Reed College Magazine December 2011

Including a Compendium of Important Terms, a Chronology of Significant Events, and a Variety of Useful and Entertaining Matter.

Origin of the Scrounge Page 88 Remembering Steve Jobs Page 78

Celebrating Reed’s Centennial 1911–2011 cover.indd 1

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REED

Annual Fund

100 100 years of reed.

years of giving.

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y L U C Y B E L L W O O D ’ 1 2

make your mark.

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Providing a world-class education is only possible because of Reed’s generous extended community of donors.

Use the enclosed envelope, visit giving.reed.edu, or call 877/865-1469 to make your Annual Fund gift.

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December 2011

Features 10

The Last Lectures

departments

A salute to retiring professors Peter Russell and Ed Segel.

1 From the editor

By Romel Hernandez and Raymond Rendleman ’06 14

Against the Odds.

3 Letters

Stage Struck

The MG buried under the library.

The invention of Herodotus.

Remembering Barbara Reid Dudman ’60.

Too Far Out?

Parents support the performing arts.

By Randall S. Barton

15

24

Smog Buster

Economist Lester Lave ’60 leaves big gift to Reed.

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By Randall S. Barton 16

Don Asher ’83 helps Gen Y navigate a grim job market.

18

The Small Chill

Classic Lectures 48

Megan Shaw Prelinger ’90 breaks every rule in the book.

ALUMNI PROFILES 65

By Matt Smith ’90 24

Such Sweet Thunder Professor David Schiff searches for the real Duke Ellington.

By Bill Donahue

Darkness, Light, and Drama in the Oresteia

66

12 Empire of the Griffin

Connecting Reedies Across the Globe

Life Beyond Reed.

Alumni Bylaws.

Cleveland Rocks.

Boar’s Head.

60 Reediana

Speed Racer

Rolla Vollstedt ’40

64 Class Notes

Abstract Artist

78 In Memoriam

Margaret Zundel Shirley ’55

70

News from Campus

100 Years of Greatness.

Navy Secretary Wins Eliot Award.

Searching for a Leader.

Joining the Tribe.

New Trustees.

The Art Spark.

New Professors.

By Thomas Gillcrist

By William Abernathy ’88

Guerrilla Archivist

Edited by Chris Lydgate ’90

Jeff Koplow ’90 finds a new way to cool overheating computers.

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4 Eliot Circular

An irreverent compendium of the ideas, episodes, people, and traditions that have shaped Reed over the last 100 years.

Avoiding Your Parents’ Basement

By Mary Emily O’Hara ’12

The New (Olde) Reed Almanac

Gigantic Brewer

Van Havig ’92

Books by Reedies

Steve Jobs Professor Helen Stafford [biology 1954–87]

88 Apocrypha˜Tradition. Myth. Legend.

Origin of the Scrounge.

Cover Illustration by Grady McFerrin

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decEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Editor’s Letter

December 2011

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 90, No. 4 Magazine editor Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu class notes editor Laurie Lindquist 503/777-7591 reed.magazine@reed.edu graphic designer Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu

President William Trufant Foster looking out towards the west hills of Portland, 1910.

alumni news editor Robin Tovey ’97

Against the Odds This fall, the college celebrated the hundredth anniversary of a momentous event— the first time a Reed student squirmed in a chair as the argument that seemed perfectly sound two minutes ago was torn to shreds by classmates. Welcome to your freshman year. Plus ça change.

Sifting through accounts of the college’s history in preparation for this issue of Reed, I have been struck by one particular theme—perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.

The college was nearly strangled before it ever drew breath, stymied by relatives who were aghast at being cut out of Amanda Reed’s will. The collapse of the property bubble in the 1910s wrought havoc with its endowment. It emerged from World War I hanging by a thread. Then came the Great Depression. World War II. McCarthyism.

And the Sixties.

Each of these historical events posed monumental challenges. Yet somehow Reed survived—and flourished. I do not think this happened by dumb luck. It took vision, sacrifice, guts, and grit from the people who loved the college and the ideals for which it stood.

The story of Reed is far too long, interesting, and controversial to be conveyed in a single magazine, but we decided to do it anyway. In this issue, we proudly present an ambitious, but irreverent, Reed Almanac, in which we attempt to shoehorn key ele2

valiant intern Lucy Bellwood ’12

ments of the college’s history into absurdly telescoped entries.

Of course, an undertaking of this nature is liable to be fraught with omissions, elisions, and outright howlers. To remedy this, (and in homage to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger ’93) we invite readers to add to the Almanac on our website.

“The birth of an institution is a solemn event,” President William T. Foster told students at Reed’s first convocation: “It lifts us above the transient interests that tend to warp and confine our daily living; it beckons our thoughts to a future, the significance of which we but dimly foresee; it presages generation after generation of human aspiration and service. The light of this morning shines upon those untold centuries when we, who greet this day with the fine enthusiasm of youth, will be but names in the faded archives of a venerable institution. That we should be remembered is of no moment; this only is needful, that our sense of the future committed to our care and our devotion to worthy ideals should create for Reed College a deathless spirit.”

In this issue, we have sought to bring the aspirations of those early days to life, and to pay tribute to the light that shone on that fateful morning.

ADVISORY BOARD Diane Morgan ’77, Matt Giraud ’85, Naomi McCoy ’94, Caitlin Baggott ’99, and Jay Dickson [English 1996–] Reed College Relations vice president, college relations Hugh Porter director, public affairs Jennifer Bates director, alumni & parent relations Mike Teskey director, development Jan Kurtz Reed College is a private, independent, non-sectarian four-year college of liberal arts and sciences. Reed provides news of interest to alumni, parents, and friends.

Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs.

Reed (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly, in March, June, September, and December, by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202.

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland OR 97202-8138.

—Chris Lydgate ’90

Reed magazine DecembER 2011

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Letters to Reed Letters to Reed may be edited for clarity and length.

For contact information, look to your left.

The MG Buried under the Library

Just wanted to congratulate Chris Lydgate ’90 on his deep digging to create the most factual article to date discussing the prank of the century. He has come the closest to true reporting that I’ve read about the history of the MG and the night it was laid to rest in its permanent home. A box in my garage holds my prize, the stick shift knob, handed to me by one of my coconspirators, and I was told that the steering wheel was given to the school archivist Dorothy Johansen ’33, as well.

[Not true, sadly—Ed.] I’m not sure why people are keeping it to themselves; when the old crowd from that night gets together, we are pretty loud and proud about the whole thing. It was QUITE a night.

—Michelle Mendelson Rosenbloom ’87 Lake Oswego, Oregon I missed the building of the Hauser Library by a hair (I saw the construction in progress during a 1988 prospective visit; by the time I arrived as a first-year in 1989 the addition was completed).

However, during my years at Reed I made friends with Marilyn Kierstead [library 1978–2001], then Special Collections Librarian and wife of my thesis adviser, Ray Kierstead [history 1978–2000]. I vividly remember on graduation day in May, 1993, that I was walking with Marilyn past the library when she recounted the story of the MG, and pointed to the area where the burial took place.

She added a funny detail (maybe apocryphal, but maybe not?) missing from the article. According to Marilyn, the pranksters reversed normal vandalism: whereas it’s not uncommon for cars to have their hubcaps stolen, these guys took the car but left the hubcaps behind, carefully positioned exactly where they belonged in the MG’s parking space! Sounds crazy, but wouldn’t you trust a highly respectable librarian like Marilyn Kierstead? Added evidence, to my mind, that the MG really IS under the library.

—Julie Landweber ’93 Princeton, New Jersey With regard to the MG Midget buried under the library—that is exactly where it belongs. One of the worst experiences of my adult life is buying the Midget instead of the MGB because the B was $1000 more. Believe me, you get what you pay for. If I could have buried that car, I would have. The article calls it vintage or legendary or awesome or something, but that is very far from the truth. Try depending on one sometime. I still remember the sickening feeling of the brake pedal going suddenly all the way to the floor because the master cylinder went out. Eventually some

idiot stole it, and when I got it back, it didn’t have a second gear and you could start it with a screwdriver instead of a key. I wish I’d bought the MGB instead. They’re far more beautiful than the Midget anyway. I mean, if you’re going to suffer, you might as well get something out of it.

—Lisa Davidson ’71 Sierra Madre, California It’s a shame the pranksters didn’t bury your car instead of the car belonging to Mark Verna ’87.

Editor’s Note:

The Invention of Herodotus

Many thanks to Ray Kierstead [history 1978– 2000], Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–], and Reed for returning focus on Herodotus and the histories he created. For, as Professor Kierstead reminds us, his account of the conflict between the Greeks and Persians is not a mere chronicling of facts, but the primal recognition that “time is the working out of such archetypical patterns” as reversals of fortune, pride, and punishment, and crime and retribution. As Henry Immerwahr so brilliantly illustrated, form and thought are originally unified by the father of history, the idea of which is perhaps as much akin to Platonic philosophy as to Sophoclean drama. The great Croesus story is indeed the seminal episode in the Histories and interlocks concentrically with the ultimate account of the Persian Wars.

So, it generates the awful realization that any linear interpretation of history is, at the very least, simplistic. And it sustains my belief that Herodotus and his intellectual descendants currently less regarded—Hegel, Freud, Camus— are the better guardians of history.

—Marc Madden ’71 Corte Madera, California

Remembering Barbara Reid Dudman ’60 Barbara was an exceptional person and the widow of Jack Dudman ’42 [mathematics 1953–85], the highly respected dean of students at Reed for many years. From the very beginning at Reed, she was a disciplined student. One of her freshman roommates recalled that she would stack several books on the floor next to her chair and then read nonstop until she had finished the weekly humanities assignment. She would arrive at the freshman chemistry lab on Saturday mornings so well prepared that she was always one of the first to leave.

Barbara seemed always composed and dignified, and her distinctive bearing was noticeable even at a distance. But there was a delightful schoolgirl side to her as well, and she was quick to add her warm voice and gentle laughter to a conversation. She was in many ways a reserved and private person, yet she was sentimental and romantic as well and would share fond childhood memories. Her many virtues appealed to all who knew her, students and teachers alike. Fifty years after graduating, in all of these respects, she seemed to me unchanged.

Later in life, Barbara scarcely mentioned her several years as a math instructor, leaving the impression that she had happily devoted her life primarily to her son and husband. Jack was twice as old as Barbara when they married, but marriages between male professors and female students were not uncommon at Reed in that era. In any event, Jack and Barbara seemed made for one another from beginning to end.

Nearly a year after Jack’s death [in 2008], Barbara wrote, reassuringly, “As for me, I am doing okay. Of course, I miss Jack very much all the time. He died in July and our 50th anniversary was in December, so that’s to be expected . . . Our son Joe lives with me, so I have company and some brawn available when I need it.”

Now, two years later, Barbara herself is gone, yet she seems as young and as vivid as ever in my memory. It was comforting to find, in the same issue of Reed that told of her death [June 2011], a beautiful example of Lloyd Reynolds’s work.

Dew evaporates and all our world is dew so dear so fresh so fleeting —Richard Morgan ’60 Berkeley, California

Too Far Out? In an editor’s note in response to a letter from John W. Thompson ’55, in the September 2011 edition, you write, “After all, bike jousting makes better copy than biophysics.”

I wonder . . .

—Robert Paul [philosophy 1966–96] Lake Oswego, Oregon Anyone care to write an article that combines these two worthy fields of endeavor?

Editor’s Note:

web extra Read more letters—and respond if the spirit moves you—at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine

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Eliot Circular photos by leah nash

100 Years of Greatness Reed celebrated 100 years in September nonprofit agriculture in developing nations. mous with the practice of transformative with a gargantuan party, complete with “This is a place where anything can hap- skills: the ability to approach problems in dancers, drummers, jugglers, mad scien- pen,” Case said, her voice quavering with nonroutine ways using analogy and metatists, and a massive chorus reciting lines emotion. “The Reed community is not just phor; conditional and abductive reasoning; from the Iliad in Greek. bounded by campus. It stretches across the taking initiative in the face of ambiguity.

Alumni, professors, and students strode globe and spans the generations.”

This is a description of what we do at Reed to the podium to talk about how Reed President Colin Diver declared that Reed every day.” changed their lives. “Reed taught me that is not just about academic rigor, but also President Diver invited the audience to the root of genius is passion,” said ecologist about gaining transformative skills. join him in invoking the Muse to guide Reed Sasha Kramer ’99. “I was lucky to meet so “For 100 years Reed has been synony- through the next century. Together, students many passionate geniuses at Reed.” mous with rigorous training,” he said. and alumni chanted the Iliad’s haunting first Kramer wrote her thesis on the nitrogen “Reedies read voraciously, argue endlessly, line, Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achileos (Sing, cycle with David Dalton [biology 1987–] debate vigorously, master complex analysis O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of and later founded a nonprofit in Haiti and intricate argument. Yes, when those Peleus)—a fitting start to the next 100 years.

The celebration continued through that builds outhouses that convert human silly websites do rankings on ‘Colleges that waste into fertilizer. Her pioneering work Kick Academic Butt,’ Reed will always be at the weekend, as thousands of Portlandinspired economics senior Molly Case ’12 the top of the list. But what is less appreci- ers flocked to campus. Reed held its first to write her thesis about the economics of ated is that Reed has also become synony- ever 5K Odyssey Run, won by chem major 4

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Searching for a Leader

For more photos and information about the centennial, see centennial.reed.edu.

Paul Whittredge ’12 in 17 minutes 5 seconds. (Registration fees benefitted local public schools Duniway, Grout, Lewis, and Woodstock). The Quad echoed with the beat of Taiko drummers while students demonstrated experiments with liquid nitrogen on the SU porch. A ceremonial English walnut tree was planted in the restored orchard in the Canyon while students squeezed cider from a bicycle-powered apple press. Other highlights included Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, a bluegrass band, a performance of Iphigenia in Tauris, and fireworks. If that weren’t enough, Oregon Public Broadcasting aired an hourlong documentary about Reed for its Oregon Experience series in October. Check it out at www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/ programs/36-Reed/. —Anna Mann

Scan your Rolodex. Scroll through your contacts.

Ping your network. Reed is seeking to identify candidates for one of the most important jobs in the world—a new president to succeed President Colin Diver, who will retire in June 2012.

“Because Reed has such deep roots in academic communities all over the country, we have an alumni network uniquely positioned to help us find people who might like to be Reed’s next president,” says trustee Anna Hayes Levin, chair of the search committee.

Composed of six trustees and six faculty members—including one from each of the five divisions—the committee has retained the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller to help recruit and investigate candidates. (Isaacson, Miller assisted with the search that resulted in Diver’s coming to Reed in 2002.)

After hearing from alumni, faculty, staff, and students, the committee has also drafted a position statement that describes the college and identifies goals for the new president. (See www.reed.edu/presidential_search for details.)

The committee hopes that vigorous alumni networking will produce a long list of potential candidates, which it will winnow down to 8 to 10 semifinalists, one of whom will ultimately be selected as president. The committee expects to make a recommendation to the board of trustees by next spring.

Levin says the college has a competitive advantage in launching its search now. “Reed is stronger than ever,” she says. “There are plenty of students who want to apply, we’ve been successful in attracting strong new faculty, and the financial house is very much in order.

Portland is a popular place to be. Reed has a distinctive style and it’s stood the test of time.”

Other committee members include trustees Dan Greenberg ’62, George James ’77, Sandy E. Mintz, Roger Perlmutter ’73, John Sheehy ’82, and Rick Wollenberg ’75; professors Ken Brashier [religion 1998–], Mary James [physics 1988–], Gerri Ondrizek [art 1994–], Jan Mieszkowski [German 1997–], Jeff Parker [economics 1988–], and Catherine Witt [French 2005–]; treasurer Ed McFarlane (observer); and student-body president Nora McConnell-Johnson ’12 (observer).

—Randall S. Barton Thinking of a good candidate? Send your thoughts to pressearch@reed.edu.

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The Class of ’15

continued

The Winnowing

Joining the Tribe Convocation 2011 marked 100 years since the first Reed College classes convened. Heralded by John Stanley’s stirring trumpet voluntary, 374 freshly minted Reedies gathered under the big top on the Great Lawn to be welcomed by President Colin Diver and the faculty bedecked in full academic regalia. “You arrive here at an auspicious moment,” Diver told them, “almost exactly a hundred years from the day when a handful of intrepid souls attended the very first classes ever offered at an upstart college in Portland, Oregon, called Reed College.

“So here we are, a hundred years later, different but the same. Still an upstart, still marching to our own drummer. Reed College really is distinctive, but not for the mere sake of being different. Reed is dis6

tinctive for the highest purpose imaginable: to liberate ourselves, and the world, from the curse of ignorance, to pursue honestly and relentlessly the search for truth. So, if that’s what you are looking for, you have found it. Welcome home.”

The Vollum Award for distinguished accomplishment in science and technology was bestowed upon Lynn Riddiford, emerita professor of biology at the University of Washington, for her work on the biochemical basis of insect metamorphosis. Ken Brashier [religion 1998–] delivered the first humanities lecture of the year, comparing the underworld of Homer’s Odyssey to the afterlife of ancient China.

For more detail, including text of the speeches, see www. reed.edu/convocation.

Applications 3059

Admitted Apps 1219 Percent Admitted 40% Matriculants 374

Academics

Average GPA 3.9 SAT Verbal 710 SAT Math 674 SAT Writing 692

Minorities* Hispanic 32 (9%)

African American 15 (4%)

Native American 8 (2%) Asian/Pacific Islander 37 (11%) Total 92 (26%) *These figures do not include international students.

Other

1st Generation 49 (13%) International 25 (7%)

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Convocation / R.danzig photos by leah nash

New Faces: Trustees Dr. Jody Hoffer Gittell ’84 Jody is a professor at the Heller School for S o ci al Polic y and Management at Brandeis University and director of the Relational Coordination Research Center.

Her research focuses on how coordination by frontline workers contributes to quality and efficiency in service settings, with a particular focus on airlines and health care. Jody earned a BA in political science from Reed in 1985, an MA in political economy from the New School for Social Research in 1991, and a PhD in human resource management from MIT in 1995. She serves on the advisory board for Families First and the board of directors for the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Her most recent book is Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships. Jody’s husband, Ross Gittell, is a professor of management at UNH. Jody and Ross live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and they have two children.

Dr. Dennis J. Henner

Navy Secretary Wins Eliot Award National security expert Richard Danzig ’65 is the first recipient of the Thomas Lamb Eliot Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Reed College Graduate. His contributions to his field and commitment to public service exemplify the spirit and integrity of T.L. Eliot, who encouraged Simeon and Amanda Reed to found the college.

Danzig served as Secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration and is the chairman of the board for the Center for a New American Security. He serves as a trustee of the RAND Corporation and is a member of the Defense Policy Board. Danzig holds degrees in political science from Reed, a BPhil and a DPhil from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a JD from

Yale Law School. He was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Byron White, taught at both Harvard and Stanford, and spent two years as a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he served as a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama.

At his acceptance speech during the Centennial Celebration in September, Danzig lauded the benefits of a Reed education “Built into the DNA of Reed is . . . the gift of Western culture,” he said. “That expanded to become global culture, a richness of thought that constitutes our heritage. Through this institution we got a chance to see it and see it refracted through the prism of all the different minds of the people who were here with us.”

Dennis is a managing director of Clarus Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm.

He has nearly 30 years of experience in the health care sector. He was a general partner in the health care venture capital firm MPM Capital and an executive at Genentech, where he served on the executive, product review, and research review committees. Dennis represents Clarus on the boards of CoMentis, FerroKin BioSciences, Pelikan Technologies, Proacta, SARcode, and Aerie Pharmaceuticals. He also serves on the boards of Ceregene and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals. He previously served on the boards of Cellerant Therapeutics, Rinat, Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Synergia, and Tercica. Dennis earned a BA in life sciences and a PhD in microbiology from the University of Virginia, and he did his postgraduate training at the Scripps Clinic. Dennis and his wife, Jane, live in Pacifica, California. They have two children, Randall Henner ’08 and Kevin Henner ’10. Dennis and Jane served on Reed’s Parent Council from 2006 to 2009.

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continued photo by vivian johnson

The Art Spark Reed steps in to fill a void in local schools’ art programs.

They come galloping across the canyon Snyder ’91 founded the Open Gallery probridge in a shrieking tidal wave of enthusi- gram in 2004, with the goal of offering free, asm—two dozen third-graders on a field trip rigorous education in art and art history to to Reed’s Cooley Gallery. As they approach local schoolchildren at a time when public the stately entrance to the Hauser Library, schools were slashing their art programs. they swarm around a dapper gent in a pin- Since then, the gallery has engaged more stripe vest sporting an elegant mustache. than 10,000 students from Portland pubHe is Greg MacNaughton ’89, the official lic schools by raising almost $60,000 in grants from the Oregon Cultural Trust, the shepherd of the Open Gallery Program.

“Greg! We saw a heron in the canyon!” “I Jackson Foundation, the Regional Arts and told you it wasn’t a pelican.” “Yeah, it was a Culture Council, the Robert Lehman Founblue heron!” “And weathergrams!” A word dation, and President Colin Diver.

“The Open Gallery program offers K-12 from Greg renders them instantly silent.

He welcomes them back to the gallery in a students the chance to engage in close, calm, lilting tone, explaining that they’ll be sustained observation of a wide variety of building on the introduction to the callig- contemporary and historical works of art,” raphy of Lloyd Reynolds [English and art Stephanie says.

Stephanie and Greg first met as students 1929–69] that he gave them a day before.

Stepping into the gallery, he leads them at Reed. Years later, when she was looking into another world—a world they might for someone to help with the gallery’s outreach efforts, she thought of him. A religion otherwise never venture into.

Gallery director Stephanie Sakellaris major at Reed, he worked for many years as 8

a case manager for homeless youths, often using art as a way to broach ethical and philosophical issues and rekindle their interest in returning to school. Last year, Stephanie succeeded in securing his position as the Cooley’s education outreach coordinator, thanks to Reed’s renewed commitment to reaching out to Portland kids.

Today’s students hail from Grout Elementary in Southeast Portland, which offers no art classes at all. They spill into the gallery with impressive familiarity, sitting on the floor to discuss the myriad objects representing Reynolds’s life and work. This is their third visit to the gallery this year—perhaps one of the program’s greatest assets. By building close ties with local schools, Greg brings students back to the gallery again and again, cementing the principles of a conference-based approach to exploring art.

There is something about Reynolds’s mastery that captures the imaginations of

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the students. They goggle at the drawings of skulls, the delicate scripts, the reed pens and hand-carved puppets. One asks what happened to Reynolds. “Did he die,” she asks carefully, “or retire?”

Greg chuckles and explains that he did both, though in reverse order. But in his hands, simple queries such as these can be used as departure points for deeper questions. Does a work of art end with the artist?

Is art always beautiful? How can two rectangles look like a barn? Soon the dialogue begins to sound a bit like a Hum conference—a model Stephanie and Greg kept in mind when they designed the program.

“We’re hooked,” says Grout teacher Jonathon Fischer. “We’d never be able to do something like this at our school—there’s just no money. But we can walk 10 minutes across the soccer field and get this amazing experience!” Fischer is particularly impressed by Greg’s ability to talk to students from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds—72 percent of Grout’s students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and 22 percent speak a language besides English at home. “I’ve seen other teachers flounder,” Fischer marvels, “but he never loses it.”

Professor Mary James [physics 1988–] witnessed the Open Gallery program firsthand as a chaperone for her son’s middleschool class. “Greg is a master pedagogue and a fine ambassador for the college,” she says. “My son and his classmates have been fortunate indeed to be a part of this program. As for me, I’ve learned a lot from Greg, both about art and teaching.”

Nor is the program limited to students.

“Often the teachers themselves don’t feel comfortable talking about art,” Greg says. “So we’re providing a model for them as well.” Last summer the Cooley hosted a symposium for teachers from Portland public schools to strengthen their ability to teach from works of art.

By providing serious, hands-on engagement, the program challenges the conventional exclusivity of the art world. “I’m extremely proud of that,” Greg smiles. In an era where public school budgets are cut to the bone, it is hard to imagine where else these students would get a chance to experience extraordinary works of art—not to mention the library’s Dr. Seuss bathroom.

—Lucy Bellwood ’12

New Faces: Professors The following professors joined the Reed faculty in September.

Row 1

Daniela Blei, history & humanities (1 year)

Michael Brumbaugh, classics & humanities (1 year)

Jae Choi, creative writing (1 year)

Kris Cohen, art history & humanities (TT)

Oscar Fernández, Spanish (fall)

Simon Finger, history & humanities (1 year) Row 2 Melissa Galloway, chemistry (1 year)

Patrick Hebert, art (1 year)

Natalie Joy ’01, history & humanities (1 year)

Mari Jyväsjärvi, religion & humanities (1 year)

Chris Koski, political science (TT)

Peter Ksander, theatre (TT) Row 3 Cara Laney, psychology (1 year)

Corrine Larson, theatre (1 year)

R. Brian Law, political science (fall)

Vanessa Lyon, art history & humanities (1 year)

Hugo Moreno, Spanish & humanities (TT)

Jeannine Murray-Román, French (2 years) Row 4 Jennifer Nycz, linguistics (1 year)

Michael Pitts, psychology (TT)

Sarah Schaack, biology (TT)

Laurel Scotland-Stewart, philosophy (1 year)

Alyson Tapp, Russian (1 year)

Sarah Wagner-McCoy, English & humanities (TT)

For more about the Cooley Gallery, see www.reed.edu/gallery/

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The Last Lectures: Saluting retiring (and not so retiring) professors

The Gene Genie Peter Russell [Biology, 1972–2011] Peter Russell has never been content to do things by half measures. After 39 years of teaching at Reed with boundless verve, he intends to enjoy retirement in the same spirit, riding his horses, Nike and Dante, racing his bicycle, playing guitar with the Fabulous Fender Benders, and writing new editions of his college textbooks.

“I don’t really have a problem letting go,” he says of adjusting to emeritus existence.

“I have too many things I can do.”

Peter has left a lasting legacy in Reed’s biology department, where he was a prodigious genetics researcher (most recently conducting experiments studying plant virus gene expression in yeast). He has won numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and raised the profile of scientific research at smaller liberal arts institutions as past president of the biology division of the Council on Undergraduate Research. He has also written, and continues to update, a bestselling genetics textbook that has gone through eight editions and been published in Greek and Italian, and co-written an introductory biology text. Needless to say, he has earned a reputation around campus as the Man Who Never Sleeps.

“I’ve always set high standards,” says Peter, who attributes his ethic to his working-class upbringing in Gillingham, England. His parents encouraged him to attend the University of Sussex, after which he crossed the pond for graduate school at Cornell.

When Peter arrived at Reed, he joined a department with a top-notch reputation for rigorous, relevant research. He was instrumental in taking the department to new heights as an “extraordinarily active researcher,” says fellow geneticist Janis Shampay [biology 1990–]. When Shampay first joined the faculty, any concerns she had about whether she would be able to pursue “hardcore research” were allayed the first time she walked into Peter’s lab— “chock full of equipment, large and small: centrifuges, ultracentrifuges, microcentrifuges, incubators, shakers, ovens, freezers, waterbaths, supplies, reagents, tubes,

pipettors, pipet tips, and a freezer full of every enzyme sold by New England Biolabs.

Needless to say, I was pretty well set up.”

But Peter’s greatest mark has been as a teacher, mentor, and friend to generations of Reedies who came to know him as a demanding but considerate professor who cared deeply about how his students were doing both inside and outside the lab.

“We were family members—that was just the way it was, and it was very comforting,” says Katrin Talbot ’80. She recalled that when her own daughter, Ariana Karp ’11, arrived as a new student at Reed, “Peter threw his arms around her and said, ‘You’re Katrin’s girl!’”

Peter treated his students as junior colleagues in the lab, supervising a remarkable 128 theses and coauthoring numerous journal articles with students.

“I’ve always given students tough love,” Peter says. “You’ve got to challenge the students so they learn to their maximum potential . . . You want to make them think.”

“Peter had really high standards—his

genetics course was tough,” says David Fastovsky ’77. “And even though it was always clear that he was the professor and you were the student, he was willing to hang out with us, too. “ In the late ’70s, Peter formed a Reed band, Peter J. Ribosome and the Subunits, which went through several lineups (David and Katrin were early bandmates). The group was best known for a rollicking version of “Roll Over Beethoven” that would have made both Chuck Berry and Gregor Mendel proud. Here’s the chorus: Well if you feel and like it you get your genome and reel and rock and roll it over and move on up just one codon farther and reel and rock and roll it over.

Got that old central dogma of nuclear DNA.

We suspect Peter will keep reeling and rocking for many more years to come.

—Romel Hernandez

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History’s Ambassador Ed Segel [History, 1973–2011] Ed Segel may have retired, but as his former students throng the corridors of power in ever greater numbers, his sphere of influence is expanding.

Born and raised in Boston, Ed graduated from Harvard in 1960, received his PhD at UC Berkeley, and came to Reed in 1973, where he earned a reputation as a passionate teacher who prompted his students to think about the Big Questions.

Generations of history majors have heard the unwritten rule that, even if your main interest lies in China or Ancient Greece, you should take at least one class from Ed. Ed’s primary interests lie in diplomatic history, 19th- and 20th-century Europe, and the Cold War, and he exemplifies the tendency of Reed historians to immerse themselves in their subject.

Ed’s lifetime was part and parcel of the very coursework he taught. His personal connections extended to figures like Henry Kissinger, from whom he took a course at Harvard, and Berkeley professor Raymond Sontag, who acted as mentor for both him and U.S. diplomat George Kennan. These connections enriched his scholarship on the doctrine of containment and other diplomatic topics.

Ed developed courses on the Cold War and on Vietnam, which was especially personal for Ed because three of his college classmates were killed in the conflict. He took particular pride in his humanities lectures on Beethoven and Mozart.

Ed strives to enter the mindset of diplomats and public alike, following his mentor Sontag, seeking to weave together the domestic and diplomatic strands of history (encapsulated in his infamous Segel’s Laws, namely, 1. All problems are essentially problems of diplomatic history, and 2. Always save room for dessert).

Ed’s mentor at Reed was John Tomsich [history 1962–99], and Ed says he always tried to match John’s subtlety of thought and mastery of a broad scope of historical movements. Both served long terms as chair of the history department.

“Ed was the ideal professor for humanities, given his broad interests from opera and literature to, of course, history,” says

Peter Goodman ’89. “He drew on the entirety of human experience in choosing how to present the texts we confronted, and he encouraged us to use the readings as jumping-off points for the biggest questions that could be asked—questions about justice, tradition, and social progress.”

“Ed was one of the best teachers I had, and I might not have succeeded in my first year at Reed without his wise and patient counsel,” says Marianne Brogan ’84. “And, of course, his humanities conferences were the best.” (Marianne is now a member of Ed’s pool crew, along with Jon Rivenburg [director of institutional research 1988–2010], and John Colgrove ’86 [assistant registrar 1987–].)

Ed also left his mark on Reed, working behind the scenes (naturally) to soften an “academic boot-camp” mentality that he felt contributed to the college’s high attrition rate. He also served as the faculty’s resident parliamentarian, often being called on to apply Robert’s Rules of Order to sometimes contentious debates.

Debonair, droll, and a devoted Anglophile and monarchist, Ed took deep interest in his students’ lives, often inviting

them over to his house for a game of pool over a pint of Bass or taking them to the opera. He also was a faculty connection to students in campus gay and other groups.

An accomplished pianist and lyricist, he has written a number of lyrics for the Portland Gay Mens’ Chorus, several of which have been recorded on CD. Students’ esteem for Ed may be gauged by the fact that last year, the history majors played in the Renn Fayre softball tournament under the name Flock of Segels.

“I’m always happy if my students go on to become PhDs in their turn,” he says.

“But what I really want them to do is go out and take over the world.”

For all his wide-ranging interests, it is membership in the Reed community that he holds most dear. Immediately following his retirement, the alumni office invited him to go on a “victory tour” around the country, delivering his classic lecture on Vietnam to alumni. He welcomes old friends and students to keep in touch via segel@reed.edu, an address he intends to maintain in perpetuity.

—Raymond Rendleman ’06

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Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

photos by leah nash

Life Beyond Reed

By Jay Hubert ’66, alumni association president

Centennial Reunions, celebrated last June, was a great success. It brought more than 1500 alumni to campus, making it the biggest reunion ever—about 10 percent of all living Reed alumni attended! It is satisfying to review Reed’s history and to celebrate its success, but it is just as important to look forward to the future.

To that end, the alumni association is beginning a new program to support career development for current students and recent graduates. The main motives for this program are the current economic environment and the desire of many older alumni to support younger ones in their quest for satisfying employment.

After Centennial Reunions, the college commissioned a survey of 1,436 alumni attendees who provided an email address. The request received a very high response rate of 52 percent. One of the most significant results is that 45 percent of the respondents said that Centennial Reunions enhanced or reaffirmed their desire to volunteer for Reed in some capacity. In response to an open-ended question, many alumni expressed a particular interest in helping younger alumni advance their careers.

To tap into the incredible energy demonstrated on campus in June, the alumni board has established a new committee called Life Beyond Reed. Together with Reed’s career services, the committee will sponsor a series of Working Weekends.

The first one will be February 2–4, 2012.

During these few days, alumni speakers will organize and lead skills workshops for students and recent graduates, meet with

students one on one or in groups, sit on industry or expertise panels that address specific topics, and share job and internship opportunities. This weekend was chosen because many alumni will already be on campus for board of trustees and alumni board meetings.

There will be a special focus on nonacademic careers. The majority of Reed alumni do not pursue careers in academia, so it should not surprise any of us that many alumni have successful careers in jobs seemingly unrelated to their undergraduate major. However, sometimes it takes a while to get a good start. Furthermore, the demands of the workplace are changing faster and faster. The Working Weekend will provide forums that explore how to apply a Reed education to a broad array of job opportunities, including employment in nonprofits or as entrepreneurs.

Working Weekends will require significant coordination. Alumni are needed to organize panels and lead workshops. Career services will handle publicity to current students. Email notices have been sent to many recent graduates. The early volunteers will have the most influence on which themes and topics are covered. If you want to participate or assist, please email the organizer of the Working Weekends, Adam Riggs ’95 (aariggs@gmail.com). Also, update your IRIS profile (iris.reed.edu) and consider adding a LinkedIn profile to provide a snapshot of your professional accomplishments. We believe Working Weekends will strengthen cross-pollination and networking within the alumni community and between alumni and current students. This

Readers may contact our esteemed alumni association president, Jay Hubert ’66, at jayhubert@comcast.net.

will strengthen the Reed community as a whole and all those who participate.

The Life Beyond Reed committee also plans to expand alumni support for recent graduates beyond the immediate Portland area. We welcome your thoughts on how to do this effectively. If you are interested, email the chair of Life Beyond Reed, Gloria Johnson ’79 (johnsontierney@gmail.com).

The Nitty Gritty What: Working Weekend When: Feb 2–4, 2012 Contact: Adam Riggs ’95, ariggs@gmail.com

2012 CALENDAR: IMAGES FROM THE PAST Save the Date It wouldn’t be fall without the arrival of your annual Reed calendar. The archival images in the 2012 edition will transport you back in time, giving you a glimpse into a century of events, people, and spirit that have made Reed what it is today. Look for the calendar in your mailbox soon.

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ORGY 2011 New students with alumni parents (or relatives) qualify for the prestigious club fondly known as Offspring of Reed Generations of Yesteryear. This photo of Reed alumni and their variously excited, nervous, or nonplussed progeny includes: back row (from left): John Selker ’81, Julia Selker ’15, Sarah Stadler ’76, Natalie Cowan ’15, Jesyca Hernstadt ’15, Liane Hernstadt ’83.

