Reed College Magazine March 2012

‰ march 2012

Breaking the Chain Can a mathematical model slow the spread of AIDS?

Sociologist Martina Morris ’80 may have the answer.

Beggars’ Banquet Page 4 Turmoil

in tibet Page 24 come To reunions! Page 64

Celebrating 100 Years of Reed Cover.indd 1

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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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MORE THAN A REUNION

May 30–June 3, 2012

REX R EQ U ES T S YOUR RE G I S T RAT I O N

Register today at reedfayre.reed.edu.

Four out of five Reedies surveyed recommend building the momentum by registering early and the fun by staying in the dorms.

Rex likes the way they think.

v

Reedfayre Top 6 • Decorate Reed’s Rose Festival float.

• Witness the opening of Eliot Hall’s 1912 time capsule.

• Celebrate Colin Diver’s decade of service.

• Indulge in Gastronomy Northwest, a Reedie food festival.

• Rock ’n’ roll around the Kaul roller rink.

• Attend an anadromous gathering of biology majors, aka the Big Bio Bash.

Email: alumni@reed.edu

Reed College Centennial Reedfayre 2012

Phone: 503/777-7589

blogs.reed.edu/the_riffin_griffin/

@reed_alumni Reed Alumni

ETURN FOR E U N I O N S 2012: EED FAY R E

MICHAEL RUBENSTEIN

‰ march 2012

KYLE JOHNSON

16

Departments

20

2 From the editor Rearguard of the Revolution.

3 Letters

Features 8

What about the Middle Class?

Burning Question.

Steve Jobs.

Beggars’ Banquet.

Diversity at Reed.

Helen Stafford.

Go at it Boldly.

Rubberstamping Ed Segel.

Dating the Crucifixion.

The Home Stretch

Reed’s Centennial Campaign reaches some key milestones.

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By Randall S. Barton 10

Gray Fund Turns 20

Reed celebrates 20 years of the fund that changed campus life.

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Breaking the Chain Sociologist Martina Morris ’80 says sexual concurrency— rolling with more than one at a time—is a key factor in the spread of HIV.

By nisma Elias ’12 16

The Maestro of Chaos

David Bragdon MALS ’10 is New York City’s master planner.

By Kurt Opprecht ’85 18

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Runaway. Street musician. Cab Driver. Novelist. The protean career of Vanessa Veselka ’10.

By Randall S. Barton

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By David Frazee Johnson

14 Empire of the Griffin

ALUMNI PROFILES 40

43

47

Stem-Cell Blogger

38 Reediana

Books by Reedies

Paul Knoepfler ’89

42 Class Notes

The Lady Vanishes

56 In Memoriam

Skeletons and Syphilis

Howard Wolpe ’60

Jamie Isenstein ’98 49

Connecting Reedies Across the Globe

Boar’s Head Banquet.

Chapter Spotlight.

Mars Gallery.

Solving Arithmophobia Peter Ash ’66

Turmoil in Tibet

Anthro prof Charlene Makley looks at the clash between Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese capitalism.

The Rest is History

By Susan Strasser ’69

By Chris Lydgate ’90

News from Campus

Iphigenia’s Stitch in Time.

Graduation Rate Hits 70%.

Where are they Now? 20 Years of the Gray Fund.

Bricks and Mortar in Tanzania.

New Dean Oversees Sexual Assault Prevention.

Art in her Genes.

How Reed shaped my career as a historian (excerpted from the new book of essays, Thinking Reed).

Marketplace of Ideas

Road Warrior

By Geoff Koch

Bill Nelson ’62 has been selling books on the SU porch for 50 years.

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6 Eliot Circular

Kristin Harper ’02

Cover photo by Hayley Young

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‰

Editor’s Letter

march 2012

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 91, No. 1 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

Yes, you can read Reed on a screen just two inches wide.

The Rearguard of the Revolution The final straw was the phone I got for Christmas.

For years, I was a confirmed foot-dragger in the technological sprint, a digital Neanderthal thumbing through phone directories and scrawling notes on manila folders while nimbler colleagues dashed past me scattering tweets and blogs. My antique cell phone was the laughingstock of the office; my 12-year-old son rolled his eyes whenever I used it in public.

So Christmas morning I found myself unwrapping a sleek new iPhone complete with the latest edition of the New York Times on its miniscule screen.

My career in journalism has revolved around newsprint since the first article I wrote for the Quest in 1984. The scent of the ink, the texture of the paper, the serendipitous thrill of turning the page and stumbling across a great story—I will proclaim these joys until they pry my dogeared copy of Roget’s Thesaurus from my cold dead fingers.

But if truth be told, there’s a lot to be said for reading on a smartphone. You can read it by candlelight. You can read it in pitch darkness. Squinting at the type? Just make it bigger. Wondering about a reference? It’s a keystroke away. In the midst of an article on Callista Gingrich, I was able to zoom in on her hair in all its platinum glory—and then email it to my wife.

The bottom line is that digital publishing offers possibilities that print can only 2

dream about. Take Geoff Koch’s terrific cover story on sociologist Martina Morris ’80 and her work on HIV. The article roams from Reed to Kenya, through sociology, statistics, public health, John Pock, and even choreography—a challenge for any magazine designer.

I’m proud of the way our feature turned out. But there’s even more on our website.

You can watch a computer animation of virus propagation. Listen to a BBC radio report on extramarital sex in Uganda.

Read Martina’s original research. Follow a televised debate. Throw in your own two cents’ worth in the comments section.

Many readers just prefer print—I do, too. But if you haven’t seen it recently, our website, redesigned from stem to stern by ace designer Tom Humphrey, is worth a visit. You’ll find our lively Sallyportal blog, browsable archives, comments, videos, links, and photos. (I can’t promise platinum hair.) Some sections still aren’t online, but will probably go live later this year.

Have we reached the end of print?

Absolutely not. But we have, I think, begun to find a true symbiosis, where the print and digital versions work together, each exploring ideas in its own way. The technology keeps changing. I want to make sure we harness that technology to serve the things that don’t change—the ideals, the mission, and the character that make Reed unique. —Chris Lydgate ’90

social media maven Robin Tovey ’97 valiant interns Lucy Bellwood ’12, Nisma Elias ’12 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.

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Letters to Reed What about the Middle Class?

Since I first arrived at Reed in 1954, Reed has been my home away from home. I met my first husband and best friend of many years, Guy Sircello, during freshman orientation. During my senior year, Reed actually hired me as acting documents librarian, and I handled that in addition to student teaching and my thesis. Guy and I coedited the yearbook one year, and Guy, a Baker Scholar, was very involved with student government. We held our wedding reception in Anna Mann, where I had lived in the same room for four years. We both returned to Reed in 1960, he as an instructor, and I originally as a “faculty wife,” but then as director of the Reed Education Project, which I founded, and later as an instructor in community organization during the summer when Reed hosted a Peace Corps training group.

