Class of ’78s continue to amaze, achieve, and represent. Huzzahs to Alfred Nicol, whose second act as a poet, after a career as a printer, is winning him renown. “Wiseblood Books has published my translation of Cent visions de guerre by Julien Vocance,” Alfred writes. The book, whose English title is One Hundred Visions of War, is a series of haiku written in the trenches in 1916. Some of the earliest haiku ever written in the West, these three-line poems “break all the traditional rules,” including the requirement that haiku speak of the beauty of nature, to “present images of the carnage and brutality of war, witnessed literally from ground level.” In his preface, Dana Gioia, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, writes: “Alfred Nicol has restored a lost masterpiece to English-language memory.” Alfred and his wife, Gina DiGiovanni, live in Newbury, Massachusetts, in a renovated 1810 house with “room for our two granddaughters to run around in the yard.”

Congratulations to professor Michael Day, recognized as a Northern Illinois University (NIU) College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Faculty. In addition to teaching rhetoric, composition (including the equivalent of “English 5”), digital rhetoric, and technical writing at NIU from 1999 to his retirement in summer 2022, Michael secured the university’s sponsorship and hosting of the Allerton English Articulation Conference, which advances standards for the teaching of college English. Retirement means, among other things, more time for travel and photography; check out Michael’s Facebook page for examples of his stunning work.

In the latest stop in a global business career, Peter Tagge has been living and working in Algeria since 2019 for the French multinational group Avril, managing a food processing unit. “There are daily challenges of all sorts, but overall very interesting and worthwhile,” he writes. Peter travels frequently to Romania, where he and his wife, Camelia, have family, and Watertown, Massachusetts, near where son David, 14, is at the Lycée International de Boston. “Unless anyone is specifically headed to Algeria to experience the Sahara Desert or multiple Roman ruins, I am a bit off the main track, but all classmates and friends passing through, please call!”

Maggie Fellner Hunt sent a beautiful photo of six great friends—Ann Hoover Maddox, Harriet Travilla Reynolds, Liz deMurga Spradling, Lissa Howell MacCallum, Heather Mayfield Kelly, and herself—taken last August against the magnificent backdrop of the Grand Tetons, near Maggie’s home in Jackson, Wyoming. “We hiked to Phelps Lake in Grand Teton National Park, floated down the Snake River, but mainly talked and talked (no surprise there),” Maggie writes. Watch our class newsletter for this and other images of ’78s at their best.

Finally, you have probably seen the flood of coverage about the 50th anniversaries celebrated last year, including the Native American studies program, Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association, women’s athletics, and coeducation. Class of ’78s were involved in all of these, and I’m going to be reaching out to them to share their stories for a future column, so stay tuned.

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—Anne Bagamery, 13 rue de Presles, 75015 Paris, France; abagamery78@gmail.com; Rick Beyer, 1305 S. Michigan Ave., #1104, Chicago, IL 60605; rickbeyer78@gmail.com