Brattleboro Union High School - Colonel Yearbook (Brattleboro, VT)

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8 THE DIAL life, she was herself her greatest poem. Beautiful, spon- taneous, courteous, and gracious, she was cast in the mould of Vermont's mountains, regal yet friendly. Turning from poetry to prose, we find Dorothy Can- field Fisher heading the list of Vermont novelists. Al- though Mrs. Fisher was not born in Vermont, but in Kansas in 1879, she is classified as a Vermont writer, and Vermont is proud to own her. What state wouldn't be proud to own such a famous novelist and such a brilliant personality as Mrs. Fisher? She now lives in the ances- tral home of the Canfields at the foot of Red Mountain in Arlington, Vermont. Her books have been many, among which are The Squirrel Cage, The Bent Twig, Understood Betsey, and The Brimming Cup. All Mrs. Fisher's books are guideposts to a full, rich life. She tries to make the world understand its own and she attempts to point out a better way. She has an understanding personality, and this knowledge of human nature is echoed in her books. They are full of common-sense philosophies-philosophies which can be easily understood. She is a modern writer -not radical, but conservative, an idealist at heart. She writes of the modern American, the person whom you meet every day on the streets of our cities and towns. Her books are concerned with their family lives, with their complexities, with their joys and sorrows. She analyzes the situation, and explains the way in which they meet the petty catastrophies and the major tragedies. Psychol- ogists explain that it's always interesting for a person to read about himself-perhaps that is the reason for the tremendous popularity of Mrs. Fisher's books. Her books are your lives analyzed, they are so real, so applicable to the modern American. Probably Mrs. Fisher has received many inspirations for her books from Vermont, and Vermont is proud to be worthy of this honor from the hand of one who can say: Not to envy other people is an inheritance rich enough, but Vermont adds to that treasure the greater one of not being afraid. It seems incredible, in our modern world, so tormented with fears about its safety, that a whole stateful of people have no ground for ap- prehension, but that is true. The Vermonter is so used to the moral freedom of not dreading anything that he is hardly conscious of it. It is the breath he draws, this lack of fear, it is the marrow of his bones. Without a doubt, one of the greatest poets of America is Robert Frost, who lives in Vermont. Frost, like Dorothy Canfield Fisher, was not born in Vermont, but in San Francisco in 1875. However, he has lived in New England since he was a small child, and in Vermont for many years. He, too, loves Vermont, for in his collected poems titled New Hampshirei' he says, New Hampshire is one of the two best states in the union, Vermont's the other. His collections of poems are many, his first, North of Boston, sold over twenty thousand copies. His as- cending popularity is registered in the increased sales of his poems, until, now, his newest collections have tre- mendous sales. Among some of his latest volumes are New Hampshire and West Running Brook. His latest collection, called A Further Range, came out on May 29th, of this year. Frost's poetry is like an open door to a nature which few people have ever glimpsed. His description is explicit, and this is a surprising fact, for he writes very simply and in very plain language. Many of his poems are a conversation with the reader. You sense instantly that he is a part of that which he writes. He loves it, whether it be an empty cellar hole, a birch tree, or a stone wall. Frost is a realist in his poetry, yet he is a romantic realist, if such a thing can be. He loves reality, the common, every-day things, like mending a wall, or picking apples, yet he loves beauty too, and it is in these things that he finds beauty. There are, said Frost, two types of realist: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form. Frost does not write entirely of Vermont, his poems could apply to any part of New England-and this quality makes a poet greater. The thing which makes his poems doubly interesting is that there is no sermon to them-the moral is barely implied-they are beauty in simplicity. What could be more beautiful, and yet so simple, as Frost's The Birthplace. A dozen girls and boys we were. The mountain seemed to like the stir, And made of us a little while- With always something in her smile. To-day she wouldn't know our name. fNo girls, of course, has stayed the samej The mountain pushed us off her knees And now her lap is full of trees. One of Robert Frost's contemporaries, Walter Hard, also lives in Vermont. Walter Hard is perhaps truer to the type of native Vermonter. Unobtrusive yet friendly, unsophisticated and unaffected, Walter Hard is just plain Walter Hard! His poetry is just what he thinks-there is no sham to it-itis all there in simple language. He captures in words the emotions of the Vermonter-his smiles and his tears. He pictures anything from the meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society to the dance at the Grange Hallmpictures them vividly, sparing all necessary details. Hard's poetry is beautiful for its sim- plicityg it is only the skeleton of the real thing, yet you understand at once everything he wants you to know. The titles of Hard's books smack of Vermont- Salt of Vermont, Some Vermonters and A Mountain Llfl- fCan1inued on page 421

