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October 25, 2000 Letters PAW gives pause; new logo, new look Professor John Martin Remembered Appreciating Professor Nollner PAW welcomes letters. We may edit them for length, accuracy, clarity, and civility. Our address: Princeton Alumni Weekly, 194 Nassau St., Suite 38, Princeton, NJ 08542 (paw@princeton.edu). PAW gives pause; new logo, new look The new design for PAW is, without exaggeration, appallingly ugly. The logo is silly; the pages of the magazine look cluttered and thrown together; fonts are dull and juxtaposed irrationally. None of the "improvements" to the classic PAW design of the 1940s and '50s has ever struck me as much of a step forward, visually. But till now, none has been truly offensive, either. This new design is offensive, if for no other reason than its utterly amateurish look. If, in visual terms, the new PAW represents the body of Princeton alumni, it makes a sorry statement. Thomas Artin, '60 *68 Sparkill, N.Y.
It is awful. Please respect the tsunami as it rolls over you and get rid of the logo ASAP. Thank you. Rob Vaughan '65 Little Silver, N.J.
You are admittedly prepared to ride out heavy weather and have begged to be spared only the tsunami (From the Editor, September 13). Evidently you already recognize how self-indulgent was your decision to overhaul PAW into its current form. Showing you can be "spectacular" in your design and editorial choices proves nothing more than that you have missed the point and are unfit for the responsibility. PAW is about the university and its students, past, present, and future. PAW does not exist to bolster staff résumés with lines about shouldering through the crowd of current thought. Perhaps the PAW staff have become "journalists" and forgotten that their responsibility is to report the news and opinion of the community to the community. The personal opinions of a quality staff should be a trivial tint in that tapestry. Report the facts. Your audience is perfectly capable of drawing its own conclusions and forming its own opinions. It's time to raise your game. Long overdue, in fact. If nothing else, lose the new cover graphic. Digital crayola is better suited to the half-life of a basement e-zine, not the cover of the alumni magazine of Princeton University. Joseph K. Myers '80 Westport, Conn.
You may add my name to the list of those alumni who think the new logo thoroughly warrants "thunder and heavy rains" from those who love Princeton. It is inexcusably tacky. If it were up to me, I would not spare you the tsunami. Joseph Neff Ewing, Jr. '47 West Chester, Pa.
After 35 years in the aviation business, I was surprised to find a Pratt & Whitney brochure in my mailbox today containing some Princeton news and Class Notes. Next year, will we get Piggledy Wiggledy annual reports? Adrian V. Woodhouse '59 Reno, Nev.
I am afraid I don't agree with you on the new PAW cover. I concede it is different. However, both my wife and I thought it was a catalogue when we first looked at it. The logo is unreadable without close scrutiny, and the name itself is much too small. Also, I believe the new type is much less readable than the old type. While I am at it, the overlaying of the class numerals over the name of the class secretary is distracting. On the positive side, you have a wonderful magazine, and I look forward to receiving it. James C. Wallace '50 Chagrin Falls, Ohio
Perhaps this is just grumbling in the manner of the wistful alumnus, one who laments the installation of a new light bulb by celebrating how good the old one looked, but I must register my opinion that the new logo is a miss. As journal after journal has "freshened" its graphics with the addition of sans-serif blandness or a bitty, fussy logo, PAW has remained a happy surprise to find in the mailbox. Inside the cover, I found pleasing, structured writing about Princeton and the world, and on the cover, I found a pleasing, structured title that looked sleek and dignified but not crusty. Sorry, but I liked the old cover better. I'll still look forward to receiving PAW; I'll just dive inside it a little more swiftly now. Jeremy Beer '86 San Antonio, Tex.
Seems to me that you missed a trick there at PAW with respect to your change in cover design. What you don't understand is that for us folks more than 50 miles or so from Old Nassau, one of the most important things about our alumni magazines is to be able to display them in our offices, studies, living rooms, etc. Guess I'll just have to put my monthly Harvard Magazine - with HARVARD in big, bold letters across the front - on top of the stack. Dallas Brown '78 Washington, D.C.
