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Keeping It to Yourself

Joan O’C. Hamilton (“If They Could Read Your Mind,” January/February) asks if “the right not to incriminate oneself extends to refusing to have one’s brain read.” But surely the greater issue is the Fourth, rather than the Fifth, Amendment right to be secure from this kind of unreasonable search.

Daniel C. Boyer
Houghton, Michigan

Canon Fodder

I eagerly read Diane Rogers’s “The Gospel Truth” (January/February), hoping she would reveal what she learned in her study of Thomas’s gospel. Gee, it was as if I had read about a ballgame but giving the score wasn’t considered very important. How about giving your readers a second chapter: a capsule summary of what Thomas said?

Glenn Waterman, ’33, MS ’50
Bainbridge Island, Washington

As someone who spent a year of independent study at Stanford trying to learn enough Coptic to read the Gnostic texts, I enjoyed your piece on Elaine Pagels and her work. The Gnostic documents are enlightening and bewildering, enthralling and alienating, calming and infuriating. And while their meaning and significance remain poorly understood, their very existence bears witness to the chaos and uncertainty of the early Christian movement. The Gnostics were not alone. Over the course of late antiquity, there were tens, possibly hundreds, of groups—all of which considered themselves “Christian”—that were crushed by that group whose beliefs eventually became established as orthodox. The doctrinal infighting was, of course, largely motivated by faith and belief, but one cannot ignore the political, social and economic factors that contributed to the shaping of the religion. One wonders if the truest, most faithful representation of the religion was not lost during the struggle. For the faithful, these can be trying issues. But for the scholar, they are part of one of the most wonderfully intriguing and relentlessly complex periods in history.

John Hanna, ’01
Boston, Massachusetts

To characterize the first three chapters of Genesis as a myth gives offense to Christians who believe the Bible to be true. More important, from the standpoint of research, believers in evolution have produced no fossil evidence to support their theory. The astonishing complexity and order recently discovered in astronomy, the nature of the atom, genetic information encoding in DNA and other discoveries in the biological sciences have discredited Darwin’s theory and confirmed belief in Darwin’s only competition, the Judeo-Christian teaching of God’s creation set forth in the early chapters of Genesis.

Please let me suggest a little research project. Interview your colleagues in the sciences mentioned above and ask them whether 20th-century research in their fields has modified their views regarding evolution and the biblical accounts of creation. Ask any archaeologist friends whether 20th-century field study has tended to confirm or to weaken the credibility of the Bible. Ask whether archaeology has proved any statement in the Bible wrong.

Lionel Cross, MA ’65
Wheatland, California

O Pioneers

The article “Family Firsts” (January/February) brought back memories of a 17-year-old girl on a train from Los Angeles to Palo Alto, soon to become a Stanford freshman and attend summer quarter (a somewhat barbaric introduction to college). I, too, was a first-generation student; in my case, neither of my parents had graduated from high school. It was because of the encouragement and work of a high school history teacher, himself a Stanford grad, that I applied to and was accepted to Stanford—a place I had never heard of. It was a shock coming from being a top student at my high school to struggling to adjust to a different environment and to adjust academically. But at Stanford my life was changed forever, and I discovered the talents that have shaped my life over the past 45 years. Reading the article, I realize how difficult it was in many ways and the courage it took to persevere. Three cheers for Stanford and three cheers for me.

Alexandra Carter, ’58
Pinehurst, North Carolina

From the simple pictures and key quotes, [the first-generation students] deserve to be there. They just need reminding; they belong. The article mentioned very little to change my concept that Stanford accepts without embracing these students who come from a different part of the academic world. Talented, yes; intelligent, yes; gifted, yes; but fully accessing all of the wondrous opportunities Stanford provides? I hope they enter more places and see more marvelous visions than I encountered.