Our children were Reed children, taking swimming lessons on campus and picnicking in the canyon with other Reed families. When Guy decided to leave Reed because he wanted to try a larger university, I was devastated. I would have stayed happily in Portland and at Reed for the rest of my life, but back then, wives followed their husband’s careers. I have kept up my connection to Reed as much as possible. I donate what I can. My sister and I have attended many Reunions. We always stay in the dorms, and subject our husbands to the hard single beds and spartan luxuries of the old dorm block.

You can imagine how happy I was to learn that one of my grandsons was determined to go to Reed. He had visited and loved both what he learned about Reed while there and from me. His interests range from quantum physics, to philosophy, to music, writing, and theatre lighting. Although I know that grandparents are biased, I would not recommend all of my nine grandchildren for Reed, but certainly Andrew is one who I think would make the ideal Reed student. Reed would profit by his attendance, and of course I think that he would, as I do, treasure and benefit from his Reed education for the rest of his life.

His parents intended to cash in savings, and thought that the modest income from an Hawaii college professor and a self-employed dance teacher would qualify him for a partial scholarship. However, it turns out that middle class students no longer need bother to apply to Reed. Reed goes strictly by the needs assessment that you get from some “impartial” national website. Reed goes by “need,” and nothing else.

Therefore, the tendency is that you have to be either wealthy or disadvantaged.

Unfortunately, my son-in-law is near retirement, and the situation is such that they will need the retirement money while my grandsons are still in college. Living in Hawaii presents unique economic problems. None of those individual circumstances can be taken into account.

Shouldn’t Reed make at least some scholarship money available for ability or other qualifications, and not just financial need? Shouldn’t the diversity that Reed says it treasures include the diversity of students from the true middle class? Let’s hope that the next Steve Jobs is not driven from Reed by misguided policies on financial aid.

—Sharon Sircello Toji ’58 Irvine, California Editor’s Note: Thank you for raising this important

issue. Federal privacy laws prevent us from commenting on specific applications in public, but in general, we can say that the goal of financial aid at Reed is to assist qualified students who could not otherwise afford to come here. Thus our financial aid is based on need, not merit. Although this approach has its drawbacks, we believe it best allows Reed to reap the benefits of an economically and socially diverse student population. Is this unfair to middle-class applicants? Median family household income in the U.S. in 2010 was $61,544, according to the Bureau of the Census.

The median parental income of students on aid at Reed is $62,404. In other words, if you define the middle class by income, Reed’s aid is largely going to the middle class. Like most colleges, Reed uses a nationally standardized need-analysis formula to arrive at a family’s expected contribution. However, Reed does take into account special circumstances such as impending retirement and the high cost of living in certain areas; and for what it’s worth, retirement assets are not included in the need analysis. Having said that, we share your concern about the middle-class squeeze. Reed is constantly seeking ways to increase its budget for financial aid, which currently stands at $22.5 million. Roughly one-half of all Reed students receive financial aid; the average package—including grants, loans, and work opportunities—is $35,990 per year.

Burning Question I’d appreciate it if you would confirm an entry in the timeline of the “Reed Almanac.” The first entry for 1969 reads, “Student Union burns to the ground. Last year of Olde Reed.”

I remember the incident. In 1968–69 I was a first-year student residing on the second floor of Doyle, with windows facing the commons

area. One night (or very early morning) I was awakened by an orange glow and noise from the window. Something was burning brightly.

I remember going outside to find firemen fighting a fire. I stood next to a pumper talking to the fireman in attendance. He took the time to answer my questions, and I distinctly remember being told that with higher pressure (pounds per square inch), the rate of flow (gallons per minute) decreased. I did not know Bernoulli’s principle at the time, so his statement caught me by surprise. I’m sure I doubted it until I next encountered it when teaching physics many years later.

The memory is vivid—but I’ve always thought I remembered the infirmary burning rather than the student union. Do your records definitely state it was the SU? —Richard Daehler-Wilking ’73 Charleston, South Carolina Editor’s Note: We goofed. The building that burned on May 21, 1969, was the OLD student union, later known as the theatre. Its name and role changed in 1965, with the opening of the new commons, at which point the old commons became the new SU and the old SU became the theatre. (After the fire, a new theatre was built in the canyon.) It certainly seems possible that the glow from this conflagration could have been seen from Doyle; in any case, we find no record of a major fire in the infirmary.

(Mis?)Remembering Steve Jobs Just a quick clarification (er . . . maybe question). Was I dreaming when I was at Quincy dorm in fall 1972 and Steve was downstairs on the second floor with Michael, his roommate?

Didn’t we share some interesting conversations concerning God, the Meaning of Life, and why are we here? And, didn’t I take the opportunity to ask the still unformed Reed College Christian fellowship to pray for him because he seemed at the time to be lost and “searching”? These first few months that I knew Steve seemed to be so absent from the record. Maybe I have it wrong, but I think this first period of time at Reed was the quiet time, an “unknown” Steve.

Could somebody please confirm to me that I have my own memory intact? Thanks.

—Richard Coit ’76 aka Scooterdude Boston, Massachusetts

Beggars’ Banquet I just read with interest “The Origin of the Scrounge.” I would like to add a few comments.

I was a scrounger during the 1969–70 school march 2012 Reed magazine

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Letters to Reed

continued

year. I reluctantly became a scrounger because I’d spent my year’s school money on a motorcycle.

I never heard it referred to as “the scrounge.” It was simply “scrounging” and I was a “scrounger.”

Once my initial hesitation had passed, I discovered that it was the best way to enjoy a meal in Reed’s fine cafeteria. The trick was to develop a fan base. These were mostly women, because they tended to eat less. Each one would bring me one component of the meal, which they took but did not wish to eat—a vegetable, potatoes, main course, and dessert. I never had to touch half-eaten food. In fact, I ate better than those with meal tickets because I got to try everything.

At the time, there were between two and six scroungers. Toward the end of the school year, the number grew to about a dozen. There were two other things I remember about scrounging—we enjoyed the meals because we didn’t take them too seriously, and we all shared. No one went hungry. Also, we were very respectful of the kitchen crew and often helped them clean up. They returned this courtesy. On November 7, 1969, the kitchen crew set a table with white linen and candelabras in the middle of the dining hall. We found old tuxedos from the Goodwill shop and were served by the kitchen crew, who scrounged the food for us! It was called the Beggars’ Banquet, and, if you find the picture in your archives, I’m the second guy on the right.

