1942

It was nice to get a note from Walter Eisenman, along with a check for the 50th Reunion Yearbook which I sent him at his request. Walter—whose bio, alas, you won't find in the 50th book—says, "Have been retired from medicine for 14 years. Spend the summers here in northern Minnesota (Bovey) and the winters in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Have good health and am really enjoying life." To save wear and tear on your atlases I'll tell you that the T and C Islands are at the eastern end of the Bahaman Islands chain, directly north of the Dominican Republic. I can think of several worse places to spend the winter.

A call from Charlie Hunt early in September revealed that he and Louise would be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary later that month and were looking forward to a reunion with friends Eisenman and HugoSchnabel on that occasion. Charlie suffered a stroke when he was 56 but says he gets around his farm (Atlantic, Iowa) quite nicely on a golf cart, though he leaves the running of the enterprise to his sons Fred 45 and Nick 38.

Luis Zalamea is alive and well in Miami and says he is "Writing day and night: a new novel, the biography of a major South American Mass Communicator, and a book of food anecdotes." Luis if you gave me the titles to these works I could at least give them some publicity. In any case, buena suerte!

Since this is a lean '42 news month I hope you'll indulge me if I devote a few lines to an activity that Betty and I have found especially rewarding: the Elderhostel program. These are (usually) one-week programs that often combine lectures in two or three "courses" with other kinds of activity (e.g. hiking or bicycling). We just completed our fourth such program—this one at the Craftsbury Sport Center near Craftsbury Common, Vt.—and it was one of the best we've experienced. Of course, the near-perfect October weather at the height of the foliage season was an extra bonus. The courses were "Literary Voices of New England" (Paine, Emerson, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Frost, etc.) taught by a dynamic teacher, and "Gardening/landscaping" taught by Lewis and Nancy Hill, respected authors and New England day lily developers.

Afternoons were devoted to walks of flexible lengths (two to seven miles), studded with magnificent vistas of the Green Mountains. Vans made timely sweeps to pick up hostelers who had walked their limit. The food was unbelievably good, and the accommodations (dormitory rooms) were spare but comfortable. As we had discovered in our previous Elderhostel programs, most of the 39 participants (some from as distant as California, Utah, and Michigan) were, like Woebegoners, above average intelligence and congeniality, and it was primarily the interaction with them in class and on the trail that made the week quite special.

The cost for all this: $55 a day per person! Elderhostel, a non-profit organization that began 17 years ago with a few hundred hostelers, now has programs in every state in the U.S. and 46 other countries. Last year nearly 250,000 enrolled in Elderhostel programs. For a catalog write Elderhostel, P.O. Box 1959, Dept TN, Wakefield, MA 01880-5959.

56 Cityside Drive, Montpelier, VT 05602