Middle row (from left): Andrew Mason ’90, Sophia Helverson ’15, Della Green ’15, Marcia Kato ’75, Kata Martin, Holly Hurwitz ’79, Sam Jackson ’15. Front row (from left): Amelia Wolf ’15, Nora Fisher Campbell ’15, Michael Campbell ’81, Lauren Faris ’15, Rob Faris ’80. (Not pictured: Amelia’s mom, Lisa Rackner ’81; and Della’s dad, Mike Hoberman ’86)

Boar’s Head

Alumni board bylaws

Mark your calendar for the alumni holiday party on Saturday, December 17. Reed’s own Boar’s Head procession is still observed with accustomed ceremony (See Hog Wild, December 2010). Help us keep this beloved tradition strong by joining the Boar’s Head Ensemble singers! For more information, email alumni @reed.edu, call 503/777-7589, or see www.reed.edu /alumni/holidayparty.

To provide the nominations committee more time to solicit and deliberate on nominations, the alumni board approved the following revisions to the Constitution of the Alumni Association.

Spotlight on: cleveland

Section 6. As soon as possible after November 15, notice of the nominees, including a brief biographical sketch of each, and procedure for proposing alternate nominees, will be printed in a college publication sent to all alumni. Additional nominations for each vacant position may be submitted by petition from the membership. Said petitions must contain the name and a brief biographical sketch of the nominee, the office to be filled, and the signatures of 50 or more members of the Alumni Association. Petitions must be received in the alumni relations office on or before April 1.

Almost a dozen Reedies gathered for a wonderful tour of rare Indian Kalighat paintings at the Cleveland Art Museum in August. This tour was led by guest-curator Deepak Sarma ’91, who teaches philosophy and religion at Case Western. The paintings were produced by anonymous artists between the 1830s and 1880s and were sold as souvenirs in bazaars around Calcutta and around the Kalighat Temple.

Deepak’s insight, engagement, and thoughtful dissection led to an animated discussion. After the tour, many in the group stayed for drinks and conversation on a nearby patio. Deepak joined Reed’s alumni board in July and was on campus in September for volunteer weekend. While there, he spoke to students in Professor Mari Jyvasjarvi’s introductory course in South Asian religions and gave a lecture with the marvelous and provocative title “Natural Born Killers: Karma and Predestination in one Hindu tradition.”

ARTICLE VII Nominations and Elections Section 5. The nominating committee, on or before November 15, shall nominate one candidate for each position to be filled except for representatives of local chapters.

Section 7. Petitioners for each of the officer positions shall indicate the office for which they seek nomination. Those seeking one of the vacant at-large positions on the board of directors should indicate only that they seek one of these seats, and are not to indicate that they wish to stand for election in opposition to any specific nominee.

Section 8. In all offices for which there is only one nominee on April 1, the nominee shall be considered elected as of that date.

Section 9. Election for all offices for which there are more nominees than positions available shall be by ballot. On or before May 1, ballots shall be mailed to all members of the Alumni Association.

The nominees shall appear on the ballot by name and class only. All ballots shall be accompanied by a copy of the appropriate constitutional provisions and a list of the nominees, with a brief biographical summary listing the nominees’ professional, civic, and alumni activities prepared by the alumni director. Candidates may submit a statement on behalf of their candidacy of not more than 300 words. This statement will be transmitted with the ballot and other information by the college at no cost to the petitioners.

Section 11. All ballots must be received by the alumni relations office by May 24 in order to be counted. The supervision of the election and the counting of the ballots shall be by the board of directors. The nominees receiving the greatest number of votes for each office shall be elected.

Candidates for the vacant at-large seats on the board of directors will be ranked according to the number of votes received, and the vacancies filled beginning with the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes. In the event of a tie vote, the board of directors shall elect the candidate from among the tied candidates.

Live in the Cleveland area? Want to join in? Contact Chantal Sudbrack ’97 at csudbrack@alumni.reed.edu.

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Campaign Update

Stage Struck Parents and the Performing Arts orin zyvan ’04

Jackhammers are pounding and construction crews are busy pouring the foundation of Reed’s new $28 million home for the performing arts. Even as the building takes shape, however, the college is working to bridge the $3.3 million gap that still remains in the project’s financing. Fortunately, the project has attracted strong proponents from an unexpected quarter: parents.

“Parents are an essential source of support and encouragement to the college, most obviously in entrusting their son or daughter to Reed, but also by serving as trustees, members of the Parent Council, career counselors, and donors,” says President Colin Diver. “They bring a unique perspective because they see firsthand the impact the college has had on their son or daughter’s intellectual and personal development.

Parental support is therefore a particularly valued endorsement of what we do.”

Gretchen Shugart and Jon Maurer both come from families with an abiding passion for the arts, which is one reason they gave money for the new building. Another reason is their daughter, English major Stephanie Maurer ’14. “I believe that our schools follow us around for the rest of our lives,” Shugart says. “It’s in our interest and our daughter’s interest for her school to be respected and recognized as the great institution it is.”

Shugart runs TheaterMania.com, a New York–based company that provides technology to theatres and venues across the country. “All people, whether they realize it or not, benefit from the arts every day,” she says. “They give us reason to get up.”

A small college, she says, must pick its spots. If Reed chooses to teach the arts, it must have facilities that meet the needs of today’s students. “In my experience, good architecture stimulates creativity,” Shugart says. “There is something really wonderful about this performing arts facility at Reed. If you give people bases to meet and collaborate, both formally and informally, really wonderful things can come of that.”

Linda Finocchiaro grew up in the arts. Her mother was Bonita Granville—who starred as Nancy Drew in four films of the 1930s— and her father, Jack Wrather, produced TV

Spring 2010 performance of Antigone at the Reed College Mainstage Theatre. From left: Dominic Finocchiaro ’11, Stephen Bennett ’11, and Jason King ’11.

series such as The Lone Ranger and Lassie.

Linda’s husband, Anthony, is also an actor; their son, literature-theatre major Dominic Finocchiaro ’11, graduated this year.

“Dominic loved his days at Reed,” Linda says, “It was transformative. But there was always a problem with the lack of rehearsal space. With the new facility there will be more opportunities for independent, impromptu performances that the kids put on for no more reason than the love of doing so.”

Linda looks forward to the day when the 450-seat proscenium theatre is added to the building. Planned as a second phase of the project, the proscenium theatre can begin construction when an additional $10 million has been raised through gifts.

“Reed is a phenomenal school,” Linda says, explaining why she made her gift. “I was motivated to make it even better, so that more people can get more out of it.”

Danny Sellers ’13 was a junior in high school when his parents, Joe and Laurie Sellers, began taking him to see colleges

near their home in Washington, D.C. “They’re all nice schools,” Danny told them, “but the one I really want to go to is Reed.”

Joe is now the chair of the Reed College Parent Council, and though Danny is a political science major, his musical gifts include singing and playing piano. “Our interest in contributing to this building is to follow Danny’s interests and to show support for Colin Diver,” says Joe. “I’ve been really taken by Colin’s passion, vision, and views as an educator. I know this project has been something he’s cared a great deal about and invested energy in trying to secure.”

Half of the construction cost for phase I is being financed with bonds, and the other half will come in the form of gifts, of which $10.7 million has been raised.

“When parents contribute to the performing arts building, or make an endowment gift,” Diver says, “they make it possible for Reed to continue to provide future generations with the benefits that their son or daughter has received.” —Randall S. Barton

Follow the Money: How the PERFORMING ARTS Building is paid for Total cost: $28 million

Amount financed by bonds: $14 million

Amount financed by gifts: $14 million

Gifts raised so far: $10.7 million Gap remaining: $3.3 million

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Smog Buster Leaves $2.5 Million to Reed raymond rodriguez

more than 400 other publications. “What I got from Reed was a certain kind of curmudgeonliness,” he told Reed in 2009. “A desire to get to the bottom of an issue. Let’s not just salute the flag. Let’s figure out what’s real and what’s hype. It doesn’t win you a lot of friends—but it does lead you to a lot of interesting conclusions.”

“You can try to change the entire world a small amount, or a small part of the world greatly,” Lester Lave ’60 once said. “I think the latter is more beneficial.”

An economist whose visionar y approach to energy and pollution issues secured his international renown, Lester passed away in May at his Pittsburgh home. His gift of more than $2.5 million to the economics department will benefit a discipline that is rapidly growing at Reed.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed, earned a PhD from Harvard, and spent most of his career at Carnegie Mellon University. He achieved international prominence in the ’70s by demonstrating that air pollution was causing a significant increase in urban death rates. The findings were vigorously contested by industry, but provided an early basis for the Environmental Protection Agency to improve air quality. He also wrote influential papers on climate change, dam safety, truck drivers with diabetes, and the environmental

effects of fuel additives. [See “An Electrifying Puzzle,” Reed, Winter 2009.]

Lester wrote an essay in Thinking Reed, a book of essays by alumni about how their time on campus shaped their careers. “The most important experience in my intellectual life was Reed,” he once said.

Seth Blumsack ’98 was recruited by Lester as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon and stayed close to him for the rest of his life. “You could really see the Reedie in Lester,” says Seth, now an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. “He was very intense, very driven, very intellectual. He had all of these qualities that are characteristic of successful Reedies.”

In addition to chairing the economics department at Carnegie Mellon, Lester was director of the Green Design Institute, codirector of the Electricity Industry Center, a member of the Institute of Medicine, and a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), and published or contributed to 28 books and

Lester’s gift will significantly strengthen Reed’s economics department. In the ’80s, the department had four full-time professors advising as few as seven thesis students—a manageable load. The department now has six professors advising as many as 27 thesis students. “We’re on the trajectory to be one of the larger departments on campus,” says Noelwah Netusil [economics 1990–].

“We’re seeing an incredible interest in the major, and I think a lot of it is because we have great new hires and have worked really hard to have a great program.”

Econ 201, Reed’s one-semester intro course, is equivalent to three semesters at most other institutions, Netusil says.

Students are presented with intermediate microeconomic theory and an introduction to macroeconomic theory. “We hit the ground running and we go really fast,” she says. “That allows us to present, in their second class, courses that usually are the primary purpose for why students take economics. They want to understand trade, to understand environmental economics, to do a course in game theory. If they had to have a year and a half of coursework before they could take the applied course, the upper-division course, then many students who weren’t majors would never see the application. Students here want a lot of information, and they want it quickly.”

Reed’s Committee on Academic Policies and Planning has recently approved a search for a new tenure-track position in economics. Chair Denise Hare [economics 1992–] says the department has identified several priority areas: industrial organization; financial economics; health, education, and welfare; and the history of economic thought. —Randall S. Barton DecembER 2011 Reed magazine 15

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photographs by erich schlegel

t n e m e s a B ’ s t n e r a P r u Avoiding Yo

Career expert Don Asher ’83 helps Gen Y navigate a grim job market.

The job interview was not going well.

The year was 1983, and Don Asher had just graduated from Reed with a degree in philosophy/religion, having written his thesis on the Platonic dialogues. Spotting an ad in the newspaper, he applied for a position with a résumé-writing service. Unfortunately, now that he was sitting face to face in the office of his prospective employer, the boss seemed singularly unimpressed.

“I can’t hire you,” he said. “You’re too young, and no one will have any faith in you.”

Don was desperate. “I came all the way out here,” he pleaded. “Let me just show you what I can do.” And he buried the man’s desk in a pile of his own résumés—each a different presentation of the same set of skills.

The next day, he got the job.

A few years later, Don wanted to write a book about getting into grad school. The editor at Ten Speed Press had ignored his first five attempts at pitching a book. Don started calling the editor every morning and sending his pitch in outlandish packages, such as a messenger tube with a ribbon tied around it. “Finally, on the seventh day, he took my call,” he says.

After his first two books were published, Don hit another wall. Still trapped in the résumé revision business, he was desperate to fulfill his love of travel, so he asked his publisher for an advance. The publisher turned him down. Ironically, this rejection launched him on a wildly successful career as an expert on career counseling and college admission. “I created a lecture tour

for my second book, Graduate Admissions Essays,” he says. “If they had given me an advance, I never would have done this. It’s that kind of loophole, that opportunity, that you have to take advantage of.”

Imagination. Planning. Persistence.

These are some of the key qualities that Don emphasizes in his remarkable 12 books on career hunting, college applications, and résumé-building, not to mention scores of articles (many with playful headlines such as “How to Shave a Year off the PhD” and “Why College Grads Still Cannot Find a Job”). He lectures around the country and acts as a consultant for executives on hiring and career change.

One of his titles is particularly, even painfully, relevant for recent Reed grads enter-

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Don’s Tips on Avoiding “Failure to Launch” Don Asher greets students at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, after delivering his lectures “Choosing a Major and Career” and “Cracking the Hidden Job Market.”

ing the job market: How to Get Any Job: Life Launch and Re-Launch for Everyone Under 30, or How to Avoid Living In Your Parents’ Basement (Ten Speed Press).

Today’s graduates are entering into an unnerving job market, with national unemployment hovering above 9 percent. In that climate, it’s hard to turn down a gig washing dishes at a vegan restaurant or stocking shelves at Trader Joe’s. Idealistic Reedies, Don says, often have high aspirations for their future careers, but sometimes get discouraged because the jobs that fit those career models just don’t exist. Or, do they?

How to Get Any Job approaches the job search from a platform of self-invention, suggesting that talented people should craft a career to fit their needs, rather than searching for acceptable jobs they can live with. He advises recent grads to engage in something he calls “life planning,” a systematic approach to uniting individual passions, long-term goals, and services that the world needs. In doing so, he believes that career seekers have the freedom to design a truly satisfying path and avoid simply taking jobs to pay the rent. Sometimes, after all, the ideal job just isn’t going to be listed at the employment bureau.

Reedies, by and large a self-motivated and nonconformist bunch, make good candidates for this sort of “life planning,” Don says. Take Don’s own career, for example.

He didn’t step out of Reed with the intent to become an expert on colleges and careers. Instead, he says, his career developed as he followed his top five passions.

“I like to do creative things like writing and performing, I like to make a lot of money, I like to work hard, and I like to help other people be successful,” he says, “Plus, I’m fairly narcissistic. I always knew I wanted to do something where I win accolades, where people like and respect my work.”

Idealistic Reedies sometimes get discouraged because the jobs they dream about just don’t exist. Or do they?

The first step for successful life planning is to take a hard, honest look at yourself: what are your top five obsessions?

What do you truly enjoy doing that could in some way turn into a career?

What about those of us who rebel at the thought of putting on a suit and covering up our tattoos? Fear not. Even as Don strides through the corridors of corporate America, he is equally comfortable at Burning Man surrounded by fire spinners.

Which is sort of a relief, frankly. You can succeed in business and still be a Reedie, after all. —Mary Emily O’Hara ’12 Mary O’Hara ’12 is writing her thesis on the movement for the economic rights of artists. She also works as a journalist and an advocate for LGBTQ youth.

Make a Career Your Goal: Decide to get a career track position, not just a job. It may take months, but you have to stay in the game to win. Keep refining your long-term goals and keep an eye out for the position that takes you there.

Don’t Settle: Even if you get a job as a dishwasher, keep trying for career-track positions. Take a job and keep right on looking if it’s not the right one. Some successful people start a new job on Monday morning and then send out a bunch of résumés on Monday night.

Diversify Your Options: A lot of Reedies are idealistic and they overlook opportunities. Don’t be afraid of the business world. Look at corporate employers. It’s a lot easier to stand out at IBM than at the Hawthorne Street Fair.

Volunteer: It puts you in contact with people who have time and money to volunteer. These kinds of people can lead you into circles you might otherwise not know about.

Network: Make people talk to you about their careers. Statistically, if you can get 10 people to introduce you to their boss, you have a twothirds chance of getting a job.

Last year Don shared his insights on career-building at alumni events in Chicago, DC, LA, NYC, Seattle, and SF. For more alumni activities, see www.reed.edu/alumni.

For more on Don, see www.donaldasher.com.

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The Small Chill

Researcher Jeff Koplow ’90 finds a new way to cool overheating computers.

Like a puck on an air-hockey table, Koplow’s fan floats on a cushion of air, cooling the computer chip beneath it.

illustratioin by jeff Koplow

Deep inside the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, a black aluminum disk rests on a workbench, surrounded by a cluster of test equipment, wires, knobs, and dials. With its spiral fins, the disk looks vaguely like a child’s puzzle, but if it lives up to its potential, it could cut over 400 coal plants’ worth of electricity from America’s energy bill, according to its inventor, Jeff Koplow ’90.

When he graduated from Reed, Koplow was a chemistry major with an interest in instrumentation—tools scientists use to measure materials and phenomena. After earning a PhD in physical chemistry at Harvard, he began designing instrumentation to study pollution, climate change, and ozone depletion. This led him to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., where researchers had to fit laserbased instruments onto pilotless aircraft.

Gas lasers were too heavy and fragile. Solidstate lasers were lighter and more rugged, but weren’t powerful enough.

Along with colleague Dahv Kliner, Koplow began looking into lasers built from doped optical fiber. “At that time,” recalls Kliner, “one kilowatt of peak power would have been enormously high for a fiber laser. We wanted to get to many kilowatts.” Conventional wisdom held that the fiber had to be kept as straight as possible, because bending the fiber scrambles the signal it carries. Since fiber lasers had been primarily used in low-power telecommunication applications (data instead of energy), no one had considered how bending the fiber scrambled the signal—interrupting a phone call was the literal and figurative end of discussion. Koplow and Kliner, however, ignored the dogma and discovered that carefully bending the fiber laser threw out noise, letting desired light propagate through the laser. This blew the lid off what had been considered a hard upper boundary, and yielded a thousandfold improvement in power output. It put fiber lasers into the megawatt range, creating new markets for high-energy fiber

If the cooler’s underlying principle can be scaled up to air conditioners and refrigerators, Koplow predicts it could trim 7 percent from electricity demand in the U.S. lasers in science, industry, and medicine.

Koplow could have coasted to an easy career in laser research, but had, by the mid-2000s, become restless. “I basically got to about age 40,” he says, “and asked myself, ‘Do I want to keep doing what I’m doing?’” Having built instruments to study the damage being done to the atmosphere, Koplow wanted to attack the climate problem at its source: energy.

Koplow approached the puzzle methodically. “The three biggest consumers of electricity are cooling, lighting, and motors,” he says. “The first problem I decided to take on was heat transfer, because it was a relatively self-contained thing, which I could do on my own without a big team.”

What is the “heat transfer problem”?

If you’ve ever seen dust caked up inside a computer, been driven nuts by the drone of its cooling fan, or been fragged because your graphics card was too slow, you’ve encountered one aspect of it. The faster you run computer chips, the more heat they make, and their performance is limit-

ed by how fast they can get rid of that heat.

For the past 40 years, the state of the chip-cooling art has been to paste a finned metal heat sink to the processor, clamp a fan to it, and blow air at it. Air molecules, however, cling tenaciously to the heat sink by viscous forces in a boundary layer that traps heat as a blanket does. Blowing more air at the fins yields diminishing returns: it takes more power, makes more noise, and gathers more dust, which further blankets the heat sink. By 2003, processor speed stalled at around three billion processes a second (3 GHz), beyond which the heat transfer problem has stifled further progress.

Koplow returned to first principles. “If you want air flowing past the heat sink,” he explains, “all you care about is relative motion. You don’t really care if it’s the air moving, the heat sink moving, or both.

My thought was, ‘Well, why not impart that relative motion directly?’” Koplow’s research led him to an obscure 1956 paper that described a peculiar effect: the surfaces of a spinning disk transferred heat far

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beyond conventional predictions by centrifugally thinning the boundary air layer.

This mechanical jujistu uses the air’s own mass to overcome its viscosity and throws the boundary layer aside. “The first time I ran the idea by a fluid dynamics expert,” Koplow says, “he said he’d never heard of the effect, and was skeptical. But, indeed, it does exist, and it is quite powerful.”

The resulting design came to fruition in 2009, in a heat sink that spins on an air bearing—the same nearly frictionless bearing that floats a puck over an air hockey table. The prototype in Koplow’s lab delivers 10-fold improvement over a conventional heat sink. At the fin surface, Koplow measured a 30-fold improvement in heat transfer. The effect was proven.

Since then, Koplow’s invention has been wending its way through the patent office, Sandia’s technology transfer bureaucracy, and into the marketplace. Once released, it could transform energy-hungry server farms and consumer electronics. The cooler is cheap to manufacture, nearly silent, gathers no dust, and never wears out.

Computers are the beginning, but by no means the end. Every dirty air conditioner and every dust-fouled refrigerator coil getting air blown at it by an inefficient fan suffers the same problem as a computer with a dusty heat sink. If the cooler’s underlying principle can be scaled up to these larger uses, Koplow predicts it could trim 7 percent off the U.S.’s total electric bill. Sandia’s official release calls it a “fundamental breakthrough.”

What is striking about Koplow’s inventions is both their range (his patents improve everything from lasers to the patent system itself) and their elegance.

“People think in retrospect they were obvious,” Koplow says. “ You know you’ve accomplished something great when people say, ‘Oh, right, of course! That’s the way you want to do it.’” But the foreheadslapping conceals what really drives his ingenuity. Koplow’s office provides a clue: books cover almost every surface. Texts on thermodynamic jostle with organic chem-

istry, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, mathematics, optics, microprocessor design, classical mechanics, and an industrial supply catalog. Their titles betray no specialization; he specializes in all of it.

As he works to reinvent the light bulb and the electric motor (patents pending), Koplow reflects kindly on the approach to science he learned at Reed. “They teach you to think about things with great generality,” he says. “That’s something that’s becoming less and less common . . . Reed cultivated a keen interest in solving hard problems, understanding things. It pays a tremendous dividend.”

Reed also taught him the value of considering the big picture. “People ask, ‘How did you come up with this breakthrough?’

That’s where my style of thinking comes in,” Koplow says. “Where I say, ‘Look back and study again. How did we end up in this situation?’” Sometimes, it seems, you have to look back to go forward.

—William Abernathy ’88

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Guerrilla Archivist

Ephemeral librarian Megan Shaw Prelinger ’90 breaks every rule in the book.

By Matt Smith ’90 | photos by ariel zambelich

The beige and white warehouse at the corner of 8th and Folsom looks a lot like the other buildings in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. On the first floor is a carpet store. Out front is a four-lane thoroughfare. The area’s industrial era is a fleeting memory now; most of the city’s manufacturing has long-since moved to the exurbs or overseas.

Inside 301 8th Street, however, is a monument to the importance of remembering the seemingly unimportant remnants of such bygone eras—the Prelinger Library. Run by Megan Shaw Prelinger ’90, the library’s mission is to preserve and share elements of the past others were content to discard.

In a spacious, airy chamber Megan curates 40,000 publications once thought to be of mere temporar y interest— “ephemeral literature,” as she calls it. The collection, which she maintains with her husband Rick Prelinger, includes forgotten 1940s commercial trade journals, 19thcentury children’s magazines, old maps,

pamphlets, and newsletters, many of them discarded by more traditional libraries. For more than a decade, Megan has dedicated herself to a key insight: throwaways are the pith of history.

Just a few blocks away, for example, sits a hulking building that used to be a factory producing Bell Yellow Pages. It’s now tech offices. Few San Franciscans remember this past, let alone realize that once upon a time the telephone caused America to re-think itself.

Megan flips open the January 1940 issue of National Safety News. An advertisement shows a white woman with a blissful smile extolling the virtues of an America “united by telephone.”

“This is social change through technology. It’s gender history, with the woman as operator,” she says. “This emerging technology became almost gendered itself.

Ephemeral literature is like ephemeral film: It shows us a picture we don’t see anymore, of what life used to look like.”

Around a thousand people visit the Pre-

linger Library each year for a literary experience increasingly remote from their day-today lives. Standard historical sources, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence, don’t always present a complete picture of the past. The advertising, educational tracts, and narrowly-focused commercial publications found at the Prelinger Library give a more nuanced historical view.

“Magazines, pamphlets, brochures and the like contain micro-narratives, little stories that don’t always make it into books,” Megan says.

Indeed, a few hours spent in the Prelinger Library demonstrate that as more of the world’s information goes online, physical, dead-tree libraries may become more valuable than ever.

Megan’s reverence for the printed page doesn’t mean she’s a digital Luddite. In fact, she and Rick are internet pioneers.

Rick is famous as the creator of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of more than DecembER 2011 Reed magazine 21

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Megan Shaw Prelinger ’90 points out an ad from 1940 extolling the virtues of an America “united by telephone.”

Guerrilla Archivist

continued

48,000 “ephemeral” motion pictures sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movies, of which 4,500 are available online.

It’s now one of the internet’s richest content troves. Megan was an early contributor, and later director, of the online literary magazine Bad Subjects, which in 1992 was among the first periodicals to hit the web.

A few years later, Rick was trolling the internet and found two articles by Megan about her ancestors’ lives in Wisconsin and along the Columbia River. A correspondence ensued, during which they discovered a shared eccentricity. “I developed an idea after Reed to do scholarship on ephemeral literature,” Megan says. “I was collecting from used bookstores, and from library discards, thinking about what kind of picture of American history could be sketched based on that kind of evidence.”

Meanwhile, Rick had been driving around America uploading discarded old film into a truck, and collecting books and magazines along the way.

They married in 1999, and “it was then that we started talking about what we could do with our collections,” Megan says.

They shared an ethos, too: It’s useful to give away information for free. This was a lesson Megan says she learned during her time at Reed. Then, as now, a privateschool degree was expensive, but some of the most valuable intellectual experiences were available to anybody who was willing to sit on the SU porch.

Megan recalls Sociology 210 with John Pock [sociology 1955–98] as “perhaps the best single class I had at Reed.” But some of her most important teachers were classmates whose presence at Reed was, well, ephemeral. “The peer community ended up being the most significant ‘take away’ experience of my time at Reed,” she

says. “Decades of ongoing dialogues with friends like Alicia Curtis ’89, Deborah Rodgers ’85, Gary Wolf ’83, Glenna Allee ’90, Joel Schalit ’90, and others are part of the fabric of life that have made my intellectual and social life what it is.”

In 2003, the Prelingers leased the warehouse on 8th Street—cheaply, thanks to dot-com-crash vacancies—and installed rows of 11-foot-high steel shelves. With the help of some of some old Reed pals, they arranged material according to an idiosyncratic “geo-spatial” scheme, moving from concrete subjects such as urban planning, all the way to the history of space exploration. The library is open and free to all comers Wednesday afternoons and evenings.

On one such evening, Megan shows me copies of a newsletter produced in Olympia, Washington, by workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Workers for the depression-era jobs program wrote essays

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about fighting forest fires, cutting trees, building dams, and making trails.

“Not long ago someone came from the east coast who was doing research on the CCC. Before they found our online index, nobody had known this kind of material existed,” she says.

Megan recently mined the library’s collection of 1950s and 60s editions of Aviation Week and Missiles and Rockets to write her book, Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962, which examines the exaggerated advertising claims made by technology companies. (By now, according to the earnest, yet fantastical advertisements, we should have been gardening on the moon.)

Among San Francisco intelligentsia, the Prelingers are known as guerrilla archivists. But Megan doesn’t come across as a renegade. Her genteel, softspoken manner, and zeal for sharing and explaining the treasures in her stacks, comes across as a Platonic ideal of the old-time librarian. Indeed, she says she’s

Maintaining a grand tradition that predates the Royal Library of Alexandria. simply maintaining a grand tradition that predates the Royal Library of Alexandria.

Every library now in existence, she says, began as a small collection.

“We fit into the American tradition of ‘home libraries,’ where people would lend books to friends and neighbors during the 18th century and going into the 19th,” she says. “We’re also in the tradition of private research libraries. That’s how institutional libraries were eventually started.”

As if to confirm its place in the bibliosophic community, she notes that the Prelinger Library regularly gets visits from honeymooning librarians.

Honeymoons, after all, consist of fleeting, ephemeral moments whose significance deepens with time.

Matt Smith ’90 is a freelance writer living in San Francisco.

FURTHER READING Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962, by Megan Shaw Prelinger ’90. www. anothersciencefiction.com.

More information about the Prelinger Library is available at www.prelingerlibrary.org.

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Such Sweet Thunder Reed music professor David Schiff searches for the real Duke Ellington.

By Bill Donahue

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“ Jazz, for all the enthusiasm of its intellectual fans, is not music in the sense that an opera or a symphony is music. … As a musical language, jazz is graphic and colorful, but, in poetic resources, it is about as rich as pidgin English.”

—from “Is Jazz Music?” an essay by Winthrop Sargeant, published in the American Mercury magazine, 1943

W

hen Professor David Schiff [music 1980–] set out, a few years ago, to write his new book, The Ellington Century, which probes the musical mastery of jazz legend Duke Ellington (1899– 1974), he knew that he was tilting against long-ingrained suspicions. Jazz was born just over a century ago in a distinctly African American context—in rollicking ragtime bars, and in brothels, and on the streets of New Orleans’s Storyville—and at times its harshest critics have invoked the rhetoric of racial prejudice. Sargeant characterizes jazz as “primitive wails and thumps” exuding the “sincerity and naïve charm of primitive paintings.”

Among today’s critics and scholars, though, the debate over jazz’s aesthetic depth turns on specific and nuanced, yet politically fraught, questions like, for instance, “Did Duke Ellington compose great music?”

It is inarguable that Ellington, an African American pianist and orchestra leader, headed up one of the most beloved ensembles of the big band era. He wrote over 1,500 tunes, and in the ’30s and ’40s, his band’s hits were legion: “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” “Take the ‘A’ Train.” “Mood Indigo.” The guy was a good time—an amiable bear of a man who was famously able to down two steaks, a lobster, a plate of ham and eggs, and six pancakes in a single sitting. A high school dropout, he was devoid of pretension, and sometimes he’d snicker at the cerebral hipsters who’d show up at his gigs with furrowed brows and analytical airs.

Still, he worked in an age steeped in

bigotry. The black musicians in his band were routinely barred from hotels when the band traveled, and during World War II, he watched black soldiers go off to fight Nazism, only to be segregrated into all-Negro brigades. He felt charged with speaking for his race. He once said, “I don’t write jazz.

I write Negro folk music.” On another occasion, he said, “I am trying to play the natural feelings of a people. I believe that music, popular music of the day, is the real reflector of the nation’s feelings. Some of the music which has been written will always be beautiful and immortal. Beethoven, Wagner, and Bach are geniuses; no one can rob their work of merit that is due it, but these men have not portrayed the people who are about us today, and the interpretation of these people is our future music.”

Ellington bristled at being seen as a simple-minded entertainer, and he suggested that history would vindicate him. “The music of my race,” he said, “is something which is going to live, something which posterity will honor in a higher sense than merely that of the music of the ballroom today.” Since his death, many critics have come to regard him as visionary. Writing in the New Yorker in 1996, Stanley Crouch called him “the most protean of American geniuses.” Crouch adds that Ellington “assayed a multitude of forms and voices as successfully as Herman Melville.”

But to some Ellington experts, this sort of praise is nothing but purple prose. In his 1987 biography, Duke Ellington, James Lin-

coln Collier refuses to call his subject a composer. “By ‘composer,’” he says, “we usually mean somebody who makes up more or less complete works of music that are written down. . . . Ellington rarely wrote out a composition in complete form, and in many, perhaps most, instances, the work existed on paper only in scraps and pieces.”

In a 1996 Commentary essay, writer Terry Teachout echoes Collier, arguing that Ellington bore “only a superficial grasp of the techniques necessary to create organically larger musical structures.” He adds, “At no time did he seek formal training,” and also complains that “surprisingly little criticism of [Ellington’s] work has been produced by trained musicians.”

Enter David Schiff. A Reed prof since 1980, Schiff, whose Ellington book is being published by the University of California Press, studied at the Juilliard School of Music. He has composed five pieces for the Seattle Symphony, conducted his own music for Chamber Music Northwest, and arranged songs for jazz saxophonist Jim Pepper. And he has long been irked

by Collier’s remark about the scraps of paper. “He was just passing along ninthgeneration rumor,” Schiff says. “When he wrote that, nobody had seen Ellington’s papers.” Indeed, the bandleader kept his arrangements secret, for fear other ensembles would copy his magic, and for many years after his death his handwritten manuscripts simply rotted away, along with bounteous photos and scrapbooks, in a drafty Manhattan warehouse.

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continued

But then, in 1988, the musician’s aging son, Mercer Ellington, turned more than 300 cubic feet of archival materials over to the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. Schiff tuned in. To research The Ellington Century, he made three five-day trips to Washington in 2009 and 2010. In a small, windowless room just across the hall from an often-visited recreation of Julia Child’s television kitchen, he leafed through endless stacks of Ellington scores, trying to heed jazzman Charlie Parker’s famous dictate, “Hear with your eyes and see with your ears.”

The papers formed a layered palimpsest.

Sometimes Ellington’s scores are written in pencil. Sometimes they’re meticulously rendered in black India ink—Ellington employed a professional copyist. Sometimes they bear the marginal comments and doodles of various players in Ellington’s band, and sometimes another pencil script joins Ellington’s amid the black bars—his staff arranger, Billy Strayhorn, often pitched in. At times, Ellington didn’t feel confident writing transitions and endings.

Terry Teachout, the Commentary writer, may read the Smithsonian archives as signal proof that Ellington was not a bona fide composer. Teachout is at work on his own Ellington bio (working title: Mood Indigo) and he’s already emphasized that Strayhorn composed some of Ellington’s biggest hits, among them “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Schiff has more respect for Ellington, though. Indeed, in his book’s most heartfelt passage, he describes his visit to the Smithsonian’s archives as a pilgrimage.

Researching a 1970 Ellington piece, New Orleans Suite, he says: I carefully worked my way, one folder at a time, through the materials. When I opened Folder 5 of Box 242, though, I came upon the holy grail, Ellington’s sketches for “The Second Line,” written, as was his habit, very distinctly in pencil with full indications of all the harmonic voicings. Often these pencil sketches show signs that they were written on the road; they may occur on the back of another piece of music and are often full of arrows that re-order the phrases between different pages. With familiarity, though, it becomes clear that Ellington and Strayhorn both worked in a systematic way that allowed [the copyist] to extract parts from a score set out on four or five staves. The sketches look casual but in fact they are complete (with the provision that neither Elling-

Professor David Schiff [music 1980–] trembled when he unearthed Ellington’s original sketches for “The Second Line,” (opposite) in the Smithsonian’s archives.

ton nor Strayhorn wrote out a drum part, and rarely indicated much about the piano part, which, of course, they would be playing). In the middle of sketches for different phrases, I found Ellington’s first entry for the great tune that serves as its refrain, a defiant melody that seems to capture the essential spirit of jazz. My hands began to tremble. It was like finding the very first jottings for Beethoven’s Fifth, seeing the moment when the notes first hit the page.

For a second I felt as if Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was looking over my shoulder, pointing to his sassy tune with pride.

Sixty-five-year-old David Schiff was perhaps born to vindicate Duke Ellington. The grandson of poor Jewish immigrants, he grew up just outside New York City, in a family that was brainy and liberal and also devout. “We weren’t just cultural Jews,” says Schiff. “For my father, eating pastrami wasn’t enough.”

The Schiffs spent their Friday evenings singing at a conservative synagogue; at home they listened to Yiddish music on a Jewish radio station, WEVD. “But we weren’t one of those Jewish families where everyone plays the violin,” says Schiff. “My father was a college administrator.” Still, Schiff père had an extensive record collection, and by the time young David was four, he had commandeered the hi-fi in the living room, so that he could listen to the soundtrack from South Pacific 8 or 10 times a day.

