1951

The DAM's nostalgia issue of last March brought back memories buried by the years. That picture of the Tanzis packing boxes of groceries for delivery imagine groceries being delivered! Now if we could just see the prices on those boxes of Kellogg's Pep, we'd know just how far we have "progressed" since then. And that kid in knickers took me a lot farther back than college. I especially appreciated Professor Watanabe's anthropological perspectives on the subject: "Nostalgia transforms impending anachronisms into a kind of lived history: in reminding us of 'the good old days,' it also reaffirms how much we have changed since then. College reunions... like pilgrimages in our secular age, draw us back across space and time, not to sacred relics, but to living touchstones of our adult selves. Long after college is over, it sustains a sense of belonging in lives full of individual achievement but short on mutual recognition and collective satisfactions of shared place and past."

It was good to talk to Nancy Sampson, Dick's widow, at Al and Dottie Mori's brunch in mid-February. Back in our college days, Nancy and Dottie were roommates while they were studying nursing in Hanover. Now Nancy works at the Maternal and Child Health Care Clinic at Mary Hitchcock.

Someone has passed on to me a long Valley News interview of Jeff Hart, the focus of which may be suggested by the following: "Scratch the surface of Jeffrey Hart and you will find that he is not the ultra-conservative monolith that he appears to be. There's no question that Hart is conservative. The question is what else is he?" According to Jeff, American colleges are the "bunker for the cultural left." The interviewer then furthers the war metaphor, stating that "Hart has found himself behind enemy lines." Perhaps notunintentionally, the phrase "has found himself' has a couple of meanings, for Jeff (as most of you know) has a double career: one as a "man of letters" who has "an elegant mind," in the words of Chauncey Loomis, an English department colleague; the other as a conservative polemicist who, while "often at odds with the Republican Party" (Jeff's words), continues as a senior editor of and contributor to The National Review. Still, the bone which Jeff picks with the College administration is not so much political as academic, for he is mainly concerned that Dartmouth does not require students to read "the books that count."

Neurosurgeon Stan van den Noort has popped up in a remarkable way recently. I have received his curriculum vitae, a document that seems to record everything he has done since conception: 11 university appointments, including those at the California College of Medicine, where he was dean and is now chairman of the Neurology Department; ten hospital appointments in the Chicago and Long Beach areas; memberships in 55 medical or medicine-related organizations; 174 public (as distinct from academic) lectures delivered; and 56 authored or co-authored articles or chapters of books. Sure, Stan, but what have you done lately?

We hope to see all of you at our 40th Reunion next month, June 10—13. As you know, the College really knows how to do them right, and a lot of your classmates have been working hard to make this the best reunion you've had. See you soon. Until then, take care, be good to yourselves, and keep in touch.

178 Madison Avenue, Holyoke, MA 01040

THESPIRIT 40th REUNION JUNE 10-13 1991 '51 IS COMING BACK.