COA Magazine Fall 2015 by College of the Atlantic

COA

THE COLLEGE OF THE ATL ANTIC MAG A ZINE Volume 11 . Number 2 . Fall 2015

ISLANDS

COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine

Islands Letter from the President News from Campus ISLANDS COA's Islands • Mount Desert Rock Poetry COA's Islands • Great Duck Island Grubbing for Petrels Islands Through Time In Their Own Words Hiyasmin Saturay '15 Alex Borowicz '14 Alice Anderson '12 Alex Fletcher '07 Julia Rowe, MPhil '02 Barbara Meyers '89 The Tactile Power of Ellen Sylvarnes '83 Bonnie Tai's Island Return New York's Forgotten Islands Book Excerpt • Ocean Country Alumni & Community Notes Our Back Pages • The Problem of Bar Island Commencement • Student Perspective

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Herring gulls on the north face of Mount Desert Rock. Photo by Izik Dery '17.

COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Volume 11 · Number 2 · Fall 2015

Editorial Editor Editorial Guidance

Editorial Consultant Alumni Consultants

Donna Gold Heather Albert-Knopp '99 John Anderson Rich Borden Darron Collins '92 Izik Dery '17 Jen Hughes Rob Levin Sean Todd Bill Carpenter Jill Barlow-Kelley Dianne Clendaniel

Design Art Director

Rebecca Hope Woods

COA Administration President Academic Dean Associate Academic Deans

Administrative Dean Dean of Admission Dean of Institutional Advancement Dean of Student Life

Darron Collins '92 Kenneth Hill Catherine Clinger Stephen Ressel Sean Todd Karen Waldron Andrew Griffiths Heather Albert-Knopp '99 Lynn Boulger Sarah Luke

COA Board of Trustees Timothy Bass Ronald E. Beard Leslie C. Brewer Alyne Cistone Lindsay Davies Beth Gardiner Amy Yeager Geier H. Winston Holt IV Philip B. Kunhardt III '77 Anthony Mazlish Suzanne Folds McCullagh Linda McGillicuddy

Jay McNally '84 Philip S.J. Moriarty Phyllis Anina Moriarty Lili Pew Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Nadia Rosenthal Marthann Samek Henry L.P. Schmelzer Stephen Sullens William N. Thorndike, Jr. Cody van Heerden, MPhil '16

Life Trustees William G. Foulke, Jr. Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. John N. Kelly Susan Storey Lyman William V.P. Newlin John Reeves Henry D. Sharpe, Jr.

Trustee Emeriti David Hackett Fischer George B.E. Hambleton Elizabeth Hodder Sherry F. Huber Helen Porter Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 John Wilmerding

September 7, 2015, Bounty Cove, Maine Midnight. We are nestled in an island cove on Penobscot Bay. Having delivered the magazine pieces to Rebecca Woods, who makes beautiful sense out of the disparate folders of text and photographs that form each issue, I have abandoned land for a last long voyage of the summer aboard our thirty-foot sloop Northern Light, which we have now sailed for almost half of its fifty years. But the stories I've spent a month reading, editing, rereading, these I can't abandon. SLEEP OUTSIDE, at least once, Teresa Bompczyk '17 urges after a summer spent on our research station at Mount Desert Rock. Her call charms, then haunts me. On our last night aboard, a light breeze whipping away the bugs, I forgo our warm cabin for a cockpit bench. Not far above the horizon is the Big Dipper, pointing to the North Star. Scorpio, I believe, is behind me and Cassiopeia to starboard. Our son is to starboard as well, engrossed in computer work on the bench across from me. Sleep outside—yes. But one cannot both watch the stars and sleep. My eyes close. One a.m. Daniel's computer clicks off. "The moon's about to rise, Mom," he says as he heads into the cabin. I hear him; I want to see the moonrise—but no, I fall back asleep. Half an hour later the quarter moon is a hand's breadth above the eastern horizon. Waves lap against the shoreline. The tide turns, and with it our boat. The depth and persistence of our students' perceptions no longer surprises me, but it does still amaze me. Scientists absorb the wonder of the world as if they were artists; artists understand its underpinnings as if they were scientists—just look at the chemical knowledge implicit within the paintings of Ellen Sylvarnes '83. Yes, human ecology spans the disciplines, but perhaps more important, it trains the eye, encouraging, even demanding that we go deeper, that we see and connect and then, quite possibly act, as Liz Cunningham '82 has done through her book Ocean Country. We are a college on an island and a college of islands, given our two offshore research stations. But that in no way removes us from the world. As so many of our students and alumni note throughout these pages, islands cultivate connection. Sleeping outside, however, does not necessarily cultivate sleep. I shift in my sleeping bag and my eyes open, once, twice, many times. I am bathed in the silence of the stars, the moon, its beauty. Perhaps even more than islands or the ocean, darkness connects us; we might think we are isolated, separate, alone, but night's mystery envelopes us all. Yes, at least once in your life sleep outside, right under the stars. But don't expect to get all that much sleep!

The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of College of the Atlantic envision a world where people value creativity, intellectual achievement, 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 biannually for the College of the Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters, and submissions (short stories, poetry, and revisits to human ecology essays) to:

Donna Gold, editor

COA Magazine, College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 dgold@coa.edu

WWW.COA.EDU

Cover: Looking out from a door atop Mount Desert Rock Light. Photo by Izik Dery '17. Back Cover: One a.m. A view from Great Duck Island. Photo by Nina Duggan '18.

From the President Darron Collins '92, PhD

COA President Darron Collins '92 and daughter Maggie piloting in Frenchman Bay. Photo by Karen Collins.

On a recent trip in Frenchman Bay on COA's floating classroom, the M/V Osprey, COA faculty member John Anderson told a cohort of first-year students, "If I had my way, I wouldn't allow first-year students to come to campus by car. They'd have to get dropped off with whatever gear they can carry from Stonington, on Deer Isle, board a boat, and be brought to the college's pier. That way they'd truly know where they were going to school. They'd understand where we are and where they are—on an island—with much more clarity." He wasn't kidding. There are obvious logistical roadblocks to the idea, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't spent a few wakeful nights trying to make it work in my head. We are on an island; the largest of 3,500 or so in the state. That island-nature of this region and COA's specific location has played a major role in shaping who we are as an institution and who seeks to join us. It certainly did for me as a firstyear student back in 1988 and as a first-year president in 2011.

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It was during that year of 2011 that I was introduced to the Island Institute's Rob Snyder. We were both new to our roles. We had both studied anthropology in graduate school. We were alike in many ways, beyond both being close to bald. Most importantly, Rob's passion for and understanding of islands—thoughtful, pragmatic, and respectful—aligned well with my own. He understood the dynamism of island communities in Maine and wasn't interested in somehow preserving islands and island communities as quaint museum specimens. Rob also understood COA, how we were excellent, how we were different, and how we could work together. With the help of the Partridge Foundation and many hundreds of supporters throughout the state and beyond, we launched The Fund for Maine Islands, which brought COA and the Island Institute together to work with island communities to address their needs in the broad categories of food and agriculture, energy, education, and adaptation to climate change.

Connecting an institution of higher education, a community development non-profit like Island Institute, and the island communities along the coast of Maine is an innovative twist on education, on development, and on applied human ecology. In this edition of COA we celebrate this young and still-developing partnership by highlighting our community's commitment to, and exploration of, islands—both in the tangible, geographic sense and in the more metaphysical sense. I look out my office window toward the southern shores of Bar Island in Frenchman Bay, the expedition site of the college's first, experimental summer in 1971. From that time forward, islands became an archetype of the college's collective unconscious. Now we know they will be an important part of our future. All the more reason to take John's suggestion seriously. Happy reading,

NEWS FROM CAMPUS JUNE

AUGUST

Naomi Klein addresses COA's 2015 graduates: "Mine is not going to be your average commencement address, for the simple reason that College of the Atlantic is not your average college. … Quite remarkably, you knew you wanted to go not just to an excellent college, but to an excellent socially and ecologically engaged college."

Sierra Magazine rates COA as one of the nation's top-20 "green" schools.

A whopping 43% of alumni show how much they care for this "scrappy college on the beautiful coast of Maine" by donating to COA, inspiring an alumna's $40,000 matching gift. "As universities and other institutions grapple with ways to fight climate change … the College of the Atlantic is nudging its students to reach outside the school's boundaries and start changing the real world," writes The New York Times in "A College in Maine That Tackles Climate Change, One Class at a Time" on Page 1 of the business section. In appreciation for a $1.5 million endowment grant, COA's sustainable enterprise accelerator becomes The Diana Davis Spencer Hatchery.

JULY Calling COA a "progressive educational experiment that broadens perspective," Princeton Review ranks COA in the top 10 for its professors, food, student satisfaction, and friendliness to LGBTQ, and top 20 for financial aid, beauty, and quality of life. The Ethel H. Blum Gallery's summer show, 2 Island Friends, 2 Points of View, featuring painter Clay Kanzler and sculptor Katie Bell is reviewed as magical, intriguing, spiritual. Climate Action singles out COA as one of 3 "Sustainable Colleges Leading the Way in Sustainable Education." Maine Magazine names Darron Collins '92 one of 50 "Bold Visionaries Defining our State."

Susan and David Rockefeller present Food For Thought, Food For Life, a film about those working to make positive changes to the nation's agricultural system.

DAWN, 6/26: PRESIDENT DARRON COLLINS '92 FINISHES HIS HIKE, #40FOR40

SEPTEMBER COA welcomes 105 students from 18 countries and 22 states to the class of 2019. At COA everything is … New! At least online. From action to whales, COA's website, while still at coa.edu, is totally changed. If nothing else, check out the home page where at College of the Atlantic everything is blue, musical, and urgent. Rankings don't mean everything— but rising 17 points to #82 in the US News & World Report rankings of national liberal arts colleges makes many of us smile. We're also noted as a "best value" with small class sizes and a low student-faculty ratio. National Wildlife Federation cites COA as the only Maine college in its The Campus Wild publication, highlighting work on wildlife protection and habitat restoration in higher education.

ALL AGES FLOCK TO FAMILY FUN DAY AT THE PEGGY ROCKEFELLER FARMS

RYAN HIGGINS '06 TALKS ABOUT MAKING CHILDREN'S BOOKS

OCTOBER Eight students present scientific research at the Schoodic Research Institute during the Acadia National Park Science Symposium and Down East Research and Education Network's Convergence Conference. Nina Duggan '18, Rachel Karesh '16, Meghan Lyon '16, Audra McTague '19, Ella Samuel '16, Erickson Smith '15, Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '16, and Amber Wolf '17, traveled to the venue to present their research. Parents, alumni, and trustees descend on COA during Columbus Day weekend for meetings, meetups, and just plain fun.

DINING OUT AT BEECH HILL FARM

"A SENSE OF PLACE— AND PERSON" AT THE BLUM FEATURES ALUMNI PHOTOGRAPHERS COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Nishanta Rajakaruna's colleague Alan Fryday examines lichens in South Africa, where the National Geographic-funded team will be working come winter. Photo by Stefan Siebert.

NATIONAL GEO funds Nishi Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in botany, has received a highly competitive National Geographic Society grant to conduct lichen diversity research in South Africa. He'll be working with five other scholars: COA's Ian Medeiros '16 and Nathaniel Pope '07, along with lichenologist Alan Fryday of Michigan State, and botanist Stefan Siebert and geologist Ricart Boneschans, both from North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Lichens are a special kind of creature—they may seem to be a plant, but really they're a partnership between fungi and algae. They're also widely used for environmental monitoring, and South Africa has an extraordinary range of them. By studying lichens in South Africa, Nishi hopes to learn what distinct species may

need to thrive—particularly the rock and soil chemistry upon which they grow, along with the temperature and rainfall. "Our efforts to investigate the diversity and ecology of lichens—an under-studied group of organisms—in a biodiversity hotspot like South Africa will greatly contribute to our understanding of lichen diversity in that country," says Nishi. In 2014, Nishi was given a three-year visiting research professorship at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, NorthWest University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. This grant, from National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration, will build research capacity in South Africa, one of the goals of his time at the university.

BIRDERS flock to COA Birders from around the world gathered at College of the Atlantic this August during the annual meeting of the international Waterbird Society, hosted by the college. They discussed topics that ranged from loon ecology to the impact of offshore wind turbines on bird populations. "The Waterbird Society is one of the leading international societies of scientists studying everything from sandpipers to pelicans and back again," said John Anderson, faculty member in ecology and natural history, who was the conference on-site organizer along with Kate Shlepr '13. "This was a chance to rub shoulders and have a beer with some of the all-time greats of the seabird and

wading bird world and to explore the cutting edge of this branch of science in t-shirts and flip-flops rather than suits and ties." The 179 attendees hailed from six countries and thirty-five states and provinces. Among them were COA students Rachel Karesh '16 and Meaghan Lyon '16, who presented papers, as did both John and Kate. But the highlight of the meeting was getting offshore. An excursion aboard the Bar Harbor Whale Watch's Friendship V, expertly narrated by Zach Klyver ('90), brought the scientists up close and personal with pelagic birds, even a shark.

COA indicates non-degree alumni by a parenthesis around their year. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

NEWS ORIGIN STORY The Bar Island Swim

Left: The first Bar Island Swim participants, in 1990 (left to right): Ken Cline, Erin Marken '92, Jaime Torres '97, Kurt Jacobson '90, Wendy Doherty '91. Right: In 2015, the 138 Bar Island Swim participants wade into the frigid water from the Bar Island sand bar.

It was the fall of 1990 and COA was unveiling a beautiful new pier. But not everyone was a fan. The school barely had any boats to speak of at the time. What was the point of building such an expensive pier? "Students were grousing about us spending money on the pier," Ken Cline, faculty member in environmental law and policy, remembers. On a fairly chilly day he was talking with a few of his students after class, when the contentious subject of the pier came up followed by the usual complaints. "One of the students said, 'Well, if nothing else, it'd be a good place to go swimming'. So a couple of us decided to jump off the pier. I don't know who made the suggestion, but someone said we should all swim out to Bar Island. So that's what we did," continues Ken. As Ken and four students walked down to the dock, he recalls, "another student got caught up with the energy and jumped in, in her underwear." The next year the group swelled to fifteen. The numbers kept increasing. In 2015, 138 students, staff, faculty, and alumni turned out for the frigid traverse. People have shown up painted blue, in costume, with inflatable animals in tow, and in their birthday suits. There are concerns. Frenchman Bay is quite cold and not everyone is a skilled swimmer. COA works to keep the swim safe. Numerous boats line the passage with

monitors ready to pull out swimmers at a second's notice, there's an hour-long, mandatory meeting beforehand, and there's the simple decree that all you have to do is jump in the water to be considered one of the swimmers. This, says Ken, is meant to prevent people from pushing too far past their limits. "I want people to feel comfortable asking for help. I don't want anyone to feel like they have to go all the way if they can't." The swim has changed over the years. As the crowd grew, the dock became too small to launch and keep track of the swimmers. For a few years, a boat carried swimmers to just off Bar Island and they jumped from there, swimming back. Then the crowd grew too large for the available boats. Swimmers now gather at the Bar Island sand bar, wade into the water, and head for the COA dock. It might not be as dramatic a start, but the swim still represents a rite of passage, one that is challenging, fun, and singular. "I love the swim," says Ken. "I think it epitomizes some of what we want our students to do with their education. We want them to try something that they haven't done before that might be a little bit scary, a little bit uncomfortable. I think we draw students who are willing to take those sorts of risks and try new things. And it does give them a sense of accomplishment." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Rob Levin

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NEWS DECEMBER IN PARIS December marks a pivotal time in climate change negotiations, as nations are expected to finalize a new agreement on actions to address the problem. They will conclude the discussion in Paris at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Among those gathering in Paris will be COA musicians Angela Valenzuela '17 and Augustin Martz '17 of the group Agua Libre—free water. They are spending the fall term on an artistic residency, creating music to promote climate action. The language of international negotiations can be dense and the challenges of addressing climate change in fair and just ways seemingly intractable. Angela and Augustin are working to transform the complicated texts and issues of climate justice "into songs that can reach people and strengthen the climate justice movement." Says Angela, "We believe that art is a force that empowers and connects humans and life on Earth. Music can be the wind that sets into movement the necessary cultural and societal changes in times of crisis. We want to use this power to create a space of unity that allows for true dialogue to happen and real solutions to flourish." Through songs like "El Hombre de Papel" (Paper Man) and "El Ultimo Glaciar" (The Last Glacier), the pair discuss the problematic aspects of climate change while offering a vision for a different kind of world. "El Ultimo Glaciar" ends with words of hope: "May our teardrops become a wide river that unites our veins, that irrigates the possibility of imagining, of rising up for the infinite worlds that rise up and sprout, spread out." As the meetings begin, Angela

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and Augustin will be joined by fifteen classmates who have been participating in Doreen Stabinsky's course Practicing Climate Politics. Doreen is COA's faculty member in global environmental politics, agricultural policy, and international studies, and currently holds the Zennström Visiting Professorship in Climate Change Leadership at Sweden's Uppsala University. The class enables students to become conversant in the language and concerns under discussion—studying the negotiation processes, the positions of various countries and country groupings, and the ways to engage in the official processes to press for a stronger outcome. Thanks to such intensive work, the COA delegation often takes a leadership role among the international youth at the meetings. This will be the second UNFCCC for Sara Velander '17. She has been following issues of forests and agriculture in the negotiations, and will focus her work in Paris on understanding how the process can deliver adequate support for adaptation efforts of vulnerable communities. Sara also expects to be involved outside the negotiations, where youth and others meet, make connections, and build strategies. While Sara would like to see true change, she is not nearly so optimistic. "We have lost some hope in what countries can achieve under this convention at this point in time," she says, speaking also for Earth in Brackets, COA's student climate change group. "We believe that Paris is a stepping stone for mass civil society mobilizations where alliances will be built and crosscommunity organizing networks can be established. That's why we are calling it the Road Through Paris, rather than Road to Paris." Students are blogging on earthinbrackets.org; Angela and Augustin can be found at agualibre.net.

