Media

BURK KETCHAM ’48

The Pledge Green Hollow Press

The Pledge is the finale in Ketcham’s trilogy based in a fictional upstate New York town. He previously published Dyken Falls and China Bound. Following three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Ketcham graduated from Union College and went on to get a master’s degree in planning from the School of Architecture at Columbia University. As a planning consultant, he is the author of over 100 planning reports and plans for cities and towns throughout the United States. His deceased wife, Helen Schmid Ketcham, was a published novelist, playwright and actress. Both of their sons are married and are college professors. One is a retired teacher of risk management and ethics. The other is an artist who teaches drawing and painting.

RON SINGER ’62

The Real Presence Adelaide Books

The Real Presence is a political novel and can be considered a sequel to Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press/ Red Sea Press, 2015). Like Bob Shepard, the American character in The Real Presence, Ron Singer served with the Peace Corps in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, during the lead-up to the Biafra War. Since then, he has written a great deal about African politics, history, economics and culture. Much of the inspiration for an exciting and enlightening story in The Real Presence comes from the author’s personal experience. This is Singer’s 15th book. The genres represented are poetry, memoir, fiction and non-fiction. Singer’s work has appeared in journals, newspapers, magazines and e-zines across the English-speaking world. Many of Singer’s poems have been anthologized and/or set to music, and four stories have garnered Pushcart nominations. He has also written the librettos for two performed operas.

MARTIN JAY ’65

Genesis and Validity: The Theory and Practice of Intellectual History University of Pennsylvania Press

There is no more contentious and perennial issue in the history of modern Western thought than the vexed relationship between the genesis of an idea and its claim to validity beyond it. Can ideas or values transcend their temporal origins and overcome the sin of their original context, and in so doing earn abiding respect for their intrinsic merit? Or do they inevitably reflect them in ways that undermine their universal aspirations? These and other persistent questions are at the heart of the discipline known as intellectual history. The essays in this collection address them through engagement with leading intellectual historians, as well other giants of modern thought. Martin Jay is the Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley. He is author of numerous books, including The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50, and Reason After Its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory.

JAMES STROSBERG ’63 MARTIN STROSBERG ’68

Schenectady’s Battle Against Contagious Disease: From Smallpox to Covid-19 Schenectady County Historical Society

On Saturday, October 5, 1918, Union cancelled its home football game against Wesleyan. The reason was that three Wesleyan students had been stricken with the Spanish Flu. Union’s quick response no doubt saved some lives on the campus. The city of Schenectady was not so quick to respond; it ultimately suffered the loss of over 500 in a population of 87,000. This is the story of how Schenectady battled and in most instances overcame contagious diseases including smallpox, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, TB, polio, influenza and COVID. Union professors and alumni often played a key role in the battle. Of particular note is Dr. Charles Duryee, Class of 1882, who as Schenectady public health officer and mayor helped establish a modern Schenectady Public Health Department dedicated to clean water, pasteurized milk, vaccination (for smallpox), quarantine and isolation, and the promotion of personal hygiene. The book may be purchased at schenectadyhistorical.org/ bookshop.

ROSEMARY MINER G’68

Rosemary for Remembrance: A Memoir Hilliard Harris

After years of writing and adventure, Rosemary Miner is sharing some of her wonderful life experiences in this memoir. An American history teacher turned history writer, her previous works have focused on regional writing in periodicals like Adirondack Life. Miner has also written three Adirondack mysteries for her Miss Grace Wickham series— One Upon a Time to Die For; Lies and Logs to Die For; and Adirondack Rubies to Die For. Grace is an herbal doctor who inherited her father’s medical practice. She is called out whenever an accident is reported, but she’s nobody’s fool. Grace knows that many times, these deadly accidents are not accidents. In his 24th book, Belliotti interprets The Godfather as, among other things, a commentary on the transformation of personal identity within the Sicilian and Italian immigrant experience. The book explores both the novel and the film sequence in terms of an existential conflict between two sets of values that offer competing visions of the world. On the one hand, a nineteenth-century Sicilian perspective grounded in honor and the accumulation of power within a culturally specific family order; and on the other, a twentieth-century American perspective that celebrates individualism and commercial success. Philosophically analyzing concepts such as honor, power, will to power, respect, atonement, repentance, forgiveness, and a meaningful life, Belliotti applies these analyses to the cultural understandings transported to America by nineteenth-century Italian immigrants. He casts fresh light on Old World allegiances to l’ordinedella famiglia (the family order), la via vecchia (the old way), and the patriarchal ideal of uomodi pazienza (the man of patience), as well as the Sicilian code of honor. The two sets of values—Old World Sicilian and twentieth-century American— coalesce uneasily in the same cultural setting, and their conflict is irresolvable. Belliotti is the SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at State University College at Fredonia.

