1944

When it comes to April, I'll take Edna St. Vincent Millay over T.S. Eliot. For T.S., April was "the crudest month," while for Edna: "...yearly, down this hill, April comes like an idiot, Babbling" and strewing flowers..." So, let's go pick daffodils.

If you were on the ball last fall, you took part in the New Hampshire YMCA's celebrity auction. Horace Blood was the committee chairman and his contribution to the auction was a week at his cozy home m Venice, Fla., "sunshine and car included.

Don Burnham kindly sent along a copy of a newspaper review of recent books about American composer Charles Ives, in which music professor Wiley Hitchcock was cited as an important source of Ives scholarship. We phoned Wiley in New York City and he says he retired from active teaching a couple of years ago, but is as busy as ever, conducting seminars at NYU, Yale, and in Georgia, and working with doctoral dissertation candidates in the city. His art historian wife, Janet, is also still active as a distinguished professor.

We heard that Phil and Ann Puchner out there in Idaho were in training for a trek to the Far East, and sure enough, they spent a month last fall "bumming around" Bhutan, that tiny little country pinched between India and Tibet. It's a tightly controlled place which you can only visit with a government escort. "They only had one airplane in the country for a long time," said Phil, "but now they have two."

Kudos to A1 Winkler, who was awarded its 'hook of Golden Deeds Award" by The Exchange Club of Old Saybrook- Westbrook in Connecticut. The award recognizes local citizens who volunteer their time and service to such things as community affairs, aiding shut-ins, running errands, etc.

Here's a one-in-a-million, 'round-the girdled-earth coincidence for you. RogAntaya, in Maryland, writes that he had two roommates at Dartmouth, GeorgeRecke and Bud Zetterburg (both now deceased), and two of their daughters are now helping educate Rog's grandchildren in Duxbury, Mass. Debby Zetterburg Statzell is principal of his granddaughter's school and Maureen Recke is his grandson's teacher at the Berry Brook School. And word just in, another Recke daughter, Judy 'BO, has been promoted to vice president in charge of marketing at Merriam- Webster.

A couple of untimely pneumonias to report, both in that most unlikely of places, New Hampshire: Dan Donovan was laid low and hospitalized for a month down in Rye; and Karl Musser was smitten and hospitalized in Hanover. Both now up and about.

we spotted Jack Shearer with son Mark 71 at last fall's Yale game. He and wife Dianne spend most of the year at Vail, but still hold on to a pad in the old hometown of Burlington, Vt.

Five deaths: Lou Schott, Wil Johnson,Henry Allen, Jack Murphy, and George-Bruce. Our sympathy. That's it. Blessings.

P-O. Box 24, Lovejoy Hill, Cornish Flat, NH 03746