As Angela Valenzuela '17 and Augustin Martz '17 perform at a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change gathering, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, watches intently. Says photographer Omer Shamir '16, "They became the superstars of the conference."

ISLANDS Kate Shlepr '13

Sometimes I wander until I find a nice spot outdoors, and then I sit. I close my eyes and think or dream, listen to the sounds around me, and focus on the blankness of my eyelidsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so that when I open my eyes I am swept away by just how vibrant the land is. Here, on a wharf in the town of Westport, on Nova Scotia's Brier Island, bright sun skitters over a swift-moving passage between this island and the mainland, while the white of two churches and a fish plant stands stark against green leaves. Our research team worked hard over the last three days, pressing through prickly rose, raspberries, and mud in order to keep the straight transect lines necessary to complete a gull nest census. I was exhausted at the end of it, but I have since showered and prepared dinner, and now I find that I am simply happy. Tonight we will use the data we collected to generate a map of gull nest densities. We hope this will tell us more about the factors influencing the reproductive success of the gulls we monitored throughout the breeding season. We hope, too, that the map will help the Canadian Wildlife Service managers carrying out a wetlands restoration project on this island; they have observed how gull guano alters the soil chemistry where the birds nest, making it likelier that roadside weeds will outcompete rarer bog plants. Closing out my fifth summer of seabird research, I have come to accept that there is only so much running away you can do on a small chunk of rock, say one mile long and one-quarter mile wide, like COA's Great Duck Island. Add a limited residential population and what is often non-existent Internet and phone service, and you find that you really are on a little island. This kind of space to think and see without distraction is uncommon in the modern world, and it is part of what makes doing research on islands unique. There is a change of pace that comes with fieldworkâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;early mornings and lots of exercise, family-style meals born partly out of practicality for a small crew with a limited food supply and partly out of desire to enjoy the company of others after hours of sun and wind. Islands themselves have a unique ecology, one seemingly simple enough to fully observe, understand, explain. And there is a felt history in island townships carried in old schoolhouse photographs and known family names, or by scars in the earth where granite quarries once prospered. These qualities, shaped by the physical isolation of islands, provide settings for experiences not found anywhere else. It was curiosity about field biology that led me to islands as a COA undergrad; I now appreciate how few other colleges can boast two thriving island research stations. Like many students on their first venture to Mount Desert Rock or Great Duck Island, I had little idea of what to expect but was nevertheless fully involved from the moment I stepped onto the boat. These days my island hopping is concentrated a bit further downeast, but I am still pulled toward Great Duck where my eyes were opened to a discovering and wondering that will carry me through this lifetime. Kate Shlepr '13 is working on her master's in biology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada.

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View of Mount Desert Island from the Edward McC. Blair Research Station on Mount Desert Rock. Photograph by Izik Dery '17.

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COA'S ISLANDS Mount Desert Rock · Great Duck Island Twenty-one miles out to sea, battered by waves, coursed by wind night and day, lies isolated Mount Desert Rock. On it stands Mount Desert Light and the several outbuildings that comprise the Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station. Each low tide, hundreds of seals haul out on the bare ledges, the highest of which rises only seventeen feet above sea level. Above, gulls circle and cry without end, while every thirty seconds the foghorn moans. A few plants tenuously grow on the three-and-a-half-acre island, but nary a tree. On the nation's entire east coast there is no lighthouse more exposed, none further out to sea. In 1972, Steve Katona, COA's founding biology faculty member and former president, took a boatful of students out to the Rock and discovered—much to most everyone's surprise at the time—that whales were diving near the island. Soon the Rock (or MDR) became a platform for scientists from Allied Whale, COA's marine mammal research program, also founded by Steve Katona. In 1998, the college acquired MDR from the Coast Guard. Each summer as many as six hundred seals, upwards of four hundred herring and black-backed gulls, and three dozen eiders can be seen daily. Humpback, finback, and even northern right whales are lured to the region by the upwellings of deeper, colder, nutrient-rich waters. Joining them are harbor porpoises and common and white-sided dolphins. Add to that population COA students and alumni researchers, along with scientists from such institutions as Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, and you have a busy Rock. In the late summer of 2015, eighteen COA students lived on MDR for a two-week field studies class in marine mammal biology. Before the students arrived, and after, a number of carpenters worked to repair the damage wreaked on the buildings by Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Nemo. The repairs are funded by a grant from the Mars family. For faculty member Sean Todd, who oversees the Blair Research Station, "the Rock is a stepping stone to the marine environment. We look out from our island to the waters that surround us. … Life on both of COA's island research stations—the Rock and Great Duck Island—requires independence, initiative, and self-reliance." And that, adds Sean, echoed by John Anderson, who runs research on Great Duck, is an essential part of the learning. 10

Students come to the island to conduct research and collect ecological data. Each day they rotate a watch from the tower from 0600 to 1800, an hour on, maybe an hour-and-a-half off, searching for whales and porpoises, noting fishing boats and tankers. At the height of each tide and at its ebb, counts of the seal and bird populations are also taken. In 2014, Grace Shears '17 and Teresa Bompczyk '17 were among ten students conducting research on the Rock. Grace was studying seal morbidity and mortality, characterizing wound types and severity. Teresa analyzed planktonic communities to identify the zooplankton found in different locales, depths, and seasons. She gathered the plankton by dragging a large, fine-meshed net behind one of the dinghies to collect water samples—a process known as a plankton tow—then viewed the results under a microscope. There is no better way to display the excitement and dedication of these young scientists than by excerpting a few pages from their entries to the daily log.—DG Looking southward from the Mount Desert Rock research station. Photographs by Izik Dery '17. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Leaving Frenchman Bay's Porcupine Islands behind as COA's M/V Osprey heads to Mount Desert Rock.

FIRST GRACE WRITES: July 26, 2014, Saturday … So we got an article today about great white sharks in New Brunswick and there was a picture of their fins. We realized the fins Sophie [Cox, a summer researcher from the United Kingdom] and I saw are definitely not basking sharks, more likely great whites, not to mention the mysterious splashes we've been seeing lately. Chris [Tremblay '03, station manager] also said they saw a "basking shark" fin the other day, but he says he's suspicious it may have been a great white. I want to see one so badly! ITT [COA's summer high school session, Islands Through Time, see page 23] is coming Wednesday, and that reminds me, Sean brought out the disentanglement gear, in case we get any more entangled seals (hopefully not, but it'll be really great to have out here). Teresa and I went swimming yesterday and we found out today from the CTD [an instrument that measures the ocean's temperature, depth, and salinity] that the water is still just 50 degrees F. Haha. So we've been swimming in 50 degree water with potentially large great whites, huzzah. Well, it's been a long day.—GS July 27, Sunday Fairly uneventful day. Chris has us practicing landings in the cove and that was pretty fun. We had one whale earlier today, but none since then. I've been working on the list of MDR birds I promised Matt [Messina '16]; I've got twenty-three species so far. Today I've seen a puffin, some double-crested cormorants, semipalmated sandpipers, spotted sandpipers, gannets (juvenile and adult), and … the first common terns of the season! Very exciting. I really can't wait to see a humpback; the blows we saw today looked suspicious: not quite fin whale blows, but no flukes so we weren't sure. It was fairly foggy so we figure they were fin whale blows distorted by fog. (We were sure they weren't humpbacks, not sure if they were fins.)—GS

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July 31, Thursday Today was hectic, but fun. It was quite foggy this morning and we were limited in our activities, though it cleared up later on. I helped Porcia [Manandhar '17] band chicks and took groups of ITT kids to see seals. We launched Delphis [one of MDR's dedicated inflatable boats] and set the drift buoy [to measure currents by drifting in them as the position is logged via GPS] while Sophie, Megan [Comey '17], and Chris did a plankton tow. Tomorrow will be busy; we're getting the second group of ITT kids. Chris is also taking a couple days off. Greenlight Academy [a Connecticutbased high school field camp] is coming out Monday and leaving Friday. Sadly, I'm leaving with them. To end this entry on a good note, we saw fin whales super close to the island today! Porcia had never seen a whale; it was exciting.—Cheers, GS August 1, Friday

Top to bottom: Chris Tremblay '03, station manager, awaits supplies for the Rock with Khristian Mendez '15 in the foreground; looking east into fog from the MDR research station; a seal basks on the rocks of Mount Desert Rock. 12

… Sophie and Porcia saw a pod of whitesided dolphins this morning, which was pretty cool; they saw a large group later on the whale watch. Toby [Stephenson '98, COA's boat captain] came a little after lunch and we launched Sali [a buoy equipped with hydrophone and recorder to document underwater sounds. The names of MDR craft are based on the Latin terms for marine mammals: Sali is short for Balaenoptera physalus, the fin whale; Delphinus delphis is the common dolphin.] Chris showed us how to charge the batteries for the recorder. Since Chris will be gone for two days, we will be going out tomorrow to change the batteries and listen for whales. It's going to be exciting because this evening we saw two fin whales and a huge pod of dolphins feeding right near the buoy! I cried when I saw the fin whales lunge feeding, you could even see the bait ball! [A tight spherical ball that small fish form in an attempt to evade predators.] And we saw so many shearwaters and gulls. Well, I've got to go help with the fire for marshmallows and enter some data.—(newly dubbed) Capt. Shearwater. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Sophie Cox, a visiting undergraduate from England, surveys the wildlife around Mount Desert Rock through the high-powered binoculars known as "Big Eyes." Behind her on the laptop is Elizabeth Beato, a summer research assistant with Allied Whale. The surveys are conducted in conjunction with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

August 2, Saturday We just had an amazing sunset and a good day. … We went out and changed the batteries on Sali and saw lots of gannets, one of them actually made a sound. I've never heard a gannet before, it was neat. Due to a knee injury, I didn't do too many watches today, but I did go up the lighthouse stairs this morning with some ITT students to look at two fin whales. Others saw a basking shark and a minke.—Cheers, Shearwater

AND NOW TERESA TAKES OVER: August 23, Saturday We unfortunately have witnessed two incidents of intentional homicide and cannibalism here on Mount Desert Rock … it was Megan. She's gone crazy. Just kidding! It was just an evil black-backed gull attacking herring gull chicks, one yesterday and today. I think it's too fat and lazy to go scavenge for other food. A dead seal is currently swashing back and forth in the cove … can't tell what kind because it's been nibbled on and is missing a face. I'm actually really freaked out by it. Abby [St. Onge '17] cooked a delicious meal of spaghetti and garlic bread (thank you Abby) last night. Hopefully tonight we can cook kabobs over a nice, non-toxic fire, as Colleen [Holtan '17] and I rescued some driftwood from the western cove yesterday evening. Other than that it's been pretty quiet out here. There was a "humpy" in the NE earlier today, but our whale friends haven't been around for the most part.—Teresa Bompczyk

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August 26, Tuesday Lots of excitement this morning. There were two fin whales (on the "small" side) hanging around not too far off shore, so Chris allowed Sophie, Anastasia [Czarnecki '18], and myself to ride out in Delphis with him to get a closer view. It was amazing to see whales that close in such a small boat … definitely gave me a better perspective on their size. [Sean notes that all activities close to whales are strictly regulated; students and staff comply with the minimum approach distances.] Attempted to collect plankton data but only succeeded in getting four horizontal tows, one vertical, and two CTD casts due to the tide. However, Megan and I were able to drive Delphis. Steering a boat is so different from a car—you always have to be checking and correcting your heading. I get distracted too easily on a boat. Tried fishing yesterday off the northern side with no bait and an unimpressive lure. I was surprised to catch five fish—three pollock and two rusty orange fish I can't identify. It was so different from freshwater fishing, especially in Buffalo, New York. Usually I go to this superdisgusting part of the Niagara River by my old house, throw a worm on the hook and wait at least a half hour before anything even bites. I'm so happy I was able to fish; it brings back great memories. We were seeing a seal with some gear or line caught around its neck, but it hasn't been spotted for a while. Grace has permission from Sean and Rosie Seton [COA's marine mammal stranding coordinator] to save it (if possible) next time it hauls out. Grace, Megan, and I went swimming in the cove this afternoon to wash up. We haven't showered since we got here. It's actually not too bad, except the perpetual guano on my clothes. I swear, they remember me from when I banded their chicks and are exacting revenge with air raids of excrement. Or it could be that I've been sleeping on guano-covered rocks for a few nights. I received warnings about the cold, the wet, and the outhouse bucket before coming out here. I was also warned of the island's beauty, and how I'll never want to come off. But no one told me about the night here … the night on MDR is by far the most captivating and aweinspiring aspect of this place. I honestly don't understand how people can even stand to sleep inside on a warm, clear night. There's the sound of real, live ocean waves to lull you to sleep, a gentle salty breeze, the light from the tower slowly revolving around … in the cove there's a dazzling display of bioluminescence, fishing boat lights reflecting off the water in the distance, and the stars. I've never been so truly amazed in my life. Billions of distant stars are visible here … it's so humbling. Literally, if there's a heaven, mine would be an unceasing night on this island.—TB 14

A black-backed gull on the research station's chimney.

August 29, Friday I'm leaving for the season today, along with Colleen, Scott, and Dan [DenDanto '91]. The summer went by so quickly and I've had so much fun and learned a lot. Mount Desert Rock is probably the most beautiful, interesting, inspiring place I've ever been, and I would be honored and so appreciative if I were able to come back. There's a lot of projects and data waiting to be started and collected … hopefully next summer that will happen! Until then.—TB P.S. SLEEP OUTSIDE, at least once. You are so conveniently resting beneath one of the most clear, unpolluted (from light), beautiful night skies. Take advantage of it! Don't let the gulls flying at night trick you into thinking they're huge meteors … COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

POETRY NO MAN IS AN ISLAND IS A WOMAN Eloise Schultz '16

CAROLINA MOON

Arlo Cristofaro-Hark '17

Everything went to the wind last night; the ocean grabbing at what it could, the island howling in reply.