Before he was 10, Schiff was composing

his own symphonies, in the spirit of La Mer

by Claude Debussy. At music camp in the Adirondacks, when Schiff was 14, a famed conductor listened to a juvenile Schiff piece and decreed, “Schiff, you’re a composer!”

With his mother, Schiff went to many Broadway musicals; sometimes he visited Radio City Music Hall for “prestige” films such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But in all his cultural wanderings, he never set foot in Carnegie Hall or the New York Philharmonic. The plush velvet seats at these venues were, he says, beyond his family’s modest means, and so he never evolved rarefied notions about what constitutes high art. “When Leonard Bernstein went on TV and said, ‘Musical comedy is American opera,’” he remembers, “I heard that. I grew up middlebrow.”

When Schiff matriculated at Columbia University, to begin working toward a PhD in English, he expanded his cultural adventures, now delving into Manhattan’s happening jazz scene. He caught Miles Davis live at Fillmore East, took in James Brown at the Apollo Theater, and Theolonius Monk at the Five Spot. When he went away to Cambridge in 1967 on a fellowship, he still homed in on jazz, now listening to Count Basie and Louis Armstrong on BBC Radio.

At age 27, Schiff shifted his career path and entered Juilliard to study classical composition. His first piece was an opera, Gimpel the Fool, based on an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story about a beleaguered baker. Joyously surreal, Gimpel is steeped in

l e f t : p h o t o b y v i v i a n j o h n s o n • o p p o s i t e r i g h t : D u k e E l l i n g t o n C o l l e c t i o n , A r c h i v e s C e n t e r , N at i o n a l M u s e u m o f A m e r i c a n H i s t o r y, S m i t h s o n i a n I n s t i t u t i o n .

Such Sweet Thunder

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Such Sweet Thunder

continued

Jewish motifs and features the memorable line, “The rabbi gave birth to a calf.” Schiff says that, in writing the opera, he was channeling the jazz inflections in the music of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Later, all the jazz music he’d heard in his formative days caused him to pepper his steady outpouring of classical compositions with a few straight jazz pieces. He wrote Shtik (1992) for a jazz quintet and Low Life (1998) for a big, Ellington-style jazz band.

Meanwhile, he also wrote about jazz, with an ardor for kicking up dust. In 1991, in a New York Times column about the revival in “Golden Age” symphonies from the ’30s, he dissed these “waterlogged vessels” and urged readers to tune in, instead, to ’30s-era black swing artists such as Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, and Chick Webb.

In a 1995 Atlantic piece, he argued that Ellington and Stravinsky were aesthetic brethren, as they both built music in a cubist manner by cobbling together “complicated, dense and disorienting” phrases.

He was, it seems, already drafting his new book in his mind.

The principal thesis of The Ellington Century is that in American music of the 1900s the walls between genres were unnecessary, and erected by fussy, uptight music snobs who wanted to ghettoize jazz. The century’s lifeblood lay, he believes, in cross-pollination.

“Leonard Bernstein jammed (once) with Miles Davis,” Schiff writes. “Frank Zappa worshipped the music of Edgard Varèse.

[But] no single oeuvre represents the full cross-categorical range of mid-20th century music more than the vast repertory, mainly composed by Ellington and Strayhorn, of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. This rich body of music, written over nearly 50 years, includes enduring songs, instrumental tone parallels, jazz concertos, extended suites, ballet music, film music, sacred music.”

Schiff ’s stance is inherently political, for it demands us to consider more than the snappy, catchy songs that made Ellington famous early on, when he was playing what white fans called “jungle music” at the Cotton Club in Harlem. These tunes were all three minutes and 12 seconds long, at most. They were crafted to fit on a 78-rpm record, and in time Ellington grew beyond them and became, controversially, more ambitious, more expansive.

In 1943, for instance, he produced Black, Brown and Beige, a 45-minute, three-part orchestral piece that endeavored to capture the whole sweep of African American history, from slavery to post–World War II Harlem, largely through tonally varied instrumental pieces. In the last decade of his life, he wrote three Sacred Concerts, which mixed ethereal vocals with frolicsome tap dancing and ultimately, in a 1973 concert, brought soulful jazz into the lofty nave of Westminster Abbey in London.

John Hammond, the vaunted midcentury music critic and producer, griped that, in changing his act, Ellington “has introduced complex harmonies solely for effect.” Many

“ For a second, I felt as if Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington was looking over my shoulder, pointing to his sassy tune with pride.”

subsequent critics have likewise dismissed Ellington’s later stuff, but Schiff sees the bandleader as relevant throughout—and in the thick of the 20th century’s most vexing cultural debates. In discussing a driving 1957 instrumental, “Such Sweet Thunder,” inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello, he relates how Ellington always told audiences about “all the fun” that the black king and his beloved, fair Desdemona had together.

“With its brash, brazen, brassy opening,” Schiff argues, the piece didn’t simply retell Shakespeare in an African American idiom.

It “challenged the era’s official culture of sexual repression. . . . In the third chorus, the ‘jungle’ speaks, gently, in the form of a nonchalant trumpet solo.”

The Ellington Century doesn’t try to be a comprehensive Ellington biography. It is, rather, a medley of eight essays, each presented as a chapter whose title hints at a musical motif. There is “Color,” for instance, and “Rhythm,” and “Melody.” While each essay sets Ellington’s songs in a sociopolitical context, it’s engaged primarily with close musical analysis, so that in “Color,” Schiff

explores what he calls “Ellington’s gift for translating visual colors into tone colors” by dwelling on how one 1938 tune, “Blue Light,” uses “meditative bell-like chords on the piano” to suggest “the indigo atmosphere of the last set in some nearly deserted nightclub.” He outlines the song’s score—“piano solo 4 bars, Chorus I . . . ”—and then lets Ellington describe how he mainly learned blues in the street: “I went on with studying, of course, but I could also hear people whistling, and I got all the Negro music that way.

You can’t learn that in any school.”

As he researched his book, Schiff listened to some Ellington songs over 100 times, and he so savored the music—now frantic and light on its feet, and now slow and majestic and regal—that he realized that part of him had always yearned to be a jazz composer.

“But if you think of the list of people who’ve been jazz composers it has about two people on it, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus,” he says. “It didn’t seem like there was a place in music for a jazz composer.”

For many years, Schiff says, he tried to satisfy his jazz craving as many classical composers do, by “importing colors and elements from jazz.” That didn’t work, exactly.

“The standard approach,” Schiff says, “is to treat the jazz as though it’s just icing on the cake. The assumption is that classical has a monopoly on technique. I’ve questioned that idea for a long time.”

And on a recent Thursday morning, it seemed that perhaps Ellington had perhaps set Schiff free from his angst. It was gray and cool outside, and as Schiff shuffled about in his third-floor Prexy office, he fielded the odd email from Seattle. That night, the Seattle Symphony was performing a new David Schiff piece, a three-minute tribute to the Symphony’s longtime music director, Gerard Schwarz, who was retiring. Schwarz was once a trumpeter, and so Schiff’s piece was a snappy salsa number starring a trumpet. It drew very little from the gods of classical music. “Ellington,” Schiff explained, “was the master of the three-minute piece. He provided the formal model for me, and there’s even a few trumpet licks that I lifted straight from ‘Lady Mac,’” a late Ellington song.

Schiff scat-sang the stolen riff—badapapabadapapabadapapa. Then he rolled his head back for a moment, delighted. In a few hours, the symphony would be playing his new piece, and the music of Duke Ellington would live once more, reinvented, far from the ballrooms of Harlem.

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REED

Eliot Society

100 100 years of reed .

years of giving.

make your mark.

Amanda Reed’s bequest founded the college for “the promotion of literature, science and arts.” As Reed celebrates its centennial, we invite you to join the Eliot Society by making a bequest commitment of your own.

Contact Kathy Saitas at 503/777-7573 or plannedgiving@reed.edu to make sure Reed can accept your gift as written. plannedgiving.reed.edu

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An irreverent compendium of the ideas, episodes, people, and traditions that have shaped Reed in the last 100 years.

Edited by Chris Lydgate ’90 • cover illustration by grady mcferrin

1 + 1 = 2: Almost nothing is as simple as it looks, not even the elementary statement 1 + 1 = 2. Sure, it seems obvious. But, go ahead and prove it. This fiendish problem—demonstrating the simplest equation of all time—was the killer question on the final exam of Math 113, Construction of Real Numbers, which introduced generations of Reedies to the thrill of rigorous mathematics. Created

by Lloyd Williams ’35 [mathematics 1947–81] and John Leadley [mathematics 1956–93], Math 113 was long considered one of the most demanding freshman courses taught anywhere in the country. (We recently dug up a sheaf of old notes and were soon hopelessly mired in the Peano-Henkin-Lawvere Axiom.)

12 noon: For many years, Reed faculty decreed that theses were due on the last Friday in April at noon—no exceptions. However, Ellen Knowlton Johnson ’39 [registrar 1945–81] hated to turn away frantic seniors who dashed in a few minutes late. On occasion, she was known to unplug the office clock just before noon and accept theses “on time” until she went home for the day. almanac: An arbitrary compendium of fact and fancy compiled by fortune-tellers, magazine editors, and other harmless cranks. Not to be confused with serious works of reference such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, or even worse, official histories.

alumni: A subterranean network of far-flung visionaries poised to take over the world. President William T. Foster (q.v.) took a surprisingly dim view of the whole concept of alumni, believing that they kept colleges handcuffed to tradition and “seem to feel that their chief business is to keep the college exactly as it was in the halcyon days of their youth.” Of course, that was before the invention of Reed alumni, whose halcyon days lie in the future. Seriously, though, Foster does not seem to have anticipated the enormous role alumni would eventually play in shaping Reed’s destiny, both by their accomplishments and by their contributions. anthropology: The study of the human family and its misbehavior. The discipline did not actually gain its own department until 1948, roughly coinciding with the (re)arrival of David French ’39, a pioneer in the field of linguistic anthropology. Classic courses have included Systems of Magic, The Anthropology of Millenarianism, Time and Space, and The Moral Symbolism of Eating (we feel hungry already).

Anthro majors at Reed undergo a blindfold initiation rite in which they are paraded through the canyon and drink the blood of their ancestors (actually V8, we think). Influential profs (q.v.) have included Alexander Goldenweiser [1933– 39], David French ’39 [1947–88], Gail Kelly ’55 [1960–2000], Claude Vaucher [1963–94], Kathrine (Kay) French [1981–2006], John Haviland

[1986–2005], Robert Brightman ’73 [1989–], Rupert Stasch ’91 [1998–2009], Charlene Makley [2000–], and Paul Silverstein [2000–]. art: A rigorous and uncomfortable discipline requiring students to stand in a room and stare at a naked body. Art was offered in Reed’s early years but then disappeared from the catalogue, not rematerializing until 1935, when the college began to offer courses on sculpture, drawing, materials and methods, and of course, art history, where the naked people can’t stare back at you. Intriguing courses have included Medieval Manuscript Illumination, The Book as Sculptural Object, Visual Art in Cold War Culture, and Iconoclasm. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Lloyd Reynolds [1929–69], Marianne Littman [1945–51], Charles Rhyne [1960–97], Willard Midgette [1963–71], Robert Palladino [1969–84], Peter Parshall [1971–2000], Scott Sonniksen [1975–82], Greg Ware [1979–89], Michael Knutson [1982–], William Diebold [1987–], Geraldine Ondrizek [1994–], James Van Dyke [2000–07], Dana Katz [2005–], and Akihiko Miyoshi [2005–]. asylum block: A dysphemistic term for the Foster-Scholz dorms, built in 1955. (Also sometimes applied to MacNaughton.) While many inmates have shuddered at the spare design and the long hallways, others remember the dorms fondly and feel they promote solidarity because

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they are impossible to traverse without bumping into someone. Architectural historians consider Foster-Scholz a strong example of modernist design. Of course, they never had to live there. atheism: See communism.

Ballantine, Duncan [preZ 1952–54]: MIT historian who came to Reed bent on reforming the college’s old-fashioned governance structure and reining in its unruly students. He nullified the faculty constitution and pursued an active role in student discipline, traditionally the domain of the student council.

These attempts aroused fierce resistance from professors and students. Tension was further inflamed when three Reed professors were publicly denounced as communists. Ballantine suspended art professor Lloyd Reynolds and fired philosophy professor Stanley Moore, outraging the faculty, which passed a motion of no confidence. Ballantine resigned and went on to serve as president of the American College for Girls in Istanbul, Turkey. biology: Science involving dilly-dallying with worms, slime, frogs, spiders, ferns, fussy microscopes, and monster textbooks. Biologists fall into two distinct species: those who study whole organisms, and those who focus on transactions at the cellular and subcellular levels. The whole-organism camp appears to have had the upper hand in the early days, offering courses on physiology and embroyology, but the microscope mob struck back in 1918, teaching courses on histology, cytology, and bacteriology.

Other intriguing courses have included Exercise Physiology; Cambrian Zoology; and Osteology of the Reptiles, a class on the crucial subject of dinosaurs and how cool they are. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Harry Beal Torrey [1912–20], L.E. Griffin [1920-45], Milo Clare [1925–37], Ralph Macy [1942–55], Frank Hungate [1946–52], Lewis Kleinholz [1946–80], Helen Stafford [1954–87], Laurens Ruben [1955–92], Frank Gwilliam [1957–96], Gabriel Lester [1961–72], Bert Brehm [1962–93], Peter Russell [1972–2011], Steve Arch [1972–], Maryanne McClellan [1981–], Bob Kaplan [1983–], David Dalton [1987–], Steven Black [1989–], Janis Shampay [1990–], Keith Karoly [1994–], and Jay Mellies [1999–]. black studies: The study of the history, politics, culture, and literature of Africa and the African diaspora. Various departments at Reed offered courses on these topics over the years— the anthro department taught a class on ethnic relations in the forties—but never in a unified or systematic way. In the ’60s, however, concerns over “relevance,” combined with a rising number of black students on campus, sparked a student campaign for black studies, culminating in the occupation of Eliot Hall in 1968. Proponents

argued that black studies were essential to a modern curriculum. Opponents argued that black studies, however important and desirable, were simply not a fundamental component of the liberal arts, from which Reed strayed at its peril. The faculty narrowly approved the program by a vote of 55-53 and hired Portland journalist and historian William McClendon to run it. The program offered courses in literature, history, politics, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology, but was never fully merged into the curriculum, and was discontinued in 1975.

Since then, courses on the subject have migrated back to their original departments, e.g. English 356, The Art of the African American Short Story; or History 369, Slavery and Freedom in the Native American Southeast.

Bragdon, Paul [preZ 1971–88]: Bragdon arrived at Reed in an atmosphere of financial crisis. A lawyer and Marine Corps veteran, Bragdon had served as press secretary to Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City, and worked as vice president of New York University. Inheriting a meager endowment—at $4.4 million, it was barely half of Amanda Reed’s original bequest, adjusted for inflation—Bragdon sought to shore up finances while prudently investing in academic expansion. Achievements during his tenure include departmental status for Spanish, majors in Asian studies along with art and history, restoration of the senior symposium, new visiting professorships and faculty chairs, enlargement of Hauser Library and establishment of the Cooley Gallery, construction of Vollum College Center and a studio art building, and pioneering programs in computing and educational technology. Toward the end of his presidency, Bragdon had to grapple with the fractious issue of divestment (q.v.). Although investment decisions were actually made by the trustees, Bragdon became the target of much student ire, and in 1985 his office was occupied by student protestors. Nonetheless, his Campaign for Reed raised $65 million, and he left the college with a remarkable 16-fold increase in endowment. By the time he retired, Bragdon had handed diplomas to 40 percent of all Reed graduates. Bragdon later served as president of the Oregon Graduate Institute and was then called out of retirement to be interim president of Lewis & Clark College.

He and his wife, Nancy, an educator and author, continue to make Portland their home. calligraphy: From the Greek καλλιγραϕία, literally “ beautiful writing.” A practice brought to the college by visionary professor Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69], whose humanistic philosophy and sweeping, interdisciplinary approach to education and life continue to influence the Reed ethos to this day. Reynolds was exacting in his approach, relentlessly drilling students on proper letter forms, pen angle, and the significance of text

Reed through the Ages 1 million years ago

Early hominids roam canyon. Fossil evidence suggests affinity for blue paint and owl worship.

1895 Shipping tycoon Simeon Reed dies,

leaving fortune to wife Amanda.

Unitarian minister Thomas Lamb Eliot urges her to establish a college.

1904

Amanda Reed dies, dedicating her estate to “an institution of learning having for its object the increase and diffusion of practical knowledge . . . and for the promotion of literature, science and arts.”

1905 Eleven heirs file suit to break

Amanda’s will. A 12th heir, nephew Martin Winch, opposes them in long and bitter court fight.

1909 Amanda’s will upheld by Oregon

Supreme Court. Her fortune—worth approximately $44 million today— transferred to the Reed Institute.

1910 Trustee William M. Ladd donates

40 acres for new campus at Crystal Springs Farm.

1910 Bowdoin professor William T. Foster,

31, appointed first president. Brims with radical ideas, such as academic rigor, senior thesis, and simplified spelling. Bans grades, frats, sororities, and intercollegiate sports.

1911 First classes held.

Last year of Olde Reed.

1912 Thousands gather at the laying of the cornerstone of the Arts and Science Building (later Eliot Hall). A railway spur is laid on Great Lawn to speed construction.

1912 Reed’s first convocation is held in halfbuilt chapel, with 124 freshlings and 45 sophomores.

First Campus Day features tug-of-war between freshlings and sophomores over lake at Crystal Springs.

Students refer to campus as “Mr. Ladd’s Cow Pasture.”

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in design. Students responded to the challenge with enthusiasm, embracing the convergence of art, history, literature, and philosophy inherent in Reynolds’s teaching. For decades, Reedies hand lettered an extraordinary number of banners, cards, programs, menus, and posters all over campus, leading to a Zen-like reverence for the art of letter writing. Reynolds’s successor, Robert J. Palladino, carried the torch for an additional 15 years, until the faculty voted to drop the course in 1984. A very brief list of notable devotees would include poet Philip Whalen ’51, software guru Peter Norton ’65, type designer Chuck Bigelow ’67, and computing pioneer Steve Jobs. canyon: From its humble beginnings as a waterlogged cow pasture, the Reed canyon now flourishes as a centerpiece of campus life. Home to an extraordinary variety of plants and wildlife, the canyon contains the headwaters of Crystal Springs Creek and Reed Lake—deemed the oldest natural lake in Portland. The 28-acre watershed, which runs east to west through the heart of campus, was the site of a community swimming hole (dug in 1915 and enhanced in 1929 by the dam whose vestiges make up the land bridge), a swimming pool, muddy tug-of-war bouts, short-lived canoeing expeditions, ice skating, and thesis research. Since 1913, students and staff have come together to get their hands dirty on Campus/Canyon Day to preserve and restore its beauty. The college has also mounted an extraordinary effort to restore the canyon’s ecology to a self-sustaining condition by clearing invasive species, building a fish ladder, meandering the stream, and improving the culvert underneath Southeast 28th Avenue. As a consequence, many of the canyon’s original inhabitants have returned, including blue herons, steelhead trout, coyotes, and bald eagles. catalogue of ships: Monstrous passage in book two of the Iliad listing the various Greek ships, crews, and captains who joined the great expedition to Troy. Although many alumni will admit they skipped the section, the title remains powerfully evocative and functions as a nostalgic talisman when Reedies encounter one another in faraway places. chemistry: Science investigating the interaction of matter and energy at the atomic level with an eye to blowing things up. For many years, Organic Chemistry had a particularly fearsome reputation, possibly because it was a requirement for bio majors and premed students. Scanning through the catalogue, it is hard to think of a discipline with more intimidating course titles. Some of our favorites include Economic Chemistry, Chemical Thermodynamics, Organometallic Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry, and Environmental Chemistry. Influential

Ken Kaiser ’62 practicing calligraphy from Lloyd Reynolds’s Italic Lettering & Handwriting.

profs (q.v.) have included William Conger Morgan [1911–20], Ralph Strong [1920–34], Arthur Scott [1923–79], Walter Carmody [1926–41], Frederick Ayres [1940–70], Frank Hurley [1942– 51], Joseph Bunnett [1946–52], Arthur Livermore [1948–65], Marsh Cronyn ’40 [1952–89], John Hancock [1955–89], Frederick Tabbutt [1957–71], Michael Litt [1958–66], Tom Dunne [1963–95], William Weir [1968–83], Larry Church [1973–80], Ron McClard [1984–], Dan Gerrity [1987–], Arthur Glasfeld [1989–], Alan Shusterman [1989–], Pat McDougal [1990–], and Maggie Geselbracht [1993–]. cherry blossoms: Beacons of floral hope to generations of students, the Japanese flowering cherry trees of Eliot Circle put on a spectacular show each spring when the gloom of winter finally relaxes its grip. For a few precious weeks the circle explodes into a wonderland of pale pink petals, which fall earthward in snow-like flurries, drifting ankle-deep on the sidewalks.

The five trees closest to Eliot make up the original planting of Prunus serrulata, which occurred sometime in the 1980s. More trees were planted the following decade.

Chinese: The language and culture of the greatest civilization ever known. Courses on Chinese history, religion, art, and anthropology were offered at Reed for many decades, but it was not until 1990 that Chinese got its own department, thanks to gifts from benefactors and the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation. Intriguing course titles include Uses of the Supernatural in Classical Chinese Literature, Text and Tradition of the Book of Change, Visions of a Mad-

man: Modern Chinese Fiction in the Republican Period, and The Social Life of Poetry in the Tang Dynasty. Influential profs have included Charles Wu [1988–2002] and Hyong Rhew [1988–].

Chunk 666: Postapocalyptic bicycle gang renowned for welding highly unstable, excessively terrifying, frequently flaming tall bikes, choppers, and other velomutations. Often seen riding the streets of Portland clad in salvaged kitchen equipment, spandex, and bucket helmets. Tall-bike jousting remains a staple of Renn Fayre, thanks to founding member Megulon-5 (also known as Karl Anderson ’95). classics: The language and culture of the greatest civilizations ever known. From the beginning, Reed has boasted an outstanding tradition in the classics. In 1914, Antigone was actually presented in Greek. For many years, only Greek was offered as an elementary course since it was expected that students would have learned Latin in high school! Beyond the hallowed names that echo down the millennia, the department at Reed has offered intriguing courses such as Comedy, Epic, Satire and Tragedy; Gender, Sexuality, and the Ancient World; and Greek Sanctuaries and Festivals. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Kelley Rees [1912–20], Laurence Hartmus [1930–39], Frederic Peachy [1956–82], Richard Tron [1961–2003], Wally Englert [1981–], Nigel Nicholson [1995–], and Ellen Millender [2002–]. cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am.

Influential declaration by René Descartes that only philosophy majors understand.

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1913 First Campus/Canyon Day. First issue of the Quest. Unfortunately, others follow.

1914 Student Council bans the tango “and all other dances of questionable character.”

1915 Yearbook employs simplified spelling.

Property bubble pops. Endowment shrivels.

First crop of Reedites unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Alumni Association formed.

1917 U.S. enters World War I. Press brands

Students survey the wreckage after the Columbus Day Storm of 1962.

Reed a hotbed of sedition (many people confuse Reed president William T. Foster with communist leader William Z. Foster).

1917 To ease financial straits and to aid coleman, Norm [preZ 1925–34]: One of Reed’s first professors [English 1912–20], Coleman coined the phrase “Comrades of the Quest,” which fit the new college so well that the students named their newspaper for it. Played key role in developing Reed’s faculty constitution, which gave professors a strong voice in the running of the college. Coleman left Reed in 1920 to serve as president of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, but returned after the death of President Richard Scholz (q.v.) to become Reed’s third president. Coleman successfully raised almost half a million for the endowment and oversaw construction of the Hauser Library.

After retiring as president, Coleman went back to teaching English at Reed until 1939.

Columbus Day Storm: Generally reckoned to be the most powerful extratropical cyclone to hit the United States in the 20th century. Starting October 12, 1962, with peak gusts of 100 miles per hour, it rampaged through California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, killing 23 people, destroying 84 homes, severely damaging 5,000 more, and wreaking overall havoc estimated at $170 million. Sometimes attributed to divine retribution after Reed defeated Columbia Christian College 19–7 on the football field, which may be true. Sometimes blamed on the mock crucifixion staged by Reedies at halftime, which is probably false; most sources place that blasphemous reenactment (in which a student actually dragged a cross along the field) several years earlier. communism: See free love. cookery: Plato told Socrates in Protagoras, “There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.” But Plato never had to eat in commons. Perhaps it was the urge to find ways to evade the tedium of commons in

the old days that turned so many Reedies into foodies and inspired Jay Rosenberg ’63 to write his classic, The Impoverished Student’s Book of Cookery, Drinkery, and Housekeepery, w h ich m any cre di t with demystifying the science of the kitchen.

Our gastronomic alumni are far too numerous to list, but for example’s sake, we cite author James Beard ’24, Genoan Amelia Hard ’67, kitchen kaboodler Lynn Becraft ’75, barbecue baron Steven Raichlen ’75, restaurateur Kurt Huffman ’94, and salt shaker Mark Bitterman ’95. It will be interesting to track the progress of Reed epicures in the future now that the chow in commons is so much better. creative writing: Art form based on the elements of blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

Although courses in composition were taught in the 1910s, the first real creative writing class was offered in 1920 within the English department. After long, peripatetic years, staffed by itinerant faculty, the program finally found a home in the English department and hired two tenure-track professors around the turn of the century. Intriguing course titles over the years have included Screenwriting, The Personal Essay, From Shaft to Stimpy: Cultural Iconography and Idiom as Poetic Muse, and Found Poems.

Influential profs (q.v.) have included Crystal Williams [2000–] and Peter Rock [2000–]. Many other well-known writers have taught at Reed, including James Dickey ’51 [1962–64], Donald Justice [1962–63], Galway Kinnell [1966–67], Kathleen Fraser [1972, 1994–95), Gary Miranda [1979–87], Maxine Scates [1989–2006], Henri Cole [1992–93], Vern Rutsala ’56 [1992–93,

in the war effort, Foster suspends humanities courses and amps up vocational offerings. Students outraged.

1918 Financial crisis deepens.

1919 Foster resigns. Last year of Olde Reed.

Honor Principle, “based on the assumption that students shall conduct themselves according to their own ideas of right and wrong,” first placed into the constitution.

Students undertake ill-fated foray into intercollegiate sports. Ask to withdraw two years later.

1920 Dorms hold “boat race” on Reed Lake on Canyon Day. (Actually a contest to determine which vessel sinks slowest.)

Doyle Owl liberated from Eastmoreland prison by residents of House F.

1921 UW history professor Richard Scholz becomes president. Introduces outline of current curriculum.

Commons (now the SU) built.

Lab rat makes first thesis appearance.

James Beard ’24 expelled, goes on to become the godfather of American cooking. Reed gives him honorary degree in 1976; he bequeaths estate and cookbooks to college.

1922 Scholz hikes tuition, launches first fundraising campaign.

1924 President Scholz dies following surgery.

1925 English prof Norm Coleman

appointed president, attempts to infuse a little piety into “godless Reed.”

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1999–2000, 2006–07], Carolyn Kizer [1992–93], and Debra Ginsberg ’85 [2002–03]. crickets: Cornelia LeBoutillier [dean of women 1941–43] had a reputation as a defender of feminine propriety. One evening as she was patrolling campus, she ran into J.J. Brownlee, the night watchman. As she said goodnight, she said, ‘“Oh, Mr. Brownlee, listen to all those crickets.” And he said “Boolyă! Those ain’t crickets, those are zippers!” cross-canyon: Built between 1959 and 1962, when the modernist bloom was still on the rose, the cross-canyon dorms (Akerman, Coleman, Sisson, Chittick, Woodbridge, Griffin, and McKinley) have been home to thousands of students who came to savor living at the edge of a wooded glen. The architects doubled up the rooms facing into the canyon to allow as many students as possible a view, according to Neil Farnham ’40, partner in the firm that designed the dormitories. The use of glass and sloping roofs were attempts to tie the buildings to the landscape. The buildings featured innovations such as radiant floor heat and tilt-out vents for fresh air, with single, double, and triple rooms clustered around common living areas to promote interaction. In 1997, Akerman, Coleman, and Sisson were razed to make way for Bragdon Hall.

would look after themselves—a proposition as unrealistic then as it is now.) So the herculean task of guiding, counseling, cajoling, and comforting students was left to professors, presidents, spouses, and classmates. The role of the dean broadened during and after World War II. No title can fully describe the job. No words can express our gratitude. But let us salute those who have had the courage and compassion to take on one of the toughest jobs in the world: Eleanor Harris Rowland [1911–17], Maida Rossiter Bailey [1912–42], Ada Chenoweth McCown [1929–31], Cheryl Scholz MacNaughton [1938–43], Cornelia LeBoutillier [1941–43], Robert Canon [1948–54], Ann Shepard ’23 [1950–68;], Josephine Grannatt Davis ’41 [1958–63], Pat Hanawalt [1959– 82], Les Squier [1955–62], Jack Dudman ’42 [1963–85], David Groff [1983–87], Paula Rooney [1981–85], Susan Crim [1985–89], Jim Tederman [1990–99], Regina Mooney [1999–2002], Mary Catherine King [2002–07], Jerlena GriffinDesta [2008–09], and Mike Brody [2009–].

Dean of the faculty: Chief academic officer, guardian of Reed’s educational mission, and fundamental point of contact between the faculty and the president. For the first 60 years, Reed had no such officer, in part because the faculty’s sway over every aspect of the college was so great it saw no reason to send a delegate to the remote and relatively unimportant office of the president. As the operation of the college grew more complex, it was perhaps inevitable that this would change.

The first provost (as the title was originally) was Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94], appointed in 1972 by President Paul Bragdon (q.v.). Other provosts and deans of the faculty include: Frank Gwilliam [1979–82], Marsh Cronyn ’40 [1982– 88], Douglas Bennett [1989–93], Linda Mantel [1993–97], Peter Steinberger [1997–2010], and Ellen Keck Stauder [2010–].

dance: Kinetic sculpture. Reed has a long tradition of dance (offered as a P.E. class in 1911). The discipline got its own department in 1949, disappeared a few years later, and reappeared in 1964. The curriculum at Reed is a mix of theory and practice, offering instruction in basic techniques, design, theory, criticism, and composition. Intriguing courses have included History of Dance; Analogous Forms; Improvised Performance; Dance and Technology; and Queer Dances: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Modern and Contemporary Concert Dance. Key figures in dance at Reed include Elfi Hosman [1963–68], Judith Massee [1968–98], Pat Wong [1975–2009], and Carla Mann ’81 [1995–].

Diver, Colin [preZ 2002–]: Diver came to Reed from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the dean of the law school. Earlier, he taught at Harvard and Boston University and was featured in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Common Ground by Anthony Lukas. Diver has helped Reed become more diverse, boosting the proportion of minority students from 14 percent to 26 percent, while at the same time doubling the college’s budget for financial aid to $22.5 million a year. During his tenure, Reed added 13 professors, made significant improvements in the performing arts, launched an environmental studies major, built several new dorms, and spearheaded the most ambitious campaign in Reed’s history, the Centennial Campaign. Diver retires in 2012; we leave detailed analysis of his legacy to future almananglers.

dean of students: In the early days, there was no dean of students, only a dean of women. (Perhaps the idea was that male students

Diversity: How to define diversity in the context of Reed? The standard response is to look at the students. Ethnic minorities now

comprise 26 percent of the student body, firstgeneration students 13 percent, and international students 9 percent. But there are many other dimensions to consider, such as the ethnic, intellectual, and experiential diversity of faculty and staff. Reed’s diversity statement, adopted in 2009, states that “Reed embraces the inherent value of diversity. It is committed to attracting the best and brightest from every group, including those who have historically experienced discrimination and prejudice, for it recognizes that dialogue between people with different perspectives, values, and backgrounds enhances the possibilities for serious intellectual inquiry.” The college appointed its first dean for institutional diversity in 2011. divestment: Withdrawal of college assets from morally questionable investments. In the ’80s, the term was synonymous with student campaigns to get colleges and universities to withdraw their endowments from companies doing business in South Africa, such as General Motors, Mobil, and IBM. At Reed, the trustees claimed such action would violate the college’s policy of political neutrality. In the face of escalating student protests, the trustees in 1986 adopted the Sullivan Principles, a set of corporate guidelines intended to encourage responsible conduct in South Africa, but this did not satisfy protesters. More than 100 students occupied Eliot Hall demanding full divestment. The trustees stood firm. Further protests followed until 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison and South Africa began to dismantle apartheid. dogs: Canis lupus reedus. Distinct canine subspecies, sometimes suspected of being the reincarnations of former students (or professors).

For many decades, dogs roamed freely on the Great Lawn, harassing squirrels, interrupting romantic moments, and stealing edibles. They attended classes, slunk in the library stacks, leapt on visitors, slept in dorms, scrounged in commons, and slobbered on distinguished members of the community. The advent of a dog policy in the ’90s cur-tailed (arf!) some of their more outrageous antics, but their grace, intelligence, and loyalty have proved endearing to many campus figures, including Amanda Reed, A.A. Knowlton, and Marion Patullo, who endowed a drinking fountain for dogs and humans in memory of her trusty terrier Angus. doyle owl: Strigidus cementus. Unofficial mascot of Reed College (the official mascot being the griffin (q.v.). While the griffin is a mythical beast, the Doyle Owl is concretely real, although most of the tales of the owl are myths. The original owl was a local piece of garden sculpture, which was carried off as a prank by students living in House F (later renamed Doyle). Since then, there have been many incarnations of the Doyle Owl; the present avatar is owl number 23, plus

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1926 First appearance of fruit flies in bio thesis.

1929 Black Tuesday ushers in Great Depression.

1930 Doyle draws plan for Hauser Library, but dies before completion; Pietro Belluschi completes it in the collegiate gothic style.

Student activities include Christmas Formal, Freshman Frolics, Costume Party, and French Camp.

1932 Enrollment hits 454; for the first time, a significant majority are men.

Mary Barnard ’32 graduates, later writes definitive translation of Sappho.

Geraldine Turner ’32, first African American student, graduates.

1934 Students hang Hitler in effigy.

House F residents pose with their prize, originally swiped from an Eastmoreland residence.

or minus 11. Almost all of them are made of concrete and weigh over 100 pounds (although there was at least one anti-owl, made of papier-mâché).

Contrary to prevalent myth, the Owl was never one of the animals adorning the roof of Old Dorm Block; those are and always have been beavers.

The owl is the paradigm of a trophy, defined

by Jay Rosenberg ’63 as “a heavy object of absolutely no intrinsic value whose only purpose is to be possessed and shown by its possessors in public places, without loss of possession.” In the full exercise of the owl tradition, it is painted, shown spectacularly, successfully defended from would-be possessors, and shortly thereafter left unobtrusively but openly to be discovered by a new ownership group.

Most showings have been on campus, although the owl has been documented in settings as far afield as the New York World’s Fair (1939) and the Top of the Mark [Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco]. The solidity of the concrete has been evidenced by a showing at the bottom of a swimming pool, presumably in the San Fernando Valley or possibly Beverly Hills. The owl has been known to spend the occasional quiet weekend at the ski cabin. It has appeared at a campus seder when the door was opened to admit the prophet Elijah. It has substituted for Boris during the Boar’s Head procession of the annual alumni holiday party. It was once displayed in commons, and escaped only after someone cut the electricity and plunged the room into darkness.

