Adaptations: COA Magazine Spring 2020

COA

COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Volume 15 . Number 1 . Spring 2020

ADAPTATIONS

COA

College of the Atlantic Magazine EDITORIAL Editor Editorial Advice

Editorial Consultant

Daniel Mahoney Heather Albert-Knopp ‘99 Lynn Boulger Dru Colbert Darron Collins ‘92 Jennifer Hughes Rob Levin Caitlin Meredith Amanda Mogridge Chris Petersen Eloise Schultz ‘16 Karen Waldron Jodi Baker

DESIGN Art Director

Kenyon Grant

ADMINISTRATION President Provost Associate Academic Deans

Darron Collins Ken Hill Judy Allen, Chris Petersen, Bonnie Tai, Karen Waldron Heather Albert-Knopp ‘99

Dean of Admission Dean of Institutional Advancement Lynn Boulger Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke Director of Communications Rob Levin

BOARD OF TRUSTEES TRUSTEE OFFICERS Philip S.J. Moriarty, Chair Marthann Samek, Vice Chair Beth Gardiner, Vice Chair TRUSTEE MEMBERS Cynthia Baker Timothy Bass Michael Boland ‘94 Alyne Cistone Barclay Corbus Sarah Currie-Halpern Amy Yeager Geier Winston Holt IV Cookie Horner Nicholas Lapham Casey Mallinckrodt Anthony Mazlish Lili Pew Nadia Rosenthal Abby Rowe ('98) Henry L.P. Schmelzer Laura McGiffert Slover Laura Z. Stone Steve Sullens William N. Thorndike Claudia Turnbull

Ronald E. Beard, Secretary Jay McNally ’84, Treasurer

LIFE TRUSTEES Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. John N. Kelly William V.P. Newlin John Reeves Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. TRUSTEE EMERITI David Hackett Fischer William G. Foulke, Jr. George B.E. Hambleton Elizabeth D. Hodder Sherry F. Huber Philip B. Kunhardt III ’77 Phyllis Anina Moriarty Helen Porter Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78 Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Dr. John Wilmerding EX-OFFICIO Darron Collins '92

The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of College of the Atlantic envision a world where people value creativity, intellectual achievements, and diversity of nature and human cultures. With respect and compassion, individuals construct meaningful lives for themselves, gain appreciation of the relationships among all forms of life, and safeguard the heritage of future generations.

COA is published annually for the College of the Atlantic Community. coa.edu

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR DAN MAHONEY

ADAPTATIONS …[if we] for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves.

—Pablo Neruda, Keeping Quiet Adaptations: In these weeks of social distancing, I am spending time with my family, catching up on house projects, and reacquainting myself with several authors whose books fill my office shelves. These are old friends, writers I’ve loved for years, writers I find myself returning to again and again: Harryette Mullen, Joan Didion, César Aira, Denis Johnson, Douglas Kearney, Pablo Neruda, Jane Mead, and Lester Bangs. I have leaned on these books for a long, long time, their pages marked by my fingerprints and coffee stains. Recently, I’ve been digging back into Bangs… When he writes about music he is writing for his life—each review a desperate plea for his readers to listen a little deeper. Even now, when I read his review of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks I am in awe: “…most of all in ‘Madame George’ where [Morrison] sings the word ‘dry’ and then ‘your eye’ twenty times in a twirling melodic arc so beautiful it steals your own breath, and then this occurs: ‘And the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves.’” I read the line and hear the lyric and the moment wraps me tight in its arms. That is strong medicine.

communities and local farms together, and volunteer plants will sprout from the rubble. Dialogue will grow, informed by the “huge silence” of our present moment.

Adaptations: Finally, in praise of poetry and the copper beech growing outside of The Turrets, in praise of the Broad Reach Campaign and Kenyon Grant’s amazing infographic, here is a poem by Russell Edson entitled, The Fall: There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

But his parents said look it is fall.

Take good care.

Adaptations: This issue of the COA Magazine will reach you right about when Steve Ressel is on Otter Cliffs waiting for the yellow spotted salamanders to return to their natal pools. Soon after, libraries will reopen, giving our communities a stronger heartbeat as we emerge from isolation. Archivists will compile records of these times for future generations because that is what we do for each other. Students will travel to different parts of the world and come to see themselves more clearly. Food equity programs will bring Front cover: Milky Way over Mount Desert Rock. Photo credit: Sean Todd, the Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Studies. Back cover: Photo credit: Nikolai Fox '00.

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT DARRON COLLINS

ADAPTATION IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 My fingers hunt and peck this letter in midMarch, right in the maw of the COVID-19 pandemic. Want to see adaptation unfold live and with fervor right in front of your eyes? Consider this: During the last week of Winter term we made the difficult decision to move our entire Spring trimester to an online format.

I pause on the word difficult. Yes, it was difficult in the sense that the circumstances were tough. For so many, and especially the least fortunate among us, the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult in the truest sense of the term and is unlike anything we’ve confronted. But the decision to move online, and not to say it was made lightly, wasn’t a difficult one to make, because it became quite obvious that it was the only one we could sensibly make.

After joining the Wednesday faculty meeting during Week 10, the last week of the term, I expected some resistance when the conversation turned to moving Spring term online.

COA, as we all know, is about learning by doing, learning through projects, learning in the field in its many forms, learning collaboratively, and learning in close contact with your faculty and student peers. Online instruction has always felt antithetical to that ethos. But the faculty rose with a stoic confidence: We’ve got this, they said. We need to, and will, adapt for the sake of our students. It won’t be easy. It’s not how we would prefer to teach. But we will put our collective shoulder behind this and push hard—and what we create is not going to look like your standard set of online courses, of that you can be sure.

After a quick lunch in Take-a-Break, I was off to the All College Meeting. I love ACM, and I love speaking to large groups, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous when I announced the following: “We have to get as many of you as possible home, and we’re going to have to move Spring term to an online format.” And, yes, there were more questions than answers, and there was anxiety, and disappointment, and distress. But there was also so much compassion. That so many of our students, in the midst of such disruption, were first and foremost focused on the wellbeing of the COA community, the communities of our local towns, and the global community reinforced for me just how much we at COA value each other, our neighbors, and our fellow humans.

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After an all-day session with the COA COVID-19 emergency response team, we held a community dialogue on Friday, the last day of the term. There were still blank spots on the map, but adaptation had meant prioritization and rapid decision making.

Philosophy professor Gray Cox, who was a student in COA’s pilot program during the summer of 1971, addressed the crowd at one point. He reminded all of us that COA was founded to do something radically different for the greater good. He reminded us that every class is, in part, a class on educational philosophy and practice. He reminded us that, especially in these times, it is our calling as a community to do something extraordinary. We needed, I realized, to confront this challenge and, using our own special kind of human-ecological Aikido, emerge as a stronger and more creative institution.

By the time you’re reading this we will be in the middle of that online Spring term and that human-ecological adaptation will be unfolding with even more fervor. Some faculty will be working through online sessions of ornithology, where students across a dozen time zones will be gathering bird data from their own home-based field sites. A cohort of faculty will be teaching the Human Ecology Core Course, in pairs, to eighty or so firstyear students and providing them the tools to chart their own courses for their COA careers. Computer scientist Dan Gatti will be working with ecologist John Anderson to take a difficult, but prescient, last-minute jog through a course entitled Plagues, Panic, and Prevention: Natural History of Infectious Diseases. What we’re evolving toward, again using Gray’s words as reference, is a kind of decentralized, place-based education.

I’m energized by that idea, and I believe that as everyone in our community works together to co-create Spring term 2020, we will continue to learn, synthesize, perceive, and adapt in a way that could only be done at COA. Enjoy this edition of COA Magazine through the lens of adaptation. Know that we hold all of you close to our hearts as you adapt in your own ways during these challenging times.

Darron

In this issue 3

News

6

Coda

BY RICH BORDEN

12

Strike and Functional Extinction

BY SONJA JOHANSON '95

14

Alumnus Profile: Alex Borowicz '14

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

16

Salamanders and the Snowman

BY DAN MAHONEY

24

A Space Left to Grow: The COA Hill

BY SAGE FULLER '22

28

Alumna Profile: Helena Shilomboleni '09

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

30

How to Share a Harvest

BY DAN MAHONEY

36

Broad Reach Copper Beech

BY ROB LEVIN

38

From Research to Recognition

BY ARIELLE GREENBERG

43

Donor Profile: Kim Wentworth

BY PRESIDENT DARRON COLLINS '92

45

Your Exquisite Corpse is Due Today

BY JOSH WINER '91

50

Alumni Profile: Melissa Relyea Ossanna ’91

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

52

台湾

BY DAN MAHONEY

59 62 68 72 73

In Memoriam Alumni Notes Community Notes Crossword From the Archives

BY NIMISHA BASTEDO '15 1

NEWS TRANSFORMATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOCUSES ON PEOPLE, PLACE The biggest fundraising effort in the history of the college was launched into its public phase in summer 2019 before an excited crowd at the annual Champlain Society reception.

The $50 million Broad Reach Campaign for College of the Atlantic’s Future endows new student scholarships, creates state-of-the-art, environmentally sustainable academic and residential spaces, and supports COA’s transition to a fossil fuel-free campus. The biggest fundraising drive in the school’s history had already raised $44.4 million in gifts and pledges by spring 2020.

“The overwhelming show of support and enthusiasm from our community of alumni, trustees, and friends reinforces the ongoing vitality and centrality of our mission,” said COA President Darron Collins '92. “At COA we cultivate students’ passions and abilities to take on the wicked problems at the boundary between humanity and the environment, and if ever there was a need for a College of the Atlantic in this world, it’s right now.”

COA alumna Nell Newman '87, the founder of Newman's Own Organics, joined the Broad Reach Campaign launch reception to announce the creation of

L to R: College of the Atlantic Trustee Ron Beard, Nell Newman ’87, and COA President Darron Collins ’92 at the Broad Reach campaign launch party.

the first faculty position endowed by the campaign, the Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman Chair in the Performing Arts, named after her parents.

"Your investment in the future of this college is an investment in humanity and the planet that sustains us all," Newman said.

The Broad Reach Campaign developed out of a strategic planning process which drew from stakeholders across all areas of

the college. At the heart of the campaign is a $22 million project that will reimagine the north end of campus, including the 30,000-square-foot, high-energy-performance Center for Human Ecology, a new art gallery and experimental theater, and a new welcome center for college admissions, which will act as an intentional “front door” for the college.

For more information, visit coa.edu/ broadreach

Left: Taking a virtual tour of the Center for Human Ecology. Right: Nell Newman ’87.

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STUDENT HELPS PLOT MAINE’S CLIMATE COURSE council includes leaders from the political, education, conservation, government, and business sectors, among others.

Ania Wright ’20 speaks at a climate strike organized by students from College of the Atlantic and Mount Desert Island High School.

College of the Atlantic student Ania Wright '20 is making use of her academic work in climate justice as the formal Youth Representative appointee to Maine Governor Janet Mills’ new, thirty-ninemember Maine Climate Council.

Convened to advise the Governor on strategies to meet the state’s ambitious goals on renewable energy generation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the

The group’s first meeting in fall 2019 coincided with the global Climate Action Week and the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit. At their second meeting in early 2020, Wright was given a featured speaker spot, which led to a standing ovation in a packed room at the Augusta Civic Center.

“It may feel like a drop in the bucket, but Maine has the opportunity to set an example for the US and the world. We are in a unique situation where we have the will and resources to create an equitable and just climate plan for the state,” Wright said. “There is room for the climate council to grow, by establishing bolder goals and encouraging diversity, equity, and inclusion in its plan, but I am excited to be a part of a process that has so much potential.”

Wright has been busy with climate justice work while at COA. She has led climate strikes and rallies, traveled to Katowice, Poland as a delegate to the twenty-forth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (where she worked with young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg), helped form the Maine Youth for Climate Justice group, and is a leading member of COA climate justice group Earth in Brackets.

Wright said she was inspired to work locally after her trip to the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland.

“The place we can have the most impact, right now, is on the local and regional level,” Wright said. “The international space isn’t enough; we need to work. Time is running out.”

NEW ARTIST RESIDENCY BLOOMS An artist residency program has been created by COA and the Marion Boulton ‘Kippy’ Stroud Foundation, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the aim of which is continuing Stroud’s legacy of contributing to the exploration of the arts on Mount Desert Island. Stroud was the founder of the Acadia Summer Arts Program, also known as Kamp Kippy, which hosted hundreds of artists and their guests and families over its nearly three-decade run.

The first artists to visit COA as part of the College of the Atlantic Kippy Stroud Artist-in-Residence Program spent a month on campus at the beginning of Fall term, winning over hearts and minds with their incredible creativity, brilliant social commentary, and friendly nature.

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley combine painting, performance, and a distinctive wordplay-rich poetry in their polemical, graphically stylized videos.

Their work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, the Baltimore COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Stills from In the Body of the Sturgeon, 2017, by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley.

Museum of Art, The High Line, Kunsthalle Bremen, the Hammer Museum, the ICA Boston, and SITE Santa Fe. “Mary and Patrick’s work is extraordinary.

To a certain extent, visually eccentric, and narratively poetic—it is very different from work shown here before,” said professor Catherine Clinger, the Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts. “Their residency provided a rare opportunity for our students to engage with two artists with a world-renowned practice and to view some of their remarkable work.”

The Kelleys held a Human Ecology Forum while they were on campus, filling the Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Community Center with students, faculty, staff, and friends of the college for a screening of their video piece, In the Body of the Sturgeon (2017), which premiered at Tate Liverpool. For the month of September, the pair occupied the Ethel H. Blum Gallery with the tools and activities of their art making, working on ideas for future work, and spending time with students.

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CHAMPLAIN INSTITUTE CONTINUES TO GROW to SXSW Film Festival co-founder Nancy Shafer, Brooklyn Museum curator Ashley James, and New York Times food editor Sam Sifton took a close look at times in our history to see how art has shaped the conversation around critical issues of the day—and how today’s culture wars are being fought on canvases, on the big screen, and in the pages of novels.

Art historian John Wildmerding signs books after a talk at the 2019 Champlain Institute.

The third-annual College of the Atlantic Champlain Institute drew a record crowd of over 600 registrants for five days of talks, screenings, receptions, and book signings during summer 2019.

Art: Dissent and Diplomacy brought a diverse group of experts to campus to examine how art, creativity, and even food influence society and political systems.

Guests ranging from author Imbolo Mbue

All institute presentations were held in a spacious tent on the seaside lawn of the Kathryn W. Davis Center for International and Regional Studies, providing plentiful space for every event and cool ocean breezes. Book signings and cocktail receptions were also held in the Davis Center and on the porch of the early twentieth century structure.

For the 2020 Champlain Institute, July 27–July 31, guests will take on the topic of November 3—What's at Stake?, exploring the issues at the heart of the presidential election including immigration, the second amendment, SCOTUS, the environment, election integrity, the state of democracy,

and many other critical issues. The event is free and open to all, with registration beginning in May. For more about the Champlain Institute visit coa.edu/champlaininstitute.

A Note on Summer Events College of the Atlantic is closely monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak and US Centers for Disease Control recommendations on large gatherings. We have an amazing slate of thought-provoking lectures, conversations, film screenings, and other events planned for this summer and maintain hope that we will all be able to gather safely on Mount Desert Island in a few months. Although there are no immediate plans to postpone or cancel the Champlain Institute, Coffee and Conversation, or any of our other summer events, we are actively making contingency plans to offer our lectures and Champlain Institute sessions via livestream should that be necessary. We will communicate any changes to the events on the COA website and via email.

HOMESTEADING including a field trip to the homestead of Devina Viswanathan '16 and Jacob Wartell '12, featuring their straw bale house, hand-dug well, raised-bed gardens, and lots of paths through their beautiful woods.

At Jacob and Divina’s homestead.

During the Fall term, professors Kourtney Collum, the Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems, and Davis Taylor, the Cody van Heerden Chair in Economics and Quantitative Social Sciences, team taught a new course, Homesteading: Theory and Practice. The course examined homesteading as an economic and cultural practice, and used Maine, a center for homesteading activity in the United States, as an ideal jumping off point. The course had a significant field component, 4

The course examined the practice of homesteading from a variety of angles.

From a food systems perspective, homesteading represents a means of divesting from the global food system through the practice of subsistence agriculture and food preservation. From an anthropological perspective, homesteading raises interesting questions about why some individuals eschew conventional lifestyles and seek significant degrees of self-sufficiency, intentional living, and commitments to non-commodified production. According to Veronica Nehasil '21, “the wish, among many homesteaders we read about, and all of the homesteaders we visited over the last ten weeks, is to live in a way that impacts the environment, specifically their land, as

little as possible, taking into consideration that no person, homesteader or otherwise, can live without altering the landscape in some capacity.”

Jesse Snider '21, another student in the class, said that he “was struck by the self-assuredness of the homesteaders we visited. Perhaps this comes from realizing the ‘dream’ of living exactly how you want to live. As someone who is fairly fearful of failure, listening to homesteaders talk about the trial and error learning processes they went through helped me realize that ‘failure’ is really just experiential learning.”

An immersive, dynamic, experiential class that leads from failure to a bevy of other questions and possibilities? That is right in line with the ethos of College of the Atlantic.

Taylor and Collum plan to offer the course again in 2022.