Your Mother, my Grandmother constellation soft skin translucent veins as if while she lay there I could see straight into her heart

This morning's calm, shy light on water. No sign of storm but what the waves threw up. Sophie ventures out with a bucket and returns with a dead monkfish

behind rows of needle teeth. Its slime skin has lost its luster, dulled by sun and heat.

But to the saw-whet owl seeking refuge in the generator shed, the island sings: survival.

like like

draped over her forearm, fins splayed between her fingers. She pries open its mouth to reveal a pale, fleshy tongue

For most out here, the sea is home: danger comes when we wash ashore, where soft meets hard.

Three hundred Sixty five Crossword puzzles Pool cues She sang, . . . Carolina moon, keep shining . . . I bet you that she is still up there somewhere

To the tern darting through the air, white wings moving like scissor blades, she calls come: here, no harm will come to you. And to the downy chick scurrying across the rocks, small of its neck gouged to a bloody mess by beak and talon, she says the same. This is not to suggest that the island intends to deceive; rather, she welcomes everyone with the same enthusiasm, then watches them die with the same indifference. The island understands what is expected of her: to receive. But she is necessarily her own self. All her life, she has been practicing separation; think how long she has strained to hold herself above the waves.

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COA'S ISLANDS Mount Desert Rock · Great Duck Island There's an almost eerie quiet to an offshore island. Walk just a few steps inland from gull cries and wave surges and you can hear the flight of insects within the silence. Spend time and the island begins to reveal itself: which bird nests where, what rocks are stable, how field merges into forest. Eventually, it almost seems possible to sense with the eye of a gull or guillemot. So it is with COA's "ducklings," the students who spend the seabird breeding season on the narrow, milelong Great Duck Island some eighteen miles south of campus. Here the nocturnal Leach's storm petrel and plump black guillemot flock to breed each summer—more here than to any other known locale in the eastern US. Herring and black-backed gulls along with eiders also nest on the island, joined recently by the Atlantic puffin. In 1998, COA acquired twelve acres of Great Duck, sharing the rest of the island with the Nature Conservancy, the State of Maine, and a summer resident. Each summer, guided by biology faculty member John Anderson, students at the island's Alice Eno Field Research Station begin the day with a climb to the lighthouse tower to count and record every visible living creature. Later the thirty-five representative herring and black-backed gull nests selected at the beginning of the season are monitored. Once the chicks have hatched from these nests they are weighed and measured daily: "chick check." Tiny metal and plastic bands are placed around the legs of these chicks—and as many other birds as possible—to better observe their individual destinies. The day ends with a communal dinner and the nightly log. Every week a careful sweep of the island is made to count all nests. Beyond recording daily findings, most students do their own field research. Some begin the summer with a well-planned project; others wait to survey the island upon arrival, finding their subject in the questions that arise. "They come up with a project themselves. We're giving them the chance to experience graduate school early on," says John. Through observation, field research, and archival searches, students are amassing a thorough ecology of this one small island—zoological, botanical, geologic, human, and historical. And dramatic changes have been observed— an increase in eagles, major movements of gulls, the introduction of puffins. At 0600 on June 8, 2015, this year's crew—Brenna Castro-Thews '18, Nina Duggan '18, Nadia Harerimana '18, Rachel Karesh '16, Meaghan Lyon '16, Audra McTague '19, and Ite Sullivan '18—boarded COA's M/V Osprey and departed into a misty sunrise for Great Duck Island. Over the weeks, as the students watched petrel, gull, guillemot, and puffin emerge from egg to nestling to fledgling, as they observed eagles foraging the very chicks they had cradled in their hands, they came to a new understanding of place, themselves, each other, and the greater cycle of life. The following excerpts, taken from the group log during each of the seven weeks of the 2015 Great Duck Island season, reveal the students' remarkable commitment to the human ecology of an island.—DG Fog rolling in partially obscures the lighthouse on Great Duck Island, but doesn't touch the flagpole. Photographs by Nina Duggan '18, except as noted.

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Meaghan Lyon '16 holds a black guillemot chick during "chick check."

June 12, 2015 Friday The day dawned cold and a little windy. John woke us up at 0640 as usual. Nina saw savanna sparrow chicks. Audra worked on her project, mapping her nests and recording the eggs and chicks. Brenna found something amazing: herring gulls dove on her much more than black-backed gulls as she was sitting next to the nests. After dinner Ite, Brenna, and Rachel went out in the drizzle and a petrel flew into them. They held it and were very happy. June 18, Thursday ISLAND COUNT DAY! The day dawned slightly overcast and warm with lovely mirages to the east. After a basic tower count we set off round the island. Audra [who was looking at herring and black-backed gull vocalizations] finally got a recording of the gulls' nest switch call. [Both male and female gulls take turns feeding and tending their young. As one returns from offshore, it announces its arrival to the other.] Rachel [who was using game cameras to determine the petrel's pattern of return to their deep, inland burrows] set up three game cams around Atlantis [near the boathouse, see page 18] to try to see petrels and found a burrow with three adults in it. Meaghan [who was researching her senior project on guillemot nest site selection and survival] found eight guillemot nests between Atlantis and the boat house. Ite learned to tie various knots and looked at algae. Nadia saw two fights between herring gulls. Audra banded her first chick by herself! Brenna and Nina went on a plant phenology walk and brought back lots of samples as well as photographs. NB: Roses up to the north end of the island are flowering. Irises are also flowering, as are the ones in our eastern meadow! But eastern meadow is only just flowering while those at north end are fully open. June 19, Friday ALCID DAY窶年ineteen razorbills seen by John at tower count this morning The day dawned drizzly and dark. The ducklings slowly trickled downstairs for breakfast. John made us French toast with homemade bread. Yum! After breakfast everyone sat around writing notes and going through journals. Brenna started to identify plants and Nina [who was looking at the interaction between gulls and eiders] went through eider photos. The cloudy weather blew over and blue sky and sunshine started peeking out at around 1100. Nina and John spent time in the tower. At 1247 an adult peregrine falcon took an adult guillemot right out of the air just left of the boat shed. It eventually dropped it somewhere around Puffin Point after being pursued through the colony by gulls. The harbor seal kept porpoising up, seen last at 1419.

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June 24, Wednesday Patience's chick [a late-nesting gull whose nest was next to the lighthouse tower steps] is moving within its wet shell about to be a freshly hatched chick. The adults are becoming slightly more aggressive now and it'll be interesting to see where their territory/range expands to. Nina had been searching for common eider from the tower all morning: seventeen common eider adults and nine chicks. In the afternoon she did not find any common eider, but she did find wren chicks and a mountain ash. From 1300 to 1500 Rachel and Audra banded gulls on the east berm totaling forty-one chicks: thirty-six herring gulls and five great blackbacked gulls. Meaghan trailed along searching for black guillemot nests and brought her total island nest count to fifty-one nests! Rachel checked on her petrel cameras after the banding fest. By the end of the most beautiful day thus far Patience's chick successfully hatched from its shell, fluffy and chirping for Mum. June 30, Tuesday

Great Duck Island, by Robin Owings '13.

The day dawned with a beautiful fog surrounding our tower. It lifted by 0740 and we were all ready to play in the warm sunshine. Meaghan sat in the tower from 0800 to 1030 watching the feeding rate of the black guillemot along the west berm. Most chicks were found alive and well, but there was one dead. "Late Gull" has three chicks, John's favorite black-backed chick is fat and sassy, and everyone is happily surprised by the lack of dead chicks after our rainy day. An adult bald eagle came from the north, diving down on a group of five common eider chicks and one adult female. The eiders all dove simultaneously just escaping the grasp of the eagle. The eagle then attempted it a second time, but the eiders escaped into the depths of the ocean yet again. John is full of songs today by a variety of artists and time

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Clockwise from top left: a black guillemot egg; adult herring gull; Audra Novine McTague '19 assists Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '16 in banding a great black-backed chick. Photo by John Anderson.

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Sunlight reflecting off the ocean illuminates the undersides of clouds hovering near Great Duck Island. At such moments, students on the island would abandon their work to admire the sky.

periods. A great black-backed gull stalked the chick under the tree by the path but had no success. Meaghan saw the chick later in the evening with the parent! Black guillemots and gulls were copulating on the rocks which seems late in the season, but they may be re-laying. [When eggs are lost to weather or predation, birds sometimes attempt replacement clutches.] A crow was seen carrying a chick (herring gull) from the east colony in the afternoon. Also an eagle (mature bald) came into the colony twice, once in the morning and once in the evening, but nothing was taken. N.B. The Indian pipes are coming up! July 2, Thursday EAGLE HELL DAY Meaghan checked on her chick check nests at Point Colony and found three wet chicks! Rachel collected her SD chips but only got pictures of rabbits. John, Ite, and Brenna discussed the Civil War during tower watch. Between 1452 and 1828 we had eight separate eagle attacks! One eagle got an adult herring gull on one of the later attacks. John made us enchiladas and beans and rice for dinner and we talked about suicide bombers. Eagle attacked again after dinner! July 9, Tuesday PUFFINS ON POINT (Nesting) Meaghan spotted two great blue herons as well as two juvenile and one adult bald eagles. We got our first confirmed sighting of a puffin with a fish in its beak, which means chicks! July 15, Wednesday The day did not dawn. Everything was damp and layered in thick fog. The air began to warm by 1200 and the fog cleared a bit, but the water was still not visible. Meaghan spent time painting, Audra wrote and studied constellations, and all the while the gulls remained relatively quiet, uninterrupted by eagles.

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July 18, Saturday The day dawned with cool, damp air and we felt rain driplets during tower count. The air remained cold and the wind was strong out of the southwest, which occasionally brought in some rain. Tower watch was cold but doable. We saw several flying chicks, razorbills, Atlantic puffins, double-crested cormorants, and the usual. Point Colony smelled like death (rotting chicks). Meaghan found dead chicks in nest eight and nine. She also found four new nests and there are most likely more because there were over 136 individuals on the water from Blondie Bay to north of the point. Rachel went petreling and found a chick in a burrow along the road and it was tiny tiny! The adult was in the nest too. Around 1426 a juvenile eagle went into the west field and grabbed a chick. It was a large chick with flight feathers. We saw it being eaten up the field along the path to Blondie Bay. It was a day for walking and adventuring in the forest and updating data. Nina made a beautiful and delicious curry and dahl for dinner and we shared stories of our past. July 23, Thursday ISLAND COUNT—(Rachel, Meaghan, and John's season comes to an end. ITT starts soon.) The day dawned finally clear! The days of fog are over. During island count Meaghan saw a black guillemot go into an unmarked crevice along the slough, which is so weird. Those rocks roll/are very unstable and have very limited spaces for nests, but the individual was carrying a fish (ground gunnel). Just before noon, Nina, Meaghan, and John saw two mature bald eagles fly over the east berm and slowly rise above the tower. Then … they latched their talons together and dove for the colony spiraling downward as the colony rose like a cloud in protest. No more babies they called with traumatic alert calls. The eagles stopped and flew on but did it one more time before heading north along the west berm. It was interesting that the herring gulls did not rise in protest until after a dive was made. Nina went to Blondie Bay and saw a mass of hummingbirds on the fireweed on the path. Eagles (juvenile) were hanging out there too, soaring high above the woods. The sunset was beautiful and cool as we enjoyed one of our final nights on the magical Great Duck Island.

Two gulls—a black-backed (left) and herring (far right) pursue a bald eagle that had come in close to the lighthouse to attack the gull colony.

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Grubbing for Petrels Anne Hurley '15 The Leach's storm-petrel, a small, dark seabird that seldom even rests to eat, nests in deep burrows within the sod of Great Duck Island's woods. To band and thus monitor the young, students are trained to reach into the burrows and pull out the tiny fluff of a chick—known as petreling, or grubbing for petrels. Anne Hurley '15, a "duckling" from 2012, wrote about the experience in her senior project, Coming In By Going Out: Notes for Olive, a collection of experiences in nature written for her young niece. My first time grubbing for petrels was on a humid, sweaty day—the kind where you're tense from the heat and the only thing worse than being hot is being bitten all over by mosquitoes while sweating. We checked hole after hole, the soil and tree roots biting at our skin as we reached deep into the nests, our faces beet red and our hands puffed, scratched, and sore from the mosquito bites. We hit two that were empty; I prepared to grub the third hole. My arm was stinging as I began reaching into the burrow. I sunk my chest into the ground as my arm stretched. I was just about to reach the limit of my arm when I felt a soft shell-like object covered in what felt like long peach fuzz. At the touch of this surprise I drew my arm back quickly, but then continued forward to ever so gently grab hold of the shelled cotton ball. I heard a "peep" from below the ground. I tried not to panic as it sat in my grip—it was so light, so vulnerable, and sitting in my hand. I was terrified of my hand twisting the wrong way, for fear of injuring delicate life. When I finally reached the opening of the burrow and this new chick saw its first rays of light, my body filled with an overwhelming amount of guilt, adrenaline, and love. She was no bigger than a cotton ball; she even looked like a cotton ball, but dyed with black walnut ink. It's been said that petrels smell like grandma's clothes that have been stored in the attic. I held her, scooped between both hands, and brought her close to my nose. Breathing slowly, I smelled the soft scent of Nana's dress that hung lamely in the back of her closet. We banded the chick, leaving our signature deliberately behind.

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ISLANDS THROUGH TIME Audra Novine McTague '19 In the summer of 2014 Audra Novine McTague was one of sixteen high school students participating in Islands Through Time, or ITT, an immersion in the human ecology of islands. Guided by faculty members John Anderson (zoology, behavioral ecology), John Cooper (music), Helen Hess (invertebrate zoology, marine biology), Sean Todd (marine mammology), and Karen Waldron (literature, writing), students spend time on Great Duck Island, Mount Desert Rock, and campus. For Audra, the twelve-day intensive was not enough. What follows is adapted from her essay applying to the COA class of 2019. GREAT DUCK ISLAND, August 1, 2014 The stars were brilliant that night. I sat and stared upon the haggard, wooden foundation of what used to be the home of one of the three lighthouse keepers on the island. Only one of the homes remains, with a boathouse that has been transformed into a bunker, to my left and down the hill. Behind me, the towering white lighthouse had just revealed itself earlier that day as the fog lifted for the first time since I had arrived on the island. The tower shot out an eerie red light that almost gave the night a supernatural impression, completing a revolution every twelve seconds. The sights, the sounds, the smells were magnificent: the contrast between the blue of the sea, the white of the ocean's mist, the brown of the beaten rocks, the red of the rugosa rose blossoms and berries, and the green of lush brush and bushes; the crackling of the campfire, the beating of the flag on the pole behind me by the wind, and the whistling of the wind itself blowing from the ocean, through my hair, past my ears; the coolness of

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Photo by John Anderson.

the fresh, salty air as it entered my nostrils and continued down, filling my lungs; the smell of nothing but nature. For at least ten minutes this was all that occupied my mind. But as I came to, I realized that I had to get up early the next morning, so I made my way down the winding path, through the gull colony, and into the boathouse. That is when the conversation that was just held on those old, haggard boards flooded my brain. My views on the world, on science, and my own religious beliefs had just been challenged by my teacher, John Anderson. Not simply questioned, but tested with a bombardment of alternative theories, queries on why I believe what I do, and reasons as to why he believes what he does. Never have I thought about such deep ideas, nor has anyone ever been so curious

to know what I thought about such subjects. Why do I think as I do? Why have I never thought that way before? My brain hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt, as if something had forced a door open that I didn't know was there. Then, as quickly as they came, the thoughts left. As I lay down, my mind became silent and centered around the atmosphere that enclosed me, as the crying of the gulls just outside the door and the continuous blows of the foghorn held me in my sleeping bag. I lay with my eyes facing the northernmost window and watched the sliver of moon afloat above the earth turn into a crescent of fire as it sank below the western horizon. Without a thought in my head and with this intense feeling of deep happiness and content, I drifted off into a peaceful slumber as the island lulled me to sleep.