—Frank Martin ’73 San Clemente, California

Diversity at Reed I was appalled, discouraged, and saddened to see no faces of clearly African descent among the 24 new faculty members pictured in the recent Reed magazine. It didn’t encourage me that only one of seven new tenure-track appointees appears to be from a minority community.

This pattern leaves me wondering whether the presidential search will be broad, innovative, and bold enough to position Reed College well for the 21st-century diversity of our nation and global interconnectedness.

The college proclaims its emphasis on increasing diversity, but if students do not “see themselves” generously among faculty, the effort cannot be considered a robust one. The effect may be subtle, but it can discourage minority students from applying and from deciding to actually attend if accepted, and can contribute to their dropping out. When I attended Reed in 1960–64, there were few women faculty. So, I know first hand the negative effect this lack can produce. It would have helped me to have the informal mentoring that is part of sharing basic similarities.

Reed has hired in a variety of faculty positions in recent years, but diversity does not appear to be improving. It looks like you are still

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Students reverse the social polarity of scrounging with candelabra and white linen at the Beggars’ Banquet of 1969.

giving unacknowledged preference to those who are most similar to existing faculty members.

Breaking the mold of hiring those who look and present as you do is difficult. It is harder to predict how one will succeed and how they will fit in. Why invite discomfort? Apparently Reed has not faced this challenge in a proactive, organized way; students and society are negatively impacted as a result.

Had it not been for affirmative action and— dare I say? quotas!—I might have spent my working life in jobs toward which my gender aimed me and from which my aptitudes and interests rebelled. I am grateful for the opportunity.

In the 1960s and ’70s, it was difficult for me to be hired into “men’s jobs” because employers could not predict my performance and I didn’t fit their preconceptions of the occupants of the position. I was a risk. Who wants to hire a risk? Without quotas, I doubt I would have been launched into the variable, challenging, and satisfying succession of positions that made my working life successful.

Perhaps Reed College needs an internal, informal quota system for diversity. Maybe when two candidates are similarly qualified and the one closest to your mold (including alumni) appears slated for selection, that predilection requires serious reconsideration at the highest levels. I am not qualified to propose a solution, but I clearly see a problem and am pointing it out in hope you will take action to solve it.

—Molly O’Reilly ’64 Sandpoint, Idaho for your thoughtful letter. We are always grateful when presented with the ideas of alumni engaged in imagining how Reed might become a more inclusive, intentional, and culturally and intellectually pluralistic community. While we acknowledge imperfection in this regard, we

Thank you

are in the process of developing means by which to identify, target, and hire more faculty from underrepresented ethnic groups. Most contemporary efforts related to diversifying the faculty are a result of a faculty resolution dated April 5, 2004, which reads in part: “As the faculty ponders ways to improve the college, the faculty resolves that the ethnic diversification of the faculty and student bodies at Reed College should be among the highest priorities during the upcoming [current] capital campaign.” We have certainly not met our aspiration, which is to become a significantly more ethnically diverse institution on all levels—in the student, faculty, and staff bodies—but since 2001 we have added eight tenure track members from underrepresented ethnic groups to our faculty.

Your letter sparked the realization that we have not formally engaged alumni in the conversation about diversity and inclusivity. Look for an article in the next issue of Reed about faculty diversity, its relevance to the academic mission of Reed, and how we are positioned in the world of the highly selective liberal arts college.

—Crystal Ann Williams, Dean for Institutional Diversity & Associate Professor of Creative Writing —Patrick McDougal, Acting Dean of the Faculty & Howard Vollum Professor of Chemistry

Remembering Helen Stafford I was saddened to read in the December issue of the death of Professor Helen Stafford [biology 1954–87].

I was among the earliest of the Reed students over whose career Dr. Stafford had a major influence. In 1956–57, I took the introductory biology course as a junior physics major. She asked me one day, knowing I was a physics major, if I knew anything about solar batteries, since one of the well-known researchers

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in photosynthesis—and a future Nobel Prize winner—had just proposed that light harvesting in photosynthesis worked like a solar battery.

I’m not sure I was ever able to explain it to her, but I ended up taking both her plant evolution and plant physiology courses and did my senior thesis on photoconductivity of plant chloroplasts. I was pleased that she signed the thesis approval page along with Professor William Parker [1948–79], my physics thesis adviser.

I suffered comments from both ends of the basement of Eliot Hall, where the biology and physics labs were located at the time, as I rushed the chloroplast preparation from Dr. Stafford’s lab to my apparatus in the senior physics lab.

Helen also introduced me to Stacy French, then director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s plant biology lab, where I spent two summers as an assistant and continued some of my Reed thesis research. I went on to a career in academia, pursuing research on the light-harvesting process of photosynthesis and teaching biology, plant physiology, and plant biophysics, all the consequence of that initial short conversation.

One of the personal things I remember to this day is the twinkle in her eye and wry smile as she posed a thought-provoking question for me to ponder.

—Richard Cellarius ’58 Prescott, Arizona

Go at it Boldly I received Reed magazine yesterday and was struck by the article about the Reed 11 (September 2011), specifically by the interview with Jessica Gerhardt ’11, as I also graduated in psychology and also planned to spend the following year pursuing music. I did in fact do that and spent much of the following years playing in bands (including Rachael Sighs and Tesseract) in Portland area bars, making (and trying to sell) independent records, and selling guitars in a music store on Southeast 39th Avenue. Reading Jessica’s interview made me excited all over again, imagining the prospect of just coming out of Reed and going for it as a performing musician. I wish Jessica all success and I pass on the following advice: “Go at it boldly, and you’ll find unexpected forces closing ’round you and coming to your aid” (William Benjamin Basil King, Anglican minister and author, 1859–1928).

—Larry Dunn ’74 New York, New York

Rubberstamping Ed Segel I really appreciated the thoroughness of the most recent magazine, including the very helpful “Reed Almanac.” It certainly reminds me what made being at Reed a singular experience. I do wonder, however, how you could publish an encomium to Ed Segel [history 1973–2011] without mention of his “BULLSHIT” rubber stamp, which

Available in April 2012

After exhaustive research, we have confirmed the identity of this enigmatic KRRC DJ: he is David Levinson ’83, whose show featured twentieth-century and avant-garde classical music.

he mercilessly wielded across student papers.

(Of course, they’re now undoubtedly submitted electronically, rendering the stamp obsolete.)

—Ross Day ’79 New York, New York Editor’s note: A well-placed source confirms the existence of two rubber stamps in Ed Segel’s desk drawer: one proclaims TIHSLLUB and the other YKCAT. Accounts differ on when the stamps were last wielded, but we understand that during Ed’s reign the mere threat of their deployment was sufficient to maintain order.

