In the midst of this everlasting pandemic, I asked classmates about their binge habits of late. Bill Yaggy has been doing “New York Botanical Garden jigsaw puzzles with pictures of plants, flowers, trees, or birds as an alternative to watching TV every night.” Joe Alviani has “enjoyed re-reading all the John le Carré spy novels.” Mike Gfroerer has “binged on hiking, summiting 33 high White Mountains peaks.” Bill Bronner has spent his time “cutting trees, splitting wood, and carrying it all around. I tell myself it’s good exercise and saves money, but I don’t believe it.” Bill White has been “bingeing on the Boston Celtics, along with bridge classes with Susan—a great game that I used to play at Dartmouth.” John Manopoli has “been playing lots of bridge online since in-person tournaments are cancelled, just bought a souped-up gaming PC, and I am in the middle of an excellent new biography of Chaucer by Marion Turner.” Bob Smith has been bingeing on “the four Bs—Babylon Berlin, The Bureau, Broadchurch, and Borgen—plus a few others.” John Isaacs “signed up for Netflix in December 2019 just before Covid and I’ve seen about 220 movies. It is non-habit-forming.” Rob Kugler “has been hitting the ‘Refresh’ button to try to make an online appointment for my vaccine. This seems to be the topic du jour and du mois for contemporaries.” Warren Cook in Montana binges on “NCIS, Blue Bloods, Lupin, Doc Martin, and Bruins hockey; Erik Larsen and Timothy Egan; and skiing cross-country and downhill.” John Hager has “been bingeing on Netflix plus European (mainly Scandinavian, Italian, French) crime series via MHz subscription.” Owen Leach has fallen for grocery store-prepared chicken wings (Wegmans honey barbecue, ShopRite barbecue and teriyaki, and Whole Foods). Yum!” Bill Judd prefers not to binge but admits to daily YouTube doses of Steven Colbert and Trevor Noah, along with subscriptions to pipe organs, Sam the Cooking Guy, etc. Gary Atkins admits to a Netflix habit (The Crown and The West Wing). Ed Arnold has “been bingeing on politics.” Andy Danver has been bingeing on his large local men’s social club as its president, holding meetings on Zoom and recording guest speakers. Contact Andy regarding their talk on “Sex and the Senior Male.” Don Garni has been bingeing on their 5-month-old golden retriever puppy and their 150-year-old adobe in Taos, New Mexico (near the landmark Alley Cantina, owned by Buzz Waterhouse prior to his death in 2015). Jock Gill “binges on work on our local planning commission, energy committee, and broadband issues.” Bill Sjogren admits that he and Sandy “from April through June ate 650 raw oysters from Island Creek Oysters, which began shipping packs of 50 and 100 oysters. I improved my time for shucking 50 to 17 minutes with no stitches needed.”

You can find the full text of each of these submissions and lots of other great stuff on our website, 1967.darmouth.org.

—Larry Langford, P.O. Box 71, Buckland, MA 01339; 1967damnotes@gmail.com