In Their Own Words COA community members tell us about their lives in this new section; while we edit the conversations, they remain "in their own words." Collected and edited by Marni Berger '09

Island Activism Hiyasmin Saturay '15, creator of the film Pangandoy: The Manobo fight for land, education and their future on the struggles of the Philippine indigenous group, Talaingod Manobo Islands mean a lot to me. I come from a country of 7,107 islandsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and I grew up on an island, the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. Both my parents were activists and were helping stop a mining company from coming into our area and displacing hundreds of indigenous people. We had to leave in 2006 because a lot of my parents' colleagues were getting killed. I always remember the sacrifices they made, the work they started, how it's grown. When I think about that, it's like, How can you stop working when some people have offered their lives for it? Coming to COA with that background helped me to understand Benito is one of Talaingod's leaders. Says Hiyasmin Saturay '15, this work "has human ecology, that it's really made me more humble, definitely, just to see that you're one part of a bigger important to see things in more than movement." one perspective and address problems in more than one perspective. My senior project was kind of a going-home project. It was also a part of my organizing work here in the US. I am currently in Long Beach, California, part of a progressive arts organization, Habi Arts. Habi means weave, weaving the different arts, looking at the connections among different struggles. We believe that people coming together is what's going to create change and try to use our art in organizing workers, youth, women to connect the struggles of migrants and women in the US to the problems in the Philippines. For example, we encounter migrant caregivers here who are being exploited and abused on the job. Basically, the same kind of political-economic system that causes their displacement to the US is the same system that affects the indigenous people that I made my documentary about. I was in Talaingod, Davao del Norte to do my project for three months. The paramilitary was close by the communities I went to, so it was pretty scary to do that kind of work. But I just trusted the people. They knew how to protect me and protect themselves. They have a community that functions, that aims to be sustainable; it's very democratic. I saw the seeds being planted thereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;what can happen when people come together. It's so inspiring that people see their school as very important and try hard to keep it going. I think that's only really reaffirmed for me that I will be committed to this work wherever I am, and if something happens, I'm OK to give my life to it, just like so many others. I wouldn't let fear stop me. Hiyasmin Saturay's film was part of her senior project. For access to the film, or her senior project presentation, email hsaturay@coa.edu. *** Marni Berger '09 is a writer living in Portland, Maine. 24

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Above: Hiyasmin Saturay '15—in blue, upper left—with children from Talaingod. "The most important thing is to stay close to the people. And learn from them." Below: Motivated students study even outside their classroom. Photos by or courtesy of Hiyasmin Saturay '15.

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Chile's González Videla research station in Paradise Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. Below: Alex Borowicz '14 and penguins at Salisbury Plain, South Georgia. Photo by Tanya Cox.

Antarctic Research Alex Borowicz '14, Antarctic field guide and PhD student in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, New York When I sailed in the morning toward the Antarctic peninsula my first time, it was absolutely breathtaking—you go from two days in open ocean and all of a sudden you see these snow- and ice-covered mountains, and you reach this place that is stark, and it's harsh, and you feel how desolate it is, but also how palpable life is there because it's such a challenging place to live. I spent two winters as a general marine biologist guide in the Antarctic. My first season I was a senior, it was right before my senior project term. I put together an introductory whale talk, an intro seal talk, an oceanography talk, one on whaling history, and one on fish and fisheries. I didn't do a climate change talk, but I always throw in little nuggets of climate change. The Antarctic is the most rapidly warming place on the planet—you can look at pictures of glaciers melting back year by year and how all the organisms are responding. You can see it right there. But you still run across people who don't believe it. There isn't a lot of large-scale science going on in the Antarctic because it's so challenging. There's a lot of basic biology that we've inferred from just a few data points, which isn't quite enough. So we make a lot of generalizations. When I see something interesting that hasn't been represented in the literature to my knowledge, it's exciting: a penguin with the wrong color eye; a humpback whale with really weird barnacles and skin lesions that I've never seen anywhere. Each one of those moments is this feeling of exploration and the promise of answers to questions that hadn't been thought yet. I come from Wisconsin and there's not a lot of ocean out there, so COA was my introduction to the marine world—I worked out on Mount Desert Rock and on COA's boat, the Osprey. My PhD program is in a quantitative ecology lab, using math and statistics to tackle complex ecological questions which can be used to get at issues of population dynamics and other fairly large-scale problems in ecology. I'm hoping to look at how changing climate variables are affecting populations at both large and finer scales in the Antarctic. One thing COA taught me was to ask questions broadly and think about how things work on vastly different scales. 26

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Clockwise from top left: two crabeater seals on an ice floe; chinstrap penguins returning from the sea; an iceberg adrift in Antarctica's Bransfield Strait. Photos by Alex Borowicz '14, except as noted.

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Island Education Alice Anderson '12, science educator at the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership on Hurricane Island, Maine A lot of people jump to thinking, islands are isolating. But islands are also really connectedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in different ways than we necessarily think of. Island environments are great teaching tools because they are this miniature version of the world that ideally can be scalable. On Hurricane Island, it means students can come out and get really excited about the natural environment, but not feel totally overwhelmed. Our main mission is supporting Maine youth in science, sustainability, and leadership. Within the science realm we focus on getting kids excited about making their own observations and informing their own questions around the natural world. One program focuses on the terrestrial landscape; after seven days students can really have a good understanding of the top twenty-five plants and identify them as they go around the island. It is so important to help kids connect and be familiar with the place that they are in, which is really valuable in empowering them to see that they could be a field scientistâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or have skills to identify things around them. I see kids light up in the field, really engaged and sort of dropping all of those thoughts, like I'm too cool for learning, because they are just genuinely excited about what they are finding. We've also collaborated with programs like Eastern Maine Skippers which Todd West '01, the Deer Isle-Stonington principal, helped spearhead. It's a multi-school program targeted towards students in the fishing industry who tend to be at a higher risk of dropping out because the lobstering industry is so lucrative right now. The classic response is, Why would I sit in a classroom when I can make more money hauling traps in one morning than teachers make in a week? It's getting those kids re-engaged in learning that's relevant to them, making sure they're getting some of the critical at-the-table, on-the-water, and in-the-office skills that help them be good lobstermen and owner-operator businessmen long-term. A big part of how we live out here is that we're off the grid. We have our own solar panel system, composting toilets, a constructed wetland that filters our graywater. And we have a really intentional design around the campus that helps students monitor our collective energy use and learn about what it is like to live off the grid. COA has a lot of that, but when you really have to embrace it as your lifestyle because there is no backup to plug into, it definitely changes you. You think, How much do I really need on a daily basis? How can I cut back on my impact on the natural environment? That's been a huge part of how I live nowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just recognizing how important it is to walk the talk when it comes to sustainability.

Photo courtesy of Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership.

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A northern elephant seal family on Race Rocks; a juvenile golden eagle calling with Mt. Baker in the background. Photos by Alex Fletcher '07. Bottom: Alex Fletcher '07.

Photo by Virginie Lavallée-Picard '07.

Solitary Reliance Alex Fletcher '07, winter Race Rocks Ecological Reserve guardian and Vancouver Island farmer, British Columbia, Canada I grew up on a big island, surrounded by islands, living at that transition between landscape and seascape. You have that rich intertidal zone—there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of life, a lot going on there. My work at Race Rocks is a mix of caretaking the island, coordinating and supervising students and visitors to the island, monitoring and observing wildlife and human activities within the protected area, and reporting infractions such as marine mammal disturbance or illegal fishing in the protected area. The light station has been in operation for over 150 years but in the nineties federal government budget cuts resulted in the station being de-staffed. That is when Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific took over management of the area, ensuring its protection and continued availability for research and education. The setting is very dramatic: we're in the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca so we're partly protected to the south, but we're also exposed to the open Pacific. We're surrounded on one side by the mountainous peninsula of Olympic National Park in the States and on the other side by Vancouver Island. The Race Rocks archipelago has pretty rich wildlife. It's a haul-out for California and northern sea lions, seals, and the most northerly rookery for northern elephant seals. It's also a pelagic bird nesting ground. It's solitary. There's not really the right word in English to describe it: you can be solitary without necessarily feeling lonely. In some ways when you're out there you're more attentive to people, and to your interactions, and you don't take as much for granted. You get more richness out of some things because you're in a state of being more conscious of how vulnerable you are. You rely on a boat, current tables, weather forecasts, and your judgment for running supplies and transporting visitors. You have to be able to read the weather and have the confidence to make those judgment calls. The logistics can be complicated: we have to bring in all our supplies, generate electricity, and desalinate all our drinking water. There's also the factor of—when I walk out my front door there may be a twelve-foot-long male elephant seal looking at me from across the pathway. While I am often the only human on the island there's still lots of other life there. And the ocean, as well, the ocean is a presence in and of itself.

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Julia Rowe, MPhil '02 at Tawharanui Open Sanctuary outside of Auckland, New Zealand. Photo by Megan Friesen.

Below: Trematolobelia. Photo by Julia Rowe.

Seabird Conservation Julia (Ambagis) Rowe, MPhil '02, PhD candidate in natural resources and environmental management, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii The overarching theme to my work right now is sustainability, with seabird conservation as the focus. There are three main parts: 1) a nutrient cycling study, investigating how seabirds impact nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrient availability in montane areas, 2) an assessment of what the nutrient input would have been in the pre-human past when seabirds were more numerous and widespread, and 3) an economic assessment of seabird restoration actions in Hawaii, the costs as well as primary and secondary benefits. Most of this work has taken place in Hawaii, but I also conducted a comparative nutrient study in New Zealand. The economics are hard for me; I struggle philosophically with the use of ecosystem services. I like the concept, especially for recognizing that species and ecosystems have value that may not show up in a traditional cost-benefit analysis, but I am uncomfortable monetizing some goods, I feel like value is lost in the process. With ecosystem services there is an implied use to humans which misses intrinsic value.Â Biodiversity and a species' intrinsic right to exist should account for more than its monetary value. Certain species lend themselves to this type of analysisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;bees pollinate crops that we depend on, therefore their monetary value can be calculated. But this leaves out many other values that are also important; butterflies or lichen or even certain native mammals may not be actually contributing to human "good" as we define it. I hope that my work with ecosystem services and the economic assessment I conducted for Hawaiian seabird restoration projects will aid those working to conserve seabirdsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that is my goal. COA was really helpful in my current interdisciplinary program. Most PhD students had to take a number of background courses in policy or stats or other things, but my COA work allowed me to hit the ground running without taking catch-up courses. My first COA class was Island Ecology in the summer with John Anderson. That was my intro to seabirds, islands, and interdisciplinary work. I do love islands and seabirds. There is a sense of self-reliance that comes with islands and more of a sense of immediacy in relation to our resources, both for personal consumption, but also ecologically. Maybe islands could be boiled down to community, both in relation to people and nature. 30

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Mission Healthcare Barbara Meyers '89, winter steward on the Maine Seacoast Mission's vessel the Sunbeam, COA head gardener, and

long-time Great Cranberry Island resident You know, in a lot of ways I'm a mountain person at heart. I first came to COA from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but in my years here I've become a good boat person, a good sailor. I'm interested in the ocean, in the biology and the ecology of the ocean; it has certainly been the defining feature of the second half of my adult life. I have a natural affinity for the way water moves; the way boats move in it. In addition to my COA work, I am the winter steward on the Sunbeam, which is a ship run by the Maine Seacoast Mission. In winter we do two telemedicine trips per month. Our basic route takes us to Frenchboro, Isle au Haut, and Matinicus. The ship is equipped with high-tech telemedicine equipment and a nurse who helps people connect to medical services remotely. I do the cooking and provide hospitality for people who come aboard. I cook three meals a day for the boat's crew plus guests—which can be as many as thirty people! Some of the most fun I had on the job was putting on a make-your-own pancake breakfast for the kids on Matinicus. We huddled around electric grills and just made the craziest pancakes we possibly could. This year on Great Cranberry, Sarah McCracken '13 and Kayla Gagnon '15 teamed up with Island Institute fellow Jessica Duma. They went to a lot of older people who no longer planted their vegetable gardens and got permission to start those gardens again. They are giving the land owners vegetables and selling the rest at a farm stand. It's fantastic to have people in their twenties—with all that thoughtful energy—doing these good things. They're already talking about what they will do next year. Islands form a distinct community. You can be more aware of where the boundaries are, and when things get imported, and how ideas work—whether it's plants or people or goods or technology. When one person comes to the island, you really see the changes that result—for better or worse, or simply different. It gives anyone the chance to observe changes more distinctly, and to follow the impacts.

Barbara Meyers '89 on the upper deck of the Sunbeam last winter while at Matinicus Island. Photo

by Mike Johnson, captain of the Sunbeam.

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THE TACTILE POWER OF ELLEN SYLVARNES '83 "Islands conjure ideas about isolation, detachment, lost paradises," muses artist Ellen Sylvarnes. "The solitude of the artist also comes to mind." She knows that thoughts are as fluid as the water that surrounds any island. "Artists aren't alone," Ellen quickly adds, "they're alone when they come up with ideas, but they're also out there interacting in the world." And so islands become the ultimate metaphor for the creative process, for just as islands are not separate bits of land, but rather hills keeping their heads above water, so our works—even those created in the deepest seclusion—are linked one to another within the fluid depths of the unconscious. Ellen came to COA for its approach—small classes, broad connections, meaningful content. "Art, the environment, human ecology, were all formulating in my mind at the time," she says. She worked with three now-retired arts faculty members: JoAnne Carpenter, Ernie McMullen, and Roc Caivano, then spent a few intense years at the famed Art Students League in New York City. Context remains essential to Ellen, beginning with the very materials with which she works. Only rarely will she purchase a tube of paint. Rather, she creates her pigments from centuries-old techniques, crushing marble into powder, combining it with wax or resin derived from beetles; choosing Italian gessoes by their locale—for the hue varies according to the minerals within the region's clay; painting with the dust of gold or silver; or painting on silk woven by former prostitutes in Cambodia. With these substances—"pummeled, poured, mixed, and boiled over a flame," according to Berlin, Germany's Emerson Gallery—Ellen "explores everything from the power structures that silently govern our lives to the radiance of desire that emboldens us to a greater reality." Ellen had two solo shows at the Emerson. She has also had solo shows in Rome and Slovenia, and group exhibitions in New York City, New Jersey, Canada, England, and Scotland. Recently, installations have captivated Ellen—works that one needs to stand within to experience. Through sound, light, icon-like sculptures, and drawings on transparent Mylar that change as the sun tracks across the sky, the pieces interact with each other and with the space in which they are seen. Whether painting with resin on panels or filling vials with various chemicals; whether setting bronze orbs on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange or tossing prints of her own body into the sea, there's a physicality to Ellen's work, and with that, a tension which she sometimes speaks of as a battle between concept and material. "Things happen; you destroy, and create, and destroy." From this struggle comes a tactile power—one that is salted within the depths of our oceanic selves.—Donna Gold

Right: Vessel Series, mixed media, 6 x 8 inches.

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Left: Emerging Night, mixed media on panel, 76 x 54 inches. Above: Division, mixed media on panel, 96 x 84 inches.

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An Island Return By Bonnie Tai, faculty member in education

A cove south of Hualien on Taiwan's eastern coast, where Tzu Chi Foundation is located.