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NEW TRUSTEES College of the Atlantic is pleased to announce the appointment of two new members to our board of trustees. Cookie Horner, of Mount Desert, and Claudia Turnbull, of New York and Bar Harbor, bring a wealth of essential skills, vitality, and experience to the COA board.

“On behalf of all our trustee colleagues, I offer my hearty congratulations and a very warm welcome to Cookie and Claudia,” chairman Philip Moriarty said. “The COA board is an incredibly generous, engaged, and dedicated group, and I can think of no two people to bring aboard to help make that even more so.”

NINA (COOKIE) HORNER

Guggenheim Museum Associate Curator Ashley James, left, speaks with Africa Pop Studio Curator Hannah Traore during the 2019 Champlain Institute.

Originally from Philadelphia, Cookie Horner summered as a young girl with her family on Mount Desert Island, eventually moving to Maine in 1972 and to the MDI area in 1975. She worked at the MDI Hospital in labor and delivery for sixteen years and as school nurse at Mount Desert Island High School for seventeen years.

Since retiring, Horner volunteers for Hospice Volunteers of Hancock County and leads their Evensong Hospice Singers.

She also has served on the boards of the Abbe Museum and Friends of Acadia, worked on the volunteer trail crew in the park, and co-chaired the year-long Acadia Centennial Celebration with Jack Russell in 2016. A registered Maine Guide, Horner is an avid outdoorswoman, fly fisherman, and hiker.

For her 50th birthday, she through-hiked the Maine Appalachian Trail.

Horner has six children and eleven grandchildren with her husband, Dr. Bill Horner. Their daughter, Jennifer Judd-McGee, attended COA ('92). Horner received an AAS from Bennett Junior College and a nursing diploma from Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.

CLAUDIA TURNBULL

The COA Homesteading Thoery and Practice class. Front row, L to R: Adele Wise '21, Indigo Woods '21, Zeya Lorio '22, Natasha Diamondstone-Kohout '22, Rose Jackson '20. Back row, L to R: Kourtney Collum, Rebekah Heikkila '20, Veronica Nehasil '21, Pepin Mittelhauser '20, Davis Taylor, Regan Greer '22, Jesse Snider '21. Selfie photographer: Leta Diethelm '20.

Claudia Turnbull began teaching meditation in 1974 and now works at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, investigating the results of psilocybin experiences had by religious professionals and long term meditators. She is a member of The Heffter Institute Board of Trustees and has been a member of the Goddard College Board of Trustees.

Turnbull has been happily married for forty-one years and has raised two children, a forty-year-old son and a thirty-sevenyear-old daughter. She is an avid organic gardener and a capable and enthusiastic cruising sailor in the family’s classic wood sailboats. She holds a master of arts degree in consciousness studies from Goddard College. n

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Coda*

by RICH BORDEN

R

ichard J. Borden's biography is impressive. He holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology and teaches psychology, community planning, and the history and philosophy of human ecology. Borden served as COA's academic dean for twenty years. He is past president and former executive director of the Society for Human Ecology, as well as a founding member of the human ecology section of the Ecological Society of America. He has authored, co-authored and edited several books, and published more than seventy research reports, journal articles, and essays. But this is only a partial biography of Borden; a fuller biography would include his love of cooking and oldtime fiddling, walking in Acadia, and his love for sharing with students everything he loves. Borden has been the rock-steady heartbeat of COA for over thirty years and will teach his last class, Human Relations, during the 2020 Spring term. We thank him for his years of dedicated service.

This piece is the closing epilogue—Coda—from my book Ecology and Experience: Reflections from a Human Ecological Perspective. It has a few ties to the preceding chapters of the book, but also offers a pretty good standalone reflection of my thinking.

The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.

Abraham Lincoln Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Henry David Thoreau

I

am sitting in one of my favorite spots, on the northern end of Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park, a mile or so from our house. It is a brilliant mid-winter afternoon. The sunshine of a January thaw warms the day with a misleading hint of spring. The ice around the lakeshore has opened in a band of sparkling water.

For the moment at least, the gap is too wide to reach the colorful ice shacks where local residents huddle over narrow holes, waiting for trout and landlocked salmon to trip their baited lines. A faint smell of detritus from last summer’s ferns and leaves rises through a patch of bare ground in the melting snow. If I sit quietly, the sound of winter wildlife filters from the trees.

A chorus of chirps and trills from chickadees, juncos, and grosbeaks fills the air. Further off in the distance I hear a raven’s croak, the chatter of a red squirrel, and the drumming of a pileated woodpecker. The nighttime tracks of snowshoe hare, white tail deer, and coyotes crisscross through the snow and trees beyond the water’s edge.

* A coda in musical terminology is a brief look back and closing repetition of a composition’s main themes. In this case, it is also an opportunity to step back from the complexity of life and recount the splendor of its unity.

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The granite bowl surrounding the lake is a timeless vista of trees and sky. To the south lies Pemetic Mountain. On my right is the eastern slope of Sargent Mountain; to the left, the west face of Cadillac.

These are the prominent landscape features that drew Samuel de Champlain to land on these shores in September of 1604. Champlain named the island Isle des Monts-Deserts for its barren mountain peaks. He also laid claim to it—along with much of the North Atlantic coast—as New France.

Nine years later, at the invitation of the local Penobscot chief Asticou, a small group of French missionaries was welcomed and aided in starting a colony. The cultural history of the island dates back 6,000 years as a summer encampment for Native Americans. The rich natural resources of berries, game animals, finfish, and shellfish were sun-dried or smoked to sustain the long winter months in their mainland communities.

The new French settlement of Saint Saveur is widely thought to have been located on the island’s southern shore, known today as Fernald Point, at the mouth of Somes Sound. The mission’s leader was Pierre Biard, a Jesuit priest and former professor of theology at the University of Lyons. The settlers erected a fort, planted crops and set about baptizing the natives. Their initiative was cut short, however, when Captain Samuel Abigail from the British colony of Virginia arrived on his ship Treasurer. Abigail and his crew plundered the settlement, killed several inhabitants, and took the remaining men, including Biard, as prisoners. The boundary dispute between British New England and French Acadia remained a heated one for the next 150 years. No other European colonies were attempted on Mount Desert Island during that time. The sole exception came in the summer of 1688, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and his bride resided here briefly to explore his land grant of MDI and surrounding coastal areas. But Cadillac soon moved westward to found the city of Detroit and later serve as governor of French Louisiana.

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Following defeat of the French at Quebec in 1759, the Acadia region was finally open for British settlers.

Abraham Somes, James Richardson and their families founded the first permanent European settlement in 1761—at the urging and offer of free land from Sir Francis Bernard, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The village of Somesville was established at the northern tip of Somes Sound. The sound’s fivemile long arm of sea divides the island into eastern and western lobes.

IF I SIT QUIETLY, THE SOUND OF WINTER WILDLIFE FILTERS FROM THE TREES. A CHORUS OF CHIRPS AND TRILLS FROM CHICKADEES, JUNCOS, AND GROSBEAKS FILLS THE AIR. FURTHER OFF IN THE DISTANCE I HEAR A RAVEN’S CROAK, THE CHATTER OF A RED SQUIRREL, AND THE DRUMMING OF A PILEATED WOODPECKER. After American independence in 1776, new communities sprang up in other sheltered harbors around the island. Final determination of the border between the United States and maritime Canada, along the St. Croix River, however, would not be resolved until 1783. When Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820, as the twenty-third US state, the island’s population had grown to a thousand inhabitants. Principal occupations were farming, lumbering, fishing, and shipbuilding, which were often combined in the annual activities of residents.

Coda

Things will stay this way in the weeks and months ahead, until late April when the ice is out. Spring in Maine comes in fits and starts. Yet each day brings something new. As the ground thaws tree buds start to swell. Clusters of arbutus and shadbush flowers erupt throughout the woods. Horsetails and pussy willows push their way into the warm sunshine. The fiddleheads of ancient ferns unfurl, as if to greet their primeval dragonfly and water strider cousins. Loons begin their mating season on fresh water and join returning grebes, mergansers, and ducks. The trees begin to leaf—every day in different shades of green. The long migration of warblers from Central and South America and the evening uproar of tree frogs affirm the coming summer.

One of the first summer visitors to Mount Desert Island was Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Cole’s trip was in 1844.

He boarded at the Schooner Head farm of William and Crosha Lynam. Captivated by the island’s beauty, he returned several more times with other artists, including Fitz Hugh Lane, William Hart, and Frederic Church. It was Church who named Eagle Lake, where I am now sitting, in a glorious oil painting from atop Cadillac Mountain. The stunning portrayals by the Hudson River artists captured the interest of wealthy collectors in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. On Church’s fourth trip to the island, in the summer of 1855, he brought along a party of twenty-six people.

This pattern continued as other "rusticators" from eastern cities followed and found accommodations in the households of local residents. As the influx of visi-

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tors grew, a new era of larger and progressively fancier hotels began.

The island’s gilded age was severely threatened in August 1873 by an outbreak of typhoid and a few weeks later by scarlet fever. Several hotels were forced to close. Tourists fled the town. The problem was traced to septic infiltration into wells caused by rapid overbuilding. National news of the outbreaks spread.

Newspaper articles warned that the island’s name, Mount Desert, might be its fateful prophecy. Without the earnest action of residents and hotel owners, it may have come true. The proposed solution was to build a system of aqueducts and pipelines to connect the waters of Eagle Lake and the town. Construction began the following May at a frantic pace. By July a newly laid system was providing safe water to the hotels and dwellings of Bar Harbor. With the help of well-placed newspaper articles and publicity, disaster was averted.

The resort reopened to a successful 1874 season.

By 1880 Bar Harbor had thirty hotels. Tourism became its major industry. Rodick House, in the center of town, was the nation’s largest summer hotel of the time—with 400 rooms and a dining hall that served 1000 guests. The island’s emergence as a leading resort attracted the wealthiest and most prominent Americans. Many of them, including the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, Astor, Carnegie, and Pulitzer families, began to build "cottages" of their own. Despite the unpretentious name, they were actually magnificent mansions with as many as fifty rooms.

friends foresaw an opportunity to join the new park system. Dorr pushed untiringly to achieve the goal.

On February 26, 1919, President Wilson signed the legislation for Lafayette National Park. It was the first national park east of the Mississippi, and the only one created entirely by gift of lands. The name was changed to Acadia in 1929.

The park continued to grow. More than 11,000 acres were added through the generosity of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Between 1913 and 1940, Rockefeller created fifty-seven miles of graveled carriage roads that meander through the forest, around lakes, and over sixteen beautifully designed granite bridges. It is ironic, perhaps, that a family that made its wealth in oil would go to such lengths to preserve a horse-drawn tradition.

The beauty of "Rockefeller’s roads" became an unrivaled refuge for summer hikers, horseback riders and open carriages—as well as a spectacular winter network of peaceful ski trails.

The Great Depression and World War II put a damper on MDI’s opulent lifestyles. The devastating fire of 1947 delivered the coup de grace. The blaze consumed 17,000 acres, nearly half of it parkland. Five major hotels, sixty-seven palatial summer estates and 200 yearround homes were destroyed. The natural beauty of Bar Harbor that had drawn people from all over the world was erased. Most of the lavish estates destroyed by the fire were not rebuilt. Many others were abandoned and fell into disrepair. The town struggled to rebuild in the charred and barren landscape left behind in the fire’s wake. Without the summer allure, on which it financially depended, the island’s future was bleak.

EVERY PLACE HOLDS A STORY OF NATURAL, CULTURAL, AND PERSONAL ECOLOGY FROM WHICH TO BEGIN. MY YEARS OF CONTEMPLATION ALONG THE TRAILS OF THIS ISLAND ARE MERELY A CONTINUATION OF SELFTAUGHT LESSONS AND PRACTICES OF CHILDHOOD. Amid this rapid development, a group of prominent summer residents initiated a movement to protect significant portions of the island. Under leadership from Harvard College’s President Charles W. Eliot, they set out to establish a nature reserve for future generations. George B. Dorr, also a Boston summer resident and friend of Eliot, accepted the task of directing the effort. With help from George Vanderbilt and other supporters, the acquisition of mountain tops, woodlands and other spectacular and fragile land parcels began in 1901. When Congress established the National Park Service in August 1916, Dorr and his

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As the natural ecology recovered, a new legion of summer visitors gradually arrived. But the permanent and summer residents who had not abandoned the island wanted a more balanced economy. The notion of a college seemed an ideal counterpart to the seasonal cycle of tourism. Leslie Brewer, a Bar Harbor businessman, and Fr. James Gower, parish priest of the town’s Catholic Church, led the initiative. Brewer and Gower were childhood friends. They graduated from Bar Harbor High School in 1940 at the top of their class and were co-captains of the football team. After college and service in WWII, both men returned to their home. They knew many of the academic and affluent summer residents who might offer assistance to recreate the town’s future.

College of the Atlantic was chartered in 1969 and opened for classes in 1972. Its educational focus of human ecology—the interdisciplinary study of the relations of humans and the environment—is credited

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Back in the middle of the book, we equated the biorhythm of a heartbeat to Earth’s yearly revolution around the sun. I would like to revisit the analogy.

Instead of heartbeats-to-years, the algorithm will use the second hand of my watch—the ratio being roughly the same. A minute of time through this lens corresponds to sixty years. Adding a few more seconds covers the duration of my life. It also frames the landscape surrounding me. Evidence of the ’47 fire that roared across the island clearly remains. Off to my right a few acres of old forest were somehow spared, as the blaze swept down the entire western shore of the lake. Only half the shoreline on the other side burned, when the October winds shifted and pushed the inferno over Cadillac Mountain and down onto Bar Harbor. The fire line defines two unmistakable patterns of forest ecology. The arching hemlock and white pine, with annual rings dating back hundreds of years, stand in stark contrast with the other side—all of which has regrown in my lifetime. We are linked in time; and I feel the difference.

Three minutes, by my watch, mark Cole’s first trip to MDI and Church’s painting of this lake. Champlain’s landing and naming of the island come four minutes later. I must wait at least two hours to sense the arrival time of the first indigenous people half-dozen millennia ago—and the true origins of human ecology in this place. In another two hours, a mile-high glacier covers everything. Ice sculpted the island geology over thousands of years—carving the central fjard, rounding mountaintops, and chiseling lakes a hundred feet deep, like the one before me. This time tomorrow, the sweep of my second hand will find the island still covered by ice. The seconds-to-years conversion will also show Homo sapiens not yet out of Africa. Still thousands of years lie ahead before they begin the venture around the world. This is one of the clearest demarcations, perhaps, to an ecology of humans.

The solitude of this winter day is ideal for contemplating the synchrony of Pleistocene Africa and North American ice sheets. In summer, millions of visitors come to Acadia. The carriage road and trails around the lake swarm with hikers. Today no signs of humanity can be seen. A handful of fish shacks dot the ice of one cove, but they are hidden from view behind a stand of trees. This reverie of seclusion is unexpect-

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edly arrested, however, when high above in the clear blue sky my eye catches the silvery reflection of an airplane. Before it slips past the crest of Cadillac another takes its place. The line of jets crisscrossing the Atlantic is ceaseless. I am not alone. A continuous stream of humanity passes overhead, thousands every hour, day and night. The wooly contrail of each aircraft is a telltale warning of atmospheric residue. I am reminded of other human impacts on the air and environment. Some are the sulfurous byproducts of inland coal-fueled power plants and industry, blown downwind across New England. Others come in the form of nitrate compounds released by petroleum usage. At one point, in the summer of 1984, the acid level of fog measured in Acadia National Park reached a pH value equivalent to commercial vinegar. Things have improved since the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, but chronically high levels of acidity still remain in the island’s air and water.

Two hundred years ago a galloping horse was the fastest form of communication. Today we travel near the speed of sound and communicate with the speed of light. These changes have happened with astonishing rapidity. They are accompanied by an equally amazing degree of unconsciousness, not only of society’s energy dependence—but also about the fossil fuels that make it possible, and what they really are. A return to our wristwatch analogy, one last time, illustrates the point. Petroleum (oil and natural gas) comes from tiny marine zooplankton and phytoplankton that died, accumulated on the bottom of large bodies of water, and became trapped beneath layers of inorganic sediment.

The organic material was then converted to complex hydrocarbons by the enormous forces and heat of sedimentary compression. Coal is made of much larger non-marine organisms, primarily ferns and trees, also laid down and compressed beneath layers of rock. Petroleum and coal are hundreds of millions of years old.

Both are the residual accumulation of past life forms and solar energy that required hundreds of millions of years to form. To experience that range of time I must sit here, counting the passing seconds, for decades!

Coda

to James Gower. The idea of human ecology is what brought me here. It has shaped my life ever since. Fr. Jim died while I was working on this final chapter. The opportunity to write a tribute to his life was given to me. He is very much on my mind as I sit here looking out across Eagle Lake. The foregoing island-in-time portrait is entwined by these feelings. So are many themes from the preceding pages—of space and time, death and life, ecology, imagination, beauty and love.

Worldwide, a hundred million barrels of oil and twenty million tons of coal are consumed every day.

This gorging on the past is given little thought. The accelerating dependence on fossil fuels, like the exponential growth of human population, seems to escape comprehension. We have heard these warnings for decades. The point here, however, is not about environmental risks; my concern is the limits of experience. It really is difficult to bring these gaps into mind. Before throwing a birch log into our woodstove, I can count its fifty-odd annual rings since the 1947 fire cleared the landscape of my backyard. The stored energy in each layer of wood and the sunlight streaming through the window are fairly easy to connect. The context that

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links my car key, our kitchen range, or a light switch is much less easily recounted. Yet all of these actions are ecological facts of life. We live in a human ecological world. It stretches beyond our individual lives—much further even, than our existence as a species on this planet.

