UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
I commend you for your story on outgoing President Gerhard Casper ("What He Did," November/December). Reading it, I felt like I was meeting him in person. His obvious warmth and caring really came through. I was particularly touched by the detail about his visits to dorms to read the students "bedtime stories." It is apparent that he is a committed teacher as well as an accomplished administrator.
Elizabeth Lutton
Manhattan Beach, California
SNAKE HUNT IN ARCHER CITY
I enjoyed your story about Larry McMurtry and Archer City, a Texas town that is fun to visit ("Three Days in McMurtryville," November/December). In 1980, my brother and I attended a rattlesnake hunt there. Afterward, the deadly snakes were displayed in the 4-H building at the local fair grounds. Later we stood under the marquee of the old building on the north side of the town square, where the townspeople viewed The Last Picture Show.
People who have lived in this part of the country (we grew up in Western Kansas) can appreciate the characters in McMurtry's books. Men like Sam the Lion and women like Coach Popper's wife, Ruth, are not found in every small town, but it is characters like these that make McMurtry's books special to me. The Texas prairie and its rugged people are part of a landscape that is very different from most parts of America.
Phil Young
Liberty, Missouri
In a media glut of glossy, meaningless celebrity profiles, it was nice to come across Ray Isle's piece on Larry McMurtry. Isle is aware of his objective shortcomings (McMurtry is a family friend and onetime boss) and reassuringly unflapped by them. Of McMurtry, he gives us a little biography, a handful of quotes and a few favorite local restaurants, and then gets on to his real business -- memories of his own small role in the McMurtry story. For Isle to shove aside McMurtry in favor of himself breaks a few journalistic rules and risks narcissism, but Isle's writing is elegant enough to trade ego for gentle truths: in his memory is the admiration of a just-started writer hoping for a share of McMurtry's pie.
Taylor Antrim, '96
San Francisco, California
I'm not sure I can take everything Ray Isle writes as fact, but one thing is for sure -- he is certainly creative.
I received a partial copy of his story from a fellow restaurateur and am disgruntled about the restaurant critiques and the personal attack on the "evil woman with an empire of 27 Dairy Queens."
Larry McMurtry has probably not been to the other side of Wichita Falls, where most of the town's restaurants are located. Not that there's anything wrong with the ones mentioned. We're a town of 100,000 in which 50 percent of all dollars go to the restaurant business. I wonder if the health department should be notified that we're poisoning our population.
McMurtry purportedly made the comments in jest. Knowing his dry humor, that's not surprising. But after a copy of this story reaches the Times Record News of Wichita Falls, I wonder if he'll still be laughing or if he and Ray Isle will still be friends.
I seriously hope you consider journalistic responsibility and integrity when dealing with people's reputations in the future, because this article lacked both.
Melissa Plowman
Wichita Falls, Texas
PHYSICIAN, WAKE THYSELF
It is not surprising to me how severe the consequences are from lack of sleep (Farm Report, November/December). What surprises me is that while doctors at Stanford's Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Center tell us we should worry if our airline pilot is tired, they do not tell us to worry if our medical interns and residents are tired.
I am not a doctor, but I have several friends who are residents, and I am horrified that they often work 48 hours straight with no sleep, for a total of more than 100 hours per week. One even fell asleep at a stoplight, only to be awakened by a fellow motorist rapping at the car window. (Honking horns had failed to wake him.) I would be highly concerned to have someone operating on me if they have been awake for even 20 hours.
I am not pointing to any particular hospital, since I understand the problem is quite rampant. It just saddens me that these interns and residents are too scared to speak out. How many patients and residents will have to be injured or killed before something is done?
Victoria Lee, '96
San Francisco, California
'PRAGMATIC ETHICS'
John Donohue's research -- suggesting that the legitimization of abortion and the high abortion rate since 1973 are a cause of our current declining crime rate -- raises interesting issues (Farm Report, November/December). Those aborted children were unwanted. Unwanted, unloved children are more prone to become criminals when they grow up. Therefore, changing our laws to allow aborting unwanted pregnancies was a good move to prevent future crimes.
The use of such pragmatic ethics to guide public policy has important ramifications. Has Professor Donohue considered the causal link between child abuse and crime? A high percentage of incarcerated individuals were abused as children. If we could just go back to former times such as those of the Roman Empire, in which fathers could kill their children if they wanted to without facing charges, more unwanted children would be killed by their fathers, which would prevent them from growing up to become criminals. Or, as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist suggested, maybe we should not define an infant as a legal human being at the point of birth. Instead, if we waited for about 30 days, we could detect more handicaps and simply "abort" after birth. Or, if we pushed the definition of human life to start at 18 years of age, we could simply terminate all abused children and those with antisocial tendencies, reducing future crime without "murdering" those unwanted children. Such terminations would not be murders because the offspring would not yet be "human."
Basing public policy on pragmatic considerations of what will reduce crime opens our society to all kinds of creative alternatives. It might even lead us to a Brave New World.
Steve Newman, '72
Woodbridge, California
SUCCESS STORY?
While I'm sure some readers found bridge professional Grant Baze fascinating, I'd like to think most Stanford alums would not view his achievements and lifestyle as something we'd like to emulate ("Playing His Strong Suit," November/December). Is he a brilliant and superb technician? Or is he a one-dimensional individual whose life consists of self-absorption? Perhaps his seven wives could best answer.
One can only hope that Stanford's admissions committee continues to seek well-rounded, well-read candidates for its precious few undergraduate spots.
