stay connected... spiritual, and physical challenge (we walk at least five miles each day up hill and down, through souks and casbahs, climbing endless sandstone steps at holy sites), hearing stories from all sides, we are dizzy. I am especially blessed to have three Palestinian friends (of a friend in Maine) to meet. Each has treated me like royalty and shown me so much. Now I must run to meet one more.” Happily, Elsie Kellogg Morse writes, “I guess I could start out just like Alice with a ‘no change here’ opener, though, having joined the happy ranks of cancer survivors, maybe it isn’t quite the same. Mine was neatly contained and removed in one swift lumpectomy, with all the expected follow-up treatments. My brother Charlie ’58 isn’t so lucky, with a much angrier sarcoma surrounding nerves and the spine in his neck. Needless to say, these times speak to treasuring every moment that we are given. This year such happy moments will include going to Cincinnati to represent the Rhode Island School of Design Museum at the National Docent Symposium as well as a major splurge trip over the Christmas holidays to the Galápagos. In between times around and about Providence, R.I., or Damariscotta, Maine, continue to be fulfilling and delightful, as I hope you all are finding your in-between times.” Cathy Watson Rapp says, “At this point in our lives, no news is good news! [Husband] Bill and I are finishing up summer at the beach in Avalon, N.J. Back to Pennsylvania soon, where we’ll settle in for the winter. (I have a husband who loves the snow!)” Cathy also asked me, “What happened to that imminent retirement? Sounds like you’re busier than ever!” Well, let’s see. I am planning to retire and slowly working toward that day, but I landed a couple of great grants for the museum [the Portland Museum, in Louisville, Ky.], one from the National Endowment for the Arts and one from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, so that’s keeping me too busy to leave. We are also in the middle of a campaign to strengthen the museum and complete some great and greatly needed projects, so I want to finish those initiatives. And, finally, I spoke with a colleague who retired a few years ago and nearly had a breakdown, lost his wife to divorce, and is now back volunteering at his old institution. So that sounds like a cautionary tale! In the meantime, Elsie’s lovely compliment means a great deal to me: “Certainly, Nathalie, you are our gold-star winner for fulfillment in every waking moment of your days. I love picturing you racing to meet your exhibition deadlines and then charming all in the hosting of those celebratory openings. We certainly all appreciate your continuing to take on the cheerleading for getting out our news.”
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Andover | Winter 2016
PHILLIPS David Othmer 4220 Spruce St. Philadelphia PA 19104 215-387-7824 davidothmer@aol.com
We are, no surprise, an extremely literate and prolific group! John Briley has been writing children’s books for some time now, and the first book of his Green Flash series, an illustrated middle-grade fantasy chapter book called Dragon Central, should be out by now. Jim Hayman’s fourth book, The Girl in the Glass, is available in paper and e-book formats, and he is, he writes, “currently trying to wrestle my way through the opening scenes of McCabe and Savage number five. I habitually seem to make each story more complicated than the last. Just a glutton for punishment, I guess.” Jim also reports that Ted McCarthy has been competing in Ironman triathalons. Chris Costanzo writes, “I am finishing my translation from Italian to English of the monumental History of the Kingdom of Naples by Angelo di Costanzo, published in 1581—the standard sourcebook for southern Italian history from 1250 to 1500, and for warfare as it was carried out then.” Pub date for Chris’s translation: early 2016. Last year, his translation of Joseph of Copertino, written by Paolo Agelli in 1753, was published. Chris writes, “Joseph was a barely literate Italian monk and mystic who, it is said, could levitate and fly, and who did so in front of the pope, kings, princes, great noblemen, and scholars. He is the patron saint of the mentally challenged and of aviators.” Dan Reiff has revised and expanded Architecture in Fredonia, New York, 1811–1997, and in 2000, his Houses from Books: The Influence of Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture, 1738–1950 was published. If you know about the Sears mail-order houses, you get a sense of the richness of material in Dan’s book. Dave Harris played the Old Man in The Man in the Mirror by Thomas Heine last summer. Bill Anderson went to Cuba in November 2015, saw Lea Pendleton while Lea was cruising in Penobscot Bay, and sees Will Taylor regularly at the bridge table. Will, a sailor, was in last year’s Bermuda Race—they lost the rudder (and thus the race) but no further harm done. Jesse Young writes, “I came out of retirement this past spring to raise money for a powerful veterans program, Saratoga WarHorse. The DVD, Out of the Darkness, is an hour of my songs, both old and new, along with interviews with the musicians and several of the folks who make WarHorse happen, including founder Bob Nevins, who was a medevac chopper pilot in Vietnam and inspired me to play again after a long and often dark struggle with Lyme disease. It was a great evening!”
As he cut back on his child psychiatry practice, Quinn Rosefsky learned to paint watercolors— you saw many of them at our 50th Reunion exhibition—and in 2006 started working with the Passamaquoddy Tribe in northern Maine. Between 2006 and 2012, he went to the reservation for three-week stints six times a year. Here are some of his reflections: “I felt terribly conflicted, guilty really, about leaving the reservation in northern Maine, where I worked for five and a half years as a psychiatrist. My job was to help people cope. But it was more than that. My patients were poor, often unemployed, struggling to exist, often doing things that were not good for them or their families (drugs, alcohol, suicide attempts). ‘Why are you leaving?’ so many of my patients asked me. Over the year that I spent saying good-bye, I gave a variety of responses, including, sometimes, ‘I don’t know why.’ It was hard, lonely work; I was in physical pain; and I was worn out. But were these good enough reasons to leave? As if my own guilt while awake weren’t enough, I had dreams about the reservation for more than a year afterwards. In those dreams, I was still a doctor, still trying to listen to impossible problems. “Although I had no intention of returning to the reservation (or to work as a psychiatrist), my next step was not an unexpected response to the dreams. Over the course of six months, I created a course on Native Americans (history, culture, legal issues, economics, health, etc.). I was driven by a sense of need to understand and explain to a group of adults our age: ‘What was God thinking when he created white people?’ It’s hard to sort out historical facts and be objective, but our training at Andover gave me a clue: look at Supreme Court cases. (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, United States v. Sandoval, Oliphant v. Suquamish.) That was not all I did, but I give you the examples because the method is so familiar to us. I gave the course twice to very motivated students, age 65 to 85. “Last fall, I took a writing course. When it ended, I told my instructor I was going to write a short story about my work on the reservation. I began work in November, writing about a fictional Native American woman who was an addict. Friends and relatives liked the story, felt it was very sad. Of course, it needed work. Why wouldn’t it? I’m a doctor, not a writer. David Othmer gave his input. So did Bob Myers. Later, when I had a collection of six stories, with more characters, Jim Hayman gave his. And now, it’s a novel that has a plot (dealing with corruption), 14 chapters, and a prologue, and has reached 65,000 words, and Alan Albright is having a go at it. “My work on the reservation, my Native American course, and my novel have taught me a number of things. To summarize: It is possible to dig your way out of a deep hole if you want to, if you don’t get killed in the process (although you might) and if you aren’t doing it for yourself alone. It’s possible to get to the heart of the matter if you really connect with someone. Whether or not anything can be done is another matter. Non sibi helps.”