I now have two passports. The newest one is forest green with gold letters stamped in English and traditional Chinese. Except for these facts, it looks very much like a United States passport, although the characters say Republic of China on top, with Taiwan Passport on the bottom. In possession of these and a minute portion of farmland inherited from my paternal grandmother, I feel immeasurably privileged. Many decades, and a lifetime from a childhood as an immigrant learning to speak English at the same time I learned to read, a new perception of self awakens even as I contemplate anatta, the Buddhist concept of no-self. Buddhism is not my mother faith, as English is not my mother tongue. For seven weeks of a ten-week sabbatical in 2015, I lived on the earthquake-prone central eastern coast of predominantly Buddhist Taiwan. Hualien is about a two-hour train ride from Taipei, where I was born. I was relearning and learning Chinese beyond a four-year old's vocabulary and my college Chinese classes, a foreigner in my fatherland. Often I was asked, 你從哪裡回來了? From where are you coming back? I knew I was on familiar ground the first time I returned in my twenties and bit into a fresh guava, my tropical version of Proust's madeleine. Taiwan's physical and social landscape matches my inner landscape more perfectly than any of the countries on the four continents where I have lived. Sandwiched between mountains over ten thousand feet high on one side and the expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other, Hualien evokes a sense of possibility, spaciousness, extreme and rugged beauty, and danger that concretizes paradox and challenges dualism. 36

Buddhism, particularly its non-theistic, questionauthority emphasis on the experiential learning of the nature of our minds, also transcends dualistic perceptions of reality. I have been studying the dharma since being introduced to the work of Pema Chödrön, US-born teacher, author, and Buddhist nun. I am also a feminist. The alchemy of these two commitments creates a heady draft: Buddhism teaches equanimity and non-attachment to my embodied ego, whereas feminism affirms my personal, embodied experience of this world. I was in Taiwan in part to restore an "accurate and usable past," in the words of Rita Gross, a Buddhist feminist theologian. Studying Taiwanese Buddhist nuns and laywomen is part of a larger feminist project. I want to help clear a trail created by girls and women who liberated themselves in spite of two generations of Japanese colonization, wartime traumas, and nearly four decades of martial law. The trail has been difficult to find, obscured by the debris of chauvinism, institutional sexism, and misogyny. The word for a monastic in Chinese is chujiaren, literally, people who leave their family and home. Historically, young women who joined the "vegetarian cult" were often perceived as uneducable, unmarriageable. Today, Taiwanese Buddhist nuns, bhiksunis, are some of the most well-educated women in the country. They choose to leave family and home to dedicate their lives to higher learning and service to all living things. In two institutions I visited, bhiksunis have chosen a path relinquishing the self in service of humanity and the planet while challenging traditional limits on women's freedom, autonomy, and agency. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Master Cheng Yan, a globally renowned bhiksuni, led a group of nuns to establish Tzu Chi (Compassion Relief) Foundation, or TCF. Its university, where I studied Chinese, is part of an early-childhood to post-graduate educational enterprise that includes a teaching hospital. Although TCF is considered one of the world's largest Buddhist charities, the nuns grow their own food and generate income through candle-, incense-, and pottery-making. Cheng Yan, one of Time magazine's hundred most influential people in 2011, blends Buddhist precepts with Confucian values to encourage Taiwanese laypeople and TCF global members to better steward the environment, "spinning gold from trash" through the recycling of plastic waste into emergency blankets distributed to disaster victims. Walking between abundant rows of fresh greens and fields of cosmos, I marveled at the scope of an organization that started out barely two generations ago during a tumultuous era in Taiwanese history. Where TCF takes a multi-pronged approach to ending suffering by providing access to quality healthcare through its hospital and medical school, K–16 education guided by Buddhist and Confucian ethics, environmental education, and humanitarian aid to disaster victims, the nuns of the Luminary Buddhist Institute (LBI or Xiangguang Si), focus their efforts on educating each individual. I arrived at the steps of the temple on the back of a small scooter driven by

an elderly man wearing a yellow hardhat, who cut the rope tying the large plastic crate to the back of his scooter to give me a lift. Over a delicate cup of green tea, Master Wu Yin, the founding president of LBI, explained that Buddhism is Buddha's education, outlining what the monastic should do. "The temple is an educational institution," she told me. LBI provides nuns with Buddha's education in preparation to teach laypeople the skills to live harmoniously. As a result, many older women students, some of whom never completed a primary education, gain literacy in addition to inner peace. Pema Chödrön often quotes Zen Master Dogen: "To study the self is to forget the self." I am inspired by the example of these women who reappropriate the tired trope of the self-sacrificing daughter, wife, and mother to transcend their gender and to redefine self-sacrifice in terms that make obsolete the self at the same time that they embrace their solidarity with all of humanity. Returning to my fatherland and relearning my mother tongue, this taste of studying and forgetting the self inspires a dispassionate passion for trail work—moving a twig here, an armload of branches there, whole downed trees, roots and all. Two sets of passports and my grandmother's land just might help me remember to forget.

Jing Si Hall, the main hall of Tzu Chi University, where faculty member Bonnie Tai spent seven weeks relearning Chinese during a sabbatical. Photos by Bonnie Tai.

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Once an island for social welfare, North Brother is now a protected refuge for birds. Following Typhoid Mary's death in 1938, Riverside Hospital, later repurposed as an adolescent drug treatment facility, was closed for good in 1963. Photo by Gabriel Willow '00.

Abandoned to Nature

Gabriel Willow '00 and New York's forgotten islands Heather Candon '99 An eroding slab of concrete juts out from the southern edge of New York City's North Brother Island where an armless swivel chair faces not the nearby console TV, but a bramble of winged sumac and honeysuckle that have subsumed the island since the last human inhabitants left over a half-century ago. It's a muggy July evening a few hours before sundown. A city water taxi idles offshore while some eighty passengers gather on its top deck for the Brothers Island EcoCruise, led by Gabriel Willow '00 and sponsored by New York City Audubon. Overhead, a black-crowned night heron wings its way slowly across the fading sky, impervious to the crowd of binoculars tracking its flight path. Given the human history of this twenty-acre island northeast of Manhattan, it's easy to imagine any number of ghosts have come home to roost. In 1904, the passenger 38

steamboat General Slocum caught fire and ran ashore off North Brother. More than a thousand people burned to death or drowned in rotten life preservers that had been furtively filled with iron bars so as to meet weight requirements. A decade or so later, Typhoid Mary was quarantined in a one-room cottage that was part of the island's Riverside Hospital. Tended to by hospital staff, she endured twenty-three years of nearisolation and squalor until her death in 1938, the hospital closing soon afterwards. The last humans left in 1963 after the hospitalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;briefly repurposed into an adolescent drug treatment facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;closed its doors. In the years since, nature reclaimed the abandoned infrastructure. Once an island for social welfare, North Brother is now a protected bird refuge, one of the city's seventeen Harbor Heron Islands, monitored by New York

City's Audubon Society and the city Department of Parks and Recreation. Large colonies of great egrets, snowy egrets, and black-crowned night herons are among a number of colonial wading waterbirds who raise their young here and on nearby South Brother Island, the seclusion making for an ideal habitat. Origins Gabriel, who was reared roaming the woods in the even deeper seclusion of rural Montville, Maine, is now something of an urban denizen, working as both an urban naturalist and a DJ, deftly navigating both the city's wildlife and its nightlife. But between Maine and New York came Mexico. Having participated in one of COA's early Yucatan terms, Gabriel returned after graduation, spending three years exploring the extensive biodiversity of the Yucatan peninsula. He guided tours, designed COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

environmental education programs, participated in conservation efforts, and worked with a radical artist collective, creating installations in half-finished buildings and deserted construction sites. In 2003, Gabriel left Mexico for New York, intending to enroll in art school. He'd been planning to examine themes of urban ecology and urban decay, conservation and climate change through a conceptual, creative lens. He literally stumbled upon Prospect Park Audubon Center while looking for a bathroom. The staff knew a good thing when they saw it, approaching him to design the EcoCruises. He promptly wrote a script. The island cruises began soon thereafter with Gabriel offering rare glimpses into unseen and unknown parts of New York, places where wildlife has colonized the void left by humans. Meanwhile, he began teaching at Prospect Park Audubon Center, working his way up to senior naturalist. Abandoned and reclaimed Even in a city of eight million, Gabriel is a rarity. Only a handful of guides offer glimpses into New York's wildlife. And no one else takes the interdisciplinary approach that Gabriel does, blending urban exploration with natural and human history, glancing into what was, what is, and what might be. "I think people want to reconnect to the natural world," Gabriel says. "I try to facilitate that through a human ecological lens. Rather than looking towards the 'wild' or the 'authentic', I show people the nature all around us, in overlooked urban nooks and crannies. There's no separation between the wild and the urban, or human activities and the adaptive response of the life forms surrounding us." In summer he narrates three different routes, cruising the East River past islands in the Lower Harbor and into nearby Jamaica Bay. He also takes people out in the colder months to see the seals and waterfowl that winter in the region. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Above: Abondoned dock on North Brother Island. Photo by Gabriel Willow '00 ; below: Double-crested cormorants perch upon the "oneness" arch on U Thant Island. Photo by Heather Candon '99.

An evocative storyteller, Gabriel gives off-the-cuff observations of passing scenery, every few beats interjecting his wry musings. "It's like a peek into the future," he says. "It's a little post-apocalyptic, but I think it's interesting to see the different ways that the environment responds to abandonment. Most of these islands and places where you're finding these birds nesting are little microcosms of abandonment. They used to have buildings, communities, infrastructure, electricity, sidewalksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and all that's gone now. And so you're seeing plants, vines, birds taking over. But at

the same time, it's also these stories emerging from the past because these buildings are 150 years old or more. It's both a past and a future that we're glimpsing, and I see that as a form of renewal. For me that's inspiring. A reminder that wildlife has this amazing capacity to adapt." A different perspective The water taxi cruises north up the East River at about twenty knots, the breeze offering a reprieve from the city's punishing humidity. Cars stream along the FDR Drive, soundless in the distance. Midtown Manhattan's skyline appears to 39

harbor seals, even occasionally humpback whales and dolphins. You've got ducks, geese, loons, and grebes wintering out there. For me, it's the most exciting thing, the most compelling thing, to get New Yorkers out, re-evaluating their own city and seeing it from a different perspective."

Homeschooled in rural Maine, Gabriel Willow '00 has become something of an urban denizen, working both as an urban naturalist and a DJ. His Audubon EcoCruises reveal the wildlife colonizing voids left by humans. Photo by Heather

Candon '99.

rise directly from the water, its towers incongruous with the dense wilderness of the forgotten islands. The East River is the eastern boundary of Manhattan Island, and not a river at all, but a tidal strait, its flow reversing between ebb and flood every six hours. Subway tunnels burrow a hundred feet beneath the riverbed while bridges transect the half-mile width from above. Intermittent jet rumbles announce nearby LaGuardia Airport. Barges, speedboats, and yachts travel the river's length just as steamboats and wooden ships did a century ago. Before the first European charted a northward course up the river in 1614, Lenape fishermen speared striped bass from their dugout canoes. Contrary to what many New Yorkers believe, there's a lot of wildlife to see. "I get jokes a lot," Gabriel says. "Oh, you lead bird walks in New York, what do you look at, pigeons?" He shakes his head, bemused. "The waterfront has a lot of species you can see: nesting egrets, cormorants, herons. There are peregrine falcons, bald eagles, 40

Recovery Unlike its fellow islands, U Thant Island, named for the third secretary general of the United Nations, is a relative newcomer to these historic waters. Midway between Manhattan and Queens on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, this 100-by-200foot islet was merely a granite reef below the water's surface until late in the nineteenth century, when piano entrepreneur William Steinway set out to continue the trolley line from his company town in Queens, underground to midtown Manhattan. The rubble blasted to create a tunnel under the East River built the reef into a small island. Today, the â&#x17E;&#x2020; train shoots through the tunnel every few minutes while above a colony of double-crested cormorants make U Thant their home. DDT almost spelled the cormorant's demise, as the pesticide rendered their shells too thin. Eggs would break under the weight of the nesting parent. Today, the population has rebounded. Cormorants subsist on fish, diving underwater for their prey. Because they can't fly when wet, they perch with their wings outstretched to dry, as if always on the verge of flight. The cormorants rule the islet, draping over an old metal arch and perched in the skeletal navigation tower. Against the taciturn steel skyline of Long Island City, the birds are an arabesque contrast of curves, welcomely animate, seemingly oblivious as to whether their nest is industrial or natural. "If they choose a manmade structure to nest upon, it's because they presumably deem it suitable for their requirements," Gabriel offers. "Many a happy hawk has been

born on a New York City skyscraper. Peregrine falcons have far more habitat thanks to bridges and skyscrapers, as cliffs were in short supply in the eastern US." Midway between U Thant and the Brother Islands lies Mill Rock, where more double-crested cormorants silently adorn a near-leafless tree. Great black-backed gulls clamor along the shoreline of the thin peninsula, their calls hoarse and low. Egrets cluster amidst the short willow and poplar trees towards the island's center. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw egrets hunted to the brink of extinction, plumage on hats being the rage of the day. Today, snowy and great egrets are on abundant display, perching on trees at the edge of the islands throughout the East River. "I think most native or lifelong New Yorkers are kind of surprised both by the proximity of these strange, abandoned islands to the city and the abundance of wildlife found on them," says Gabriel. "Really charismatic, dramatic wildlife. Charismatic megafauna. The egrets are pure white, they're very large, they really stand out, and when I look up, there are cormorants and egrets flying overhead all the time. In the city's hustle and bustle, how many New Yorkers even look up? If they did, they might be surprised at what they find soaring above them." Surrounded by the country's most densely populated city, the desolate structures and dilapidated buildings of these islands serve as a reminder of how quickly wilderness can reclaim a place, and how resilient the natural world can be. For more on Gabriel Willow's Audubon EcoCruise, visit nycaudubon.org or facebook.com/urbannaturalist. *** Having spent nearly two decades living on islands, first in Maine, then in Spain, Heather Candon '99 is a writer living in New York. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Book Excerpt: "Thousands of Selves" By Liz Cunningham '82 Adapted from Ocean Country: One Woman's Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Seas Foreword by Carl Safina. North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House, 2015 At age thirty-six, Liz Cunningham '82 was nearly drowned and temporarily paralyzed by a kayak accident. As part of her recovery she returned to the ocean, training to become a divemaster. Seeking out the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos where she first fell in love with the undersea world, she witnessed a four-degree spike in the water temperature that bleached a coral reef. Ocean Country Liz Cunningham '82. Photo by Eiglys Trejo. is Liz's quest to understand that and many other changes in Earth's oceans. It chronicles her journeys from her California home to the Turks and Caicos, Indonesia, and the Mediterranean, and her conversations with conservationists, fishermen, sea nomads, and scientists. Throughout, she offers poetic meditations on the state of the seas. Ultimately, this story of a woman emerging from paralysis to power is also one of finding true hope. Calling it "a stunning account of our endangered oceans," College of the Atlantic faculty member Rich Borden writes, "Time and again Liz Cunningham discovers threads of hope in people committed to reversing these tragedies. Taken together … they unlock a hitherto unimagined and hopeful revelation. You can feel it in the author's heart. You will feel it in your own." The episode below is adapted from "Thousands of Selves," one of the concluding chapters of Ocean Country, set in the Mediterranean. A divemaster led us along what looked like an alpine rock face—the seascape beneath a rocky island called La Gabinière—one of several tiny islands surrounded by seagrass southwest of Marseille, known as the Îles d'Or. Clumps of seagrass grew in the crevices between the gigantic boulders. Schools of slivery sea bream chomped on it like little cows. The northern light was so angular that when one of the bream yanked on a piece of grass at a certain angle, its scales emitted a flash like a signal mirror. Seagrass meadows have an abundance of life parallel to that of mangroves. They are filled with juvenile fish, crustaceans, and anemones. The seagrass in the Mediterranean is over a yard tall, with stocky, dark-green strands. Over 70 percent of all fish in the Mediterranean take shelter in it at COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

some point in their life cycle. The marine ecosystem balance relies on it. There was a tap on my shoulder. It was the divemaster, Pierre. He waved at me to follow him. The current was light enough to make a go at swimming to Le Sec de la Gabinière, a seamount—a kind of tiny underwater island—just to the southwest. Soon the rocky edge of the island vanished and we were swimming in open water. A few minutes later, Pierre turned around and pointed downward. Forty feet below, in the open sea, was an outcropping covered with seagrass and purple and yellow sea fans. As we descended, two enormous grouper, each over a yard long, came into view. They hovered in a cut between two knobs of stone. Their lumbering bodies barely moved. Grouper usually have one

cave or crevice they consider home and several others close by which they circulate to and from. These groupers may have lived there all their lives, perhaps over thirty years. Large fish like this play an important role in healthy fisheries. They have been shown to have exponentially more young than small fish because more of their energy can be allocated to reproduction. It had been two decades since I'd seen grouper that big. The Nassau grouper in the Caribbean were now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's dreaded Red List of species at high risk for extinction. But the grouper at Le Sec de la Gabinière had been given a chance to grow old. And they hadn't done it in some far-flung location, but in close proximity to one of the most populated areas of the Mediterranean. It was possible 41

because they lived in a marine preserve whose boundaries were respected. *** "We don't know it, but we have thousands of selves," Naima Andrea Rodríguez, a staff member at the World Wide Fund for Nature office in Barcelona, had told me when we were talking about biodiversity. She meant that it wasn't just the organisms in our guts that keep us healthy, there are microorganisms in our nasal passages, mouth, and skin, and all of them keep us healthy—the "human microbiome."

safeguards threatened plant species. Then, in the fall, like an exhausted snail, the island coils into its shell for the winter, and the two hundred or so inhabitants savor the quiet. When I arrived in early October, things had already settled into a hushed peace. I stayed in an old villa retrofitted into a hotel next to a small nineteenth-century church with plain windows, a clock, and a prominent bell tower. In front of it was a dusty square with a flock of white pigeons. The brass key to my room had a hollow ring at one end, like the key to an antique trunk.