John C. Wilen, MBA '84
Frisco, Texas
What is your point with "Playing His Strong Suit"? Is it to show how a person who abuses his body (overdoses on caffeine, smokes 33 cigarettes a day, shuns exercise) and ignores the larger society (never reads a paper or watches the news) can become "a bona fide star"? Is this something to be admired -- one man's obsession with an unusual profession in which he has developed great talent but does little with it for the good of the community?
Certainly, I am intrigued by the life of a professional card player, and the personal angle draws me into the story. I would like to think that your article was simply showing how one alumnus used his intellectual clout to craft an unusual and amusing life. But I fear that it conveyed, and condoned, how one alumnus neglected his physical, social and emotional health to achieve occupational success.
Shannon K'doah Range, Gr. '99
Palo Alto, California
TOUCHÉ
You assert that Lisa Milgram is a trailblazer because she is the first woman to coach a men's sport at Stanford (Farm Report, November/December). Sorry to disagree, but Jean Helliwell, '47, coached both the men's and women's fencing teams for decades. She was a true trailblazer and deserves real credit in this arena. Now, you might not think fencing was a sport back then, because we didn't have any scholarships and didn't get much money from the school -- but we did win our division, we did send people to the ncaa finals and we were qualified to earn varsity letters. What else counts?
Jeff Gueble, '81, MS '86
Bainbridge Island, Washington
KIDS THESE DAYS
Regarding the incoming freshman who got up early to "get the good bed" (First Impressions, November/December): what has happened to fairness and courtesy to others? On my first day at Stanford, my new roommates and I waited until all of us arrived, then drew numbers for beds, desks, dressers and closets.
Sally Randall Swanson, '58
Ketchum, Idaho
THREE TAKES ON HOOVER
The red, white and blue chart about George W. Bush isn't listed in your table of contents ("W's Hoover Helpers," November/December). Is it an advertisement? If so, could you please mark it as such? And what's this about "the Stanford kitchen cabinet"? Did I miss something? Does graduating from Stanford make me a Republican?
The people Hoover has right now, like Newt Gingrich, are making me question what's going on there. And Stanford magazine seems to have a clear bias for consumerism and Republicanism.
Audrey Watson, MS '77
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Editor's note: The chart listing Hoover Institution scholars who are advising the Bush campaign was not an advertisement.
Is any reasonable purpose served by publishing a derogatory letter such as the one titled "Hoover Power" from Kay Moorsteen (Letters, November/December)? You may not be able to control the civility of your readers' responses, but your editors can display judgment in the choice of those published.
Jack Grey, '43
Tiburon, California
The Hoover Institution, it seems to me, has two different sets of activities: (a) a specialized research library; and (b) programs of research, appointments and publications designed, in advance of research, to support the ideology of a particular political party and some of its out-of-office officials. The library function is wholly appropriate to a modern, secular university. The latter activities are not.
Might it be possible to divide the Hoover functions, give them separate institutional settings and move the partisan politics off campus bereft of the Stanford name? By such an organizational device, the University could avoid the continuing intellectual and scholarly embarrassment associated with its direct and explicit partisan advocacy -- fine for individuals, not so fine or seemly for Stanford University.
A.W. Baxter, '47
Piedmont, California
CARD-CARRYING LIBRARIAN
The title of Tia O'Brien's article about Michael Keller, "You Thought Librarians Were Dull?" (September/October), is gratuitously insulting to Keller and to all of us in the information professions. Is it really necessary for your magazine to keep alive such sophomoric images?
Keller is historically "with it," by the way, in referring to his library degree as his "union card." All of us professionals have called the degree our union card. And, in my experience, all have maintained closed shops.
What miracles Keller could perform were he the Librarian of Congress! Regrettably, the institution has been headed by historians for the past three decades and is sorely in need of professional library management.
Charles Olsen, '48
Washington, D.C.
FLASHBACK
In "The Way We Were" (September/October), the photo titled "Disarming" brought back vivid memories of 1970, and I immediately recalled the event it depicted. The students with their arms locked together are protecting a student photographer who had just been attacked in White Plaza by a crowd of radical protesters. The protesters had recognized this photographer as a journalist with an alternative weekly newspaper, the Arena, which presented campus news and editorial views somewhat to the right of the Stanford Daily. I was the Arena's associate editor. The attack was presumably prompted by the protesters' knowledge that the Arena routinely cooperated with local authorities in identifying individuals who committed vandalism and other crimes.
The event gained further notoriety because both the Stanford Police and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's departments refused numerous phone calls requesting help. A lawsuit filed against the University by several assaulted students was eventually settled out of court.
John W. Tolan, '70
San Carlos, California
Imagine my surprise to discover a photo of myself in "The Way We Were" and then again, silhouetted, in the following issue (Letters, November/December). Yes, that's me sitting among the Stanford fish collections, holding a sturgeon.
In the 1950s, the fish collection had run out of space, so a group of biology students working for graduate degrees mounted a fund-raising campaign and provided free labor to double-deck the collection rooms in the Natural History Museum. The photo shows a small part of the collection, temporarily stored on the steps of the museum. Alas, the University decided to dispose of this most valuable asset -- at a time when biodiversity wasn't a major world issue -- and turned it over to the California Academy of Sciences.
Thanks for the memories.
Jay M. Savage, '50, MS '54, PhD '55
Professor emeritus, biology
University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida
CORRECTION
The article on book author Dorothy Patent, '62 ("She's in a Volume Business," November/December), misstated the name of her husband, Greg (not David) Patent -- who also was the principal author of the apple cookbook the couple collaborated on. We regret the errors.
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