Page 2-Sunday, April 16, 1978-The Michigan Daily
RAMBLINGS! patty montemulTi
The Michigan Daily-Sund
OnE. B.
White:
T HE PRIDE they feel will be hard
to hide. It will surface in the
smiles on their faces, through the tears
that will undoubtedly course down my
mother's face and in the way my father
will clear his throat before he offers a
congratulation.
Sitting amidst some 5,000 graduates
chafing under cap and gown and pomp
and circumstance, I, the eldest child of
two Italian immigrants, will look for
their faces in the crowds of similarly
beaming family and friends.
When my cousin graduated from
Eastern Michigan a few years back, my
parents went. Sitting on fieldhouse
bleachers, they marvelled in Italian
over the lines of graduates, bedecked in
black, scholarly robes, inching their
way up to a platform to receive a
rolled piece of paper. At Eastern, an
administrator announced my cousin's
name (along with 2000 others) and the
family responded with deserved
plaudits and glad hurrahs.
Among my friends there are rum-
blings about how the commencement
exercise here is just that - a mere
exercise for 5,000 book-weary, world-
leery students who will collectively
heel-and-toe-it into Crisler Arena for a
formal farewell from Fritz and
Fleming. The only person who is going
.. there will be nothing "officially"'
personal about graduation. A voice
will bid the Literary College seniors to
rise and be acknowledged, and so on
down the line . .
to call out my name will be my sister
and that will be after the ceremony.
She'll want to know the quickest way
out of the ensuing traffic jam.
Continuing in the you're-only-as-
good-as-the-number-on-your-student-
ID-card tradition, there will be nothing
"officially" personal about graduation.
A voice will bid the Literary College
seniors to rise and be acknowledged,
and so on down the line. Engineers,
please, teachers, artists ...
We seniors tell our parents that
graduation is no big deal, nothing worth
driving to Ann Arbor from Detroit for,
let alone trekking in from Queens, New
York or Madison, Wisconsin, as will the
families of some friends I know.
NOT ONLY do we scoff at the
graduation ceremony, but we
become very philosophical about our
unstructured futures. We feel geriatric
walking through the UGLI amid under-
classpeople clenching yellow felt-tips
over introductory textbooks. We smile
when they respond with a stale "oh
yeah'' to our knowing "don't worry."
120 credit hours from now the C in
chemistry or calculus class will mean
nothing.
We get very nostalgic. Seniors revel
in "this is the last time I'll ever have to
(fill in the blank) in my college career"
statements. Every day adds to the
collection of items to fill in the blanks.
"This is the last hourly I'll ever have to
take" or "This is the last time I'll ever
have classes on Wednesday," or "This
is the last lecture I'll ever doodle in."
Every time we walk through Angell
Hall we glance at the names of
graduating seniors listed in a display
case, even though we thoroughly noted
every name on the list (stopping a
moment at our own) when it was first
posted. It's not an official list - it
displays our names, middle-moniker
included, only if the proper forms were
filled out by mid-March (". . . the last
forms I'll ever have to fill out in my un-
dergraduate career.") Scanning the
list, we take stock of friends and
acquaintances first encountered during
orientation, the dorm years or classes.
"So Ed's middle name is Bruno, huh?"
Seniors get very reflective about four
years spent under the University's
tutelage. With tally sheet in hand, a
fellow senior friend spent an evening
last week rating the 35 courses he's
taken by degree of usefulness. Courses
fell into five categories, from the num-
ber one rating - very useful - to the
number five grade - a complete waste.
He came to the disheartening con-
clusion that, in terms of usefulness, his
education here lacked something: the
"complete waste" courses edged out
the "very useful" in the final totals.
But don't tell my parents. They
shelled out close to $10,000 to help me
get through school here, and I'd like to
see them smile at my graduation.
A personal.
tale of two pigs
By Ann Marie Lipinski
sUnddY mgazine
f1E!FIC d!PUZZLE
A. Sullen obstinacy; pertinacity
B. Asking about the health of; seeking
information about his welfare
(2 words)
C. Scrooge's workplace (Comp.)
0. Santa's last name in The
Miracle of 34th Street
E. Scrooge's first name
F. "And he whistled and shouted,
and called them by
name...-" from The Night
Before Christmas by Clement C.