Human ecology is a way of looking at the world. As a philosophical perspective, it seeks an understanding of how the world really is, how it was, never will be again, and how it could be. I have had the opportunity to work and live in an educational community that shares these aims. These ideals are by no means limited to higher education. If I had my way, every schoolchild would begin their life of learning in personal discoveries of their ecological context. There is nothing special in the brief snapshot of Downeast Maine portrayed above. Every place holds a story of natural, cultural, and personal ecology from which to begin.

My years of contemplation along the trails of this island are merely a continuation of self-taught lessons and practices of childhood. Had schools back then offered such a curriculum, this book would have been easier to write. It pains me to realize how little early education has changed in the interim. Some strides have been made here and there. Yet I am often reminded by alumni, with high hopes of applying their interdisciplinary education as teachers, who discover the inflexibility of traditional structures. Irrespective of these impediments, I remain hopeful. The intuitive

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impulse behind questions of sustainability is growing.

Climate change and other anthropogenic issues have begun to pass the threshold of economic and political concern.

The act of enfolding subjective experience and external reality is deeply personal. Its representation defies abstract formulae, written words, or coded rules. Nature and mind are too fleeting to be seized. A story’s flowing stream or the timeless repose of meditation are perhaps the closest we come. My mandala for the contemplation of life is life itself—in the ever-changing patterns of ecology. Everyone can find a private spot to know some place this way, around the seasons and across in the depths of time. The experience of being alive in this evolving world will flow from there— to other places—and all events. Ownership and assets do not measure the quality of life. Life is measured in the quality of our experience. All the world is open to experience. The richness of the living world, conversely, may well depend on our caring enough to do so.

This world by itself is a wonder. The experience of being here, in celebration of the whole of life, is to make the most of it. When the time comes, as my wife Patricia paints it, "to go back into the soup," I am prepared to meet it as a homecoming. Everything else is mystery. n

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WHY I GIVE

Elena TuhyWalters '90 Black Fly Monthly Giving Society “I gave my first gift to COA shortly after graduation when I was the interim public affairs director. I could see from the inside that every contribution, no matter the size, helped the college’s mission. By making a recurring donation through the Black Fly Society, I hope to allow the college to address the expenses it has every month, not just at the end of the calendar or fiscal year. COA provided a magical time in my life and I give back to help students expand their horizons, provide for students’ basic needs, and provide more than a living wage for faculty and staff.”

Elena Tuhy-Walters went on from COA to earn a JD degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, and has served as assistant prosecutor for the Columbus, Ohio City Attorney’s Office since July 2019.

THE BLACK FLY SOCIETY is for everyone!

The Black Fly Society was established to make donating to COA’s Annual Fund easier and greener. Anyone can join this swarm of sustaining donors by setting up a paperless, monthly online gift.

Follow the instructions at coa.edu/blackflysociety If you want to give by mail: COA Annual Fund 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 (Please make checks out to College of the Atlantic)

Questions? 207.801.5624

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SONJA JOHANSON '95

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: This series of erasures is part of a found poetry project, The Poeming, that takes place each October, in which poets reimagine horror novels.

Strike

erasure, Anne Rice, Taltos, pg. 190 megastrobili, Eastern Redcedar, Juniperus virginiana 12

previously published by Nightjar Review

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These particular erasures use the Anne Rice novel Taltos as their source text. I elected to perform these erasures using plant materials as a way of celebrating and mourning our current ecological state; the breakneck speed of climate change and globalization is easily observed by those working in horticulture and conserva-

tion. Both native plants that are threatened by habitat loss and introduced plants are represented. In selecting materials for these erasures, I looked for plants that were accessible in the landscape during the month of October, and sought diversity of form, texture, colour, and botanical structures

Functional Extinction

erasure, Anne Rice, Taltos, pg. 230 leaf margins, American Chestnut, Castanea dentata COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

previously published by Menacing Hedge

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ALUMNUS PROFILE

From Mount Desert to the Danger Islands:

Alex Borowicz '14

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

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cant other visitors have come to the Danger Islands, a cluster of ice-covered rocks off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, but Alex Borowicz '14 is far from alone. He’s surrounded by Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae): seven hundred and fifty-one thousand, five hundred and twenty-seven pairs, to be exact. Borowicz knows because he’s counted them, clicking tallywhackers in each hand while the birds waddle around their nests “like people going into a rock concert.” He was one of five researchers to locate and document the supercolony located in the Danger Islands. In addition to ground counts, Borowicz and his colleagues from Stony Brook University trained an algorithm to determine the population’s size from drone imagery. By estimating the penguins’ range and abundance, the researchers hope to learn more about the factors behind the colony’s success.

It’s far from Borowicz’s first trip to the Antarctic; he’s been traveling there since his last year at COA. Before then, he served as a deckhand on COA's research vessel Osprey, which he considers one of the best preparations for the turbulent Antarctic seas. “It’s hard to learn how to run a boat well if you only ever learn in good conditions,” he jokes. While still a student, Borowicz worked closely with captain Toby Stephenson '96 to pilot Osprey to COA’s research islands and other offshore projects. Finding connections between fieldwork and courses such as Biogeography, he says, inspired his own research. After learning that Mount Desert Rock was a pupping site for gray seals (Hali-

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choerus grypus), Borowicz decided to dedicate his senior project to the species’ recolonization of the area.

“You’re not doing human ecology if you have a singular goal,” he reflects. Writing a thesis on gray seals led him to explore the intersections of economic and environmental policy, and to anticipate the ways that thinking in a singular way could lead to new problems.

“Climate change presents the biggest test of human ecology,” he says, “because you have to work at the interface of many systems.”

The Antarctic’s extreme and vast landscape is one reason that Borowicz returns there; he’s also drawn by a sense of urgency and curiosity for what’s still unknown.

After finishing his PhD in ecology and evolution at SUNY Stony Brook, he plans to continue working in conservation while keeping one foot propped in the Antarctic. In 2020, he will return to survey Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus) in the South Shetland Islands with a combination of ground counts and aerial mapping. Many of these areas have never been surveyed before, but with the aid of drone technology, he’ll be able to get a more precise reading than satellite-based estimates. Chinstraps like to nest in steep slopes and in scree, which makes them hard to distinguish from rocky shadows. “All told,” says Borowicz, “we’re looking for several million penguins, but we can’t be sure exactly how many.” The team’s research will provide insight into the environmental and climate-linked factors driving this species’ population decline. But first, he says, they’ve got to be counted. n

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Alex Borowicz '14. Photo credit: Jeff Topham

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SALAMANDE THE

Spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum). Photo: Steve Ressel.

A rapidly changing climate means that many species will likely depend on their ability to migrate away from or adapt to increasingly less favorable climatic conditions.

Professor Steve Ressel’s study of spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) challenges long-standing dogma that amphibians are inherently salt intolerant.

Are these salamanders adapting to or just simply tolerating their environment, and what exactly does a snowman have to do with it?

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ERS AND E SNOWMAN

BY DAN MAHONEY

TH E WAIT It is a typical April night in Bar Harbor, Maine, but professor Steve Ressel, the Kim M. Wentworth Chair in Environmental Studies, is on edge. At any moment he might hightail it from the warmth of his home and head into the freezing drizzle that fills the air outside. He is itchy, full of excitement, waiting like a kid waits for the last day of school—he has that same fire in his eyes. Ressel is waiting for one of the most puzzling and thrilling wildlife spectacles in New England: the emergence and mass migration of glistening, COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

yellow-spotted, jet-black salamanders.

In Maine, that migration happens over a couple of nights, usually in April.

This urge is what leads spotted salamanders to migrate en masse in search of vernal pools.

The spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) have been waiting too. For most of the year these shy amphibians conceal themselves under logs, leaves, rocks, or in burrows and tunnels made by other animals. In winter, they hibernate in protected areas below the frost line. But when temperatures are just above freezing and it has rained enough to soak the ground, spotted salamanders sense it is time to move, and not only time to move, but time to breed.

Once the right pool is found, the congress of spotted salamanders will participate in a nuptial dance so vigorous, the water around them may appear to boil. Male spotted salamanders deposit their sperm before they even meet the females. After littering the bottom of the vernal pool with sperm-bearing capsules, they then wriggle and gyrate, nuzzling with abandon every female they contact. The females lay their eggs in gelatinous masses shortly thereafter.

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ALONG WITH GNOMES AND NYMPHS, SALAMANDERS WERE CONSIDERED ONE OF THE ‘ELEMENTAL SPIRITS’ REPRESENTING EARTH, WATER, AND FIRE, ACCORDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE SIXTEENTHCENTURY ALCHEMIST PARACELSUS

manders were considered one of the ‘elemental spirits’ representing earth, water, and fire, according to the system of the 16th-century alchemist Paracelsus.

The shy amphibians were long thought to be born of fire. The idea probably arose because salamanders often lived under logs and were sometimes unwittingly transported to home hearths. When the fireplace was lit, distressed salamanders rushed out of the blaze— giving the appearance of arising from the flames.”

TH E SP OT TED SAL AMAN D ERS O F OT TER P O INT There are vernal pools all over Mount Desert Island and in Acadia National Park. Most of them are forested, full of rich dead plant material, and protected by a canopy of trees. The vernal pools at Otter Point are an exception to this. They are located on top of massive granite cliffs 150 feet above the high tide zone. The pools are exposed, mere depressions on granite rock, making them susceptible to large temperature fluctuations. They often have elevated salt concentrations due to sea spray blown in from storms. Many studies have shown that spotted salamanders avoid pools with increased salinity levels, so the question is why does a small group of spotted salamanders keep using the vernal pools of Otter Point to breed? This is the question that brings Ressel to the cliffs every April.

Spotted salamander.

Photo: Kenyon Grant.

Having done their part, the adults return to their forested upland hideouts, leaving the next generation to fend for themselves.

After the eggs hatch, spotted salamander larvae must grow quickly and leave the pool before it dries up for the remainder of the year. If they remain in the pool too long they will dry up as the pool dries up or they will become easy prey for birds and other predators.

It’s a complicated but fairly straightforward schedule using the natural cycle of the vernal pool as an amphibian incubator/launch pad. The pools appear and then disappear, like magic.

In fact, magic and salamanders have been intertwined for centuries. According to an article in the journal Animals, “…along with gnomes and nymphs, sala-

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In 2015, Ressel and a small group of COA students went out to Otter Point to collect some preliminary data. They noted the vernal pools were created by fresh water from the uphill forest running down the cliffs.

After the spring rains, there could be up to eighteen vernal pools on Otter Point. Ressel was pretty sure the pools had little-to-no salinity in them, but a student suggested they take a measurement just to be sure.

What they found was shocking. The salinity levels in the pools that contained breeding adults varied from 0.4–30 parts per thousand (ppt). For comparison, undiluted seawater is 35 ppt. They noted adults in the higher saline water were in obvious distress, flailing about awkwardly at the bottom of the pool. They also noted that some of these high-saline pools contained adults one night, but were devoid of spotted salamanders on another, suggesting that individuals vacated the pools when salinity levels became too high. For Ressel, questions of why have developed into questions of how. If spotted salamanders are able to tolerate different levels of salinity when breeding and developing, then where exactly is the threshold? Are these spotted salamanders just barely getting by with the increased salinity levels or have they actually adapted to live in these conditions?

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Photo: Emma Ressel.

According to Bruce Connery, biologist and Acadia National Park’s former Wildlife Program Leader, rangers have known about the spotted salamanders since the early 2000s, but no one had the time or resources to properly study this population. Then came Ressel. “Steve has creatively managed to conduct the study using very little funds, equipment, lab or office space. Without careful consideration on Steve’s part of the field design, specific field/lab experiments, care and welfare for the animals involved in the study, and related considerations, any results or findings would be ignored or disregarded by peers and the scientific community due to slipshod research methods.”

Since collecting that initial data, Ressel and COA students have returned every April to the cliffs to conduct research on the spotted salamanders. Ressel says he has been moving slowly on this study for a couple of reasons. The action takes place during the Spring term, when he is teaching. He also wants to have students help with the study, but because of the nature of the research, he can only use three or four students at any one time. He says thus far, the extra hands have been great, “the students who have been working on the study longer serve as mentors for newer students having their first experience with this type of research.”

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TO HAR N E SS A SAL AMAN D E R One of the COA students has who helped with the study is Elizabeth Signore '19. Signore decided to focus her senior project on mapping the movements of spotted salamanders during mating season on Otter Point. To do this, she applied to the Federal Government for a permit to conduct research in a national park. In short order, she was forced to step out of the relative comfort of being an engaged student and step into the territory of established researcher. For an undergrad, this type of application can be a daunting task. Signore completed the application and was given permission to conduct her study mapping spotted salamanders. According to Ressel, this sort of outof-the-classroom experience really helps fine-tune a young scientist’s thought process.

Signore applied for funding from the Maine Space Grant Consortium in order to cover the cost of developing a workable harness for the salamanders. “While I was waiting for the weather to get warm in the spring, I came up with a bunch of possible harness designs. I couldn’t test them until the salamanders came out from hibernation, so I came up with about twelve ideas. I spent quite a bit of time in the hardware store looking at plumbing supplies. I discovered I needed 19

Reserva Biológica Tirimbina, Costa Rica.

Photo: Steve Ressel.

something that wouldn’t stretch at all for the salamanders or they would be able to get it off. What finally ended up working, and staying on the salamanders overnight, were little strips of self-adhesive velcro.”

Signore’s harness could be affixed quickly, just behind the front legs of the spotted salamanders. Small transmitters were glued to the harness and then a dot of black light poster paint was applied to the harness to aid in its retrieval.

She tested her design by holding harnessed salamanders caught at Four Foot Farm, a Bar Harbor property owned by COA alumnus and trustee Jay McNally '84. Signore explains that by using McNally’s private property, she was able to work with salamanders, test her harness designs, and not worry about federal permits. “Jay loves offering his farm to students to conduct research, so this was perfect.” After catching the spotted salamanders, Signore attached the harnesses and held the salamanders overnight in a tank with vegetation similar to that of Otter Point. When the harnesses were still attached twenty-four hours later, Signore realized she had a good design. The spotted salamanders were then photographed, taken back to

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Four Foot Farm, and released back into the wild. For her Otter Point study, the harnesses stayed attached on average between three and seven days, with a maximum of fourteen days. Signore noted that this type of study is the first documented attempt to test a non-invasive external harness for salamanders.

According to Connery, “…we are learning that a population of species might have common characteristics and backgrounds, but what a local group or population exhibits, has adapted to, or uses to sustain its population can be somewhat to radically different; thus the more we learn of the variance or full breadth of a species or population’s existence, the better we are able to understand how to manage the species/population in different areas, regions, etc. Building a more thorough or broad understanding is likely to help biologists, scientists, and managers understand how changes or stresses could affect the long term viability of a local or entire population of a species.” This is why Ressel’s work on salamanders is not only important to Acadia and the rocky shorelines of downeast Maine, but to all of us adapting to rapidly changing environments.

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Ressel is not only interested in spotted salamanders on MDI—he leads the charge on a long-term assessment of amphibians in forested uplands too. COA students have been the direct beneficiaries of this research, often accompanying Ressel to these sites and assisting with data collection. And Acadia National Park's education program took dozens of school groups to the same amphibian-rich sites to learn a little about the scientific process and identifying species. Connery points out that Ressel “is really a champion of teaching students in real world situations.”

TH E Q U E S TI O NS In southeastern Pennsylvania, where Ressel grew up, summers were elusive. He was never quite sure the summer had arrived until he found a box turtle in his backyard. “We’d keep animals as pets for a couple of weeks until our parents got on us about releasing them back into the woods.” There would be a variety of animals for Ressel and his friends to see and handle in the woods around his neighborhood. “We would prop a box up on a stick with a string and then put in bread to lure birds… It never worked but we did it every single summer because that is what you did, you were never inside.”

When it came time to apply for college, Ressel sat down with his father at the kitchen table trying to pick a major. He had no idea. He went down the list and only chose “biology” because he liked being around animals. It was a question Ressel answered without much thought, but by answering the way he did, he started off a process of questions and answers that would come to define how he approached his work.

the individual? Was this a special physiological adaptation? A combination of things?

Doing doctoral research in the massive diversity of the tropical rainforest made a huge impact on Ressel, not only from the perspective of one who studied many of the species found there, but from a human ecological point of view. “The tropical rainforest is a complicated landscape. In some ways it has an aura of, 'oh my god, if we don’t save this we are doomed… Why are we destroying it?' But these are complicated questions.

Complicated because many of the people asking these questions do not live there.”

THE TROPICAL RAINFOREST IS A COMPLICATED LANDSCAPE. IN SOME WAYS IT HAS AN AURA OF, OH MY GOD, IF WE DON’T SAVE THIS WE ARE DOOMED… WHY ARE WE DESTROYING IT? BUT THESE ARE COMPLICATED QUESTIONS. COMPLICATED BECAUSE MANY OF THE PEOPLE ASKING THESE QUESTIONS DO NOT LIVE THERE.