To save lives, we must save the thousands of lives that make each one possible— from a blue whale to a speck of plankton.

*** The next morning the dive boat motored to the rocky point of Porquerolles called the Médes. It was sunny, and the water was almost as smooth as a glass mirror. There had been several weeks of unusually calm, windless weather. As I sank into the sea, I was startled by how clear the water was. It reminded me of the gin-clear water in the underwater caves of the Yucatán. The rocky terrain was covered with bright orange sponges and sea lettuce, a type of algae that grows in flowery swirls. I hovered in a sand channel and peered sideways into the tall seagrass. There was an ultrafine fizz, tiny bubbles on the surface of the seagrass blades and in the water. "No," I mused. "It couldn't be!" But it was: oxygen. If you'd asked me the day before if I understood photosynthesis, I'd have said, "Sure. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. What's not to get?" But now that truth came fully alive. I could hear my noisy breath through my regulator. I had thought of breath as inhale and exhale, but now I was vividly experiencing another dimension of it, a key and rather large-scale one: the biosphere. I turned slowly in the water with my fins; all I could see were the seagrass meadows. I recalled seeing NASA images of them taken from satellites. One spanned 770

Each of us hums with life; each of us is a busy orchestration of many creatures. The passenger manifest for the ark has been updated: to save lives, we must save the thousands of lives that make each one possible— from a blue whale to a speck of plankton. *** There are three major islands in the Îles d'Or—Levant, Port-Cros, and Porquerolles. La Gabinière is just southwest of Port-Cros. When we finished the dive, the boat crossed to Porquerolles, where I was staying. Portions of the rocky islands thrust up out of the ocean like alpine peaks. There were over six miles of open water between the two islands, but halfway across, white butterflies fluttered over the waves. As we got closer to Porquerolles, the scent of pine trees filled the air. In the summer, tourists flock to Porquerolles and take in the rocky vistas and wander trails through the forest and the olive and fig groves maintained by the Conservatoire Botanique National, the national botanical conservatory, which 42

miles along the coast of Australia. Another, just below the Everglades, covered over five thousand square miles. There were miles and miles of seagrass, from the Mediterranean to Mexico to New Guinea to Zanzibar. And mangroves and plankton and forests and rainforests—all pumping out oxygen. We might go without food for months, water for days. But air? Minutes. A houseplant would never look the same. Photosynthetic organisms are the Teddy Roosevelts of all life—they speak softly, but carry a big stick. They pump out oxygen and sequester carbon. "A square meter of seagrass," Nicolas Gérardin, the Port-Cros National Park operations director, had told me, "produces twice the volume of oxygen in twenty-four hours than a square meter of tropical forest, up to fourteen liters of oxygen per day." One acre of seagrass absorbs over seven thousand pounds of carbon a year, the equivalent of the emissions of an average car traveling over three thousand miles. In some areas of the Mediterranean, scientists have estimated as much as a 30 percent loss of seagrass beds in the last fifty years due to damage by fishing gear, dredging, pollution, and poor anchoring techniques. I recalled that over 50 percent of the oxygen in our lungs comes from plants and algae in the ocean. Nicolas had told me that scientists call seagrass "the lungs of the Mediterranean." *** After sundown I went for a walk. A dirt road led past an ornate wroughtiron gate and wound up a steep hill through a dark canopy of pine trees. Some bushes with white flowers emitted a fragrant scent. The air was silky warm. At the top of the hill, the harbor came into view. The water was calm and windless. The road led inland to an eighteenth-century windmill perched on an overlook. Below, the moonlight illuminated olive and fig groves and the forest. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Sunset over the Mediterranean. Photo by Liz Cunningham '82.

From across the island, a lighthouse flashed. Everything felt so vivid. I remembered the French woman I dove with when I first returned to the Turks and Caicos after over a decade—how she said, "I must recover my sensations," when she explained she'd need to get used to being underwater again. And I remembered that "everything is alive" sensation I'd felt diving in the reef. Now it wasn't just in the ocean that I felt it. Sea, sky, land: the world was more alive. Some recovery beyond my own imagining had occurred. I wondered if that intense sensation of aliveness—that "hum" of life—might be the thousands of selves that Naima talked about. But the price for that openness had been high. My travels had afforded me a searing first-hand view of the damage wrought upon the seas: coral reefs pulverized by dynamite COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

fishing or rendered lifeless by coral bleaching; mangroves choked by logging runoff; entire coastlines that once provided fish to feed hundreds of villages now nearly bereft of marine life; coastal wells inundated with salt water, leaving families scrambling for the money just to drink clean water. The world was so much more cruel and greedy than I'd ever fathomed. It felt like what last shreds of innocence I'd retained had been stripped off. But a second innocence was slowly growing in its place. Like an offshoot sprouting from a felled tree, its roots were sturdier and less easily vanquished: the willingness to say yes, to begin again, to trust, to risk. I retraced my steps to the hotel. In the middle of the night a warm wind stirred. The lace curtains over the windows billowed like the sails of a boat.

*** There was a narrow dirt road that went south, to the other side of the island, a little less than an hour's stroll. It was close to dusk and I wanted to see the sunset. Pine trees formed an arc over the road. On either side were the fig and olive groves maintained by the botanical conservatory. The rows of scraggly trees converged into the hilly distance. The island is a "garden island"— sea and land are both cared for. This is true of many coastal parks around the world. "Wildness"—wilderness— will need to enter its second innocence. The first was not chosen; the second will have to be. And it will be our choice. Another dirt road appeared, veering off to the right. It too was lined with a rhythmic row of evenly spaced trees. The evening's angular light had grown rosy and golden. 43

A hundred or so yards away I saw a woman standing still. She looked transfixed. I didn't dare disturb her. I imagined for a moment she might have been a botanist at the conservatory, lingering in the last glimmers of evening light before walking home. I kept walking toward the south side of the island. I remembered asking Annie Aboucaya, one of the park botanists, when she had really known she wanted to become a botanist. "You mean the big flash?" she joked with a self-deprecating smile. The term flash is slang for a revelation in French. "Yes," I grinned, "the big flash."

We might go without food for months, water for days. But air? Minutes. "If there was one, it was when I began to work with the botanical conservatory on Porquerolles." The conservatory saved seeds of endangered plant species in a "seed bank" that had the seeds for over seventeen hundred species. Annie told me that they had germinated some seeds of threatened species and cared for them until they had grown into small plants. "There was a day we went into the wild to replant them," she gestured with her hands, as if carefully putting a plant into the ground. "That was the big flash." She grinned, adding, with emphasis, "Because we gave these endangered species a second chance." I kept walking. But a few moments later I glanced back; the woman was still there, lingering. I wouldn't see another soul that night until I returned to the village. Annie and many others I'd met had found their place in the growing linkage of people at work to preserve the earth.

They'd found something they loved to do that contributed to making the world a better place. And I had too. I'd published some articles. I did my first radio interview in over ten years. And I was starting to understand something: one of the world's most belligerent lies is delivered in the guise of the seemingly innocuous words: "Don't bother, your voice won't matter." How many times had I thought that myself? But the day after I'd resolved to find a way to be a part of ocean conservation efforts, I watched a TED talk by Sylvia Earle, the founder of Mission Blue. Her words caught my attention: "I wish you would use all means at your disposal—films, expeditions, the web, new submarines—and campaign to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet." She'd sent out a call—strong and clear. I heard that voice, her words. I felt needed. Walking down the dirt road, I asked myself something so simple I felt embarrassed that I'd never really asked myself this before: "What if I really lived as if my voice mattered?" *** Close to the southern edge of the island I followed a narrow trail through the woods. It brought me to a bluff overlooking the ocean. I found a perch on which to sit and watch the sunset. The stone was still warm from the day's heat. I remembered what Annie had told me about the Maures Massif. I was sitting at the top of an ancient mountain range. The sea turned blue-violet and a slice of moon rose. There was nothing but open ocean until Africa. What is it about distances? Mountaintops, great expanses of water—they bring something out in

us. To the south and west and east there was nothing but the open waters of the Med. Just before I left for Europe I'd read the book Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. He described how he'd began to wonder if we really knew how many people around the globe had joined the effort to preserve the earth and protect human rights. He searched the government records and tax census data of many countries to see how many organizations were devoted to these causes. "In trying to pick up a stone," Hawken writes, "I found the exposed tip of a much larger geological formation." His calculations led him to believe that there are over a million organizations devoted to sustainability and social justice, the largest social movement in history. Social psychologists Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson had documented a similar cultural upwelling through focus groups and social surveys. Beneath their overturned stones were millions of people. "Could it be," Hawken writes, "an instinctive, collective response to a threat?" The threat that the earth has a "life-threatening disease, marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change?" But a movement? Where's the figurehead? The manifesto? Might it be like the co-management committees I had encountered in Spain, in which fishermen, scientists, NGOs, and government administrators were managing a fishery together on equal footing—bottom-up, communitybased, decentralized? I recalled some wooden diving goggles given to me by a Bajau sea nomad in Sulawesi. A similar set of goggles had been given to Jacques Cousteau by a friend when he was young man. The moment Cousteau put them on and swam in a harbor in the south of France was the

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the olive groves and out onto the jagged coast and the wide, southern expanse of sea. *** Twenty-one percent of royalties from Ocean Country are being donated to the New England Aquarium's Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF): neaq.org/mcaf. That is the percentage of oxygen in each breath we take, over half of which comes from plants and algae in the ocean. MCAF aims to protect and promote ocean biodiversity through funding of small-scale, timesensitive, community-based programs.

The hand-carved wooden diving goggles that Liz Cunnigham received from a Bajau sea nomad in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Photo by Liz Cunningham '82.

epiphany that began his lifelong love of the sea—he could see clearly the abundance of life in the ocean. I realized my entire journey had been like donning a pair of wooden diving goggles, but it wasn't the undersea world that they revealed. It was all the people who worked to make change, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of "selves." I remembered how two years before, bluefin tuna seemed doomed to extinction. Pegged as the most "hopeless fishery in the world," the activists working to save it refused to quit, despite terrible odds. Then in the fall of 2012, bluefin stocks ticked upward. All the efforts all around the world—quota reductions, moratoriums, position papers, awareness campaigns, documentary films, lectures, books, all those efforts—had added up. Nearly invisible plus signs had caused these seemly disconnected efforts to save the "most hopeless fishery in the world." But could that "largest social movement in history" be powerful

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enough to change the course of civilization? The runaway industrial locomotive—change that? Something deep inside me shuddered, bolted awake—the sensation of a gigantic, beautiful force afoot in the world. Don't discount the invisible plus signs. Even if you can't do the math, don't quit.

Liz Cunningham '82 is also the author of Talking Politics: Choosing the President in the Television Age. She has written for numerous journals and newspapers and is cofounder of KurtHahn.org, the web archive for the founder of Outward Bound and serves on the board of Outward Bound Peacebuilding. For more visit lizcunningham.net.

*** I'd lingered too long. The trail back to the road was pitch dark. But soon the moonlight illuminated my path. The road was now a soft tunnel of trees and singing crickets. Suddenly there was a bolt of light. I stopped. Fear rippled through my chest. Then it was dark again. I resumed walking. Another flash. "Who's there?" I squawked, and swirled around. It was the broad sweep of the lighthouse's beam, which had just been turned on. It moved swiftly and then vanished, leaving a fleeting path of light and long shadows that flickered through the trees and

ALUMNI NOTES 1976

1980

A crew who first met when the college began in the fall of 1972 gathered for a picnic this summer. From left in photo, Kate and Eric Henry; Craig's wife, Beth Dilley; former faculty member Susie Lerner; Katherine Hazard; Craig Kesselheim; Katherine's daughter Emma; former faculty member and president Steve Katona; Katherine's friend Ian; Jim Perkins and his wife, Jeanne; and in front, Alexandra Conover '77 (a 1973 arrival) and her husband, Kermit.

Steve Donoso's new book, Unknown Skies: Leslie Kean and the Case for Rational UFO Investigation, is an indepth interview with investigative journalist Leslie Kean who has been researching and reporting on unidentified flying objects. The book explores key aspects of a persistent and controversial scientific mystery.

1977

Barbara Acosta writes, "I am coordinating a Spanish-English dual language program and loving the challenge. After more than 30 years in education with English language learners and 20 in research and evaluation, who knew I would find my home back in a school district? Now I get a chance to work with administrators and teachers to apply all that research to real life and real kids."

1978

Storyteller Jackson Gillman performed a full weekend for adults at the Mystic Seaport, CT, Sea Music Festival. This fall he is part of Cirque de Sea stage comedy for the 6th International Oyster Symposium in Woods Hole, MA, and also brings a nautical show to Florida. 46

1991

Jason Alderman has moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Portland, OR. He is now VP of corporate communications for Knowledge Universe, the nation's largest private provider of early childhood education and care. In this newly created role he oversees external and internal communications, and events management. Jason was most recently Visa's VP of global corporate communications and public affairs. He also writes a weekly personal finance column carried in some 500 newspapers, including The Huffington Post. Melissa (Relyea) Ossanna is in Bar Harbor expanding the endurance sports adventures that began with her first MDI marathon in 2012. In 2015 she was first female finisher in a snowshoe marathon, ran her first 50-mile trail race, and completed her first Ironman Triathlon. She also completed several other marathons and 50k races and will run her first 100-mile trail race in November. All

this plus being a wife, mom, fulltime corporate employee, and head family chef. "Endorphins are magical things," she writes.

1993

A web of alumni has reinvigorated Bar Harbor's 1932 Criterion Theatre. Heather Martin joined the newly renovated, and now community nonprofit theater as director. She works with Michael Boland '94, board president; programmers James Pike '06, Colin Capers '96, MPhil '09, and faculty member Jodi Baker; staffers Rowan Kase '15 and Taylor Thomas-Marsh '15; intern Gus DenDanto '18; and the rest of the merry band of volunteers and staff. Heather is now living on Ledgelawn Avenue with her boys and planning many a raucous potluck.

1994

After 10 years of teaching middle school and leading professional development for teachers, Leah (Zuckerman) Barcan now tutors middle and high school students, and works with their parents to improve educational outcomes. A certified life coach, Leah helps people manage and reduce the stress of parenting, education, menu planning, and cooking through her company, Home without Stress. She lives in Boston with her husband and two boys.

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1996

Jim Kellam married Shannan JonesKellam this summer and is now a proud stepfather of two girls, 12 and 17. He's also had a sabbatical from Saint Vincent College.

1999

This year's James Jones First Novel Fellowship prize was awarded to Josie Sigler for her manuscript, The Flying Sampietrini.

2000

Melinda Casey-Magleby received a master's in mathematics for teaching at Harvard this spring and continues to teach math and science to 8th graders at Brooke Charter in Boston. She and her wife welcomed their second daughter, Mae Scout, this summer and are thrilled to have two little girls keeping them busy.

