Buzzwords were back in action at the city council meeting last week. But Councilor Francis H. Duehay '55 couldn't fool anyone with his substitution of "adjustment" for over-ride or bypass. The council is currently contemplating a popular referendum that would allow the city relief from continued budget reductions due to Proposition 2 1/2, and the councilors are understandably concerned that voters may be reluctant to throw away future tax cuts. Apparently Duehay feels an "adjustment" will be easier for the voters to approve than an "over-ride." Thursday night, however, his linguistic gymnastics prompted loud chuckles from most of the audience.
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Making his first public comment Thursday on the specific structure of the new Foundation for race relations, the director of the agency said that his plans are "tremendously" curtailed by a shortage of adequate funding.
S. Allen Counter, associate professor of neuroscience at the Medical School, said that during the last six months he has been discussing the mechanics of the Foundation with interested students, but that the new agency is now "operating on a shoe string budget."
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Supreme Court Justice SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR has refused an invitation to deliver the 1982 Class Day address but will preside over the Law School's Ames Moot Court competition next fall.
O'Connor turned down the Class Day invitation because "she has been flooded with invitations and can't accept as many as she'd like to," the justice's appointments secretary said last week.
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Henry A. Kissinger '50 described himself as "relaxed and confident" as the former secretary of state prepared to undergo open heart surgery at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital last Thursday. He had initially entered the hospital complaining of acute shoulder pains.
No difficulties hindered the four-and-a-half hour operation in which doctors performed a coronary triple bypass. Doctors afterwards compared the danger involved in Kissinger's operation to that involved in a gallbladder operation. The only other operation Kissinger had undergone was an appendectomy 25 years ago.
Kissinger, former advisor to many presidents and former professor of Government at Harvard, said before his operation that he will negotiate his recovery period with the doctors.
They've been mumbling about my weight," he said while doctors confirmed that the 55-year-old Nobel Peace Price winner will have to lose 18 to 20 pound in addition to severely curtailing his activities for the next weeks.