Colby has signed on with Governor Angus King's program that encourages state businesses and others to donate used computers to public schools. For the past two years, even before King announced his plan in his State of the State address in early February, Colby had been parceling out used machines to area schools. More than 100 were given away last year, and now there are as many more ready to go to school departments in Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield and Oakland. New PBKs From Bombay to Shanghai and from Los Angeles to Southwest Harbor, 43 seniors and a junior are the newest Colby members of Phi Beta Kappa. Maine's Beta Chapter secretary David Mills '57 has posted the list, which, we won't fail to note, includes 20-plus percent from Maine even though the state supplies only 12 percent of the student body. We salute them all. Not One, But Two For the fifth time in this decade, Colby has two of the nation's 60 Watson Fellowships. Joan Giblin '98 (Stoughton, Mass.) and Amy Lyons '98 (Standish, Maine) were chosen from 193 nominees selected by 51 participating institutions. Seventeen colleges, including Bowdoin, had two. Twenty-three others, including Bates, had one. Ten came up empty. So You'll Know It is claimed that the song "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," made famous by Kate Smith, was written by Charles Henry Wood while he was a student at Colby. The inspiring mountain is Mt. Kearsarge near Conway, N.H. The song was first sung by Smith in the Paramount film The Big Broadcast of 1932. It also appeared later in Dinner at Eight. Wood, who attended in 1884-85, was a lawyer in Bar Harbor and a member of the Maine senate. The source is From the King's Plantation to Home Town Heritage, published by Peter Randall of Portsmouth, N.H. Net News More than 74,000 people visited Colby's Web site in March, a 37 percent increase over the same month a year ago. About 70 gigabytes got moved around, the equivalent of about 700 meters of shelved books. In our own alumni network, we find that a full quarter of all graduates since 1989 are con-nected, including one third of those who graduated last year. Back at the ranch, the most popular Web page continues to be the dining hall menus, where hungry students visited nearly 5,000 times in March. Egad, the dining hall menus turn out to be the most popular site for those just admitted to the Class of 2002 as well. This could affect overall Colby admissions marketing strategy. "Come to Colby, eat well." Faculty Notes Ira Sadoff (English) will share, with Robert Bly, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize for the best poems published in the American Poetry Review in 1997. Sadoff's work is part of his forthcoming collection, Grazing, to be published by the University of Illinois Press. . . . James Webb (history) has been named general editor of the new Ohio University Press series in ecology and history, which will feature books about environmental history in all regions of the world. . . . Cheryl Townsend Gilkes (sociology) has been selected as the Robin M. Williams Jr. lecturer of the Eastern Sociological Society for 1998-99. The prestigious appointment goes to scholars accomplished in the field who are able to address themes of broad import. Gilkes will present lectures at the society's annual meeting and at two colleges during the next academic year. To Name a Few The third edition of The Parties Respond (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.), edited by Sandy Maisel (government), is dedicated to the Colby undergraduates who have been Sandy's research assistants. The textbook examines the 1996 national elections and contemporary political parties. . . . The Harvard Educational Review has published (winter 1998) an article by Marilyn Mavrinac, emerita associate professor of education and human development, on Coeducation, Gender Equity, and School Reforms in Twentieth Century France. Saving Trees Bill Cotter, Colby's 18th president, told trustees at the January meeting that he is especially saddened by the ice storm damage to the sugar maple in front of Woodman Hall, one of the few trees left that pre-date the Mayflower Hill campus. He wants the damages branches trimmed carefully and the tree preserved in whatever shape. His concern reminded Colby's 17th president, Robert Strider, of bons mots attributed to Colby's 16th president, Seelye Bixler. Seems Bixler was passing by the construction site of Woodman Hall some time in 1951 and saw men with chain saws about to cut the old tree down. Bixler ran up to them, waving his arms, and shouted: "Woodman, spare that tree!" Moosecellaneous Returns from the Harris Company survey used to prepare Colby's new Alumni Directory show that 4,000 of the College's 16,000-plus alums have e-mail addresses. . . . The ice storm rescue team from a North Carolina power firm wanted to know why Maine folks built houses on the edges of the fields and then put their outhouses in the middle. Someone explained that the fields were lakes and the outhouses were fishing shacks. . . . USA Today reports that 97 percent of all U.S. colleges now have Web sites, and two percent more are in the process of creating them. . . . That same paper has chosen Colby's own Tina Goudreau '98 (Manchester, N.H.) for honorable mention on this year's All-USA College Academic Team. Tina's contributions, in and out of class, are as long as your arm.