Paul Juarez, ’71
Oakland, California

First Impressions (January/February) truly encapsulates my thoughts about being a first-generation student. Although I found my way to college without an “extra seat in the car” and “tuition of $12,” my experiences along the way have created the opportunity for the same outcome and made the journey memorable and worthwhile.

Wow! I am still trying to ingest $12 tuition. I guffawed as I wrote my astronomical tuition check to the NYU Bursar’s Office. Thank you for sharing your experience; I too hope to show my future family how far we have come.

Michelle Acitelli
New York, New York

Artful Dodger

Your article on the emerging exhibit at the Cantor Arts Center (“The Work of Art,” January/February) brought back one of my great memories.

In spring quarter 1958, I needed three more units to graduate and registered for Museum Methods, which was to meet at the Stanford Museum every Friday afternoon. I was the only student, and Professor John LaPlante, curator of the museum, was my supervisor. My project was the total refurbishing of the dingy Northwest Indian Basketry Collection, located on the second floor in the eastern rotunda—I could look over the balcony and see the Gold Spike under a glass dome, locked in a display case.

Professor LaPlante suggested that I contact the Smithsonian Institution to see if they would give us their recipe for preserving woven baskets by using shaved wax mixed with acetone. He unlocked the filing cabinet in the office, so that I could look for their address. The “S” file felt thick and heavy as I pulled it out of the drawer. There, along with the Smithsonian’s address, was the Gold Spike! I picked it up and held it for a few exciting moments. Professor LaPlante explained that several large groups were expected to tour the museum that weekend, and it had been filed away for safety. A fake had been placed under the glass dome.

Sally Randall Swanson, ’58
Ketchum, Idaho

High-Stakes Honor

Why bother with the honor system (“Whose Idea Was That?” September/October) if it means so little today? Maybe the last time it really meant something was during the Depression and WWII years when most of us were probably “first in family,” and family honor—such as you still see so often in students from new immigrant families and Asian-Americans—was a moving spirit.

Family honor, and doubtless the honor system, probably began to disintegrate after WWII when the big spenders in D.C. decided we have to support the rest of the world, no matter how unwelcome our interference. Taxes began to escalate and with them inflation, and with that, the necessity for two-income families.

Rosie the Riveter went back to work, and “momism” came into vogue. Most anything that goes wrong with the kids is mom’s fault. The inevitable result is that we now have a spoiled, materialistic, youth-oriented society in which the young regard as entitlements what we used to consider luxuries.

Isn’t it time for a zero-tolerance policy to restore the honor system? Make it quite clear, up front, that only one mistake will be tolerated, with a zero grade and no chance to make it up; then, caught a second time, you’re out. Make it clear to parents as well as students that there will be loss of scholarships and transcripts will reflect the fact that the student didn’t leave voluntarily. But toughest of all, especially for the parents, aside from their disappointment, would be the loss of any money involved, part of which would cover the cost for that student’s replacement.

As Dr. Phil might say, “to get results, all you’ve got to do is up the stakes high enough.”

Miriam Hallman, ’45
Aiken, South Carolina

Truffle Kerfuffle

I enjoyed Marisa Milanese’s article about The Game (“Clued In,” November/December). I did have one question, though.

A 3x8 grid of truffles can represent four 3x2 braille characters. Yet the clue somehow translated into a phrase much longer than four characters. I figure that the different characteristics of the truffles (flavor, coating, etc.) were used to create multiple overlapping sets of characters, but how were they sorted? Or did the teams just get several four-character strings that needed to be assembled like a puzzle?

Darin McGrew, ’85
Mountain View, California

Rock On

What a hoot! Loved your story about Neepa Acharya, (“What You Don’t Know About KZSU DJs,” Farm Report, January/February). Back in about November 1963, I had just started my sophomore year. Somebody with a connection to KZSU, a fledgling enterprise at best, knew that I had stacks of wax and a passing knowledge of rock ’n’ roll. He literally begged me to take the Saturday night slot for a few hours. No training course, no minimum station work-time. Just get down here with your records and play something. No station manager, no engineer. There’s the turntable and there’s the mike switch. Get to it.

