Earlier this year newspapers around the country reported that the last of Knute Rockne’s players was gone with the passing of Cleveland’s Al Grisanti ‘31 at age 93. Not true. At least two alumni coached by the immortal Rockne survive: Jack Yelland ’30 and Fred Reiman ’31. Neither saw game action, but that was also the case with Grisanti, who died in June. Yelland lives in Minneapolis, Reiman in La Crosse, Wisconsin. . . . “Invasion is forever,” biology professor David M. Lodge told the House Subcommittee on Environment, Technology and Standards in June. He was talking about invasive species of aquatic life like the zebra mussel. He told the congressmen the government should invest more to control and prevent invasive species because, as he put it, “Biological invasions are the least reversible form of pollution.” . . . Notre Dame finished 13th in this past year’s Sears Directors’ Cup competition, which measures college athletic success across all sports. The only private university to finish ahead of Notre Dame was Stanford, which won the cup. . . . If basketball games were decided by graduation rate instead of points scored and allowed, the Irish men would have gone to the Final Four last season instead of being eliminated in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Pulling the top graduation-rate teams from the four regions in the tournament would have produced a Final Four with three Catholic schools — Saint John’s from the East, Notre Dame from the South, Xavier from the West — to go along with Stanford from the Midwest. . . . Each year when they left school for the summer Christopher Fuchs ‘01 and Xavier Helgesen ’01 couldn’t help but notice how many books their classmates simply abandoned in the dorm. They came up with an idea: Collect the books, liquidate them for cash through bookstore and used book wholesalers, and donate the money to a charity. This past spring semester they tried it for the first time. Operating under the name Irish Community Outreach, they placed collection boxes in all the dorms. All students had to do was throw their books into the boxes on their way out of town. The effort, which they plan to continue, raised more than $1,200, which was earmarked for an after-school reading program for kids at the Notre Dame-sponsored Robinson Community Center south of campus. As a reward the hall that donated the most books, Keough, won a picnic with the kids in the fall. . . . Siegfried Hall has become the cradle of leprechauns. The Mod Quad dorm has now produced three of the past four varsity sports leprechaun mascots. The latest is junior Michael Macaluso, who was promoted to varsity leprechaun after serving as leprechaun for the Olympic sports teams (everything but football and men’s basketball) last year. . . . Business majors often joke about what they imagine to be meager job prospects awaiting Arts and Letters graduates. Times are changing. Lee Svete, the Career Center’s director since 1999, has worked hard to find more job opportunities and internships for students pursuing a liberal arts education. And the college has noticed. It recently presented Svete a new award that honors “an outstanding colleague outside the college whose work adds immeasurably to the college and enriches its life.” . . . The former chief executive officer of the California Center for the Arts has been hired to be chief administrator for the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, which is under construction and expected to open in August 2004. Before becoming involved in arts administration John A. Haynes worked a dozen years as a television programming and production executive with CBS in New York City and Los Angeles and with Viacom in Beverly Hills. . . . For the time being, the remains of the youngest of the Holy Cross brothers who accompanied Notre Dame founder Edward Sorin from France will remain where they are — in southern Indiana — instead of being removed to Notre Dame, as at least one current Holy Cross brother has suggested. Brother Anselm Caillot was 15 when he traveled to southern Indiana from France in 1841 with Sorin and five other Holy Cross brothers. The following year he and one other brother were left behind when Sorin journeyed north to start Notre Dame. The other brother joined Sorin the following year, but for some reason Sorin wouldn’t let Anselm come. The area bishop sent Anselm instead to teach in Madison, Indiana, on the Ohio River in the southeastern part of the state. The following year Anselm died in a swimming accident in the river. Anselm’s gravestone in Madison was lost for decades, apparently sunken into the soft earth following a flood in the 1930s. It was rediscovered only last December. Brother Richard Gilman, CSC, president of Holy Cross College, suggested publicly that Anselm’s remains be removed to Notre Dame to be with the