction of superior sciolism...I am standing beside myself in indignation.

Shocked, stunned, and almost speechless at the loss of a great example of Dartmouth lore, I am

Princeton, New Jersey

Nelson Ham admits to Knowing just twopig jokes. Let's not exaggerate his faults.

Dartmouth Denatured

President Freedman's "Sense of Place" ["Presidential Range," September] is representative of the self-aggrandizing mush that Dartmouth's "adoptees" and "natural offspring" alike tend to spout in their effort to avoid the fundamental nothingness of rural New Vermontshire. Hanover has a "look," and it can count various plants in its stock; but to gush over nature as if it were synonymous with the place is disingenuous at best.

The rural Northeast, when inhabited by those who lived in and worshipped nature, was apparently the paradise posed by the many writers quoted by President Freedman . Since the advent of Wheelock and his European ilk, however, the natural landscape has been literally razed several times over. What isn't third- or fourth-growth forest depleted of most of its native wildlife is now bordered and incessantly polluted by the descendants of die missionary-civilized men coming to the wilderness before, during, and after Mr. Wheelock conceived of filling the "void."

Hanover is now a man-made green, almost Skinnerian in its planned and thoroughly unnatural evocation of "Nature." I will never forget when one of the aforementioned imported trees died near the Green. Rather than planting a new, young tree (or, Eleazar forbid, letting nature fill the "gap") the town planners craned in a 100-foot exact duplicate of the dead tree in its prime from who-knows-where and carefully set it in to avoid any variation on the "look."

It is fascinating to note that each of the great poets alluded to by the president mourned profusely the incessant slaughter of nature then going on throughout the country, not least of all in the rural Northeast. Thoreau in particular would have had a good little say about the green pavement attempting to pass for nature which engulfs Hanover. The "lessons of variety and freedom" of Whitman have extraordinarily little to do with the deadened suburban ideal which Dartmouth and Hanover's planners are bent on pursuing. Kafka, indeed!

Oakland, California

Instilling Stillness

Jonathan Douglas's provocative piece on being "busy" at Dartmouth struck me as being a microcosm of America itself. ["An Exam? Let Me Try to Pencil It In," September.] Most of us are conditioned to believe that life is a perpetual hundred-yard dash leading to success, happiness and a win at all costs.

Young people at college don't change much from generation to generation. Most of what they are about has to do with trying to deal with self-esteem, bearing the pain of being young, trying to come to terms with time, and working hard chasing that American rainbow called happiness. Sound familiar?

Most of us can't make ourselves happy. It's given to us as a gift. Dartmouth can, however, help matters along by instilling in students a feeling for things like stillness, silence and wonder. These are quite the opposite of being "busy" either with studies or extracurricular activities.

In the end most of us hope to have used our years well. I seriously doubt that a perpetual hundred-yard dash ever led to a life fulfilled.

Princeton, New Jersey

To say that Nelson knows three pig jokes is aham-handed compliment.