If you care one whit about alumni interests, you will put Princeton back into PAW. R. H. Van Fossen, Jr. '63, p'84, p'87, p'91 Decorah, Iowa
The new PAW, September 13, has been lying on my coffee table since it first came in the mail. On that day, I eagerly opened it, only to be surprised by the injudicious use of color and the small print. It has sat on the table since then as I thought about what I wanted to say to you. Forty-seven years after graduation, my eyesight is still good, but I find the new PAW hard to read! The small type size and new type face are not clear or legible, due to the lack of contrast with the background color of the page and the thin lines of the font. In the Class Notes, the names of classmates are in bold caps, which makes scanning the column difficult. The class numerals are superimposed on the class secretary's name and address, making both hard to read. If you are looking for good examples of easy-to-read journals, try Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and the Wall Street Journal. Frankly, you've labored hard and brought forth a mouse, not a Tiger. William B. Gardner '53 West Simsbury, Conn.
Now that you've experimented with one issue of this typographical catastrophe, can PAW please revert to a readable font size? "Better legibility . . . "? That's a hoax played on you by your "renowned designer." Let sanity prevail, and eyestrain cease. Leif Wellington Haase '87 New York, N.Y.
One of the few polite words I can come up with to describe the new cover, logo, layout, and overall design of the new PAW is "ghastly." It was arrestingly ugly when I took it out of the mailbox, and so visually jarring when I tried to read it (where it wasn't trite, that is) that I found myself looking at the ads for relief. The page numbers are hard to find, there are almost no visual breaks between editorial content and advertising materials, and the overall effect of the various visual doo-dads is a very "busy" page. I hope you will listen to feedback from alumni on this, and then go with the majority sentiment if one should develop - as I suspect it will. PAW exists to serve its readership, not to be a vehicle for marginal avant-garde design. I simply can't switch to another publication in order to get news of the campus and my classmates, as you're the only game in town; nor can I cancel my subscription and get my money back. This presents a very different publication-to-reader relationship, and if you'll forgive my putting it this way, it means that you're under some institutional pressure to deliver a modicum of "comfort food" to the inmates. In other words, let the controversy come from the text, the issues, and the ideas; and let us at least be soothed by the appearance. We like seeing pictures of Blair Arch on the cover, etc., etc. Jeffrey A. Kehl '70 New York, N.Y. Awful, ugly, inappropriate, meaningless, meeskeit, illegible, brutal, and besides that, I don't like it. It references nothing, stands for nothing, evokes nothing, and is not even clever. I could go on. Dick Limoges '60 Philadelphia, Pa.
Inside format is clean and readable. On Class Notes, the orange year behind secretary's information makes it hard to read and is visually irritating. The slogan, An independent magazine . . . supported by your class dues, is no longer strictly true. LOSE the new logo. Ugh. Looks like three people stuck together in a phonebooth. Or a train wreck. Andrea Matthews '78 Needham, Mass.
Having lived in Holland for the past few years, I didn't see PAW in its previous design; having designed the first all-white cover the summer of 1969 with Lanny Jones '66, then editor; and also having edited, published, and founded five art and architecture magazines in the past 15 years in New York, including Metropolis Magazine, I find the new cover design of PAW not radical or abstract enough to be truly new or cutting edge. Yet, I do like the dissolution of the whole iconic and totemic word of Princeton into a deconstructivist zig-zag-zig. Andrew Pierce MacNair '69 Amsterdam, Holland
Love the new look. Especially the dazzling logo - despite previously expressed reservations about hanging on to "Alumni." Abandoning the equally traditional and outdated "Weekly" tag, however, would have truly distressed me. That anomaly simply confirms the primary truth my curmudgeon city-editor years taught me: "There is no such thing as logic!" Brad Bradford '44 Highland Park, Ill.
