The total exhaustion of 1983, getting the financial aid operation at Wentworth onto computer, resulted in My first week's vacation last December at the Club Med in Agadir being a blur of sleep and recuperation. It well prepared me for the next Week at the C.M. Marrakech, with excursions up to Berber villages in the Atlas Mountains, daily sorties to the Club's desert oasis for luncheon and poolside sunning late afternoons spent wandering the native souk (marketplace) just outside the C.M. gates (dentists abutting abattoirs, seated by snake charmers, adjacent to fakirs swallowing swords, pointing to vendors of all sorts of merchandise, all enshrouded in the myriad odors of the incense and spice merchants). Could the C.M.'s former status as a seraglio have anything to do with the fun-loving nightly entertainments?! In fact, my constant companions there were two older French couples, the husband of one being a retired actor from Cannes who was a raconteur of the first order, fleshing out what the film festivals there really involve. Another companion told me, at the end of my trip when I met her in Paris, that student riots in Algeria had led to the Club having to be barricaded the week after I left it.

From Marrakech followed Bogart up to Casablanca, whence a flight to Dakar, Senegal's and Africa's westernmost point. In Dakar's harbor a visit to the Island of Slaves where African chiefs sold their tribesmen (and women and children) to the highest bidder! by the pound. What a contrast to the Club Med at Almadies, and certainly nothing like life on 49 Symphony Road, Suite 39! Counting the number of choices at the luncheon buffet one day, I stopped at 220, before even reaching the dessert table. Now having been to so many Clubs, they've become a third family to me: the Chef du village at Dakar had been at Djerba in Tunisia with me five years before; renewed acquaintance with the crafts instructor whom I had met at Cancun two years ago. But I'm a relative neophyte: one member had been to 24 different Clubs; another was celebrating the 21st of her 84 birthdays at the C.M. Marrakech

Finally on to the real excursion of the trip: up the Niger River via Air Mali (Malair to its regulars, as it has progressed from 17 planes and 200 employees some years ago to 3 planes - one sequestered in London for non-payment of bills - and 700 employees now) As the prime minister's Wife was late getting to our flight out of Dakar, 180 of us sweltered on the tarmac for three hours before we finally took off for Bamako, Mali's capital. Air Mali does have a bonus for its passengers: We had three roller-coaster aborted landings before touching down: seems the control tower has been on the fritz for a few years; visual landings in the omnipresent dust are rather chancy

Anyone who wonders at concern about UNESCO's failure in its mission would do well to visit Bamako, there to see all of the free relief supplies being sold at exorbitant prices in the open markets, and there to hear from the junior-level UN employees of the corruption, waste, and inefficiency of the 'relief' operations.

Even the primitive conditions in Mali's capital didn't prepare me for the trip l,000 years into the past at Tomboctoo (we almost didn't make it, as the only pilot in Mali qualified to fly the Constellation couldn't be found till the last minute. A further worry: as the control tower there as well was non-functioning, departing people told us that dust storms had kept them sequestered at Tomboctoo for an extra week. A group of Italian tourists were stuck there while one of their party flew back to Italy to get spare parts for their Land Rover.

But it was worth all the travails: what a trip! No paved roads nor electricity, nor sewers in this city of 25,000 (refrigerators and TV's operated by kerosene generators). I was the first Yank the hotel manager had seen in 3 years. Happily the hotel had its own generator to run the air conditioning, which shielded us from the 110F heat and ever-present dust.

One more hint of Mali's ills before returning to civilization: when we touched down in Algiers, our plane had to land at the cargo area distant from the passenger terminal, as Air Mali was in arrears in payment of landing fees. Finally back to Paris, where at the Club Med Neuilly, had occasion for reunion with many of the Parisians I had met at C.M.s in past trips .

Back in Boston, learned I had been elected to the board of SAMSUSA, the parent of the Samaritan branches in the USA; shortly thereafter a resignation led to my accepting (only on a stop-gap basis) chairmanship of the finance committee. So fast are new branches opening, and so many are the inquiries from new cities about how to get a branch going, the extremely limited financial and personnel resources of SAMSUSA are being strained to the breaking point.

Given the above, and the fact that I was able to get to only half of the performances of the Boston Ballet that I had tickets for the last few years, it was a bittersweet duty to end 14 years as a trustee of the Friends of the Boston Ballet. Certainly shall miss the annual madness of the Ballet's Esplanade series, and regret not having the frequent benefit parties to attend, where there is such a contrast to the society at the Charles Street Jail: I do, however, have to recognize that I am finite.