2001

Noah Krell and Lia Wilson were married at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth, ME, this summer. They met in San Francisco in 2009 while Noah was pursuing an MFA in photo, video, and performance. After two years living and working in Brooklyn, NY, they have moved back to Portland, ME, for a more reasonable quality of life. Noah is pursuing a master's in social work at the University of Southern Maine.

WHY I GIVE Elizabeth-Anne (Cobb) Ronk '12 On the 25th of every month I receive a text-message notification from my bank that reminds me that I used to live by the ocean. I pause in the memory of snow and the taste of it with maple syrup. I recall the first time I saw contra dancing, joined picnics on mountainsides, and smelled freshly exposed seaweed. I relish the few short years I lived in a place where my professors cared about my theories, my peers were dynamic innovators, and I didn't have to worry about venomous snakes. I am a member of the Black Fly Society which allows me to seamlessly give a monthly paperless donation to COA. Although my donation is small in the grand scheme of things, it impacts the alumni donor percentage just the same. I joined the Black Fly Society because I need a monthly reminder that Take-A-Break is not a figment of my imagination, but I also donate so that I can aid COA in bringing the experiences I had to future students. Plus, I got a really cool sticker.

State Theater, also screening elsewhere in New England for the Halloween season: erinenberg.com.

2003

The film Arabel, by Erin Enberg, was an official selection at the New Hampshire Film Festival, Maine International Film Festival, Emerge Film Festival (winning Best Maine Film), the SENE Film Music and Arts Festival in Providence, RI (receiving honorable mention for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Design), and the Harrisburg-Hershey Film Festival in Pennsylvania. Her next film, The Poet, premiered at Damnationland, an invitation-only showcase of dark films at Portland's COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Katy and Amanda Hollander welcomed Henry Wilde Hollander on July 5. They are loving getting to know this new little human and are

so glad he picked them to be his mommies. Cory Whitney presented two papers at the 38th conference of the Society of Ethnobiology at the University of California Santa Barbara. Both were based on his recent participatory ethnobotany explorations with indigenous elders in Laos and Vietnam, and show positive trends between uses and conservation practices of indigenous plants, suggesting that traditional cultural uses for plants may be conserving biodiversity in the region's rapidly deteriorating forests. The findings also support a systems theory of human ecology developed by the indigenous peoples. 47

2004

Andrew Moulton and Amanda Muscat Moulton '06 are living in Leeds, UK. Amanda is a high school science teacher at Allerton Grange School. Andrew is homeschooling Emmett, 2, working part-time at Emmett's Steiner kindergarten, and pursuing a master's in education. He blogs at andrew2014.globalblogs.org.

2005

This fall, Santiago Salinas joined the faculty in the biology department of Kalamazoo College.

Gulf of Mexico and monitoring reef fish assemblages on offshore oil and gas platforms using remotely operated vehicles. In February Marianna married Mikey Steen; they welcomed their son Marlin to the world in April. Anna Goldman left her position at The Field Museum in August to begin a graduate program in tropical forest ecology at the University of Hong Kong.

2008

Zach and Paige '06 Steele introduced Henrick Guthrie Steele to the world on Aug. 4 at 6:47 a.m. "7 lbs. 3.4 oz. 22.5 in. and perfect in every way." In January 2016, Nina Therkildsen starts as an assistant professor of conservation genomics in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University (where Matt Hare '84 also teaches). Most recently Nina was a postdoctoral research scholar at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.

2007

After completing a master's of environmental management with a focus on coastal environmental management at Duke University, Marianna Bradley Steen serves as a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in New Orleans. Working through the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program, she's also studying alternative gear for yellowfin tuna in the northern 48

2009

Sam Miller-McDonald completed his master's of environmental management degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in May. From left in the photo are Daniel Rueters-Ward '10, classmates Philip Kunhardt '11 and Hale Morrell '12, Sam, and Robin Kuehn '10.

2010

"This has been a year of accelerated change and transition," writes Kate Hassett-Barnabas. "In May I graduated with a master's in social work from the University of Southern Maine. In June I packed up all my experiences, filled my car with plants, balms, and treasures, and moved to the Boston area with the love of my life, Frank. In July we got married at Cambridge City Hall! In early August I passed the Massachusetts state licensure boards and became an LCSW. I am now working in downtown Boston as a shelter specialist, providing clinical assessment, crisis intervention, and advocacy for sheltered and unsheltered homeless individualsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the job I have been dreaming of for years. I am thrilled to be doing this work! It hasn't been all sunshine and butterflies, but thanks to my supportive network of family, friends, and some amazing mentors, teachers, and cheerleaders at COA and beyond, I have maintained buoyancy while fully embracing the art of perseverance."

Andrew Coate received his master of divinity from Boston University School of Theology in May and plans to seek ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister. He has started a new position as director of religious education at First Church Jamaica Plain Unitarian Universalist. Last March, Taj Schottland began working as a coastal adaptation specialist for the National Wildlife Federation. Though based out of the Northeast regional office in Vermont, most of his time and energy is focused on the New England coast, working with community partners in implementing nature-based approaches to protect ecosystems and human communities from the impacts of climate change.

2011

On May 20, Philip Kunhardt IV married Laura Torre, an Argentine and Spanish national, and graduate of Yale Law School. Philip, the son of trustee and fellow alumnus Philip Kunhardt III '77, will complete his master's of forest science degree in December at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The two COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

have moved to midtown Manhattan, but make regular forays out of the grey urban sprawl and into the green countryside. After completing a master's of library and information degree at McGill University, Megan Laflin drove across Canada to Vancouver Island to begin work as a librarian at Pearson College this fall, moving from an East Coast island to one on the West Coast.

which recently opened the first solar bakery in Haiti and launched a #FreeTheSun campaign to expand solar energy, partnering with World Vision International; Boond Engineering and Development, Ltd.; and ChocoSol Traders. GoSol is releasing free construction guides and offering workshops to ensure the spread and impact of sustainable, low-cost, solar technology for projects like solar roasting of chocolate.

2012

2013

Through her work at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Maggie Garcia is pursuing a master's in biology within the Advanced Inquiry Program at Miami University. She is also a direct support professional through Living Arrangements for the Developmentally Disabled. Hudson Krakowski is working as client administrator with Patron Technology and acting in the webseries Brothers which is about to film its second season: brothersseries.com. In May, Jess McCordic received an MS in biology from Syracuse University with the thesis, "Discrimination of age, sex, and individual identity using the upcall of the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)." She continued as research assistant in SU's Parks Lab through July and is now a research assistant with the Pacific Whale Foundation in Maui, HI.

2012

Hale Morrell received a master's in forest science degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in May. She spent the summer with the West Virginia Land Trust writing baseline documents for their properties. Urs Riggenbach has been working for the Finnish startup, GoSol.org,

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Jane Nurse received a Chevening Award, funded by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to pursue a master's in environmental law and sustainable development degree at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. She was one of some 2,000 scholars from 137 nations chosen from 36,000 applications. Following her studies, Jane will return to the Caribbean to work in environmental policy and advocacy. After working for two years as a COA admission counselor, Eliza Ruel moved to South Portland, ME, to be closer to her family. She is now helping high school students prepare for college as an advisor at TRIO Upward Bound at University of Southern Maine.

JOIN THE BLACK FLY SOCIETY! The Black Fly Society was established to make donating to the Fund for COA easier and greener. We hope you'll join this swarm of sustaining donors by setting up a monthly online gift. It's the paperless way to give to COA. Follow the instructions at coa.edu/donatenow, or if

2015

Casey Acklin is co-author of "Effects of natural enrichment materials on stress, memory, and exploratory behavior in mice" published in Lab Animal 44 (7). He has been offered a position as a research assistant for Gareth Howell at The Jackson Laboratories.

you want to give by mail: The Fund for COA 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 (Please make checks out to College of the Atlantic.) Questions?

The alumni board meets four times a year and welcomes new members. For more information, or to send your news and notes, contact Dianne Clendaniel, dclendaniel@coa.edu.

Call 207-801-5625.

Donor Profile

C.W. Eliot Paine: Passionate about Nature The year was 1968. Father Jim Gower had just taken a parish on Mount Desert Island. Les Brewer, Father Jim's old high school football pal, was a Bar Harbor businessman. Come summer, MDI boomed; the rest of the year it struggled. How can we improve life on this island year-round? the two friends pondered. They gathered others to discuss solutions, among them the Reverend Cushman McGiffert, Jr. Soon his young cousin, C.W. Eliot Paine, a horticulturist, joined them. Now retired as the executive director of Cleveland, Ohio's 3,600-acre Holden Arboretum, Eliot recalls those early days. "My elderly cousin Cushman McGiffert was inviting me to these erudite meetings with Les and Father Gower and several others—I wish I remembered their names. I was the youngster; I was only there because I was a cousin and interested in ecology and nature." Those legendary meetings led to the creation of the small, hands-on, democratic, environmentally focused College of the Atlantic on the shores of Frenchman Bay. Meanwhile, across the island and out on Blue Hill Bay's Hardwood Island, another educational program was being launched, the Maine Island Ecology Program. This three-week summer session for high school students was founded by the "youngster" Eliot, along with his friend Dennis Wint. The concepts were remarkably similar: immerse young people in nature; get them peering into tidepools, examining beaver dams, noticing bird nests during the day, and constellations at night. Each summer for twentyfive years, Hardwood's ecology program changed the lives of the thirty participants who hailed from a diverse array of locales across the country. "We didn't ask about their academic background. The only requirement for admission was an interest in nature—in butterflies, exploring low tide zones, trees, ecology," says Eliot. "And what the students were saying was, I never knew other kids were interested in what I'm interested in—the out-of-doors, nature." Having grown up summering at nearby Moose Island Bar, Eliot was passionate about nature—and about education. At the time he was Holden's education director. He also served on the board of the Student Conservation Association, which places students as volunteers in the nation's parks and forests. After many candlelit evenings—Hardwood had no electricity—Eliot and Dennis outlined the Maine Island Ecology Program. In 1970, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History agreed to sponsor it. Eliot was the botanist, though after the first year work kept him in Cleveland for most of the summer. The program continued until 1995 when Eliot retired and could spend 50

Photo by Linda Paine.

extended summers on his cherished island. For despite his busy, involved career, Maine held sway. So did College of the Atlantic. From 1979 to 1985—some of COA's hardest years—Eliot served on the board of trustees. "What kept me involved? The college fulfilled all of the promise that I heard discussed at those early meetings— bringing an intellectual environment to Mount Desert Island, providing worthwhile employment for intelligent people who now make their home on the island, and educating students who are now working in far reaches of the world doing great things. It is a marvelous, marvelous idea." —Donna Gold COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

COMMUNITY NOTES In addition to other summer activities, including hosting the Waterbird Society at COA with Katherine Shlepr '13, John Anderson, William H. Drury Professor of Ecology/Natural History, collaborated with Acadia National Park in monitoring eagle activity on Thrumcap Island.

The film by art faculty member Nancy Andrews, The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, screened at The Maine International Film Festival and the New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland last summer, and in New York City and Ohio's Wexner Center in the fall. In August, The Shoulder Land video festival screened On a Phantom Limb. Interviewed by filmmakermagazine. com, Nancy said, "I didn't want to make a rhetorical film, but I want people to think about the limitations of understanding the world only through their own senses … that our perceptions are individual, and as a species actually quite limited and subjective. And therefore, what we think we know might not be quite so fixed and solid as we believe." In early September, Nancy shot a short film in Chicago co-directed with Jennifer Reeder and featuring Michole Briana White. She also exhibited drawings, videos, and sculptures at the MIFF gallery and is serving as a contributor to a project sponsored by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, "After The ICU: A Collaborative to Improve Critical Illness Survivorship." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

In July, Rich Borden, Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology, took part in a weeklong training seminar at the New York Center for Jungian Studies in Rhinebeck, NY. In August he attended the centennial meeting of the Ecological Society of America. As a member of the ESA governing board and chair of the human ecology section, Rich organized, chaired, and presented at a special session on the history of human ecology. He is now editing the collected papers from the session, to be published jointly by ESA and the Society for Human Ecology.

Ken Cline, David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection, continues to work with Acadia National Park to coordinate faculty and student work in the park, especially geared to the 2016 centennial of ANP and the National Park Service. At the George Wright Society biannual conference in Oakland, CA, he coordinated the workshop Re-Envisioning the Application of the National Environmental Policy Act Within Land Management Agencies with ANP's Chris Buczko. And with John Anderson, and (left to right in photo) Chris Phillips '15, Miguel Provencio '17, Maya Rappaport '15, and Erickson Smith '15, he attended the Science for Parks, Parks for Science: The Next Century conference in Berkeley, CA. Art faculty member Dru Colbert spent much of her spring sabbatical

developing an installation based on the "dead end road" in Otter Creek. With support from the Kathryn Davis International Fund, Dru also spent a month as one of eight international artists-in-residence of diverse media aboard an expeditionary vessel through Scotland's Shetland and Orkney islands with the Clipperton Project. Having connected to local weavers, historians, ornithologists, archeologists, and artists, Dru is now working on a response to the journey. As part of a series sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council, Gray Cox, faculty member in philosophy, social theory, and peace studies, spoke on "Threats to National Security Posed by Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" at the Winter Harbor Public Library in July. In October he presented the talk "Artificial Intelligence and Existential Threats: Rogue AI and the 'Smarter Planet'" to the Maine Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons annual conference in Bar Harbor. His latest album, Sleep Baby, Sleep, lullabies and songs of peace, is available at graycox. bandcamp.com.

When not overseeing the TAB line as dining room manager, Jennifer Czifrik can be found taking her goats and sheep for long walks in the woods and letting local children play with them on the land that she and Caroline Smith, Sea Urchins Café manager, farm in East Trenton. Says Jennifer, "I have a three-legged ram who is always a challenge to 51

Parent & Family and Alumni Weekend October 9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12, 2015 Some 100 friends and family members of students attended classes, went on outings, and enjoyed glorious fall weather. They were joined by some 50 alumni and guests, including (pictured in third photo) Megan Smith '90 DOVR PRWKHU WR D Č´UVW \HDU VWXGHQW Jessie Greenbaum â&#x20AC;&#x2122;89, and Meganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son Rocco DenDanto.

shear, but C.J. Walke [Peggy Rockefeller Farms manager] was a real pro and got the job done!"

went to Japan to talk with a group of scholars about COA's educational model.

Dave Feldman, faculty member in physics and mathematics, and Anna Demeo, engineering and physics lecturer and director of energy education and management, received a $20,000 grant from The Maine Space Grant Consortium to support students in energyrelated campus projects, as well as the development of a textbook by Feldman and Demeo on their course, The Physics and Math of Sustainable Energy, and other work. This fall Dave is teaching a new massive open online course, or MOOC: Introduction to Fractals and Scaling, via the Santa Fe Institute. The course is part of their Complexity Explorer project: complexityexplorer. org. Also, a paper Dave coauthored for Chaos was selected for the "25 Articles for 25 Years" collection, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the journal. According to the editor, the choices "represent the depth and breadth of nonlinear science historically and today." They were picked for their importance, "their impact on the direction of nonlinear science, DQG WR UHČľHFW WKH YDULHW\ RI exciting research in nonlinear science." aip-info.org

Carrie Graham, manager of COA's George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History, presented an insect catching DQG LGHQWLČ´FDWLRQ ZRUNVKRS WR young campers at the Friends of Taunton Bay's summer day camp in July. As part of her work at the Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center she helped to organize a Women's Equality Day rally in downtown Bangor, ME, to promote awareness of reproductive rights and other feminist issues.