Moore (4 words)
G. Popular Christmas Carol
(2 words)
H. Author of The Little Match Girl
and The Fir Tree
I. Scrooge's clerk
J. Person or thing out of the ordinary
run; something of surpassing
excellence or merit (2 words)
K. Santa'slanding fields
22 45 67 92 96 116 192 162 207 212
13 35 51 86 105 112 126 138 161 190 169 178
214 204
43 94 155 180 189 201 209 75 89 131 167 104
53
157 171 191 115 47 200 177
7 3 41 82 61 55 150 165
- - - - - - -_-_- - -
25 39 59 103 111 117 134 142 151 163 187 8
147 179 196 156 172 215
10 56 125 143 66 87 106 135 83 118 153
9 57 197 164 176 198 193 107
63 109 208 12 175- 2 73 160
6 46 29 42 202 99 17 124
L. Territory historically or ethnically
related to one political unith-r - - - --9-7_48 _491--9--4
but presently subject to another 18 69 78 148 36 174 91 97 114
M. Forerunner of Santa Claus
(2 words)
N. "- of Christmas," traditional
poem (2 words)
0. Scrooge's first night visitor
(2 words)
P. Airplane pilots or operators
Q_ Dish of N.A. Indian origin, usually
consisting of green corn and
beans cooked together
R. N.Y. Sun editor who replied
"Yes, Virginia, there is a
Santa Claus"
S. Set of materials or equipment
designed for a particular use
T. Battle again
U. Author of "The Boy Who
Laughed at Santa Claus"
(Full name)
V. One of the gifts that "my true
love gave to me"
(2 words)
19 28 40 65 84 110 139 144 195 100
5 133 21 184 95 54 194 203 211 168
132 49 60 102 108 205 123 32 137 158 173 213
24 149 90 70 16 199 120 76
37 52 88 93 101 128 146 152 15
77 23 4 154 186 64
27 72 80 122 130 206 141 159 182
44 183 129 81 68 30 38
1 14 181 31 62 74 79 140145
85 11 26 34 48 71 113 119 127 136 170 188
58
BY
STEPHEN J.
POZSGA I
Copyright 1978
INSTRUCTIONS
Guess the words defined at the
left and write them in over
their numbered dashes. Then,
transfer each letter to the cor-
responding numbered square
in the grid above. The letters
printed in the upper-right-hand
corners of the squares indi-
cate from what clue-word a
particular square's letter
comes from. The grid, when
filled in, should read as a
quotation from a published
work. The darkened squares
are the spaces between words.
Some words may carry over
to the next line. Meanwhile,
the first letter of each guessed
word at the left, reading down,
forms an acrostic, giving the"
author's name and the title of
the work from which the quote
is extracted. As words and
phrases begin to form in the
grid, you can work back and
forth from clues to grid until
'the puzzle is complete.
Answer to previous puzzle:
"The processes of ra-
tional thought are not
ends in themselves but
must be perceived in the
larger context of human
good. The nature, the di-
rection of rational and
analytical endeavors
should be determined in
significant part by their
ultimate human implica-
tions.
Carl Sagan
The Dragons of Eden
ESSAYS OF E.B. WHITE
by E.B. White
Harper and Row, New York
277 pp., 12.50
IT SEEMS a pretentious exercise in
typing to advance a review of E.B.
White, but if the task must be met, it
will be met in the odd form of a con-
fessional: E.B. White has made me love
pigs.
As a child of 12 I was accompanied to
the Michigan State Fair by my parents,
as was our custom each summer when
the cotton candy and the freak shows
and the blueberry cook-offs settled into
the fairgrounds for their seasonal, mon-
th-long visit. As one might imagine,
there is nothing particularly painful
about something as dandy as state fair
visits, and until this particular visit I
had imagined so, too. But early into the
aftern~oon, on our stroll through the
barn where the pig judging was to take
place, a hauntingly frightful scene oc-
curred which was to change my
disposition toward the fatty pink
squealers for years.
I imagine there is a name for those.
largest and loudest of pigs, the slovenly
ones which pass their time grunting and
eating and groveling in the mud, but my
urban vocabularly does not include
their title. Suffice to say that my state
fair nightmare was perpetrated by the
fattest and meanest of the species-a
pig whose only purpose in life was to
gain weight and take up space.
As he was working on the former, a
large crowd formed around his pen.
Ann Marie Lipinski, an Ameri-
can Studies major, says she no long-
er eats bacon.