Capturing the owl has become increasingly daunting in recent years. Those releasing it back into the wild constantly seek to trump the efforts of their predecessors. This has led to the owl’s being airlifted off campus by helicopter, rising like a specter from the steam tunnels,

dangling from a tree whilst being set aflame, and trundling forth from Sallyport encased in a massive block of ice. (This particular incident required the combined efforts of 20 students, a flaming papier mâché decoy, and the strategic use of the walk-in commons freezer.) The resulting owl fight lasted a good seven hours as teams struggled back and forth with the chilly prize, some attempting to defrost it, others simply bent on wrestling the beast into a getaway vehicle as quickly as possible.

The most notable side effect of exposure to the owl is, of course, owl fever—a disease so virulent that it can turn even the most demure Reedies into a howling mob who will stop at nothing to secure their feathered prize. Alumni, faculty, students, staff—all are caught in the inescapable sway of the owl. The question of why a nondescript garden statue from Eastmoreland still inspires such passion remains unanswered.

Doyle, A.E. (1877–1928): Protean architect of Reed’s iconic buildings, including Eliot Hall, Old Dorm Block, the gymnasium (razed), Prexy, the Woodstock language houses, Anna Mann, and commons (now the SU). Despite humble origins and scant formal education, Doyle played a dominant role in shaping the architecture of Portland, particularly at Reed (House F was named after him in 1935). The epitaph set in the south entrance of Eliot Hall describes him well: “Lover and Creator of Beauty.”

Dyslexia: For many years, the J.K. Gill Company in downtown Portland had a giant sign that read “CALL GILL’S! Your Office Supply and Office Equipment Headquarters.” One night in 1959, Reed students scaled the Gill Building with ropes and converted an “L” into

Educator, journalist, and economist Dexter Keezer named president.

First appearance of dialectic in thesis title.

1936 Howard Vollum ’36 graduates, goes

on to invent oscilloscope and found Tektronix.

Cerf Amphitheatre built by the National Youth Administration.

Commencement held here through the 1960s.

1937 Fashion designer Emilio Pucci MA ’37 graduates. His first design is for the Reed College ski team.

1938 Students picket a Nazi ship, the Emden, docking at Portland.

Enter the theatre department, stage left.

1939 Football team is undefeated. New York

Times reports: “Students, faculty, and alumni, thoroughly embarrassed by the obscure but undeniable position of the team in the list of unsullied college elevens, have already brought pressure for a losing team next year and a special fund to pay football players not to enroll.”

1941 Owl war in Eastport interrupted by news of Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Eliot, Thomas Lamb (1841–1936): Unitarian minister and outspoken social progressive who urged Simeon and Amanda Reed to found a college. Hailing from a storied family with roots in Boston and St. Louis, Eliot arrived in Portland in 1867 and soon became one of the pioneer city’s leading figures. He founded the First Unitarian Church, the Oregon Humane Society, and the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society. He worked to improve conditions in the county jail; ministered to orphans, the poor, and the mentally ill; and championed public schools, the public library, and women’s right to vote. He enjoyed the confidence of many of the city’s leading citizens, including Simeon and Amanda Reed, who sang in his choir. Eliot sowed the first seed for his greatest ambition in 1887 when he wrote Simeon Reed a letter, proposing a “Reed Institute of Lectures,” and joked that it would “need a mine to run it.”

Not only was Eliot instrumental in persuading Simeon and Amanda to found a college, but he was also responsible for shaping its character, arguing that the institution should teach the liberal arts and sciences as opposed to technical vocations. At the college’s first commencement, in June 1915, he was honored with the degree of Doctor of Letters. He continued to be intimately involved in Reed’s operations until 1924, when age and ill health compelled him to resign from the board. Eliot was an insomniac who rose at 3 a.m. He was also plagued by eye trouble, possibly the result of a teenage episode of measles. Nonetheless, he was a voracious reader, committing to memory the psalms, the sonnets of Shakespeare, and long passages from Milton, Wordsworth, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Don Quixote. He oversaw the purchase of books for the public library, and read all the major articles in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume by volume, as they were published.

continued

The J.K. Gill’s sign after pranksters corrected their error.

an “R.” Unfortunately, the perpetrator, who was hanging upside down from a rope by one foot, painted over the wrong “L,” resulting in a sign reading “CALL GILRS!” Ensuing press coverage heaped scorn on the Reedies’ inability to spell.

Classmates on campus were equally unmerciful; a sign appeared in commons, warning “THE COSP ARE COMING!” Malefactors later braved increased police surveillance of the site to correct their paintographical error. Shortly thereafter, the company modified its sign to read “PHONE GILL’S!” economics: The study of a mythical creature known as the Rational Actor—no wonder it is so dismal. Economics became a stand-alone department in 1922. Intriguing courses have included Game Theory; History of Economic Thought; Innovation and Technological Change; and The Economics of Reed College. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Hudson Hastings [1911-20], William Ogburn [1912–17], Clement Akerman [1920–43], Adelbert Friedrich [1921–29], Blair Stewart [1925–49], Arthur Leigh [1945–88], Carl Stevens ’42 [1954–90], George Hay [1956–83], Jeff Parker [1988–], Noelwah Netusil [1990–], Denise Hare [1992–], and Kim Clausing [1996–].

Eliot, T. S.: Obscure vaguely poetical nephew of T.L. Eliot (q.v.).

Eliot bug: Scutigera eliotopedia. Arthropod denizen of Eliot Hall, possible relative of the centipede. Legend states that the Eliot bug was the result of a freak accident in the chemistry lab on the fourth floor in the early years of the college. It boasts monstrous antennae, at least 15 pairs of legs, and astonishing bursts of speed as it dashes into dark corners to avoid being called upon in conference. photo by tom humphrey

English: The gentle art of producing an analysis six times longer than the original text.

Early courses at Reed included Public Speaking and Argumentation, The English Bible, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and The Novel. Other intriguing courses have included Narratives of Slavery and Freedom; The Emblematic Eye; Caribbean Re-writings; New York, New York; Frontier Literature; The Death of Satan; Graphic Novel; Film Noir; and The Victorian Marriage Plot. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Norm Coleman [1912–39], V.L.O. Chittick [1921–48], Barry Cerf [1921–48], Ruth Collier [1933–52], William Alderson [1943–64], Donald MacRae [1944–73], Frank Jones [1949–56], Kenneth Hanson [1954– 86], William Halewood [1959–67], Charles Svitavsky [1961–98], Roger Porter [1961–], Fred Hard [1962–70], Tom Gillcrist [1962–2001], Jon Roush [1964–70], Howard Waskow [1964–72], Jim Webb [1965–71], Simon Friedman [1971–

77], Peter Sears [1974–80], Robert Knapp [1974–], Lisa Steinman [1976–], Christina Zwarg [1979–85], Gary Miranda [1979–87], Gail Berkeley Sherman [1981–90], Ellen Stauder [1983–], Chris Zinn [1985–92], Nathalia King [1987–], Laura Leibman [1995–], Pancho Savery [1995–], Jay Dickson [1996–], Michael Faletra [2001–], and Maureen Harkin [2002–]. financial aid: Assistance provided to needy students to offset heartstopping cost of tuition (q.v.). Comes in bewildering variety of grants, loans, and work study, funded by the government and by the college itself. About 52 percent of students currently receive financial aid; average package is $34,200 per year. Reed meets the full need of all continuing students who maintain satisfactory academic progress (six units annually and a GPA of 2.0) even if their family income suddenly collapses. Reed also tries to meet the full need of freshlings and transfers. Each year, however, a small number of applicants are not admitted because the college’s financial aid budget (now about $22.5 million) has been exhausted. If you are outraged by this, please see philanthropy. folk dancing: International folk dancing (IFD), or doing dances from many different cultures, became popular at Reed in the ’50s, peaking in the ’60s and ’70s. Originally, the dances of IFD represented major ethnic groups in the United States, with an early dominance of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the British Isles. Later, dances of Israel and the Balkan countries became popular.

Begun as a social event, IFD was first taught by the physical education department in 1959, when Pearl Atkinson [P.E. 1959–77] joined the faculty. Pearl nourished IFD, providing opportunities for enthusiastic students to teach specialized dance classes, and beginning a faculty and staff group that continues to this day as the Kyklos Dancers. IFD appeals to Reedies because it combines nativistic styles and movements with an intellectual approach. This spirit was captured in a haiku by Jim Kahan ’64: Ethnic folk dancers Unlike urban amateurs Never need lessons.

Foster, William T. [prez 1910–19]: The “masterbuilder.” A brilliant prodigy from Bowdoin, Foster was just 31 when he was appointed Reed’s first president. Scornful of the “sheep-dip method of education” that permeated college life in that era, he set out to create a new kind of college where the Socratic ideals of critical examination and intellectual freedom were dominant from day one. He banned grades, intercollegiate sports, fraternities and sororities, and imposed high standards in the senior thesis and oral exam, and for faculty advisers. Professors would focus on teaching, not research. Students would discipline themselves and choose their own course of

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study. With an evangelist’s zeal, Foster recruited professors and students to join him in this visionary project. Unfortunately, his revolutionary fervor rubbed many Portlanders the wrong way, as did his enthusiasm for simplified spelling (q.v.). The collapse of property values in the 1910s wrought havoc on Reed’s endowment and spelled an end to many of his ambitious plans.

His outspoken opposition to American involvement in World War I made matters worse. Many people confused him with communist leader William Z. Foster (just as they confused shipping tycoon Simeon Reed with communist journalist John Reed). Money grew so tight that Foster was forced to drop his beloved humanities disciplines in place of vocational courses. Facing financial crisis, failing personal health, student discontent, and a lack of confidence among the trustees, he resigned in 1919 and moved to Newton, Massachusetts, where he directed a foundation for economic research and published a series of influential books on economics. When he died, his ashes were scattered over the canyon. free love: The third part of the trinity that makes up the official unofficial motto of the student body. Adopted as defiant satire sometime in the 1920s, the slogan has been repurposed ever since with varying degrees of irony—irony typically lost on outsiders who only see the T-shirts and shudder. Certainly catchier than the phrase suggested by T.L. Eliot (q.v.) from Matthew 5:15, Ut luceat omnibus (“That it may shine on all”). Try putting that on a T-shirt.

French: The language, culture, and theory of the greatest civilization ever known. Courses over the years have naturally reflected contemporary issues: in 1916, for example, the college offered Soldier’s French. In recent decades, Bill Ray’s classic Introduction to Literary Theory has held enduring appeal. Other intriguing courses have included Masterpieces of the Last Three Centuries, French Drama, French Lyric Poetry, Belgian Literature, Surrealism, and Francophone Literature. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Benjamin Woodbridge [1922–52], Cecilia Tenney [1921–63], Sam Danon [1962–2000], Paul Antal [1968–75], Bill Ray [1972–], Jane McLelland [1974–81], Doris Berkvam [1975–2001].

Gerard Gasarian [1982–89], Hugh Hochman [1999–], Ann Delehanty [2000–], Luc Monnin [2004–], and Catherine Witt [2005–].

German: The language and culture of the greatest civilization ever known. In Reed’s early days, German was for some reason taught alongside Greek under the department of Germanic languages. Intriguing course titles have included Scientific German, Sturm und Drang, Rationalism and Irrationalism, Exile, The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation, and Mythos and the Daemonic. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Charles King [1926–41], Heinz Peters

[1940–59], Kaspar Locher [1950–88], Alan Logan [1953–60], Werner Schlotthaus [1960–67], Vincenz Panny [1963–84], Dieter Paetzold [1963– 86], Ottomar Rudolf [1963–98], Ülker Gökberk [1986–], Marion Doebeling [1990–97], Katja Garloff [1997–], and Jan Mieszkowski [1997–]. ghosts: After 100 years, Reed has produced remarkably few tales of curious campus revenants.

There are, however, reports of a ghost that pleasantly haunts the third floor of Prexy. “Students would refer to it from time to time, and I heard those sounds too,” says Bonnie Garrett [director of applied music 1988–2010]. According to Bonnie, the ghostly activity seemed to emanate from the third floor attic, a vast undeveloped space “with wee windows and a turn-of-the-century aura.” A few years ago, a staffer was in the act of unlocking room 302 when he noticed that the doorknob rotated before he turned the key in the lock. In British and American tradition, a ghost is typically cast as a soul with unfinished business or one whose life has been cut short. It is also true that President Richard Scholz (q.v.) lived in Prexy when he rose from his sickbed following an appendectomy to deal with a crisis on campus. The resulting strain led to more surgery and his death in 1924. No one is suggesting that Scholz still haunts Prexy, but how to explain the strange phenomena? Bonnie says that theatrical costumes were once stored on the third floor. Perhaps costumes from an old production of Gilbert & Sullivan had come back to life? “There were no recognizable Gilbert & Sullivan tunes, however,” she says. “Of course strange noises could be attributed to a building that is nearly 100 years old. But that doesn’t make for a very good story.” grade inflation: Vile phenomenon in which mediocrity marches to the front of the alphabet. Virtually unknown at Reed. The average GPA for Reed students is 3.08 and has scarcely budged in 26 years. In that time, only 10 students have graduated with a perfect 4.00 GPA. graduation rate: Reed’s graduation rate was never exactly stellar for a host of reasons, including sunshine deprivation, the grueling workload, and Reedies’ propensity to drop out and pursue their dreams. (Can you say Apple?)

In the early ’80s, only 28 percent of students graduated in four years. Since then, the figures have shown dramatic improvement, thanks to a sustained effort to improve student life and boost academic support. Today the four-year rate is 70 percent and the six-year rate 79 percent.

Great Lawn: A vast expanse of green, ideal for dogs, Frisbee, softball, commencement, hot air balloons, physics experiments, and reading Plato. In A.E. Doyle’s original master plan, the lawn was envisioned as a giant grassy quadrangle criss-crossed by walkways and flanked with Gothic buildings.

1942 College switches over to wartime operations, including blackouts, student war activities, and army cadets.

Students arrested on bogus spy charges after taking photos of Mt. Shasta.

Quest rues departure of Japanese American students sent to internment camp.

1943

Patricia Beck ’44 becomes first woman student body president.

Army Air Corps sets up notoriously demanding premeteorology program under aegis of physics prof A.A. Knowlton.

1945 UC Berkeley poli sci professor Peter

Odegard named president. Last year of Olde Reed.

Kenneth Koe ’45 graduates, goes on to develop Zoloft.

1946 Enrollment jumps to 738. Veterans

now comprise half the student body.

1947 Student arrested for reading poetry

at bus stop and charged with violating curfew. Sparks “Shelley by Moonlight” protest.

Professor Herb Gladstone launches the music department. Gilbert and Sullivan invade shortly thereafter.

1948 Local businessman E.B.

MacNaughton becomes president.

Chemistry prof Arthur Scott builds “pickle barrel” nuclear reactor on campus.

John Sperling ’48 graduates, goes on to found University of Phoenix. (First rule: No lecturing.)

1949 Chemistry building built by Belluschi, early example of modernist style.

Professor Lloyd Reynolds offers first calligraphy course for credit.

Cue the dance department!

1950 William Carlos Williams speaks on

campus. Future beat poet Lew Welch ’50 graduates.

Anthro professor David French ’39 begins project to study the people of Warm Springs.

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Griffin: Enemy of ignorance and official mascot of Reed. The griffin, a mythical beast, half eagle, half lion, was taken from the coat of arms of the Simeon Reed family. From Under the Green Tiles, by Beatrice Olson ’24: “The griffin has from time immemorial symbolized a guardian and protector of man and the beasts of the earth. In its early habitat in Asiatic Scythia, it was credited with the protection of gold and precious stones.

Thus, in familiar tradition, it has gained, through centuries, the attributes of swiftness and strength in the service of protection.”

Herodotus (484–425 BCE): Sometimes dubbed the father of history (q.v.). Of course, the same has been said of Confucius (551–479 BCE). history: A discipline dedicated to proving that the past is not what it’s cracked up to be, and never was. First courses at Reed focused on Greece and Rome. By 1916, the college was offering courses on the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Protestant Revolt, and the French Revolution. Far more classes have been taught over the years on British and European topics than on American. Fascinating courses have included The History of the Pacific Northwest (taught by Dorothy Johansen ’33), The Third Reich, History of Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Peasants and the State in China and Japan, Jewish Mysticism, East Asian Business History, Technology and Society in America, and Marx and Jesus. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Rex Arragon [1923–62], Dorothy Johansen ’33 [1934–84], Richard Jones [1941–86], Owen Ulph [1944– 79], Charles Bagg [1946–74], Frank Smith Fussner [1950–75], John Tomsich [1962–99], George Fasel [1963–70], T.C. Price Zimmerman [1964–77], John Strawn [1970–77], Christine Mueller [1973–2005], Ed Segel [1973–2011], David Groff [1976–87], Ray Kierstead [1978– 2000]. Richard Fox [1981–90], David Sacks [1986–], Douglas Fix [1990–], Jacqueline Dirks ’82 [1991–], David Garrett [1998–], Tony Iaccarino [1999–2007], Michael Breen [2000–], and Benjamin Lazier [2005–]. hum 11(0): History as understood by poets, literature interpreted by philosophers, philosophy explained by artists, and art seen by historians. Welcome to Freshman Hum. The broad outlines of the course were originally laid down by President Richard Scholz (q.v.), but his untimely death in 1924 derailed his dream for almost two decades. The first true humanities course at Reed arrived in 1943 under the leadership of Rex Arragon [history 1923–62]. Then as now, the course focused on Greek and Roman civilizations through the prisms of politics, art, history, religion, philosophy, and literature.

Hum 110 was later expanded to the Middle Ages

In the groove: unidentified KRRC DJ spins vinyl, circa 1985.

and beyond, but this was felt to be too burdensome, and in 1993 its focus returned to Greece and Rome. Reed has also employed the framework of the humanities to approach other crucial periods and cultures. Since 1995, for example, the college has offered Hum 230, focusing on the foundations of Chinese civilization.

Hum Play: Annual slapstick production occurring after the final Hum lecture of the year.

Hum Play follows the adventures of the hapless Student, who journeys through the Hum syllabus in a desperate attempt to learn a year’s worth of material the night before his final. The show features bedsheet togas, cardboard spears, and an inexcusable number of bad puns. Guided

by Greek gods, epic poets, and fearless professors, Student runs across several characters from the syllabus before arriving at Enlightenment.

The play began as the brainchild of Greg Lam ’96, who staged the first production in 1994.

Since then, the script has been passed down from one generation to the next, each adapting it to create more outrageous iterations. human hamster wheel: Behemoth roller bearing that materialized in the SU in 2010. Over 12 feet in diameter, the wheel was constructed of lumber, plywood, and skateboard components, and was big enough for a student to run inside. Student group named “Defenders of the Universe” claimed responsibility.

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Iliad: Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus.

Keezer, Dexter M. [preZ 1934–42]: Educator, journalist, and New Deal economist, Keezer arrived on campus at the nadir of the Great Depression. Believing that Reed was too intellectual, Keezer worked on improving student life with initiatives such as the ski cabin on Mount Hood. After Reed, he worked for the federal government on the war effort.

K o b l i k , S t e v e n [preZ 1992–2001]: Koblik came to Reed from Scripps College, where he served as the dean of the faculty. A historian known for his friendly demeanor and emphasis on transparency, he took student pranks, many of which were directed at him, with grace and humor. He was credited with reuniting a faculty that had suffered a rift. Koblik’s 10-to-1 initiative sought to improve the student–faculty ratio by adding 15 new professors. Although he inherited a budget deficit of over $1 million, by the time he left, the endowment had tripled to $349 million. Although he often said he didn’t want to be a “construction president,” the face of Reed’s campus changed dramatically during his tenure with the addition of the Educational Technology Center, the Gray Campus Center, Kaul Auditorium, and the Bragdon, Naito, and Sullivan dorms. Koblik also decided to stop participating in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “best college” rankings, a courageous move that drew national attention to the survey’s capricious methodology.

After Reed, Koblik become president of the Huntington Library.

KRRC: Persistent intermittent presence haunting the radio dial. Origins date to 1954, when students organized the Reed Radio Club to pursue “the technical and programming aspects of radio broadcasting.” A year later, KRCB-AM, the Radio Voice of Reed College, debuted at 660 AM to the delight of students and a few neighborhood residents. Broadcasting from the basement of Doyle, Radio Reed from its beginnings played the music no one else was playing. The club later persuaded the FCC to grant an FM license and became KRRC-FM 89.3 in 1958. Equipment—including the transmitter and antenna—was built, donated, borrowed, and generally cobbled together by students. An Oregonian article noted that “austerity vies with ingenuity” in the studio, where “egg cases and an old ice box play important roles in achieving a high quality of low fidelity.” In the early decades, highlights from the station’s program included poetry, film reviews, news, the Kinks playing live at Reed, and the Epistemology of Rock with Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953– 94]. Still, austerity and ingenuity have been ongoing themes, as the station has faced frequent technical difficulties, financial troubles,

and sometimes contentious interactions with the FCC. After losing space in the airwaves to a Christian station in the 1970s, KRRC moved to 104.1 FM, where it remained until the 2000s, when it was bumped to its current perch at 97.9 FM. Nonetheless, the station has prevailed. While the signal—when it is working—barely extends past Woodstock Boulevard, its limited range allows student DJs to take full advantage of the joy of radio without too much fear of getting into hot water with the authorities. It is hard to think of a musical genre the station has not explored. From Gregorian chant to psychedelic funk to Hungarian gypsy bagpipe, KRRC plays it all—and then some. Thanks to the advent of digital radio, the station has escaped into cyberspace and can now be heard at krrcfm.com. linguistics: The art of misunderstanding many languages at the same time. Linguistics was first formally taught at Reed in 1955 under anthropology (q.v.). Intriguing course titles have included Psycholinguistics, Signs, and the rather intimidating subject of Morphosyntactic Typology. The linguistics qual consists of a long passage in an unidentified language, accompanied by a translation, and asks the aspiring linguist to describe the characteristics of that language. Have a nice day. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Edwin Gerow [1985–96], John Haviland [1986–2005], and Matt Pearson ’92 [2001–].

MacNaughton, E.B. [preZ 1948–52]: Prominent Portland businessman, one of the original members of the board of regents (later merged with the board of trustees). As president, “Mr. Mac” focused on Reed’s finances, securing numerous gifts, forging key relationships, and rescuing the college from the brink of insolvency. One of his first actions was to hike faculty salaries, which gained him popularity among professors. MacNaughton also served as chairman of the board of the First National Bank and president of the Oregonian.

A typical day included mornings at the bank and the newspaper, and afternoons at Reed.

MacNaughton was utterly dedicated to the “greatest little college in the world” and refused to accept any compensation for being president.

In 1944, he married administrator and instructor Cheryl Scholz, the widow of Richard Scholz, who also devoted many years to Reed.

Magic Grove: Cluster of flowering cherry trees designed and planted by early professors on the Great Lawn. manorial documents: A staple of Hum 11 in the ’50s and ’60s. A standard assignment would be to write a paper on these documents, which were extracts from the Domesday Book.

1951 Poets Gary Snyder ’51 and Philip

Whalen ’51 graduate; inspired by Lloyd Reynolds, both explore Asian influences.

1952 MIT history professor Duncan

Ballantine becomes president.

Conducts study on Reed’s allegedly “permissive atmosphere.”

1954 House Un-American Activities

Committee comes to Portland. Three Reed profs called to testify. Philosophy professor Stanley Moore fired for refusing to discuss his political views with trustees. Faculty votes no confidence in President Ballantine, who resigns.

New Women’s Dorm (later named MacNaughton).

1955 Future Portland mayor Bud Clark ’57 attends Reed.

New Men’s Dorm (later named Foster-Scholz).

1956 Educator Richard Sullivan appointed president.

Gary Snyder ’51 and Allen Ginsberg stop by Reed on a road trip from San Francisco. Ginsberg reads Howl in Anna Mann; first time poem is recorded.

1958 Chemistry professor John Hancock

builds DIMWIT, an early computer, cannibalizing parts from confiscated pinball machines.

1959 Churchill Memorial Footbridge is built

across the canyon using a novel cantilevered design.

Griffin Memorial Biology Building built.

1960 Epic board game Empire developed.

1961 First thesis parade. Glitter conspicuous by its absence.

Sullivan proposes Reed University.

Students dubious.

Peter Norton ’65 attends Reed, later develops Norton Utilities.

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mathematics: “A subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true” (Bertrand Russell).

Reed has taught the discipline in dimensions both theoretical and applied. In 1918, the department taught a course on war mathematics. On the theoretical side, there was Construction of the Real Numbers (see 1 + 1 = 2). Other intriguing courses have included Astronomy, Probability, Automata and Languages, and Computer Architecture. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Frank Loxley Griffin [1911–56], Jessie May Short [1920–39], Robert Rosenbaum [1939–53], Louise Robinson [1940–53], Lloyd Williams ’35 [1947–81], Joe Roberts [1952–], Jack Dudman ’42 [1953–85], Burrowes Hunt [1953–77], John Leadley [1956–93], Hugh Chrestenson [1957–90], Dorothy Williams [1959–65], Thomas Dennehy [1962–79], Tom Wieting [1965–], Rao Potluri [1973–], Ray Mayer [1974–2002], Joe Buhler ’70 [1980– 2005], Albyn Jones [1986–], Jerry Shurman [1989–], David Perkinson [1990–], James Fix [1999–], James Pommersheim [2004–], and Irena Swanson ’87 [2005–]. music: The literature and linguistics of a wordless language. Music has always played a vital role in campus life, but was not part of the academic curriculum until 1935, when the college offered a course, Introduction to the History and Appreciation of Music. The tempo increased with the advent of Herb Gladstone [1946–80], who for many years was the department, teaching academic courses, supervising theses, and leading the orchestra. Reed has offered some fascinating courses over the years, including Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler; Song; Jazz; Music Since 1968; The Madrigal; Music and Science; The Music of Duke Ellington; and Bebop.

Besides Herb, influential figures have included Edna Chittick [1931–39], Frederic Rothchild [1968–78], Leila Birnbaum Falk [1969–2009], David Schiff [1980–], Mario Pelusi [1982–89], Bonnie Garrett [1988–2010], and Virginia Oglesby Hancock ’62 [1991–].

Math professor Lloyd Williams ’35 with students at the blackboard, circa 1962.

Mack ’93, Nick Kaplinsky ’93, and Al Kun ’95) staged the first celebration of the seventh element. The original N-Day featured a brass band, a barbecue, and an ode to the triple bond. Subsequent bashes have featured nitrogen-infused beer and ice cream cooled by nitrogen.

Odegard, Peter [preZ 1945–48]: Political scientist who taught at Williams, Ohio State, and Amherst before becoming Reed’s sixth president. Odegard worked to shore up faculty salaries, hire more professors, and expand Reed’s geographic draw. He also boosted attention to the arts and oversaw upgrades to campus buildings. Students and faculty alike saw Odegard as a champion for the community and its intellectual history. Declaring that a college “must be something more than an intellectual delicatessen store,” he insisted that Reed “serve as an island of free inquiry, for only by free inquiry can the frontiers of knowledge be advanced.”

Odegard left Reed to join UC Berkeley as chair of the political science department.

Odyssey: Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.

nightmares, recurring: Fantasy writer David Eddings ’54 was haunted by a question on an ethics final by Ed Garlan [philosophy 1946–73]: Explain the difference between Right and Good. “I had nightmares about that one for years,” Eddings said.

Olde Reed, last year of: When you are a student, it’s the year you arrived minus 1. When you are an alumnus, it’s the year you departed plus 1.

nitrogen: You can’t see it. You can’t smell it.

You can’t taste it. It doesn’t burn, explode, alter consciousness, or make you talk funny. It is anything but rare. In fact, it may seem rather dull.

Yet this underrated element gets the recognition it deserves at Reed, which has celebrated Nitrogen Day since 1992, when a group of science majors (including Dave Weinstock ’92, Rob

open door: Policy maintained by Reed deans since World War II. From the introduction to the letters of Ann Shepard ’23 [dean of students 1944–68], we read: “Miss Shepard’s door was always open and unguarded—no appointment necessary. This was sometimes a nuisance, but it encouraged the impulsive visit, so frequently the crucial one. She courteously

and instantly dropped the work on her desk, leaned back comfortably in her chair, crossed her legs, and, eyes smiling through a cloud of smoke, settled down to really listen as if the visitor were her only concern for the rest of the day. Ann Shepard combined a realistic skepticism in theory with complete trust in action. She made the leap of ethical faith. To the irresponsible campus bad guy, she calmly gave the keys of her new car when he needed transportation. He met her trust. The car was back on time and freshly washed besides. In this woman the skeptical realist lived comfortably somehow with the believer in the ultimate perfectibility of Reed students.” paradox CAfé: Student-run coffeehouse in the SU famous for its paint-peeling brew. philanthropy: Term coined 2,500 years ago by the author of Prometheus Bound to describe a love of humanity, as demonstrated by the eponymous titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind. Philanthropy is also the cornerstone of Reed, which was founded with a bequest from Amanda Reed.

When her will, stipulating an “institution of learning,” was made public in 1904, it caused a sensation. Rather than secure the wealth of her own family, Amanda chose to strengthen the community and alter the fabric of the society in which she lived. After an epic legal battle, her nephew, Martin Winch, transferred $1,821,560 (approximately $44 million today) to the Reed Institute. Gifts are crucial to Reed’s existence and its growth. Big gifts make good copy, but all gifts make a difference. Of the 336 grads of the class of 2011, roughly 52 percent received financial aid, with the average award weighing in at $34,196. Gifts have also allowed the college

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1962 Class numbers add an extra digit.

Hum 11 becomes Hum 110, and so on.

Reason: some departments now offer more than 10 classes at each level.

1963 Barret Hansen ’63, aka Dr. Demento, graduates.

Investigative journalist Barbara Ehrenreich ’63 graduates.

Student council dissolves itself and is replaced by a community senate of 11 faculty and 11 students.

Last year of Olde Reed.

1964 Advent of Students for a Democratic Society.

Rockefeller Foundation awards grant to encourage more African American students.

Paradox Café circa 1985. Michael Donally Goldman ’89 scoops nickels; Mike Magrath ’84 pours joe. Photo Larry Clarkberg ’88.

to break ground on a long-awaited $28 million performing arts facility and launch an ambitious environmental studies program. philosophy: A game played with extremely high stakes, the objective of which is the discovery of its own rules. Philosophy has been taught at Reed since 1911, including a course titled Logic and College Life (which seem like totally incompatible subjects). Although all Reed students gain some exposure to the discipline through Hum 110 (q.v.), they have also had the opportunity to deepen their misunderstanding in courses such as Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. The department has at times offered courses on both the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history. Other intriguing courses have included Social Philosophy; Philosophical and Religious Thought of India; and Minds, Brains, and Machines. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Edward Octavius Sisson [1911–43], Edwin Garlan [1946-73], Stanley Moore [1948–54], Marvin Levich [1953–94], Bill Peck [1961–2002], Robert Paul [1966–96], George Bealer [1975–90], David Reeve [1976– 2001], Neil Thomason [1980–88], Mark Bedau ’76 [1991–], Mark Hinchliff ’81 [1991–], Steven Arkonovich [1998–], Paul Hovda [1992–], and Margaret Scharle [2003–]. physical education: A field of exertion. Contrary to popular misconception, P.E. has been a mandatory part of Reed’s curriculum since the founding. Unusual courses have included cricket; captain ball; advanced exercises with Indian clubs, dumbbells, and wands; Physiology and Hygiene; Anatomy, Anthropometry and Kinesiology; Theory of Play and Playgrounds; and Playground Leadership. Influential figures have included Charles Botsford [1912–52], Dorothy Elliott [1918–30], Evelyn Hasenmayer [1930–46], Jerry Barta [1956–88], Pearl Atkinson [1959–77], Jack Scrivens [1961–99], Angela Dreher [1976–88], and Ann Casey [1990–2006].

physics: The study of things bumping into other things, occasionally producing electricity. The range of courses offered at Reed over the years is astonishing: Theoretical Mechanics, Mathematical Physics, The Electron Theory of Matter, Signal Corps Physics, Electronics, Atomic and Nuclear Physics, Solid State Physics, Classical Field Theory, Astrophysics, Elementary Particles; Molecular Biophysics, and Scientific Computation. Notable experiments at Reed have involved catapulting water balloons across the Great Lawn, lighting fluorescent bulbs from a distance with a Tesla coil, and placing your head in the path of a bowling ball suspended by a rope at an angle of 45 degrees. Influential profs (q.v.) have included A.A. Knowlton [1915–48], Marcus O’Day [1926–45], Ken Davis [1948–80], William Parker [1948–79], Jean Delord [1950–88], Byron Youtz [1956–68], Dennis Hoffman [1959–90], Robert Reynolds [1963–2002], Nick Wheeler ’55 [1963–2010], David Griffiths [1978–2009], Richard Crandall ’69 [1978–], Johnny Powell [1987–], Mary James [1988–], John Essick [1993–], Darrell Schroeter ’95 [2003–05 and 2007–], and Joel Franklin ’97 [2005–]. picts: Late Iron Age Celtic people living in what is now Scotland. Also a ferocious horde of unclad Reedies covered in blue paint. Picts are commonly found roaming campus during Renn Fayre doing battle with the notorious Copts—clothed assailants wielding squirt guns filled with orange paint. Ritual and Renn Fayre have long gone hand in hand, but signs point to Lynn Rosskamp ’95 as the progenitor of this tribe. political science: The study of human nature in action. By the time they graduate, poli sci majors have gained an understanding of what this entails and developed a suitable sense of despair. From the Student Handbook: “Welcome to Political Science. There’s no reading

Enrollment hits 1,000.

Feds and the Ford Foundation cut funding. Financial crisis deepens.

The Sixties take hold.

1965 Richard Danzig ’65 graduates, later runs the U.S. Navy.

1966 Scroungers appear, waving forks.

Students vote for 24-hour intervisitation.

Students surreptitiously enter dental machine in sculpture exhibition. Ruse discovered, but entry allowed to stand.

Still legal, LSD arrives on campus.

Existentialism smokes first cigarette.

1967 Nuclear reactor goes critical.

Students hold nude “swim-in” in new Watzek Sports Center, angering lumber magnate Aubrey Watzek, who requests that his name be removed from the building.

1968 Lawyer and poli sci professor Vic

Rosenblum appointed president.

Fire guts Prexy.

Students barricade themselves inside Eliot Hall, demanding a black studies program. Faculty approve a modified proposal.

First Renaissance Faire features jesters, troubadours, and human chess game.

1969 Student Union burns to the ground.

Last year of Olde Reed.

Fervent debate over “relevance” in curriculum pits Old Guard against Young Turks. Traditionalists triumph.

Advent of Paideia. Go, underwater basketweaving!

100 students go on a tuition strike over curriculum and tenure issues.

President Rosenblum persuades all but 40 to come back.

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fun books written by pundits or professors of pop or whatever. You want to read Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics? Good. Only after you’ve read his Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime. This is Reed. Accessibility is for the weak.” Originally lumped in with history, poli sci spun off its own department in 1913 and has been busy plotting revolution ever since. Classic courses have included Machiavelli, Marxism, New Marxism, Hegel and Marx, Approaches to Violence, The Internet and Politics, Power and Money, Torture and Democracy, and Nuclear Politics. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Charles McKinley [1918–60], George Bernard Noble [1922–48], Maure Goldschmidt [1935– 81], Frank Munk [1939–65], Kalesh Dudharkar [1959–88], Richard Frost [1960–69], Kirk Thompson [1964–71], Peter Steinberger [1973–], Stefan Kapsch [1974–2005], Darius Rejali [1989–], and Paul Gronke [2001–].

