Brown University Womens College - Brun Mael Yearbook (Providence, RI)

Page 17 text:

Q' L lu- If you can't get the elevator, you have to walk down, and that can be aggravating if you live on the fourth floor. As a matter of fact, the thing's stuck again, and 1 am supposed to go down to the second floor and give it a kick, so that it will go up to four and pick up the group. Will it stop at two on its way back, no it won't, so better to go on downstairs and get in line for the brussels sprouts. This is the Year of the Brussels Sprouts. Last year was Anno Yellow Beans, year before last was Anno Yellow Squash. Cheap, see. And much less artistic than the ori- ental custom of naming years after dragons or celestial plums. Then there's Creole meat pie, and Autumn sal- ad, which shows the western love for euphemism out full-force. i' i x Q Ex. But not by bread alone. This is the reasoning behind dress dinner and the Pembroke napkins that get put into Scrapbooks. Once. Anyway, everyone falls silent when the bell rings for grace. Everyone but a talkative soul who suddenly finds herself with an audience of six hun- dred, and breaks off nervously in mid-sentence. After all, better tell seven friends later on, when the broad- cast will be jammed by the rattle of dishes and the talk of Franny and Zooey, the weekend, and the bomb. These things demand and get equal time, weaving over- head in a fugal monotone: Franny, blasted, Saturday, rowdy, one more A-B-C down the drain, one more megaton bomb, no more crew races. There are seconds on Brussels sprouts. Best wishes. Some linger over coffee, feet on the trestle as the wait- ress empties the ashtrays and clears her throat. She is ignored in favor of the better part of institutional din- ing.

Page 19 text:

Somebody else went up to the second floor to kick the elevator back down to the basement, so I got a ride all the way, with five stops. Now it is exam time, and there is the siren call of bridge. This is such a hand CWhen will you ever get cards like this again? One void and a singleton ace, and your partner opened one no trumpb that it can't be passed up. And having made the slam, a seven hundred rubber seems possible on One More Hand. This should not suggest that we aren't serious people. Contrary to rumor, we spend little time in tray-sliding and other forms of Whimsy. There isn't that much snow. As for the seasonal cult of the Road Runner car- toon, that is as constructive as the yearly flooding of the Nile, or the sacrificial lamb. This is the time of the Road Runner, that fourth horseman and sign of Armageddon. A time for sober reflection and, hopefully, total recall. Thinking upon the Road Runner, I got four postcards today at new rates. Sharpened my pencils, cleaned off my desk, told George I would see him sometime in the indefinite future, and wrote to everyone to tell them not to expect mail from me. Then I got a new jar of instant coffee. You know you canft accomplish anything until you're- ready. Napoleon went off to Moscow without making any arrangements for a winter campaign, and by that sad example I mean to make it clear that you aren't in business this time of year without your post- cards and whatnot. So much for the groundwork. As for the studying itself, by midnight I will have read . . . George on the phone, out of his mind in the Hay . . . by this time tomorrow, I will have read War and Peace. When duty whispers low, somebody always needs a fourth or a cup of coffee. 9 ' 'A S. gf 3 ---.