Water matters

I not only enjoyed the cover story “Thirsty Planet” in the May–June/15 issue but found it very timely, especially as I live in one of the areas of California where the governor has mandated a 36 percent reduction in water use as part of a program to deal with the state’s drought.

Near the end of the article, there is mention of broadening the Water Research Initiative to include questions of law, economics, and public policy. They may want to include economists sooner rather than later. Pricing water correctly is a key component, perhaps the key component, of any effort to deal with water shortages. If water is too cheap because of government subsidies, traditional property rights granted a very long time ago under very different conditions, and similar policies, it’s certain to be used inefficiently. California agriculture illustrates this in spades. Interesting research question: which would do more to enhance the availability of fresh water—1,000 new desalination plants or getting water correctly priced in every country?

Richard Blackhurst, PhD’68
Palm Springs, California

Populous planet

The money being spent on tracking and developing underground water resources would be much better spent on addressing overpopulation to reduce the demand for fresh water. By many ecologists’ estimates (e.g., David Pimentel at Cornell University), there are five billion too many people on this planet. The current human enterprise is far too great to be sustainable and water shortages are just one of the many inconvenient truths that threaten a meaningful future for our children.

The late Garrett Hardin, SB’36, author of “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Science, 1968), “An Ecolate View of the Human Predicament” (Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 1981), and many other important books, articles, and ecological concepts, warned us decades ago about confusing shortages of resources with “longages” of population.

The University of Chicago should be part of the solutions and not waste money on efforts that in the last analysis may only end up aggravating our problems by furthering future growth.

Jane R., PhD’65, and Stefan P., AM’64, Shoup
Marion, Wisconsin

Patterson remembered

Thanks for the article on Clair C. Patterson, PhD’51 (Legacy, May–June/15). When I started my research, mentored by Professor Nathan Sugarman, SB’37, PhD’41, my lab was next to Clair and George Tilton’s (SM’49, PhD’51) lab in Kent Chemical Laboratory. I remember stopping early in the morning to ask what Clair was doing with the potassium permanganate solution in a large flask. “I must obtain very pure water by distillation of Chicago water,” he responded.

Later, after he moved to Caltech, he called one day and asked about clean room hoods to keep the lead-polluted Pasadena atmosphere from contaminating his experimental procedures. I am sure that the leaded environment in his smoggy city far surpassed that of Corvallis, Oregon, where I was at Oregon State University.

Someday someone should write a short book, “Meteorites to Unleaded Gasoline, a Worldwide Achievement by Clair C. Patterson.”

I also enjoyed the comments of Philip Glass, AB’56, in the previous issue (“The Great Escape,” Mar–Apr/15) and appreciated the enthusiasm that Harold C. Urey exuded to his undergraduate classes and to graduate students, faculty, and other persons in general. In 1952 Urey published his book The Planets: Their Origin and Development (Yale University Press), which influenced many UChicago graduate and postdoctoral students to enter the scientific fields of geochemistry, geophysics, mineralogy, etc., and, in their later careers, the study of meteorites, Earth, and lunar samples. These included scientists such as James Arnold; Samuel Epstein; Gordon Goles, PhD’61; George Reed Jr., PhD’52; John Reynolds, SM’48, PhD’50; myself; Gerald Wasserburg, SB’51, SM’52, PhD’54; George Wetherill, PhB’48, SB’49, SM’51, PhD’53; and many other faculty and scientists worldwide.

In my biased view, Urey was the foremost scientist who testified before the US Congress and convinced them and NASA to study lunar samples with all available techniques. His view complemented the political urgency proclaimed by President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the moon, which NASA accomplished with the Apollo 11 mission by Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins in 1969.