PORTLAND: Mythical realm said to lie somewhere to the north of Steele Street.

Powell, James [preZ 1988–91]: Originally a geologist, Powell arrived from Franklin and Marshall College with the goal of safeguarding Reed’s accomplishments, rather than changing its direction. Powell worked to hike faculty salaries and also created a stronger administrative presence on campus, imposing stricter policies on drugs and alcohol: no more free beer at Reed socials! However, Powell clashed with the faculty and departed to become president of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. premeteorology: Intensive one-year program set up by Army Air Corps in 1942 to relieve acute shortage of meteorologists for airborne operations in World War II. Professor A.A. Knowlton [physics 1915–48] ran the program at Reed, which was notoriously demanding. “It had nothing to do with weather,” says Lyle Jones AMP ’44. “We took math, physics, history, and humanities, all taught by Reed professors.” Premeteorology was a godsend for Reed and other colleges, which were starved of students because so many college-age men were serving in the armed forces. Federal revenues from the program helped Reed scrape through the duration.

Professors, easy: Purely theoretical category never populated at Reed. professors, influential: Defined in this almanac as those who taught at Reed for more than six years. We salute them for demanding more of us than we thought we could give, and showing us that we were capable of more than we knew.

Waxing wroth. Students utilize cutting-edge technology (aka razor and scissors) to lay out the Quest, 1982.

psychology: Discipline that first lost its soul, then its mind, and then consciousness.

Amazingly, it gained them all back and still behaves. Psychology has deep roots at Reed and was taught from 1912, but only a handful of courses were offered until the ’40s, when interest appears to have exploded. By 1947, students could pursue courses in abnormal, social, comparative, genetic, experimental, and educational psychology. By the mid-’50s, most courses had a behavioral flavor, but the advent of Neural Basis of Behavior in 1965 and of Cognitive Psychology in 1987 heralded intellectual diversification. Classic courses have included Sleep and Dreaming; Human Sexual Behavior; Psycholinguistics; Self-Experimentation and Self-Control; Stereotyping and Prejudice; Stress and Coping; and our all-time favorite, Problems in Psychology: Gender. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Eleanor Rowland Wembridge

[1911–17], Monte Griffith [1926–54], Frederick Courts [1945–69], Leslie Squier [1953–88], Carol Creedon [1957–91], Bill Wiest [1961–95], William Devery [1963–70], Richard Katzev [1967–91], Allen Neuringer [1970–2008], Dell Rhodes [1975–2006], Daniel Reisberg [1986–], Marion Underwood [1991–98], Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzalez [1992–], Kathryn Oleson [1995–], and Jennifer Henderlong Corpus [2000–].

Quest, the: Beacon of press freedom, bane of administrators, fiercely independent student newspaper published more or less weekly since 1913. Named for the famous phrase of Norm Coleman (q.v.), “Comrades of the Quest,” referring to the intense camaraderie at Reed among students and professors alike. Early editions of the paper demonstrate an admirable level of journalistic skill; indeed, the Quest is the sole source for many episodes in the college’s history,

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since no other record remains. The first edition, for example, describes a “tong war” in which the denizens of House F repelled an invasion by House H by drenching the attackers with a threeinch fire hose “and quenched an accumulation of ardour with a well-directed stream.” In addition to reporting the news, the Quest has sometimes created the news. In 1967, for example, it ran a story about a nude “swim-in” in the gym, with a photo deemed so provocative that Dean Jack Dudman ’42 begged the editors to black it out. (They did so, but the story got out anyway.)

Because of the peculiar system at Reed in which editors are elected, the quality and character of the Quest has varied dramatically over the years.

One week, it reads like the New York Times. The next, like the Revolutionary Worker, the Weekly World News, and the Sellwood Bee—sometimes all at once. Nonetheless, the paper’s longevity is a testament to generations of editors who have sweated over its inky pages for nothing more than the thrill of seeing their work in print.

Quest, first editorial: Excerpt: “Our chief concern is not with bricks and stone nor with landscape architecture. The few of us who are here, teachers and students alike, are working not for the Present, nor even for ourselves, but for the Future. As Comrades of the Quest we have set out, as President Foster has expressed it, ‘to do something significant in the realm of Higher Education.’ We do not feel that our enthusiasm and purpose are commonplace or ordinary and we shall not be satisfied with mediocre results.”

RAIN: Uncouth term for the meteorological phenomenon known in Oregon as “liquid sunshine.”

R e e d , A m a n d a W o o d (1832–1904): Founder of the college that bears her name. Born to a wealthy and prominent local family in Quincy, Massachusetts, the youngest of nine children, Amanda was married at 18 to an industrious young storekeeper named Simeon Reed (q.v.).

They went west to seek their fortune and settled in Portland. In contrast to Simeon, who chomped cigars and swirled brandy while building a legendary fortune, Amanda loved music, sewed her own dresses, and was deeply concerned with charity and spirituality. She and Simeon joined the Unitarian church under the leadership of T.L. Eliot (q.v.) and sang in his choir. It was Eliot who encouraged them to found a college, to the fury of their heirs, who challenged the will in court and almost certainly would have prevailed but for the extraordinary efforts of Amanda’s nephew Martin Winch (q.v.). Amanda’s will mandated an “institution of learning, having as its object the increase and diffusion of practical knowledge,” but was vague on key details. Eliot and Winch later battled over the question of whether Reed should focus on the liberal arts or technical instruction.

Reed, Simeon Gannett (1830–1895): Shipping, mining, and trading tycoon who amassed the fortune that built Reed. Born in East Abington, Massachusetts, Simeon was an infant when his father died; his mother married his father’s brother, a small landholder who dabbled in lumber and flour milling. Simeon attended a local academy, learning arithmetic, penmanship, and bookkeeping, until he was 15 years old. Restless, he worked as a clerk in a dry goods store, cut shoes, and milled flour. At 18, he moved to Quincy, Massachusetts, and set up shop as a grain merchant; there he met and wooed Amanda Wood (q.v.). In 1852, he sailed for California to see if he could set up a profitable trading business, but lost many of his goods in a fire that swept the tent city of Sacramento. Undaunted, he sailed north to Oregon and eventually became a clerk for pioneer trader William Ladd. Soon he was investing in steamships, particularly the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which proved a fantastically lucrative venture. Reed branched out into mining iron ore, railroads, and real estate. The quintessential self-made man, Simeon had a quick wit, a round belly, and a knack for making friends—and deals.

Fond of poker, cigars, and bourbon, he raised thoroughbred race horses and loved to hunt (he shot off two of his fingers in a hunting accident).

In 1892, his kidneys failing, he and Amanda retired to Pasadena. He died of a paralytic stroke three years later. In his will, he left his fortune to Amanda and urged her to spend it on “a suitable purpose of permanent value that will contribute to the beauty of this city and the intelligence, prosperity and happiness of its inhabitants . . . all the details I leave entirely to the good judgment of my wife in which I have full confidence.” relig ion: A discipline that introduces students to the major sacred traditions of the world and demands that they go beyond small talk. Although religion was an important part of the curriculum in the first years of the college, it did not earn departmental status until 1969, despite dire prophecies from some quarters that the establishment of a department at Reed portended a disaster of biblical proportions.

The apocalypse failed to materialize, however, and the department has flourished. Intriguing courses have included Classical Mythology; Egyptian Christianity; Women in Buddhism; The Qur’an; Early Chinese Cosmology and Its Ritual Response; Deep Time and Biblical Narrative; and Christian Philosophers, Poets, Historians, Magicians, and Burners of Books. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Dan Deegan [1957–69], Simon Parker [1968–75], John Staten [1969–76], John Kenney [1980–95], William Long [1982– 89], Edwin Gerow [1985–96], Steve Wasserstrom [1987–], Michael Foat ’86 [1996–], Ken Brashier [1998–], and Kambiz GhaneaBassiri [2002–].

1970 Emissaries from the U.S. Dept.

of Justice visit Reed to discuss law enforcement and civil rights.

Students dub the event Ramsey Clark Day, greet G-men with cheerleaders, Doyle Owl, and debauchery.

Coed dorms. Repent!

Kent State. President Rosenblum issues statement affirming “the principles of academic freedom and order.”

First mention of “paradigm” in a thesis title.

1971 Endowment at $4.4 million, less

than half of Amanda Reed’s original bequest, after adjusting for inflation.

College flirts with insolvency.

NYU vice president Paul Bragdon appointed president.

1972 Theatre built over the canyon stream.

Steve Jobs studies calligraphy with Robert J. Palladino [art 1969–84]; later cites class as key influence at Apple.

1973 SDS attempts to wrest control of

lower commons from poker crowd.

Softball game decides the victor.

Cardsharps triumph, activists relegated to SU.

1975 Student pranksters send mock ulti-

matum to local officials demanding Basque liberation. Hoax taken seriously by authorities.

1979 Studio Art building constructed.

1980 Talking Heads release Remain in Light.

Advent of fractals.

1981 Vollum College Center built.

1982 First appearance of conceptual baggage.

1984 Students agitate for Reed to divest

endowment from companies doing business in South Africa.

Apple Macintosh arrives on campus packing mouse and six, yes, six fonts.

1985 Armed with a single Gaggia, Mike Magrath ’84 and Matt Giraud ’85 launch Paradox Café.

1986 Linguistics secedes from anthro, forms semiautonomous major.

Trustees adopt Sullivan Principles, which spell out ethical practices for doing business in South Africa.

Students barricade themselves in Eliot Hall, demanding full divestment.

Women’s Rugby. Chauvinists flee.

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are submitted. Organized and named by Linda G. Howard ’70 [trustee 1988–] in 1968 as the First Annual Reed College Renaissance Faire, Renn Fayre has evolved far beyond its roots to include spectacles such as bug-eating contests, parachute jumps, fireworks, water slides, and glo opera. Still, some medieval flavor persists: Renn Fayre still features a human chess game and jousting (admittedly on bicycles).

Rosenblum, Victor [preZ 1968–70]: A passionate teacher, lawyer, and political scientist, Rosenblum arrived from Northwestern University with a plan to strengthen the humanities but was quickly sucked into a raging controversy over whether Reed should establish a program in black studies (q.v.).

Soon after he arrived, student protestors blockaded themselves in Eliot Hall. Rosenblum was caught between the demands of students and the misgivings of senior faculty who had lived through the Stanley Moore affair (q.v.). The faculty eventually approved black studies, but student dissatisfaction remained strong. In December 1969, approximately 100 students went on a tuition strike over tenure and curriculum issues. Somehow Rosenblum managed to persuade about 60 to come back, but meanwhile many other smoldering issues had burst into flames: a chronic shortage of money; a bitter debate over “relevance” in the curriculum; changing cultural mores; and sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll generally made Reed a difficult place to govern. After Reed, Rosenblum returned to Northwestern, where he earned numerous teaching awards. rugby: A game played by men (and women) with odd-shaped balls. First known games at Reed took place in 1974; early players were refugees from the crew team. The sport has flourished ever since (though we’re not sure why).

In particular, the women’s team, sometimes known as the Badass Sparkle Princesses, has produced several outstanding national players.

Russian: The language and literature of the greatest civilization ever known. First introduced into the Reed curriculum in 1939 with a single class on grammar. Intriguing courses have included Formalism and Structuralism, Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (in the original Russian!), Russian Symbolism and Decadence, Horror and the Sublime in Russian Culture and Literature of Destruction. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Vera Krivoshein [1949–72], Ieva Vitins [1970–77], Lena Lencek [1977–], Judson Rosengrant [1979–90], Charles Isenberg [1985–97], and Evgenii Bershtein [1999–]. Former professor Judson Rosengrant organizes popular Paideia tours to Russia for Reed alumni.

Scholz, Richard F. [prez 1921–24]: Reed’s second president took the helm when the future of the college hung by a thread. His immediate task was to restore a sense of purpose to a college shaken by war, misfortune, and friction with the community. Adamant that Reed should maintain its commitment to intellectual rigor, he balanced the academic program by requiring broad readings in the humanities for the first two years, followed by specialization in a chosen field.

In this sense, he is the godfather of the Reed curriculum. He hired a cadre of iconic professors who would shape the college for generations to come.

He led a fundraising campaign that eased an acute financial crisis brought on by the recession in the 1910s. Unfortunately, Scholz never got a chance to pursue many of his long-term goals. Following an appendectomy in 1923, he rose from his sickbed, against medical advice, to deal with a student rebellion over smallpox vaccinations. (See spring crisis.) This led to a series of complications and further operations from which he never recovered. After his death, students published a heartfelt tribute: “Dr. Richard Frederick Scholz, a man among men, in whom nature fused the noblest of human attributes and to whom she gave a deep sensitiveness to the full meaning of life, freely and without thought for himself, gave his life to his ideals.”

Scott, Arthur [acting preZ 1942–45]: A graduate of Colby and Harvard, Scott taught chemistry at Reed from 1923 to 1979 (albeit with a gap of 11 years). He served as president during World War II, a difficult time for Reed because the war diverted so many male students into the armed forces. Nonetheless, “Scotty” led the war effort on campus and was pivotal in the development of Reed’s nuclear reactor. On his 75th birthday, the chemistry department gave him a blue three-speed bicycle. Scotty had never ridden one before, but gamely mounted the saddle and proceeded to pedal. “A little wobbly, but not too bad for a beginner,” said one student. The bike—and the chemistry building now named for him—testify to the community’s enduring affection.

Scott Tissues: Maggie Scott ’19 [registrar 1923–62] was notorious for curt notices alerting students to their paperwork deficiencies.

These missives became known as Scott Tissues, as revealed in this bit of doggerel: My name is Margaret Scott.

I’m a keeper of records and rot.

If you’re making an issue I’ll give you Scott’s tissue That’s not worth a tittle or jot. scrounging: The tragedy of the commons.

Seventies, The: Charles Svitavsky [English 1961–98] once reflected on the campus mood of this turbulent decade. “In the ’60s, when I

walked into class in the morning and said, ‘Good morning,’ the students wrote it down. When I walked in and said ‘good morning’ in the ’70s, students would say, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, it doesn’t seem that good to me.’”

Shelley by Moonlight: After World War II, the GI Bill helped many veterans go to college, including Tom Kelly ’48. One night, while waiting for a bus on Woodstock Boulevard, Tom stood under a streetlight reading a book of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Passing police officers stopped, found his reaction to their questioning suspicious, and hauled him down to the station. The following night, 100 students gathered at the bus stop to read poems in protest, making national headlines. simplified spelling: When Noah Webster published his first volume on spelling and grammar in 1783, he wanted nothing less than to shape the character of a nation. Both his textbooks and, later, his dictionaries reflected his conviction that America’s language—its spelling, its grammar, even its definitions—played a key role in its identity. A century later, the simplified spelling movement posed a similar connection between language and politics. Attracting luminaries such as Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain, the movement tried to build common sense into the spelling of English so people could learn it more easily; a universal language, they reasoned, would help bring about world peace. Reed’s first president, William T. Foster, was a passionate adherent who brought his convictions about spelling—and world peace—with him, encouraging simplified spelling in Reed’s early publications. Conservative Portlanders were aghast, deriding Reed—and its nonconformist East Coast radicals—for spellings such as hav, enuf, tung, buro, and maskerade. Foster continued

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to champion the movement as an example of Reed’s resolve to “stand staunchly—and if necessary, stand alone—for whatever was right.” Nevertheless, the practice didn’t stick, and by 1918, Carnegie himself gave up on the idea. “I think I hav been patient long enuf . . . I have a much better use for twenty-five thousand dollars a year.” If only they had been around for Twitter. sociology: A science whose practitioners take commonsense propositions, translate them into impenetrable argot, perform strange experiments, and draw far-reaching conclusions that no one else understands. Intriguing courses have included Theories and Problems of Social Ethics; Neighborhood Progress; Economic, Social, and Political Problems of the Northwest; Ethnic Minorities; Technology and Society; and The Collapse of Communism. Influential profs (q.v.) have included William Ogburn [1912–17], Alexander Goldenweiser [1933–39], Howard Jolly [1949–70], John Pock [1955–98], William Tudor [1973–2009], Alexandra Hrycak [1998–], and Marc Schneiberg [2000–]. sound experiments: First launched by professor Herb Gladstone [music 1947–80], the monthly performances took place in the old student union before a blazing fireplace. Innovation was the watchword. The very first was billed as “Jazz from tailgate-trombone Blues to Bebop, in two hours and twenty-three numbers.”

Spanish: The language and culture of the greatest civilization ever known. First offered at Reed in 1912, Spanish was taught both as language and as literature, but disappeared from the curriculum after 10 years. It staged a valiant comeback in the 40s, when five classes were listed, but vanished again after another decade.

Restarted in 1967, Spanish has gained ground ever since. Intriguing courses have included Chicano Literature and Popular Culture; The Epics of the Conquistadors; Borges, Vallejo, Lezama, and the Limits of Expression; Chronicling America; Crime and Detection; Sexual Imagery from Medieval Manuscript to the Printed Text; and Realism and Magic. Influential profs (q.v.) have included Benjamin Woodbridge [1922–52], Roger Oake [1959–74], Robert Johnston [1977– 86], Sharon Larisch [1986–], Lourdes de León [1987–97], Libby Drumm [1995–], Katharine Jenkes [1997–2004], Diego Alonso [2001–], and Ariadna García-Bryce [2001–]. spring crisis: Annual campus controversy typically taking place in March or April, just as sunshine deprivation is reaching its nadir. (See rain.) An early example involved the explosive charge that female students were smoking cigarettes. In 1924, the issue was smallpox vaccination—a quarrel that grew so heated that President Richard Scholz (q.v.) rose from his sickbed in an effort to quench the flames (the strain

contributed to his death). By 1940, the eruption of a vernal controversy at Reed had become so predictable that students actually staged a vaudeville show dubbed The Spring Crisis. The 1940 show involved pompous senators investigating communism at a “Pinkweed College.”

Another show spoofed the tale of Noah’s Ark (whose vessel collapsed during rehearsals, fortunately harming no one). The tradition of the spring crisis continues, having revolved around issues as contentious as intervisitation and as obscure as departmental pay equity, and shows no sign of flagging, despite efforts to nudge it into May, when the occasional appearance of the sun makes things seem less dire.

Stanley Moore affair: In 1954, at the height of anti-communist hysteria, the House Un-American Activities Committee summoned three Reed professors—Leonard Marsak [history 1953–55], Lloyd Reynolds [art and English 1929–69], and Stanley Moore [philosophy 1948–54]—to testify about their alleged ties to the Communist Party. They declined, inflaming local suspicion that Reed was a den of pinkos.

In response, President Duncan Ballantine [1952–54] and the board of trustees suspended Reynolds from teaching his summer course on art history and demanded that the professors explain their political views in private. Moore refused, arguing that the board had no right to question him about his political beliefs. The board fired him, despite the fact that he was tenured. Although professors at other institutions were fired under similar circumstances with little protest, the episode shook Reed to its core because it cast doubt on the college’s commitment to academic freedom. Students, professors, and alumni were appalled. Ballantine lost the confidence of the faculty and resigned.

In 1981, after years of controversy, the trustees issued a statement of regret. In 1997, Moore, then near death, participated in a campus forum on the affair. “I think what we’ve learned is that colleges should be more careful in the selection of trustees,” he said. steam tunnels: Network of subterranean passages emanating from the massive central boiler in the physical plant, designed to transfer steam heat to campus buildings. Spelunking in them has been a popular Reed hobby from the founding. Betty Hines Holzer ’29 recalled picnicking with friends in the “Dutch ovens.” Steve Yeadon [facilities 2006–] points to two remarkable features: the montage of graffiti done by students over the years and the footprints in the cement floor—evidence of the workers who set the forms and poured the concrete in this first campus infrastructure. All tunnel openings are locked, but students still manage to find a way in, as fresh examples of graffiti attest. Rumor holds that a considerable number of garden gnomes have also found their way in over the years.

1987 AT&T sues Quest for altering its logo in newspaper ad.

Postmodernism outflanks authorial intent.

1988 Geologist James Powell appointed president. Soon clashes with the faculty.

Doyle Owl pilfered from rugby team.

Library wing under construction. MG Midget installed in sub-subbasement.

1989 Cooley Art Gallery opens.

Brandishing coffee mugs, students march on renovated library to protest ban on food and drink.

1990 Students stage “reverse peristalsis” protest against Vice President Dan Quayle, drinking food coloring and emetics and then retching red, white, and blue. Quest: “Avant-Garde Painters Dazzle Quayle.”

1991 Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger ’91 graduates.

Concrete “blue bridge” replaces cantilevered bridge over canyon.

Last year of Olde Reed.

1992 Endowment at $116 million but college running deficit of $1 million.

Historian Steven Koblik appointed prez.

Students and faculty build a solarpowered car, dubbed the SolTrain.

New chemistry lab constructed, named for Arthur F. Scott. Old lab turned over to psychology for analysis and therapy.

Betty Gray establishes $2 million Gray Fund to improve student life.

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A barrel of fun. Larry Clarkberg ’87 bangs drum as students don outlandish headgear during thesis parade, circa 1987.

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STUDENT-FACULTY RATIO: For most of its history, the college’s ratio hovered around 10–1. In the early 70s, facing a financial crisis, the faculty raised the figure to 12–1. This lasted until 1999, when President Steven Koblik led a campaign to add more professors and get the ratio back to 10–1. That effort, combined with support from Reed’s centennial campaign, has driven the current ratio down to 10.2–1.

Sullivan, Richard [preZ 1956–67]: During his 11-year tenure—unusually long

by Reed standards—Sullivan was able to do what many presidents could not: expand. A Harvard graduate and World War II veteran, Sullivan hiked faculty salaries, hired new professors, and implemented (for the first time) a sabbatical program. This helped make Reed a national institution and bolstered its reputation. Sullivan oversaw the construction of several buildings, including new biology and physics labs, residence halls, a sports center, the commons, bookstore, and a library addition. He also tried to establish a grad school

(“Reed U”), which ultimately went nowhere.

After Reed, he became president of the Association of American Colleges. theatre: The study of the world as a stage.

It never metaphor it didn’t like. Theatre played a key role in student life from the founding of the college, but Reed did not offer formal instruction until 1936. The discipline gained its own department two years later. Fascinating courses over the years have included Radio Broadcasting, Theatre and the Media, Plays and Playhouses, Experimental Theatre, Stagecraft, and Gender and Theatre. Influential figures have included Kay Stuurman [1928–42], Frank Kierman [1941–46], Seth Ulman [1959–73], Cara Carr [1975–2005], Craig Clinton [1978–2010], Kathleen Worley [1985–], and Max Muller [1988–2006]. thesis: A graduation requirement since the very beginning; the library’s collection now numbers about 14,325 (the exact figure depending on whether the thesis of Gary Snyder ’51 has been stolen again). The rules regarding formatting, deadlines, penalties for late submission, and the composition of orals committees were

informal in the first years; President Dexter Keezer had them codified in 1937. Theses must be submitted to the registrar by the last Friday of classes. The shortest thesis (Kenneth Tomlinson ’15, Losses in the Electro-Analysis of Copper Sulphate Solutions, chemistry) runs four pages, while the longest (Carl Washburn ’66, A Sometimes Great Nation: A Story of American Politics, poli sci) runs an astonishing 506. Don Green ’54 took 50 years to complete his economics thesis, receiving his diploma in 2004 for Principal Agent Theory: Case Study of the Presidio Trust. (He wrote a perfectly adequate thesis in 1954, but was dissatisfied, ditched it, and did not find another topic until decades later.) Olin Balch ’73 delivered his psychology thesis, The Restoration of Avoidance Responses, on horseback.

On thesis day, Olin galloped across the front lawn, dismounted, walked his horse up a flight of steps in Eliot Hall, remounted, and submitted his thesis to President Paul Bragdon. thesis parade: First organized in 1961

by Priscilla Watson Laws ’61 and Jerry Millstein ’61. “In previous years many of us watched seniors straggle up to the registrar’s office one by one and then slink off quietly to collapse,”

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1993 Multicultural Resource Center established.

1995 Declaring that the Best Colleges survey

by U.S. News & World Report is “grossly misleading,” President Koblik pulls out of the survey. U.S. News retaliates by putting Reed at bottom of rankings.

1997 Student group SWORD (Siege

Weapons Offensive Research & Development) seeks funding to build giant catapult.

1998 Kaul Auditorium opens.

2000 Millennium bug crawls off in disgrace.

2002 Endowment at $349 million.

Educational Technology Center built.

they later wrote. “Having worked hard on our projects, we decided that the delivery of our senior theses should be conducted with proper ceremony.” On the appointed day, a rumpled band of barefoot seniors convened in front of the library accompanied by trombone, accordion, recorder, and drum, and proceeded to march to the registrar’s office. Since then, the tradition has grown more elaborate but no less exuberant. Students have tossed pages of notes from the roof of Eliot or burned them in a fire pit in front of the library. The parade has been led by marching bands and punctuated by the blast of cannons. Glitter, champagne, or rose petals—it’s always raining something. The trappings may vary, but the exhilaration never wanes. timê: Ancient Greek concept of “honor,” which Reedies encounter in their first week of Hum 110 as they try to figure out why Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus are acting so weird. Students also earn timê for scrounging, rugby, stealing the owl, and pulling off a double major. trustees: The buck stops here. tuition: Currently $42,540 a year; add $11,050 for room & board. See financial aid. underwater basket weaving: It was a joke, of course. Since the ’50s, “underwater basket weaving” has been used to refer to obscure or absurd college courses. Naturally, Reed students thought it would be fun to actually teach such a course at Paideia. A classic photo of a snorkeled student suspended in the pool weaving a basket still appears in the viewbook. You might think that after 40 years, the joke would wear out. Not at all. Several times a year, interns from peripheral news outlets dedicate roughly seven minutes to writing uncredited feature stories about absurd college courses. Inevitably, tucked between The Physics of Star Trek and The T’ao! of

Homer Simpson is Underwater Basket Weaving at Reed College—now held up as an example of the very trend it was supposed to lampoon. Mother Nature Network provided a typical example of shoddy journalism in its “15 Weird College Courses.” “[U]nderwater basket weaving actually involves making baskets by dipping reeds into water and letting them soak—at least that’s how Reed College of Portland in Oregon taught it.”

Winch, Martin (1858–1915): Nephew of Simeon and Amanda Reed (q.v.), who came west to live with them at the age of 12 and became a surrogate son and business manager.

At Amanda’s deathbed, Winch vowed to carry out her wishes. He withstood a furious legal challenge from the other heirs, who tried to break her will. Thanks to his efforts, the will was ultimately upheld and the college was born. Unfortunately, Winch clashed with T.L. Eliot (q.v.) over the character of the institution. Winch wanted a technical school, believing that was consistent with the Reeds’ wishes; Eliot insisted on a liberal arts college. Eliot won; Winch resigned from the board and entered a physical and emotional decline, dying a few years later. The bronze plaque dedicated to him in the Capehart room in Winch is a masterpiece of understatement: “He rendered valued aid in the founding of this college.”

Zeus: Mighty son of Kronos, marshal of thunderheads, father of gods and men.

Special thanks to Jim Kahan ’64, Gay Walker ’69, Patty MacRae ’71, Lauren Lassleben ’75, John Sheehy ’82, Sally Brunette ’83, Tonio Andrade ’92, Ian Gillingham ’94, Catherine Hinchliff ’10, Brandon Hamilton ’11, Lucy Bellwood ’12, Randall S. Barton, Ted Katauskas, Stacey Kim, Mark Kuestner, Laurie Lindquist, Kevin Myers, and Aimée Sisco for their outstanding contributions. Errors and omissions are the fault of Chris Lydgate ’90. Please send clarifications, corrections, or seething jeremiads to reed.magazine@reed.edu or add your comments online at reed.edu/reed_magazine.

Colin Diver, dean of law school at University of Pennsylvania, appointed president.

2003 Iraq War. 2004 Birchwood Apartments, Reed Office Annex, and Parker House acquired.

2005 Eastmoreland Hospital at Southeast 28th and Steele acquired and demolished.

2006 Linguistics declares independence

from anthropology (UN recognition pending).

2007 Advent of the DoJo, aka Academic Support Center.

Farmhouse next to Botsford Drive is acquired and becomes Farm House.

2008 New dorms Sitka, Sequoia, Bidwell,

and Aspen. New bridge over canyon.

New Spanish House.

Housing bubble pops. Stock market collapses. Endowment drops 30 percent.

2009 Reed launches Centennial Campaign with goal of raising $200 million.

Steelhead trout return to canyon.

2010 Sprouting of first environmental studies majors.

Doyle Owl appears in quad encased in block of ice.

Human hamster wheel materializes in SU.

2011 100 years! Hard to believe.

Last year of Olde Reed.

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Classic Lectures

Darkness, Light, and Drama in the OrestEia Thomas Gillcrist

This is the third of our classic Hum lectures, selected by Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–]. For more in the series, see www. reed.edu/reed_magazine.

The stage is dark at the beginning of the Agamemnon. In darkness the Watchman laments his discomfort and anxiety. When the beacon appears, it is the visual initiation of a motif that will recur throughout the trilogy, both verbally and visually: light out of darkness. This light is both real and a will o’ the wisp. It is the signal the watchman was set out to wait for, announcing Agamemnon’s victory and impending return. But it is not the “good news” that “shines through the darkness” the Watchman hoped for. The King’s return will not bring the restoration of order in the house and city, the “happy deliverance from toil” that the sentinel desires. By the time he descends from the roof, he knows it will not, and why. The Watchman is only the first of the play’s characters whose hopes for light out of darkness are quickly seen or feared or expected to be deluded, by themselves or us.

The interaction of visual and verbal images in this opening is characteristic of the play, and the trilogy. Though regarding light out of darkness the visual precedes the verbal, elsewhere the reverse can be true. So it is with another motif, that of the net, which binds together many things, perhaps indeed the trilogy itself.

Actually, by net I mean a complex of related images, net, coils, web, harness—constructs of fabric or cord that link, entangle, capture, or constrain. Harness appears first in a metaphor: Calchas at Aulis foresees the Greek army as a “great bit for Troy’s mouth.” Also, when the Chorus envisions Agamemnon reaching his terrible decision at Aulis, they describe him as having “put on the yoke-strap of compulsion.” This is a particularly complicated instance of the cluster. The yoke-strap signifies compulsion, but Agamemnon himself dons it. Translator Lloyd-Jones allows the reading that Agamemnon has no choice here, but not

all scholars agree. We should consider the ode and the event it describes theologically, psychologically, and ethically before we decide— including the question of what Agamemnon believes or convinces himself compulsion is.

The next appearance of the net motif is verbal again, but intensely visualized by the speaker and demanding an equally intense imaginative visualization from the audience. This is the Chorus’ conception of Agamemnon’s command regarding Iphigenia and its effect: to lift her face downwards like a goat above the altar, as she fell about his robes to implore him with all her heart, and by gagging her lovely mouth to stifle a cry that would have brought a curse upon his house; using violence, and the bridle’s stifling power.

And with her robe of saffron dye streaming downwards she shot each of the sacrificers with a piteous dart from her eye . . .

Why did this execution occur and in this way? Artemis demanded it, at least conditionally, but why? It is often observed of Shakespearean characters that they tend to be actors. Similarly it may be said of characters in the Oresteia, even invisible divinities, that they tend to be dramatists or directors.

Here the Chorus envisions the way Artemis required Agamemnon to perform a ritual sacrifice of his daughter if he was to leave the harbor, thereby publicly manifesting himself as the murderer to be of countless young people, Greek and Trojan alike, in his role of king responsible for the expedition.

The audience inevitably ponders the question of Agamemnon’s degree of guilt and the gods’ fairness. Artemis does give

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THE ORESTEIA: A PLOT SUMMARY: The basic outlines of the story are not complicated, though the details vary from version to version. As we all know, Paris, a Trojan prince, ran off with the beautiful Helen. Of course, Helen’s husband Menelaus wasn’t too happy about this, and Menelaus’s brother Agamemnon, the most important man in all of Greece, felt compelled to punish the affront by leading an enormous army against Troy. Now the goddess Artemis was sympathetic to the Trojans, so she prevented the Greek army from sailing across the Aegean. At that point, Agamemnon faced a tragic choice: either he could give up the expedition, thereby failing in his duty as a brother and a king, or he could propitiate the goddess by sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia, thereby failing in his duty as a father. He chose the latter. This allowed the Greeks to reach Troy, where they won the war. But it also made Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra furious—and who can blame her? During Agamemnon’s absence, she took up with his cousin Aegisthus and, upon Agamemnon’s triumphant return, she and Aegisthus killed him. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, then killed his own mother to avenge his father. Aeschylus’s great trilogy, the Oresteia, is the story of Orestes.

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him a choice—he can kill his daughter and proceed to Troy or give up the expedition.

But Agamemnon is to be the agent of Zeus’s vengeance for Paris’ violation of guest-host friendship in transporting Helen. Still, if the King is setting out on that basis, it is because of at most a general cultural imperative. He does not receive an express divine directive, as his son does in the second play. Here it is as though Zeus does not need to give one because he knows his man and the man’s vindictive, exploitative nature. On his return from Troy, Agamemnon does intend to thank the gods, but as his allies, for their help in what he has done. One may doubt that Agamemnon feels a divine command with enough intensity for that to absolve him of guilt for murdering his daughter. In his crisis of choice, he thinks of failing not Zeus but his “allies,” which may be merely consideration of his future as a warlord. Is the “doom” he foresees merely political? Apparently so, if the Chorus knows its man. They visualize him acting not in piety but hybristically: his spirit’s wind veering to an impious blast, impure, unholy, from that moment his mind changed to a temper of utter ruthlessness.

And Artemis has another motive: working to bring about another sacrifice, one without song or feast, an architect of quarrels grown up with the family, with no fear of the husband. For there abides, terrible, ever again arising, a keeper of the house guileful, unforgetting. Wrath child-avenging.

Artemis is contriving not only to have Agamemnon incur and manifest his guilt, but to ensure his punishment by Clytemnestra.

The Chorus’ vision of Iphigenia’s execution includes the detail of her tangled robes falling as she died. And the audience’s memory of that intensifies the irony of Agamemnon’s reluctance to soil the rich cloth, to trample on the treasures of his house, when his Queen in her turn directs him in a staged enactment of his hybris that is of her contriving.

It is more than poetic justice that both

father and daughter die amid entangling, bloody fabric. And it is more than strokes of superb stagecraft that bring the verbal image of the net into view at climactic moments.

The net is not only a central image of the play —in a sense it is the subject of the play. All the avengers are victims in turn, as they must be while they live within the social net: the ancient, aristocratic code of the vendetta— the convention of justice as retaliation, by a member of the family of the previous victim.

It does not help that the gods seem to be weaving the net, or exploit or at least condone it. The Atreidae are Zeus’s ministers of justice (however conscious they may be of this fact or whatever its position in their hierarchy of motives) and it is in this capacity that Agamemnon incurs the guilt which necessitates his punishment in turn. Avengers characteristically perpetrate culpable excesses in the performance of their function, as do the Achaean troops who while serving as “the mattock of Zeus who does justice” overturn “the altars and the seats of the gods” in Troy and are wiped out by a storm on their return voyage “not without the wrath of heaven.”