For his master’s degree, Ressel studied the western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) in California. He was questioning how the presence of parasites in adult blue-bellied male fence lizards affected their ability to mate. “I became a biologist that summer,” Ressel notes. “I spent six months in a field station and my purpose in life was to get up and go catch lizards. As a kid, I caught lizards all the time, but this was something completely different. Out in the field, I was only thinking about the lizards and about the question I was asking. It was a huge shift and pretty exciting stuff.”

Ressel’s doctoral research found him traveling to Panama’s tropical rainforest to study frogs. The question he wrestled with had to do with mating calls and the underlying muscle physiology of a frog’s throat. Why was it some frogs were able to call and call, he wondered, whereas others had weaker calls that petered out after a short time? Was this a question of health of

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For many years, Ressel and professor John Anderson, the William H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Evolution, Ecology, and Natural History, brought students to the Costa Rican rainforest during the two-week intersession between Winter and Spring terms. It was an incredible and exhausting experience for all involved. During the 2019 Winter term, Ressel changed it up by con-

Sweet Pea Farm, Mount Desert Island.

Photo: Steve Ressel.

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ducting his entire class in Costa Rica. This gave students a chance to be in the rainforest environment for a longer period of time. Because of the sheer magnitude of everything that is found there, the Costa Rica course is just an introduction for students, and that is the whole point. Ressel points out, “one of the things about the tropics for first timers, is that you have this perception of once you step off the plane you’re going to be surrounded by a living zoo and animals will be everywhere… That is just not what Costa Rica is.

WE ARE LEARNING THAT THE POPULATION OF SPECIES MIGHT HAVE COMMON CHARACTERISTICS AND BACKGROUNDS, BUT WHAT A LOCAL GROUP OR POPULATION EXHIBITS, HAS ADAPTED TO, OR USES TO SUSTAIN ITS POPULATION CAN BE SOMEWHAT TO RADICALLY DIFFERENT

When you step into true rainforest you are stepping into this great green monotone mass where nothing is moving. The longer you are there the more that green mass opens up and the forest slowly reveals itself to you.”

TH E S N OW MAN Ressel has always been fascinated by animals that are radically different than himself. “You wonder what it is like to be a turtle or a frog. And then you start to think about reptiles living in the extremes of Maine.”

Most every January, you can find Ressel teaching his Winter Ecology course to eager students ready to brave freezing temperatures to engage with Maine's arboreal landscapes. The class heads immediately off campus to North Woods Ways, the wilderness retreat of Registered Maine Guides and traditional skills teachers Garrett Conover '78 and Alexandra Conover Bennet '77. That first weekend is mainly about getting students introduced to being outside in the winter, learning how to read the landscape, and getting practice using snowshoes. Ressel notes, “the longer we

2015 Winter Ecology class observing snowy owls on top of Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park. Photo: Steve Ressel.

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Ressel and Emma Damm ’22 at Otter Point, Acadia National Park. Photo: Austin Schuver '17.

stay outside in winter, the more winter opens up to us.” And if I think about how “winter opens up,” I am reminded of what poet Wallace Stevens calls, "a mind of winter": The Snow Man –Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place

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For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The speaker of the poem is trying to be present in a winter day, to “have a mind of winter” so winter can open its doors to him. But for human beings to see like the snow man, we must challenge our own assumptions and biases: winter wind is not cold and miserable, we are. Winter wind is winter wind, period. According to the poet, Stevens, and the biologist, Ressel, if you open yourself to the experience of winter (or any experience) you will see, “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” The process and movement in the poem is Ressel’s process, is COA’s process, and, ultimately, is the process of human ecology: curiosity, emersion, unfolding, connection, and then reporting out. n Thanks to Bruce Connery & Elizabeth Signore '19. Sources for this article: Nature Magazine, Animals, and The Heart of New England.

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Hawkweed growing on the hill.

The COA Hill

BY SAGE FULLER '22 24

PHOTOS BY GALENA CONRAD '22

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A Space Left to Grow THE BEST EXAMPLE OF HUMAN ECOLOGY I KNOW IS A BIG PILE OF DIRT AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC. The COA hill is a temporary new addition to our campus, appearing in spring 2019. Situated on the lawn just south of the arts and sciences building, the hill stands around three meters tall and is covered in grasses and broadleaf plants. Students clamber up the slope to sit at the top: an ideal spot for studying, stargazing, and talking with friends.

The hill was created as a byproduct of the excavation of the North Lawn to make space for COA’s new Center for Human Ecology. As earth was removed, it was deposited as a heap on the playfield. At first, this hill was a naked pile of rocks, rubble, and soil. Yet by the middle of August, it had erupted with life. When students returned from summer break, they discovered a lush grassy knoll on campus. Swaths of crabgrass covered the north side of the hill, while the south side was overrun with clover. Scattered across were a few bright spots of flowering yarrow, lobelia, and aster. Even on a pile of discarded earth, nature always finds a way to create life.

During the Fall term, Suzanne Morse, the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany, taught the introductory botany course Weed Ecology.

The course helped the students gain an understanding of what a weed is, through learning plant identification and natural history, while also having conversations with local caretakers of the land. Morse used the

AT FIRST, THIS HILL WAS A NAKED PILE OF ROCKS, RUBBLE, AND SOIL. YET BY THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, IT HAD ERUPTED WITH LIFE. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

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Pasture thistle growing wild.

hill as an example of what can happen when a place is left to its own devices. As the class soon discovered, the hill was a home to a variety of weed species, from dandelion to plantain to garden yellow rocket.

According to Anna Davis, farm manager at COA Beech Hill Farm, “weeds are nature’s way of protecting itself.” Although many people have a negative view of weeds, some people prefer to use the term "volunteer plants." These volunteers are how nature fights back against disturbance. They are the natural ground cover that follows after upheaval, as seen right here on the hill.

DEBRIS DOES NOT DISAPPEAR AFTER IT IS REMOVED FROM A SITE. IT REMAINS A PIECE OF OUR WORLD, A PLACE FOR GROWTH AND CHANGE LIKE ALL OTHERS. When humans tear up the earth in our acts of creation, we rarely think about the process. Our eyes are set on the future: great buildings where we can live and work and learn. But before there are buildings, there are pits to be dug and debris to be carried away. This debris does not disappear after it is removed from a site. It remains a piece of our world, a place for growth and change like all others.

As the Center for Human Ecology continues to form, the hill also grows. Crabgrass reaches for the sun and clover spreads across the soil. Although we tore up a

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layer of earth for the sake of our new building, the earth is always able to heal. And weeds are its balm, the first to reach out and make it green again. They spring up in parking lots and wedge their way through the cracks in sidewalks and nestle in at the bases of buildings. They grow not just beside our civilization, but inside it.

I am enamored by weeds and their perseverance.

While taking Morse’s class, I became especially passionate about the hill and decided to take it on as my final project. In mid-September, a series of transects were established on the hill in the form of ten lengths of orange string draped over the sides. Faculty and students alike remarked on its odd appearance, but were all satisfied and often amused by the explanation that it was for science’s sake. In mid-October to early November, I collected data on species richness and diversity on the hill using these transects. I climbed up and down the sides of the hill identifying plants and avoiding the wasp nest that had established itself in the southwest side. The data points I collected help to look at the hill quantitatively, and they also establish a baseline data set for future research, depending on how long the hill will remain.

The most common plants on the hill by far are clover and crabgrass, followed by the same turfgrass that can be found all over campus. Mixed in throughout the greenery are common garden weeds like yarrow, plantain, and dandelion, as well as some less abundant species like common figwort, field sorrel, goldenrod, and hawkweed.

Also seen on the pile were more rare flowers, like garden lobelia and New England aster. These brilliant-

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ly colored plants may not be volunteers at all; they may have been scooped up from their old home on the North Lawn.

Creating the Center for Human Ecology required digging up part of the lawn, troubling some who considered it sacred space. But perhaps this sacred space has not disappeared from campus. Perhaps it has simply moved.

The importance of a place is not defined by its physicality. Just because the North Lawn has changed does not mean that its beauty is gone. It is with us in every flower across campus, and especially so in the blooming purple petals on the hill.

Throughout Morse’s class, we found it useful to understand weeds through their context: certain plants and their relationships with certain people in a certain place. In this case, we have weeds growing on a hill on a small campus of dedicated, curious students. We often think of dandelion and crabgrass as invaders to

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be dealt with accordingly. But here on the hill, these weeds are greenery and beauty. Perhaps they are not weeds at all, or maybe we have simply been too negative in our view of weeds.

View of the hill from the Arts & Sciences building.

I have seen people race to the top of the hill just to stand and stare at our campus. There is a great affection for the hill already, and as it continues to bloom with life, I believe people will love it more and more.

It is a space for photography and art as well as science.

This hill is the essence of interdisciplinarity.

Human ecology means understanding that nature will always grow with us. Through weeds, the earth reclaims its space. Plants turn a forsaken pile of dirt into a grassy hill for us to wander on. Yarrow grows beside rocks and rebar, and asters flower by concrete.

Life finds a way to return. n Acknowledgements: Thank you to Suzanne Morse for mentorship and help in the field, Daniel Gatti for help with data analysis, and the Weed Ecology class of fall 2019.

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ALUMNA PROFILE

Scaling Climate-Smart Agricultural Innovations for Food Security:

Helena Shilomboleni '09

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

W

hat does it mean to grow food sustainably and equitably when most of the world’s food-insecure people are farmers? The answer, says Helena Shilomboleni '09, is key to understanding the challenges associated with meeting food security today. Shilomboleni works for the global partnership CGIAR’s (formerly called Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Program, where she is part of a team doing research and working with local partners to introduce climate-smart innovations for smallholder food systems in East Africa. From drought-resistant seeds to seasonal weather prediction, her research highlights locally informed best practices for farmers to face new realities of climate change.

As a student at COA, Shilomboleni immersed herself in courses on social movements and international development, where she focused on the impacts of globalization on governance. When she felt that she needed to pursue a deeper study, Shilomboleni says, her professors at COA encouraged her to seek out experiential opportunities. She spent a year studying abroad with the International Honors Program on a course called Rethinking Globalization. She traveled to Tanzania, India, New Zealand, and Mexico, meeting members of marginalized communities who have experienced the negative impacts of globalization. “We spent time in Mexico with the Zapatistas, learning about their movement against NAFTA. In Tanzania, we spent time with the Masai, learning about the impact conservation has had on their livelihoods. But it was really in India,” she adds, “where I saw how unfair

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the global agricultural trade system was.” Shilomboleni met cotton farmers struggling to support themselves and their families while competing with largescale production from other countries and incurring massive debt. “Trade is important,” she recalls thinking, “but not to the extent that it’s damaging farmers.

What kind of sustainable agricultural systems should we be supporting to help farmers make a decent livelihood?”

The experience led Shilomboleni to learn more about ways to support sustainable and equitable food and agricultural systems. After COA, she pursued a master's and then a doctorate at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada specializing in food security, and examined contributions from the African Green Revolution Forum and the food sovereignty movement.

Now a postdoctoral fellow and scaling specialist, Shilomboleni is based in Nairobi, Kenya where she works with partners in that country, Uganda, and Tanzania to share knowledge on improving market access opportunities for smallholder farmers as well as addressing the obstacles faced by small- and medium-sized enterprises that serve them, such as agro-dealers, food processors, wholesalers, and retailers. These agribusinesses are an important link between farmers and markets, enabling access to improved inputs such as seeds, and better-paying buyers of their produce. In addition to shedding light on the climate-related challenges faced by Africa’s smallholder farmers, she says, her research helps build solutions for sustainable agriculture to contribute positively to food security and ecological resilience. n COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Helena Shilomboleni '09. Photo credit: CCAFS East Africa.

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NOW IN ITS THIRTEENTH YEAR, COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC’S STUDENT-RUN, SOCIAL JUSTICE-INSPIRED SHARE THE HARVEST FOOD EQUITY PROGRAM CONTINUES TO INGRAIN ITSELF INTO THE FRAMEWORK OF THE MOUNT DESERT ISLAND FOOD SYSTEM.

How to

Share a Harvest

BY DAN MAHONEY 30

FOOD JUSTICE FOR ALL ON

M O U N T DESERT ISLAND COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Left: Share The Harvest fundraiser, 2017. Photo: Junesoo Shin ('21). Top right: Left to Right: Jenna Farineau '18, Ivy Enoch '18, Rayna Joyce '20. Photo: Aubrielle Hvolboll '20. Bottom right: Peppers from BHF Photo: Aubrielle Hvolboll '20.

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hare the Harvest (STH) is a collaboration between students at College of the Atlantic and farmers at COA Beech Hill Farm. Rayna Joyce '20, Ana Zabala '20, and Indigo Woods '21 are the current program coordinators. Throughout the year, they work to ensure the Mount Desert Island community has access to the space, knowledge, and resources it takes to sustain an equitable food system. The mission of the program is to fill critical gaps in food access on MDI, make fresh, local produce available to the whole community, and generate conversations and actions to address the root causes of food insecurity.

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Top: Share the Harvest fundraiser 2019. Photo credit Darron Collins '92. Bottom: T-shirts designed by Jenna Farineau '18.

Most of STH’s work happens from June to November, when volunteers deliver produce boxes to housing complexes around the island and provide participants with vouchers they can use to purchase fresh food at the Beech Hill Farmstand or the Bar Harbor Farmers’ Market.

According to co-coordinator Joyce, “we accept applicants loosely based on the state income guidelines, but also recognize that those numbers are often arbitrary and do not account for other circumstances that are not financially based. So we operate on an honor system, trusting that because someone has reached out to us, they are otherwise unable to access or purchase local and organic foods on a consistent basis.” This past season the STH program served roughly 140 households on MDI, an increase from 113 households last year.

Share the Harvest is able to function due to fundraisers and generous donations from the community. For the past six years, STH has held the STH Farm Dinner at Beech Hill Farm.

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COA's own Kourtney Collum & Suzanne Morse at STH fundraiser, 2017. Photo: Junesoo Shin ('21).

The dinner teams STH volunteers with Havana, 1994 COA grad Michael Boland’s award-winning Bar Harbor restaurant. Tickets sold online secure an individual a spot for a four-course meal sourced almost completely from COA Beech Hill and Peggy Rockefeller farms. Funds raised during this event go directly towards supporting the program’s services for the following year.

In addition to the the farm dinner, the past year saw a return of a student-run pop-up restaurant. STH co-coordinator Ana Zabala '20 notes, “the idea to host a pop-up restaurant is one that was passed down to us from former student coordinators. We heard stories of past pop-up restaurants: of meals prepared entirely with gleaned and donated food, and of crowded kitchens of students working together in common cause. These events created both community and financial support around the work that Share the Harvest does.

We called the event Squash the System and invited the entire MDI community. It was a great time to eat together and have all sorts of engaging conversations.”

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Candles, flowers, and friends. Share the Harvest, 2017.

Student volunteers cooked in the new commercial kitchen at Beech Hill Farm and then served food to approximately sixty people.

Students, faculty, and members of the MDI community gathered around large tables to enjoy butternut squash and celeriac soup, a salad of cabbage, beets, and carrots, and homemade assorted breads.

After the meal, guests were encouraged to move to the farmhouse to enjoy apple crisp and live music. "Towards the end of the evening, as we washed dishes, we felt satisfied that the fundraiser aligned with the goals and mission of our program. We could not have done it without the help of many friends who offered their homes to us for the evening, helped us cook, baked bread, served food, washed dishes, and played music. We are thankful to be a part of this community,� Woods recalls. This echoes what Lally Owen '14 had to say 34

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Left: Share The Harvest fundraiser, 2017. Photo: Junesoo Shin ('21). Top right: 2019, STH coordinators: Indigo Woods '21, Rayna Joyce '20, and Ana Zabala '20. Photo by by Darron Collins '92. Bottom right: At STH dinner, guests are served appetizers and cocktails in the shelter of the Beech Hill Farm farmstand.

about the ethos of the last student initiated pop-up restaurant. “Eating not just to eat, but more consciously feeding yourself and other people. The idea of being held by something that you make, or holding other people…offering nourishment in that way.”

Share the Harvest is a vital bridge between the COA and MDI communities. The produce deliveries, the farm stand vouchers, the education forums, the farm dinner, and the pop-up restaurant all serve as catalysts: opportunites for the community to connect over food, support each other’s projects, and celebrate the life we make together. n

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AN INFOGRAPHIC RENDERING OF THE COPPER BEECH (FAGUS SYLVATICA) OUTSIDE THE TURRETS AT COA. 36

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A Broad Reach THE CAMPAIGN FOR COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC'S FUTURE If there is one central theme to The Broad Reach Campaign for College of the Atlantic’s Future, it’s people. People in the form of exceptional students from forty-two states and fifty-five countries that will go on to create businesses, energize and lead climate and social-justice movements, and thrive in a world where knowledge is the greatest currency; people in the form of a dynamic faculty dedicated to a transformative, interdisciplinary pedagogy where everything is always up for debate; people in the form of community members of our small, yet global corner of Maine, who join us for a wealth of cultural offerings and support our mission as a year-round economic and intellectual engine.

People from all facets of the COA community worked in a collaborative process to create the Broad Reach Campaign. A six-year strategic plan completed in 2015 identified twenty-nine priorities meant to cultivate and build upon COA’s strengths and fulfill the college’s most important needs. Two years later, this became the $50 million Broad Reach Campaign. Comprised of eight key elements, including $3.5 million to become the country’s first fossil fuel-free college campus, $8 million in student scholarships, $7.5 million for endowed faculty chairs, and $22 million for the transformation of the north end of campus, creating new academic spaces, performance art facilities, and a welcome pavilion and front door for the college. In line to be completed by 2021, when COA will celebrate its fiftieth incoming class, the campaign builds a thriving, energetic, intellectually challenging College of the Atlantic well into the twenty-first century.

