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letters
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“Gonzales apparently did not absorb the high ideals to which Rice is dedicated during his time there.” —Paul Wernicke ’81
Bevo, SMU had its pony, and even the Aggies, whose mascot is themselves, had a collie dog. At the time, the Rice mascot was a 10-foot tall fiberglass-like structure of an obese, friendly looking hoot owl— hardly the image a football team wanted to carry into gridiron war. “Sammy,” as the mascot was called, was unimpressive. It was so unimpressive that when some Aggies stole it and demanded a ransom for its return, the Rice student body responded: “Keep it.” I accepted the gift of the live great horned owl, and at the next student council meeting, I brought the owl, who I named Thor after the Norse god of thunder. The student governing body voted to accept Thor as the official mascot of Rice. I kept Thor tethered to an ironing board in my apartment for a few weeks and tried to take him outside from time to time. Obviously, I did not have a clue how to care for an owl. The manager of the apartments became aware of the presence of the owl— somehow, a student walking around with a great horned owl tethered to his arm tended to draw some attention. The manager was unimpressed and suggested that we find other accommodations for Thor. I approached the Lovett College cabinet, and the cabinet agreed to fund the construction of a wooden bird cage at Lovett to house Thor. I believe someone consulted the Houston Zoo and the Rice
biology department to determine the recommended dimensions and nature of the cage. The cage was constructed around a tree so that Thor would have limbs to use. The cage was fairly large, so Thor could make short flights. We obtained mice and rats from the biology department to feed Thor, and Lovett appointed a group of students to take him to athletic contests and to care for him. He prospered. Several years after I graduated, I was told that my owl had died after living to an old age for owls. So that is how the owl cage came to exist and why it was located at Lovett. Somewhere, I have some colored slides of Thor. If anyone is interested, I can try to find them in my archives. P. Keith O’Gorman ’70
San Antonio, Texas
Other
The summer issue of Sallyport just arrived with the letters department headlined by a quote comparing Rice to the University of California at Berkeley. As a graduate of both (Rice, BA 1957, and UCB, PhD 1965), I think both institutions should be proud of the comparison. Of course Mr. Adams meant something different by the comparison, but he has conveniently forgotten that the uproar at Berkeley was caused by the defense of the right to free political speech. It was the at-
tempt by the university authorities to prohibit the distribution of political advocacy literature on the approaches to the campus that was the trigger to all the turmoil of the 1960s. It was a defense of his right to have that letter published as well as the right of others to refute his stand. Graham Campbell ’57
Upton, New York
I read with interest the article in Sallyport (summer 2006) on R2, the latest iteration of a literary magazine at Rice. My best wishes to an important project. However, perhaps it should be called R3. To my knowledge, the first student edited literary magazine at Rice was Janus, which I founded and edited in 1960. It was, by the way, the venue for the first publication by a graduate student at Rice by the name of Larry McMurtry. The chapter he published was from Horseman Pass By, which later was made into the movie Hud. Larry has gone on to a distinguished writing career, including an Oscar last year for co-writing Brokeback Mountain. I lost touch with Janus after the second issue and my graduation from Rice in 1962. It seems it disappeared until the current renaissance.
vived until 1973. Note that R2 is short for The Rice Review, not for the second iteration of a Rice student literary magazine, otherwise it might have to be called R6, at least. Between Janus and R2, there have been several literary magazines at Rice, including The Rice Literary Review, The Rice Literary Magazine, Collage, and University Blue. —Editor I have a very small correction to make to the notice on page 17 of the summer 2006 Sallyport. Rice did participate in the Association for Computing Machinery Programming Contest World Finals after it won the regional contests in 1994 and 1996. See the following websites for the statistics: http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/icpc94/finals/Standings. html and http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/ icpc96/Finals/Standings.html. The finals were not called the Tech Olympics back then, but I suspect that Rice also was in the finals in other years after 1985, since I believe Rice traditionally has dominated the southwestern region in this contest. I see that a Rice team also participated in the world finals last year. See: http://compsci.rice. edu/news.cfm?doc_id=9810. Aaron Hertzmann ’96
Seattle, Washington
Joel Simon Hochman, MD ’62
Houston, Texas
You’ll be happy to hear that Janus sur-
Winter ’07
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