Avengers also characteristically mingle sanctioned motives with more dubious ones, as when Clytemnestra combines serving as Artemis’s agent with facilitating the consolidation of her paramour’s tyranny. And the despicable Aegisthus, of course, mixes vengeance for Thyestes and his own brothers with sexual and political opportunism. “The impious act/begets more after it” sings the Chorus, ostensibly regarding Paris, as Agamemnon approaches. There seems to be no potential for transcendence from within the system.

From where may help come? From Olympus? That hope has been expressed as early as lines 160–183, by the pious Chorus in their first ode, as they brood upon the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Zeus is only apparently savage, they declare—actually he has a benevolent purpose, inflicting pain on human beings for their benefit: it is Zeus’s law that through our sleepless nights of suffering we come to illumination and maturity. This choral affirmation is often presumed to be privileged, a valid expression of the meaning of the play’s events.

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But even a hopeful listener must recognize it as an instance of the motif of light out of darkness, which so many characters who hope for peace after turmoil articulate in vain.

By the end of the Agamemnon, there seems to be no clear reason for faith that the Chorus was right about Zeus’s intentions, or perhaps his capacity to achieve them. If Agamemnon suffered during the sacrifice of Iphigenia, there is no sign that he achieved insight or maturity through that. Rather, as Martha Nussbaum has observed, his apparent lack of “regret or painful memory” may be what most persuades us that he deserves his punishment.

Cassandra indeed suffers into truth, though one may wonder whether what she gains was worth the cost—she does not believe it so. In any case, her visionary power extends

Says the prophetess Cassandra: “There is no god of healing in this story.” throughout but not above or beyond the net in which she herself dies; her only satisfaction is in anticipation of another link in the chain of retaliation through the coming of Orestes.

Aegisthus is exultantly complacent regarding both his righteousness and impunity. And if Clytemnestra finally oscillates between confidence and foreboding, it is because she intermittently apprehends that retaliation will come, not because she has learned to recognize that she deserves it.

There is yet another question about Zeus posed by the Agamemnon but unanswerable at its end. If the Chorus’ faith in Zeus’s purpose seems unsubstantiated, at least so far, is that because they have attributed to the god intentions that he does not have or because he is unable to carry them out, whether yet or ever? Zeus’s project for Troy is complicated by the opposition of Artemis, the first of the virgin daughters of Zeus, whose attitude toward his will affects its exercise. Her anger at Agamemnon and Menelaus is toward their role as Zeus’s agents and thus toward her father and his intentions. It is Artemis who,

by demanding Iphigenia’s sacrifice, unleashes Clytemnestra; Clytemnestra is Artemis’s Fury.

As far as we can see, the dynamic of retaliation in human society is being driven by—or reflected in—a discord among the Olympian family themselves rather than by a coherent, functioning plan. Is it a plan, or just the cosmic dimension of things as they are?

And does Zeus even care? Does he have any intentions for mankind except punitive ones, even toward the human agents he uses? The play gives no access to Zeus’s consciousness, but what we learn of his shining son Apollo is not reassuring. Apollo makes Cassandra his prophetess, as Zeus makes Agamemnon his executioner. But Apollo, from a contemptible motive of sexual resentment, confers upon her suffering and knowledge in inseparable reciprocity. Cassandra’s experience at Apollo’s hands is a bitter parody of the enlightenment the Chorus hopes will be conferred by Zeus.

As the prophetess herself summarizes it, “no healer stands by while this word is uttered”­— or, as Richmond Lattimore translates the line, “there is no god of healing in this story.”

Anxiety and desire for release are carried forth into the second play, the Libation Bearers. Here these themes are intensified by a new factor, the character of the brother and sister avengers. Orestes and Electra appear as, in a sense, better people than their parents, if smaller in dramatic stature. The young ones have a kind of decency, and initially a kind of innocence, with perhaps an attendant vulnerability, which engages a different kind of concern from the audience than was accorded to the mother and father.

Orestes does have the explicit directive from Apollo that Agamemnon did not have from Zeus. And unlike the characters in the first play, who express hopes that after their crimes all will be well, Orestes expresses a desire to “perish,” having slain his mother.

Similarly, Electra distinguishes herself from her predecessors. She prays that she and Orestes will accomplish their revenge, but also that she will be more temperate than her mother and that her own acts will be “more innocent.” One cannot imagine Clytemnestra offering such a prayer.

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Moreover, Electra makes an unprecedented “distinction,” to which H.D.F. Kitto rightly calls attention. When the Chorus tells her to pray for the coming of a supporter, Electra hesitantly replies, “Do you mean a judge or one who does justice?” She discriminates between justice as retaliation and justice as trial and assessment. The young princess conceives of an agent of justice willing to consider and evaluate motive and circumstance. No one in the first play had such an idea. And no one else in the Libation Bearers has either. The chorus is peremptory and dismissive. They have the old mentality.

Justice is retribution.

Thus for Electra and Orestes there are two dangers. One is that they will be caught in the chain of ongoing retaliation that is the vendetta system. At the beginning of the Libation Bearers, Orestes prays while he and Pylades are alone on stage. The men then hide behind Agamemnon’s grave mound as Electra and the Chorus approach. When the Chorus speaks, the audience, unlike them, is aware of Orestes’s presence and the potentially impending applicability to him of the women’s words regarding Clytemnestra: For what payment can atone for blood spilt upon the ground?

Calamity, inflicting grievous pain, keeps the guilty man forever infected with an all-destroying sickness. and though all streams flow in one channel to cleanse the blood from a polluted hand, they speed their course in vain.

Oriented by this opening dramatic irony, the audience is sensitive to the possible double applicability of later choral pronouncements, such as loud cries the voice of Justice; “for murderous stroke let murderous stroke atone.”

“Let the doer suffer.”

This particularly ominous instance occurs as the time for Orestes to proceed against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus approaches:

But it is the law that drops of blood spilt on the ground demand further bloodshed; for murder calls on the Erinys, who from those who perished before brings one ruin in another’s wake.

The other danger for Electra and Orestes is that they will not be able to maintain their superior personal quality in action.

Because they are temperate by nature, they must impel themselves to frenzy, which came easier to Agamemnon. But as they do, their language, once capable of fine distinctions, becomes more like the savage chants of the Chorus, as in Electra’s cry, “Zeus lay his hand upon them—/ah, ah, severing their heads?” The animal imagery associated with the siblings becomes debased. The woman member of “the orphan brood of the father eagle” comes to identify herself with “a savage dog.” Orestes ultimately acknowledges himself as the “snake” of his mother’s dream.

And what is most disconcerting about this is the way it associates him with Clytemnestra’s vengeance upon Agamemnon, “the coils and meshes/of a dread viper.” Orestes must be saved not only from subsequent avengers but from becoming a “guilty man forever infected with an all-destroying sickness.” It remains to be seen whether there will be a god of healing in the next story.

Does the Eumenides resolve the conflicts it inherits from the two preceding plays, and if so how? From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s, the most widely accepted answer to these questions was provided

by Kitto and others influenced by him. In the Eumenides, the Oresteia crystallizes as a civic pageant celebrating the establishment of an Athenian institution, the court of the Areopagus. Through Athena’s interaction with the citizens of her favored polis, the ancient tradition of the vendetta is superseded by the innovative court. The passions and conflicting motives and interests of the clan are replaced by the rationality of the objective citizen jurors. Through Athena’s persuasion of the pre-Olympian Furies to sustain the new system, the discord among the gods which paralleled the human chaos of the

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vendetta era is also healed. The emergence of the Athenian civic institution is hailed as a great step forward for mankind. The Oresteia is a celebration of progress.

More recently, however, there have been second thoughts about this interpretation.

One reason is presumably that since the 1960s more people are more aware that courts of law are not always all they should be. If law is the great human, or western, or Athenian institution that the trilogy is celebrating without qualification, is this not politically naïve, or conducive to political naïveté? Anne Lebeck finds that when the trial is “assumed to be the great moment on which alone the trilogy’s resolution turns, it does seem a let-down, a sell-out, an awful disappointment.” Instead, according to Lebeck, “the trial is a parody which does not present the Athenian lawcourt in the most attractive light” and “the poet does not consider its legal forms above suspicion.”

The trial is “only shadow play,” Lebeck continues, behind which “lies the will of Zeus, irrevocable, incomprehensible, and just.” This version of the Eumenides hardly celebrates citizen participation or the triumph of rationality. Regarding human communication, Simon Goldhill concludes that “tragedy’s challenge is precisely to the sense of the secure and controlled expression of the order of things that for so many critics in their different ways has constituted the end of the Oresteia.” Moreover, in the last twenty years there has been powerful elaboration of an older criticism of the trilogy, as in Froma Zeitlin’s argument that “the Oresteia stands squarely within the misogynistic tradition that pervades Greek thought, a bias that projects a combative dialogue in male-female relationships and also relates the mastery of the female to higher social goals.”

It may be possible, however (and only coincidentally like a good Greek striving for the mean), to offer yet another reading of the Eumenides—one in which the play is significantly less complacent than in interpretations of the Kitto school, but more than another chastening ordeal with the problematic of language; a reading, moreover, in which the Eumenides is shown to manifest a criticism regarding the status of the female in Greek

culture that anticipates our own criticism thereof—a reading in which the concluding drama is seen as involving an attempt to redefine that status more affirmatively, even if not a completely successful one.

One key to the attitude that the Eumenides manifests toward its materials may be that the play involves a kind of chronological double vision. The Athenian institution celebrated—or, it may be safer to say, commemorated—is the court of the Areopagus, which existed as early as the seventh century. The manipulation of

The Oresteia involves chronological double vision. time that matters here is not the elimination of the five-hundred year gap between the era of Agamemnon and the seventh century, that brilliant stroke of dramatic license. Rather, it is the blurring of the distinction between the seventh century and the play’s own fifth. The original court was an arm of the Council of Areopagus, which had extensive legislative as well as judicial powers, and was open to “a group of aristocratic families” exclusively. The Areopagus remained a bastion of aristocratic “privileges and powers” until 462/461, when it was reformed by a democratic group including the young Pericles.

The Council and Court were stripped of all powers except the conduct of homicide trials.

And the jurors were no longer chosen from the privileged old families alone. The change was strenuously resisted by the conservatives and carried out with near-revolutionary force by the democrats. This crisis had occurred only three years before the Oresteia was produced.

The Eumenides, then, was presented to an audience of Athenians who had been bitterly divided by the recent reform of the Areopagus—on the one hand, those who deplored the loss of the Council as part of the city’s traditional way of life, in which the power of the great aristocratic families had been paramount, and on the other hand, those for whom abrupt curtailing of the traditional powers and their conventions seemed part of the creation of a better future.

This provides one frame for interpreting the

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nature of Apollo, his attitudes, and his actions in this final play. His behavior at its beginning may initially relieve an apprehension experienced during the Libation Bearers. At the end of the middle play, the only hope held open for the now desperate Orestes is that Apollo will somehow extricate him. But by that point what has been heard of Apollo in the trilogy has generated uncertainty whether his assurances can be relied upon. His behavior toward Cassandra has not been reassuring as to his integrity or dependability.

Early in the Eumenides, however, Apollo does harbor Orestes at Delphi and arrives to support him in Athens. Of Apollo’s intentions there is no more doubt. Nevertheless, an unanticipated problem emerges regarding his effectiveness. Apollo may be said to save Orestes only indirectly—that is, by taking

codes of law, inculcating high moral principles, and favoring philosophy. The play itself clearly associates him with social order, civil law, and rational intellect. And all of these the Eumenides undoubtedly represents as good things. Good, and necessary. But, more startlingly, especially to the component of the original or any audience dedicated to progress through rational reform, the play’s vision of Apollo also represents these good things as not in themselves altogether sufficient, even for their own perpetuation.

That this is so, and why, is evident in the clash between two arguments: the one the Furies give as to why Orestes’s crime is greater than Clytemnestra’s, and the one Apollo gives as to why Clytemnestra’s crime is greater than Orestes’s. When asked why they pursue Orestes for killing his mother but did not pur-

Apollo represents a specific complex of principles in the universe. him to Athens where other agents perform the task Apollo himself cannot fulfill alone.

Moreover, after Orestes is acquitted there is still more to be done to resolve the general problems of which Orestes’s plight had been a specific instance. Apollo plays no part in that final resolution; he presumably withdraws with Orestes. (But the stage direction to that effect in some editions in conjectural—Apollo simply disappears from the play.)

By dramatizing the reason for these limitations, the Eumenides creates a contrast that illuminates the agent who eventually does what Apollo cannot. The key is his attitude toward the Furies. He cannot speak to them without reviling them. When they claim they have rights as gods and a proper function to perform, he can only sneer. His only wish and command regarding them is that they be gone.

The point is not that Apollo as a character is irascible. However anthropomorphic he may be, he is not a person, he is a god—and as such he is the representative of a specific complex of principles in the universe. He has to react to the Furies as he does because he is Apollo.

The Greeks conceived of him as fostering the higher development of civilization, sponsoring

sue her for killing her husband, his father, the Furies reply, “She had not the same blood as the man she killed.” This is a true statement, but not an acceptable argument, at least to half the audience, and least of all to Apollo in his capacity as embodiment of the principle of social order. It is unacceptable to Apollo in this specific instance because Agamemnon was king. But it is equally incompatible with the principles Apollo represents as a general argument. Because even if Agamemnon had been a private citizen, it would have been his role to maintain order in his family so that its internal relationships reflected and contributed to the larger order of society—which Agamemnon may have been resolved to do on his return, whatever his own past transgressions against the family may have been.

Moreover, the Furies’ disregard for the nonsanguinary bond that does exist between husband and wife is unacceptable to Apollo for another reason: it is because that bond is one of contract, of agreement rather than blood relationship, that marriage is a social institution, reciprocally sustaining of and sustained by the social order. Marriage is the most fundamental of those various voluntary

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commitments out of which society is made.

Against the Furies, the play juxtaposes Apollo’s argument as to why Orestes’s crime is not so great. He advances it with notable complacency: This too I will tell you; mark the truth of what I say!

She who is called the child’s mother is not its begetter, but the nurse of the newly sown conception.

The begetter is the male, and she as a stranger for a stranger preserves the offspring, if no god blights its birth.

Even, however, if some audience members may have considered this physiologically accurate, the trilogy has already made it irrelevant. Even if the mother’s blood is not involved in conception, it nourishes the fetus in the womb, as does her milk post-partum.

The viper image in the Libation Bearers derived its horrifying power from the perverse conjunction of the animal fang that draws blood and the human mouth that draws milk.

Whether the natural fluid that gives the son life is blood or milk or both makes no difference. Orestes as viper becomes hideous as his blow spills the life of that being from whom he had drawn his own life.

Moreover, it is from that point that he becomes hideous to himself. For when it is perceived, at the end of the Libation Bearers, that Orestes has become entangled in the net of guilt, it is he who insists that it be recognized. Orestes reintroduces the drapery that Clytemnestra had exhibited at the end of the Agamemnon. But in the son’s case there is this difference: the net motif has been sustained by tangles of fabric in Artemis’s and Clytemnestra’s symbolic productions. But they have used them to make manifest the guilt of someone else. Orestes does that also. He calls for the robes in which his father was killed to be displayed as evidence of his mother’s guilt and thus his own exoneration. But it is also he who orders that the net be spread out around himself. And as it is extended, the lines converge upon him at the center, pointing to his own entanglement in the skein of evil. Ironically, his own symbolic pageantry

implicates him rather than exonerating him.

If this demonstration is unconscious on Orestes’s part, that in itself is significant. For it is out of his deeper consciousness that the Furies now emerge. When they appear to him immediately following his encirclement by the net, they arise out of his mind. They can be seen by no one else, on stage or in the audience.

Orestes’s reliance upon Apollonian rationality in reconciling himself to his act has proved insufficient. Part of his own nature has rebelled against it. Elsewhere in the trilogy, the Furies have represented a force in nature, the cosmos, human society, and tradition; now they also represent something in the self. No previous murderer in the Oresteia has experienced guilt to this degree. And the reason, as the scene implies, is that no previous crime has been so terrible. Matricide is a crime against nature which cannot be borne because it violates the most fundamental of natural bonds.

Here then is the trilogy’s answer to Apollo’s glib assertion that the mother does not count.

The audience, which has so shortly before experienced the conclusion of the Libation Bearers, can hardly fail to see this: Apollo’s argument does not take into account fundamental human instinct—something which, since he is a manifestation of rationality itself, he cannot comprehend. The trilogy is working to generate in the audience a more comprehensive consciousness, sufficient to criticize both Apollo’s argument and the restricted mentality that can produce or accept it. So far neither the Furies nor Apollo has the answer. Each sees part of the truth but neither can see the whole, due to what at this point seem to be the inherent limits of both their natures.

Apollo’s assertion regarding the autonomy of the male in procreation may also be seen as undercut within the Eumenides itself. The only attempt he makes to provide evidence for his position is by pointing to the visible Athena: and I shall offer you a proof of what I say.

There can be a father without a mother; near at hand is the witness, the child of Olympian Zeus . . . and she was not nurtured in the darkness of the womb, but is such an offspring as no goddess might bear.

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It is necessary to observe that Athena never unambiguously opposes this or Apollo’s other statements regarding her male-oriented Olympian nature. On the contrary, in her own words she seems repeatedly to concur.

For example, at the time of casting her lot in favor of Orestes’s acquittal, Athena explains her act this way: For there is no mother who bore me; and I approve the male in all things, short of accepting marriage, with all my heart, and I belong altogether to my father.

Therefore I shall not give greater weight to the death of a woman, one who slew her husband, the watcher of the house.

Here Athena does verbally confirm Apollo’s claim that she was “not nurtured in the darkness of the womb.” And this statement by Athena is one of those that Jane Harrison is deploring when she laments on behalf of women that “we cannot love a goddess who on principle forgets the earth from which she sprang . . . always from the lips of the Lost Leader we hear the shameful denial.” No one should casually dismiss any opinion from a scholar whose contributions have been as valuable as those of Professor Harrison, the distinguished classical anthropologist and historian of Greek religion. But it seems possible to suggest that a fuller response to Athena’s lines is to recognize them as generating the questions—for men or women—of can we, how can we, should we, why should we, love such a goddess?

The denial in question is Athena’s omission of a response to Apollo’s description of her birth that would give the full story: Zeus overpowered the Titaness, Métis. She conceived a daughter and Earth prophesied that if she conceived again she would produce a son who would depose his father. So Zeus swallowed Métis and was seized by a headache. Haephestus split his skull, and Athena emerged full grown. As Fagles and Stanford observe, “the myth may demonstrate the fatherhood of Zeus but it hardly excludes

the motherhood of Métis, even her irrepressible vitality in the face of the Father’s typical violence.” Apollo’s partial version need not be presumed to indicate that anyone else has forgotten or is repressing the full story. The myth was a cultural property, familiar from Hesiod and otherwise, so Apollo’s distortion by omission here may be providing the audience with further evidence of the limits of his mentality.

In any case, Athena’s nature must be comprehended through her behavior as well as her utterances and her silences—her behavior toward the Furies first of all. They have initially agreed to her arbitration because, as they say, “we reverence you as worthy and of worthy parentage”—a line which Kitto renders as “We pay you honor worthy of the honor you have paid us” and Fagles translates “We respect you. You show us respect.” What is significant here is not only that Athena is conciliatory to the Furies but that she can be, as Apollo cannot. If his inability is an attribute of his limited nature, her ability is a manifestation of a more comprehensive one. In terms of ability to balance the claims of instinct and reason, one may term this wisdom (which was associated with Athena’s mother Métis). In terms of participation in both the male and female principles by which those poles of consciousness are represented here, one may call it androgyny.

Even at the moment of casting her ballot, Athena’s behavior involves more than her words indicate. On the one hand, she does vote to acquit Orestes. And in her rationale, she indeed aligns herself with male principles exclusively, denying any female affinities. But here Athena is doing something specific and at the same time something more general. She is voting on Orestes. And she is thus participating with her citizens in the first decision of the court she just established. The institution is one in whose processes considerations of motive and circumstance are taken into account. What Athena has done is to create an institution that gives weight to the kind of concerns she expressed upon first hearing the Furies’ version of Orestes’s crime; as she asked then, “Was there no other constraint that made him go in fear of wrath?” And as she

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observed to herself, “Two parties are present, and we have heard half the case.” And then to the Furies, “You wish to be thought to act justly rather than to do so.” Athena is expressing a conception of justice not as retaliation and victory but as trial and right assessment.

And that is what she makes a place for in Athens (whether or not human beings will subsequently be adequate to its demands).

Whether this more general and ongoing establishment could be as easily rationalized in male Olympian terms as the single vote on Orestes is not clear. It is clear that Athena doesn’t attempt to; her male-oriented explanation applies only to the vote, not to the founding of the Court. Her broader objective is at least as much mercy as rational analysis.

And Athena’s responses when she first heard the Furies’ accusation against Orestes are

Athena expresses justice not as retaliation but as trial and right assessment. reminiscent of Electra’s query to her Chorus as to what kind of savior she should hope for: “a judge or one who does justice?” Electra’s Chorus had no patience with that question.

Their concern was for retribution alone.

And there is no evidence in either play that Electra’s emergent distinction is shared by anyone else in society or the cosmos except and until Athena. What the goddess ultimately does is to give institutional form to concerns and perceptions first articulated in the trilogy by an isolated mortal woman.

Neither the vote nor the creation of the Court are Athena’s last acts on stage. And in her subsequent behavior her more than male nature is most clearly manifested, however it may have earlier been blurred or denied.

Orestes has been saved. Nevertheless, two problems remain, one religious, one moral and social. Or rather, one problem with both religious and social dimensions. Athena’s vote has been a partisan, Olympian one, by her own account. The claims of the Furies have been denied. The conflict among the gods is

yet unreconciled. Furthermore, in acquitting Orestes, Athena has refused to be influenced by the Furies’ contention that their power must be maintained because it operates as a deterrent to crime, in spite of the fact that she has earlier recognized the truth of their assertion. Paradoxically, in acquitting Orestes because in avenging his father king and ridding his house of a usurper he was acting on behalf of the social order, she has set a precedent—the denial of the rights of the Furies—which, if followed, will itself result in the disturbance of social stability.

Now Athena acts to resolve these conflicts also. She offers the Furies, and they accept, a new relationship with the Olympians, and a new significance in the hearts and minds of human beings. But in her final disposition, Athena does not try to alter the essential nature of the Furies or their inherent function.

Rather, once again, as earlier in the play, she comprehends and acknowledges their nature and value with a sympathy that implies an affinity with them and distinguishes her more comprehensive consciousness from the exclusive rationality of Apollo. Moreover, in recognizing society’s need for the Furies, Athena displays a fuller understanding of human consciousness than does her brother. Indeed, she may be thought to recognize a characteristic of consciousness shared by Furies and humans.

Athena’s forensic persuasion of the Furies includes a brief reference to the “lightning-bolt” in Zeus’s armory. In mentioning her access to that, is she not operating on the Furies’ own principle that no one can be expected to do right through reason alone, without an element of fear?

After the Furies have been won over, Athena gives thanks to “Zeus of the assembly,” who has “prevailed.” But in the same utterance she more fervently expresses thanks to a female power: “I rejoice; and I cherish Persuasion’s eye,/for having guided my tongue and lips.” This expression of affiliation with both male and female powers is in striking contrast to her self-definition while casting her vote for Orestes. Athena herself has been through much. Before the trial, she told Orestes “either course, that you should stay/

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or that I should send you away is disastrous, and perplexes me.” Has she suffered into truth? Has she learned not only how to support Orestes and not outrage the Furies, but also the truth of her own nature—that she embodies and serves both male and female principles? This is her last reference to Zeus.

As for visible effects, one may wonder if she drops her spear when she assumes the role of the Fury Chorus’ Leader and joins them in their dance.

The Furies are not demeaned, as they gradually recognize. Entering the cave is not allowing themselves to be shut away. Earth has always been their home, from which their influence can still radiate. The lower position of the cave at the base of the hill relative to the Court at the top represents not a subordinate role but a foundational one.

The resolution of the trilogy requires both the establishment of the Court of the Areopagus and the migration of the Cthonic goddesses to a new home in the soil of Attica, with their conversion from blind and bloody persecutors into defenders, through the awe they inspire, of the new system in which discriminating justice is practiced—or attempted. When they consent to enter the civic structure, their earlier function of avenging bloodshed on family and clan terms is expanded to include avenging acts of violence on behalf of the polis. By accepting Athena’s proposal, these gods of the underworld gain great power in cooperation with the gods of Olympus, and mankind.

At the conclusion, Athena becomes a stage director, like Artemis, Clytemnestra, and Orestes before her. And her directions include the last visual manifestations of the trilogy’s two unifying motifs. The Furies’ black robes disappear from view and torches are kindled—light out of darkness.

Their new robes of red, the color designating quests of the state in the Panathenaic procession, supersede the red fabrics that had been involved in the crimes in the preceding plays—the net transformed.

Is this a fulfillment of our hopes or a mockery of them? Is the triumphant conclusion earned and potentially salutary, as

critics such as Kitto affirm? Or is it ironically, skeptically, or obtusely imposed on double talk and false consciousness, as Lebeck’s, Goldhill’s, or Zeitlin’s analyses conclude? Or something in between?

At least one prominent pair of readers, Fagles and Stanford maintain the Kitto position in considering both the Oresteia and the Parthenon to be “expressions of optimism,” though they are fully aware of conflicting views of the trilogy. But the final lighting of the torches, in apparent triumph, may indeed convey an undertone of doubt. As the audience has observed since the Watchman’s experience at the beginning of the Agamemnon, characters’ hopes from lights out of darkness have repeatedly been thwarted before. The effect of this repetition might be compared by the modern reader to

Athena embodies and serves both male and female principles. the rhythm of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. At the conclusion of that novel, Stephen is firmly optimistic about his future as a writer, believing that earlier obstacles and doubts have been resolved. But the reader is less certain, having followed Stephen through a series of moments of apparent crystallization that were followed by backsliding into futility or depression.

Portrait thus enables the reader to perceive that Stephen may succeed or fail, and also to perceive something on which that will depend. Young Daedalus must learn that he does not and cannot create out of his own consciousness in isolation, as he supposes.

He must learn, as Joyce has learned, the possibilities of intertextuality – there is a web to be entered, beyond those nets “to fly by.” Consciousness must be extended by interpenetration with other consciousnesses, even or especially those that have been disparaged as outmoded or threatening, rival or alien, including the feminine. Only out of this does the progress come. So hard it is to

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“forge . . . the uncreated conscience” of a race or of a city, be it Dublin or Athens.

There is a kind of chronological double vision in Portrait. Though often we have the illusion of unmediated access to young Stephen’s consciousness, there is an older, wiser writer—call him older Stephen, Joyce, or an anonymous narrator—who is fostering our understanding of what Stephen still needs to learn and do. The chronological double vision in the Oresteia may be thought to function in a similar way. If the audience supposes that the Eumenides is reverential in relation to the seventh century foundation of the Areopagus, then the triumphant procession must seem a mockery indeed. The Council’s Court, as originally constituted, did not succeed in bringing harmony to the city during the ensuing two hundred years. If the audience supposes, however, that the play is reverential in regard to the reform of the Court three years before the production, the implication is different. The play simultaneously confronts the audience with an earlier failure and a new chance.

The Eumenides has represented characters discovering hitherto unrecognized traits and capacities for enlargement in themselves and their supposed opponents, in religion, social values, and gender. It has dramatized antagonists discovering underlying common interests. And it has represented the indispensability of the ancient to the modern and the danger of disregarding that. Ironically, it is not the Furies but Apollo, that self-proclaimed champion of progress, who turns out be the “old one” and who must be bypassed to achieve the wedding of opposites: which points toward fertility at the end of this comedy in tragic form. Apollo’s sterility is in his inability to learn the abortiveness of stereotyping oneself or others, failing to recognize one’s own or their potential to expand beyond definitions that are complacent or pejorative. And the play has sought to inculcate in the audience the fuller consciousness necessary to critique Apollo’s view, whether they entered the theatre as partisans of the civic rationalism of the new Areopagus or the clan-oriented traditionalism of the old one.

It is most significant for judging the Oresteia’s implied claim for itself that the audience is invited to join in the procession to the hill. The double vision suddenly becomes triple.

The time is not two hundred on three years ago, but now. The invitation—actually challenge— is not to celebration but to commitment and participation. Whether the procession will lead to a triumph or a mockery depends upon whether the audience can manifest in the city the consciousness that the trilogy has sought to manifest in the theatre.

Thomas Gillcrist retired from Reed College in 2002 after forty years in the English Department. He received a Graves Award for excellence in teaching in the Humanities and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, and Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Seoul. He also served on the executive committees of the Association of Departments of English and the Western Humanities Alliance. Since retiring, he has written on Victorian historian and statesman T. B. Macaulay’s essay on Warren Hastings and served as guest editor for a special Macaulay issue of Nineteenth–Century Prose.

Works Cited Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1993.

Fagles, Robert, and W.B.Stanford. The Serpent and the Eagle: A Reading of the ‘Oresteia.’ The Oresteia. By Aeschylus.

Trans. Robert Fagles. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977. 13-97.

Goldhill, Simon. Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

Joint Association of Classical Teachers. The World of Athens: an Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916. Ed. Chester G. Annderson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

Kitto, H.D.F. Form and Meaning in Drama: A Study of Six Greek Plays and of “Hamlet.” 2nd ed. London: University Paperbacks –Methuen, 1964.

Lattimore, Richmond, trans. Oresteia. Ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. The Complete Greek Tragedies.

Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953.

Lebeck, Anne. “The Oresteia”: A Study in Language and Structure. Publications of the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1971.

Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

Zeitlin, Froma I. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Women in Culture and Society.

Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

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Reediana Books by Reedies

Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers

By Roger Porter [English 1963–]

Work Meets Life: Exploring the Integrative Study of Work in Living Systems Edited by Robert Levin ’79

Cornell University Press, 2011

MIT Press, 2011

What compels grown children to hunt down and expose their parents’ secrets? Do these narratives simply exploit painful family histories, or can they be justified as paths to authenticity?

Professor Roger Porter [English 1963–] explores these questions in a survey of 18 memoirs about parents—mostly fathers— whose deceptions have led their offspring to question their own most basic assumptions about who they are.

Some of the revelations are truly mind-boggling. Mark Kurzem, for instance, recounts how, gradually and against great resistance, he finally draws out his Jewish father’s secret: orphaned as a young boy in Belarus, he was adopted by proHitler Latvian soldiers, who dressed him in a Nazi uniform and paraded him through Germany as a “child Nazi warrior.”

One of the most touching memoirs is that of Louise Steinman ’73, who relates her efforts to piece together the World War II experiences that turned her father from a passionate and lively young soldier into the distant, impersonal man she knew. After her parents’ death, she opens a rusted ammunition box and discovers 474 letters from her father to her mother from the Pacific theater, along with a small Japanese flag. Steinman learns that Japanese soldiers carried these flags as gifts from their families, and eventually she tracks down the soldier’s surviving relatives to return his flag.

Not all the memoirs are conventional texts. Porter includes Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary film, My Architect, about the architect Louis Kahn, and a memoir in graphic form by Alison Bechdel, best known for her long-running cartoon strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. The book raises many fascinating issues: Can the truth really be reconstructed out of the sketchiest of documentation and testimony? Do the offspring have compassion for their parents? Does learning the truth change their lives in any meaningful way? Bureau of Missing Persons is full of probing and perceptive questions even as it challenges the memoirist to do justice to an unchangeable and perhaps ultimately unknowable past. —ANGIE JABINE ’79

What is work? Ask a physicist, and she might breezily answer, “Force times distance.” Ask a biologist, and you might hear about cells converting ATP to ADP + P. Ask an economist, and you might hear about the interplay of labor power, resources, and capital. Ask Dad, and he might tell you, “What I did to put you through that college in Oregon.”

Who’s right? All of them.

In Work Meets Life, Bob Levin (himself a biologist) gathers a cross-disciplinary panel of experts to discuss work, and the interplay of work and living systems, from their respective areas of expertise. His goal is to forge a better understanding and a more focused approach: a study of work that breaches the disciplinary boundaries that separate these perspectives.

The book begins with the biochemical building blocks of work, where microscopic life forms wrest order from the brute verities of thermodynamics, and tackles increasingly complex systems, moving from microbial metabolism to management theory, with stops along the way to discuss the energy-information tradeoffs of the Pony Express and the active energetic balancing act of satisfied workers. The essayists here assembled—biologists, neurologists, and industrial designers—refer frequently to each other’s efforts, indicating the collegial, crossdisciplinary approach that went into the book.

Though the central thesis of Work Meets Life is tantalizing, the book doesn’t always convince. Worker dissatisfaction, for example, is reduced through seductive Cartesian curves to be mere imbalances in the worker’s stored versus expended energy, with no room in the clean graphs for “my boss is a jerk.” But we should expect some rough edges whenever an interdisciplinary team tries a radically different approach to a single subject. To its credit, Work Meets Life suggests many more questions than it answers. Having brought us from microbes to human workplace relations, it would be interesting to see this grand unification extended to the macrowork of organizations, and, indeed, that of economies and nations.

More work for later. —William Abernathy ’88

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The Astral

By Kate Christensen ’86

Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots along the Pepper Trail Kraig Kraft ’00, cowriter

Doubleday, 2011

Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011

Kate Christensen has a way with men. In earlier novels, she’s created a string of memorable male protagonists, such as Hugo Whittier, the washed-up writer who is chain-smoking his way to the grave in The Epicure’s Lament, and Oscar Feldman, the philandering painter whose death lies at the crux of The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner award.

In The Astral, her sixth novel, she’s sculpted the life of Harry Quick, 57, a mildly successful poet whose cosseted life is upended when his long-simmering wife Luz tosses him out.

She believes, falsely, that she’s discovered irrefutable evidence of an affair by sneaking a look at Harry’s latest work, which she destroys by literally tearing it to shreds, then tosses his computer out of the window, along with all the routines and comforts of his life.

Flattened by his loss, Harry manages to gather up his shattered fragments and patches himself together into a whole, if wholly different, person. Christensen deftly pokes at the glue, smoke, and mirrors that hold a marriage together through vivid flashbacks of Harry’s life with Luz, as well as vignettes with Harry’s still (unhappily) married friends and a hilarious scene in which Harry descends upon his wife’s therapist and viciously castigates her for ruining his marriage.

The Astral has many funny moments, often involving Harry’s warm yet distant relationship with his daughter Katrina, a do-gooding lesbian freegan, and son Hector, a starry-eyed follower who’s either in the clutches of a cult or the charlatan behind it. By the novel’s end, it is clear that Kate understands the secret of compelling books and enduring romance—leave them wanting more. —Audrey Van Buskirk

What is a spice, a vegetable, and a condiment; is used as a colorant, a pest repellant, a preservative, a weapon, and in medicine?

The answer to this riddle is the irreplaceable chile pepper. Its increasing prominence in cuisine and precarious position in current climate conditions inspired a yearlong odyssey for three “gastronauts”—agroecologist Kraig Kraft, chef Kurt Friese, and ethnobotanist Gary Nabham—who traveled through pepper-growing regions in the U.S. and in Mexico in a van they dubbed the Spice Ship. Their goal: to learn about the effects of climate change on food diversity, using America’s rarest heirloom pepper varieties as the test group. Their method: to meet with those most affected, the farmers and chefs for whom the pepper crops are a source of livelihood. More than a travelogue, the book includes the history of peppers, recipes for local dishes that use them (try xnipek, Mayan for “dog’s nose”), and numerous sidebars, such as those contributed by Kraig for the datil, habanero, tabasco, and New Mexico chiles (his favorite from his formative years in the state). Kraig majored in biology at Reed and earned a PhD at the University of California, Davis, focusing on the origins and diversity of wild and domesticated chile peppers.