Of course I started out with the classics, not to offend anybody. Such as “Maybelline” by Chuck Berry, “There’s A Moon Out Tonight” by the Capris, “Ape Call” by Nervous Norvus and “The Girl Can’t Help It” by Little Richard. The article says 500 watts, but I think back then it was more like 50 watts and probably didn’t get past White Plaza. The next Saturday night, a person I had never before met charged into the little studio and asked me to pack up and leave forever. Why? I had played a tune called “Annie Had a Baby” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters.

John Leuthold, ’66
Montrose, California

Not to be jerks about it, but there are several glaring factual errors in your article. For example, as representatives of “post-punk bands from San Diego,” Neepa Acharya cites “The Strokes or [The] Blood Brothers.” Unfortunately, neither group is from San Diego, nor are they in the least bit post-punk. Examples of valid post-punk acts might be Joy Division, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen—the neat sort of after-punk-movement groups your older brother listened to in the basement. Sure, post-punk has been over for like 14 years, but acts like the Blood Brothers, and megapop ex-indie starboys like the Strokes (from Seattle and NYC, respectively) would never in a million years claim to be post-punk anyway.

Post-punk is not, was not, nor will ever be “a mixture of funk and rock ’n’ roll.” Can you imagine Ian Curtis wearing star-shaped sunglasses and descending onto the Manchester dance floor in a gigantic illuminated UFO? We can’t either.

Finally, Acharya is only half right about math rock. It’s true, the “math” refers to geeky exploration of tempo and sound, but “a rhythmic cycle, constantly changing” suggests mainly to us that she needs to take a break from tending “the herb garden at Columbae.” We politely suggest that in order to “love music for what it is,” she must first correctly identify said music.

Noah Barron, ’04
Ted Kolberg, ’05
Stanford, California

Fish out of Water

As a botany graduate, I was pleased to read of the care with which Herb Fong manages the campus grounds and landscaping (“What You Don’t Know About the Head Gardener,” Farm Report, November/December). In “the so-called collector’s garden,” however, he can’t very well specialize in “cacti and cyclids.” Your reporter got it wrong; what he said was “cycads,” an ancient group of gymnosperms having fernlike leaves and usually seed-bearing cones. Cichlids, on the other hand, are a group of fish best known for their prolific evolution of species in East African lakes. End of biology lecture.

Kenton L. Chambers, PhD ’56
Corvallis, Oregon

Poetic Timing

In her valuable article on Edgar Bowers (Showcase, November/December), Cynthia Haven writes that “he himself used to say that a poet is only a poet when writing a poem.” I suspect that Bowers, scrupulous about word placement, would have said, “A poet is a poet only when writing a poem.”

I also wonder if in the sentence “After the war, Bowers came to Stanford to study with Winters, whose In Defense of Reason (1947) inspired him,” the past perfect (“had inspired”) isn’t called for, because presumably the book’s influence occurred before Bowers decided to study under Winters.

George Held
New York, New York

Getting the Axe

I was shocked—shocked!—to read an obituary in the November/December issue, saying of Henry Eric Hill, ’29, “He was one of the ’Immortal 10’ who retrieved the Axe from Cal.”

“The Immortal 21” has been a flag to me since I was just a kid. My parents were alumni and I was brought up on Big Game lore. When I finally went to Stanford myself, I remember the thrill as I actually traveled across the Dumbarton Bridge and could visualize the 21 racing back to campus in the dark of night. (And didn’t they get the bridge tender to raise the span behind them, just in case?)

Now, however, you have redeemed yourselves—though perhaps unwittingly—in “The Last of the 21” (Red All Over, January/February) featuring Art Miller, who showed up last fall at age 94 and donated relevant memorabilia to the University, including his incontrovertible photo of all 21, count ’em, stalwarts and the Axe. Had you learned of the error and then featured the Art Miller piece as a fortuitous cover-up?