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CLASS ESSAY Vermont's Heritage HERE is a little state up in northern New England, a -I-place which is dear to you and to me. To outsiders, it may seem lonely and deserted, but to us natives, who un- derstand its varying moods, its very ugliness is beauty, its ribbons of roads winding through green wilderness lead to fascinating fairylands, and the swish of the winds through towering pines is a remembered solace. A patch of blue sky thrown over a green-covered mountain-Ven mont! The very soil of the Vermont hills seems to characterize the writers whom she has produced. A certain sincerity of purpose and unswerving ambition and zeal have made them famous, worthy to be called Vermonters, and proud of their title, They have served their state well, and deserve to be called the salt of Vermont , the very core and heart of all its beauty, they stand symbols of the towering strength and goodness of its people. The life of Daniel Leavens Cady is characteristic of the lives of many men of that period, but he achieved a success which few writers of that time dared hope for. His life itself was not very spectacular, he himself was not a spectacular personality. He was born in 1861 on the western slope of Ascutney Mountain, and was reared. ac- cording to the standards of the day, attending the public schools of the district, and graduating from the University of Vermont. He started writing verse wholeheartedly after his retirement in 1912. Not only has he boosted the reputa- tion of the state in this way, but he has also encouraged and helped other writers by furthering the advantages of the state for Vermont writers. Of all Cady's collections of poems, Rhymes of Ver- mont Rural Life is the most popular, because it is the most appealing. Many grandfathers and grandmothers, even fathers and mothers can remember. The iron brown bread spoon, so old It showed the iron ore Right through the tin, was number one Behind the buttery door.', Cady has written innumerable poems about Vermont, in fact, his poems are primarily Vermont folk ballads. He could not be called a famous poet according to poetic standards, but he has created a poetry typifying a section- Vermont. Many of his poems are collected in such books as Stray Breaths of North East Song, Maize and Milk- weed, and The Hill of Benningtonfi Reading Cady's poems is like opening the heart of an old native Vermonter and reading the thoughts inside- simple and touching in their simplicity. His poems spring from a heart Welling over with love for his native state and its people. Each poem is a fond tribute to Vermont. Cady's poems have many examples of poetic restraint -he says so little and yet means so much. Only the real Vermonter, and a skilled poet, could write the dialect so intelligently and not make it appear overdone. But he does exactly this. He uses the old dialect, but he uses it so effectively that you can well imagine an aged grand- father speaking in that voice to his grandchildren. Cady's poems are for the most part memories, memories that escape the brain of the average person, but are forever in the heart of a true Vermont poet. For who but a true Vermonter could write this of an old pantry? Each thing was on its proper nail jest where it ought to be, Or else stood back upon the shelf Like grandma's Hyson tea. The poems of Cady and those of julia Caroline Ripley Dorr show a vivid contrast. The life of Mrs. Dorr was a poem in itself. She lived very happily with her husband and children, living intensively every minute of her life. Although she was born in South Carolina in 1825, her surroundings afterwards were predominantly Vermont. She attended school in Vermont, was married in and lived in Rutland, and here it was that her writing career began. The most predominant quality in Mrs. Dorr's life was her ability to keep her vivid, rich personality, every- body loved this handsome womanstall, with dark eyes and hair which were inherited from her French mother. Her poetry is a perfect reflection of her life-rich and beautiful. She believed that writing was no substitute for living, so she combined both very effectively. She wrote poems, short stories, and novels, but her favorite medium was the poem, and this is the one in which she gained the most recognition. Some of her sonnets are very beautiful, with the philosophies well expressed. When Dreams Departn is one of her most famous sonnets, expressing an age-old human truth: For dreams they are the very breath of life, The little leaven that informs the whole, Wine of the gods, poured from the upper skies, Manna from heaven to nerve thee for the strife. Fetter thy dreams, and hold them fast, O soul! When they depart, it is thyself that dies. Her poems are not of a section as Cady's are of Ver- mont, but are world-wide. She did not write so much of the Vermonter, as she did of his qualities, perseverance and courage. Someone has said of her If poetry is a revelation of

