I am an obstetrician-gynecologist who is completing his 33rd year with what I consider to be the best health-care organization in the country, Kaiser-Permanente. From our beginning we have provided prepaid health care to our members and still do today. I am responding to the article “A Healthy Decision?” in your October issue. There is [...]

The political theme running through the October Bulletin made this issue particularly interesting. Once again, I have occasion to marvel at how intelligent people, some with impressive academic qualifications and professional affiliations, can hold opposite views on fundamental issues of public policy. Take the role of government in the economy: Diana Furchtgott-Roth ’79 noted that “… [...]

In the October Bulletin, it shocked me a bit to see a Swarthmore student writing an article in support of Romney. Danielle Charette ’14 wrote very eloquently about the conservative cause and put it in a Swarthmore context. Her debating opponent, Carmen Smith-Estrada ’14, also did a good job of defending Obama in terms of his [...]

Just a note to say how much I am enjoying the October issue of the Bulletin. The public policy theme is exciting, well handled, and very important in one of the most critical election years I can remember. As a local political volunteer I am immersed in the weeds of grassroots campaigning. It is refreshing [...]

I enjoyed reading Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10’s history of Swarthmore literary magazines in the April 2012 Bulletin but was disappointed when I got to his treatment of my own era, 1968–72. This time was not the “literary desert” that Epstein-Deutsch describes, and the Swarthmore Review—not even a College publication—did not appear “like a bolt from the [...]

Most of the obituaries of Sally Ride ’72 have not mentioned her Swarthmore connection. Sally was in my second-semester Intro to Physics class in spring 1969. She had come to Swat because of the national reputation of our then–tennis coach Ailyn Terada. Sally was a notable and promising future physics major in her freshman year.
I [...]

It was so heartwarming to read about my dear teacher Randy Exon [professor of studio art] in the July Bulletin. Even though I was an engineering major at Swarthmore, the fondest memories I have are of the painting classes I had with him. Those classes had a “Magic Garden” quality to them. The minute we [...]

After reading the “The Great History Hoax of 1959” in the July Bulletin, I remember hearing about the Sherkite hoax when I was a student. It inspired me to write a few verses (with apologies to A.A. Milne), which I posted on one of the bulletin boards back then:

Mr. W asked
Mr. U, and
Mr. U asked
Mr. [...]

There were a couple articles in the July Bulletin that were especially entertaining and refreshing to read. I had the good fortune to have taken a lifelong learning course from Randall Exon [the artist/professor featured in the Q&A] and always enjoy hearing more about him.
But I especially enjoyed “The Great History Hoax of 1959.” It [...]

There is much to be written about the career of my late father, Howard Turner ’33, and the Bulletin kindly made special notice of it in the July issue. The Turner School of Construction Management, established by Turner Construction Company, which he led, was mentioned but not that it was formed to support businesses owned [...]