Drawn from interviews with more than 1,400 people stretching back to the early 1900s,

Comrades of the Quest

offers a rich portrayal of a band of young, iconoclastic West Coast intellectuals and the institution that nurtured them, Reed College.

“It’s a great story, brilliantly constructed and told from multiple and brief, always shifting, points of first-person view.

The story never lags.”

— Robin Cody, author of Another Way the River Has

Dating the Crucifixion In the “Reed Almanac” entry for the Columbus Day Storm (1962), you correctly note that the mock crucifixion (in which a student dragged a cross along the field during the halftime show) did not occur that year. It occurred on either October 3 or October 24, 1959; the journalistic standard of two independent witnesses verifies that it occured during a football game against Columbia Christian that year, and those are the dates of the two games against that august institution. Although Foster Boys Incorporated are the usual suspects, all of them that I could round up (over half a dozen) deny not only culpability but also even awareness. That said, a 3 x 5 card from the momenteaux of FBI leader Peter Scheiber ’61 provides what the acolytes were chanting during the event—a Latin phrase that translates, “We have brought rain; break out the wine casks.”

—Jim Kahan ’64 Portland

“A compelling portrait of cultural radicals and intellectual conservatives interacting to mold the history of a fascinating educational institution whose wide influence has far outweighed its small size.”

— Carl Abbott, author of Portland in Three Centuries Hardbound. Promotional price (through June 1) $29.95.

To order your copy, visit www.reed.edu/bookstore/comrades or call 503/777-7757.

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Eliot Circular

A Stitch in Time Saves Iphigenia Environmental studies major Rennie Meyers ’15 loosens up while visiting assistant professor and costume designer Corrine Larson adjusts a neckline backstage for Iphigenia and Other Daughters, directed by Kathleen Worley [theatre 1985–] in November.

Written by Ellen McLaughlin, the play offers a glimpse into the thoughts and lives of the characters caught in the web of the House of Atreus. Left, Iphigenia (Rennie) leans over Orestes (Zak Garriss ’15) with sacrificial knife in hand. As the priestess of Artemis, she is supposed to kill any man who ventures into the shrine of the goddess, but something about this one intrigues here. She doesn’t know he’s her brother... yet.

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Graduation Rate Hits 70% photos by darryl james

Reed’s four-year graduation rate has jumped to an all-time high of 70%.

Out of 337 freshlings who arrived on campus in the fall of 2007, fully 236 marched with the Class of ’11, the highest four-year rate in the college’s history. “This is wonderful news,” says Mike Brody, dean of student services.

Reed has historically suffered from low graduation rates compared to other private colleges. Rigorous academic standards and a notoriously independent student body are two key factors.

Combine those with a traditionally hands-off approach to student life, not to mention Portland’s copious rainfall, and the result was massive attrition.

Reed’s four-year graduation rate stood well below 30% in the ’70s and early ’80s (see graph).

The improvement reflects several factors, according to Brody and other college administrators. First, Reed has become more selective. In 2000, the college accepted 68% of all applications; today the proportion is 40%.

In addition, the college has made a sustained effort to support students during their time on campus.

“Sometimes it’s a bumpy road to graduation,” says Brody. “We’ve gotten better at helping students navigate the turbulence they encounter.”

The college now offers robust tutor-

ing through the DoJo to help students with the challenging academic program, as well as comprehensive support for students with documented disabilities.

The DoJo offers workshops on preventing procrastination, time management, note taking, and other essential skills.

Reed also provides a network of support for students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Reed has worked hard to encourage a culture of balance, rather than a culture of stress, with a stronger P.E. program, a new counseling center, and a sustained emphasis on wellness.

“Students who could have burned out in the past are now finding healthy ways to take better care of themselves,” Brody says.

Over finals, for example, the college held special yoga sessions in the dance studio, threw a tea party in the Capehart room, offered free acupuncture in the library, and hosted a midnight breakfast in commons.

One night during finals week— finals week!—your correspondent spotted a clutch of mud-spattered rugby players howling in triumph as they trooped back from the pitch through the freezing drizzle. What better way to prepare for a wrestling match with Thucydides? —Chris Lydgate ’90

Reed’s Graduation Rate 80%

60% 50%

6 Years

40%

5 Years

2007-08

2006-07

2005-06

2003-04

2002-03

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20%

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30%

1982-83

% of students graduating

70%

Year students entered Reed

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Eliot Circular

continued

Centennial Campaign

The Home Stretch leah nash

By Randall S. Barton

As alumni know, Reed provides a full-body immersion in the liberal arts and sciences that is unlike any undergraduate experience in the world. The Centennial Campaign is advancing this mission and preserving Reed’s independence by partnering with alumni, friends, and foundations to establish financial resources and seek support.

To date, 11,696 donors have stepped forward to help the Centennial Campaign achieve over $185 million toward our $200 million goal.

This report highlights some of the campaign’s successes.

Building Community A true community of scholars should know no bounds, but for some students, the financial barriers to a Reed education are daunting.

Scholarships provide access for the most qualified applicants and increase diversity. Last year, 52% of Reed students received some form of financial aid.

The Centennial Campaign has allowed Reed to provide more scholarships than ever before.

• Donors have contributed more than $52 million for scholarships for domestic students.

• The 2010–11 financial aid budget, which includes funds from the restricted and operating budgets, has 8

increased 65% since the beginning of the campaign, from $12,790,264 to $19,636,000.

• Donors have contributed more than $2.3 million for scholarships for international students, whose needs are generally greater than those of domestic students.

• Last year 275 current students gave money to a scholarship fund for an incoming freshman.

Furthering Inquiry The hallmark of a Reed education is broad exploration in human knowledge balanced with in-depth study in an academic discipline. Small classes allow faculty to mentor students and engage with them in individual discussions.

• Donors have contributed $20 million toward the $30 million goal to support new faculty positions.

• In addition to strengthening small departments, reducing chronic over-enrollments, and meeting curricular needs, the college has moved close to its longstanding goal of a 10-to-1 student-faculty ratio.

The addition of 13 full-time faculty positions brings the student-to-faculty ratio down to 10.23 to 1.

• Donors have contributed more than $8.8 million for endowments for existing faculty positions. Endowed professorships confer special recognition, provide money to support research, strengthen academic departments, and serve as lasting tributes to the people after whom the professorships are named.

• The campaign has inspired $8 million in gifts to enable faculty research, hire professional lab assistants, and acquire materials and equipment.

In the Spotlight More than half of all Reed students take classes in the performing arts. In November 2011, construction began on a 70,000-square-foot performing arts building on the west slope of campus that will house the music, dance, and theatre departments. This new teaching facility, due for completion in time for classes in the fall of 2013, will provide state-ofthe-art classrooms, appropriate rehearsal spaces, a studio theatre, and a black box theatre.

