Archimedes Plutonium on TV, science
Archimedes Plutonium
gentlemen had seen me on TV that night?
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You are watching chronicle New England's Only Nightly News Magazine
WCVB-TV Boston
CHRONICLE May 23 1995
MR: Chronicle presents : The Main Streets & Back Roads of New England
MR: New Hampshire's Upper Valley just another spot on the map? Not on
your life, the river hides surprises.
TP: Strangest thing you ever saw
MR: And one village completely disappeared.
Vermonter: It become eliminated
MR: You have got to see him to believe him, Mr. Plutonium
Me: Everything that we see, everything that there is, is just one Atom.
MR: How's that again?
MR: Choose a paddle or a bagpipe
[bagpipe music]
MR: A fishing trip or a shopping spree, all in the shadow of MT
Ascutney where Vermont and New Hampshire meet. Or do they?
Vermonter: Vermont is sort of New Hampshire, only with a sense of humor
MR: New Hampshire's Upper Valley , next
TV staff: Tonight, Peter Mehegan , Mary Richardson, with Liz Bruner
and Mike Barnacle. (sp?)
Chronicle, New England's Nightly News Magazine
[ music]
PM: A gentle May morning in New Hampshire, four hardy canoeists embark
on a Dartmouth College tradition. It is called "trip to the sea" a 220
mile paddle down the Connecticut River, from Hanover to the Atlantic
Ocean.
PM: The three Dartmouth students and one alumnus are adding a leg to
their trip.
First heading north to the source of the Connecticut.
PM: The midpoint of their journey will be here in Hanover, a town that
hugs the east bank of the river, and looks across the water to Vermont.
PM: The two states concede to a regional identity here.
PM: The Upper Valley a name coined in the 1950s by a local newspaper.
The region encompasses some 2 dozen towns scattered along the
Connecticut River of New Hampshire and Vermont.
[music]
PM: Known for MT Ascutney, and river views, scenes captured by 19th
century painters like Charles Platt
Dartmouth art prof: He was one of the earliest members of what became
quite a large colony of artists or summer colony of artists who
lived in Vermont or New Hampshire and shared a certain vision of the
world.
PM: An area described by some as .... conservative New Hampshire
PM: And a place long influenced by its most well known resident,
Dartmouth College, founded in 1769 by evangelical minister Eleazar
Wheelock.
Dartmouth prof: Right across here is the guy who really made the
college survive, his son, John Wheelock.
Interviewer: So this is hallowed Dartmouth ground here, really isn't
it?
Dartmouth prof: Well not too hallowed, we're here
[bagpipes in background]
PM: So what would Eleazar make of this campus figure?
Me: My name right now is legally Archimedes Plutonium, and I had
changed it several times in my life.
PM: Archimedes Plutonium, four days a week he washes pots and pans at
Dartmouth's Hanover Inn. For his 32 hours in the suds, Archimedes gets
a precious employ benefit, time on the schools computers where he
serves the Net and puts out the word on his singular passion, a theory
called PLutonium Atom Totality.
Me: Everything that we see, everything that there is, is just one
atom!
If you know about physics, every electron is a whole bunch of dots,
those dots I claim are galaxies. So as you are looking at the night
sky, you are looking at one electron.
Me: I have two gold teeth in front which might be obvious to any viewer
out there. That one was chipped and that one had a cavity, and so I
decided to make it permanent gold.
PM: While few take him seriously. Archimedes sticks by his idea, that
the universe is a Plutonium Atom.
Me: It is not an onion. Some philosophers have said that the universe
is an onion or something like that. Something far-fetched.
PM: So that explains Plutonium, what about his name Archimedes?
Me: I believe I was Archimedes in my previous life.
PM: Who knows, he may be onto another life before any of his ideas are
accepted. For now, he is a believer, with this ....
PM: Our canoeists, meanwhile, are right on course as they head down
the Connecticut. With tales of good scenery and some oddly placed
vintage cars. Todd P... is a Dartmouth senior
TP: There is a strange stretch, about a mile of river where the bank is
held back by cars, the whole way, like old cars. I guess Mark had said
farmers used to retain the river bank by using old cars. So you are
going along and there is miles and miles , 1940s vintage cars, nose
down into the river. It is incredible, strangest thing you ever saw.
Interviewer: A canoe like this would be ideal for the Connecticut?
JE: Absolutely ideal
PM: Jay E... class of '49 helps out at the independently run canoe club
launched by students 75 years ago. The club was named in honor of
another Dartmouth free-spirit John Ledyard, a student here in 1772.
Interviewer: Did he have links to canoeing himself?
JE: No, he had no links at all. But he had a money problem. And his
funds ran out here, and Eleazar got after him, and so he built a dugout
canoe not too far away from here. Fifty foot long and about three feet
wide. And the story is he hopped into it, just in the nick of time as
the president was coming down this hill.
Interviewer: It had some pretty exotic foreign rivers here.
JE: If the canoeist had been traveling in China, it would be the
Yangtze, or the Po , or the Volga.
Interviewer: So they get around.
JE: Oh yea, they paddle all over the world.
PM: Jay E... says he would not want to be an undergraduate today. He
says students have less free time, and more pressure than he did. All
the more reason to take to the river.
JE: This offers an-- escape, -- a refreshment, and it offers, -- you
can make lifelong friends and those are pretty important things when
you go through your college career, as well.
MR: Wow, quite a trip.
PM: Magnificent trip, but 25 students, 8 alumni made the trip, Mary,
all the way from
Pittsburgh New Hampshire in the far north to Old Sabre Connecticut.
Took them 7 days and they had a ball.
MR: Something I am sure you would never forget in your life-long. Now
what is it with Archimedes? What do you think of the theory, are you on
to it?
PM: Archimedes, no I am not a convert. Archimedes is a controversial
figure up there. Mary.
MR: Yep.
PM: He is not officially associated with Dartmouth, although he does
the dishes there. He is a controversial figure on the Internet. We have
been getting mail already on the Internet saying "Why are you profiling
this guy?, Archimedes is a pain in the neck, he rants and raves,
he does not stop".
MR: [nice laughing]
PM: The Internet is open to all
MR: And I have a feeling they are going to continue to hear from
Archimedes
MR: Shopping the way they did a century ago, when our visit to New
Hampshire continues..........
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I thoroughly enjoyed doing that TV spot, and bless the people
responsible for its production to the Fields of Elysium, ATOM