Essay for Harvard college 1957 fiftieth reunion book

 My mother, Sophie Barrett, was active many years in Roslindale + West Roxbury Massachusetts Historical Societies. In November 1978 she spoke on the Pearl Harbor attack at the Roslindale Knights of Columbus Hall.  The photo [for this book] was probably taken by Jim Dolliver  or Tony Solimene for the West Roxbury Transcript, where editor Jason Korell took a great interest in the Barrett memoirs and programs on Brook FArm, Faulkner Hospital, and Boston Latin's 350th anniversary.

    My father was a career naval officer who tried to warn of the danger of a Japanese air attack when he was assigned as assistant war plans officer at Pearl Harbpr in July 1941.

He was disregarded and transferred to be Assistant Personnel Officer in October; for four years he handled space assignments on Navy ships leaving Hawaii, including military personnel, and, after the December 7 attack, a great many families. My mother and I worked for several years on a memoir + preserved hundreds of photos.

     I served as an air force reserve Medical Service Specialist 1960-66 after Harvard Law School 1957=60.

    One of the great challenges of our time is cancer, the leading cause of death in Americans under age 85  Genetics is a major factor I have been interested in the research of Drs. Robert Weinberg at MIT and of Judah Folkman and Lan Bo Chen at Harvard Medical School.

Omega-3 polyunsaturated oils are an important health discovery of recent years: Dr. Artemis Simopoulos has been a leader in research + education in this area. A Harvard Medical School team led by Dr. Wang at Massachusetts General Hospital has managed to transfer genes into mice that enable them to make Omega-3s in their own bodies, so we may soon get the longer-chain forms Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) from milk and meat and plant sources as well as fish, which are often overutilized and affected by mercury and other pollution.

    Global warming is one of the great challenges of this century and millennium, but with propoer leadership it will probably be manageable. Fusion power is the main long-term solution, but conservation is significant, as well as re-processed fission materials from nuclear power plants. There must be care agains terrorism and diversion to military  use, but I believe it can be done. We should reduce the use of fossil fuels as much as possible + avoid long-term underground storage of radioactive materials, such as the proposed dangerous dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

       We are still expected to experience ice ages, because of the 26,000-year cycle of the earth's perihelion - now January 3 which reduces the critical Northern Hemisphere winters, which are affected by the amount of sunlight reaching the extensive land masses around sixty degrees north latitude. In the very long run, however, the overheating of the sun as helium accumulates in the core limits how long the earth can remain habitable without human intervention. Although a  small group might colonize other solar systems, the mass of humanity and the diversity of plant and animal life and microorganisms would perish with the earth, so I believe we should study the technology to reduce the mass of the sun by slow stages. This requires overcoming the high gravity at the surface of the sun, but I expect it will be done eventually, and we should try to performs a small experiment on these lines in the present century.

      Physicists may soon learn a great deal about fundamental particles and whether the universe has dark matter and dark energy + accelerating expansion. In 2007 I was living in Forks with Dr. Ken + Heidi Romney + their eight talented children (now nine).

      I have done a great deal of botany geology + other natural history + have known many of the Harvard science faculty particularly biologists in association with Arnold Arboretum, New England Botanical Club, Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany (algae, fungi, mosses) Cambridge Entomological Club + museums of Comparative Zoology MCZ, Geology, Botany, + Anthropology. Harvard can be proud of Peter Ashton, Edward O. Wilson, Andrew Knoll, Don Pfisterm  Heinrich Holland, Paul Hoffman, David Boufford, Shiu-Ying Hu, David Haig, Richard Lewontin, Dan Hartl, Farish Jenkins, Karel Liem, John Dowling, + human rights specialists like Marshall and Merle Goldman.

= John Barrett