He also writes about chiles for a number of magazines and journals (see also chasingchiles.blogspot.com). What the travelers conclude from their journey leaves the reader with hope: the response to unpredictable weather lies in increasing plant diversity. As one Sonora resident notes, “climate has been changing all along,” and we have no other option, but to keep growing. —Riddy Anna

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continued

Social Perspective: The Missing Element in Mental Health Practice, by Richard U’Ren ’60, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, was published by the University of Toronto Press in September. In his book, Richard investigates how access to income, education, and social affiliations buffers individuals against stress and facilitates coping. He demonstrates that those who lack access to such resources suffer the poorest health and the greatest mental distress. Adding a new dimension to understandings of mental health, mental illness, and psychological distress, Social Perspective offers a concise account of society’s impact on the individual.

Jack Bradbury ’63 and his wife and coauthor, Sandra Vehrencamp, published a second edition of their textbook, Principles of Animal Communication (Sinauer Associates). The new edition is in color, and both authors worked hard to recruit great photos (mostly from Flickr photographers) of various animals engaged in communicating. The heavy math and advanced theory in the first edition were removed from the hard copy text of this edition, but are still available free, online for anyone interested. “The field has moved ahead rapidly in the last decade and it took over five years to review the literature and write this totally new version,” says Jack, who also related that he would be providing Frank Gwilliam [biology, 1957–96] with a signed and dedicated copy.

Jack retired in 2009 and Sandy in 2010, and now they plan on really having some time for efforts other than book writing!

In her book Honest Medicine (Innovative Health Publishing, 2011), Julia Schopick ’65 introduces four lifesaving treatments that have

Queen Esther Seeking Permission to Speak, 2009, by Lilian Broca, is featured in The Hidden and the Revealed, edited by Gareth Sirotnik ’69. been effectively helping—and in some cases curing—people for 25–90 years. The treatments include low-dose naltrexone for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, HIV/AIDS, and some cancers; the ketogenic diet for pediatric epilepsy; intravenous alpha lipoic acid for terminal liver disease and some cancers; and Silverlon for nonhealing wounds.

(See Class Notes.)

Conscientious Objection in Health Care: An Ethical Analysis, by Mark Wicclair ’66, professor of philosophy at West Virginia University, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.

Mark offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases.

His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, students, and anyone interested in this important aspect of health care.

The story “A Borrowed Heart,” by Deborah Ross ’68, appeared in the July/August 2011 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine.

(See Class Notes.)

Gareth Sirotnik ’69 edited and produced a largeformat art book, The Hidden and the Revealed: The Queen Esther Mosaics of Lilian Broca, which was published this year by Gefen Publishing. Lilian Broca (www.lilian broca.com) is an award-winning artist, lecturer, and instructor, who says she chose the biblical Queen Esther “as a prototype for the courageous, selfless heroine, who wins against all odds.” (See Class Notes.)

Bonnie K. Rucobo ’74 has published her first middle grade novel, King Pachuco and Princess Mirasol (Wildflower Press, 2011), for children ages 8 to 12. The story relates the adventure of two characters who find themselves far from home, transformed into a Lilac-crowned

Amazon parrot and a lovebird. They live for a time in the kitchen of an elderly Hispanic couple in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then they plan their escape into the night sky and their perilous journey home.

Bonnie’s birds Pachuco and Mirasol served as the models for the book, which she describes as a labor of love. Her goal in writing it was to provide positive role models for Hispanic children, and she is already at work on a sequel. (See Class Notes.)

Susan Reed ’81, an award-winning journalist who has covered almost every aspect of the workplace for 25 years for CBS News, the New York Times, the American Prospect, and other publications, has written The Diversity Index (AMACON Books, 2011). Based on her groundbreaking study of Fortune 100 companies, the book analyzes the long-term, widespread effectiveness of the Plans for Progress protocol developed in 1961, and reveals the stories behind the few companies that have made a difference, breaking down the 10 simple steps required for an organization to fully develop integration, keep it growing, and

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empower its employees to develop new products and markets. Susan currently writes a business column for the international news website GlobalPost.com.

Rebecca Poulson ’86 has published the Outer Coast 2012 calendar (www.theoutercoast.com), which features her original wood engravings and watercolors, as well as poetry on an “into wilderness” theme, including a contribution by John Daniel ’70. “Thanks to Ellen Stauder [English, 1983–] and Bert Brehm [biology, 1962– 93].” Rebecca has been publishing an annual calendar for several years and remembers doing typesetting and desktop publishing on the original Apple computers that arrived at Reed in 1986.

Phyllis Behrens Gerstenfeld ’88 is the author of CJ: Realities and Challenges. Using the text’s framework of observe, investigate, and understand, students learn to recognize the myths and interpret the facts underlying the American criminal justice system and gain greater understanding of its complexities.

Additionally, her book Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls, and Controversies is now in its second edition (Sage Publications, 2010). Phyllis also writes under the pen name Kim Fielding and has published her second novel, Flux (CreateSpace, 2011).

Ennek, the son of Praesidium’s chief, has rescued Miner from a terrible fate: suspension in a dreamless frozen state called Stasis, the punishment for traitors. As the two men flee Praesidium by sea, their adventures are only beginning . . .

Flux is a sequel to Phyllis/Kim’s novel Stasis. (See Class Notes.)

Noah Iliinsky ’95 has cowritten Designing Data Visualizations (O’Reilly Media, 2011) with Julie Steele, his collaborator on Beautiful Visualization.

His latest is a how-to book on the visualization design process and is accessible to those with no technical background. Noah says that the book was strongly influenced by the work he did for his master’s thesis in technical communication at the University of Washington.

Two books by Linus Rollman ’96, Crocodiles and Coconuts: Equations in Two Variables and A Companionable Guide to Polynomials and Quadratics, complete a middle-grade algebra series that began with the publication of Jousting Armadillos in 2009.

The books, says Linus, “present algebra from a humanities-oriented perspective,” and differ from other textbooks because they are written in the first person and can be read from cover to cover, “rather than skipped and skimmed through.” In addition, they are structured differently from most textbooks in that the problems and questions are embedded in the text itself rather than separated out as “problem sets” at the ends of lessons. Finally, they guide the students through inductive discovery of the principles of algebra,

“rather than simply telling the students how to do things.” Linus teaches at Arbor School of Arts & Sciences in Tualatin, Oregon.

Email: linus@arborschool.org.

The Local World, a debut volume of poetry by Mira Rosenthal ’96, was published in September by the Kent State University Press. The work, which won the Wick Poetry Prize, is described as beautifully crafted narratives dealing with loss, travel, and salvage, but with language that “consistently rises above its cries to wonder and beauty.” A second book of Mira’s poetry translations will appear in February 2012. Learn more at mirarosenthal.com. (See Class Notes.)

Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician’s Craft (University of California Press, 2011) by Graham Jones ’97, assistant professor in anthropology at MIT, offers an unprecedented look inside the secretive subculture of modern magicians. Entering the flourishing Paris magic scene as a participant observer, Graham gives a first-hand account of how magicians learn to perform their astonishing deceptions. He pulls back the veil to reveal not only how magicians’ secrets are created and shared, but also how they are stolen and destroyed.

Karen Leibowitz ’99 and her husband, Anthony Myint, have written Mission Street Food: Recipes and

Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant (McSweeney’s, 2011). Described as “a breath of fresh air,” and “uncommonly generous,” the book relates the story of the couple’s successful and innovative jaunt through the restaurant business in San Francisco, and comes with recipes such as Chamomile Toast Crunch (a homey dish, elevated “with a highbrow technique or two”), and with “thoughtful and hilarious” discussions of contemporary food issues.

Though Karen says that the book is more about the taste of food rather than the politics of food, a portion of the book sales will go to food activism (Slow Food USA), just as they donated their restaurant profits to local charities. To learn more about Mission Street Food and the book, visit Karen’s blog, blog.missionstreetfood.com.

Simon Max Hill ’01 teamed up with Eisner Award–winning artist Shannon Wheeler for his book Grandpa Won’t Wake Up (BOOM! Studios, 2011). “It’s a little bit Hop on Pop and a little bit Weekend at Bernie’s,” says Simon, who also runs the casting company that found actors and extras for the hit comedy show Portlandia.

Elly Blue ’05 has a new zine, PDX

by Bike, which is self-published by her new organization PDXbyBike (pdxbybike.com).

The publication is a “bicycle tourist agency” for visitors to the city and serves as a companion to the organization’s web guide, with information about local history, using the transit system, bridges you can bike over, and much more.

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In Memoriam Prodigal Son Steve Jobs

February 24, 1955–October 5, 2011

By Chris Lydgate ’90

Visionary. Iconoclast. Rebel. Even though Steve Jobs was officially enrolled for just one semester, he was the quintessential Reedie.

It is far beyond the scope of this obituary to trace his protean career at Apple or assess his accomplishments and failures (and there were many of each). Classmates hardly need to be reminded of how he transformed the personal computer, the cell phone, and the music player, and how those devices in turn revolutionized a dozen industries.

But it is worth taking a closer look at Steve’s time on campus, because Reed was a much deeper part of him than one might think from his official transcript. In his crystalline intensity, his obsession with big ideas, his hunger for perfection, he personified the classic Reed archetype.

“Reed is about ideas, and Steve Jobs embodied the spirit of Reed by fighting to bring his ideas into existence,” President Colin Diver said after Steve’s death. “He revolutionized the way we communicate, how we listen to music, and how we share information. He showed us how the power of creative ideas can transform the world.

We are saddened by his loss.”

Steve came to Reed in fall 1972. War raged in Vietnam. Bobby Fischer had just seized the world chess title from Boris Spassky. Watergate was smoldering. The counterculture was changing the face of higher education. Many colleges relaxed their academic standards and modernized their curriculum. Not Reed. As Tim Appelo ’78 wrote in the Hollywood Reporter: At Stanford, any grade below a C was erased from students’ records. At Reed, there was no gentleman’s C, and you were expected to be too pure to even ask what your grades were.

Your goal was perfection. It was all about

questing individualism, original thinking, ruthless meritocracy. The school mascot was an image of burning ambition: a griffin blazing like the sun.

Steve was a brash 17-year-old from Palo Alto, California, from a family of relatively modest means. His father was a machinist; his mother an accountant. Steve lived on the third floor of Westport in room 32, a triple room at the end of the hall.

Arriving before either of his roommates, he snagged the big central chamber. Even then he had outsized ambitions and a certain hauteur, according to his roommate, Eric Siegal ’76. He raved about the Beatles and Bob Dylan and dismissed organized sports as “fascist.”

Dorm dad Ron Luckerman ’73 remembers how Steve would come to his room late at night and pour out his heart about his romantic woes. Other times, Steve would stop by the pottery studio and give Ron a hand mixing clay and glaze. “Steve spoke with me more than any of the other dorm kids ever did,” Ron says. “Being younger may have had something to do with it.”

In the first couple of weeks of class, Steve Wozniak, a high school friend of Steve’s, showed up and crashed on the floor. Woz brought with him an early prototype of the “blue box,” a homemade hacking device that allowed the user to make free telephone calls. The blue box became an instant hit. Steve, Woz, and their friends would engage in pranks such as placing a call from a phone booth in Westport to Los Angeles, then to London, then Tokyo, Jakarta, Bombay, and back to Portland to the next booth over. Eric can still remember how the voice was delayed as the signal caromed around the globe.

(On another occasion, Woz impersonated Henry Kissenger and placed a prank call to the Vatican, waking up the Pope. The pontiff’s reaction is not recorded.)

Woz made frequent trips from the Bay Area to Reed to see Steve, often lugging bags filled with electronic components; before long, Steve and Woz were manufacturing blue boxes in Westport. (Steve’s

knack for marketing was apparent even then—he would fold slips of paper into the boxes with enigmatic messages, like Chinese fortune cookies. One read, “You’ve got the whole world in your hands.”)

This not-so-innocent experimentation nearly landed Steve in jail. At one point, Eric took a blue box to a phone booth outside the Rexall drugstore up the hill on Woodstock Boulevard. As Eric held the blue box to the receiver, he was arrested

by FBI agents, who took him to a detention center and demanded to know where he got the device. “They told me, ‘You’re a history major. There’s no way you made this yourself,’” he remembers. Eric was just 17 years old but was not intimidated by his interrogators; he refused to roll over on Steve and Woz. Dean Jack Dudman ’42 [mathematics 1953–85] bailed him out. He was ultimately convicted and paid a hefty fine but, he says, “I never gave them up.”

Like many a freshman, Steve was intoxicated with the spirit of Reed, but intimidated by the curriculum. He took Hum 110, psychology, and philosophy, but was so focused on his own obsessions that he did not work hard on his studies—indeed, it is striking to note that none of his profes-

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photo courtesy of jeremy stone ’99

sors that first semester have strong memories of him. Feeling guilty about asking his parents to spend their savings on classes that he was only sporadically attending, he dropped out. As he later told the 2005 commencement class at Stanford, “It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.”

Steve stuck around campus for another 18 months, auditing classes that would profoundly shape the way he looked at the world. A Shakespeare course from Charles Svitavsky [English 1961–98], for example, taught him about humanism and its ideals.

A class in modern dance from Judy Massee [dance 1968–98] influenced his ideas on the perception of movement, which later proved invaluable in the design of animation routines.

But the most important course he audited at Reed was probably calligraphy from former Trappist monk Robert Palladino [art 1969–84]. “I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great,” Steve said later. “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.” This period of Steve’s life was marked by intense curiosity and intense poverty.

He slept on the floors of his friends’ dorm rooms. He scrounged meals in commons.

He went barefoot. He recycled cans and bottles. “He had no money, no food,” says Eric. “I thought, this poor guy is never going to amount to anything.”

Nonetheless, Steve seemed to belong.

“Reed was an open society with a strong sense of community,” says professor Ron Fial [psychology 1970–74]. “If you were willing to learn, you were considered part of that community.” In 1973, Steve asked Fial, who ran the psychology department’s workshop, if he could earn some extra money repairing circuits and equipment used in psychology experiments. “I knew about the blue boxes, and I knew he needed money,” Fial says. “He had the right skills, so we hired him.”

In the winter of 1996–97, a band of Reedies including Justin Campbell ’99 and Colin McCluney ’99 took the Doyle Owl on a road trip to California. On a whim, they stopped by Steve’s house in Palo Alto and rang the bell.

They were floored when Steve emerged, admired the Owl, talked about Reed, and posed for this photo in Justin’s parents’ minivan. “He was really nice about it,” Justin says.

Steve also forged a unique bond with The part-time position gave Steve access to a workbench and a soldering iron—cru- Jack Dudman. “Dudman really liked him,” cial tools during an era when many comput- recalls one classmate. “He’d say, ‘That guy’s ing circuits were still constructed by wiring going to go places.’” Not only did Jack allow together individual components. Professor Steve to hang around campus, but he proBill Wiest [psychology 1961–95] remem- vided moral and financial support, even bers running into Steve in the basement going so far as to slip a surreptitious $20 of Eliot, where the workshop was located. bill into Steve’s tattered coat pocket.

“I’d walk in, and he’d have a project on the

bench with switches and wires and circuits.

He’d smile and say good morning, and we’d Steve’s fascination with eastern philosophy talk. He was always very polite, but was and metaphysics blossomed at Reed. He pretty vague about what he was actually spent long hours in the library immersed doing—he’d just say he was just working in books on Buddhism. During the first or second week of class, he struck up a conon some experiments.”

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Steve Jobs

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versation at the bookstore with Daniel Kottke ’76—they had both just bought a copy of Be Here Now by Ram Dass for $3.33—thus beginning a long friendship that would take them to India and beyond.

Student body president Robert Friedland ’74 was another influential figure in Steve’s life. Robert managed a farm in McMinnville (dubbed the All-One Farm), which became a magnet for psychedelic pilgrims—including Daniel and Steve, who spent time at the farm tending the apple trees, an experience that would later inspire the name Apple.

“ Character is built not in good times, but in bad times; not in a time of plenty, but in a time of adversity.”

—Steve Jobs, Reed convocation 1991 In 1974, at Robert’s urging, Steve and Daniel spent four months in India, a powerful experience for both of them. Shortly afterwards, Steve returned to Palo Alto and started Apple with Woz in his parents’ garage. Daniel was one of their first employees.

In 1991, Reed honored Steve with the Vollum Award at convocation. Accepting the award, Steve paid tribute to his time on campus. “I can assure you that as the patina of time takes its toll, I thank God I had these experiences here,” he said. “It has helped me in everything I’ve ever done, although I wouldn’t have guessed it at the time.”

“He was a true son of Reed,” says his comrade and colleague Richard Crandall ’69 [physics 1978–], who worked with Steve for many years and currently holds the title of Apple Distinguished Scientist.

“Steve Jobs was an archetypical Reedie,” says Steve Falk ’83. “Brilliant, innovative, outspoken, focused, and willing—no, make that eager—to challenge the dominant paradigm. We fellow Reedies were, are, and always will be proud to call Steve Jobs one of us.”

Steve is survived by his wife, Laurene, their three children Reed, Erin, and Eve, and his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs; and his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.

Steve Jobs on Staying Hungry Steve Jobs was given the Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology at Convocation on August 27, 1991.

Thank you very much for this. It means a lot to me. I’m a peculiar Reed alumnus, as many of you know. I never graduated from Reed—although that doesn’t make that unusual, I suppose.

But maybe more unusual: I ran out of money after one semester here at Reed, so I dropped out, but then I dropped in for another year-and-a-half. So, I was actually here by choice. This is somewhat more unusual. And I had some experiences here that I’m sure many of you will have as freshmen and throughout your years here, that have stayed with me my whole life. I was thinking of some of them to recount to you.

Remember that I’m much older than you, in that, I’ve always thought that people’s spark of self-consciousness turns on at about 15 or 16, and so from normalized age to 15 or 16, most of you are two or three or four years old here, as freshmen; I’m about 20. So that maybe puts in perspective what it’s like to return to Reed after so many years.

But a few things stick in my mind that I wanted to pass on that maybe could be of some value. The first was that, as you will be shortly, I was forced to go to humanities lectures, it seemed like every day. I studied Shakespeare with Professor Svitavsky. And at the time I thought these were meaningless and even somewhat cruel endeavors to be put through. I can assure you that as the patina of time takes its toll, I thank God that I had these experiences here. It has helped me in everything I’ve ever done, although I wouldn’t have

guessed it at the time.

The second experience that I remember from Reed is being hungry. All the time. The cafeteria here taught me quickly to be a vegetarian. I didn’t have so much money, so I would gather up Coke bottles and take them up to the store to find out how to eat. I discovered the cheapest way to eat was Roman Meal.

Have you ever heard of this?

It’s cereal. It was invented by a Harvard professor who studied with a history professor who one day wondered what the Roman legion took with them to eat as they conquered and pillaged these villages, and he found out through his research that it’s Roman Meal, and you can buy it at the local store, and it’s the cheapest way to live. So I lived for many months on Roman Meal.

But also, several of us, after not eating for a few days, would hitchhike across town to the Hare Krishna temple on Sundays, where they would feed all comers. Through practice, we discovered just the right moment to arrive after their particular religious practices and right before the food. And, not having eaten for days, we would eat a lot, and on several occasions stay over, because we were not able to move. The following morning, they would wake us up at four o’clock in the morning because it was their time to go gather flowers for their temple to honor Krishna. So they would take us with them, pre-dawn, out into the neighborhood where they would proceed to steal flowers from the neighbors. And the neighbors that

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In Memoriam

Paul Wiseman ’33 atop the Olympic Mountains, 1951.

Paul Williams Wiseman ’33 lived close to the Hare Krishna temple soon were wise to their pillage and would get up early in the morning and guard their flower beds, and so they would have to go in an ever-wider circumference about their temple.

In spending a little time with these people, I noticed some of their other behaviors: they used to sell incense to the local department stores and then go steal it back, so that the department stores would buy more and they would have a thriving business.

And their ethics told them that this was fine, that anything in the service of Krishna was fine.

In interacting with them I think I learned more about situational ethics than I ever did on campus.

The last experience I wanted to recount to you was: there is a man—I think he’s here today— named Jack Dudman, who used to be the dean of the school, who was one of the heroes of my life while I was here, because Jack Dudman looked the other way when I was staying on campus

without paying. He looked the other way when I was taking classes without being a formal student and paying the tuition.

And often times, when I was at the end of my rope, Jack would go for a walk with me and I would discover a $20 bill in my tattered coat pocket after that walk, with no mention of it from Jack before, during, or after.

I learned more about generosity from Jack Dudman and the people here at this school than I learned anywhere else in my life. So, I wanted to thank this community, because the things I learned here stayed with me.

Character is built not in good times, but in bad times; not in a time of plenty, but in a time of adversity—and this school seems to nurture that spirit of adversity, and I think does build some character. So, I thank you for teaching me how to be hungry and how to keep that with me my whole life. Thank you very much.

June 13, 2011, in Olympia, Washington, two days before his 99th birthday.

Paul studied at Reed for two years and lived in House F, where he and roommate Hunter Morrison ’34 formed a lifelong friendship that included mountain climbing. Following the Depression, Paul’s family could no longer afford tuition, and he left Reed to work as a deckhand for the Grace Line, sailing between Seattle and South America. In 1935, he received a BA in economics from the University of Washington and went to work for state government in Olympia. He served as an army quartermaster during World War II and was posted in Europe and the Philippines. After the war, he resumed his position in Olympia, becoming chief of research and statistics in the employment security department. Over the years, he maintained his love of mountaineering, helping to found the Olympia branch of the Mountaineers Club, one of the oldest outdoor clubs in the U.S. He received the branch’s first service award in 1991 and served as historian for the Mountaineers in Washington. (His role is documented in the book The Mountaineers: A History.) The Mountaineers stated, “Paul Wiseman’s death deprives the Olympia mountaineering community of one of its original branch founders and enduring role models.” Paul also was a board member of the Sierra Club’s northwest chapter and the Mountain Rescue Council, and was a strong advocate for wilderness conservation. In 1958, he hiked with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Polly Dyer, and others along the Olympic coastline to protest a proposed extension of U.S. Highway 101 that would have destroyed a section of Olympic National Park. He led trips DecembER 2011 Reed magazine 79

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for the Mountaineers in his ’80s and continued to hike and drive his Lincoln—the one vehicle with a trunk big enough to hold a set of skis— well into his late ’90s.

Cordelia Dodson Hood ’36, MA ’41

July 14, 2011, in Damariscotta, Maine.

Cordelia grew up in Milwaukie, Oregon, and transferred to Reed from the University of Oregon. “The professors at Reed were more immediate. They were human beings; you could talk to them. And they were interesting people. They forced you into thinking and not just coasting along.” Cordelia’s memories of Reed included the influence of the Spanish Civil War on campus life and time spent skiing with Austrian exchange student Otto Urbach, who taught ski classes on Mt. Hood. After earning a BA from Reed in literature, she decided to pursue graduate work in German. (“I think a lot of the German literature, sort of Sturm and Drang type of thing, appeals to youth.”) In a master’s program at Reed, she taught introductory courses in German before going to Vienna on a fellowship, accompanied by her brother, Daniel B. Dodson ’41, and her sister, Lisbeth. She was attending an opera on March 11, 1938, when Hitler invaded Austria. “Things just happened so fast. All of our civilian rights, the police system, certain protections that everyone took for granted were just gone.” She and her brother and sister quickly returned to the U.S. and were later able to help Karl Urbach ’42—Otto’s brother—escape from Austria. In 1941, Cordelia earned an MA from Reed and went to Washington, D.C., where she got a job in the Military Intelligence Department. “I was so upset about what was happening in Europe that I wanted to

help in some way.” She was then recruited into the Office of Strategic Services. Her knowledge of German and French brought her into intelligence and counterintelligence work with future CIA director Allen Dulles in Berne, Switzerland.

Fieldwork for the OSS involved incredible challenges, such as transporting prisoners via secret night flights and using “ultra material,” including the Enigma cryptographic machine in London. “So many things I did at that time, I did without thinking; I just didn’t have time to think about fear.” (Her work was mentioned in the book Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS.) In Switzerland, she met her future husband, fellow OSS operative William J. Hood.

Following the war, the couple worked in Vienna for the newly formed CIA. Cordelia’s intelligence duties took her to various locations in central and western Europe until 1980, when she retired to a home at Pemaquid Point, on the coast of Maine. Her marriage to William dissolved in 1975. “Reed stayed very much with me, and what training I had in using my brain and examining what I was being told was very useful in working in the intelligence world. It’s thinking habits that are very important, to be analytical and seeking as much factual material as you can find, which is what you wind up doing if you’re an analyst in the intelligence world. You’re trying to find facts and you’re trying to find information that your opposing country doesn’t want you to find.” Cordelia moved to Damariscotta in 1998 to live with her beloved sister, who survives her.

May A. Director Georges ’37 May 20, 2011, in Portland.

May followed sister Estelle Director Sholkoff ’31 to Reed and earned a BA in psyc h o l o g y. D u r i n g a 28-year marriage to Norman Berenson, who died in 1965, the couple o p e rate d B e re n s o n Hardware and raised a daughter and four sons. In 1970, May and Thomas T. Georges Jr. ’40, co-owner of Oregon Linen Rental in Portland, were married. May served as a volunteer for United Way, the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Emanuel Hospital Foundation board. She was board president of the Oregon College of Art & Craft, president of Jewish Family and Child Services, and was a member of Congregation Beth Israel and the Reed College Women’s Committee. In 1984, she received the Maurice Sussman Memorial Award for her outstanding contributions to Jewish and civic communities; she also served on Oregon governor Vic Atiyeh’s commission on education.

May and Tom enjoyed time with grandchildren, traveling, golfing. Tom died in 2004.

Jane Campbell Munly ’37 August 11, 2011, in Portland.

Jane earned a BA from Reed in general literature. In 1940, she married Bob Munly ’40, who had been her friend from the time they met at age three.

Jane’s teaching career was cut short following a bout with tuberculosis. She was a member of Pi Omicron Alumnae, a book group that originated in Portland in 1929, the League of Women Voters, and the Milwaukie Symphony Auxiliary. She volunteered for the Portland Art Museum and supported the Oregon Symphony. After Bob’s retirement from teaching and guidance counseling, the couple traveled to Jane’s parents’ and grandmother’s birthplaces in Wales, England, and Canada, and to Bob’s mother’s birthplace in Pennsylvania. Survivors include three sons and one daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Bob died in 2003.

Laura Tunnell Gleysteen ’40 June 14, 2011, in Bremerton, Washington.

Laura began her schooling at the University of New Mexico and moved on to the University of California, Berkeley. “I was a college bum,” she said.

Reedites Peggy Sebern Moss ’41 and Margaret Selling Labby ’40, whom she met at Berkeley, influenced Laura’s decision to attend Reed. After earning a BA in sociology, she went to San Diego to work for the welfare department and the American Red Cross, and, in 1946, married naval physician Rodney R. Gleysteen. He later opened a private medical practice in Bremerton. Laura served on the Bremerton School Board and the board of the Bremerton Symphony, and volunteered with the YMCA, the American Cancer Society, the local chapter of the NAACP, the Bremerton Garden Club, and P.E.O. In her public obituary, we read that she had a strong sense of family and a delightful sense of humor. “She often marveled at the richness of her life, which she attributed largely to the diversity of her friends and family, young and old.” Survivors include two sons, two daughters, and four grandchildren. Rodney died in 1989.

James Verme Whipp ’41 June 13, 2011, in Reno, Nevada.

Jim grew up in Portland and always wanted to go to college. But money was tight in the Great Depression, so he went to work at Fred Meyer,

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saving up for tuition, and finally arrived at Reed in 1936. He enrolled in a special combined program in chemistry, spending three years at Reed and then transferring to MIT, earning a BA in chemistry and a BS in chemical engineering. “I have often stated that MIT prepared me for my livelihood, but my time at Reed had the most effect on my enjoyment of life.” Jim was a project director, chemical engineer, and project salesman for Union Oil of California and C.F. Braun. He and his wife, Audrey A. Warner, lived in many places, including California, Utah, England, Venezuela, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. They returned to England regularly to attend theatre and concerts and to visit friends; they also traveled annually to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and to the Telluride Chamber Music Festival. Jim enjoyed backpacking and fishing, and spent “all seasonable time” hiking in the Sierras and the Grand Canyon. He also wrote computer programs for financial and statistical applications, even at age 91. He is remembered for his warmth, his wit, his keen analysis, and his abundant generosity. Audrey died in 1966, and in 1968 he married Roberta A. Niklad, who survives him, as do two sons, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Jeanne Chan Yue ’41

August 17, 2010, in Flushing, New York, three days after her 90th birthday, from myelodysplastic syndrome.

Jeanne was born in Portland, graduated from Lincoln High School, and came to Reed, where she wrote a sociology thesis. Her father was Chin Luck, an influential member of the Chinese business community and restaurateur, who managed to bring Jeanne’s mother to Portland from Toisan, China, after a

Jeanne Chan Yue ’41 with her husband, John.

separation of almost 20 years. Jeanne lived on a farm, and later in a house near Reed, where she would often go home for lunch. In 1946, she married John Kwok Yue, who came from a prominent Cantonese family and had diplomatic status attached to Nationalist China.

After the Communist Revolution wiped out the family fortune, Jeanne and John traveled to New York City for work. John retrained as a scientific illustrator; Jeanne worked as a secretary at Bank of America on Wall Street for 25 years. “After my grandfather died in 1942, her life became one of juggling the care of my grandmother, her husband, and children,” wrote her son, John Jr. “And, also, working on Wall Street, which was an hour and a half commute each way.” The family eventually settled in Flushing, New York, along with their sons, John Jr. and Alan. Jeanne retired in 1981 to care for her mother, who died at the age of 104.

For many years, Jeanne was recording secretary of the local chapter of AARP. “She was a remarkable, kind, well loved, but humble woman. Until the end, she retained youthfulness in looks and her distinctive girlish voice.

Her mind was bright up to the last day, and she never found a crossword puzzle she couldn’t demolish.” In addition to her sons, Jeanne is survived by four grandchildren.

Caroline Newberger Canafax ’42

April 23, 2011, in Seattle, Washington.

Caroline attended Reed for two years before transferring to the University of Washington, where she earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in special education. Caroline taught in elementary schools in Seattle and at Head Start. During the Vietnam War, she joined the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and traveled on behalf of the league “to get out the word to end war.”

Her opposition to war began when she saw photos of the World War I dead, she said, and, from the standpoint of a teacher she also saw social needs going unmet as defense spending rose.

Caroline founded the WILPF publication Pacific Vision in 1982 and served as league international vice president. “Women have been the prime nurturers, and therefore they are really oriented to life and the human race,” she wrote.

She marched in peace rallies and protests, sang with the Raging Grannies, and dedicated her life to promoting democracy, women’s rights, and organized representation for labor. She also found time for hiking and agate collecting.

Her passion for opera and chamber music grew out of the hours she spent listening to classical music in the Capehart room in Winch. Caroline married Leo Canafax in 1947; he died in 2010. Survivors include a son and daughter, four granddaughters, and a sister.

Maxine Irene Howard Crites ’42, MAT ’65 July 19, 2011, in Portland.

Maxine was sharp, irreverent, outspoken, and enthusiastic—character traits that blossomed during her years at Reed. “You were encouraged to think and have ideas of your own,” she wrote.

“I’ve carried that way of thinking into my adult life, trying to see the broader picture and standing up for what I think is right.” A native Portlander, the youngest of five children, she was the only one to graduate from high school. During her time at Reed, she worked as a nurse’s aide, lived in the infirmary, served meals in commons, did laundry for other Reed students, and worked as a maid in Eastmoreland, and, in summer, at Crater Lake Lodge. After earning her BA in sociology, she moved to Roseburg, Oregon, where she did social work. She joined the war effort by enlisting in the navy WAVES and serving as hospital corps woman in San Diego—“one of hundreds, who cared for the estimated 10,000 patients.” In 1946, in Portland, she married grocer Norman B. Crites. Both Maxine and Norman were lifelong members of All Saints Episcopal Church. Following up on a notice in the church bulletin about teaching scholarships, Maxine returned to Reed for graduate work and taught social studies at Franklin High School for 20 years. After that, she volunteered as a case reviewer for children in foster care. Maxine enjoyed local alumni events and traveled to Tuscany in 2004 with her daughter, Melissa, on an alumni-sponsored tour. Johanna Thoeresz ’87 met Maxine on the tour. “I was taken aback by her vim, vigor, and verve.

Everyone on the trip who tried to cajole the ‘sweet little old lady’ was quickly put in place by her quick wit and insistence that she never wanted special attention.” Robin Tovey ’97, who visited with Maxine at events on campus, remarked, “Maxine was a formidable lady (and I mean that in the best, most French, way!), and she’ll be greatly missed on a very personal level by many in the Reed community.” Maxine supported the annual fund at Reed every single year after she graduated, for an incredible total of 69 years. Survivors include Melissa and her sons Douglas and Gregory, as well as four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1992.

Dorothy Melissa Glassberg Hutchison ’43 July 28, 2011, in Everett, Washington.

Dorothy grew up in Everett, Washington, and came to Reed, where she met Morris W. Hutchison ’40. She and Hutch married in Everett when he returned from service in the army in 1944. They lived in Texas and Idaho, and then returned to Everett, where Hutch taught high school biology and chemistry. Dorothy and Hutch were active at Trinity Episcopal Church in Everett, and Dorothy was chapter executive DecembER 2011 Reed magazine 81

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for Snohomish-Island Counties American Red Cross and was a grade school mentor. “Dorothy was deeply loved by family and friends alike.” She is survived by Hutch, son Coe, and two grandsons. A daughter, Susan, died from Hodgkin’s disease in 1971.

devoted to her husband and three children. Tom died in 2004, and Delphine moved to San Jose to be near family. Survivors include two sons, Christopher and Richard; a daughter, Delphine Anne; and three grandchildren.

Richard Fot Hum AMP ’44 May 22, 2011, in Yountville, California.

Pat moved to Seattle from Greeley, Colorado, when she was a teen, and at 16 entered Reed, where she earned a BA in biology. In 1947, she married Ray F. Egner.

They operated Ray Egner’s Sport Center in Bellevue, Washington, and she later worked for Pace Chemical. Pat loved to design houses and designed the family home near Lake Sammamish. She raised two daughters and a son, and also had four grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Richard was an air force officer, a veteran of three wars, and a five-time recipient of the Legion of Merit. He attended Reed in the premeteorology program and earned a BA and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, in physiology and an MA in international affairs from George Washington University. He and his wife, Jane Louie, to whom he was married for 60 years, established the Honor Flight program for northern California, providing funds for World War II and terminally ill veterans to visit the war memorial in Washington, D.C. Richard volunteered with Sonoma County’s Area Agency for Aging and the Napa Airport Museum board. He was a life member of Veterans of Foreign Wars, and was a Shriner and a Mason. Survivors include Jane, one son, three daughters, six grandchildren, and two brothers.

Delphine C. Parr Frazier ’44

Robert Bither Calderwood ’46

A gifted musician and an accomplished swimmer, Delphine grew up in Portland and earned her BA from Reed in literature. Memories of Reed included Rex Arragon [history 1923–74] and his passion for the rise of civilization and the humanities; Barry Cerf [English 1921–48] on the touchstone theory of Matthew Arnold; Victor Chittick [English 1921–48] and the connection of literature and art to the richness of everyday life; and Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69], who really knew how to teach writing and to inspire a passionate hope for all of mankind, she wrote. “By encouraging my desire to learn, to think, to use reason, to question, and reach for the best in literature and in life, Reed provided a foundation for my life’s philosophy.”