Graphic Revolution! Hurrah for Old, make that New, Nassau! Cuthbert R. Train '64 Northeast Harbor, Maine As a settler in Shanghai for the past 10 years, I have moved from daily bewilderment at the strangeness of my adopted city to familiarity and even, at times, acceptance and understanding. But rarely do I feel in harmony with the views and interests of Shanghai's mainstream. At the same time, when I receive PAW I feel reassured about my state of estrangement; the orange-and-black parading Princetonians seem even more exotic than the socialists with Chinese characteristics among whom I live. The progress of Class Notes with baby photos and obituaries provides some human grounding to the more bizarre Princeton spectacles. But what has truly given me a sense of community are the letters over the past year regarding the appointment of Professor Peter Singer. What started out as a few angry outbursts have turned into a forum about ethics and the university, about freedom of speech and religious morals, about the place of debate and its importance in education. What has been glorious is the writers' attachment to the debate and the shared urgency of weighing in an opinion. Living in a place where the few Falun Gong protesters can be disposed of without concern or comment by the rest of the populace, the debate in PAW finally gives me a sense of the common ideals of Princeton. They are ideals forged by an education that believes in debate, the efficacy of speaking out, and the individual's responsibility and power in society. These are precious values wherever you fall on the spectrum of a professor's appointment. They have crisply articulated for me what is missing in Shanghai's daily bustle. Virginia Moore '86 Shanghai, China
I've watched with interest the monthly Letters to the Editor debates over Professor Peter Singer, with the "academic freedom" arguments being used to attack the "immoral infanticide" arguments. If academic freedom and the importance of open debates are so important here, shouldn't they also be in other areas of our political discussion? Why is it so hard to find a professor to support any other view than those of the left? Last I heard, over 90 percent of the faculty of our prestigious universities took leftist positions on most issues. Maybe we need affirmative action on political views in the faculty to get real academic debate to flourish for the enrichment of all. William B. Smith *63 Cohasset, Mass. Professor John Martin remembered
I was so sad to read of Professor J. R. Martin's passing. It was his Baroque class, which I took during my freshman or sophomore year, that made me choose art history as my major. Even though his class was early in the morning, I never missed a lecture no matter how tired I was. In fact, once I overslept and literally ran over to the lecture hall, unwashed and unbreakfasted, rather than miss it. I frequently took the train into New York to go to the Frick and other museums so that I could see the original works he had discussed. During my junior year, when I was in Paris on Smith College's year-abroad program, I went to the Musée Cognacq-Jay one day and encountered a little-known Rembrandt painting that Professor Martin had put on his final exam as an "unknown" work to identify: it was Balaam's Ass, which the artist had done as a teenager and which was, therefore, quite atypical and a real stumper for all of us. I bought the postcard and sent it to Professor Martin with a message along the lines of "Remember when you nailed us with this one?" I think he was pleased that I remembered. Anne C. Powell '84 Boxford, Mass.
We will remember Professor John R. Martin *47 as one of the most exciting, exuberant, and enthralling teachers we studied with as undergraduates. He instilled a passion for art in us, along with generations of students over a 40-year career at Princeton. In a preceptorial on Rembrandt, Professor Martin was discussing the famous Anatomical Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp, a group portrait in which the eponymous Tulp, having denuded a cadaver's left arm of skin, is describing the musculature. Professor Martin, having analyzed Rembrandt's composition, launched into an anatomy lesson of his own. Here is a flexor muscle controlling inward finger movements, he said, pointing to a slide projection, and there is an extensor for outward movements. Next came an account of 17th-century medicine, including the use of leeches to bleed patients and of clysters to render their insides as clean as a hound's tooth. By this point, some students had been transported back to Amsterdam in the 1630s. Others were clearly grossed out, and said so. Professor Martin, taking note of both groups, beamed with pleasure. Andrew Mytelka '85 Bethesda, Md. Arnold Mytelka '58 Chatham, N.J.
