Dr. Wheelock's Journal
Divers Notes & Observations
THE AUTUMN LEAVES HAVE been a bit on the muted side, though happily brightened by days and days of gorgeous sunshine, blurred only by the exhausts of a thousand tour buses. We heard that the 1,500 hotel and motel rooms in this part of the Upper Valley were a solid sellout for three weekends in a row, including Dartmouth Night and Homecoming. Our dictionary calls a bonfire "a large fire built in the open air as an expression of public joy, for sport, etc.," and never were words writ larger. We feared earlier that with all the injunctions against the occasional displays of antisocial exuberance that have accompanied Dartmouth Night celebrations in the past, the traditional event would lose some of its spontaneity. Not so, by our old chivalric faith. We don't think we've ever heard a louder rendition of the Alma Mater, by a crowd that overflowed the Green from corner to corner. And from as far away as Dartmouth Hall's steps we were heated by the fire, as it dangerously ventured once or twice to blaze out of control.
Nor have we survived a Dartmouth-Yale heart-stopper like the Green's 14-13 win the next day—even though we were at the Bowl in 1931 for the 33-33 "triumph," and again in '35 for the 14-6 demise of the Yale Jinx. The heroics of this year's impersonation of Frank Merriwell, Yale split end Dan Iwan, finally fell short of those of Dartmouth quarterback Jerry Singleton and running back Pete Oberle, both '96. It was Singleton's first start as successor to classmate Ren Riley, out for the season with a broken wrist. The weekend brought other triumphs: men's cross-country took the new England championship in Boston; the women won also, in a dual meet in New York. Women's soccer cruised past Princeton, 2-0, in New Jersey; but field hockey's four-game streak was halted by the Orange here in Hanover, 2-1.
WELL, IT IS A LIFE OF THE mind here, as well—but we shall not stray too far from sports in mentioning the outstanding eighth Presidential Lecture, by History Professor Charles Wood: "Froissart's Chronicles, Memorial Field, and the Concept of Chivalry." The medieval tradition of knighthood declined through the ages until its end in the massive, anonymous destruction of World War I. But, suggested Wood, it was reborn in the 19205, thanks in part to the popularity of football and the ornate style of sportswriters such as the late Grantland Rice, who gave us the Four Horsemen—not of the Apocalypse but of Notre Dame. Professor Wood implied, we suspect, that Froissart himself might have written Rice's "not that you won or lost, but how you played the game."
Physicist and author Freeman Dyson, winner of this year's Enrico Fermi Award, has been captivating the campus with his accessibility to the student body, even for a Montgomery Fellow His message is that the benefits of modern technology, such as the computer and the discovery of DNA, continue to outpace the dire predictions of science fiction, but he warns that they not be used to emphasize our economic or educational differences. And 1986 Nobel winner Elie Wiesel, visiting as a 1930 Fellow, keynoted a scholarly conference on the Holocaust, current events related to it, and how to teach it.
At least two leading sources for scientific funding have recently been more than generous to the College: the National Science Foundation, with an award to Thayer professor John Yin of $100,000 yearly for five years; and a similar award to physics and astronomy professor Marcelo Gleiser, for his research in theoretical physics. And as part of an $86 million award to 62 institutions, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has dealt the College in for $1.8 million, to develop undergraduate scientific research.
WHILE WE'RE ON THE subject, Dartmouth fans of Jeopardy! must have been delighted to see Government Professor Tom Nichols back on the show last month, a reprieve from last February when he was wrongly penalized, for one response. Asked what campus reaction there had been to the five weeks during which he won $57,580, he reported that now whenever he asks a tough question in class the students start humming the Jeopardy! theme song. He answered the almost impossible final Jeopardy! question (the stumper having to do with a Jefferson quote on ignorance of the law), and qualified for the $100,000 Tournament of Champions.
AT LEAST TWO PHENOMENAL return appearances have highlighted the early fall season at the Hop: first, the outlandishly zany Flying Karamazov Brothers, not aerialists, Russians, or even brothers, but talented in just about every other department; and second, the Mitchell-Ruff duo, artists-in-residence here two decades ago. Jazz began to end for us back when the melody too often vanished into a cloud of non-chordal improvisation. But Mitchell, a more-thanmodern-day Art Tatum, and Ruff, a veritable Paganini of the double bass, gave a packed Rollins Chapel audience the recognition of each familiar jazz standard embroidered by unbelievable musical flights of fancy around every chorus. Much more is ahead for Hopkins Center under the lead of its new program director, Norman Frisch, particularly events in the new Lansing Porter Moore Theater, and we will keep you "appraised," as we are wont to say, in future issues.
IN THE SPIRIT OF JEOPARDY! WE offer you this little dandy. Answer: Daughter of a renowned sportswriter of the twenties who had a beautifully cold Dartmouth experience. Question: Who is 1928 Carnival Queen Florence Rice?
Good-bye FrankI Merriwell, helloGrantland Rice.
