Tea Leaves and taurus

Every year about this time a wizened Green Lady in Eliot House numbles incantations over the serving line and writes her predictions for the new Year on the top layer of lasagna. Theey are as follows:

January

Lt. Geen. Lewis Hershey announces that he "agrees, maybe," with White House assurances to Ivy League presidents that draft protestors will not be reclassified. Informed sources hint that the eight presidents have been reclassified, inducted, and shipped to Vietnam.

February

New Orleans District Attorney Jamees Garrison holds a press conference next to a sewer opening in Dallas. Once again outlining the 42-assassin theory, he points to the sewer and declares, "they went that-a-way, and I'm following them." H leaps in. Ho Chi Minh is reported bed-ridden with an infected hangnail. White House sources say the war should be over by Noveermber.

March President Johnson, in an effort to cut spending "in distant lands," proposes state-hood for South Vietnam. Four Southeast Asian Chiefs of state protest vigorously. In separate incidents, all disappear while swimming.

April

New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison holds preess conferencee beside sewer outlet in Johnson City, Texas.

May

Dean Ford says that all students will be eeligible to run for next year's Student-Faculty Advisory Committee. However, in order to vote, he cautions, students will have to pay a "small sum" and satisfactorily interpret a section of the Course Catalogue. Tanzanian journalists say that Ho Chi Minh is succumbing to an attack of boils.

June

Oscar Handlin, in a statement signed by 37 moderate sinologists, perceivees a "defeatist" attitude in U.S. China policy and declares, "We are prevailing." The policee chief of Cedar Rapids, Ia., reports the season's first riot. He terms it "a minor disturbance," and adds, "We really don't think it's racial thing at all." CBS news reports that Cedar Rapids in missing.

JulyEugen McCarthy, shrugging off criticism that his campaign has been lackluster, announces that he may enter the New Hampshire primary. George Romney flis immeediately to New Hampshire. He finds that the primary was held in march.

August

George Romney barnstorms through Chicago, climaxing a whirlwind hand-shaking tour ("Hi, there, buddy, I'm running for President"; "Oh, yeah? Who are you?") with an emotional convention plea. Departs after he is informed he is at the wrong convention. President Johnson, visibly moved that anyone bothered to make a stirring speech, chooses Romney as his running mate.

September

Oscar Handlin, in a report issued by a committee of moderate criminologists, indicates that he turned down an offer to become police chief of Boston. "I didn't want to get involved," he declares, CBS news announces that Boston is missing. The White House says that Southeast Asia will be the 50th, not the 51st state, since Louisiana is being toweed out to sea and sunk. Local commentors blame Garrison's "sewer-side tendencies."

October

Eight Ivy League presidents, in a letteer to the White House, renew their protest of the draft. Letter is postmarked from Sweden. It is returned with the notation, "No such city at this address."

November

Johnson edges Nixon in the election 5-4, with 75 million abstentions. Early returns from urban areas indicate there are no urban areas. Johnson appoints a high-level secret panel of modeerate urbanologists to locate them. At a Cambridge press confeerence, Oscar Handlin accepts the appointment.

December

Students stage a massive "sleep-in" to protest parietals. Leeaders hail it as "tremendously successful." Radcliffe officials, comparing signouts on night of the demonstration with those on previous evenings say there was "no detectable increase." Oscar Handlin, in Vietnam to entertain the troops, says that a panel of moderate cryptologists has cracked the Vietnamese code. He reveals that Ho Chi Minh has suffered a near-fatal skiing accident and is sinking fast.