• The cost of this facility is $28 million. Reed will fund half of the cost, $14 million, through fundraising, and

the remainder through a bond issue.

• Members of the board of trustees have given or pledged, in aggregate, more than $7 million to the performing arts building.

• Alumni, foundations, parents, and friends have committed $2,979,684 to this initiative.

The college seeks another $4 million in gifts.

• A generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation enabled the college to add faculty and expand academic offerings in theatre, music, and dance.

The $1.5 million foundation grant was matched 3:1 by $4.5 million in gifts from alumni and friends, resulting in a total of $6 million.

• Thanks to gifts and grants, Reed added one new faculty position in music and two half-time positions in theatre and dance.

• Gifts and grants also allowed Reed to add a performing arts librarian position and programmatic improvements in the dance department.

Upholding Integrity: unrestricted support The Annual Fund subsidizes the immediate needs of today’s students and enables the college to respond to a challenging economy while upholding the quality of a Reed education.

• 60% of Reed’s operating budget comes from tuition, with the Annual Fund and income from the endowment making up the majority of the remaining 40 percent.

• In fiscal year 2011, the Annual Fund totaled $3.6 million, up from $2.7 million

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seven years ago—a 33% increase.

• Parent giving has increased 34% over the past six years, and the number of parents giving $1,000 or more has increased 43 percent.

• The overall number of donors giving leadership ($1000+) gifts to the Annual Fund continues to grow, from 481 in 2005 to 732 in 2011.

• Young alumni (the 10 most recent class years) participation in giving back to Reed is at a new record high. The number of young alumni donors is up 84% from five years ago.

Estate gifts ensure Reed’s ability to provide a superb education in the liberal arts and sciences. Bequest gifts have been largely responsible for building the college’s unrestricted endowment to provide longterm institutional strength and resilience.

• Since the public launch of the campaign in April 2009, the college has received $30,643,670 in realized bequests, including more than $18 million from the estate of David Eddings ’54.

Class of ’11: Where are they now?

Now what? That’s the giant question looming over the head of every freshly minted graduate. To find out more about the fortunes of young alumni, Reed’s career services office conducted a survey of the Class of ’11. We heard back from 241 out of 292 seniors, a response rate of 83%. Among those who responded, 46% were working, 22% were looking for work, 12% had been accepted

to grad school, and 7% were applying to grad school. Among the more interesting jobs we heard about: working at a law firm in Croatia; management consulting in Hanoi; teaching English in Turkey; teaching capoeira; developing software at Apple; designing games at Microsoft; doing residential counseling at a boys’ home; and caring for a 96-year-old grandmother.

Travel 3% Volunteer (Peace/AmeriCorps) 2% Undefined Other Activity 2% Post-bac, Fellowship, or Internship 7%

Found Work 46%

Applying to Grad School 7%

Accepted to Grad School 12%

Seeking Work 22%

REED

Annual Fund

100 100 ye a rs of re e d.

years of giving.

• 50 new members have joined the Eliot Society by naming the college in their will or trust. There are more than 500 members in the Eliot Society.

Reed’s long history of educational excellence has always relied on generous financial support. Philanthropy continues a tradition initiated by Amanda Reed when—upon signing her will—she founded a college dedicated to spirited inquiry and rigorous scholarship in an atmosphere of intellectual honesty.

make your mark.

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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continued

The Gray Fund: 20 Years On The roar of the crowd was deafening. What had been silence only minutes before had erupted into chaos. And that could only mean one thing—singer-songwriter Jason Mraz had entered the Rose Garden. For the next few hours, I was entranced by the soulful acoustics of Mraz’s songs as he crooned hit melodies such as “I’m Yours” and “Lucky.”

I could not believe my luck at seeing my favorite barefoot musician live, with his trademark red fedora jauntily tipped to the right—all thanks to the Gray Fund.

For 20 years, the Gray Fund has been creating experiences for Reedies to remember for the rest of their lives, from barn dancing, to hot-air balloon trips, to meeting populist historian Howard Zinn.

“ I honestly cannot imagine what my life at Reed... would be without the Gray Fund.”

—Adrien Schless-Meier ’12 Reed trustee John Gray and his late wife, Betty Gray, gave Reed $2 million to establish the fund in 1992. “It was really Betty’s idea,” John says. “She thought that Reed students were too serious and somber.

We’d walk around campus and they seemed to be so deeply occupied with their studies.

We decided to create a fund to get ’em off campus and just liven things up.”

The express purpose of the fund is to ensure that Reed will have “stimulating cultural, social, and recreational programs of excellent quality” that provide opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to interact outside the classroom. They are also explicitly substance-free.

Since its founding, the Gray Fund has brought scholars, performers, and artists to campus, while sending students, faculty, and staff off to explore the Pacific Northwest with outdoor trips and sample cultural offerings in Portland. Kyle Webster, chair of the Gray Fund Committee, says the purpose of the Gray Fund is to support students, help them de-stress, and build community. “It was definitely ahead of its time,” says Kyle.

Many students say that the Gray Fund transformed their Reed experience. “Gray

The Gray Fund has brightened campus withTibetan monks, whitewater kayaking, awesome concerts, and even toasters.

Fund was a huge incentive for me to come to Reed,” says English major Anna Perling ’14. “I have done some awesome things with Gray Fund I never would have been able to do on my own on a student budget. I have gone to a Ducks’ game, eaten dinner with Billy Collins, gone on a week-long hiking trip, and eaten many a Voodoo doughnut at a movie night.”

Sociology major Adrien Schless-Meier ’12 says the Gray Fund provided a crucial counterbalance to the intensity of her coursework. “I honestly cannot imagine what my life at Reed, or even Reed in general, would be without the Gray Fund,” she says. “It’s allowed me to hear people like Sherman Alexie and Ursula Le Guin speak, to learn to make my own cheese and roast

my own coffee, and to cheer for the OSU football team. I know it’s contrived to talk about becoming a ‘well-rounded’ individual, but I honestly think that the Gray Fund was one of the primary factors that contributed to that process for me.”

Kristin Holmberg, director of student activities, feels tremendously lucky to be involved in a program that very few educational institutions have. “It is such an amazing gift to the college.”

To celebrate 20 years of the Gray Fund, Reed is planning a special event at the Schnitzer concert hall on April 20 that will feature an array of performers and acts. The final lineup remains a carefully guarded secret—but if the past is any guide, it should be a night to remember. —Nisma Elias ’12

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Bricks and Mortar in Tanzania

Walking around campus in the early nineties, Betty Gray thought students seemed “too somber.” Mindful of their own backpacking trips in the Cascade Mountains, John and Betty established the Gray Fund to “liven things up.”