Roman A. Schmitt, SM’50, PhD’53
Corvallis, Oregon

Passing thoughts

The article about “passing,” describing the work of Allyson Hobbs, AM’02, PhD’09 (“Crossed Lines,” May–June/15), brought to mind experiences related to me when I was a graduate student in 1947–49 and living in Woodlawn. A number of blacks living on the South Side were able to pass and thus were able to hold down “white” jobs in the Loop and elsewhere. Since their actual address would be a dead giveaway to their employer, they would list the address and phone number of a white friend; should the boss call, the friend would use the “not at home, but I’ll give him/her the message” strategy.

Many years later, in teaching courses on “race relations” (the titles morphed over the years), I would tell my students about the Great Chicago Racial Transformation Machine: the Cottage Grove streetcar line! In the morning, on as black, off as white; after work, the process reversed.

Harold Lieberman, AM’49
St. Cloud, Minnesota

Your article on Allyson Hobbs and the excerpt from her recent book,A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), made me look forward to reading the entire book.

Given its theme of identities, I was struck by a passage in the excerpt describing “the German philanthropist Otto Kahn” who suggested to Fredi Washington that she change her name and pass as French. Ironic identity abounds in Kahn, and there is no better way to unpack it than with a story that alumnus (and assistant to Robert Maynard Hutchins) Milton Mayer, EX’32, included in an article critiquing Jewish assimilation in the March 28, 1942, edition of the Saturday Evening Post titled “The Case Against the Jew” (the title was not Mayer’s; the article is reprinted in Mayer’s book What Can a Man Do [University of Chicago Press, 1964]): Otto Kahn met a hunchback in front of an Episcopal church in Manhattan and said to the hunchback, “I belong to that church.”

“I know,” said the hunchback.

And Otto Kahn said, “I’m very active in the church; I’m one of the vestrymen,” and the hunchback said, “I know.”

And Otto Kahn said, “I used to be a Jew.”  “I know,” said the hunchback. “I used to be a hunchback.”

Ironies multiply, in that prominent—and, highly unusually in those days, Jewish—advertising executive Albert Lasker took great exception to Mayer’s article, without actually having read it. Lasker demanded that Hutchins fire Mayer, which he declined to do since the article was written on Mayer’s own time. Lasker resigned from the University’s Board of Trustees.

Mayer adds a final part to the story in Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir (University of California Press, 1993): “Some years after the war, the two old friends found themselves seated next to one another at a dinner party. The now elderly Lasker turned to Hutchins and said, ‘Do you remember an article about Jews in the Saturday Evening Post during the war?’ ‘Vaguely,’ said Hutchins. ‘You know,’ said Lasker, ‘my son-in-law gave it to me to read the other day. It wasn’t a bad article. But the title was unfortunate.’ ‘Wasn’t it,’ said Hutchins.”

Bob Michaelson, SB’66, AM’73
Evanston, Illinois

Mayer had originally titled his article “The Wondering Jew,” according to Lasker’s biographer John Gunther, PhB’22, who also wrote that the Post changed the title “without his knowledge or consent.” In a footnote in Mayer’s memoir of Hutchins, editor John H. Hicks says he could find no evidence in Mayer’s papers confirming or denying this account, but that Mayer “apparently refrained from public comment or disclaimer, and stoically assumed ... the consequences of the printed (and eventually reprinted) title appearing over his name.”—Ed.

I read with interest the article on “racial passing,” and it stimulated my thoughts along those same lines with regard to “religious passing.” I am observantly Jewish and it is common knowledge that many Jews passed out of their “inherited” religion, whether with a formal conversion or after physical movement from one geographical area to another. This happened especially in Europe under pressure from the church and often from civilian authorities, although it was not unknown in the United States.

Many of the problems described in the article applied in this case too: often those who left had to cut all ties to their families and communities and “disappeared” from the memories of their descendants. Hobbs’s observation that “once family members crossed over they were usually lost, essentially dead to their families” (page 40) was acted out literally in Jewish families, where family members who remained Jews sat shivah (a ceremony to mourn the dead) for those who converted, as they would have for those relatives’ physical deaths.

