Not All Black and White
Bernie Butcher's excellent article regarding black voter registration in 1963 ("Freedom Summer," July/August) engendered vivid recollections of spirited debate between Chris Wilson and myself in the old Phi Kap house. I was in absolute disbelief such racial division could exist in the United States of America. Chris Wilson, wherever you are: You were right and I was wrong.
William M. Forrest, '66
Yakima, Washington
The Unkindest Cut
Lucy Sankey Russell's piece, "Mission: Tuition" (End Notes, July/August), certainly strikes a chord with me. I too am a Stanford graduate with substantial educational loans who has chosen a "rewarding" but low-paying profession, and I too worry how to pay for the college education of my 5-month-old baby. And like Russell, I tend to supplement practical strategies with fantasies that I'll win the lottery or that my child will win an athletic scholarship.
I'd merely like to suggest another important item to add to the list of practical things we do to help plan for our children's education: support aid programs. In the process of cutting the budget deficit, Congress has cut funding for, or threatened to eliminate altogether, nearly every program that made it possible for me personally to attend Stanford, and then go on to pursue a graduate degree -- guaranteed student loans, federal work-study, Title VI fellowships for language study, National Science Foundation graduate fellowships in social sciences and Jacob K. Javits graduate fellowships.
We need to fight for public support of higher education. What's good for everyone's children is also good for our own.
Janelle S. Taylor, '87
Grinnell, Iowa
Catcalls and Kudos
The article, "Resetting the Age Clock," by Michael Fossel in the July/August issue was just fascinating and surely provokes much conjecture as the sociological challenges of the next century emerge.
You deserve a solid round of applause for the great transformation that has taken place in bringing Stanford up to the high standards of graphics, layout and content that truly reflect the stature of a great university.
Robert G. Linville Jr., '48
New Meadows, Idaho
Somehow this alumnus has become the unwitting victim of a publishing shell-game at Stanford!
In the March/April issue of Stanford , the new editor opined: "Please let us know what you think of the new Stanford ."
Well, we feel deceived! Gone is the informative, expansive Stanford Observer published by the University News Service. Instead we have Stanford Today , an insert in Stanford magazine that fails to match the editorial content and excellence of the Observer and is a confusing commingling of glitzy, colored articles sandwiched between Stanford articles.
The net result of this unholy marriage is a bimonthly magazine with a vastly reduced transmission of news to alumni and the public. At a time of low alumni contributions and heightened concerns for Stanford's direction, this new magazine is a major disappointment to alumni who hunger for news of Stanford and the Farm.
Eugene Danaher, MBA '45, PhD '46
Tallahassee, Florida
I write to commend you on your excellent July/August magazine. As someone who reads a lot of journalism, both professionally as an encyclopedia yearbook editor and also in my personal time, I was consistently impressed by the well-written and fascinating content of the issue. As an English major who took both of Professor Nancy Packer's main classes ("Short Story" and "The Novel") and count them among the best of my undergraduate experience, I really enjoyed Michael Cunningham's piece about this marvelous educator. The fact that Cunningham is a novelist inspired greatly by Packer made the article even more intriguing and rewarding.
The Packer piece was excellent, but the rest of the issue was equally good -- the Olympic profiles, the fascinating account of Stanford students' participation in the civil rights struggle in Mississippi, the article about the excavation of the Stanfords' house (I took an archeology course my freshman year and can't say enough good things about it), the profile of former astronaut Mae Jemison, and the myriad little pieces that so often answer the burning question, "Whatever happened to?"
In short, a magazine of newsstand quality. If this is what the merger of Stanford Today and the Stanford Magazine has created, I praise the day it happened! Keep it up (but it will be hard to meet this kind of quality every issue)!
David Hirning, '91
Seattle, Washington
The March/April issue in the new format was so good that I feared that subsequent ones would never reach that quality. I was wrong. The May/June issue is even better.
Joseph R. Grant, '47
Oceanside, California
Father Figures
"The Mate Debate" (End Notes, May/ June) suggests that the only way a father will be content as the primary caregiver is if he earns less money than his wife. My own experience indicates that what really makes such an arrangement successful has to do with career ambitions. The earning potential is only an occasional result of the same cause.
My wife and I have six children. Until two years ago, we never thought of anything but a traditional parenting arrangement. I am a dentist and have my practice situated very close to home. I spent much of my time with the kids, and though I was doing well, my wife thought I should be at the office more. She herself was unhappy just tending to the kids, so she began acting as my office manager. She was always trying to push me somewhere, while I was content.
Two years ago, my wife took a job. Her ambitious personality, coupled with her unlocked potential, quickly propelled her to a managerial position. Now, she is a career woman, I am the primary caregiver -- and we both love it (and each other). It doesn't matter who earns more. What matters is that we have each found an arrangement that suits our personal ambitions.
David L. Rosen, '81
Jerusalem, Israel
Thanks to Rhona Mahony for her End Notes on the father being the "primary parent." The message from this piece is, I believe, that child-rearing is an enormously important job and one parent should devote him/herself to it fulltime or close to fulltime.
A father can be as loving, patient and nurturing as a mother in this capacity. As a pediatrician and now the stay-at-home mother of two young girls, I have found raising my children to be a challenging and infinitely rewarding career move. In my pediatric practice, I had several families in which the father was the "homemaker"; it seemed to work quite well for all concerned.
