Letters

QUOTE/UNQUOTE “Buddhists have transmitted for the past 2,500 years what Stuart Kauffman ’61 appears to seek.” FRANK HOWARD '70

The Earthly Realm

I OFTEN WANT TO WRITE TO DAM but am usually too lazy. Two items in the May/June issue, though, made me actually take to my keyboard. “A World of Difference” took me back to 1983 and Prentice Knight’s “Physical Geography.” His wide-ranging course on the nature of how transportation systems determined settlement and commerce patterns changed my life. I have kept those lessons in mind in everything from retail development to real estate sales. One never knows where inspiration will come from. That class was brilliant! Glad to see the geography department is alive and well.

On a very different note, I hope everyone who still has the magazine tucked away in that stack of stuff will go back and read Leslie Dahl’s ’85 Class Notes column (it’s on page 74—go find it!). As a society we’re incredibly sanctimonious…she dissects that habit by relating Michael Phelps’ faux pas to the typical Dartmouth experience. Bravo!

Portland, Maine

AS A PROUD ALUMNUS FROM LONG ago and a student of Robert Huke ’48, I can state that Dartmouth’s geography program is without doubt the finest undergraduate program in the United States—probably the world—with a faculty and students who would be the envy of the majority of university graduate programs. During my own career at the University of Washington (1960-2004), I was delighted to teach and know a number of superb students from Dartmouth and to have been a visiting professor at Dartmouth in 1991.

Seattle, Washington

I WAS IN THE FIRST SMALL GROUP of majors, in my case modified, in a geography department instituted mainly through the devotion of Professor Albert S. Carlson. Without this beginning geography would likely have remained a subset of economics or geology.

I was also invited back as an instructor in 1952. Bob Huke, who also did his graduate work at Syracuse, and I became good friends. His enthusiasm and effort, as noted by writer Catherine Faurot, mirrored that of Dr. Carlson.

To me there is a connection with the article about Stuart Kauffman ’61 that followed [“God Is in the Details”]. This is in the philosophical realm—shaping new ideas in the face of dogma. Without Darwin’s courage to publish, the revelations of the past 150 years would have been lost or at best delayed. Alfred Wegener’s concept of continental drift was too startling for the orthodoxy, but it opened an avenue that led to the revolution in geology called plate tectonics.

Overcoming dogma such as that from Genesis has been very difficult, but where would we be without it? Geography, as a discipline of almost unlimited recognition of similarities and differences of all kinds from place to place, is mind expanding. It enhances our understanding of our Earth’s character. We need to know our relationship to our sun to understand many aspects of Earth’s makeup, but unlike understanding the universe beyond our solar system, as is Kauffman’s apparent concern, it is not a necessary part. The similarity is that in either area of understanding the pioneer thinkers have paved the way by breaking the dogma, as an essential, even though all questions have not been answered.

New London, New Hampshire

The Heavenly Realm

BRAVO STUART KAUFFMAN FOR opening our thoughts to a creationist belief beyond the violent religions that are now plaguing humanity with cynicism, war and pestilence!

I have been writing about this for the past eight years and am becoming tired of being drowned out by the Christopher Hitchens/Richard Dawkins atheistic crowd on the one side and the radical Jewish/Christian/Muslim orthodox fanatics on the other.

Robbinsville, North Carolina

KAUFFMAN SEEKS TO UNDERSTAND “the ceaseless creativity in this universe, [which] is the bedrock of the sacred that I believe we must reinvent.”

Buddhists have transmitted for the past 2,500 years what Kauffman appears to seek. As Lama Govinda wrote: “The challenge of modern life, the widening horizon of scientific knowledge, will be an incentive to explore the very depths of the human mind and to rediscover the true meaning of the teachings and symbols of the past, which had been hidden under the accumulated dross of centuries. Much that had been merely accepted as an article of faith, or that had become a matter of mere routine, will again have to be consciously acquired and resuscitated.”

Rochester, New York

KAUFFMAN HAS BEEN SEARCHING for God all his life because he needs Him, while denying that He exists. According to Alex Nazaryan’s article, the professor believes there is no “supernatural god,” and he has set out on a course of research that would “eventually lead to an understanding of the underlying laws that govern the ability of any system to organize itself.” Nazaryan goes on to say that Kauffman has been “searching for initial conditions that allowed life to coalesce from a primordial soup, where survival of the fittest could not yet work its invisible hand.”

Kauffman also says our present idea of God is inadequate “for our full human spirituality,” and goes on to assert, “We can now choose to assume responsibility for ourselves and our world.” We can indeed. God has always given us the free will to choose His way or ours. Unfortunately for Kauffman that translates into eternal life or eternal death.

St. Augustine, Florida

Kauffman’s call for an embrace of the “radical ceaseless creativity of the universe” that neither breeds fundamentalism nor fosters distinction between competing faiths sounds a lot like Lloyd Geering. The world-renowned religious scholar from New Zealand has proposed that a “secular trinity” replace the well-known doctrine that many have found essentially meaningless.

In Christianity Without God Geering suggests that modern Western thought might better envision ultimate reality in terms of “the self-creating universe, the self-evolving human species and the emerging global consciousness.”