All events are sub-free and open to students, faculty, and staff.

Environmental studies major Shannon Smith ’14 spent the summer in the remote village of Mang’ula in the eastern mountains of Tanzania, working with a local cooperative named Kilombero Youth Movement against Poverty (KYMAP). The group runs a school, teaches performing arts, maintains a cultural museum, and makes bricks (yes, the kind you build with).

She partnered with KYMAP on several of its priorities: a new water pump to upgrade its brickmaking capacity, and new costumes and props for its theatrical troupe. She taught village children how to document their environment with digital cameras, learned traditional African drumming and dancing, and killed chickens for dinner. “I always seem to shine the most when doing what I love,” she wrote, “learning from the amazing diversity of people and places that this

world has to offer and working to build sustainable communities that will keep that diversity flourishing amidst an ever-globalizing world.”

Shannon is 1 of 10 Davis United World College Scholars currently attending Reed. The program seeks to advance

Teaching village children and killing chickens for dinner. international understanding through education. The program supports future leaders and seeks to help college campuses become more internationally diverse. Read more about the Davis United World College Scholars at www .davisuwcscholars.org. Read more about Shannon’s adventures at www.trailofseeds.org.

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New Dean Oversees Sexual Assault Prevention In response to growing concerns on campus and nationwide about the issue of sexual assault on college campuses, Reed last year created the position of assistant dean of students for sexual assault prevention and response. From a pool of top candidates, the search committee sought a professional with superb credentials, long experience, and commitment to excellence—and found her.

“I wouldn’t have picked up and moved across the country if I didn’t believe Reed could become a national model in this area,” says Jyl Shaffer, who took the job in September. Shaffer comes to Reed from Vanderbilt University, where she was a victim advocate and winner of the 2011 Margery Fry Victim Service Practitioner Award for outstanding service in victim assistance.

“I like working in a college environment,” says Shaffer. “You have a population that is interested in this topic. They want to learn and they want to get it right. Since the day I got here, people have been asking me ‘How can I help? How can we work together to get this right?’ I can’t express how different that is—how different that makes Reed.”

Shaffer will work closely with the sexual misconduct board (SMB) that was recently created to adjudicate sexual misconduct complaints against students. (Survivors are also assisted in contacting the police.)

She will help train the 17 staff and student board members. Hearing panels must

Assistant Dean of Students Jyl Shaffer oversees sexual assualt prevention and response at Reed.

include at least two staff members and at least two student members. SMB proceedings are governed by the same procedures applicable to the judicial board.

In addition, Shaffer oversees Reed’s programs to prevent sexual misconduct; prepares educational resources for students, staff, and faculty; reviews response protocols; tracks data; and works with campus groups.

“In my role as advocate, I need to make sure that the process is meeting the needs of the community and that the resources are available to those who need them,” says Shaffer. “This is not about just making sure we meet the legal requirements, but rather making sure we are doing it right and meeting the needs of the community.”

Shaffer has a BA in history and education from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and an MA in conflict management from

Lipscomb University. Her thesis focused on the use of restorative justice in the adjudication of sexual assault cases on college campuses.

In case you harbored any doubts that she’s a good fit for Reed, consider the course she taught over Paideia, The Right Way to Help a Friend Get Lucky, focusing on the proper role of a wingman, wingwoman, or wingperson, what it means be a friend, and how to promote togetherness in a manner that is safe and consenting. The course description ended with the following note: “There is the strong possibility of references to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and, if you’re nice, Dr. Who.” Welcome to Reed!

Find out more about Reed’s policies at www.reed.edu /sexual_assault/index.html.

Art in her Genes Professor Gerri Ondrizek [art 1994–] unveiled a new work, Chromosome 17, in the main entry hall of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the department of medical genetics and its founder, Dr. Arno Motulsky, the piece represents a gene sequence in a mosaic of green and blue, highlighting locations of specific genes that were first identified at UW. To develop the piece, Gerri consulted with Peter Byers ’69, a professor of medicine and genome sciences at UW. [To explore more of Gerri’s work, see academic.reed.edu/art/faculty/ondrizek.]

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Th i nk ing ReeD: A CenTenniAl CeleBRATion W e ’ R e B R I N g I N g T H e PA R T Y TO YO U.

Be a part of our journey as we take Reed’s centennial celebration on the road. We’ve charted a course through all chapter cities, where we’ll put on festivities that include a hosted reception, video presentation, and brief remarks from a notable graduate who will discuss how a Reed education influenced his or her achievements. We will also toast retiring president Colin Diver. Register now at alumni.reed.edu/rotr/.

February 29 March 10 March 14 March 15 March 22 March 27 March 28

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Rainier Club, Seattle, WA Marriott, Marina Del Rey, CA Union League Club, Chicago, IL Caucus Room, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC City Club, San Francisco, CA Yale Club, New York City, NY Harvard Faculty Club, Cambridge, MA

All events begin at 6 p.m. except for the March 10 event, which begins at 10 a.m. The program will last approximately two hours.

For details, directions, who’s coming, and to RSVP, please visit alumni.reed.edu/rotr/. alumni@reed.edu 503/777-7589

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Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

leah nash

Penny Hummel ’83 and other members of the Boar’s Head Ensemble break out the candles for the stately procession celebrating the annual Reed Alumni Holiday Party in December.

Boar’s Head Banquet More rapid than owls, his coursers they came.

And he whistled and shouted, and called them by name; Now Diver! Now Doyle! Now Chittick and Ladd!

On Foster! On Scholz! On Quincy in plaid!

So up to the holiday party they flew For dinner with friends and dancing, too. (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

View photos of the festivities as well as individual glamour shots for download at www.reed.edu/ alumni/holidayparty/.

Chapter Spotlight Chicago August 2011 found the Chicago chapter visiting Fermilab, a high-energy particle physics research facility located in the western suburb of Batavia. Accelerator operator Cindy Joe ’08 led a group of 30 Reedies on an up-close and personal look at this scientific wonderland. Highlights included an eagle’s-eye view of the lab and surrounding restored native-prairie habitat from the 15th-floor observatory; an overview of the linear accelerator and the neutron-therapy cancer treatment facility; a visit to the main control room, where accelerator operators conduct their magic 24 hours a day; some time with the exhibits and souvenirs at the Lederman Science Education Center; and a peek at the lab’s own buffalo herd. An enriching and entertaining time was had by all (even, we think, the buffalo)! See a gallery of photos by Orin Zyvan ’04 at www.reed.edu/ alumni/chapters/chicago. —Cindy Joe ’08

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orin zyvan

Washington, D.C. In November, Leslie Overstreet ’71, the curator of the rare-book room at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, led Reed alumni on a tour of her domain. As in the past, this year’s event was vastly oversubscribed (to protect the rare books, there is a limit on the number of visitors who can be in the library at any one time), but Leslie accommodated all attendees by scheduling two separate tours. During the tour, focused this year on “reading” a book as a physical object, Leslie displayed a range of volumes dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and discussed the means of producing the books as well as the manner of their display.

