Nov/Dec 2000

During the late spring and summer months the class of 1963 becomes incommunicative, and the class secretary doesn’t have any news. That makes the class secretary’s job harder. But the class secretary doesn’t get discouraged and doesn’t give up. He is resourceful. These are characteristics he developed as a student at MIT. The class secretary resorted to making up a news item that is really a reminiscence, and to a sophisticated form of electronic begging that we call E-mail. First the reminiscence. I remember when we were students Paul Cohen and a few Burton House friends had a folk singing group. They performed at living group parties, and they were pretty good. One of their tunes, The Song of the Salvation Army, or something like that, had the following verse:

We never eat cookies cause cookies have yeast.
And one little bite makes a man like a beast.
Oh can you imagine the sorry disgrace.
A man in the gutter with crumbs on his face.
Away, away, with the rum, by gum, with the rum, by gum, with the rum, by gum …

I thought I could parody this to illustrate the plight of your class secretary.

Your class secretary, he has got the blues.
Because for this space he’s not got any news.
Oh can you imagine the sorry disgrace.
Of begging for class notes out in cyberspace.
Away, away, with the rum, by gum, etc.

You wouldn’t want to receive an E-mail in which your class secretary begged for news would you? Send me some tidbits so I won’t have crumbs on my face. It’s easier than writing a letter. And maybe Paul will let me know what he’s been up to for the last 37 years. This free publicity may help him land a few folk singing gigs.

To start my campaign I looked you up in the on-line MIT directory. I was astonished at how few E-mail addresses are listed. In the first few hundred names in the directory only 11% show E-mail addresses. Hey, classmates! You are graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a capital "T". Log onto the MIT Alumni Web site (http://web.mit.edu/alum/) and update your personal information. I know that more than 11% of you use electronic mail.

I E-mailed a dozen of you, and got enough material for a column. Bill Barnett wrote: "I am editor of a Cambridge University Press journal, Macroeconomic Dynamics. Although the journal's objective is to publish sophisticated research in advanced dynamic macroeconomics, we also publish interviews of well-known economists. In the June 2000 issue, we featured an interview with Franco Modigliani by Robert Solow and me. Franco and Robert are both Nobel Prize winners in economics at MIT. We garnered fascinating insights into Franco's views and his remarkable life. If you knew him at MIT, you may wish to read that interesting interview. We also are about to publish an interview of Paul Samuelson by V. V. Chari. A collection of some of my own published journal articles is to appear in a series of [several] books to be published by North Holland Publishing Company. The first book in that series just appeared, and is called The Theory of Monetary Aggregation. In early 2000 I made a lecture tour of Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Paris regarding that book." I noticed in the directory that Bill’s MIT degree was in Course II (Mechanical Engineering) and he seemed to be doing economics now, so I asked him about the transition. He told me that he took Franco Modigliani's graduate course while he was a senior, and became fascinated by economics as taught by Modigliani. As a result he increasingly drifted toward economics. Bill’s graduate work included an MBA (Berkeley) and a Ph.D. (Carnegie Mellon) in statistics (jointly with economics). His first position after the Ph.D. was at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC and he has been an economist ever since. Now he is a member of the economics faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Bill concluded his note with the comment that "Before getting my Ph.D., I worked at Rocketdyne in LA, and indeed I was an engineer in those days."

Another E-missive came from John Yules, who is a faculty member at Chapman University right here in Orange County. John and I are both graduates of course VIII (Physics). A few months ago, he came across a copy of the 8.09 lab handout about constructing an ionization detector. 8.09 lab was a bellwether for determining who was serious about physics and who wasn’t. John says he plans to join us at the monthly luncheon of Orange County MIT alumni that is held at nearby UC Irvine.

Best regards to you all. You can reach me at: Mike Bertin, 22 Gillman St, Irvine, CA 92612. E-mail: MCB1@aol.com. If you want to schmooze, call me at (949) 786-9450.