TIPS leave some children behind

Gone but not really forgotten

Preaching to Lucretius' fan club

Monsters omitted

Phoebe Stanton's legacy

TIPS leave some children behind

Joyce L. Epstein's TIPS activities ["The Big Question," April] that support homework in which students interact with parents is not practical or realistic. There are merits to homework, but teachers and future teachers need to be aware of their students' home environments. One student may have a quiet area with proper lighting accompanied by parental guidance, while another will have to remember to take his pencil home (I have had students like this) so that he will have one available to use in a noise-filled, chaotic room with no parental guidance. The former student could do a parent-student interactive homework assignment. The latter student has many barriers to hurdle to even attempt it. Also, Epstein never takes into account the ever-increasing number of students with English as a second language whose parents may be non-English speakers. In an ideal world, Epstein's idea might work, but not in the world of today.
Karen W. Gronau
Perry Hall, Maryland

Gone but not really forgotten

In "Forgotten Casualty Emerges From the Ashes" ["Wholly Hopkins," pg. 20, April], it was asserted that the black man who died in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 was only briefly mentioned in the Sun and there was no further mention in the newspapers, and the "unidentified victim fell from the historic record." The article further states that "there have been 30 to 35 people who [subsequently] have written about the fire, and everyone's overlooked that inch and a half" of the newspaper.

James Collins probably has not seen the Official Program and Souvenir of the National Democratic Convention, which was held in Baltimore during June 1912. In that publication the story of the conflagration was told in an article titled "Baltimore's Great Fire." The very last paragraph reads: "There was only one life lost, a negro in a lumber yard whose clothing took fire from sparks and to extinguish the fire he jumped in Jones Falls, and was drowned."

Although the black man was not identified by name and this article did not appear in the newspaper, it does prove that this unidentified person had not "fallen from the historic record" as claimed by Collins.
Bob Cohen, '67 (MEd), '73 (CASE)
Baltimore, Maryland

Preaching to Lucretius' fan club

For those of us who were graduate students in the war years, taking courses in the classical languages, the announcement by Professor Walter Stephens that he thinks De Rerum Natura to be neglected ["The Big Question," February] came as no surprise.

In 1944-45 we were privileged to have a course on Lucretius given by a visiting professor from the University of Pennsylvania, George D. Hudrsifs. At the time, he was considered the ranking authority on Lucretius in the United States and his course was outstanding.

So, in talking to us, Professor Stephens was preaching to the choir, however inappropriate that simile sounds here.
Stewart H. Benedict, '45 (MA)
New York, New York

Monsters omitted

Any accounting of monsters ["Bestial Beauties," April] neglecting the rich vein of heraldic monsters, and in particular the dazzling products of the imaginations of Garter Kings of Arms John Wrythe, Sir Thomas Wrythe, and Sir Gilbert Dethick, must be said to be woefully inadequate.
Daniel C. Boyer
Houghton, Missouri

Phoebe Stanton's legacy

I saw the announcement of the passing of Phoebe Stanton in the February issue ["A Lasting Influence on Students and Skylines," pg. 60]. I wanted to share some of the ways that she was a major part of my college experience.

During my junior year, I was a physics major until about the third week of the first semester. At that point, I discovered that although I wanted to save the world by fusing nuclei some day, either a) I wasn't cut out for it, or b) I didn't want to eat, sleep, and breathe physics all my life. I dropped all my courses and signed up for Italian, two Department of Environmental Engineering courses (my original and ultimate major), and Phoebe Stanton's Introduction to Art History. This was the antidote, the beacon of humanity, the other of C.P. Snow's "two cultures." If science is father, art is mother, and Phoebe Stanton's class humanized a generation of scientists and doctors.

During my senior year, I took her new class on modern architecture. We toured the dollar homes at the Inner Harbor, and I wrote about the World Trade Center and the Mies van der Rohe building on Charles Street. I learned of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier. During intersession of senior year, I flew with Professor Stanton and a group of art history graduate and undergraduate students to London for a three-week tour. We visited the landscape garden Stourhead, Salisbury Cathedral, Oxford, and Cambridge — a modern-day grand tour.

After graduation, I first worked in Chicago and experienced firsthand some of the architecture that she'd presented in her class the prior year. My Stanton-trained eye helped me spot a Frank Lloyd Wright house near where I was staying in Elmhurst. The house had boarders, and I had the privilege of living in it for six weeks. "Play the game of find the door," she had said. "Find the fireplace — the house is built around it." And it was so. She told us to note the emphasis on the horizontal — the overhanging eaves — in contrast with the verticality of the Victorian era. My first night sleeping in the house, I found that form did indeed follow function. My corner room was on the second floor, with eaves projecting six to eight feet out from the window. There was a violent mid-Western thunderstorm. But my windows were wide open, and not a drop of water came in — a most delightful experience.

She will be missed, but her influence lives on at Hopkins and in the hearts of women and men.
Pepper White '79 (BES)
Ipswich, Massachusetts

Return to June 2004 Table of Contents