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Lessons in joy from Alvin and the Chipmunks

Lessons in joy from Alvin and the Chipmunks

Susan Arico

My kids are obsessed with Alvin and the Chipmunks. Last month the oldest, who's 10, went with a friend to see the latest movie in the theatre; he came back fixated on the hip, wee creatures with the helium-balloon voices. He's a Star Wars lover and neophyte Batman follower too, so I'll admit the chipmunk enthusiasm rather caught me off guard. At the next opportunity to buy something with his own money, he bought the DVD… To share the movie bliss with his sisters. And watch it pretty much as often as we'll let him.

At his repeated request I bought three songs off the album; it was the first time he'd ever liked music enough to ask me to purchase it. And in the car -you know where this is going – he asks me to play them on repeat. Continually. The whole crew adores Chipmunk rock, actually. When I play it everyone sings along together as if they actually were cast in the Alvin movie themselves. A rolling capsule of song and harmony are we, when Alvin and his chipmunk brothers bring the tunes.

Horatio Robinson Storer’s journey west
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Horatio Robinson Storer’s journey west

Frederick N. Dyer

We noted that Horatio Robinson Storer first contacted the American Medical Association in 1857 and that his request for creation of an American Medical Association Committee on Criminal Abortion was granted at the Annual Meeting of the Association in Nashville in May of that year. He was made Chairman of the new Committee with power to appoint the other Committee members. We mentioned that it would be two years before the important American Medical Association Report on Criminal Abortion was presented at the May 1859 Annual meeting held in Louisville.

The delay was related to Horatio's concern about chest symptoms and a trip west which he took on the one hand for health reasons and on the other to collect Natural History specimens. He wrote Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institution on Jan. 5, 1858, requesting collecting cases for his natural history efforts. The letter included "I shall undoubtedly have opportunities of getting hold of various interesting specimens in Texas, but have been at a loss as to how to transport them.  It has been suggested that you might have collecting cases on hand, better than anything I could get made here, even if there were time." He also indicated that he would leave Boston on January 12.

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