—Paul Levy ’73

Pictured are Bennett Barsk ’82, two guests, Leslie Overstreet ’71, guests (my son Sam Levy, his friend Nafisa Jiddawi), two more guests; partly hidden is Cynthia Erville ’71, and on the far right is Susan Belardi ’76.

Molly Stankovsky

Next Time You’re in Chicago . . .

Mars Gallery

Situated in a gritty meatpacking district, in a building that once housed the Empire Butter and Egg Company, the Mars Gallery practically defines “off the beaten path”—the perfect location, in other words, for underground art.

The gallery, run by Peter Mars ’82 and Barb Gazdik, features work by Joey Africa, Michael Hedges, Kevin Luthardt, and, of course, Peter—a well-known pop artist in his own right, whose portraits of Elvis were recently featured at the Clinton Presidential Library.

Mars Gallery also boasts an exotic history. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was the legendary “Space Place” nightclub. It is also said to be located directly on top of a phenomenon known as the Fulton Street Vortex, a concentrated sphere of energy that is said to warp both sound and time.

Besides the factories, the neighborhood boasts art galleries, coffee shops, condos, and some of Chicago’s trendiest restaurants (Moto, The Publican, Next, and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat).

You can also rent the gallery for a party or a fundraiser (as Reed has several times).

Mars Gallery: 1139 West Fulton Market, Chicago; www.marsgallery.com; 312/226-7808; Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, noon–6 p.m. Thursday, noon–7 p.m. Email marsgallery@aol.com for other times. —David Perry ’73 Do you have a favorite “Reed” destination in your neighborhood? Send us a tip at reed.magazine@reed.edu Peter Mars ’82 explains the Fulton Street Vortex at his eponymous gallery in Chicago.

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The Maestro of Chaos David Bragdon MALS ’10 is NYC’s master planner. city discharges some 30 billion gallons of unprocessed sewer overflows into its waterways each year.

At the heart of the Mayor’s Office for Long-Term Planning & Sustainability, which David directs, is PlaNYC, the master plan of what New York will look like in the year 2030. Ten chapters, 132 initiatives, a feast of charts with circles and arrows, it represents thousands of hours of pragmatic planning in transportation, climate impact, parks, storm water management, building codes, energy codes, and, yes, more bike lanes. (Read more about PlaNYC at on.nyc.gov/z3zwms.)

“ Transportation really does determine how cities are shaped.” —David Bragdon Asked to talk about one challenge in particular, David picks an area in which New York uncharacteristically lags: trash.

Every single day, Gotham produces something in the smelly neighborhood of 11,000 tons of garbage—a monumental headache to haul, barge, and dump, especially for a city that lives mostly on islands.

But, what if we didn’t have to haul and bury the trash? Say we turn it into gas, yeah, burn that gas to generate electricity, and thus take a bite out of the city’s carbon footprint. The idea seems to work in Sweden and Denmark—could it work in NYC? David is quick to point out the many challenges, among them how to pay for it, wrangling over potential sites, and clearing federal, state, and city regulations, but he remains cautiously optimistic. “Certainly any sort of new technology has to be evaluated and the impacts of it have to be weighed pretty carefully—how we assure that this is actually an environmentally and socially responsible approach to handling solid waste, what the emissions are, that sort of thing,” he says.

photo by michael rubenstein

On a foggy winter morning, David Bragdon might be seen striding down the hill from his apartment in Fort Greene and walking up the ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. As he passes beneath the first Gothic stone pylon and begins to summit the span, Manhattan opens below him like a diorama, a mad scrum of skyscrapers playing king of the hill in midtown; the Battery and seaport skirting the southern shoreline, the UN compound clinging to the edge of midtown, and the other bridges sewing the boroughs together to the north. From here, the metropolis can look almost serene, softened by the mist, as though it is merely sleeping in—until you descend into the roaring core of it, the heartless machinery, the overflowing structures, the jostling millions of humans working, living, breathing, and playing together. Not a bad way to get to the office when you’re the man in charge of charting the city’s future.

Amid all the hue and cry, David is like a tugboat pilot at the eye of a storm. His Portland cool deflects, by habit almost, the East Coast agita. Ask him about the forces vying for supremacy around the fulcrum of his office, and he offers calm explanations and cautious predictions. Having served eight years as president of Portland’s Metro Council, the regional government in charge of land-use planning, parks, and transportation, the man has polished steel rhetorical discretion. (It took some rhetorical skills of our own before he would acquiesce to an interview.)

Take a look at what he’s up against: it’s clear the only way to handle this job is with a grounded detachment. New York City will gain a million new residents over the next two decades. Every day, the city drinks a billion gallons of water, most of it delivered from a tunnel built in 1917; and pressure from hydrofracking for natural gas is threatening its watersheds a hundred miles away. Its sewer system is the stuff of legend (and we don’t mean the alligators).

The network includes more than 135,000 catch basins, 6,000 miles of pipes, and 14 wastewater treatment plants. Even so, the

David came to the mayor’s office with broad experience navigating the seas of commerce, literally. He worked in Singapore, India, and the Soviet Union, under job titles that include marine marketing manager, assistant international traffic manager, and chartering assistant. He has always loved trains, a passion which sparked his interest in public transportation. Rounding out his transportation portfolio, he drove a cab in Portland for a while during his stint at the Metro Council.

He moved with his family from New York to Portland in 1971 so his father Paul Bragdon [president 1971–88] could take a position at a small liberal arts college there.

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Growing up so close to campus (a little more MALS program used a different part of my than a stone’s throw, as his father likes to brain,” he says. “It was like being part of a say), David got plenty of exposure to Reed, book club but on steroids, and where you also and assumed that all colleges were similar. have to write papers.” One standout profes“And then, I went to a big eastern university sor was Jay Dickson [English 1996–], from where most of the professors didn’t care whom he took a class on the Bloomsbury about the students at all. There were big lec- group. “If I could take a class from Jay Dickture classes, an emphasis on regurgitating son one night a week for the next 20 years, I’d the texts, and a mindset that college is just do it.” He wrote his master’s paper on Herbert about getting ready for law school.”

Croly (1869–1930), the progressive intellecBut it wasn’t until 20 years after graduat- tual who founded the New Republic. “Undering from Harvard that David finally got the standing the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street chance to attend Reed through the Master is a little easier if you know something about of Arts in Liberal Studies program. “Even the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt, and though I had a pretty demanding job, at the Herbert Croly,” he says. (And comes in handy, time, at the Metro Council, I felt that the we suspect, when you work in city hall.)