RAYMOND ANGELO BELLIOTTI ’70

The Godfather and Sicily: Power, Honor, Family, and Evil SUNY Press

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PA JAMES ’77

Empowered by Trauma Independently published

The author writes, “As I learned from personal attacks, I’ve found that individuals living with trauma can assist their recovery by making an honest acknowledgment of when they surrendered esteem, morality and values to their predator. It is my hope and prayer that Empowered by Trauma will serve as a tool for claiming self-responsibility in any assault/abuse/attacks upon one’s person. In so doing, one will become empowered enough to be an over-comer of emotional, life-changing experiences.”

GARY GLAUBER ’80

Rocky Landscape with Vagrants Cyberwit Press

Rocky Landscape with Vagrants has something for everyone. These poems encourage us not only to “accept life’s ambiguity/its lack of clarity and neatly packaged answers,” but to “embrace them as a gift.” Glauber’s use of language is so eloquent and generous you might not notice the punch of the payoff until it’s knocked you off your feet. These poems are brave enough to go anywhere—it’s about the surprise of the destination as much as the curves in the road. In Rocky Landscape with Vagrants, we encounter an expertly crafted reflection of our collective struggle for meaning and connection during these troubled and trying times.

GARY GLAUBER ’80 A Careful Contrition Shanti Arts Publishing

Here are crafted reminders of a world gone awry despite best intentions, discrete memories of humanity’s misguided longings. Glauber’s poetry is filled with desire—desire longing to bridge the distances between lovers, between past and present, between hope and reality. Glauber’s words in this collection show us the path: refuge can be found in art, in music, in poetry and above all in our boundless capacity for love. This book isn’t about the pandemic, or even our political divisions. Rather, this is a carefully constructed collection of precarious messages that foretell of a prescient world where everything suddenly matters.

ANDREA L. FRY ’81

Poisons & Antidotes Deerbrook Editions

In Poisons & Antidotes, life is inhabited by things that kill us and things that save us. But it’s never black and white, because poisons exist on a continuum, each increment representing some gradation of toxicity. Sometimes poison is clearly recognizable; other times it sits side-by-side with the innocuous and the borders are blurred. In this collection, poison is a metaphor for the degree of human connectedness to the world. The delirious voices in the poems are trapped in their own subjectivity, unable to see beyond their own strange stories. Just as poison becomes less virulent across the continuum, the poetic voices acquire a gradual awareness of themselves in relation to their world. By the end of the collection, it is as if human experience also exists on a kind of continuum. The expression of this vast range of experience—with all its subtleties, contradictions and ironies—is the antidote to human disconnectedness. Andrea Fry is an oncology nurse practitioner at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

MELISSA STEWART ’90,

co-author 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books Stenhouse Publishers

For decades, we’ve classified fiction as a way to study, understand and, ultimately, teach it better. However, up to now, nonfiction hasn’t received this same level of intention. In 5 Kinds of Nonfiction, Melissa Stewart and Marlene Correia present a new way to sort nonfiction into five major categories and show how doing so can help teachers and librarians build stronger readers and writers. Along the way, they introduce the five kinds of nonfiction—active, browseable, traditional, expository literature and narrative. They explore each category through discussions, classroom examples and insights from leading children’s book authors. They also offer tips for building strong, diverse classroom and library collections, and provide more than 20 activities to enhance literacy instruction. Finally, they include innovative strategies for sharing and celebrating nonfiction with students.

FRANCIS L. STEVENS ’01

Affective Neuroscience in Psychotherapy: A Clinician's Guide for Working with Emotions Routledge

Most psychological disorders involve distressful emotions, yet emotions are often regarded as secondary in the etiology and treatment of psychopathology. This book offers an alternative model of psychotherapy, using the patient’s emotions as the focal point of treatment. This unique text approaches emotions as the primary source of intervention, where emotions are appreciated, experienced, and learned from as opposed to being solely regulated. Based on the latest developments in affective neuroscience, Dr. Stevens applies science-based interventions with a sequential approach for helping patients with psychological disorders. Chapters focus on how to use emotional awareness, emotional validation, selfcompassion, and affect reconsolidation in therapeutic practice. Interventions for specific emotions such as anger, abandonment, jealousy, and desire are also addressed. This book is essential reading for clinicians practicing psychotherapy, social workers and licensed mental health counselors.

MARIK HAZAN ’15 Our Trip Together New Degree Press

In Our Trip Together, you’ll learn about the complexities of the psychedelic rollout today and the lessons we need to remember from the past. You’ll learn about how Israeli’s and Palestinians are drinking Ayahuasca together, and how Charles Manson used psychedelics to convince his followers to commit multiple murders. We’ll share stories of “Googler’s” microdosing LSD and how psychedelics were used in concentration camps during the holocaust. You’ll learn about psychedelics for end-of-life care and about healers that are using tarot cards to conduct narrative therapy with these same compounds and plant medicines. You’ll see how these molecules will come to influence politics and business and how culture will transform at unprecedented rates over the next 10 years. Ultimately, we want our readers to see this book as a tool to help them navigate the ups and downs of psychedelic development over the coming decades, develop a nuanced approach of engaging with the psychedelic ecosystem and those building it, and find ways in which to participate mindfully when they are called to this work.

