The Greening of the Arctic

Alumni on Top

I would like to add to the March issue on the Arctic the roles of Les Viereck '51, Don Foote '54, and Tony Williamson '57 in defeating the proposed nuclear excavation of a harbor in Northern Alaska in the 19605. Their story is documented in Dan O'Neill's book, TheFirecracker Boys.

Also, the issue failed to pay sufficient attention to Dartmouth's discovery role in one of the most profound social and environmental issues of our day, the climate record of the polar ice caps. This record provides the firmest basis for an understanding of global warming today. David Nutt '41 and his colleagues in the Blue Dolphin Labrador and Greenland expeditions made the first studies of the carbon-dioxide content and carbon-14 age of glacier ice.

TM@GEO.UMASS.EDU

Will IT of Martyrdom

Not having married or fathered children, I have the objectivity to see what the parents in Mary Cleary Kiely's article ["Honey, They're Home," January] are doing wrong. Like the fulltime parents among my friends and relatives, they can't quite help emitting a faint whiff of martyrdom. Where are the perky high spirits, the animal joie de vivre, that a healthy parent should ooze from every pore?

Actually, it's obvious. Life in the suburban zones set aside for nuclear families is trapped in a figure-eight orbit around the twin-attractor system of work and family. Since no one can ever completely know and provide what is best for himself, town life traditionally drew sustenance from a daily odyssey of spontaneous and/or engineered encounters with friends, acquaintances, and strangers on the street, in the pub, and at the soirees of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. Volunteer and religious involvements, while worthwhile, do not replace this social landscape, now thoroughly trampled by our stampede for individual self-containment. Suburban stay-at-home parents have been left to rage on their well-manicured heaths, considerably more neglected than either their pampered offspring or, in an earlier day, their towndwelling grandmothers (the ones who went bowling in leagues, or something comparable).

The profusion of friends-who-are-awlays-hanging-with- each-orher TV shows simply feeds suburban envy of hip city people such as myself. Better to read Philip Langdon's most excellent diagnosis, A Better Way to Live:Reshaping the American Suburb.

KINGSBUR@MAGNET.FSU.EDU

I almost cheered when I saw the cover of the January issue. From talking to classmates and working with local alumni to interview Dartmouth applicants, I know we are out there, but at-home parents have never seemed a worthy enough (or interesting enough) topic for the alumni magazine of an Ivy League school. Thank you, Mary Cleary Kiely, for bringing us out of the closet. As a lawyer who quit private practice after seven years in big-city law firms, I have now been home for eight years. I tried a home-based business (until fear of legal liability forced me out of it), and did a lot of pro bono legal work for a nonprofit organization. I feel very fortunate to have the choice, but I must confess that raising children has been more challenging for me personally than the most difficult judge or client. My three sons, now ten, eight, and four, have taught me more about myself (I never had a temper until I had kids of my own) and the world (it's amazing how far elementary-school science has come since my day in parochial school!) than any job could have.

It is my sincere hope that all Dartmouth parents feel comfortable determining the precise mix of full time work, part-time work, or staying home that seems right for them. The needs of every family are different and what is best at one time may not be the solution at a later time. The key is flexibility in structuring your life and tolerance of the choices others make. Today's working mother may be tomorrow's at-home parent, or vice versa. Dartmouth alumni are an interesting and talented bunch. Those talents are too abundant to be wasted at an office or at home.

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Evil Interpretation

Saint Augustine has said, "The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works." In the january "Syllabus," religion professor Amy Hollywood is quoted as saying, "The trick for Augustine is that after Adam sinned, one of the punishments for Adam's sin is that human beings are no longer capable of doing good. So you and I are, according to Augustine, incapable of doing good."

If a person is incapable of doing good, why bother to confess evil? Professor Hollywood's interpretation would lead one to believe that Augustine was not a Christian, and certainly should not be a saint in the Roman Catholic church.

I believe this is an example of the erroneous teaching which we older alumni find troubling in the present College.

WEST HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT

Losing Jerry

It is with great personal regret that I note the death on December 21 of Dartmouth's eminent retired professor of art, Churchill Lathrop.

Jerry, as he was known to everyone, was a fixture in Hanover, a friend of four generations of Dartmouth students, and an important factor in the growth and success of the study of art at Dartmouth College. I am proud to have been part of the support which created the Lathrop Gallery in the Hood Museum of Art.

The Rockefeller family, in the persons of Nelson '30, myself, Rodman '54, and my two sons, Peter '79 and Michael '86, owe a particular debt of gratitude and affection to this wonderful man. I doubt there are many cases where one person befriended and taught three generations of a single family. My father, Nelson, would have been an art major if his heart had made the decision. Jerry Lathrop, recently arrived instructor in the art history department and his friend, Jose Clemente Orozco, introduced my father to Latin American art and culture, including the negotiations leading up to the creation by Orozco in Baker Library. No one who took Jerry's year-long survey of Western art, as I did in the fifties, can fail to have their appreciation enhanced. Even in retirement, he took my two sons under his wing, both in his home and in the Hopkins Center. Of course, his wife, Dot, was an integral part of the warmth and strength which one found in the Lathrop family.

Dartmouth, and all the many hundred who knew him, have lost a wonderful friend.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Dan's Trail

I much enjoyed W.D. Wetherell's "Facing Smarts" [November].

Readers and hikers might be interested in the Daniel Doan Trail up Smarts Mountain. At a 1993 dedication ceremony at the trailhead, the Dartmouth Outing Club renamed the old Mousley Brook Trail for my father, Dan Doan '36, "in recognition of his efforts to stimulate interest and involvement in hiking and the out-of-doors."

Dan first climbed Smarts in 1929 at age 15. In one of his hiking books, Fifty MoreHikes in New Hampshire, he describes some of his boyhood adventures on Smarts, including a snowshoe trek to spend New Year's Eve 1929 in the summit's DOC cabin, which is now gone.

CENTER SANDWICH, NEW HAMPSHIRE