The Broad Reach Campaign was launched publicly in July 2019, but fundraising work has been underway since COA’s trustees voted unanimously to begin the campaign in October 2017 and subsequently became COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

the first to support the effort, combining forces to give a total of $9 million. This set in motion a tide of major gifts that would total $42 million by the time the campaign was announced, and $44.4 million by the time of this writing. The gifts have included a 1:2 challenge grant of $7.5 million from Anne and Bob Bass, a $5 million gift from Bob and Arlene Kogod, a $1 million gift from the estate of David Rockefeller, and a $10 million gift from the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, led by Andrew and Kate Davis—the largest single gift in the history of the college.

Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Center for Human Ecology held last spring, Andrew Davis noted that his family had supported COA philanthropically for three generations, even though none of them had attended school here.

The reasons, he said, were nothing short of global, and, as people, especially youth, around the world wake up to the idea that we are facing a planetary climate emergency, his words seem quite prescient today.

“We have made an investment in College of the Atlantic in the belief that, one day, graduates from COA will be a part of the solution to what ails the planet. Like the philosophy that drives our business, it is a long term investment, one in which we have invested multiple times over multiple years, and one in which we take great pride,” Davis said. “COA stands in a unique position, not suitable for all but essential for some. There are plenty of excellent four year colleges in which one can major in anything from accounting to zoology. But where do the exceptional go?

Where can a student find a way to design an education fitted to precisely the goals of that student instead of accepting a preordained set of requirements? If the field is the world's environment, the answer is, right here.” n 37

I THINK I HAVE A LOT TO OFFER BY COMING AT THIS WORK FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF BEING BOTH A RESEARCHER AND AN ARCHIVIST. 38

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From Research to Recognition

Breaking Open Gender Identity through Archival Research

BY ARIELLE GREENBERG ART BY LYDIE CONANT '22

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cademic research can be pretty exciting, full of exploration, mystery, and treasure-hunting. Discovering a new prehistoric species. Unlocking a formula that explains a previously inexplicable economic model. Or, in the case of COA senior Elliot Santavicca '20, mining archives to shine light on the untold experiences of gender-nonconforming people of earlier times.

The following are excerpts from a conversation with Elliot and their faculty director, Jamie McKown, the James Russell Wiggins Chair in Government and Polity.

O N TH E LE AD IN G E D G E ELLIOT: I always find this thing I’m doing a bit hard to describe, but basically it’s a research project that’s interested in gender-nonconforming individuals who lived in the United States around the turn of the last century and who were crossing gender lines. My primary source is newspaper databases, with a heavy reliance on online sources including digitized newspaper archives and ancestry and genealogy databases—but I work with microfilms as well.

I’m looking for anything that seems interesting, any stories I can find that have something uncommon or compelling in

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terms of how a person might have considered their gender. As one example, I found out about Samuel Pollard, who was born female but lived in Nevada as a man and eventually went on the lecture circuit speaking about his experiences.

JAMIE: One cool thing is that work on this subject is coming out all the time—it’s a busy area of scholarship. Elliot, you're on the leading edge. It’s really exciting.

E: At the beginning of my third year, I took a term off from school. I spent time thinking about what I wanted to do when I started back up: I wanted to be excited about my independent work. I knew that 39

I loved being in the library. As a kid, my dream job was to be a librarian, and I have been a work-study student at the library the whole time I’ve been at COA. I was also interested in queer theory, and I realized that you can’t do that kind of theoretical work without historical context.

So I started paying more attention to history, to how things such as gender identity formulate and shift over time and are impacted by other period-specific factors. I took a couple classes about history in other contexts with Jamie.

J: I teach a couple of different classes that connect politics and history within a broader context. History isn’t just “here’s stuff that happened in the past.” It’s about how historic texts—essays, transcripts of speeches, newspaper articles—reflect ideas and conceptualizations. Those ideas aren’t merely “historic”; we can look at how they inform larger conversations and questions, such as what defines gender.

In my classes, we do small “recovery projects”; for example, instead of assigning the same landmark speech everyone has read, I have students form teams to go find material to study. They may, for example, locate a speech that has never been properly transcribed before.

It’s refreshing for students to go find things. The search itself is exciting: it's great for students to find something no one’s found before, as is knowing that your work can then be used by others. I am able to teach speeches I never used to have, speeches found by students. And now institutions such as the Library of Congress have projects involving crowd-sourced transcriptions of things like hand-written letters, work that would have previously taken years to complete, or which may have never been done at all.

Not every student loves this kind of research, but some find their passion in it, as Elliot has.

E: While I was taking Jamie’s class on suffrage, a librarian friend sent me a list of queer archives, libraries, and museums.

I decided to do a residency on queer archives, for which I traveled to archives in five different cities—including the Lesbian Herstory Archive in New York, Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection, 40

The ArQuives in Toronto, and others.

After the residency, I talked to Jamie about what else I could do that could incorporate my interests in archiving and queer history. We started with an independent study to look at something from the nineteenth century around gender nonconformity. As I started searching, my interest centered around unraveling individuals’ stories through research. That work became the germ of my senior project, which is basically the culmination of three terms’ worth of work.

B E YO N D L AN G UAG E E: One of the central struggles in doing this work is around language. As I talked to archivists at these places, questions arose about how to talk about queer and trans identity within these past historical moments. Do we use today’s terminology, which didn’t exist then? Do we use outmoded language we consider offensive today? Every meeting with Jamie is a dance we both do around terminology.

J: In many cases, there just were not enough lexical possibilities available. Even thinking about sex and gender—the way in which someone could understand their own lived experience—the possibilities were more limited in the historical times we’re focusing on. But in another way, the possibilities were also more open.

E: It’s problematic both around the reporting we’re finding from the turn of the twentieth century as well as contemporary scholarship. The media of the time is describing people living without, or outside of, identification and labels, but scholars will label them using current terms such as a “trans men.”

But it’s a lot more nuanced than that. We can’t assign categories to these people. And in most cases, there’s no way for us to ever know what labels they used for themselves, if any. I feel very strongly that I shouldn’t slap a term on someone, a term that didn’t exist in their time and that they might not use even if they had access to it. And as a scholar, when I synthesize my research, I don’t want to stick an idea in someone else’s head about who this person was as if it’s a fact. It is unfair, unethical to make those kinds of assumptions.

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J: What’s fascinating is that because we’re doing the primary work ourselves—reading through archival materials—instead of just going to secondary source materials, we realized that some contemporary historians have read context that isn’t there in order to draw some conclusions other than what was presented in the newspapers of the time.

Journalists and historical scholars often appropriate a person’s story in a well-meaning way, toward a positive, empowering goal. But it’s still a kind of colonizing of someone else’s story, and you can’t trust reports from a newspaper to give a true sense of how someone self-identifies. On rare occasions, we find something that tells a person’s story in their own voice, in fragments. But mostly we are committed to starting with the story as it is, as we find it, and not overlaying too much on top of it.

E: These complex issues around labeling and lexicon present problems at the archiving and research levels as well. For example, at the Lesbian Herstory Archive in Brooklyn, materials are labeled with outdated terminology or with terms people wouldn’t be familiar with today, and vice versa. For example, if, as a researcher, I want to look for historic materials about gender nonconformity, what words do I need to look for in an index?

One partial solution is certainly cross-indexing. The Digital Transgender Archive began because someone was doing their dissertation on a part of trans history and realized it was really hard to find things.

This was a few years ago when not as much was digitized, so they set up a resource so other researchers could do this work more easily. The archive offers centuries of materials around trans history, and is searchable both by the original terminology of the day and modern terminology. I have issues with the way this particular archive is set up, but the idea is better than using only one term or the other.

I identify as trans myself, so thinking through this historical context always relates back to how I think about my own gender. Even though I can never meet the individuals whose stories I’m discovering, I have something in common with them. It’s also been fascinating seeing these individuals who didn’t have access to a label but COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

also didn’t have to pick one: there’s a weird sense of freedom mixed in with a kind of invisibility. In terms of language, I don’t put a lot of labels on myself. If I can give others that option, I can give it to myself.

QUESTIONS AROSE ABOUT HOW TO TALK ABOUT QUEER AND TRANS IDENTITY WITHIN THESE PAST HISTORICAL MOMENTS. DO WE USE TODAY’S TERMINOLOGY, WHICH DIDN’T EXIST THEN? DO WE USE OUTMODED LANGUAGE WE CONSIDER OFFENSIVE TODAY? PUT TIN G TO G E TH ER A HIS TO R ICAL PUZZLE J: The individuals we’re researching often had to be transitory, especially once their gender-nonconforming status was discovered. So they are hard to pin down at times. The website Ancestry.com has been a huge boon: it helps locate where someone is. And it can help triangulate where someone was and when, to help us go back and forth between newspapers and map out a timeline.

E: The biographical threads of the people I’m researching eventually just disappear: for most of them, we don’t have a complete story. Sometimes that might have been because they were trying to disappear: they didn’t want to be tracked on a census record.

I have found some fascinating materials, such as a story from 1902 about a female-born individual who was married to a woman. I actually discovered an article in the New York Times about them that was in support of same-sex marriage: it posits, what’s the issue with two women being married (even though we don’t know that both individuals identified as women)? But that particular author was taking such a different perspective from other reports about the same story.

J: In the majority of stories we’ve found, the focus has been on trans men, or women living as men. And they aren’t stories about threats or violence: often, as in the case Elliot mentioned, the focus is on the issue of marriage, and the accompanying 41

anxiety about women’s rights. Because of the time period, there’s this overtone about suffrage: “They want to vote, what’s next?”

But as Elliot said, there’s a pretty wide range of attitudes in the media we’ve found. You’d think, “oh, it’s the Victorian era, everyone must have been so repressed around gender nonconformity,” but that’s not necessarily at all what we saw.

E: I’ll say that I haven’t come across many stories of trans women: this may be due in part to the use of historical terms I don’t know about. Or maybe because those stories don’t get as much attention. I did find newspapers from San Francisco where there was a lot of mention of trans women as sex workers; that was the most common kind of story I saw. Unlike the stories of trans men I found, which focused on their professions or family lives, trans women seem to have mostly been equated with sex work. Trans men are not talked about in a sexual way in the materials I’ve found.

J: Digitization is what makes this all possible, especially when you’re a student at a small school on an island in Maine. And ,of course, this kind of project—queer archiving—isn’t talked about very much at other institutions, nor would a student at another kind of college be able to shape their own path the way Elliot has. Here at COA, you can take an idea and move it through a few different formats—from residency to independent study to senior project, for example. This is made possible by the flexibility of the curriculum, and would be impossible for undergrads at most other institutions.

E: I plan to continue this project after graduation and eventually turn it into a book if feasible, and I want to pursue archival studies in graduate school. But right now, I work for the Southwest Harbor Public Library on their digital archives, and frankly, I wouldn’t be upset to work at the Southwest Harbor library for ten more years. I’ve become really interested in local history. I’m from Michigan, but at this point, I’m pretty attached to Maine. I’ve fallen in love with the island and the community and I’m planning to stay around here. This is much more of a home than I’ve ever had before.

EVEN THOUGH I CAN NEVER MEET THE INDIVIDUALS WHOSE STORIES I’M DISCOVERING, I HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON WITH THEM.

J: We typically find a lot of passing references to someone who is “cross-dressing,” who is making unconventional clothing choices for their gender. Many of these are wartime stories—women dressing as men to serve in the military, or to secure a job.

The issue is, such stories are not necessarily about how someone wants to be identified in terms of their gender.

WHAT TH E F UTU R E H O LDS E: When I started this project, I didn’t know how to use these kinds of resources.

With Jamie’s help, I learned how to do research, but also about how archives function. And now I see history as a foundation for everything else, always.

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Long-term, though, my goal is to end up working as an archivist in an LGBTQ-focused institution, and to use archives to improve them. I think I have a lot to offer by coming at this work from the perspectives of being both a researcher and an archivist.

I’m certain that no matter what else I do, I’m going to be a researcher for the rest of my life. n

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L to R: Meghan, Grant, Charlotte, Kim, Finn, Mark, Frances Anne, and Katie Wentworth. Photo credit: Brian Sager.

DONOR PROFILE

Kim Wentworth

BY PRESIDENT DARRON COLLINS '92

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here’s nothing better for uplifting the spirits and engaging one's mind than a walk in Acadia with Kim and Finn Wentworth. They’re athletic in their approach to such a walk—physically and intellectually. The conversation will cover everything from the beauty of the moss beneath your feet to the disaster that is the Pacific Ocean plastic gyre.

I was fortunate to meet the Wentworths during my first summer back on MDI as president of COA, in August 2011. We hit it off immediately, partially because of our shared passions for the outdoors and conserva-

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tion, partially because we’re New Jersey natives and therefore have a finer, more nuanced appreciation for our beloved Garden State. I was thrilled when the Wentworth family and COA partnered to create the Kim M. Wentworth Chair in Environmental Studies, and equally as excited about writing this donor profile.

“I’ve been passionate about the fate of our planet since I was a little kid,” Kim noted when I spoke with her on the phone this winter. “I was always a nature girl and found comfort being out-of-doors and quickly discovered that the very Earth itself was in peril.”

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In so many ways, Kim embodies the ethos and the dual mission of College of the Atlantic: collectively focused on both the will to inspire a healthy, sustainable environment right here on Mount Desert Island, and cultivating generations of leaders to help steward us through the most pernicious social and ecological concerns affecting the planet.

The Wentworths first came to MDI as newlyweds in 1984 and, after renting for years, purchased a home on the beautiful Northern Neck of Long Pond in 2001.

“I’ll never forget the hike Finn and I took up Flying Mountain back in 1984—I was mesmerized by the view south out of Somes Sound and into the open ocean,” Kim remembered. “When we had our children, Grant and Mark, who happened to be very tall and talented swimmers, we knew we had to live near swimmable water, hence the preference for warmer freshwater!”

Both Grant and Mark cut their teeth in the wilds of MDI—“they swam like otters,” Kim told me—and would build on those experiences: they would both go on to swim the English Channel. Grant swam the waters separating Cape Cod from Nantucket while Mark beat away the sharks from a kayak. Grant has swum the Strait of Gibraltar. Mark developed terrestrial passions for farming and conservation, and is now a council member of the Save the Redwoods League in California.

“With the chair at COA, we also wanted to address the legacy issue: we, the baby boomers, didn’t do enough,” Kim told me. “We may have recognized some of the problems early on, but we need to inspire and equip future generations to be able to improve some of the conditions we face.”

“You know what it was like going to the shore in New Jersey,” she recalled, “with the plastic and the debris strewn all over the place. Our investment in COA is about equipping students to both understand and

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address those kinds of massive, complex questions, and we know that there’s no better institution to take that on than COA.” Professor Steve Ressel is the inaugural holder of the Kim M. Wentworth Chair in Environmental Studies.

The Wentworths are excited not just about helping with an investment, they are also excited to really get to know Steve and his work better, and add to that work with their own talents.

Speaking of talent: Kim is a leader in New Jersey public lands management and conservation. She was the former chairperson of the Morris County, NJ Parks Commission, managing 20,000 acres of public lands within thirty-five miles from New York City, and is a trustee of the Community Foundation of New Jersey. Both she and Finn have focused an incredible amount of time, talent, and treasure protecting the open spaces of the Garden State.

Terrance Nolan, senior vice president at the Open Space Institute, noted that, “Their passion for the environment is a shared passion. They don’t just support something and walk away. They are the rare supporters who know the details of complex conservation projects and also jump in with both feet to help overcome obstacles. In a word, they are selfless.”

I closed our call this winter with the question, “Why COA?” “COA has proven itself—you’re the number one college committed to the environment in the entire country,” Kim said. “I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Join me in thanking the Wentworth family for the tremendous boost they’ve given COA. And be ready to exercise your brain if you ever join Kim or Finn for a walk in the park! n

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Your Exquisite Corpse is Due Today Josh Winer '91, lecturer in photography, has a unique way of introducing students to photography, collaboration, and the unexpected. The following text is pulled from the first assignment, and the photos are what emerged from the first day of class during the Winter term.

The idea of the Exquisite Corpse originates with a drawing game, invented by the Surrealists Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and Andre Breton in Paris around 1925. The Surrealists were looking to create art that engaged the unconscious, often using dreams and automatic drawings as raw material. Games were seen as a way to unlock the mind, leading to new insight and inspiration. Similar to the game of Consequences, where players took turns writing lines to create an absurd story, they modified the same idea to create a drawing game. We think of this as a precursor to Mad Libs. The name is thought to have emerged from an earlier game of Consequences, where they’d inadvertently created the sentence “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.” We’ll borrow this strategy, with a few logistical changes.

Splitting up into small groups, each person will make one picture, in order, and print it out immediately. The second person will make a picture that responds to, or begins with, a part of the first picture. And so on. The finished piece will be the collective work of everyone who participated. This type of work stimulates experimentation, depends on collaboration, and elicits questions of authorship and originality. It’s also totally unpredictable and typically really fun.

