1980

Merle Adleman still writes to me, even after I compared her appeals for dollars for the Alumni Fund to Sally Struthers' commercials. Merle reports that our unofficial class total for the Alumni Fund year that ended June 30, 1997, is $208,000, over 39 percent over goal. Eighty! eighty! Eighty! Merle works with Bob Burnham at HP Medical Products Group in Andover, Mass. Bob is excited about his company's new cardiac ultrasound products. Like the Energizer Bunny, Bob just keeps going, and going, and going. Merle was full of other news as well. Bob Berlinger has finished directing the Third Rock from the Sun and will be working on the new Kirstie Alley sitcom, as well as independent projects. Yo, Berli-man, let's do lunch.

Mark Alperin, with help from his wife, Kathy, had twin girls in May. The twins joined an older brother, Mickey. (Merle did not provide names for the girls, or this sensitive columnist would have provided monikers for them as well.)

Ron Chen is a law professor at Rutgers, and Merle thinks he is also some kind of associate dean. For fun, Ron umpires rowing, and he did so at the Atlanta Olympics. Ron, do rowers bite each other's ears, and if so, how many warnings do you give them? Other news comes from sources other than Merle. Marc Lewis has joined Christian & Timbers Inc., the nation's fastest growing executive search firm. Marc is a principal in the firm's New York office. Following Dartmouth, Marc earned an M.B.A. at Stanford. Before his current position, Marc had worked for Salomon Brothers, Trammell Crow, Russell Reynolds, and Handy Associates. No wonder Marc knows so much about job searches.

Jake Eschen and wife Kathleen live with their children in Santa Cruz, Calif., where Jake practices law and Kathleen is the liberal Protestant campus minister at the local University of California campus. Santa Cruz has achieved national fame for its controversies over the large number of drummers there, and its proposal to pay for the homeless to stay in nearby state parks and then give them rides into town during the day to panhandle. The commuting homeless plan, however, did not make it out of the garage.

Yale University Press is reissuing Beth Baron's book, The Women's Awakening inEgypt: Culture, Society, and the Press, in paperback. This book has had real staying power. All those wakeful women just cannot put it down.

Lan Baldwin's 1983 experiment with poplar trees was featured in the Bangor DailyNews in an article about the war between insects and plants. According to the paper, lan created a minor sensation when he claimed to have found proof that plants could communicate with one another. When poplar trees are attacked by insects, they make chemicals that have a bitter taste and discourage further chewing. Lan infested a young tree with tent caterpillars and then covered it in fine netting so that the caterpillars could not reach nearby poplar trees. The trees began to manufacture high levels of the bitter chemicals, even though they were not under attack. Lan believed that some unknown chemical released by the damaged tree warned others in the vicinity to'prepare their defenses.

Finally, my family enjoyed visiting with Carol Burns Duke, husband Tom Duke '81, and their three girls when they stayed on Tybee Island near Savannah this summer. The Dukes live in Maryland, where Carol is a lawyer with Bechtel, the large international construction firm, and Tom teaches school. Okay, Carol, are you satisfied? You didn't have to come see me to get a mention, but it didn't hurt.

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