Class of 1978

Class Secretary: George Beckwith, 200 Cabrini Blvd, Apt. 44, New York, NY 10033; chipwith@aol.com

Class President: Mary Henderson Pressman, 5306 Sunset Dr., Kansas City, MO 64112; mhpinkc@aol.com

Next Reunion in 2003. Got news? Tap out a note to magazine@bates.edu! For 16 years, Cathy Attig has been working on the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) Project, housed at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “DARE includes historical information as well as dialect and colloquial terms,” she reported in Bates’ anthropology department newsletter. “I’m fascinated with how people have lived in the past and how they deal with their lives in modern time. This project reveals the great variety of American language and provides plenty to keep me interested every day.” Volume 4, she says, is off to Belknap Press, a division of Harvard University Press. As Amazon.com reports, the fascinating dictionary includes a trove of Americanisms. By scanning Volume 3, for example, the reader could untangle this sentence: “If you jug-handle that kyoodle and make him meech, you ouchy numpy, we’re bound for a real lip battle.” (Translated: If you treat unfairly that mutt and make him cringe, you irritable dolt, we’re bound for an argument.”)