The group will first decide the orientation of the image (horizontal or vertical) and pick ONE of the following constraints that each participant will adhere to: • Photograph an object that is within reach, trying to fill the frame • Photograph a subject that is predominantly one color • Photograph a part of the body • Photograph the sky • Photograph moving water 1. Consider the orientation carefully, especially as you consider the constraint of your choosing. If your end result will be assembled from left to right, shoot your pictures in the landscape mode. If your end result will be assembled from top to bottom, shoot your pictures in the portrait mode. Horizontal images should be made from left to right and vertical images should be made from top to bottom. 2. Having picked a shape and a theme, the first person will have five minutes to make a picture and return. 3. DO NOT show your picture to your team. NO PEEKING! 4. Print the picture immediately and CUT IT IN HALF. Really. DO IT. Give the right side/bottom of the picture to the second person. They’ll use this as their left/top edge, making a picture that begins at the intersection. Consider this edge part of your second picture. 5. Keep the left/top side of the first picture; we are not done with it 6. The second person will now have five minutes to make a picture and return. 7. Print it out immediately and cut it in half. Really. DO IT. Give the right hand side/bottom to the third person. 8. The third person will finish the sequence.

—Josh Winer '91 Lydia Pendergast '23, Celeste Crowley '21, Jara Lastra '22

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Ash Welch '23, Crystal Guzman '23, Maggie Hood '22

Emma Ober '21, Xavi Stevens '20

Henry Barkey '22, Julia Houédé '23, Maya McDonald '21

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Philéas Dazeley--Gaist '23, Kelsie Shields '21, Emmy Avery Witham '20

Hunter Bischoff '21, Patrianna Anderson '21, Lótus Carmo '22

Millie Jacoby '21, Nick Ressel '22, Liz McNally '22

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ALUMNA PROFILE

The Extra Mile (or 99)

Melissa Relyea Ossanna ’91

BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16

A

fter finishing her first marathon, Melissa Relyea Ossanna '91 was restless for the next thing.

When she saw that Gary Allen was organizing the Great Cranberry Island 50K, she recalls thinking, “That’s just a few miles more.” Then, she was invited by a friend to participate in a fifty-mile trail race in Ithaca, New York, and it wasn't long before the 100-mile race started looming in her mind. “It's such a bad idea, just stupid,” she jokes. “And then I signed up for one."

One hundred miles has since turned into her favorite distance. "It's a challenge. And you don't know if you'll finish or not," she says. “So many things can go wrong.”

Ultra-distance runners must be comfortable with solitude for the tens of hours that it can take to complete a race. Races usually start before sunrise and end in the small hours of the following night, and conditions that would be bearable for marathon distance become dangerous. "You have to anticipate yourself in the elements," says Ossanna. “You have to understand the chill of the night, and how the temperatures descend as the sun goes down.” From the effort, however, she gains the opportunity to be fully present in the entire rhythm of a day.

Even when she’s not racing, Ossanna often hits the road at the crack of dawn: “You can get eight miles in during an early morning, and see amazing views from various mountaintops.” On the island, she’s gotten involved with Crow Athletics, a running club that organizes races across Maine, and regularly trains with the COA Black Fly Trail Running Club.

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"My extended family is the running community. Running has become a huge part of my life. I remember the moment I decided I was going to be a runner. I have multiple sclerosis and was at a point with that disease where I was feeling strong. I happened to be at Don’s Shop and Save (now Hannaford) the day before the 2011 MDI Marathon and the store was just full of runners—they seemed so excited, happy, and motivated. I went back home and told my husband, 'I’m going to run the MDI Marathon.' He said, 'Okay, but you don’t run.' That was nine years, an appearance on the Today Show, and dozens of profiles in running magazines ago."

You could say that Ossanna has adapted herself to the patterns and resilient features of Mount Desert Island, living by the permacultural practices that she studied at COA. “All of things that came up were things I hadn't thought of, and they appeared to me because I was here,” she says. “It’s amazing for a small island off the coast of Maine to have these opportunities.” After graduating, Ossanna was hired by The Jackson Laboratory and then earned her doctorate at the University of Maine. Now she works as a clinical research scientist for Eli Lilly. The best part? Working from home, where she can stay connected to the community and landscape she loves.

Ultrarunning has given Ossanna another way to appreciate the world around her: a value, she reflects, that was built into the fiber of her degree in human ecology. “Protecting the world starts with appreciating it, and COA really teaches that appreciation from many different perspectives. In today's world, we need to build a force of people who do give a damn, because we're in a fight for our lives.” n COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Photo credit: Melissa Ossanna '91

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台灣

BY DAN MAHONEY

In the Human Ecology Abroad in Taiwan (HEAT) program, students spend an entire term immersed in the language, culture, and history of Taiwan. The ten-week course allows students to develop Chinese language and intercultural communication skills in a vibrant, youthful, and progressive society.

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eam taught by Bonnie Tai, associate dean in teaching and learning, and Suzanne Morse, the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany, Human Ecology Abroad in Taiwan (HEAT) is a three-course expeditionary program located entirely in Taiwan. The dual focus of HEAT, Chinese language learning and intercultural understanding, make this an amazing immersive opportunity for students and co-teachers alike. Students study Mandarin, explore local food systems, and participate in intercultural education.

As part of the HEAT program, students complete independent studies about topics of their choosing. Students have written travel essays and epistolary poetry, studied beekeeping, calligraphy, Chinese painting,

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colonial history, and have interviewed artist-activists about what makes Taiwanese art political and older residents about their experiences during the Japanese colonial period, among many other engaging topics.

According to Tai, the birth of the HEAT program was a direct result of the events of September 11, 2001. “After 9/11, there was a lot of discussion on campus about how we needed to teach more courses about cultures in different parts of the world. We were developing our academic priorities and as a group decided Asia and Africa were underrepresented in our curriculum, so these regions were elevated to academic priority areas of study.”

About ten years ago, Tai went to Taiwan on sabbatical. She was studying Taiwanese Buddhism at the time and learned that the Tzu Chi Foundation (a Buddhist humanitarian organization) operated a Chinese Language Center in their university in Hualien. “After making some connections there and in other parts of Taiwan, my thinking about how we might incorporate the place and the culture into our studies at COA began to evolve. I started to think about using Taiwan as a base for Chinese language immersion and cultural exploration.” Chinese is the most spoken language in the world. Chinese-speaking countries are increasingly important to the global economy, global politics, and especially

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View of rice paddies and cabbage fields on the east coast of Taiwan. Photo credit Malia Demers '18.

This is why intercultural education for me is so important: we need to be able to celebrate cultural differences in societies, and the best place to start is inside the classroom. With the HEAT program and its combination of the language learning component, intercultural education, and my independent study, a documentary about rituals in Mazuism, I was able to understand the importance of intercultural education from first-hand experiences and theories we read. —Vanessa Taylor '19

Top: Dharma Drum Mountain monastery during the Chinese New Year. Photo credit Suzanne Morse. Middle: Bonnie Tai with Chester Hardina Blanchette '21 and Rainer Mcintosh Round '21 in Tainan. Photo credit: Suzanne Morse. Bottom: Light display during New Year's celebrations in Hualien.

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in environmental politics. She felt it was really important for students to experience cultures and philosophies in the region as well as ways of thinking and knowing different from their own.

Taiwan is a unique place. It is often considered the most democratic country in the region; however, as of this writing, only fourteen other countries recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. In deference to the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan is not recognized by the United Nations (as of 1971) and the United States stopped recognizing it in 1979. Tai points out as an example of its leadership concerning gender equity, “Taiwan has an incredibly rich

and well-supported history of ordaining women as Buddhist nuns and teachers.” It was the first country in the region to legalize same-sex marriage and it prides itself in protecting citizens’ civil liberties. “Taiwan is really open to collaborations with universities and other NGOs around the world. It needs allies; collaboration for the Taiwanese is a powerful form of soft diplomacy.”

Two groups of COA students have taken part in the HEAT program. The first cohort was based in Hualien City, Taiwan, during the 2017 Winter term, and the second found their way to Tainan, Taiwan during the 2019 Winter term.

HEAT made the move to Tainan because the former capital city of Taiwan offered additional opportunities for students to engage with: proximity to Dutch colonial and Qing dynasty-era sites, the World Vegetable Center, and more experiential language learning opportunities. For Tai, it is important to offer students the opportunity to learn a language that is not alphabetic but rather pictographic and tonal.

“For students interested in how language influences how we think and how we know the world and engage with it, learning Chinese gives them a whole different way to think about what it means to be human and how to communicate with other humans.” n

Learning Chinese, I’ve begun to notice just how crucial spatial intelligence is to my mind, my conceptions of the world, and communication.

Before the Lunar New Year break we added words like at (在 Zài), here/there (這裡 Zhèlǐ/ 那裡 Nàlǐ), left/right (左邊 Zuǒbiān/右邊 Yòubiān), next to (旁邊 Pángbiān), nearby (附 近 Fùjìn), in front/behind (前面 Qiánmiàn/ 後 面 Hòumiàn), inside/outside (裡面 Lǐmiàn/外 面 Wàimiàn) above/below (上面 Shàngmiàn/ 下面 Xiàmiàn), and middle (中間 Zhōngjiān) to our vocabulary. An entire new cache of syntax ensued. I began to visualize the spaces that verbs, subjects, and nouns inhabit in a sentence.

—Josie Trople '18 54

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I spent most of my free time in Taiwan cycling through motor chaos to get to small art galleries around Tainan. On these trips, I became obsessed with getting to know local artists, local art, and all the average, street-trash, objecty-stuff in between. I began to draw connections between these physical things, both found and carefully constructed, as traces of the vague, politically complex notion of a single Taiwanese identity. —Leelou Gordon-Fox '21

Top left: Peanuts on the stalk. Photo credit Suzanne Morse. Top right: Volunteers sing and pray on the ground floor of a Tzu Chi Hospital. Photo credit Malia Demers '18. Bottom: Malia Demers '18 (left) and Shir Kehila '18 practice their Chinese Calligraphy.

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I enrolled in the HEAT program with the main intent of improving my Mandarin speaking, writing, and comprehension. A part of the program required us to choose and research a topic that would ground our working definitions of human ecology in the new landscapes and cultures that we were being introduced to. I chose to study apiology. —Leta Diethelm '20

How can I meditate on the tension in my throat without putting it there?

In meditation, there must be no pursuit of a particular sensation, likewise with the zuihitsu there must be no pursuit of particular content as one allows the experience to reveal itself in the experience. —Chester Hardina-Blanchette '21 Left: Leta Diethelm '20 with Mr. Bee at Dansui Farm. Photo credit Suzanne Morse.

Right: Rice paddy outside of Kenting Baisha Bay. Photo credit Suzanne Morse.

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Making mushroom soup during a cooking class. Photo credit Malia Demers '18.

In Taiwan, I have learned about the experiences during the Japanese occupation before World War II. After spending almost five years in Western countries, I felt at home when I arrived in Taiwan. My skin color did not stand out, I felt as if I understood the language and the culture, the personal space, humility, and the landscape—the mountains and rice fields were similar to our landscapes in Japan. I wonder to what extent the familiarity came from the influence of the Japanese occupation in Taiwan? Many elders here still speak Japanese. When I get a cup of tea at a food stand or when I am waiting for a train or a bus, many elders come to talk to me in Japanese. —Makiko Yoshida '18 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

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When I first came to Taiwan, I was permeated with questions of travel. Why travel? Why teach in Taiwan? This last visit, two years after the first, we grappled with questions of narrative. What stories have been told over time?

Who tells the stories? Who draws the maps? What is encoded in the character? The brush strokes?

The scope is complex, layered. Taiwan is a dynamic place, shoved up from the sea along three intersecting plates.

The long, sweet potato-shaped place is Formosa from a distance. Emerald green mountains, folded, reaching up to the sky and down into the turbulent sea. Waves of migration is another story, from the first peoples who both stayed and continued on to live throughout Austronesia, wayfinding with the stars.

And then much later, in quick succession, the colonial waves washed over this place, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, English, and American. Much of this time, this distant and folded place was also conceived as the edge, the hedge for China, the middle kingdom, the center of the world.

Narratives are inscribed in the words and perhaps more importantly in the characters themselves. How do these strokes inform how one describes and knows the world? How can the future be down and the past up? Is it because we are all moving to our future death, returning to the earth? Existential dread inscribed into a gesture? Or is it that when you write from top to bottom, the future flows ahead of you in black characters on red paper and the past is stamped there showing you what has passed. The reference. Painting. Writing. Be present in the moment, and in the moment, inscribe harmony. Never paint a bird alone. Completeness comes with the relationship, the tension with another. To be centered. To be at the center (中), China (Zhōngguó 中国) the central kingdom.

What does it mean when, each time you name your language and place, you say it is the center of the world?

—Suzanne Morse, the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany

The COA cohort preparing to hike the gorge in Taroko National Park.

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IN MEMORIAM LESLIE BREWER 1 922—20 1 9 I met Les just after his eighty-fifth birthday. It was at my first COA board meeting and we had been seated next to each other.

He leaned over, introduced himself, welcomed me, and gave me a memorably firm handshake. His warmth and energy were palpable from that first meeting and we immediately became friends. But we really got to know each other when he moved to an assisted living facility in Portland called The Cedars and I began occasionally driving him up to Mount Desert Island.

There was a nice, serendipitous symmetry to these rides, as he had driven my Aunt Betty to COA meetings later in her life, and our trips quickly settled into a lively rhythm of their own. When I’d arrive at The Cedars, Les, who was very prompt, would invariably be waiting in the foyer with his suitcase. He’d get into the front seat usually with some gentle teasing about the state of my car’s interior and a related twinkle in his eye and we’d set off.

seems to be everywhere at key junctures for the island—organizing his Beta Theta Pi friends to help stop the 1947 fire’s march down Cottage Street, running the Village Improvement Association, helping the hospital, the YMCA, and St. Saviour’s Episcopal church, which was so central to his life. Spearheading the creation of the unified MDI High School, an incredibly important and complicated and thorny project, ten years in the making.

Les couldn’t contain himself; he liked to start things and he loved helping others.

When I asked him about these activities, he said the same thing he said when people asked him about COA: “I just wanted to do something for others."

He was the original, founding board chair at the college and I was the new rookie one, and I’d always ask his advice about particular topics and he would inevitably give pithy, calm, incredibly wise counsel.

I learned an enormous amount in those conversations about business and life, and legacy and priorities, and, importantly, the power of kindness, and, not incidentally, we also had a delightful time.

People don’t just start colleges—it’s a hard thing to do. But if there were a checklist for how to go about doing it, the essential ingredients would include: land, someone to run it, and money to pay the faculty and staff. Les helped find all of these for the fledgling COA: negotiating an amazing deal to lease The Turrets and the surrounding land for $1 a year for the first three years, raising $65,000 from the local community through a series of teas (the COA endowment is now over $60 million, almost a thousandfold larger), and somehow convincing the former Harvard School of Education Associate Dean Ed Kaelber to become the college’s first president.

In looking at his service to the island over the last seventy-plus years, it’s almost impossible to overstate Les’s impact on Bar Harbor and the broader MDI community. Like the movie character Zelig, he

He loved interacting with students. His favorite board meeting was the June meeting, which consists entirely of a series of seniors presenting their capstone projects.

No committee meetings or discussion of

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budgets, enrollment, or academic policy.

It’s all about the students and their work —what actually goes on at the college day to day. The presentations are consistently excellent and Les loved them, always asking the students provocative questions and alternatively beaming with pride and shaking his head in wonderment at how far COA had come since he and his Bar Harbor High School classmate Father Jim Gower got together for that fateful coffee fifty-two years ago this fall.

Les would often speak of his long association with First National Bank, where he was a director from the early '60s to the late '90s. He’d marvel at how the stock had grown in value since he owned it—up over a hundredfold if you reinvested the dividends (which of course Les did)—and he’d use the analogy of a snowball growing in size as it rolls down a hill.

I really like that analogy with the snowball —in this case representing Les’s life—accumulating relationships and impact and experiences and friendships on its journey.

To create a large snowball you need a long hill and really sticky snow. Les had a very long hill, a ninety-seven-year hill, and his unique mix of personal characteristics— his patience and kindness and curiosity, his optimism and loyalty and warmth—meant that his snow had great adhesion, translating into a Cadillac Mountain-sized, a Lessized snowball of a life—for which we can all be unbelievably grateful.

—Will Thorndike, COA Trustee

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The first piece of mail I received upon arriving here, as College of the Atlantic’s new president, wasn’t a bill, or a changeof-address memo, or some other communiqué from the postal service; it was a moth orchid, Phalaenopsis amabilis. It was Tom’s welcome to me and my family; it continues to flower and to scent our home and to multiply its spider-like roots in a desperate search for its native Sumatran soils. It continues to be my memory touchstone of this man we all loved so dearly.

THOMAS A . COX 1 93 3 —20 1 9 The following eulogy was delivered

by Darron Collins at Tom Cox's memorial service on July 12, 2019.

My personal experience with Tom and his philanthropy began with that orchid.

It can never represent the magnitude, the diversity, and the outpouring of love that was Tom’s giving—to COA, to Friends of Acadia, to Maine Coast Heritage Trust, to Mount Desert Island Hospital, and all the other institutions he loved here on MDI, to say nothing of what he supported throughout the world. But I suspect there’s an orchid analog between Tom and each and every one of those institutions, people, and ideas.