CONSIDERATION

Media, formerly Bookshelf, features new titles by or about alumni and other members of the Union community. To be included, send a copy of the work (book, DVD, CD) and synopsis to: Office of Communications Union College Schenectady, NY 12308 Or send synopsis and high-resolution image to: magazine@union.edu

A Message from the President of the Alumni Council

It is my pleasure to address you as the new president of the Union College Alumni Council.

The Alumni Council is an organization that has operated since 1871, engaging alumni in the ongoing life of the College. We strive to strengthen the relationships of alumni with one another and with the College, and to support the mission and values of the College.

Apart from organizing and conducting our alumni trustee elections, we support programming organized by the Office of Alumni & Parent Engagement, as well as from our regional and affinity alumni club network. We are proud to recognize exceptional alumni, faculty and staff at convocation during ReUnion weekend.

Our organization has worked to navigate the challenges faced this past year, and will continue to serve the needs of the alumni community. We hope to be a recognizable group within the campus community, and you’ll be hearing from us often.

In this regular feature we will inform the alumni community of our ongoing efforts to encourage participation in alumni-focused events and initiatives. We also will continue to recognize the contributions that members of our Council have made to the Union community.

We encourage your interest and participation in our meetings, which are open to all who have received a degree from Union College or who have previously been full-time students and whose class has since graduated.

For those interested in learning more about our organization, meetings and membership, please visit ualumni.union.edu or contact Ashley Boland, director of Alumni & Parent Engagement, at alumni@ union.edu.

I look forward to meeting with many of you in the coming year. – Vin Mattone ’06, President, Union College Alumni Council

Meet the Executive Committee

The Alumni Council is pleased to introduce executive committee members serving through June 30, 2024.

PRESIDENT: Vin Mattone ’06 Vin has worked at ACM Wealth for over 15 years as a wealth advisor. He earned a B.A in economics and political science from Union College and serves on the Board of Trustees as an alumni trustee. Vin lives in Rockville Centre, N.Y., with his wife, Laura, their three young children and sheepadoodle. He is actively involved in his community, volunteering for several charitable and non-profit organizations, and as a member of the Financial Planning Association of Long Island.

VICE PRESIDENT: Chester Karwatowski ’78 Chet has been an active member of the Alumni Council for the last 17 years. He is a supply chain and digital transformation leader at IBM, and serves on the boards of several environmental, social and educational organizations. He is the proud father of two adult children. As the chair of the Council’s Affinity and Clubs committee, Chet will work to improve communications between the Council, regional alumni clubs and other Union affinity groups.

VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS: Quisqueya Witbeck ’16 Quisqueya has a background in global health, development and international relations and has worked in sectors ranging from business operations to academia. In addition to her role on the Alumni Council, Quisqueya also serves as the GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Terrace Council chair and as the head class agent for the Class of 2016. She served with the Alumni Club of Boston for four years.

VICE PRESIDENT OF MEMBERSHIP: Tess Skoller ’13 Tess is an associate brand and advertising manager at MFS Investment Management in Boston, Mass. She previously held roles on the marketing teams at Goldman Sachs and OppenheimerFunds (now Invesco) in New York City, where she was involved in the New York City Alumni Club for more than seven years. In addition to working as a financial marketing professional, Tess is pursuing her MBA at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

VICE PRESIDENT OF FINANCE: Matthew Mauriello ’99 Matthew is a longtime member of the Council and volunteer for the College. He teaches computer science for SUNY Orange and Newburgh Free Academy P-TECH, and is a swim coach for a local swim team in Newburgh, N.Y. As a volunteer for Union, Matt helps with alumni admissions and the Annual Fund.

SENIOR ALUMNI TRUSTEE: Betsy Modest Brand ’82 Betsy is one of four alumni trustees who sit on the College’s Board of Trustees. She is the founder of Brandmark Studios, a boutique marketing agency based in Connecticut. She also is on the board of the equity theater ACT of Connecticut, and a parent to three young adults. At Union, Betsy serves on the Board’s Admissions and College Relations committees, and on the Council’s DEI initiative. She holds an MBA from Columbia University.

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT: Kate Barry ’01 Kate is a partner at Isaacson, Miller, a Boston-based executive search firm specializing in leadership recruitment for non-profit organizations, including the largest higher education search practice in the country. At Union, Kate was active in College administration and governance as a student leader, and she received the Frank Bailey Prize for her efforts. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Union and a master’s degree in higher education from Harvard University.