Similarly, the anecdote about Langston Hughes is reminiscent of experiences I’ve had while wearing my kipah (skullcap); I will pass someone in the street and they will say “Shalom” (a Hebrew greeting), clearly to identify themselves as Jewish and therefore sharing a commonality of identity with me although they are not wearing a kipah themselves. Some enterprising scholar in the Divinity School might follow up on this idea.

Morton Isaacs, AB’52
Rochester, New York

What propitious timing for the two articles on the commonly understood meaning of “passing.” I usually read the Magazine cover to cover even though I am challenged by anything scientific. Rachel Dolezal makes a mockery of “racial identity” by stating expressly that she can choose to identify with whichever race she prefers on a particular day. Reminds me of Senator Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Native American because she might be 1/64 Cherokee.

Although I was born in New York City in 1943, I spent my summers at the White Oak Campground outside of Thomson, Georgia, near Augusta, with my mother and most of her four sisters. Very boring place—Methodist revivalism, elderly women, and chain gangs working on the surrounding red clay roads. One of the shotgun-toting guards showed me the buckshot holes in some of our unpainted wooden “tents” (cabins replaced tents around 1900). It was not uncommon for blacks on the chain gang to be shot for little or no reason. To blacks in Georgia back then, LSMFT was not a slogan for Lucky Strikes; it meant “Lord Save Me From Talmadge,” meaning Herman Talmadge, a racist governor in the 1940s who later served in the US Senate.

Before the Civil War it was common knowledge throughout the South that masters and their male relatives could rape slaves with impunity. As “white blood” was added to African genes, the lighter-skinned slaves received increasingly less onerous tasks. After Reconstruction, there was less racial mixing in the South due to the abolition of slavery and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

My family moved from upstate New York to Tallahassee, Florida, in 1954 when I was 11. Even though I had spent multiple summers in Thomson, I was shocked by the official segregation of that time and place. I saw very few light-skinned Negroes, the word du jour then. As the miscegenation laws were done away with by federal court rulings, mixed marriages have been almost commonplace. Outside of the worst hellholes in the New South, I doubt that there is much incentive for African Americans to attempt to pass these days.

But, as the stories pointed out, it was seen as a necessity up North through the 1970s. Jews, Italians, and many other non-WASPs routinely anglicized their names in order to succeed in the professions as well as in the entertainment fields. What has been so radically different for African Americans is that their skin color—unless they have huge amounts of “white blood”—will always arouse bigotry in racists. It will take more centuries of mixed marriages to finally make most of us look like café au lait, as the late Mississippi senator John C. Stennis predicted.

W. Walton Jay, JD’68
The Villages, Florida

Repeating history

I was amused to see the photo of the Students for Bush gathering in 1980 (Alumni News, May–June/15). I was the leader of that group, and I believe that was the day Barbara Bush came and spoke to us at a breakfast gathering. I am in the plaid shirt scribbling contact information from another student. I am still active in the GOP, as an elected precinct chair, and might be supporting another Bush for president next year. We’ll see.

Douglas Markham, JD’81
Houston

Great escapes

I enjoyed reading the excerpt of Philip Glass’s memoirs (“The Great Escape,” Mar–Apr/15) about his years as a student in the College under the old Hutchins program of comprehensive exams. I was a student there at the same time, but my experience was different. I was in my early 20s and was a reluctant student. I did not want to be in Chicago, and I did not want to attend classes.

I took advantage of the Hutchins program that only required passing the 14 comprehensive exams and being on campus for nine months. I stayed on campus for those nine months but never went to any class or other U of C offering. At the end of the nine months I took off for Cuba to go snorkeling; the University sent my comps to a University of Havana professor, who administered them on the same days that my fellow students took them in Chicago. Subsequently I took comps similarly in New York City at the NYU testing center, in the south of France in a professor’s beautiful villa, and finally in Paris at the Sorbonne.