At Reed, she met another musician, Thomas L. Frazier ’42; they married in 1947, following his return from service in the army during World War II. (Tom’s early life in Germany and his intelligence work behind German lines in France and Italy during the war were the subjects of his memoir, Between the Lines, which Delphine helped him publish in 2001.) After Reed, the couple moved on to Washington and California for graduate study in social work. Tom completed a master’s degree in 1961, and Delphine completed an MSW 10 years later. Both retired in 1977 and began teaching humanistic theories and providing workshops on transactional analysis in Europe. In 1996, the International Transactional Analysis Association recognized their work with the Hedges Capers Humanitarian Award. Delphine was highly regarded by her peers and loved by her students. She was

Bob earned a BA in mathematics and was a systems analyst at First Interstate Bank and at Benjamin Franklin Savings & Loan. He was also a deacon and elder at the First Presbyterian Church in Portland.

Survivors include his wife, Maryhelen Westgate, whom he married in 1959; a son and daughter; and four grandchildren. His sister, Lois Calderwood Johannsen ’50, also attended Reed.

Patricia Jane Moore Egner ’44 June 4, 2011, in Seattle, Washington, from cancer.

August 5, 2011, in San Jose, California.

July 13, 2011, in Portland.

Gerald M. Meier ’47

June 21, 2011, in Stanford, California, from complications related to a brain tumor.

A leading economist and former Stanford business and economics professor, Jerry visited Reed for the first time with his high school debating team from Tacoma, Washington.

What he experienced at the college influenced his decision to apply for admission. “In retrospect, the first two years at Reed provided the best education of my life.” He served as meteorologist in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to Reed, graduating with honors in social science.

In 1948, he won a Rhodes scholarship and earned a BLitt in economics from Oxford. He

then completed a PhD in economics from Harvard. Jerry received a handwritten letter from Emile Despres—one of the world’s foremost specialists in international economics and economic development and father of Charles Despres ’67—offering him a teaching position at Williams College. “It was a molding influence on my life to be with him,” Jerry said. He left Williams to teach at Wesleyan, then rejoined Despres at Stanford 15 years later. During his career at Stanford, he taught business and economics at the Graduate School of Business until surgery and treatment for cancer in 2003. He specialized in the study of the economies of developing nations, and was credited with inspiring generations of students. He conveyed the discipline of economic reasoning by “posing large questions” and using the Socratic method.

“I question students vigorously. I want them to appreciate the full power of the subject. This sometimes leaves them unsettled. Students don’t like indeterminacy in answers. But I think that any subject worth studying should have some element of mystery and some surprises.”

Jerry was the first holder of the Konosuke Matsushita Professorship of International Economics and Policy Analysis (established in 1985).

During his career, he also was recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Brookings Research Fellowship, and the Russell Sage Foundation residency in law and social science at Yale. His text, Leading Issues in Economic Development (1964), is now in its eighth edition, and he served as general editor of the Economic Development Series, published by Oxford University Press. He also served as a consultant to the World Bank, the National Science Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Asian Development Bank, and SRI International. The Gerald M. Meier Award for Distinction in Economics, an annual prize to honor excellence in undergraduate economics, has been established at Reed and at University College, Oxford University. His family is creating similar awards at Stanford and Wesleyan.

Survivors include his wife, Gilda Slote Meier; four sons; and six grandchildren.

Lloyd Teify Thomas ’47 June 15, 2011, in Portland.

Lloyd was born in Portland, a son of Welsh immigrants, and entered Reed in 1940, leaving for service in the army in Europe during World War II. He returned to Reed and earned a BA in history and philosophy; he also did graduate study at the University of Oregon. He and Mary Lou Williams ’47 married and raised a daughter and two sons. Lloyd worked for the state of Oregon in education in Salem and in Oceanside, Oregon, and returned to Portland after retiring in 1982. Survivors include Mary Lou, his sons, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Margaret Ann, and his brother, Evan W. Thomas ’39.

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Sharonn Jean Goodman Gittelsohn ’48 January 20, 2011, in Berkeley, California.

Sharonn earned a BA from Reed in sociology and married Alan M. Gittelsohn ’50 in 1949.

They raised a daughter, Lisa, and two sons, Michael ’77 and Paul. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, she earned an MSW and LCSW from the University of Maryland, and was accepted to the Academy of Certified Social Workers. Her career in social work was inspired by experiences and values she gained at Reed, she said. She developed and coordinated the Down Syndrome Counseling Service and coordinated the intensive care nursery, both at Sinai Hospital, in Baltimore, Maryland. In the late ’80s, she made a career switch and worked for the largest real estate firm in Maryland. After a move to New Hampshire, she turned her focus toward international adoptions. Later, in Berkeley, California, she served as director of East West Adoptions. Sharonn’s interests included time with family, playing tennis, swimming, hiking, travel, and photography.

a 311-acre stewardship forest in Philo, California. Betty married Fred R. Lewis ’44 in 1947 and raised three daughters and two sons; they later divorced. Survivors include her children, nine grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a sister.

Peter Murchie Wilhelm ’48 July 15, 2011, at home in North Fort Myers, Florida, from leukemia.

the mathematics faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. He was respected and admired by students and colleagues alike, not only for his brilliance, but also for his modest and unassuming personality. He published more than 90 academic papers and coauthored a textbook, Linear Analysis and Differential Equations. His research was in mathematical applications in mechanics, electromagnetic theory, and population models. He was awarded the Richard Moore Education Award in recognition of excellence in teaching. In retirement, the couple traveled to Europe, attended local theatre and opera performances, and enjoyed Pittsburgh Steelers games. Richard died five years to the day after Fae died. Survivors include his children and six grandchildren.

Born and raised in Portland, Ames went to Lincoln High School (where he was student body president) before coming to Reed. After Pearl Harbor, Ames joined the U.S. Navy, became a lieutenant, and commanded a landing ship tank in the South Pacific, where he saw active duty in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After three years of study at Reed, broken up by military service, he transferred to the University of Oregon, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. In the span of a 33-year career, Ames held numerous positions at two department stores, Meier & Frank in Portland and Broadway-Hale in Los Angeles. He was a longtime member of the Multnomah Athletic Club and enjoyed tennis, golf, and swimming, and he devoted time to charity and faith-based community work. Survivors include his nephew, Ames Hendrickson; and his cousin, Carroll Hendrickson ’42.

Born in Oakland, California, Peter lost his father at seven and moved with his mother and brother to Portland, where they lived with a maternal aunt, Margaret Standish, and her husband, Miles, cofounder of Lane-Miles Standish Printing Company—a prominent Portland business and a landmark, with its distinctive corner turret. Peter graduated from Grant High School and entered Reed, where he earned a BA in economics. At 6 feet 7 inches, he was ruled too tall to serve in World War II and often spoke of how dramatically the campus atmosphere changed when the war ended and veterans came to Reed intently focused on earning their degree. He ran a campus snack bar and worked summers in the timber industry as a choke setter for a logging crew and a compass man for a timber cruiser. In 1950 he married Elizabeth Lee Bragg. They raised three children and moved to New Jersey in 1958, where Peter worked as an independent sales representative in the timber business. After a late-’70s divorce, he married Astrid Bork; the couple lived for many years in San Francisco, then moved to Rhode Island and Vermont to be close to Peter’s family before retiring to Florida. Peter’s many friends remember him as a warm, kind, outgoing man who had a vibrant sense of humor, could talk with almost anyone, did the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink, believed strongly in peace and social justice, and treasured sports and the outdoors, jazz and classical music, the many dogs in his life, and, above all, his family. Survivors include his wife, Astrid; his children—Doug, who provided the details of this memorial piece; Gordon; and Sarah-Lee Terrat—and five grandsons.

Alan came to Reed on the GI Bill after serving in the navy during World War II. “My attendance at Reed was a complete fluke,” he wrote. Hailing from a small town in Oregon, he learned of the school after speaking with a neighbor, whose son had studied in the premeteorology program. As a chemistry major, Alan expressed gratitude for the exposure to literature, history, music, and philosophy that he gained through Reed’s humanities courses. After graduating, he returned to military service during the Korean War, and from there, completed a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He was a material scientist for Shell Development in California and later for IBM, the Lawrence Radiation Lab, and Raychem. He enjoyed hiking and skiing, and, on one trip to the Sierra Mountains, he met his future wife, Marlene Todd. They raised a son and daughter and shared common interests in outdoor recreation, nature conservation, and cultural organizations. Alan was a loving husband, father, and friend, and a tireless volunteer. His wife and children survive him, along with two grandchildren.

Elisabeth Bauman Lewis ’48

Richard Carlton MacCamy ’49

Joseph Kindley Frazier ’50

Betty earned a BA in biology from Reed. She did social work in Santa Rosa and was a member of the Girl Scouts, the Sierra Club, and the Mazamas. She was also adept at biological illustration, spinning, dying, weaving, and gardening.

Toward the end of her life, she worked to restore

Richard served in the air force during World War II and came to Reed on the GI Bill, where he earned a BA in physics.

He and classmate Fae G. Jacobson ’48 married and raised two daughters and one son. After earning a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Richard joined

Joe received his BA from Reed in history. His son, D o u g , w ro te , “ M y father was always proud of his Reed education, and I think his years at Reed were some of the best and happiest of his life. A lot of people at Reed influenced my father. Perhaps most important

Ames Birrell Hendrickson ’48 June 9, 2011, in Santa Ana, California.

July 7, 2011, in Stockton, California.

July 6, 2011, at his daughter’s home in Naperville, Illinois.

Stacy Alan Aspey ’50

August 11, 2011, in Grass Valley, California.

May 17, 2011, in Portland.

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was history professor Richard Jones [history 1941–86], whose teaching caused my father to change majors and pursue a career in teaching.

Another was fellow student Bill Axford ’50, whose sister became my mother.” Joe and Della Jean Axford had two sons, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren; all survive him.

Joe went to the University of Washington for graduate school and taught at Marietta College, the University of California at Riverside, and Portland State University before joining the faculty at Pacific University, where he taught American history and geography. Former Pacific University president Robert Duvall said that Joe brought exceptional colloquia to the university. “His passion for teaching ‘a kind of history of ideas, seen through everything’ manifested itself in the experimental work he challenged his students with,” wrote Joe Lang of Pacific.

Joe Frazier’s students left the confines of the classroom in search of historical artifacts that could reveal stories of local landscapes. In one summer course in history at Portland State, students prowled the Portland waterfront in search of remnants of streetcar tracks and explored an abandoned dry dock under St. John’s Bridge for a kind of “urban phrenology.” Finding things that didn’t happen were as important as finding things that did, Joe said. “You start with the geographic structure and work down until you get to the hardware.” The course mingled several disciplines, including history, architecture, urban planning, and geography. In addition to his teaching, Joe enjoyed travel, reading, and hiking. “From Reed, if you’re lucky, you get a sort of intellectual-academic morale (favorite word of David French ’39 [anthropology 1947–88]). This carries you through and keeps you fundamentally happy. It is the intellectual work ethic, and the tradition of being near the cutting edge of thought, that seem to have persisted for three-quarters of a century.” Joe was a loving husband and father, a man of learning, a friend with a great sense of humor, and a staunch supporter of democratic ideals and humanistic values. “We will miss his laughter, his knowledge, his support, and his love.”

Donald W. Houser ’50

May 14, 2011, in Walnut Creek, California.

Born and raised in Portland, Don served in the U.S. Army Air Corps before coming to Reed, where he studied physics and met Jane Furkert ’48. Later he transferred to Oregon State University, earning a BS and an MS in mechanical engineering. He worked at Standard Oil and Chevron, where he managed operations for the product engineering division in Europe for several years. Home and family were of utmost importance to Don; he, Jane, and their three daughters enjoyed camping and vacations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Don retired in 1984

and was involved in his community, including Friends of the Walnut Creek Library. In his public obituary, we read, “Don lived life as an adventure and loved to add humor to situations. He was a romantic and a poet. At the same time, he was also a man of deep integrity, reliable, disciplined, and organized.” He loved tools, machines, cars, trains, planes, garden landscaping, Broadway musicals, the symphony, board games, and baseball. Survivors include Jane; daughters Julie, Karen, and Diane; and grandson Joshua.

George Thomas Howard ’51

Joan Petersen Kelley ’50

George grew up in and around theatres, from the time his mother performed violin in an orchestra, and joined the stagehand’s union as a teenager, which allowed him to earn his way through college. He received a combined degree in physics and electrical engineering from Reed and MIT and an MS in electrical engineering from MIT. Prior to leaving Portland for MIT, George helped found Hollywood Lights, renting lighting equipment, including army surplus searchlights, and participating in the rescue efforts when Vanport was flooded; Hollywood Lights continues in business in Portland and Seattle today. After MIT, George worked for General Electric for five years, including work in their long term planning group.

He returned to work in the stage lighting arena when he became the executive vice president for Kliegl Brothers’ western division in Los Angeles in 1967. George was a registered professional engineer in 17 states and developed a unique specialty, providing expertise in all areas of theatre and showroom design. He created the firm George Thomas Howard & Associates, a leading consultant for theatrical and presentation facilities for over three decades, with special expertise in theatre and showroom design. One of his first major consulting projects was the design of the lighting system for the 1959 renovation of the Elizabethan Theatre of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. In his own words, “I spent a substantial amount of time in Ashland each summer for the following 15 years, working with Dick Hay and Bill Patton on changes to the Elizabethan Theatre and consulting on the design of the Angus Bowmer Theatre . . . I have had a long and diverse career as a theatre consultant. My projects have ranged, and continued to range, from high school auditoria to multivenue metropolitan performing arts centers, and include just about every type of theatre, media production, and public assembly facility.” George loved travel and was a hands-on consultant. His firm managed projects for an incredible list of theatres and showrooms in the U.S. and as far away as Australia. Clients included the Grand Ole Opry, the Hollywood Bowl, the MGM Grand Hotel, Caesar’s Palace, the World Trade Center in Moscow, and the Seattle Opera House. He was a fellow of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), and a member of the American Consulting Engineers Council, the American

July 13, 2011, in Portland.

Joan earned a BA from Reed in international studies, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and later earned an MA and PhD in psychology from the University of Portland.

Her practice in psychology, 1974–98, brought her national recognition as an authority in the use of biofeedback for pain patients. She cofounded the Oregon Academy of Professional Psychology and the School of Professional Psychology at Pacific University. In 1951 she married Craig H. Kelley ’51. They raised a daughter, Sarah, and three sons, Gil, Mark ’78, and Tim. Joan served as an alumni trustee on Reed’s board of trustees (1986–90) and as director of the alumni board. Joan travelled the world, visiting Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She enjoyed concerts by Chamber Music Northwest and shows at the Portland Art Museum, and maintained a passion for politics and murder mysteries. “Her family and many friends will miss Joan’s intelligence, wit, style, and humanity.” Survivors include her children; Craig died in 1972.

Darryl Irene Johnson Stark ’50 May 22, 2011, in Seattle, Washington.

Dar r yl grew up in Nebraska and served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II as a medical technician. With the GI Bill, she came to Reed, where she developed a love of literature and earned a BA in biology.

She also met Benjamin G. Stark ’53 at the college. The couple celebrated 60 years of marriage in 2010. Darryl relished trips to Pacific Coast, especially to LaPush, Washington, and was a member of the Saltwater Unitarian Church. Survivors include Ben, two daughters and two sons, and three grandchildren.

July 7, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Society of Theatre Consultants, and numerous other theatre and engineering societies. Fellow USITT member Joel Rubin, who worked with George at Kliegl Brothers for six years in the ’60s, said that he was one of the single best “red-liners” of working drawings he had ever met. “He coupled this with a unique ability to read print upside down and backward and to ‘red-line’ that way from his side of the table. This ability was also usefully employed in reading notes from across the table while negotiating contracts.”

George had a photographic memory and never filed a single piece of paper, yet always knew where a document could be found. He was brilliant, innovative, and driven by his work, and is remembered as a phenomenal mentor and a good friend. Son Christopher, who provided many details for this memorial piece, wrote, “He taught us all about how to do a good job and how to earn respect. Our parents both shared their love of education and culture with their children as they raised us. They supported us in whatever direction we wanted to go, as long it was understood we would go to college. He left us with a great legacy in that regard, much as he has left the world with many great theaters by which we may remember him and his work. He is missed.” George is survived by his wife, Karen Holm Howard ’51; his son; and his daughter, Tamara. A second son predeceased him. The family requests memorial gifts be made to Reed in George’s name.

Jean Besley Scott ’51 July 18, 2011, in Portland.

Jean, or Scottie, as she was known at Reed, began her education at the University of Oregon, but felt the school was too impersonal.

She moved to Portland, where she lived with a maternal aunt and worked for State Farm Insurance and Albertina Kerr to earn money for tuition. During that time, she met Fred White ’50, who suggested she investigate Reed, where she found both academic challenge and the comfort of a smaller community. “The wonderful thing about Reed was that everybody there cared about the world . . . that had never been my experience before at all.” At Reed, she met Kenneth Tollenaar ’50, who shared her love of music; he was a musician, she sang jazz.

They married in 1949; she worked in the coffee shop for a year while Ken finished his degree, after which she earned her BA in education. She loved Reed because of Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–69] and Ann Shepard ’23 [dean of students 1926–68], who believed in her ability to succeed. “It was very, very hard, because I was so poorly prepared. I hadn’t a clue how to write a paper. I didn’t have a clue how to do research and I didn’t have a very broad area of knowledge. It was a wonderful experience, though, because I grew a great deal.” She also gave credit to Frank Loxley Griffin [mathematics 1911–56]. “That man taught me to count

to 10.” After leaving Reed, she taught for two years near Eugene, and then the couple moved to Minnesota and Washington, D.C., for Ken’s graduate studies. Jean worked and raised a family, and then earned a master’s in alcohol and drug counseling from the University of Oregon.

She worked for Oregon Vocational Rehabilitation in Clackamas and retired in 1989. She was a member of the First Unitarian Fellowship, a passionate supporter of the arts, and a volunteer for students in grade schools and seniors in retirement centers. She kept a close connection to the college throughout her life. “Jean was delightfully cantankerous. She loved to engage in thoughtful debate and enjoyed being around others who shared the love of ideas. I will miss her in our planning meetings as well as at the events themselves,” said Mike Teskey, director of alumni & parent relations. Survivors include two sons, one daughter, and a grandson.

Richard Coovert ’52 July 21, 2011, in Portland.

Richard earned his BA from Reed in physics, writing the thesis “The Construction of a Bent Crystal X-Ray Spectrograph.” He went on to get a PhD from the University of Illinois and worked as a research physicist at Tektronix.

He became chief scientist for Planar Systems, retiring in 1997. Richard also served in the navy and enjoyed recreational boating.

Edgar Earle Jacobs ’55

July 16, 2011, in Palo Alto, California, from pneumonia related to lung cancer.

Edgar served in the army before coming to Reed, where he met his future wife, Allene Jenny Lamson ’53. He earned a BS in a combined physics and business program at Reed and MIT. His career as an industrial economist led to work at the Stanford Research Institute and to assignments in Europe and Brazil. Edgar had a broad knowledge of science and a great interest in world history and art. He loved nature and bird-watching. After Jenny’s death in 2000, he moved back to his home state, Idaho, and renewed connections with former friends from American Falls High School. Edgar and other surviving teammates, who set an unbroken record in the 1946 state championship basketball game, received the Legends of the Game award in 2010.

During cancer treatment, he returned to California to be near his family. Survivors include a son, two daughters, and a granddaughter.

Harry Tichnor Freis ’56 July 26, 2011, in Orinda, California.

Harry graduated with a BA from Reed in economics in 1956, but officially completed his

thesis, “International Tourism and Foreign Aid: An Inquiry into United States Policy,” in 1964.

He also studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69], as his handwriting thereafter attested. After Reed, he moved to Berkeley, where he met Jessie L. Thompson.

They were married for 44 years and raised a son, Elliott, who survives them. Harry was a business development officer for Bank of American in San Francisco and worked in public relations. He pioneered mail-order wine sales for Tiburon Vintners in the late ’60s, after which he developed a mail order Chinese cooking venture and a newsletter, Wok Talk, and also led tours to China. Harry was a beloved husband, father, and friend. He died peacefully, looking out on his garden, while playing his cello. The family suggests memorial contributions to Reed or the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Albert Dean Benson MAT ’64 May 28, 2011, in Portland.

Al served in the navy before enrolling at Central Washington College of Education, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He came to Portland in 1958 and taught English at Cleveland High School for 30 years, with summers spent fishing for halibut in the Gulf of Alaska. He also was a member of the Portland Chess Club and the Elks Club. He played handball and racquetball and enjoyed yard work and reading. For the past 19 years, he lived on Woodstock Boulevard, which gave him the opportunity to admire the Reed campus on a daily basis. Survivors include his daughter Susan Benson Zoref MALS ’06, son-in-law Norman Zoref, and grandchildren Sarah Zoref ’05 and Robert Zoref.

Margaret Ayre Brown ’65 June 7, 2011, at home in Honolulu, Hawaii, from pancreatic cancer.

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therapy assistant at Kapiolani Community College in 1985. After working several years in the hand clinic at Tripler Hospital, she worked as a leader for groups of frail elderly. In 1989, the Occupational Therapy Association of Hawaii named her certified occupational therapy assistant of the year. Margaret did charitable work, mostly through Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu, and also volunteered with the American Cancer Society’s Reach to Recovery program. She helped establish Hui Manawale’a, Crossroads’s branch of an interfaith cooperative effort to support elders and the disabled.

She also helped establish Family Promise to provide immediate housing and long-term solutions for the homeless. After her breast cancer diagnosis in 1995, she began a daily practice of centering prayer and became a certified instructor in that practice, leading weekly centering prayer meetings at Crossroads. Margaret was a political activist, passionately devoted to promoting peace, and was a founder and leader of the Hawaii chapter of the Friends of Sabeel, a Christian Palestinian movement for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel. She was co-organizer of the 2010 Sabeel Conference at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Honolulu and received the Church of the Crossroads Martin Luther King Jr. Peacemaker Award in 2011. The award honored Margaret’s vital and caring presence in the congregation and the great respect for her work at the church and in the community. Margaret was widely read, and her gift for writing with clarity and precision was constantly employed in her many activities. She loved the outdoors and enjoyed ocean swims, daily walks, and backpacking trips with her family and friends. Margaret was also classically trained in piano, violin, and cello. She sang in several choirs and danced with a hula halau. She was a founding member of the Kaimana Ceili Band and organized and recruited people for Celtic and old-timey fiddle music jams in Honolulu. Ron wrote, “Perhaps two-thirds of the people at a big jam at her memorial service had been introduced to this music by her.” Survivors include Ron, daughter Sara, son Peter, and her sister and brother.

Gail Kay Jacobson MAT ’68 June 21, 2011, in Portland, from cancer.

A Portland resident and a graduate in history from Mills College, Gail taught history at Jefferson High School in Portland. After earning her master’s degree from Reed, disenchanted with life and politics in the U.S., she hitchhiked through Europe en route to Greece. She found a cottage in Melina

on the Aegean Sea, with two acres of land cultivated in olive trees and managed by sheep herding, and settled into a life “much more realistic than any other lifestyle would be.” Gail led charter tours through the Greek islands and the Aegean aboard a 38-foot sailboat, Diogenis. Her primary occupation. however, was studying and collecting textiles. She used the rich cultural background of the pieces she found to inspire her own creations in crochet, stitching, and weaving. “The search for textiles is only the tip of a collector’s iceberg; one gathers at least as many wonderful, generous people in the process,” she said. During visits with her parents in Portland, she operated a shop in downtown Portland, where she sold Greek and Turkish goods and taught tapestry crochet classes. Sales from her shop benefited those in her village and helped sustain her life in Greece. She also gave presentations and loaned pieces from her growing collection of textiles for exhibitions in the Pacific Northwest. Gail and her husband, Peter Stephan, founded a grassroots ecology group, Aquapeace, in 1985. Eight years later, Gail returned permanently to the U.S. to support her mother, whose health had failed. Gail bequeathed her Turkish rug collection to Reed in part to establish the Flying Carpet Fund, providing financial aid for students from low- and lower- middle-income working-class families.

Elinor Friedberg ’92

July 6, 2011, in Portland, from recurring breast cancer.

A spirited woman of energy, warmth, and flair, Elinor lived large.

She earned her BA from Reed in music, but her passion was belly dancing, performing as Sharita. For her company of avantgarde belly dancers, Sharita Productions, she designed costumes and choreographed performances to the music of Stravinsky and Gershwin. She also taught classes at Reed and Portland State University.

Elinor chose physician-assisted suicide to end her battle with cancer, and was surrounded by her family and friends on the evening she died.

Her husband, Karl Blume, and her parents, sister, and brother survive her.

STAFF, FACULTY, AND FRIENDS

E. Kimbark MacColl

August 31, 2011, in Portland.

Educated at Princeton and a veteran of World War II, Kim came to Reed in 1953 to teach humanities; he also worked in the admission office. In 1958, he got a job teaching history at Catlin Gabel School, where he later served as headmaster. Among his students was David Bragdon MALS ’09. “He was old school in the

best sense,” David reported. “He posed questions about our fundamental values. What did citizenship mean? What was the role of architecture in Athens, for example? And what did that say about our values?” Kim is probably best known for writing three influential books about Portland history: The Shaping of a City; The Growth of a City; and Merchants, Money, and Power. In 1999, Kim graciously consented to an interview with future Reed editor Chris Lydgate ’90, then a struggling freelancer, for a newspaper article on the history of Portland.

Unfortunately, Kim’s car was being repaired, which required him to catch a ride down from his home in the West Hills in Lydgate’s vehicle, a disreputable ’64 Plymouth Valiant with holes in the floor and dubious brakes. After a heartstopping descent into Portland, Kim grinned and said, “That reminds me of a jeep I once drove in the Army.” Kim and his wife, Leeanne, were active in social and political causes, and his associations included the City Club of Portland and the Urban League. Survivors include two sons and two daughters, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Helen A. Stafford [biology 1954–87]

August 12, 2011, at her home in Portland, after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Helen’s interest in plants first blossomed when she gardened beside her father in Philadelphia.

“My father was an avid gardener but he had to do everything himself. I was allowed to help him. My father got sick one year and I had to then plant the seeds myself. That just started it all.” Her interest deepened at Wellesley College, where she studied plant physiology, earning a BA in 1944. “Somebody came to give a seminar talk about metabolic biology and I got excited about it. That’s why I like tissue culture, I still like to watch things grow.” A career in science was not easy for a woman at that time, but Helen was encouraged by her mentors at Wellesley and Cornell, where she worked as a research assistant. She earned a master’s degree from Connecticut College for Women for her groundbreaking thesis on the development of anatomical structures and the effect of light on timothy grass seedlings. Her thesis was published in the America Journal of Botany, the first of more than 70 publications over her career.

To pursue her PhD, Helen went to the University of Pennsylvania; prejudice nearly prevented her from teaching botany to male students, but she persevered, teaching the course and earning a doctorate in 1951 for her discoveries about plant enzymes. Helen went to the University of Chicago as a postdoctoral scholar; meanwhile, her exemplary record of research, publishing, and teaching impressed Lewis Kleinholz [biology 1946–80], who recognized how much she could strengthen the department at Reed. She arrived on campus in

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1954 as the only female faculty member in the division of mathematics and natural sciences.

It was a tumultuous time: President Duncan Ballantine [1952–54] resigned her first year and department chair Ralph Macy [1942–55] the next. Biology was the smallest department at the college, and Helen was challenged by the limited facilities available in the basement of Eliot Hall. Helen began lobbying for grants from the newly organized National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health—both helped provide resources for research. She and her colleagues worked to integrate classroom teaching with vigorous research by both faculty and students, and transformed the department into one of the top biology programs in the U.S. Helen was the first Reed professor to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she took at Harvard in 1958. She received unbroken funding of her research from NSF for over 30 years. She also was a member of the reviewing panel for requests for NSF research grants in plant physiology. Her stature within her field led to her serving as commissioner of the Committee for Undergraduate Education in Biological Sciences, and as president of the Phytochemical Society of North America. She was a member of the editorial board of Plant Physiology for nearly 30 years and editor of Recent Advances in Phytochemistry.

Helen retired in 1987. Three years later, she published Flavonoid Metabolism, a definitive textbook providing a comprehensive review of the biosynthesis and catabolism of flavonoids and their regulation in plants. In 1996 she received the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award from the American Society of Plant Physiologists—the first woman to receive the honor. “Professor Stafford has a most well deserved international reputation, a fact all the more striking given that essentially all of her research was conducted at an undergraduate institution,” wrote Norman Lewis, director of the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University. “Her numerous scientific contributions can be characterized not only as incisive and truly creative, but also ahead of their time. Her studies were superbly conceived, brilliantly executed, and represent a significant and lasting contribution.” Professor David Dalton [biology 1987–] stated that Helen helped design the highly successful and distinctive attributes for which the Reed biology department is known. “Her career has been a model that demonstrates that it is possible to be successful and productive with research in a setting that strongly emphasizes teaching.”

Helen was a pioneer in many ways. Declining the role of firebrand, she worked tirelessly as a mentor and role model for the next generation of women scientists. “We all loved dinners at her house,” wrote Pam Ronald ’82. “I remember that she was a bit annoyed at us vegetarians. ‘Plants have feelings, too,’ she would say.” “She was a great scientist and a wonderful

Helen Stafford [biology 1954–87] was the first Reed professor to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.

person,” wrote Jerry Marshall ’82, who was Helen’s thesis student. On the subject of teaching, Helen stated, “I have learned to appreciate how deeply students need encouragement, as well as, say, expertise. Typically required to work harder than ever before, expected to comprehend unfamiliar and often difficult subjects, obliged to compete with their peers for the first time, and usually subjected to severer criticisms than ever before, students deserve, not merely need, encouragement.” Even as she faced the onset of Alzheimer’s, Helen continued to exhibit the courage and curiosity she was known for with the help of devoted friends and caregivers. A lover of the outdoors and of the dogs who were her constant companions, Helen found a true home in the Pacific Northwest.

Ever frugal, she was able to endow the Morton

O. Stafford Jr. Scholarship at Reed in memory of her brother, who was killed in World War II. Helen is survived by her niece, Anne W. Scarff of Amherst, Massachusetts, who provided many of the details for this memorial piece. She was predeceased by her parents; brother; and sister, Marie Louise S. Scarff. Helen’s ashes have been scattered in the Reed canyon.

PENDING Paul Hafner ’34, Frances Mesher Keller ’37, Jerome Doff AMP ’44, William Dugan AMP ’44, Donald Little ’45, Earl Ringle ’46, Robert Johannsen ’48, Robert Autrey ’53, Howard Wolpe ’60, Barrett Tomlinson ’64, Tania Lipshutz Levy ’68, Linda Ludwin ’73, Lew Sayers MAT ’73, David Zager ’74, Carolyn Holzman ’77, Nicole Halpin ’84, Mark Petteys ’85, and Juana Ukulov, friend.

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Apocrypha

tradition • myth • legend

Scrounger trading cards, issued in Fall ’93, included special chowline monikers. From left: “Minneapolis,” “Krack,” and “Skunk.”

Origin of the Scrounge Walk into commons and you’ll see that the venerable practice of scrounging is alive and well. Students hover unobtrusively near the drop-off window, fork in hand, hoping that you’ll donate some tasty morsels to their cause. They seem as much a part of the campus ambience as the canyon ducks and the Oresteia.

But scrounging wasn’t always accepted at Reed. In 1962, the Honor Council found a junior guilty of lying about “mooching in commons.” In a letter to the defendant reprinted in the Quest, honor councilor Don Kates ’62 wrote, “Your defense was that you had taken food which otherwise would have gone to waste. To sustain this defense you must needs answer ‘no’ to the question ‘Have you ever asked anyone to get extra food for you?’”

Credit goes to Mary McCabe [commons and dorms director 1958–78], for allowing the practice to take root.

Although Mary was known for her mouthwatering clam chowder, she also superintended a period of social revolution that transformed everything from hairstyles to dining etiquette.

In 1966, after working for Mary at commons for a month or two, Nick Heyer ’67 figured that a free meal was not an unreasonable benefit of his work. “I started arriving early and simply helping myself,” he recalls. “Having met no objections, I continued the process.” Mary eventually

confronted him, but he somehow talked himself out of trouble.

One day Nick ran into a freshman who was on a diet. She would eat what she wanted, then give him her leftovers as part of a portion-control plan. Soon a halfdozen students (who preferred the term “scrounger” to “moocher”) were sitting at a table near the dishwashers. “Everyone knew to drop off their leftover food for us,” Nick says. “I don’t think we saw this as a movement—we just chatted about whatever it is we wanted to chat about.”

Outsiders sometimes scoff at the idea that Reed students don’t have enough money for food, but the truth is that many students live on a shoestring budget. For Nick (and others such as Steve Jobs), scrounging was simply a way to keep costs down.

The practice aroused remarkably little controversy until April 8, 1982, when the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story with the sensational headline “Freeloaders Ambush Paying Customers at College Mess Hall.” The story quoted concerns from a county health officer and the cafeteria head, Jim O’Brien of Saga Corp., saying that scrounging cost Saga $15,000 a year.

Responding to trustee concerns, President Paul Bragdon [1971–88] wrote, “Yes, we knew the reporter was here. Yes, since he wouldn’t go away, we cooperated with him. Yes, we kept our fingers crossed that

the story would die.”

Some alumni wrote in to praise the practice, however. “I hope the faculty, student body, and administration were more amused than embarrassed,” Chas Clifton ’73 declared. “It did my heart good to know that a stalwart tradition was being continued.”

A survey of Reed students that spring showed that only 68 found the practice “offensive;” 143 said it was “a nice tradition,” and 288 said it was “a good use of leftovers.”

Meanwhile, scroungers developed their own code of ethics. William Abernathy ’88 penned the Commandments for Scroungers, whose first rule is: “Thou shalt not wrest thy bread from the tray of another without asking.”

In the early ’90s, students even introduced scrounger trading cards. The idea was simple: buy a scrounger a meal, and collect his or her card. The cards featured scroungers such as “Fearless Forker,” who lists her life source as “chicken strips with honey mustard,” and her weaponry as “standard fork and long arms.”

Ironically, Nick eventually became a public health epidemiologist and holds a more skeptical view of scrounging today.

“I’m still fairly frugal—I own a regular old TV instead of a flat screen,” he says. “But thinking back on it now, I wonder, ‘How did I go for everyone else’s gnawed-on scraps?’”

—Raymond Rendleman ’06

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PHOTO DANIEL RADIN ’75

More than a reunion: Reedfayre 2012 M AY 3 0 – J U N E 3

Join us as we conclude Reed’s centennial year with an

all-alumni gathering to mark this momentous occasion.

Reconnoiter. Renew. Relish. Replenish. Recreate. Repeat.

Return for Reedfayre 2012.

R E U N I O N S . R E E D. E D U

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Email: alumni@reed.edu

Facebook: Reed College Centennial Reedfayre 2012

Phone: 503/777-7589

Check out the latest Riffin’ Griffin posts: blogs.reed.edu/the_riffin_griffin/

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Reed College

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon

photo by dylan clark ’11

In the belly of the Beest. Inspired by Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen, Reedies Michael Page ’10 and David Lansdowne ’09 created this massive creature, known as the Beest. Like a headless wooden spider, the leggy Beest skittles across the floor of the SU when students propel it forward with a push. To watch it in action, see www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

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