John Womack, Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, is another basketball buff. Before he let the game go one and a half years ago, he used to play at lunchtime with Repetto, who reminisces. "John is not particularly athletic, but he is aggressive." Womack quit the game during his leave because, he says. "I didn't want to spend the time when all my time was my own. Now I don't have the time, literally, to do it in the middle of the day. And you can't play in the morning, and by night you're too tired. "He plans to take it up again in the spring."

English Professor Robert I. Brustein swears by tennis. "Certainly I play to keep in shape, but tennis doesn't really strengthen that many muscles--just some muscles in the legs. I play more for rhythm, and for timing, and simply for the choreography of the game, which I find enchanting. It keeps you under the illusion that you're still young."

Philip A. Kuhn, professor of History and of East Asian Civilizations and Languages, sees physical endeavor as an alternative to total decay." Unlike many of his colleagues, though, he is unwilling to exercise in a boring or repetitive manner. He prefers to go cross-country sking in New Hampshire's White Mountains, where he owns a cabin. "Anybody who lives in New England and doesn't get out to the country really is missing a great deal. The thrill of gliding through the forest on noiseless skis is hard to beat."

Brendan A. Maher, professor of the Psychology of Personality, waves equally enthusiastic about cross-country skiing. He and his wife learned the sport in Norway during his sabbatical. "It's testimony to my extraordinary ignorance of sking that I didn't even know there were two kinds. Now I am frightened by downhill skiing. When we were in Oslo I went up to the top of the Holmenkollen ski jump, the Olympic ski jump ther, and I could not imagine why people would launch themselves off the top of that thing voluntarily. I decided I would stick to cross-country."

Hoffmann says he doesn't enjoy swimming in cold weather or in swimming pools. "Still, as they haven't quite fixed up the Charles yet, and as Cambridge tends to get chilly in winter, I use the pool." Which pool? "Well, a pool is a pool, and chlorine is chlorine," but he prefers the IAB facilities because he can't park on the other side of the river, and "anyway. Blodgett is like the Paris subway at seven o'clock p.m."

But Hoffmann doesn't need formal exercise, he claims. "Lecturing is a very good way of keeping in shape. It is a huge expense of energy, and preparing for lectures is something that makes one extremely anxious, so that has some effect on one's physical form. I find that I am one of those people who can eat like a horse and never gain weight." What he really likes to do is walk. "I find that I get ideas when I walk."

Another avowed walker is Edward O. Wilson, Baird Professor of Science. "I used to run a great deal, three to six miles every day, but now I depend mostly on brisk walks. I just didn't have the time it took to run--an hour out of every day. And I find walking keeps me in pretty good shape. The nice thing about it is I can often work it into just walking around Harvard, from the Science Center to the Square."

Professor of Government Jorge I. Dominguez walks for a different reason. "I have never liked sports, and I don't like them now. My only sport is walking, and I only do that when I need to catch the bus."

Sheldon Glashow, Higgins Professor of Physics, comments even more pithily. "I'm not in shape. And you can quote me on that."