Finding such similar concepts from eminent thinkers in two very diverse disciplines and recognizing how slowly new religious ideas gain traction in the wider culture, I was reminded of Charles A. Beard’s dictum that the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.

Foster, Rhode Island

THAT SAME ISAIAH WHO IN EFFECT coined the College motto anticipated the Kauffmans of the world when he wrote about the carpenter who fashioned a false god from cypress or oak he burned for food and heat, then asked, “Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

Does Kauffman have even a plausible point of view on Isaiah’s question?

Stu Mahlin ’63 Cincinnati, Ohio

Not One of Us

AS QUALIFIED AND WONDERFUL AS President Kim is described to be [“Campus,” May/June], somebody needs to explain to me and probably other curious Dartmouth grads why we once again have a College president who is not an alum.

We are constantly being told that Dartmouth is ranked in the top 10 academically; that multitudes of our alumni are in august positions in government, education, science, business, the arts, etc.; and that we should send our children to our alma mater (if they can get in!) instead of Harvard.

And yet since my own graduation more than 20 years ago we have not had a Dartmouth president who is a graduate. Is our beloved institution churning out inferior products? Do we not trust our own to govern and lead sensibly? Is it impossible to find a qualified alumnus? Or can we not convince any qualified alumnus to take up the mantle? If that’s the case, why not? I think we all deserve some answers to these questions.

The events of the last two years have amply demonstrated that alumni are courted more for their donations than their opinions, and now we also see that our leadership is not sought. Will it ever be again?

Geneva, Switzerland

A Different Perspective

Michael W. Fadil ’85 [“Letters,” May/June] asks, “Why are we okay with [Timothy Geithner ’83] running the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service?”

I have no outrage against Secretary Geithner’s confirmation because I spent 10 years as an attorney for the Office of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service and because I knew Geithner as an acquaintance in Fayerweather Hall.

I know no more about Geithner’s tax troubles than what I read in the newspapers—and I yawn at them. He claimed no illusory losses in hyper-com-plicated currency swaps, put no money in a Liechtenstein trust while refusing to open his books to the IRS, made no attempt to claim he was a “free-born natural person born in the Republic of Texas,” and did not work as a nurse for a child who died of leukemia, then use that child’s Social Security number to claim a false dependent. My outrage has exhausted itself on those I saw face-to-face who flouted our country’s laws far more gravely.

I remember Geithner as intelligent, personable and quiet; he was a good listener. I saw no sign of a future Treasury Secretary, but I came away with a very favorable impression of him. I trust him to do the right thing in a very challenging position.

Oak Park, California

Hot Job

“No Survivors” [Mar/Apr] described an ad hoc DOC response to an emergency. In the fall of 1947 there was a similar DOC response, but to a different sort of emergency: forest fires.

The state of New Hampshire paid us 75 cents an hour to fight an unprecedented outbreak of forest fires and the College allowed us to cut classes.

We were fortunate to have an excellent cadre of DOC student leaders, veterans back from the 10th Mountain Division and other World War II units, who had plenty of experience dealing with much more serious emergencies. As in the 1959 plane crash effort, John Rand ’38 was the overall leader.

I was an inexperienced 17-year-old freshman who just did what I was told, but I had the impression that it was all well organized. I have no idea how many students actually participated.

Middlebury, Vermont

Glory Days

NOTHING LIKE A LITTLE NOSTALGIA to suck us geezers in and let our minds drift back to those winters in Hanover when basketball was big at Dartmouth. Ralph Wimbish’s “The Last Dance” [Mar/Apr] does an astounding job teasing out the inside story of the 1958-59 basketball team’s journey to the Ivy League championship in the era of Rudy LaRusso ’59, Dave Gavitt ’59, Doggie Julian, et al.

Especially riveting were the details of off-court life, as recalled by the team’s members. I was just a fan in the stands but what a memory trip. Those guys from Brooklyn, New Jersey and Long Island could certainly tough it out.

Philadelphia

I ENJOYED THE ARTICLE ABOUT the 1959 championship basketball team in spite of its failure to mention Stu Hanson ’59, who did not play his senior year because he was in medical school.

Stu and Gavitt had been roommates and had played forward with LaRusso. Stu completed his medical education at the University of Minnesota and is the senior member of the pulmonary medicine department of the Park Nicollet Clinic, the second largest group practice in the state of Minnesota behind the Mayo Clinic. He is past president of the Minnesota Medical Association, served many years as a member of the board of delegates of the AMA and is on the admissions committee of the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Minnetonka, Minnesota

Grammar Penalty

In “Quick Hits” [“Campus,” Jan/Feb] Buddy Teevens is quoted as saying, “I feel badly for the way the season went….”

I feel bad that Buddy feels badly, but what does that have to do with football? If he feels badly then perhaps he should consult with DHMC for tests on his tactile senses. (Where are the language police when DAM really needs them?)

San Francisco

Music Man

I’m surprised David Tiersten ’56 never saw Erich Kunzel ’57 play an instrument [“Letters,” Jan/Feb]. Erich played just about every percussion instrument, including glockenspiel, during my freshman year (1956-57), a facility that amazed me at the time. But Kunzel was always a pretty amazing guy.

Hillsborough, California

Correction: In “God Is in the Details” [Mar/Apr] Stuart Kauffman’s medical school alma mater should have been identified as University of California at San

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