Item From the Past: East Hall Ensemble

May 8, 1981

Looks like we were in a good mood. We'd just finished our exams for the year. This ensemble of friends, formed during our sophomore year, had gathered one more time in Neal and Stewart's room in East Hall before we scattered for the summer and, in fact, the 30 years since then: Cynthia, me, Layne, Julie, Neal and Jim (left to right). Jim was my roommate, also in East Hall; the girls all lived in one of the nearby girls' dorms (Gillette Hall, if memory doesn't fail me).

I think Stewart took the picture. But the impulse to snap images, facilitated these days by cameras in every gizmo imaginable, was mostly missing then. This and three other photographs taken within minutes of each other -- probably because we knew it was unlikely that we'd get together again -- are the only images I have from that entire school year.

The length of my hair at that moment owed to the fact that I only had it cut during Christmas break and in the summer when I was in college. The was no ideological or aesthetic imperative at work, just that I couldn't be bothered to go to the barber more often. As for the Mr. Bill shirt, I think I'd gotten it for Christmas a few months earlier. At some later point in the 1980s, it vanished.