Mahony's comment about life being "completely sane" for the wives of these male primary caregivers certainly has some merit -- life with one parent at home is more balanced, calm and in control. And though I would argue that living with children rarely feels "completely sane," it is a wonderful, magical adventure nonetheless.
Elise J. Herman
Ellensburg, Washington
Doctor's Dilemma
Thank you for Adam Strassberg's compelling piece entitled "Heart of the Matter" in the May/June issue.
I have worked in the entertainment industry since my graduation from Stanford seven years ago, and recently have been exploring the possibility of going to medical school. While I've spoken at length with many medical students and doctors as a part of this process, no one was able to capture as poignantly as Strassberg the inherent struggle in trying to balance our own humanity with the scientific pursuit of knowledge.
It is refreshing and encouraging to learn that Stanford is training physicians and researchers who are grappling with these important issues. Just the fact that they are able to "feel" as well as "know" means that they are on the right track toward truly "understanding." Particularly in this era of managed care, it is more important than ever before for those training in the medical field to examine the bigger picture.
Lori Gottlieb, '89
Los Angeles, California
As a practitioner and student of alternative medicine, I would like to respond to Adam Strassberg's article, "Heart of the Matter." Traditional medicine has long taught its practitioners that in order to battle death they must know death. A medical student studies pathology, cadavers, disembodied organs floating in formaldehyde -- without ever recognizing that death is at times nature's most beautiful form of healing. And when the pain becomes too unbearable, the medical student is taught, or Strassberg was, "to see [death] through . . . the serpent of [the] intellect . . . [to] refuse to see a mother's heart or a child's grief."
I believe that acknowledging that child's grief is as much a part of health care as is understanding the failure of that mother's heart. To me, an ideal health care system would be one whose practitioners spent more time studying babies than studying dead babies' hearts. To me, doctors should focus on the vital energy that sustains health, not the disease and death that threaten it. Strassberg's tears are part of what make him human. If he feels he has to suppress them in order to survive in his profession, then perhaps he should find a line of work more tolerant of his humanity.
Kirsten Stade, '95
New York, New York
Back to the Future
Your "Then and Now" article in the May/June issue was most deeply appreciated, and it set me to reminiscing. Twenty-five years ago, I read the description of what then was a totally novel approach to career life planning: "Looking Backward to the Future." What a clever idea, I thought. What a practical technique to use in my classes on "Finding Your Life's Mission," offered through a local community college adult-education program. In the years since, my students have used these epitaphs as an organizing principle while they ponder the course their lives have taken to this point and consider the very serious question: "How do I wish to be remembered?"
Mary Alice Floyd
Santa Barbara, California
The collection "Then and Now" was wonderful. It encouraged me to recall my own dreams and brought back a favorite experience to my mind. My sixth-grade teacher at Gomes Elementary, Mrs. Bufkin, had each of us write a letter to ourselves before we left elementary school.
That letter -- and its contents -- were long forgotten by me until six years later when I graduated from high school and received it in the mail. The letter, which was to describe where we would be four years after high school, held one particularly amusing fact. Somehow, as a sixth-grader, I wrote that I wanted to go to Stanford, and I described myself as a Stanford graduate about to enter medical school.
Well, my folks had to settle for law school (I just finished at UCLA last spring), but the fact that I was able to attend Stanford as predicted was not lost on me. Looking at my own letter and the examples in "Then and Now," I am amazed and amused by how well we know ourselves. Although the specifics may change, traits such as curiosity, drive and commitment remain constant.
Mica Martin, '92
Los Angeles, California
Shake Down?
While it is nice to see the Quad being restored ("Rebuilding a Sense of Place," May/June), it is rather upsetting to read that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is "contributing" about $50 million to help the University pay for more than $150 million in earthquake reconstruction. My recollection is that for many years Stanford had earthquake insurance but, prior to the 1989 quake, canceled the insurance because it felt the premiums were too costly. The University then decided to self-insure against earthquake damage. It is hard to believe that the definition of "self-insurance" now includes having taxpayers bail out a university that has made an incredibly inept management decision.
Kent H. Kaiser, '59
Atherton, California
Jeffrey Seilbach, Director of Risk Management at Stanford, responds:
Stanford had earthquake insurance until June 1985, when insurers decided that they wanted to retreat from the California earthquake market and cancelled our policy. We continued to search for other earthquake insurance markets, but none were reasonably available. The State Insurance Commissioner has informed FEMA and Stanford that earthquake insurance for the University is not reasonably priced or adequate in coverage. The 1989 earthquake taught us that retro fitting and/or bringing buildings up to current earthquake code is the best form of earthquake insurance. None of the buildings that met current code were damaged.
Omission
In "Georgia on Their Minds," (July/ August), we listed six Stanford-affiliated athletes who were to compete in the Atlanta Olympics for countries other than the United States. Regrettably, we omitted four others: Swimmers Jessica Arney, '00, and Eddie Parenti, '94, from Canada; swimmer Gabrielle Rose, '00, from Brazil; and Gus Envela, '90, competing in track and field for Equatorial Guinea.
Self-Congratulations
Stanford has been named 1996 Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The award is given annually to the best general interest university magazine in the country; this year there were more than 100 entries. In addition, Stanford's art director, Paul Carstensen, was named CASE's designer of the year.
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