Tom’s second gift to me was Plutarch’s essay, On Listening. I kind of breezed through it when he gave it to me eight years ago, but I’ve read it three times prepping for this talk and cannot shake one paragraph where Plutarch, speaking with his pupil Nicander about the dance that must occur between listener and speaker, says, ...it is important (to) peel off any excess in style—we ought (not) to behave like garland weavers (who) pick blossom-laden plants, and plait and weave them into something pleasant but barren, (we must) consider flowery, showy language to be the " fodder of the drones."

I’ll always wonder if Tom would have thought my orchid-heavy opening paragraph was too flowery. But I know now that, in gifting Plutarch, Tom gave me the gift of self-reflection; it may have taken eight years, but Tom, I promise it has finally gotten through! I promise to be a better listener and practice self-reflection.

Tom gave the gift of mentorship and, in so doing, he gave the gift of patience, of listening, and of a promise for a refined intellect. Mentoring sessions with Tom were Swedish massages for the brain and facials for the self.

time at Moss Haven. I had to maneuver my truck as delicately as possible across the crushed stones, knowing a small slip in the clutch would send a spray of pink granite buckshot through the windows and into the frog pond. Tom and I would pause in the entryway and meditate on Richard Estes’ print, D Train, cruising across the East River from Brooklyn to downtown, silent and empty. About a month after Tom’s death, I ran across southern Manhattan, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, and returned via the Manhattan Bridge. I stopped at what I thought was a random hole in the fence and snapped a quick shot on my iPhone—it turned out to be the exact view of Estes’ D Train. Like the orchid and Plutarch’s lessons, Tom’s caring and presence will be with us forever.

After the D Train meditation, Tom would hold court on his couch, he to the north, me to the south, with Buddha watching intently just to our west. Newspaper clippings, books, hand-written notes, yellowing, typewritten pages single-spaced, finely cut carrots, and cucumber sandwiches with no crust. These were the accouterments of our meetings, Tom as sensei, me as grasshopper. Tom gave time imbued with the quality and attention few other human beings could ever muster. In a world of distraction, he gave focused time.

And after the mentorship, there was the gift of joy, the celebration of a session brought to a close by a vodka martini. Let’s be honest—it was a glass of unadulterated, very cold vodka. Even in his last year he would shake that vodka so hard I thought he might lose his balance. Tom enjoyed life with the vigor of that shaken drink. His smile and laugh drifting from his deck will linger forever in the spruce forests between Moss Haven and Little Long Pond.

When we wander down to the Turrets Great Hall I will most certainly make a silent toast to Tom with my glass of cold vodka for his great philanthropy. But here, now and publicly, I’d like to toast Tom by announcing that, to honor his life, his love for this island, and for his appreciation of beauty, College of the Atlantic is creating the Thomas A. Cox Chair in Studio Arts.

Thank you, Tom. We miss you terribly.

Cheers.

And Tom gave time, such glorious time!

For me and for so many of us, he gave 60

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CARL KETCHUM 1 9 41 —20 1 9

One evening in the spring of 1972, as I was preparing to move to Bar Harbor to help start a brand new college, I got a call from my dear cousin Carl Ketchum, who had received his doctorate in math and physics from MIT and was teaching at SUNY Albany. I had known him since childhood.

Our grandmothers were twins, though Carl’s side of the family got the calculus gene. The next year we hired our first mathematician, and Carl was the community’s choice. He taught Math, Physics, and Oceanography. He taught Programming in Pascal before anyone had a computer. He had a deep knowledge and love of Planet Earth (the title of one of his most popular courses); his Weather and Climate class anticipated our current focus. He was not only a passionate mathematician but deeply concerned with the art of teaching. Janis Steele '86 writes, “He opened the door to the wonders of math. I finally broke through and grasped the structure of functions. It felt like a moment of enlightenment or epiphany.” Generations of COA students overcame their math phobia under his guidance.

Carl learned from his colleagues and they learned from him. Dan Kane and Carl taught Frontiers of Physical Thinking, introducing COA to the ideas of Stephen Hawking. I co-taught a course with him called Creativity in Mathematics and Poetry. Former president and founding faculty member Steve Katona writes, “Carl was a wonderful colleague, sincerely committed to the college's mission and deeply engaged in helping us explore ways to teach it and act it, discussions that took countless hours during the college's early years.”

Carl was as deeply invested in collegial morale and rapport as he was in his teaching. He loved working at COA and his excitement was infectious among faculty and staff. Marie Stivers recalls him as “sooo handsome, with a great smile and always enthusiastic.” When faculty growled at each other he would organize an encounter group. As long-term Personnel Committee chair, he restructured the faculty contract and salary system on the principles of human ecology. He served as informal ombudsman for a humane workplace and equitable compensation. Former professor Don Cass recalls “his ability to disagree without criticizing, and his abili-

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ty to like people who disliked each other.”

“On the surface he was a mathematician,” Rich Borden writes, “deep down he was a healer. I don’t recall him saying an unkind word.”

He epitomized COA’s tradition of self-sacrifice for the good of the institution. In the financial crisis following the fire of 1983, Carl left campus and took another job for a year in order to reduce faculty costs in a time of need. For several years he maintained a classic boarding house in Bar Harbor that was the epicenter of the downtown community. His roomers were visiting and single faculty, students, boat builders, and local computer heads, and they closed out each workday with festive communal dinners, each resident cooking once a week. Carl disdained academic hierarchy and considered his students as equals in the learning adventure. He co-taught a course with Fran Pollitt '77 when she was an undergraduate. “Courage and humility marked his decision. He gave up control in class management, while I was spreading my wings.” Alexandra Conover Bennett '77 remembers “his remarkably fluid mind which could ponder deeply from multiple perspectives. A superb teacher and a very sensitive soul and friend.”

In 1989, love called Carl away from COA to marry Lorraine Stratis and begin a new teaching chapter in New York City, but he never forgot his experience at COA. Lorraine writes, “his early years at COA were so important and meaningful to him. He cared very much about interacting with his students. He wanted to make a difference in their lives.” Laura, his daughter, recalls, “he really loved finding a student who intensely disliked math and showing them new ways to think about it.”

Almost fifty years after that first phone call, in the spring of 2019 when I was teaching the COA history class, Carl was scheduled to appear as one of our featured guests. But that was not to be. He died on March 17, just before the term started, and we dedicated that class to him. Carl’s selfless energy and vision in the college’s infancy are among the reasons COA is what it is today. We miss him greatly.

—Bill Carpenter, COA founding faculty member

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ALUMNI NOTES

From left to right: George Sharrard, Dominique Walk '09, Linda Mejia Black '09, Sarah Keebler '08, Laura Howes '09, Dan Noonan, Sarah Jackson '09, Michelle Schatz (Allied Whale alum '07), and Sam LeHardy.

Alumni featured heavily in Bill Carpenter’s Big Bang class in the 2019 Spring term. His last class at COA, it focused on COA’s founding and early years. In addition to founding faculty, trustees, and staff, alumni visitors include: Jill Tabbutt ('71) Bill Ginn '74 Cathy Johnson '74 Barbara Dole '76 Craig Kesselheim '76 John March '76 Alexandra Conover Bennett '77 Phil Kunhardt '77 Fran Pollitt '77 Jim Frick '78 Jonathan and Nina Gormley '78 Cathy Ramsdell '78

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Andrea Lepcio '79 Chellie Pingree '79 Barb Sassaman '79 Steve Demers '80 Matt Gerald '83 Jay McNally '84 Scott Swann '86 Barbara Meyers '89 Christie Anastasia '92 Darron Collins '92 Pam Parvin '93 Michael Boland '94

1975

After a career in reporting, communications and media, CHRISTINE PALM ran for State Representative in her home state of Connecticut. She serves the Connecticut River towns of Chester, Deep River, Essex, and Haddam, and her main focus is on the environment (along with protecting women’s reproductive rights and promoting gun safety). Last year she introduced a bill to mandate the teaching of climate change in all public schools; it passed the House but was not called in the Senate.

She is reintroducing it this coming session with the hopes it passes both chambers and is signed into law.

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1978

JACKSON GILLMAN has continued to perform solo as the Stand-Up Chameleon for forty-plus years. He broke his thirty-year hiatus from group theater this year. He developed yet another dialect for the lead in Be My Baby as an irascible Scotsman. Then he got “scrooged” to play Ebenezeer, the great-great-great grandfather of Emmalina Scrooge in an updated sequel of that holiday classic, at the Marion Art Center. He started playing the real-life role of professor a couple years ago, teaching Wide World of Story each January for Colby College’s Jan Plan. And he continues his favorite role as father to son and daughter who are still teenagers, but not for long! Jacksongillman.com ELIZABETH TOVA BAILEY’S film, based on her book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, was a 2019 finalist for the Jackson Wild Best Education/Institutional Film.

1980

CYNTHIA JORDAN FISHER has lived in Charlottesville for the past twenty-six years, working with families and children, birth to three years, through her small business (babiesbytheblueridge.com). She recently took her postpartum doula experience and training and used it to begin a nonprofit which is budding and growing in great ways these days (nearbybaby.org).

Cynthia and her colleague are offering training to women who then provide peerbased doula support, regardless of income, to families once home with their newborn.

The doulas are, in many ways, providing the villages that many of these marginalized families have left, in Honduras, Afghanistan, Mexico, Venezuela, and more.

1982

STU DICKEY SUMMER is on sabbatical this year and is spending much time researching the adverse effects of various vaccinations. Ne w York St ate eliminated religious exemptions precipitously this past summer and has all but eliminated medical exemptions, too. Forty students

in his school either decamped to nearby Massachusetts (where the clock is ticking) or are homeschooling.

1984

2019 was a year of learning for ANNA HURWITZ. In June, she received her masters of information and library science from the University of Washington’s iSchool where she focused on archives and special collections. In July, she went on a genealogical expedition with her family to Lithuania; guided by local archivists and historians, she believes they found the very house her paternal grandmother lived in before she fled Vilnius just ahead of the Holocaust. It was a surreal and very impactful trip, especially given what is happening in the world today. In September, she started a full time job as a contract assistant archivist at the Gates Archive in Seattle where she’s been able to put theory into practice and hone her skills. If you’re ever in Seattle, please get in touch!

1987

In November 2019, NELL NEWMAN was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

1991

MELISSA RELYEA OSSANNA has taken her hobby of running to an extreme.

In addition to working full time as a clinical research scientist in breast oncology, she logs many miles on MDI, as well as in locations around the country for very long races. Last year she attempted the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning, four historic 100mile races in one summer, but the altitude at Leadville, CO inhibited her from finishing all four races. For 2020, she decided to try for three 200 mile races in three months; those races start in August. Melissa has found that the challenge of running 100 miles and further brings rewards that just cannot be found in "regular" life.

It’s even more magical since Melissa has been successfully managing her multiple sclerosis by running for nine years now.

Top to bottom: Jackson Gillman; Anna Hurwitz; Melissa Relyea Ossanna.

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Top row, left to right: Bri Druga; Nishi Rajakaruna. Middle row, left to right: Nate Pope; Walt Drkula; Jivan Sobrino-Wheeler. Bottom row, left to right: Alexander Paul Desmond and Lisa Kay Rosenthal; Ana Puhac at the International Consultation on Urban Food Agenda.

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1994

NISHI RAJAKARUNA, biological sciences professor at California Polytechnic State University, will travel to North-West University in South Africa this spring as part of a prestigious honorary appointment by the university’s School of Biological Sciences.

a Human Ecology Forum in which she described that adventure and her work with Ocean Exploration Trust.

2004

1997

In June of 2019, after practicing with her husband for eight years, DR. BRI DUGA opened a collaborative practice, called the Healing Arts Collective, in Dover, NH. She is the paleo chiropractor, and in her office she integrates the fundamentals of the paleo lifestyle with neurologically based chiropractic care, Lyme disease support, nutrition counseling, and genetic lifestyle counseling.

2000

MIHNEA TANASESCU, FWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Political Science Department, Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, is an editor of a new book called The Edges of Political Representation: Mapping, Critiquing and Pushing the Boundaries. bit.ly/39RIwhK

Urban naturalist GABRIEL WILLOW was on the cover of the June edition of PC Magazine and he’s one of the faces of the new Swarovski Optik campaign, featured in their #gobirding “Sharing the joy of birding” blog post.

NATE POPE successfully defended his PhD thesis in ecology, evolution, and behavior at the Dept. of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin in April 2019.

TAMMY PACKIE has been working for over a year to start a new chapter of Trout Unlimited in the MDI area. Their efforts have been successful and in September they were officially labelled as the Downeast Chapter of Trout Unlimited. TU’s main goal is to protect cold-water fisheries and the watersheds which support them.

ALLISON WATTERS launched her business, Brooklin Canvas Design, doing marine canvas and upholstery. Find them online at brooklincanvasdesign.com.

2003

HOPE ROWAN published her second book, Ten Days in the North Woods: A Kids’ Hiking Guide to the Katahdin Region. As with Hope’s previous book, Ten Days in Acadia, the book is written from a fictional child’s point of view. The publisher describes these books as “a new way to interest kids and get them excited about being outdoors.”

ALLISON FUNDIS co-lead the National Geographic expedition (with Robert Ballard) to find Amelia Earhart's plane. Allison came back to COA in January 2020 for

2006

2007

2009

MICHAEL DIAZ-GRIFFITH has been named executive director of Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation, a New York-based foundation that supports Sir John Soane's Museum in London through a program of lectures, gatherings, fellowships, and study tours inspired by Soane and his world. In February, Michael was named one of House Beautiful's 2020 Visionaries for his advocacy of antiques as the sustainable alternative to newly produced furniture. He would love to hear from COA friends through Instagram (@ michaeldiazgriffith) or email (michaeldiazgriffith@gmail.com), and invites the COA community to tune into his podcast, Top to bottom: Julian Forrest Rosehill; Michael, Jack Joseph, and Emily Keller; Diana Chava Adler.

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Sam Miller-McDonald

Curious Objects, which explores the hidden histories of antiques and works of art. It is available on all podcast platforms.

LAURA HOWES got married this past September to her partner Dan Noonan, whom she met in Boston. See their alumni group photo on page sixty-two!

MICHAEL AND EMILY KELLER welcomed their new son Jack Joseph Keller on November 26, 2019.

SAM MILLER-MCDONALD is living in Edinburgh, Scotland while finishing his PhD at University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Between writing essays for publications like New Republic and Current Affairs, and editing a climate politics magazine called The Trouble, he and Matt Maiorana '10 have just launched a new magazine called Epilogue. Check it out at epiloguemag.com.

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Renae Lesser

LISA KAY ROSENTHAL married Alexander Paul Desmond on June 22, 2019 in Salem, Massachusetts. The couple met ten years ago during Lisa’s senior year at COA, when Alex was working as a chef in Bar Harbor. Starting in the fall of 2019, Lisa will attend the University of Maine School of Law as a Susan Calkins Public Interest Fellow. The newlyweds are excited to begin married life together in beautiful Scarborough, Maine!

2010

ANDREW COATE-ROSEHILL and his partner Sarah Rosehill welcomed their second child, Julian Forrest Rosehill, on May 27, 2019. Four-year-old big sister Alexa loves giving him cuddles and making him smile.

2011

NINA WISH ADLER and husband David Adler had their daughter Diana Chava Adler on May 4, 2019.

ALAN FERNALD, an MBA candidate at UMass Amherst, started a new position as corporate responsibility, diversity & inclusion intern at Voya Financial.

2012

WALTRAUD “WALT” DRKULA was promoted to vice president, project management at BORN Group in NY.

RENAE LESSER co-founded Big Sky Education and Strategy last year. Big Sky helps schools and organizations explore difference and power through experiential and transformative programming for youth and adults. They also help schools and organizations carry out participatory organizational assessment and change projects.

They work with K-12 schools, colleges and universities, community groups, and nonprofit organizations.

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Casey Acklin and team

Aneesa Khan

2014

ANA PUHAC started a new position as urban food system planner at Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations.

JIVAN SOBRINO-WHEELER was elected to the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2015

CASEY ACKLIN is spending the year working as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in Nevada. He’s working with an organization called Dementia Friendly Nevada, which is a statewide grassroots initiative to build communities that are respectful, educated, supportive, and inclusive of people living with dementia and family care partners.

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ADRIAN FERNANDEZ JAUREGUI is living and working in the tech industry in Montreal.

mental policy and regulation at the London School of Economics.

2016

PORCIA MANDANDHAR got a grant from the Gates Foundation to work at the World Health Organization for a threemonth period.

NATALIA ZAMBONI VERGARA started a new position as bilingual youth specialist at Boulder County, Colorado.

2017

ANEESA KHAN, executive director of SustainUS, is having a busy year! After being featured in a video on the APlus media outlet describing the work she does with the youth climate change movement, she was on the NPR talk show 1A to discuss the role of youth activists in the fight for climate justice, and was chosen as one of Vice.com’s 11 Young Climate Justice Activists You Need to Pay Attention To. She’s currently pursuing her MSc in environ-

2017

2019

JULIA CLEMENS got married in October 2019.

GILLIAN WELCH was named an Island Institute Fellow for 2019-2020. Gillian is on Vinalhaven supporting the work of the nonprofit Our Island CARES (Community Addiction Recovery Education Support). n

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COMMUNITY NOTES Photo by Steve Ressel

HEATHER ALBERT-KNOPP '99, dean of admission, presented a session called “Major Issues: Moving Beyond the Traditional Major and Minor Conversation” at the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

Co-presenters included admission leaders from Bard College, Hampshire College, and St. John’s College.

