Letters to the editor

A Musical Intro

I'm sitting in LaGuardia Airport waiting to board a plane. I always hoard reading materials for when I have more time for pleasure reading while on vacation. Among the items I've packed with me today is the latest issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine. So here I am, relaxing in the airport, and I have thoroughly enjoyed Brennen Jensen's story "Key Personnel" (Fall). I have no musical abilities—zero, zilch, none—but Jensen's wonderful and clear writing made this article a joy to read. I reread several times the poetry of Jensen's writing, like the description of piano tuning that starts with, "Next, well, things get complicated. When a hammer hits a string, its 'fundamental' tone is the one ..." The entire paragraph is just spellbinding. To take a concept so technically complex—and I suspect, unknown to many—as piano tuning and explain it in such a beautiful and simple way is just mesmerizing. Thank you for providing your readers with such a treat. Well done!

Quanti Davis, Ed '09 (Cert)
Silver Spring, Maryland

Pitch Perfect

Thank you for Brennen Jensen's article, "Key Personnel" (Fall), on the piano technicians at the Peabody Institute. Besides being a well-written explanation for both a layperson and a pianist, it brought back memories from childhood.

As an 8-year-old, I had already been playing the piano for at least four years. I began to take saxophone lessons so that I would be able to eventually join the school band. I couldn't figure out why the C on an E-flat alto sax didn't sound like the C on the piano. My teacher explained to me that I had perfect pitch. At that point, I didn't realize that not everyone could recognize the sound of every note. 

During the '50s and '60s, boys my age followed the classified ads in the back pages of Boys' Life, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics. There were always ads to become a piano tuner. I believed their promise that it would be an easy way for a 9-year-old to make some extra spending money.

Daniel P. Kraft, BSPH '80 (MPH)
Lake Worth, Florida

Gone to the Dogs?

When I was in high school, a recruiter from Johns Hopkins came to my school, and I joined a handful of other students to hear her pitch. I told her I had visited Homewood campus when my sister was looking at colleges a few years earlier. The recruiter asked what had struck me. I said it was the sheer number of dogs running around on the Beach.

Her expression soured. "We're working on the unleashed dog problem," she said, or something to that effect. Clearly I had hit a nerve. But to this dog-loving high school junior, Hopkins looked like Dogtopia, and I was smitten. With this in mind, I enjoyed President Ron Daniels' most recent Message (Fall).

I only hope he recognizes that the reason for getting a dog shouldn't be "walking it to see whom [you] meet," but … just walking them. Spending time with them. Those "scores of students flocking to Barney"? They get it. Barney does, too.

P.S. Thanks for the article, "Saving Lives, Alternatively Speaking" (Fall) about the inspiring work of Thomas Hartung and the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. It feels as long overdue as the European Union's outlawing of the rabbit pyrogen test (never mind the U.S.).

Craig Bernardini, A&S '91
Hopewell Junction, New York