1981

Earlier this morning my wife was perched precariously on the top rung of a too-small stepladder trying to prune the cherry tree in our front yard. From where I was inside the house, I could see her teetering a bit, at one moment a leg shooting out this way for balance, her hand flailing out another way. The saw she held caught the sun like Clint Eastwood's grin, sharp enough to take a hand off at any miscue. But I was far too busy to give her a hand, even if she lost her own. I was far, far too busy. I was brewing beer. In the kitchen thick goo bubbled in our biggest Revere Ware pot: into it had gone grain—crushed chocolate malt—and then several pounds of barley syrup. The heady aroma of Tettnanger hops covered my hands as I tossed those in, too. Eye of newt was next, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog, and finally some baboon's blood. My head over the cauldron, I inhaled deeply and, in a vision, saw that I would be Thane of Cawdor—and King of Scotland The witches then told me to beware Macduff but that none of woman born shall harm me. I bellowed into the air of our kitchen—"Sweet bodements, good!"—pulled out my broadsword, and marched out to help with the pruning.

And you think I brew just 'cause of the beer.

Scott Von Eschen brews, too. "I'll send you a recipe for a great porter," he told me over the phone that same day, a few hours after my encounter with the Weird Sisters. When I called him, Scott had just walked in the door from, of all places, Las Vegas. Seems that he and a couple of friends for the last two years have gathered there each March to gamble and canoe the Colorado.

"I won $50 playing craps," bragged this small-time Bugsy; while talking to me, he was cradling four-week-old daughter Anderson and fending off other daughter Campbell. Wife Kristin was just rolling her eyes and shaking her head, glad that next March is 11 months away.

A few years ago, Scott gambled when he quit his job at Morgan Stanley and started an outdoor adventure firm for kids called Adventures Cross Country. Each summer ACC runs about 50 wilderness trips all over the world, from rafting in Alaska to Snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef to trekking in Costa Rica's rainforest. Scott can't lead trips anymore—he has to be at his San Fran-area office to field questions from parents about why there's no such thing as freeze-dried mesclun mix—but he does spend considerable time scouting out new areas of the world and cool activities in those areas. No wonder he was in Vegas.

Other news? Near the end of December, classmate Larry Leavitt was elected to Vermont Academy's Board of Trustees; his grandfather—also named Larry Leavitt and also a Dartmouth graduate, class of 1925 had been that school's headmaster for 25 years. And Lauren Austin became the director of the Tompkins County human rights office in January. Lauren had been a lawyer in the Syracuse firm of Hiscock and Barclay and worked in Uruguay and Mexico for the Foreign Service. Moving to the Ithaca area with her husband and two sons, she'll investigate complaints of unlawful discrimination, assist complainants in securing compensation if it's occurred, and persevere to educate the community about equal opportunity in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, and credit. One of her first challenges? To look at the recent racial tensions at Ithaca High School.

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