Editor's Desk
SUMMERTIME
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The Montanan welcomes letters to the editor. We ask that letters be signed and include the writer's graduating year or years when appropriate, home address, and phone number or e-mail address. Send them to: Montanan Editor Unfortunately, because of space limitations we are not able to include all letters sent to us. Letters that appear often are edited for length or clarity. While universities are places of discussion where people of good will do not always agree, letters deemed potentially libelous or that malign a person or group will not be published. Opinions expressed in the Montanan do not necessarily reflect those of The University of Montana. |
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Summer is delicious on a university campus. Acres of well-kept greenery, turquoise skies with wispy clouds … so still and beautiful on a silent morning one might conceive it a cathedral of nature, Main Hall’s bell tower sounding out eight chimes.
But if you want that kind of quiet, you’d better come early in the day. Although the popular conception may be that universities are abandoned in the summer, that idea is far from the truth. High school football camps, summer session classes, prospective students visiting with their parents. Groups here, there, everywhere.
You see pre-schoolers strung along across the grass, each connected to a rope held ultimately by their grown-up leader, moving like a bobbing, colorful centipede across the green expanse of the Oval. A little later, soccer camp for middle-schoolers. On my way back from an errand, a music professor giving a violin lesson in the shade outside the music building, listening to her student while she keeps an eye on her two-year-old.
The other day I threaded my way through a large group of men and women with the ubiquitous name tags, the women wearing head scarves, chatting happily as they moved en masse to the UC, no doubt for lunch.
UM’s connections with Kyrgystan and Pakistan, and its recent welcoming of students from Saudi Arabia have broadened the languages overheard as one ambulates across campus. I am used to hearing French, German, Japanese and now we’ll add central Asian and Arabic languages to that mix.
Although there is much happening at UM over the summer months, it all moves at a much slower pace, as if all the angst of class registration, tests, administrative snafus, faculty wrangling, facility service problems, parking hassles, class preparation—all are reduced to their lowest common denominator. No worries. It’s summer. Let’s sit in the sun here for a minute. Too hot, let’s move to the shade. Feel that sweet breeze … is it time for lunch?
Summer is delicious on a university campus.
Joan Melcher
Editor, Montanan
Letters to the Editor
Memories
I attended all of the Aber Day keggers, even the ones not held at lower Miller Creek. Jefferson Airplane and Bonnie Raitt were never at any of those events, as noted in the article. I can think of quite a few (believe it or not) who were, but I would remember Bonnie Raitt and the Airplane. Bonnie Raitt played a ballroom concert in 1976, but the Aber Day event was usually boogie-woogie, borderline country rockin’ blues artists like Elvin Bishop, Jerry Jeff Walker, Heart, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and even the Cajun fiddler, Doug Kershaw, who came in by helicopter one year. Someone should compile a short history of those keggers, starting as an offshoot of residence-hall keggers and growing to one east of Missoula the first year, I believe, and then moving twice before ending up at the rodeo grounds for the last couple of years. Thanks for bringing back memories. The Montana Band was what people came to think of as Mission Mountain in the latter days, but it was a whole different animal. The magic was just not as keen. Thank you—and regards.
Rick Tobin
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Editor’s note: We wondered about this because Greg Reichenberg said in the band’s recently released DVD that Bonnie Raitt played and sang at one Aber Day kegger. We didn’t have to look long to find collaborating evidence. This poster by Monte Dolack tells the story. (I suppose Raitt could have canceled, but she definitely was billed.) We checked with UM Productions and then the K. Ross Toole Archives at the Mansfield Library to see if they had any record of the groups and individuals who played at the keggers. Archives staff dug through Montana Kaimins of the era and did not find a record of Jefferson Airplane playing at a kegger. The band no doubt fronted for the Airplane, but at another event.
Tamsen or Tamzene?
I enjoyed Vince Devlin’s article in the Spring 2006 Montanan about Kelly Dixon’s work at the Donner Party site. I hope she continues. A minor correction: I’m pretty sure that George Donner’s wife’s name was spelled Tamsen, not Tanzene. I hope that Kelly Dixon has read Ordeal by Hunger, a very detailed and understated account of the Donner Party tragedy by the late George R. Stewart, who was an English professor at the University of California. He wrote quite a bit about other events on the California trails. His larger book, The California Trail, is very complete and readable.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher P.S. Williams
Portland, Oregon
Editor’s note: I contacted Kelly Dixon and she responded that Ordeal by Hunger has been an influence in her research and is noted in all of her project bibliographies. She wrote, “the story {behind} Tamsen’s name is actually more complicated than the writer of the letter may realize. Her first name is commonly spelled Tamsen in the literature of the Donner Party. Yet, she herself used the spelling Tamzene. According to our project historian, this is a version of Thomasine, which is a feminine form of Thomas.” Even though Tamzene may be a correct spelling, our article had it as Tanzene, an error probably attributable to a typo or to the author hearing the name that way. We regret the misspelling and appreciate that both our readers and our faculty members keep us on our toes.