V
'E. B. White made me cry for this animal which
I had loathed for a decade. But more than that he
gave this animal, which had no name, a soul.'
fear, I saw before the pen an old woman
lying on the muddy barn floor, her leg
letting blood through her twisted,
baggy nylons. A companion was slum-
ped over the old woman, shouting
wildly for an ambulance. The pig ate.
I ran from the barn to a bench outside
and sat with my hands over mry ears un-
As I recount the episode now, its'
jolting effect on my life seems
somehow foolish. But as sure as I
author this anecdote, I cannot deny that
the event that state fair afternoon was
as chilling and arresting as any I have
witnessed. Since that day I have lived
with a deep fear and a rabid hatred of
There were other pigs eating, but this
one commanded the most attention by
his very size. Because I was only 12,
and rather short at the time, I was
unable to see the precise motion in the
crowd which detonated the pig, but as
vivid as if it occurred this morning is
my memory of that fat animal's awful
siren of a squeal followed by a woman's
scream and a horrified gasp from the
crowd. As the people turned away in
til the anticipated ambulance, its siren
wailing, arrived and departed, the pig-
bitten woman its bleeding passenger.
The said incident left the pig barn
visitors in a sort of funk, but soon after
the ambulance departed and the crowd
around the barn began to fade, the
hawkers outside the nearby freak house
resumed their pitches and the lines for
buttered popcorn grew. Everyone
recouped except me.
pigs. It is
Until rece
J UST A
I car
underwen
Pig" in I
Yes, it wa
tly simple
this anim
decade. B
animal, v
Although
chering ti
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for he "
world," v
taken ill I
sapped hi
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poselessn
could hav
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"I disc(
given a pi
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now, as th
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For thr(
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See
1L-J
vietnam
(Continued from Page 6)
("armed progaganda," "frontier
sealing"), about the words the soldiers
scratched on their helmets ("Born to
die, ''Pray for war, " "Hell sucks.") It
is the most intense kind of mood jour-
nalism, with the reporter reporting on
his own feelings, the ones he knows
best, as much as those of anyone else.
* * *
I READ Going After Cacciato, Tim
I O'Brien's novel, immediately after
finishing Dispatches, and thetransition
was startling. Cacciato tells about
American soldiers in Vietnam, too,
detailing their fears, their gratuitous
brutalities, their homesickness. But
while Dispatches is simple about war,
O'Brien's book is really about peace.
A round-faced, "dumb as a bullet"
soldier leaves the members of his squad
in the fall of 1968, AWOL, informing one
9f them. hat th has4kegided 4q-walk to
Paris. He had had enough of the war,
and he had planned the whole thing out
with rnaps--8600 miles to Paris, and he
figured he would walk it. Without really
deciding why, his squad goes after him.
This rather surreal jumping-off point
makes for an even more surreal quest
that leads the seven surviving mem-
bers of the squad far from Vietnam. In
the beginning, it is ludicrous,
something simply not done. "Can't just
waddle away from a war, ain't that
right sir?" one soldier declared.
"Dummy's got to be taught you can't
just hump your way home." But as the
soldiers begin to move away from the
sounds of battles, something in Cac-
ciato's flight, unspeakable but enchan-
ting, begins to tug at them. In the mind
of one soldier, Paul Berlin, it came to
seem "a fine idea. . . A truly awesome
notion. Not a dream, an idea. An idea to
cdeyeopand build ajnd sustain, to draw
out as an artist draws out his visions. It
was not a dream. Nothing mystical or
crazy, just an idea. Just a possibility.
Feet turning hard like stone, legs stif-
fening, six and seven and eight
thousand miles through unfolding coun-
try toward Paris. A truly splendid
idea."_
To tell more would be to give away
important surprises. But the book's
essence is there in Berlin's early
thoughts. O'Brien asks simply: Why
not? Why not? Why not just walk away?
The idea is, as Berlin thinks, "nothing
mystical or crazy." Berlin had no stake
in this war. He had grown up along the
Des Moines River; "He'd gone
canoeing with his father. He'd gotten
lost as an Indian Guide in the Wisconsin
woods. He'd become a soldier at age
twenty. Sure, he had a history." Why,
O'Brien asks, should Paul Berlin,
* whose. only goal was to live long
enough tc
for still
jungle?
The tw
ferent ki
all cold
own time
ding ho
qualities
revolts t
the films
made aft
cing the
Going A
away its
instead c
panding
Ngai in
panoram
future,
Vietnams
the first
repeat. d
we 'might
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