Jay Friedlander, SharpeMcNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business, Anna Demeo, and COA students were featured in a front-page article in the business section of The New York Times for their work to integrate renewable energy projects into the classroom. Over the summer Jay attended a Changemaker Summit at Middlebury College, gave a featured presentation on creating abundance at Maine Start-up and Create Week, and 52

Working with Sarah Hall, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in Earth Systems and GeoSciences, Spencer Gray '17 spent the summer creating a GIS-based bedrock geologic map of Mount Desert Rock and Great Duck Island. In June, Sarah took three students from her South American Earth Systems class to Peru to explore the intersections of geology and society in the Cordillera Blanca region. During July and August she worked on two National Science Foundation-funded curricular development projects, one constructing teaching modules to enable educators to use geodetic data in introductory geoscience classes, the other establishing a professional development program targeting environmental STEM students. Jamie McKown, James Russell Wiggins Chair in Government and Polity, continues to document the earliest history of intercollegiate debate in the US. He also presented a series RI QHZ Č´QGLQJV WR WKH ELHQQLDO NCA/AFA Summer Conference on Argumentation in Utah. -DPLH V SURMHFW LV WKH Č´UVW RI its kind: he has systematically cataloged some 900 previously COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Sunblind Almost Motorcrash by Daniel Mahoney Published by Spork Press, 2015 COA lecturer in writing Daniel Mahoney's letterpress book is a collection of reviews of imaginary albums by imaginary bands. The collection, described as prose poems/microfictions, investigates, says Dan, "the distance between sound and how we use language to describe sound." Dan sent his "reviews" to some bands he likedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and in reply received some music written to his reviews, so the book also includes a cassette. Yes, a cassette. Here's the title review:

Orange Over More Orange Artist: Muebles Pasados de Moda Album: Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence Label: Akon The first few notes of Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence feel like a blurry soundtrack of 1974, like some holiday couple on a walk near a river in Buenos Aires or La Paz or Lima. A down tempo warble bass line and slither-saturated wheeze drift color the mix and mix up that romantic sun-on-water feel. Treated guitar licks sound like meandering dustups of languid planets or blissed out morning launchpads over superfuzzy otherdrift. The picture on the discsleeve is nice too. Orange over more orange. On Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence, a skittery FX dronestep blurs into echoes of hypnotic low-end whir, like an undulating crosswind or an unhinged heart-of-the-sun gauzescape bleeds into late afternoon drift and distant riversparkle. The textured expanse teems with lumber, spring days perfectly caught in a drifty hyper-saturated sprawlcore. An all-sun wrapped around a borrowed sweater. A super druggedup male sun. A hazy sweater wearing South American sunblind almost motorcrash. All you need is time and headphones. The textures are an opal-hewn hiss of gauze and drum and slow heaving organsound blown in from an openocean endlessness. Half into it, the bifurcated spectacle does something that I, frankly, can't explain. Reverb laden guitar hooks serve as a long-distance pulse to the song, a wet whir-warped echo chasm between sun-bleached bonedry and overgrown moistureary. Guitars whir, wah, hover over radiant insect sound, until slowly entombed by other silences in the songfabrick, like warm nights in tumescent laundryhouses, or smoke rising in the drifting periphery where lunatics hold their lunatic ceremonies. So fucking awesome! By the end of the movement, we enter into an enormous enfolding of endless spacebliss and superdistant reverbed harmonica rivertwang. Past and future turn together like a bin of old 45s unearthed by a race of cosmic beekeepers and used as postcards to distant satellites. Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence grooves, rumbles, croons, thrums in the ovulary steam baths of non-stop swirlcore and we emerge from it soulful, murky, warped: our singular transient bodies turning to transparent cinematic soundfields.

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In Memoriam Ann Sewall

July 8, 1932â&#x20AC;&#x201C;June 18, 2015 Ann Sewall and I were husband and wife for almost two decades. I loved her. I respected her. We didn't always agree. We argued; and if anything, our disagreements strengthened our bonds to one another. Ann was direct. It was not hard to discern her views. They were her views as she was incapable of dissembling. All her relationshipsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and not just with meâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were marked by gentleness and kindness. My how I miss her. (G .DHOEHU IRXQGLQJ &2$ SUHVLGHQW

Tinker Bunker

November 28, 1931â&#x20AC;&#x201C;April 10, 2015 Tinker Bunker, carpenter, Jackson Laboratory research assistant, Mount Desert Island Hospital registered nurse, and licensed Coast Guard captain, also taught carpentry and construction skills to COA students in the late seventies. Roc Caivano, former faculty member in architecture and design, remembers that Tinker embraced COA's community-oriented ethos, directing students as they built bus shelters around the island. DG

unknown debate events that took place before 1910.

Development associate Amanda Mogridge, formerly Amanda Ruzicka, married Alan Mogridge, the CEO of the MDI YMCA, on the lawn behind The Turrets on June 20. Writing from the Norway University of Life Sciences, Suzanne R. Morse, Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair of Botany, is in her sixth season of spending the fall teaching in its agroecology master's program. Two of her students are now working as organic consultants in Florida with Jose Perez '09. In June, Suzanne worked with C.J. Walke to plant black dry beans as part of the third season of a Sustainable Agriculture 54

Research and Education project examining whether chipped alder (a common resource for Maine farmers) can be a useful soil amendment. Previous plantings were of tomatoes and brussels sprouts. They've found that the chips don't hurt yields and can suppress weeds. Suzanne also participated in a crop breeding workshop at the University of Maine. Additionally, she is on the board of 0DLQH V ČľHGJOLQJ :LOG 6HHG 3URMHFW working to increase the use of native plants in all landscapes so as to conserve biodiversity, encourage plant adaptation in the face of climate change, safeguard wildlife habitat, and create pollination and migration corridors for insects and ELUGV 7KH Č´UVW LVVXH RI WKH SURMHFW V journal includes an essay by Steve Ressel (see page 55) and an article about Emily Dickinson's and William David Thoreau's interest in native plants and herbaria, highlighting the COA herbarium. $ORQJ ZLWK Č´YH RWKHU VFKRODUV including Ian Medeiros '16 and Nathaniel Pope '07, Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in botany, received National

Geographic Society funding for research in South Africa examining the role of climate and substrate chemistry on lichen diversity. Also his students Ian and Ella Samuel '16 received Garden Club of America scholarships funding their senior projects, and Liam Torrey '17 received its Summer Scholarship in Medicinal Botany. At the New England Botanical Conference in Northampton, MA, Ian and Nishi presented posters on the serpentine biota of Massachusetts, while Ella, Nishi, and two others presented the poster "Mycoremediation in the face of anthropogenic environmental damage" both there and at the Mycological Society of America Meeting in Alberta, Canada. Also in Alberta, at the Botany 2015 conference, Ian presented ongoing research with lichenologists at the Field Museum while Ella and Nishi presented her current research. Nishi has had numerous recent publications, and co-edited two special issues of the Australian Journal of Botany, titled 8OWUDPDČ´F (FRV\VWHPV 3URFHHGLQJV RI WKH WK Î&#x2013;QWHUQDWLRQDO &RQIHUHQFH RQ 6HUSHQWLQH (FRORJ\. These include eight COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

papers by Nishi and colleagues. For additional publications and presentations, visit nrajakaruna. wordpress.com.

The essay by biology faculty member Steve Ressel, "The Secretive Life of the Four-Toed Salamander," appeared in the first annual Wild Seed magazine, published in June. In July, Steve attended the annual Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles meeting at UKansas along with Matt Messina '16 (pictured), who presented the poster, "Breeding by the Sea: Coastal Bluff Vernal Pools as Breeding Habitat for Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum)," summarizing preliminary data on salamanders breeding in high saline vernal pools. Matt was assisted by Zoey Greenberg '16, and Wade Lyman '15.

her visiting professorship in climate change leadership. She spent two weeks in October on the Swedish island of FĂĽrĂś at the Ingmar Bergman estate finishing up several writing projects. From servicing field and construction work on COA's islands to private charters and education groups, COA's M/V Osprey had a full summer calendar, writes Capt. Toby Stephenson '98. Projects included deploying hydrophones into waters off Mount Desert Rock for master's research by Chris Tremblay '03, deploying OceansWide oceanography camp's remotely operated underwater vehicle to study the Frenchman Bay floor, field trips to Bean Island with Jean Masseau's COA drawing and painting class, taking out National Park Service divers to capture images of Acadia underwater for the 2016 centennial of ANP, and conducting several field trips for the August Waterbirds Society Conference hosted at COA. Education faculty member Bonnie Tai presented "Teacher and Youth Leader Development in Nepal" at the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies Conference in October.

Zach Soares '00, audio-visual technology specialist, has been a volunteer at the Bar Harbor Fire Department for a year. He attended the Maine State Fire Academy this summer and hopes to be certified as an interior firefighter. Doreen Stabinsky represented COA at climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, in June, September, and October, joined by several COA students in June and October. In August she participated in a meeting of experts on climate change adaptation, and loss and damage, convened by the UN Secretary General in Cairo, Egypt. In September she was a panelist at a forum on the Paris climate negotiations at Uppsala University, where she continues COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Rebecca Hope Woods, director of creative services, recently illustrated The Vitruvian Heir, a steampunk novel by L.S. Kilroy, published by Little Tree Press. She also juried Jacksonville State University's annual Mini-Works on Paper exhibit, and won first place in the novice women's division at the New Kids on the Block Crossfit 321 competition in Topsham, ME.

Planned Giving Hank Schmelzer & Cynthia Livingston We chose to provide for College of the Atlantic in our estate plan because we want to help its future and sustainability. For us, COA represents values critical to providing a broadbased education that is essential to build a better society for today and tomorrow. Whether in the sciences, arts, or the humanities, COA students represent a level of idealism, inquiry, and activism fundamental to the leaders of this generation. The holistic concept of "human ecology" assumes a genuine personal commitment to society, and that appeals to us. Examples of rigorous learning and application are plentiful and inspiring: COA's "monster classes," which combine several courses into one class, are models of interdisciplinary experiential learning; some students gain entrepreneurship skills through the Hatchery while others go off to study in places around the globe. COA's leadership on environmental issues has become a standard other colleges seek to emulate. We see students engaged, learning, and creating. In short, we are continuously inspired and delighted by what College of the Atlantic represents and offers. We feel fortunate to be part of the COA community, and know that Mount Desert Island highly values the college as a partner.

OurBack Pages The Problem of Bar Island It was 1971. COA wouldn't start for another year, but that summer it explored the possibility of a problem-centered, human ecological curriculum through an intensive pilot program. Wesleyan freshman Gray Cox, now faculty member in philosophy, social theory, and peace studies, was one of the dozen students. Faculty included a biologist, a political scientist, and Bill Carpenter, who continues to teach literature and writing at COA. At the helm was Ed Kaelber, founding president, who believed that education ought to provide the tools to solve the world's numerous problems. The idea, recalls Bill, "was that on WKH MRXUQH\ IURP WKH SUREOHP WR WKH VROXWLRQ \RX ZRXOG Č´QG your education." To begin, they only had to look out the window. Just RÎ?VKRUH OD\ XQLQKDELWHG %DU Î&#x2013;VODQG /DQG ZDV IRU VDOH RQ WKLV LVODQG RI GHHS ZRRGV DQG VSHFWDFXODU FOLÎ?V FRQQHFWHG WR %DU +DUERU E\ D WLGDO EDU Î&#x2013;W RÎ?HUHG WKH SHUIHFW VHWWLQJ for a problem-solving workshop. Students, teachers, and administrators swarmed the island. As they bushwhacked from the perimeter into the interior, they discovered the ruins of an old mansion that is still crumbling into the island's south end. "What is the right stewardship of an islandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;public or private?" Bill recalls wondering at the time. "You could have hundreds of people on itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;over against one single family. Someone was hogging the commons; but then, thousands of visitors can severely stress a landscape." The students were charged with determining the problemsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and connecting with the community to research solutions. Working alone, each student took on a project. At the time, a permanent causeway to the island was being proposed. Was that sensible? What would be the impact? Sitting in the kitchen of the local state representative, Gray learned how such a decision would be made, gaining essential insights into state government in the process. When COA began a year later, students had the choice of three workshops addressing immediate problems: a WDQNHU KDG JURXQGHG RÎ? 3HDNV Î&#x2013;VODQG LQ &DVFR %D\ VSLOOLQJ 100,000 gallons of oil; a company sought to mine the peat LQ :DVKLQJWRQ &RXQW\ V *UHDW +HDWK DQG MXVW RÎ? WKH FRDVW whales were endangered. But now, responding to feedback from the pilot program, the issues were approached as a group. The curriculum continued evolving, favoring student choice. Though no longer mandatory, problem-centered classes thrive, with local expanding to global, so students

create posters for Hancock County QRQSURČ´WV LQ D GHVLJQ FODVV DQG VWXG\ WKH details of diplomatic treaties in advance of attending United Nations conferences. For Bill, that old crumbling mansion on %DU Î&#x2013;VODQG OHG WR UHČľHFWLRQV RQ WKH SDVW and a course in Maine coast history and architecture co-taught with faculty emerita JoAnne Carpenter. The ruin still haunts him. "It didn't look out to sea but to the glamour RI %DU +DUERU VKRZLQJ LWVHOI RÎ? *DWVE\ like. If we were to visit now, it might lead to a course on inequality." Story and photos by Donna Gold.

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The Heart of a Tree Nimisha Bastedo '15

Excerpted from her June 6, 2015 student perspective at commencement

Where is the tree's heart? This could sound like the beginning of a love poem, or part of a COA student's commentary on a painting. But it's actually the question of a sixth grader in northern Canada. This young girl was sitting in a tree, quite seriously wanting to know where the tree's heart was. I looked up at her. She waited for an answer. Um … I could have said, "Well kid, biologically speaking, trees don't have this muscular organ you speak of, though as vascular plants, they do have a form of circulatory system." But knowing this girl had spent six years in a mainstream school, I worried she might let such an answer extinguish her curiosity. I wouldn't have worried if she were a kindergartener—nothing can extinguish their curiosity. About a year earlier, in a kindergarten class, a student was looking at his hand very intently. And then at his friend's hand. And then my hand, counting under his breath. Finally, he asked, "Hey!" Why do we all have five fingers?" I could have said, "Well kid, the structure of our hands is a product of natural selection." Or, "Not all COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

humans have five fingers. Think about the six-fingered man in The Princess Bride." I'm sure many COA classes have also pondered trees' hearts and the anatomy of our hands. What I find harder to imagine is our professors giving us a, Well kid, the world is like this, answer. I think we came to COA because we knew there was more to learning than that. If searching for answers about tree hearts or hands, we would do it quite like a kindergartener, with a flood of questions. Now if you're thinking "after all we've invested into our graduates you're telling me that they're still asking questions like a kindergartener?" I can assure you, Yes! Our questions just 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, Well, what do you think? This can be frustrating. Answers, after all, give us direction. They help us decide how to actually do things. What we may not realize is that we've learned to see answers as starting points for new questions. So, I had a vision that I would prove just how profound we've become by sharing some of the questions currently on our minds. But when I asked my classmates for questions, what I found were conversations. Really interesting ones. About hope and lifecycles, motivation and community, human ecology and chickens, about what it takes to change people's minds. Condensing these conversations to a single question was impossible. Like our classes, our conversations might start with one question, but they quickly evolve as we each add partial answers … which then become kindling for more questions. It's through this collaborative questioning and answering that our collective understandings grow.

And these questions and our work connect to other people's questions and work in ways that we might never have imagined, coming into COA. Realizing this was comforting. Because it would be frightening if we thought we had to find all the solutions on our own. When I leave, 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 weighed down with anxiety from an unstable household? What if this instability is caused by poverty and alcoholism and environmental degradation, symptoms of larger structures of power and racism imposed on these communities for over one hundred years? Realizing how much is out of my hands and beyond my scope of knowledge, I could give up. Or I could invite other people into my questions and build connections between my work and theirs. Questions are essential. But I hope we never underestimate the power of conversation—of all types. The ones about daunting, interconnected problems … and the ones that begin with the simple and wonderful things of the world. So, I'm standing underneath that tree. And the young girl is still looking down at me from her branch, waiting for an answer. Where is the tree's heart? Finally I say, "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 weren't around, and whether or not it hurts when her branches break. By the way, if anyone has ideas about where a tree's heart could be, let me know. Because I'm still very curious.

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