Here’s some fast-breaking news of statuesque interest.

More than 50 people resident in my urban community have posed nude, or in some instances almost nude, for a new calendar that will cover the academic year that starts in September 2004.

Several of those seen without notable clothes are citizens prominent outside their home town, notably the erstwhile gubernatorial candidate Robert Reich and the husband/wife authors Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan.

Though news of this event has not shaken the burghers of my home town, it has provided considerable amusement to some others from more staid communities.

A prominent resident of Boston’s Beacon Hill, Smoki Bacon, for instance, when she heard about the publication said about the Kaplans: “At their age, they are entitled to do anything they want.” My friend Smoki’s spouse Dick Concannon added: “With the advent of Bush the elder jumping out of a plane, who says seniors cannot show their bodies?”

Neither of these Bostonians expressed any envy of the chosen 50. And, when I showed the calendar to members of El Grupo – my circle of special friends who share a meal each week – they all perused the calendar with amusement but greeted with horror any prospect of themselves posing.

I called my friend Justin Kaplan, whom I respect for many reasons. Among them, I think especially of his fine literary work on Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and the entertaining memoir that he co-authored with his wife Anne Bernays.

In contacting Kaplan and asking about his motivation for posing without covers in the stacks of my favorite bookstore, I received a surprise. Others had suggested that he wanted to display the septuagenarian body proudly and without shame.

According to this surmise, which I bought into, he was demonstrating how even in advanced age the human body retains its splendor and that only a false modesty would have made him refuse the invitation to pose clotheslessly.

This distinguished writer surprised me, however, by rejecting noble motivation and answering: “We were drugged.” So much for my theories.

When pressed for more motivation for him and his wife posing, Kaplan replied lightheartedly: “If anyone is offended or scandalized, the hell with them.”

Despite the celebrity status of some of the poseurs, you won’t find your favorite columnist among the nudes anytime soon. Fortunately I was not judged distinguished enough to be asked.

In the abstract I would have welcomed the opportunity. After all, I serve as a champion of all things older and would have felt it an honor to display the athletic 75-year-old body tout nu, as the French say. In the concrete, however, it was too cold for me to have disrobed last winter when the show-all photos were taken.

Even if the photographer had allowed me to use a book as a fig leaf, as Kaplan did with his own memoir, or the studied placement of her arms, as Bernays did, I would have rejected this photo op. Revealing myself in words is ample enough self-disclosure for this proper Greater Bostonian.

I would like to have asked Robert Reich his motivation for posing. This 58-year-old took a half-way approach, only baring it all behind an amply stocked fruit basket that concealed his entire lower-mid section. Though known as a candidate who is candid with voters, his physical candidness apparently has limits. Perhaps he wants to run for office again.

Quite a few of these nudists posed in groups of friends or fellow workers. That meant they revealed their bodily selves to others even before the calendar hit the newsstands. Given the delays involved in professional photography, that must have involved considerable time spent together nude. For me that would have provided more opportunity to get to know my associates than I needed.

I wonder how many of the disrobed would agree with this shocking conviction of mine: Most people look a whole lot better with clothes on.

Yes, there are exceptions – Michelangelo’s David comes to mind, as do many Venuses– but for most of us, clothes, if they do not exactly make the Man or the Woman, go far to improve our appearance.

I think it significant that Justin Kaplan has not seen the calendar and does not want to. We, its purchasers, look at it with a certain wonder and curiosity to see to what extent others, stripped bare, look like us, but I remain thankful for the law that prohibits us from walking down the street in the altogether.

Yes, let me again express my appreciation of God’s work in devising the human body, and allow me to endorse Shakespeare “What a piece of work is a man,” but when it comes right down to it I prefer to see my neighbors adorned with clothing.

Richard Griffin