Seeing the obituary notice for Professor John Martin *47 brought back a flood of memories (Notebook, September 13), and a sense of gratitude for how, when I was a freshman, he opened my eyes to the whole field of esthetics. I was lucky enough to be assigned to his precept in Art, Architecture, and Sculpture in America, which I chose because of a total lack of knowledge of such things. He showed us how there were such things as style, design, and periods within art, and we all signed on for his subsequent course in Baroque art. Again I was lucky enough to be assigned to his precept. I never visit an art museum or examine architecture without remembering this master teacher, and thinking what a wonderful gift he gave to us in his sensitive teaching and enthusiasm for his subject. The world is a richer place because of his life. Rob Roy MacGregor '60 Philadelphia, Pa.
Editor's note: For another tribute to Professor Martin, go to PAW's Web site, www.princeton.edu/~paw, to read an essay by Susan Schwartz '88.
Professor Gerald Garvey *62 took over American Political Thought from the legendary Alpheus T. Mason in the 1968 - 69 academic year. He always seemed to be operating on more than one level, using vivid images (including Cartesian coordinates) to teach the material. If we'd had the terminology, we'd have called this "right-brained," something rare in the Ivy League. Turning the then-prevalent "cepts-man" idea on its head (a "cepts-man" boiled a course down to a few concepts, only, nothing too deep, able to generate enough verbiage to get by), Professor Garvey gave us a take-home final in which we were to write a mere 20 sentences: the 20 key concepts in American Political Thought! ("Don't just paraphrase the syllabus back to me.") Coming during a period of great sensitivity to hipness and creativity, this was a terrific challenge, a very creative challenge, from a guy so far beyond hipness that he wore a three-piece suit to class every day. Rob Slocum '71 Stamford, Conn. Appreciating Professor Nollner
I cannot speak for the world at large, but I know that Professor Walter Nollner has left a significant legacy in me personally, and I suspect there are dozens of other alums that could write similar letters to this one. I sang under him for six years, both in the Chapel Choir and in the Glee Club, and traveled with him on four concert tours to numerous foreign countries including Thailand, Czechoslovakia, and Puerto Rico. From him I learned to pronounce texts in over a dozen different languages; and what I learned from him about Ecclesiastical Latin has come in handy in other venues as well. He was an unusual person in many ways. Sometimes he would get so caught up in conducting us that he'd hum or even grunt along without realizing it - this usually meant we were dragging the tempo and he was trying to get us to pick it up by flapping his arms faster. He told me once, without any conceit whatsoever, that he could read music like a newspaper (even the many-staved orchestral scores). He could do magic with a keyboard: On one tour we were asked to perform a work by a member of the royal family of the country we were visiting; the song was very sappy as I recall, and the vocal arrangement pretty awful. He saved the day by inventing on the spot an accompaniment that turned it into something halfway decent. His greatest asset to us, however, was his ability to get college students enthusiastic about singing. Not only about singing, but also about big choral works, about college loyalties (such as the annual football concerts sung with the Harvard or Yale glee clubs). We learned, too, that a work doesn't need to be complicated or difficult in order to thrill an audience, what really matters is that it be performed with energy and enthusiasm. Elizabeth McKenney '84 *89 Altadena, Calif.
The late Pete Conrad '53 was a friend of mine, as was the late Howie Stepp. Shortly after Howie died, his family gave me two Nassau Hall bell clappers (one with the distinctive Princeton "P" forged on it) and a Princeton flag they said Pete had given Howie after Pete's moon walk. I didn't think that the flag was one that went to the moon with Pete. However, in PAW's article about gifts to Princeton (Cover story, February 9), it was reported that "Conrad carried with him five Princeton flags." The article accounts for the disposition of three of the flags. My question is whether or not I am the possessor of a Princeton flag that went to the moon and back. I wonder if someone might remember an occasion, e.g., a party, banquet, private dinner, reception, etc., at which Pete Conrad made a formal presentation of such a flag to Howie Stepp, Sr. Whatever light you might be able to shed upon this mystery would be greatly appreciated. Joseph A. Carragher, Jr. '53 Atlanta, Ga.
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