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IVY ORATION Television HO wants television? Will television serve any useful purpose, become popular as a source of en- tertainment, or will it, having been perfected, serve a very narrow field? These are a few of the questions which have arisen as a result of the continuity of the line of de- velopment which has already given us the talking movie and the radio. Incidentally, when the talking movie first made its appearance, the word soon went around that this was only a passing fancy, and that it would soon com- plete its run. This statement was also applied to the au- tomobile, to the airplane, to the radio fall of which are still herej, and is now being heard in relation to tele- vision. Television is not the result of a sudden fancy on the part of mankind, but it is the realization of a desire that has existed in man from his very beginnings. The auto- mobile, giving man the speed he wanted, has stayed, the airplane, giving him the wings he sought, also has stayed, television, giving him the distant sight he has longed for, is here to stay. The desire to see and to hear things at a distance is as natural a desire as is eating. The Indian put his ear to the ground to hear the approach of enemies who were too far away to be seen with the naked eye. And what is the modern newspaper but an instrument to enable us to see and to hear beyond the horizon? The printed page offers us a chance to visualize what has happened-but, would we be content with printed material if we could see the actual occurrence with sufficient clarity as to make us seem actually to be present at the event? Certainly we would not. Television is to be the means of our accom- plishing this end. Without delving very deeply into the technicalities of the subject, let us suppose that here sits the object to be televised. Light rays are directed upon the subject, and, since they obviously cannot penetrate, they are refracted. These rebounding rays are picked up by photoelectric cells, which convert them into varying electrical im- pulses, which are in turn sent out on the air. At the re- ceiving end, these electrical impulses are captured by a catbode-ray tube, and are transformed back into light rays, which are flashed onto a screen-and there it is- television! Television is no longer just around the cornern for several million people. It is actually available today to those who live in the vicinity of London or of Berlin, and will soon be offered to several other millions living in or near New York City. One Berlin station is transmitting daily programs, mostly speeches, the receiving sets picking up both the words and the features of the speakers. According to present plans, Germany will have ten other sending sta- tions, which will be connected by wireless and cables which can be used for telephone traffic when not in use for television. Receiving sets are being built to sell for iilJOut 35200. One rather unique method of transmission is in opera- tion in Germany. After sound pictures of an event have been taken, the film is developed in a very few minutes aboard a truck. The film is then submitted to a scanner, and the beams of light are changed into radio waves with the aid of a photoelectric cell. These waves are then broadcast. This method makes it possible to take sound movies of such events as baseball or football games, and to transmit the pictures within a few minutes after the ac- tion has occurred. Broadcasts from a London station, covering a radius of about thirty miles, have been highly successful. This is a ten-kilowatt station, and it is believed that when its power is increased to thirty kilowatts, the range of ef- fectiveness will be considerably increased. In London, the greatest interference to clear reception was the effect of the electrical equipment upon automobiles. This trouble has been greatly remedied by increasing the power of the stations. Another remedy is to place receiving aerials at least seventy-five feet from heavily travelled streets. There are three methods in general use in England. One is the direct pickup, whereby the television camera is trained upon the scene. The second method, called the intermediate film process, was developed in Germany. This is the method used by the trucks, in which films are developed and televised. In the third type, the film is de- veloped and printed as in talking pictures, and a device called the telecine picks up both the scene and the sound of the film, and televises them. For a short time the Baird engineers, in England, have been working on a system for reproducing television images on full-sized moving picture house screens. Heretofore, the average screen did not exceed twelve inches on a side. Of this new development, Captain A. G. D. West, technical director of the Baird Company says: This new development will bring television of news events to all the cinemas, and will result in enor- mously increased revenue for them. Only a few years ago movies were revolutionized by the advent of talking pictures. Within a short time we shall see a further revolution with the advent of television to the cinema. Instead of crowding around a loud-speaker to hear the result of the derby, people will be able to go to their local theatre and see the event as it happens. He also states that a new cable development makes possible a thing which previously has been regarded as impossible fC0n1inued on page 101