OPKN r QUESTION confirmed legacy. Nuclear energy is wonderful, but radiation does kill, and the residue from miraculous new chemicals makes toxic all our pure streams. Yet who of us did not start saving for his children's education the moment they were bom? On one level, we cherish the future of our progeny—and on the other, we have fouled the world in which they will have to live. If there is ever a true day of judgment, our generation will be weighed in the scale-, ami found wanting. Erir/i Segafs most remit book is T h e Class. He graduate/I from HarvardCollege in 1958.
John Jay Osborn What is the ultimate meaning of life? T h e answer is my family. I'm forty years old, have been married eighteen years. When my father was forty and married eighteen years, 1 was out of his way, eighteen and on my own way to Harvard. My dad could buckle down into his "productive years." But my children are six and eight; they need attention. My wife is a doctor; her career is as important as mine. So we're both involved in all the elements of raising the children, miming the house. And we're involved in each other's lives because we arc constantly balancing priorities, carving up the day on a minute by minute basis. This is what's known as a "high maintenance" relationship. My wife and I have to spend a lot of time talking to each other; otherwise the system derails. We have to be aware of each other's moods, particular needs. When we aren't, the retribution is swift and strong. I think we are engaged in a variety of the Japanese manufacturing and marketing strategy that American companies are trying to emulate. Everything has to be done on a "do it once, do it right" schedule. Deliveries from suppliers are arranged to coincide with time of need to avoid inventory buildup. Each member of the assembly line is responsible for the whole unit, not just a part. If something goes wrong, the whole plant shuts down; wc have 100-percent quality control. Only, of course, in our case, we're supplying emotional boosts, 164
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love, affection, on time, when needed, no misses. I don't get as many books written this way. but books aren't the product. It is the most satisfying way to live; you're truly engaged. No question about it. John Jay Osborn '67, J.D. '70, is a writer. His books include T h e Paper Chase anil T h e Man Who Owned New York.
Martha Lyman What shaping experiences still lie ahead for me? It has been almost a year since my grandmother died. As she was dying, and since her death, I have often reflected upon the experiences she had and the person she was. More often than not I have wondered, at the same time, what experiences and people will be woven together with my personality to become the fabric of my life. As I reflect upon my grandmother's life, I tend to focus on her response ro events over which she had little or no control. 1 try to understand what role, if any, the magnitude of technological and
social change she experienced—growing from a child in "Indian Territory" to an adult witnessing the opening of a new frontier in space—played in the development of her character. I also wonder whether the personal grief she carried through much of her life over the deaths of parents, a child, her husband, and two grandsons became the source of her strength and warmth, and indeed the thread which held our large family together. If 1 live to my grandmother's 93 years, I am only one third of the way through my life. While I have been concentrating on the choices I am making that will influence what I do in life and who I am, I am coming to realize that there may be those experiences over which I have no control that will have greater influence. I wonder what will those experiences be, and how will I respond? Martha West Lyman lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, with her husband. Daniel '73, and their daughter. Anna. After six years of working on natural resource polity issues for a conservation o/ganizatioii. she is doing freelance work on many of the same issues and spending more time in the chatlending and wonderful world of a three- warold.
Edward Hoagland How many? A question that many writers turn over (it has its analogies, of course, for other professions) is how many children they would like to have had and how many books they can reasonably hope to writein a lifetime. If the books are to have much chance of being one-of-a-kind, they may not earn enough money for the author to father many children. Fathering is a complex matter nowadays, involving tens of thousands of dollars as well as many thousands of fine busy hours. Kids are no longer expected to raise themselves, and some parents actually "budget" for the process, I think. I have one nonpareil child going off to college this fall, and have published twelve books. Each of the latter was the best I was able to write at the time— but why not twelve children and onlv
one book? Or why didn't I strike a better balance and produce six of each? Well, at 53, I've had exactly that number of books in me, no more and no less, and have gone gimpy doing them. Yet nevertheless—yes, certainly—I would have had six kids if my readers had supported the notion. I've never turned with relief to the company of adults from the company of children, and tend to believe that fecundity of any sort breeds further fecundity. I've seen writers parched of humor and flexibility by midcareer from what I've suspected was mostly not having had any children. Love takes loads of time, yet in my experience can double or redouble the pace of one's ideas—they came fast and furiously when my daughter was small and I was waking up