rest of the community, as Anselm had wished. But a spokesman for the order said no decision has been made on a possible move. . . . The Indiana Province of the CSC priests has purchased the former home of Charles O. Finley, the flamboyant late owner of pro baseball’s Oakland A’s. The property is about 25 miles west of South Bend in LaPorte, Indiana, and adjacent to the Indiana Toll Road. The order paid $1.5 million at auction for the 50+ acres and its12-bedroom, 11-bathroom home, which features stained-glass windows of Oakland A’s symbols in the stables. The CSCs plan to transfer to the property continuing education programs, workshops and meetings for Holy Cross religious that were formerly held at a site on a lake in the mountains of western Maryland. The LaPorte property is more central and accessible and, unlike the Maryland property, is winterized, so it will offer the community year-round use. Finley grew up in Gary, Indiana, and made his millions in insurance. He died in 1996 at the age of 77. . . . Notre Dame, other colleges and universities, and a number of paper-gobbling businesses like Kinko’s decided to stop buying paper from Boise (formerly Boise Cascade), the giant timber company, until the company stopped cutting centuries-old trees in some undisturbed forests. The boycott apparently worked. Earlier this year Boise reportedly began telling its customers that it had ceased old-growth logging. . . . The creator of the large abstract steel mobile in the Mary Loretto and Terrence J. Dillon Courtyard between the Snite Museum and O’Shag died in July at age 95. George Rickey, a South Bend native, became an internationally renowned sculptor. The museum has a second kinetic sculpture of Rickey’s and hopes to install it in the courtyard by year’s end. . . . The internationally known Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, which began in South Bend in 1973, now calls Notre Dame home. The event was held on campus for the first time this past May, drawing more than 60 ensembles from 22 countries. . . . Joshua Rich ’02 designed the new Notre Dame vanity plate for Indiana that features an interlocking N and D inside an outline of the Golden Dome. The old plate just had the interlocking ND. Six other states — Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia — offer Notre Dame plates. The extra fees motorists pay for them support public service initiatives of Notre Dame alumni clubs. . . . That fellow pictured in the spring issue of this magazine holding his young son in his arms in front of their new house on Notre Dame Avenue is now director of the University’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Tim Matovina, associate professor of theology, succeeds R. Scott Appleby, who had directed the center since 1994. Appleby is now director of ND’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. . . . Student Activities censors Bookstore Basketball team names that the office deems offensive. There are always plenty; the censored teams get a numerical designation instead. This past year the staff drew criticism for censoring any name incorporating the name of their boss, Father Mark Poorman, CSC, vice president for student affairs. When questioned by The Observer, the head of Student Activities said they were only following the general rule of not allowing team names that include the name of an actual person in the campus community unless that person has granted them permission. That’s why teams were permitted to include campus names like Britney Spears, Donald Rumsfeld and, alas, George O’Leary. . . . Speaking of familiar names, there’s a new one on the Notre Dame Board of Trustees: Gallo. Stephanie Gallo ‘94, granddaughter of famed wine-maker Ernest Gallo, is brand manager for the Turning Leaf and Turning Leaf Coastal Reserve brands of the E&J Gallo Winery. . . . Hollywood is well represented on a new campus Advisory Council for the Performing Arts with directors Sydney Pollack ( The Way We Were, Out of Africa ) and Martin Scorsese ( Raging Bull, Goodfellows ) and actress and Saint Mary’s graduate Cathering Hicks (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the TV series Seventh Heaven). . . . Senior Pat Amato, an accounting major from Toledo, Ohio, made his television debut June 24 on the WB network’s elimiDATE show. Amato was one of four suitors systematically eliminated by the female date-chooser; he was the second to get the boot. Initially spotted by a recruiter on a beach in L.A. two summers ago, he survived several rounds of interviews before being selected to be on the program. His show, taped in July 2001, followed him and his date on visits to such hotspots as the LA Comedy Club. He says the experience wasn’t a total loss. It allowed him to miss a day of work, and he was relieved to be eliminated just before the round that required dancing.