Getting Closure
There have been far fewer rubs to the toe of the Christ statue ever since May 3 when the main entrance to Billings from Broadway was shuttered so that the exteriors of Marburg, Billings and Wilmer could be restored. There will be new slate roofs and copper trim, repaired cupolas and metal rails, refaced or replaced stone, pointed up brick and a restored dome. The work will take 15 long months. This is the first time these buildings, which are on the National Register of Historic Places, have undergone major renovations. It is still possible to visit the Christ statue, although on a recent weekday morning, things were quiet. Security officer Steve Kojak, who once affably greeted hundreds each day, seemed lonely. “I’m taking care of the building, but I miss my regulars,” he said stoically.

Blue-Eyed Cicadas
Centrex operators thought they’d heard it all—until, that is, the weekend of May 15 when callers began inquiring about blue-eyed cicadas. The red-eyed insects had just emerged from their 17-year larval slumber, and word was out that Hopkins would pay up to $5,000 to the lucky person who found a rare, blue-eyed cicada. “Can you imagine picking those things up and looking into their eyes?” says Centrex supervisor Pat Morrow. Rumor control, it seems, is a useful weapon in the arsenal of a Hopkins telephone operator.

Printed Directory
The first thing you did last month when you received your new JH Institutions Faculty and Staff Directory was open it to your name. The second thing you may very well have done was gasp when you discovered your information was out of date. You’re not alone. The directory was supposed to come out last fall; data for the A to Z listings were extracted from JHED last summer. So if your info changed between then and now, you were out of luck. But not to worry. This opus, with all its 32,000 listings, is short-lived. Another is due out this fall. Meanwhile, for the first time, you can update your own listing by logging onto the new Printed Directory Manager at http://PrintedDirectory.johnshopkins.edu. Use your JHED login ID and password, then edit. Just make sure to do it before late summer, the cut-off for the next paper edition.