More seriously, how do you go about authenticating a point of campus history, tradition or legend? Kissing on the Quad; kissing in the cactus garden; prewar (WWII) automobile speed records from campus to Los Angeles; women must wear “hose” when walking “below” the post office; heating system tunnels to Roble; anything about Doodles Weaver.

You’re vulnerable, I guess, only so long as a story lives, for the most part no longer than its originators or participants and their proximate classmates. But some stuff—Herbert Hoover and the pioneer class, vignettes from the ’06 quake, the old-time frosh beanie, sophomore porkpie, junior “plug” and senior sombrero, the original theft of the Axe, the 21, footprints up the Hoover Tower and yes, Doodles Weaver—is Lore on a Higher Level! You have every reason to retain very old copy readers.

Ralph Whitaker, ’49
San Luis Obispo, California

Murder, He Wrote

As a Stanford PhD whose dissertation focused on David Starr Jordan’s Stanford presidency, I have followed recent attempts to determine “Who Killed Jane Stanford?” (September/October 2003) with considerable interest.

Dr. Robert Cutler persuades me that Mrs. Stanford almost surely died of strychnine poisoning. And while he may be overly critical of President Jordan’s behavior after her death, at least he stops short of accusing Jordan of murder.

Professor W. B. Carnochan, on the other hand, crosses the line. “He had the motive,” Carnochan says in his American Scholar article. Then, referring to rumors that Mrs. Stanford was thinking of dismissing Jordan, he defends this assertion with a rhetorical question: “Who at the time would have known his presidency was at risk?”

This is not merely speculation, it’s fantasy. It posits a motive for which there is no proof and blithely ignores questions of whether Jordan acted on his “motive” or even had any opportunity to do so.

Even the notion of Jordan’s “motive” doesn’t hold up. It assumes that (1) Jordan heard rumors that he was to be fired; (2) believed them; and (3) chose murder as his response. But even if he had heard and believed the rumors (and rumors were always flying at Stanford; it was like a medieval court), why would he conclude that his best course was to murder Mrs. Stanford? Since the University’s founding in 1891, his relationship with her had sometimes been difficult, as he navigated between her controlling instincts and the expectations of an increasingly professionalized faculty. But it also involved respect and affection on both sides.

Jordan’s respect for what Mrs. Stanford had done for the University and his generally protective attitude toward women would have kept him from acting on this “motive”—even if he were so motivated. And Jordan had to know that if he were dismissed, he would not be jobless for long. In short, to assume that Jordan even pondered murder requires us to believe that he would betray both his principles and his interests.

In the past quarter-century, interpretations of the University’s early history have given Mrs. Stanford a more prominent and sympathetic role than she played in previous versions of the story. Now it seems that improving her reputation involves taking an ax to Jordan’s.

Neither Mrs. Stanford nor President Jordan was a saint or a villain. The history of Stanford’s early years abounds in both drama and complexity; it does not need oblique accusations of murder or melodramatic portrayals of its two principal characters to spice it up any further.

Luther Spoehr, MA ’70, PhD ’75
Providence, Rhode Island

Ralph Schaffarzick (Letters, January/February) raises the possibility that nux vomica could be the source of strychnine found in Jane Stanford’s blood.

According to Homeopathic Pharmacopaeia of the United States, nux vomica is a preparation of strychnos seed “6X,” i.e., 1 part in 10 to the 6th, or one million. My understanding is that strychnos seed itself is not pure strychnine, so the total strychnine content of nux vomica may, in accordance with the homeopathic Law of Infinitesimals, be quite small indeed. Homeopathy is a spiritual art not connected with medical science—except in a fluke of the law governing pharmacology in this country. Dilutions exceeding Avogadro’s number by enormous orders of magnitude are common in homeopathy, though this is not one of them.

Matthew H. Fields, MA ’87
Ann Arbor, Michigan

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