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 nameless for he " world," v taken ill I sapped hi him to an poselessn could hav of this sic med a ur bond. "I disc( given a pi back, no life's mor lot and m now, as th silver cor his death bowl of m deliver hi strong of became t wretched For thr( recall-h dachshun He adr medicine. stood wat 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 33 98 166 185 20 210 121 50 * Sf *',iP *~I~4* ~ .g.'.%.'.4..$ .' - .~ *,~, I,. a'fe_ ~ .G.u ~ - , 4 *,l i4 t .. ".. i . e ~.- l',- Q*I P S"p 4 I I, . ,t . , r ... f i d..3..