In January 2020, The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation announced f ive $5,000 awa rdees of The El l is-Beaurega rd Foundation Project Grant, including Danielle Byrd '05 and faculty member NANCY ANDREWS for “Fruity Time,” a series of live telecasts (currently using Instagram @fruity_band). "Fruity Time" features Andrews and Byrd as the musical duo Fruity, playing songs with electric guitars, chatting with special guests, and focusing on creativity and queerness in downeast Maine.

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In January, faculty members NANCY ANDREWS and DRU COLBERT launched the first publication of The Journal of the Higher Institute of Nervous Activities with a reading and performance at the Jesup Memorial Library. The inaugural issue of the journal (winter 2020) features poems by Colbert and drawings

by Andrews. Each subsequent issue of the journal will pair artists, craftspeople, researchers, scientists, workers, writers, or poets back-to-back; their work will be seen in context with one another, and create dialogue, ideas, visions, thoughts, and dreams from the space between the works. Future publications seek to pair the likes of young and old, blue and red, lichen specialist and poet, playwright and economics researcher, printmaker and homemaker, social activist and painter.

CATHERINE CLINGER, the Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts, worked with four experts in the field of art to share their perspectives, talents, and practices with COA and the greater community during the summer and fall of 2019. During “Can Islamic Art Change Minds,” a session at

the COA Champlain Institute, Clinger spoke with Dr. Sheila Canby, Curator Emerita, Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on subjects which included: the monumental reopening of the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia in 2011; South Asian printmaker Zarina (Hashmi); and rare wonders found within the Met galleries. During the Coffee and Conversation summer series, Clinger paired with Casey Mallinckrodt, Wadsworth Atheneum museum object conservator and COA trustee, for “Conservation & African Material Culture,” concerning conservatory practices and issues of ownership and repatriation as collections respond to the decolonize museums global movement.

During the year, she worked with the Marion Boulton Stroud Foundation and Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum to establish an artist residency at COA. The month of September, Clinger hosted the inaugural COA Kippy Stroud Artists-in-Residence and MacArthur fellow Mary Reid Kelly and Patrick Kelly.

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DARRON COLLINS, COA’s president and class of 1992 graduate, ran the Mountain Lakes 100, a 100-mile ultramarathon on the Pacific Crest Trail in Oregon. He did it as a challenge to himself and in preparation for his fiftieth birthday (April 6, 2020 in case you’d like to send a gift). “It was the hardest physical thing I had ever done...and it was extraordinary.” He raced alongside 175 others and completed the course in just over twentyeight hours. His trail notes for the course were published in the Dec/Jan issue of Ultrarunning Magazine.

KOURTNEY COLLUM, the Partridge Chair in Food & Sustainable Agriculture Systems, coauthored four conference papers including ones presented at the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values conference and the Society for American Foresters National Convention. With colleagues at UMaine, she continued work on a USDA project researching honey and maple syrup production in Maine.

This past summer the project funded eight undergraduate research fellows through the Sustainable Food Systems Research Collaborative, including three COA students: Adele Wise '21, Hannah Williams '20, and Qomaruliati (Ruli) Setiawati '20. Sweetest of all, Kourtney and student Leta Diethelm '20 expanded COA’s apiary to five colonies; you’ve never tasted honey so good.

In response to an invitation to help in the Journal of Rural Development’s fall 2019 celebration of the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, faculty member GRAY COX authored Pollinators for a Truly Smarter Planet: Using Gandhian Traditions of Dialogical Reasoning to Frame and Foster Rural Development. In January, he also had a chapter appear in a Routledge book on Gandhi and the Contemporary World, “Gandhi’s Dialogical Truth Force: applying Satyagraha models of practical rational inquiry to the crises of ecology, global governance and technology.” He also published a poem in Bateau 2019, At the Corner of the Plaza across from Worker’s Stadium. During his winter sabbatical as part of his ongoing research on AI, he took part in MIT's “Summit on AI in Latin America” along with a follow-up hackathon, as well as the AAAI's “AI, Ethics, and Society” conference in New York.

MARTHA ANDREWS DONOVAN, lecturer, came back to her native state four years ago, moving to the small village of Bernard on the back side of Mount Desert Island where she has been documenting her return to coastal Maine by posting daily photographs on Instagram. Donovan is currently engaged in a collaborative project with landscape painter Tracy Baker-White, who is based in William-

stown, Massachusetts where the two met over forty years ago as college classmates. Baker-White is painting a series of landscapes in response to images Donovan has been recording with her cellphone camera. In turn, Donovan is writing poems in response to Baker-White’s paintings.

Their collaboration Light, Sky, Land, and Edges: A Collaboration Between Painter and Poet will be exhibited at the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor in the fall of 2020.

From November 2018 to July 2019, faculty member DAVE FELDMAN served as interim vice president for education at the Santa Fe Institute. He returned to teaching full time at COA this fall. His second book Dynamical Systems and Chaos (Princeton University Press) was released in August. This December he spoke at a rally organized by Indivisible MDI on the eve of President Trump’s impeachment.

This past summer, JAY FRIEDLANDER, the Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green and Socially Responsible Business, joined provost Ken Hill and faculty member Jodi Baker, the Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman Chair in the Performing Arts, to lead the Human Ecology Lab in Ōsakikamijima (HELIO), Japan. Together they led over twenty students from a half-dozen universities on a two-week exploration of

Left: The Journal of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activities, issue 1.

Right: Darron is ready for the ultramarathon.

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Hiroshima, Fukushima and Osakikamijima. Friedlander’s sabbatical in the fall of 2019 gave him the opportunity to bring his work at COA beyond Maine’s borders.

It took him to Canada, Iceland, the UK, and Australia where he did presentations for faculty, enterprises, and local municipalities on leveraging the UN Sustainable Development goals to spark innovation. In Canada, Friedlander did a workshop for business faculty and staff in Vancouver on teaching sustainable business. In Iceland, he was part of the Maine delegation to the Arctic Circle Assembly, where he presented on his work in Maine, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Denmark to build the sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem.

In the UK, Friedlander consulted with Harlaxton College on integrating social entrepreneurship into their curriculum and he also gave his inaugural lecture as a visiting professor of social innovation and sustainable business at the University of Northampton. In Australia, Friedlander ran a series of ten workshops and seminars in Brisbane, Melbourne, and other locations.

KENYON GRANT, director of creative services, graduated from the Maine Master Naturalist program (MMNP) in March 2020. The MMNP is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven enterprise with an intensive and rigorous yearlong curriculum

Kenyon Grant (right).

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addressing Maine’s ecological systems, plants, animals, insects, geology, and conservation biology. She presented her capstone project in partnership with the Frenchman Bay Conservancy. She is the second in her family to achieve the Maine Master Naturalist certification, as her mother graduated in 2019 and currently serves as a mentor for the Waterville class.

Faculty member HEATHER LAKEY '00, MPHIL '08 has an article forthcoming in the academic journal, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. In The Many, The Wise, and the Marginalized: The Endoxic Method and The Second Sex, Lakey proposes that Simone de Beauvoir’s magnum opus, The Second Sex, instantiates a version of the endoxic method, a philosophical strategy originally practiced

by Aristotle. She argues that Beauvoir improves upon Aristotle’s endoxic practice through her heightened focus on minority groups. This article has its roots in Lakey’s graduate studies at COA. As part of her ongoing leadership of the COA program in Mexico, KARLA PEÑA developed a Winter term program for immersion learning of Yucatec Maya, which was field tested by three very enthusiastic students. She and her team at PICY also worked with Lika Uehara '20 in the

development of a mobile library and an ongoing program in literacy and youth development for rural Maya girls.

In September, faculty member CHRIS PETERSEN co-organized a stakeholder meeting on water quality in Frenchman Bay at the Schoodic Institute with Aaron Dority of Frenchman Bay Conservancy and Hannah Webber of Schoodic Institute.

This fall, Petersen was appointed to the Coastal and Marine Working Group of the Maine Climate Council. In addition to being a member of the Bar Harbor Marine Resource Committee and a board member of Somes-Meynell Conservancy, he continues to work with Frenchman Bay Partners, Downeast Conservation Network, and the Downeast Fisheries Partnership. In March, Petersen will serve as a session moderator during Shellfish Focus Day at the Fisherman’s Forum in Rockport.

In July, STEVE RESSEL, the Kim M. Wentworth Chair in Environmental Studies, gave a talk titled, "How salt tolerant are amphibians? Insight from a spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) population that breeds next to the open ocean" at the 2019 Northeastern Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation meeting, Stockton University, New Jersey.

Dave Feldman's second book.

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Ressel attended the meeting with Sidney Anderson '19, Elizabeth Signore '19, and Emma Damm '22, all of whom participated in the study. A photograph of a snowy owl that Ressel took during his 2017 Winter Ecology course was featured in Maine Coast Heritage Trust’s fiftieth anniversary publication Voices From The Coast.

Ressel's Winter Ecology course was highlighted in the 2019 winter issue of Friends of Acadia Journal.

Allied Whale staff member ROSEMARY SETON took a leave of absence from her duties as stranding coordinator to spend a year in Scotland pursuing her master’s degree. She graduated from the University of St. Andrews with a master of science in marine mammal science in December 2019. Her dissertation on humpback whales was entitled: Coming and going: Have migrating humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) shifted their arrival and departure times to and from their feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine? While pursuing her degree, she also took the opportunity to visit cousins and delve more fully into her Scottish ancestry on both sides of her family!

DAVIS TAYLOR was named the Cody van Heerden Chair in Economics and Quantitative Social Sciences in December.

According to Taylor, “Cody embodied the finest qualities of a human ecologist: great intellectual curiosity, dedication to rigor and detail, and an empathetic approach to improving the world.

Cody and I shared a love of Maine, economics, and addressing challenging questions and problems. Being a part of Cody’s deep dive into the institutional economics of the Maine lobster industry was incredibly rewarding.” n

November 3—What’s at Stake?

Rosemary Seton

Monday, July 27-Friday, July 31, 2020

The Champlain Institute is a week-long ideas festival which hosts leaders from around the country and the world to share their expertise on pressing issues of our time. The focus of the 2020 institute will be November 3 — What’s at Stake? During the week, we will explore the future of US diplomacy, climate change policy, income inequality, national security, the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court, and other issues that will be critical national topics leading up to the presidential elections next November.

A Note on Summer Events College of the Atlantic is closely monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak and CDC recommendations on large gatherings. We have an amazing slate of thought-provoking lectures, conversations, film screenings, and other events planned for the summer and maintain hope that we will all be able to gather safely on Mount Desert Island in a few months. Although there are no immediate plans to postpone or cancel the Champlain Institute, Coffee and Conversation, or any of our other summer events, we are actively making contingency plans to offer our lectures and institute sessions via livestream should that be necessary. We will communicate any changes to the events on coa.edu and via email.

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CROSSWORD

BY KENYON GRANT

ACROSS 1. A type of chopped salad 5. Nasser of Radiolab 10. Seasonal share at Beech Hill Farm (abbr.)

13. A miscellaneous collection of things 14. Home of the University of Maine 15. Aries animal 16. A group of Ambystoma maculatum (see pages 16–23) 19. Pub drink 20. Wrath 21. Where Elliot Santavicca does their research (see pages 38–42) 23. The eye is this to the soul 24. Bed and breakfast 26. Author Gloria of My Life on the Road 27. Gerund suffix 28. Route or direction 30. Political event held in Philadelphia in July 2016 (abbr.)

31. Large antelope 32. English word with the most definitions 34. COA Associate Dean in Learning and Teaching Bonnie of HEAT (see pages 54–58) 36. The theme of this magazine 41. Allow 42. No, to Jacques Derrida 43. Person born in August 46. Minority majority 48. Mo. with an opal birthstone 50. Monopoly property (abbr.)

51. Amount of living matter in a habitat 55. Like a lizard or bull 57. Go on 58. Doc’s script 59. A snowy one can be found atop Sargent Mountain during the winter 60. It can be found just outside Turrets, or on pages 36–37 of this magazine 65. “Look at me, I’m Sandra ___” 66. Vivien of Gone with the Wind 67. Type of race 68. It's found in the Ethel H. Blum Gallery 69. Martian crater, or the astronomer François after whom it was named 70. Govt. IDs Visit coa.edu/coamagazine to view the answer key.

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DOWN 1. Trig. function 2. Hello (Portuguese) 3. What HEAT students will be, at least (see pages 54–58) 4. COA’s gained two new members this year (see page 5) 5. Voodoo god 6. Prince Valiant’s son, or a Spanish alder 7. All (Spanish, feminine) 8. Still 9. Like a magician’s card?

10. Want badly 11. The Crucible locale 12. Iowa town, or defunct discount store 17. Cat’s cry 18. Japanese religion of nature spirits 22. Andean 23. Hairpiece 24. Bed and breakfast 25. Bee relative 29. Despite that 33. Better than a burn

35. Residents of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, and Tremont 37. Storage spot 38. Immeasurably small 39. Also 40. Move slowly 44. First lady 45. Brit. ref. volume 47. Cooking oil 49. Grave 51. Arbor 52. Cove 53. Exceptionally good 54. Reddish-brown color named for a cuttlefish 56. Marsh plants 57. The title of the piece by Rich Borden in this magazine (see pages 6–10) 61. Bird-to-be 62. Seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet 63. ____-do attitude 64. Mercuries? (abbr.)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES Nimisha Bastedo’s Graduation Speech 2015

Where is the tree’s heart?

This could sound like the beginning of a love poem, or maybe part of a COA student’s commentary on a painting. But it’s actually a question that I got from a sixth-grader during my senior project in northern Canada. We were about an hour away from the community, at one of the school’s camps. This young girl was sitting up in a tree, looking down at me, quite seriously wanting to know where the tree’s heart was.

I looked up at her. She was waiting for an answer.

Um… I thought, what should I tell her?

I could have said, “Well kid, biologically speaking, trees do not have this muscular organ you speak of, but as vascular plants, they do have a form of circulatory system.”

But knowing this girl had spent six years in a mainstream school system, I worried she might have been trained to let such a clearcut answer extinguish her curiosity. She might have just said “oh” and continued to climb the tree.

If searching for answers about trees, hearts, or hands, we would do quite well to think like a kindergartener—with a flood of many more questions: “Does the concept of a heart and what it means to be a tree, not change across cultures?” And, “What exactly was the historical context which gave rise to the theory of natural selection?” Or, “How would third-wave feminists interpret the story of the Princess Bride?”

If you are thinking, “Wait a minute, after all we’ve invested into the education of our daughter/son/niece/nephew/friend, are you telling me that they’re still asking questions like a kindergartener?” I can assure you: yes, only our questions now might sound a little more intellectual. We still have the curiosity of kindergarteners precisely because COA hasn’t fed us answers. Instead we’ve been asked many times,“Well, what do you think?”

This can be frustrating. Answers are, after all, good things. We crave them. We need

them. They give us direction. They help us decide how to actually do things. But I’ve heard myself and others at the end of a term saying things like, “I feel like I know less than I did when I started this course because all I learned was how much I don’t know!”

If we had questions to begin with, and still have questions now, you might be wondering, “What has been the value of these four years?” What we may not realize is that we have actually arrived at some answers throughout our time here. It’s just that we’ve learned to see answers as starting points for new questions. In that sense, our many lingering questions are something to celebrate. They show how far we’ve come in acknowledging the complexity of things.

They show how much we’ve learned.

At this point, I envisioned that I would prove to you just how profound our thinking had become by sharing some of the questions that are currently on our minds. But when I asked for questions, what I found instead were conversations, really interesting ones.

Conversations about hope and lifecycles, about motivation and community, about boundaries between cultures, about human ecology and chickens, and about what it takes to change peoples’ minds. Every time I sat down to condense a conversation into a single question that would represent what was on my classmates’ minds, I found it impossible.

My plan failed, but because of that failure I have had many other conversations. At COA, we don’t just become better questionaskers, we also learn that our questions and each of our areas of work connect to other people’s questions and work in ways we might never have imagined, and the conversations go on forever. Realizing this was comforting because it could be frightening if we thought we had to find all the solutions on our own.

When I leave here, I plan to return home to northern Canada. Thinking about becoming a teacher there, I’m still filled with questions.

How can I help a child learn when they come to school without breakfast, or when they come weighed down with anxiety from an unstable household? What if this instability is caused by poverty and alcoholism and environmental degradation which in turn are symptoms of larger structures of power and racism that have been imposed onto these communities for over 100 years?

Realizing how much is out of my hands— and how much is beyond my scope of knowledge—I could give up. Or, I could do what we’ve been practicing here this whole time. I could invite other people into my questions and build connections between my work and theirs. The school cooks, the social workers, the policy makers, the historians, and the environmental groups are also pursuing answers. Anything we do in isolation could never be as powerful as the collective insight and action that could emerge if we each contribute our own pieces of knowledge and partial solutions.

For me, this is not only comforting, but it is empowering.

What I want to say now is that questions are essential. But I hope we never underestimate the power of engaging in conversations—of all types. The ones about daunting, interconnected problems… And also the ones that begin with the simple and wonderful things of the world.

You know, when I was standing underneath that tree with the young girl still looking down at me from her branch, waiting for an answer. “Where is the tree’s heart?” I finally said something like, “That’s a great question! What do you think?” And it led to quite the conversation about how the tree’s name was Martha, and what the tree might do when the students were not around, and whether or not it hurts when her branches break.

If anyone out there has ideas about where a tree’s heart could be, let me know. I am still very curious. n

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