This being a rather busy posting of our web site, with two feature articles, a 50th reunion survey, and three obituaries, deference to our collective diminished attention spans suggests we keep this column as lean and mean as I can, so keep reading and it won’t take long.
I want to welcome almost 20 more classmates to the wonderful world of www.Yale62.org, because we now have their email addresses! We started with over 200 missing addresses, so there’s still a long way to go. As previously reported, your CorSec and Sec. Jim White separately carried on telephone dragnets over the summer to collect missing email addresses from Massachusetts and Washington DC residents. I eventually contacted 12 out of 19 Mass. classmates, all of whom were very gracious about providing the missing data and in most cases we had a fun catchup phone conversation as well. Jim has bagged at least two and is working down his list. Two email addresses even arrived unsolicited, sending me news. The following remain locked out of our virtual world, and need to be contacted by any means possible with a request to forward their email address to me: Ed Dodd (no answer), Rolf McClellan (left message), Michael Sola (phone not working), Louis Simon (no phone listed), James Rouse (left message), Chris Lydon (left message), and Michael Golden (no phone number).
When I started this column I intended it would be open to guest columnists. There are a large number of us who have wonderful stories to tell, great thoughts, rare knowledge, and the ability to put a sentence together. So the time has come for me to yield this space to my first guest columnist. You don’t need to commit to your subject matter, just to producing about 700 words for the next posting, probably mid-December. But you should try to appeal to a broad audience, therefore some areas to avoid if possible: 1) lengthy discourse on highly technical subjects or career success; 2) political ranting; and 3) grandchildren. The door is open, first to step through gets it. There will be other chances if you miss this one.
This summer I was in my home town of Poughkeepsie, NY for the wedding of an old friend’s daughter. We stayed at the Vassar Alumni House, which has been nicely refurbished in its original old English tudor style. There I wandered into the library, and was delighted to stumble upon a few volumes of class books from our era, complete with photos of a few young ladies I actually dated. Moving from nostalgia to science, I was surprised to see that over 50% of the Vassar girls from that time came from Manhattan and the greater NYC area! No wonder we had a lot in common. This led me to wonder where our very diverse classmates of ‘62 have ended up, and I consulted my master address list. This shows that almost 25% (188) of our extant class live in the greater NYC area, double the number in the next area of concentration California (92). There are respectable contingents in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and let’s call it the Upper Midwest, but after that we are very thin on the ground. No ‘62 Eli admits to living in Arkansas, Mississippi, or the Dakotas (where no one else lives either). So, thanks to our California cadre, we are both bi-coastal and far more diverse than the Vassar girls of 1962!
At a September 9th cocktail event at the Union Club in Boston, CorSec enjoyed meeting and listening to Yale AD Tom Beckett, football coach Tom Williams, and women’s crew coach Will Porter. Williams, a Stanford grad and football player, and formerly on the coaching staff of the Jacksonville Jaguars, is a powerful speaker with a good sense of humor and a great stage presence. He is not afraid to make changes, as shown by his introduction of a 6AM practice regimen to allow the players to participate fully in Yale’s afternoon academic and other offerings. As of last week, Harvard has not adopted this innovation, as CorSec could see in his frequent travels past the Harvard Stadium. Williams said that Yale will run a traditional balanced offense, not going with the pass-prone “spread” that Harvard supposedly will employ. Porter, a world-class collegiate rower in his own right, came to Yale 11 years ago from Dartmouth. He comes across more reserved and cerebral than Williams, but in his own style equally impressive. Yale women’s crew has the track record to show he is a top-class coach, with several Ivy and NCAA national titles and many top finishes. Responding to an audience question about the economic pinch at Yale and other colleges AD Beckett said they were not cutting out any teams, but had adopted a new five-hour-by-bus travel policy for Yale athletics, which I took to mean no more West Coast and Florida tournaments.
I suspect that most of us are saturated with the national health care drama so I will try to restrain myself here. Over the past several years I have analyzed the financial statements of several hundred hospital systems and seen part of the reason why health care costs are rising at an unsustainable rate. Yet, in the current debate it seems no one is challenging the high cost of our system. Providing health insurance to the needy is surely a good thing but neither individuals, businesses, nor the government (i.e., we taxpayers) can afford the current cost levels. Only massive new taxes can finance the Federal and state health care commitments if health care costs are not brought under control. So the Republicans are right to be concerned about adding to the deficit but have no more guts than the Democrats when it comes to taking on the forces that are driving costs up. The recent chart below might interest you. The horizontal axis shows average [not top] doctor income by specialty. The vertical axis show which specialties are most popular with medical school graduates, as measured by hospital residency vacancies. The shape of the line through the dots says there is a direct correlation between income and career choice in this profession.
For further reading on health care cost issues, I recommend a June 1, 2009 New Yorker article by Harvard’s Dr. Atul Gawande.
Joys of retirement – CorSec offers a valuable prize to the first person to identify this classmate (photo below), spotted this summer harvesting the deep in an unnamed location. Winner to be announced in the next posting of www.Yale62.org.
Can you name this Classmate?
With that CorSec bids you a happy Fall, including gridiron success for Tom Williams and his new team at the Yale Bowl. And keep the news coming by sending it to me, your CorSec, at mkane40@gmail.com.
Yours truly,
Corresponding Secretary Mike Kane
mkane40@gmail.com