Another reason I had to leave the Ballet: as premature as it might seem, my class at Brown is coming to its 25th reunion; I'm doing what I can to help our class give a record-breaking amount to the university. A new dimension to our annual gift: this year, for the first time, we are designating a portion of our gift as an endowed scholarship fund, recognizing that college is now costing ten times what it did when I was a student (surely a coincidence that we're doing it, given that I work in financial aid). The response to our efforts so far has been encouraging.

With two new people joining us in the financial aid office this year, we're in the best shape ever to assist students and parents in their trip through the maze of Federal, state, institutional, and private requirements for getting aid. A slight, complication, as I noted last year: having spent 16 months getting one software system functioning smoothly in the aid office, had to run it parallel this year with a new software package (ultimately better, as it will link together all of the administrative offices at the college). I did vow not to go into the office in the evenings any more: though I might get less work done, what good is greater productivity when health is near gone? I was encouraged upon learning form a colleague at a conference at Williamsburg in the Spring that it had taken his college only! six years to get the software system we are using fully functional.

In May, the Governor's Suicide Commission concluded our work, issuing the most detailed state-wide survey of lock-up suicides in the nation, with research on every behind-bars death during the past twelve years we could get data on, and with a whole package of legislative recommendations now languishing for the past six months in the Ways and means committee on Beacon Hill, while Massachusetts' new drunk driving laws have reduced death on the highways by 25%, while there has been a scandalous increase in the number of lock-up suicides, most of them by people not charged with a crime, but put in protective custody (what an ironic phrase).

Though I have little hope that the legislature will move, much is being accomplished through court actions, both on the State and Federal level: in May, I was permitted to appear in Federal court as an expert witness in a case involving lock-up suicide (the distinguishing thing about expert witnesses, once qualified, is that they can state opinions under oath). The jury concluded that the six officers, who had noted their detainee had said he would commit suicide, were not guilty of simple negligence because they had no suicide training; however, their employer the town was found guilty of gross negligence in denying the decedent his right to life by not providing suicide training for its officers, and was ordered to make substantial monetary payment to the decedent's survivors.

As a result of that and other judgments, I'm having an ever-accelerating number of requests to present my suicide seminar with the Samaritans, to state, county, local, Federal and military law enforcement officers. Given my primary duty to Wentworth during the day, have to squeeze these seminars in on holidays, weekends, and evenings. For instance, I flew to Ohio (like Massachusetts, finding an alarming increase in behind-bars suicides since enforcing tough drunk-driving laws) on Columbus Day, where I had three seminars in one day to several hundred police officers. Is it worth it? If one person - either detainee or relative or friend or colleague of one of my audience - lives because of the seminar's new insights, how can the cost/benefit analysis be done!?

Further increasing awareness of the suicide phenomenon have been appearances I've been able to make on several local and one national TV show, as well as a number of other media exposures. To those who might think my preoccupation with suicide macabre, I've come to the conclusion that only people addicted to life care about arresting suicide: if life is cheap and meaningless, than suicide would not be a tragedy.

The capstone of the year, and probably of all my years' family events, was a surprise Golden Wedding celebration for my parents at the Golf Club engineered primarily by my brother and sister To be able to keep an event with over 50 guests and with months of planning secret from Mum and Dad so that they were totally surprised by the event! After the fact, they said they had been a bit put out that we did nothing for the event but in their wildest imagination they couldn't have anticipated the number of relatives and friends that flew, drove, trained and otherwise got to Needham for such a happy time.

Well, that as much as I have time for; hope I haven't worn you down with my peregrinations through what has been one of the fullest years of my life.

You can probably detect my eagerness to get away for my trip this year. Slight change of format: as Jessica will be leaving for Belgium to be there for Christmass (thence to meet her boyfriend's parents in France?!?!), shall profit from the long weekend and depart on the 22nd for Paris: after lunch with a friend there, on the 23rd, board a flight to get to Mauritius the morning of the 24th. I'm taking a tape I have of last Christmass's Midnight Mass at the Church of the Advent to be with me at Club Med on Christmass Day. Then to Reunion Island, finally up to the Seychelles (all of the above three destinations in the southwestern Indian Ocean, by the way) before necessary overnights in Paris and London (perhaps a bit of Samaritan contact) until a mid-January return to Boston.

Warmest wishes for joy at Christmass and reconciliation throughout 1985!

David J Hogarth

For two thousand years light and warmth have pulsed out over the world from the little crib. From His eyes streams the light -- Lumen de Lumnie -- the light which the darkness did not comprehend. The little heart which beat in the child's breast is the very seat of love. from Sigrid Undset: Christmas and Twelfth Night.