1957

Bruce Bernstein has taken on the task of overseeing mini-reunions. At this point there are at least two projects in the planning stages: first, three days in Scottsdale, Arizona, organized around visits to the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State, and further in the future, two or more days in and around Cooperstown, New York, a place with so much to do you don't even have to love baseball. Bruce is eager to hear about proposals for future gatherings, especially from those willing to help with the planning, even from a distance. For information about Scottsville in February 2009, contact Herb Roskind at hroskind@cox.net.

Even though Charles Tseckaris' firm, CBT Architects, is an associate on the extensive redesign of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the firm has begun to look globally. Those who saw the 60 Minutes report on Abu Dhabi know that it is enormously wealthy and has become a world center for daring architecture. Charles is spending most of the next six months there to see if the firm should open an office.

Charlie White writes to describe the exciting renovation of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art; it and the Hood are among the best college art museums in the country. And now Clif Olds, professor of art emeritus at Bowdoin, will serve as interim director when the museum reopens this fall. Charlie says, "It should be considered one of Clif's highest honors."

A new word I'm still trying to get my tongue around: Bob Copeland and Patricia Bly Davis have conducted a "commitrimony," defined by Bob as a "commitment of life partnership... without the formal trappings of state or church." A warm welcome to Pat.

After teaching medieval history at Smith since 1971 Lester Little, Dwight W. Morrow Professor Emeritus, is a specialist in the social history of religion and religious movements in the European Middle Ages. Lately he's been preparing a study of wine-carriers in northern Italy because they have almost disappeared from historical memory. Les observes that "Northampton hasn't changed much in this half-century, except that Rahar's is long since gone."

As for degrees of separation: Tom Macy's aunt, Marion Macy Lunt, was the subject of a previously undiscovered 1921 poem, "About a Little Girl," by the major American poet William Carlos Williams. Williams, also a practicing pediatrician, had treated Lunt when she was a girl and had misdiagnosed her with leukemia. He was anticipating her death when he wrote the poem, although she lived to be 92. There's a small book to celebrate the poems discovery, and Tom tells the story with relish.

Larry Dingman '60 saw the note about Bill Fiero in the Notes and wrote to say that he and Bob Dennis "had a big influence on my choosing to major in geology, which determined my career and life."

Looking ahead: the older we get, the more precious and poignant the beginning of a new year must be. So happiness and health to all of us in 2009. Excelsior!

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