1977

At www.violetsnow.com, the Web site for Catskill Mountain herbal healer Violet Snow, the plant of the week this week is sumac. In Louisville, the plant of the week is the four-inch bluegrass rough at Valhalla, site of the 2000 PGA Tournament. I'm not much of a golfer, but I had a great time at the tournament. It was close enough to my home that I could kick Tiger Woods' ball out of the bushes and down the cartpath at 18 and walk back in time to see myself on ESPN.

And here's another scoop for DAM. Violet Snow and Ellen Carter are the same person!

Ellen checked in 14 years after the AlumniMagazine lost track of her when she went off to England and India in 1986. I am living in Phoenicia, New York, in the Catskills, teaching herbal healing under the name Violet Snow (a pseudonym invented in my poetry days, before I got into plants). I teach classes, write articles and go to peoples houses to show them which of their weeds are medicinal or edible. I'm a database programmer on the side, and I do Web site design (including my own). I'm married to a writer, Sparrow, and have an 8-year-old daughter, Sylvia."

What a long, strange and colorful trip it's been to Phoenicia. Ellen graduated a year early and then departed for Iran. She taught English in Tehran for five months with 12 other Dartmouth graduates, an episode arranged "through a history professor whose name I now forget." Then she traveled in India and Sri Lanka for more than a year. Ellens "poetry days" were the early to mid-'80s when she describes herself as a "New York School poet in the East Village," which is how and when she met her husband. The trip in 1986 began with six months in England, before four months in India and Nepal.

Meanwhile, Violet Snow has been teaching herbal healing since 1991 and has studied with Robin Bennett, Susun Weed, William LeSassier, Peter Holmes and other illustrious herbalists. She has taught at the Learning Alliance, Ashokan Field Campus, Appalachian Mountain Club, Phoenicia School, Green Thumb, Moccasin Meet and other venues. Violet writes articles on herbs and primitive skills and wanders the Catskills, gathering plants, tracking animals and learning about nature.

"What can a modern boy or man do to distinguish himself as being 'masculine' in an age when women fly combat missions?" A prescription for Viagra? The answer, argues Katharine Phillips and her co-authors in their book The Adonis Complex, is that males have become obsessed with their bodies. For example, apparently 38 percent of men want bigger pectorals, while only 34 percent of women want bigger breasts. Drawing on 15 years of original research, Katherine, a professor psychologist at Brown, and her co-authors have contributed significantly to deepening our midlife crises.

14102 Beckley Trace,Louisville, KY 40245; alan.macdonald.77@alum.dartmouth.org