Although I did not have the on-campus experiences described by others, I did complete all the required reading and gained a comprehensive education for which I am eternally grateful. The Hutchins program gave me a broad base of knowledge and a way of seeing the world that has been with me ever since.

Postscript: After I graduated in 1956, I found out that women college graduates needed to learn typing and shorthand to get a job. I did, and worked as a secretary for a few years. Then I got a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Illinois Institute of Technology and worked as a planner in Algeria, New York City, and San Diego (20 years). Before retiring from San Diego County, I went to the University of San Diego School of Law and then enjoyed a retirement career as a California attorney. Now in my 80s I continue the learning that started with my U of C College experience.

Ann Tyler Fathy, AB’56
San Diego

Fan mail

I must congratulate you on once again producing a superior product. I graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in politics, economics, rhetoric, and law and went on to law school at Northwestern University. My wife graduated from the University of Washington. My sons attended Beloit College and Grinnell College. I read the magazines produced by all five schools, and the University of Chicago Magazine is always the best by a wide margin.

I routinely learn a great deal from the well-researched and well-written articles. The article by Philip Glass provided wonderful insight into how such an unusual intellect related to the University of Chicago and the various disciplines learned there at a time of great academic freedom. He even attributes the inspiration for some of his pieces to science, literature, and sociology, all subjects he studied at the University.

The piece on Wendy Freedman (Glimpses, Mar–Apr/15) managed to explain Cepheid variable stars and parallax techniques for measuring the distance to stars, give credit to Henrietta Leavitt at Harvard for discovering the periodic cycles of Cepheid stars, and encourage young women to pursue the physical sciences.

I want to thank you for actually making me eager to receive my copy of the magazine each issue.

Martin L. Ziontz, AB’76
Seattle

A fine 50th

I was at the reunion, where we celebrated 50 years of graduation from medical school. It was just a wonderful experience and I know that the University went overboard making this moment memorable. I had a great thrill seeing my roommates, some of whom I had not seen for 50 years. It was “just like riding a bike.” Once I started talking to them I felt that I had seen them the day before. I am happy to realize that many of us are still active in the practice of medicine but sad to hear that 11 of us are no longer alive.

I realize at this point in my life how the training that I received at UChicago shaped my entire professional life and also my personal life, both of which run together. It has been a wonderful trip. I am still not done. I am in the private practice of general surgery and I love every moment that I am able to contribute to the surgical care of our patients. I still use the teachings that I received from my teachers, particularly Dr. George E. Block, who shaped my surgical training.

Fernando Ugarte, MD’65
Marysville, Kansas

Research request

I am going to be cocurator of an exhibit on Cyrus Leroy Baldridge, PhB 1911, at the University’s Special Collections Research Center in June 2016. Baldridge was a noted artist, illustrator, and traveler. He took part in World War I as an illustrator for the Stars and Stripes and, while living with his wife, writer Caroline Singer, in New York, he was prominent in the city’s University of Chicago alumni club. In 1952 he retired to Santa Fe.

In preparation for the exhibit, I would like to talk with anyone who knew Baldridge, knew about him, or owns art works by him. I can be contacted at jaymulberry@gmail.com.

Jay Mulberry, AB’63, MAT’71
Chicago

Party time

Preparations are being made for a 70th birthday dinner for Anna Linchevskaya Linden, PhD’05, who taught in the Slavic Department from 1986 to 1996 and will turn 70 in April 2016. Students, faculty, and friends interested in attending the dinner, please contact me at lindvicjul@gmail.com or at 312.608.5827.

Julia Linchevskaya Linden
New York City

Corrections

In “For the Record,” May–June/15, the name of University trustee Nassef Sawiris’s (AB’82) father, Onsi Sawiris, was misspelled. Nassef Sawiris gave $20 million to establish the Onsi Sawiris Scholars Program, a scholarship for Egyptian students, in his honor. We regret the error.

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