In many ways, David has a progressive’s dream job, but his days working for the Bloomberg administration are numbered.

Unless Mayor Mike wrangles another term out of the city council by 2014, David will be out on the street—which theoretically is his element. Until then, he’ll probably keep on walking to work on the Brooklyn Bridge, constructed for horse and foot traffic long before the automobile hijacked American roads. The bridge is usually described as a marvel of engineering, which is true enough, but it is also an elegant symbol of something else—the value of planning for a future we can only dimly see. —Kurt Opprecht ’85

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The Marketplace of Ideas

Fifty years on, students still love browsing Bill Nelson’s books on the SU porch. photos by vivian johnson

Friday of O-week. Afternoon sunshine dapples the SU porch as new students browse the books on display under the shade of an old sycamore tree. A handsome edition of Tennyson sits cheek-byjowl with a dog-eared copy of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. A soft breeze rustles the Complete Guitar Player and animates the Principles of Chinese Painting.

One student contemplates Anna Karenina, while another shrieks in triumph over a 1946 edition of the Joy of Cooking. “Finally, my own copy!” she exclaims. “It’s like a rite of passage.”

Surveying the scene beneath a charcoal gray fedora, Bill Nelson ’62 cracks a wry grin. He has been buying and selling books

at Reed for 50 years, virtually his entire adult life. His khakis may be worn and his shirt rumpled, but his eyes have lost none of their sapphire sparkle. Books are his hobby, his passion, and his profession. His collection, which totals more than 30,000 volumes, is like a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy of ideas, touching on every conceivable subject from the Indians of the Pacific Northwest to sorcery in New Guinea.

What keeps him coming back to the SU porch, however, is neither money (he doesn’t need it), nor any fetish for ink and paper, but rather the sense of camaraderie and kinship that books inspire—and the thrill of introducing students to new ideas for three dollars a pop.

Bill caught book fever young. In grade school, he would join his uncle on sorties to Portland’s legendary used bookstores, filling shopping bags with his discoveries.

By the time he graduated from Grant High School and came to Reed, he had collected more than 1,000 titles.

Reed gave his passion an intellectual focus. “Math 110 changed my life—literally,” he says. “It introduced me to the concept of mathematical proof and opened up a whole world—and I don’t mean just learning algorithms, I mean original thinking.” Inspired by professors such as Lloyd Williams ’35 [mathematics 1947–

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Dog-Eared Classics 81], Joe Roberts [mathematics 1952–], Michael Litt [chemistry 1958–66], and Marsh Cronyn ’42 [chemistry 1952–89], Bill began to read more widely, and started scouring church sales, rummage sales, and library sales as his collection grew.

In the early ’60s, Bill was involved in setting up a book gallery in the loft of the SU to raise money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an activist group opposed to segregation. Student interest in SNCC eventually waned, but Bill kept the book gallery going, even after he graduated from Reed in chemistry and got a job teaching math, chemistry, and physics at the Catlin Gabel school in Southwest Portland. (Catlin’s legendary annual rummage sale became another source of books.)

In 1970, the city of Beaverton bought Bill’s house by right of eminent domain, and he was suddenly faced with a big headache: what to do with his gargantuan collection, which by then occupied five entire rooms. In a flash of inspiration, he loaded a bunch of books in a trailer, hauled them to Reed, and set them out in the Quad.

Thus began an itinerant tradition that would continue to this day. “It’s just so rewarding,” he says. “The students really appreciate the books.”

Over the years, Bill has perfected his formula. He doesn’t keep a regular schedule, because the first ingredient for a successful sale is a sunny day—a rare commodity in winter and spring. The next ingredient, of course, is the right selection.

He hauls between two and three thousand books in his battered red ’85 Toyota pickup to the SU porch, and spends several hours arranging them to show off particularly unusual or beguiling titles. He has developed a sixth sense about titles that appeal to Reedies. “There has been incredible consistency,” he says. (See sidebar.)

Booksellers typically stay in business by selling rare books to wealthy collectors for a hefty fee. Bill turned that model upside down. His top price for Reed students is usually five dollars, whether the book is a well-thumbed Dr. Seuss or a first-edition Hemingway, and he sells most of them for two or three dollars. He is able to do this because he pursues a frugal lifestyle. “I enjoy growing and preparing my own food too much to ever even think of eating out,”

We asked Bill to list some Reed student bestsellers, based on his years hawking books on the SU porch.

Philosophy I’ll begin with this category, since all subjects at Reed are treated with philosophical rigor.

The number one author has to be Friedrich Nietzsche, but Bertrand Russell has always had a stalwart following.

Walter Kaufmann’s Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre is the single most popular title.

Religion & philosophy The top seller is definitely The Prophet

by Khalil Gibran.

The most popular author is the prolific Alan Watts, whose book The Way of Zen was first published in 1957. That and Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi are runners-up.

Another perennial favorite is Be Here Now by Ram Dass.

English literature First and foremost is Shakespeare’s Complete Works in any of its myriad editions.

The most popular English novelist is George Orwell.

German literature Hermann Hesse reigns supreme. Thomas Mann and Günter Grass have had their moments but never seriously challenged Hesse’s hegemony.

American literature More difficult, but Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is probably the single most popular title.

Other perennial favorites are the books of J.D. Salinger, William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan, and Dr. Seuss.

Russian literature Dostoevsky is number one, followed by Tolstoy, Chekov, and Nabokov.

Science fiction A toss-up among Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, with a strong showing by Philip K. Dick.

he says. “And there has always been so much free reusable material and repairable equipment that the concept of shopping became largely irrelevant.”

Bill’s Thoreauvian lifestyle underwent some uxorial adjustments after he married Susan Olson, a genetics professor at OHSU, with whom he has raised three daughters, but he has faithfully returned to the SU porch, year after year. He has also been a loyal donor to the college. “I really appreciate the opportunity to be a

French literature Top billing goes to Albert Camus’s existential novel The Stranger. Runner-up is Voltaire’s hilarious satire Candide. Sartre and Proust are perennial favorites.

Spanish literature Gabriel García Márquez, particularly One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Political science The Autobiography of Malcolm X, followed by the books of Hannah Arendt.

Cooking & lifestyle The Joy of Cooking has always been the number one cookbook (sorry, James Beard). Books on self-sufficient living such as How to Live on Weeds or the Whole Earth Catalog remain as popular today as they were in the Sixties.

History A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn remains unchallenged.

Sociology Max Weber and Emile Durkheim.

Psychology Carl Jung, followed

by Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, and Viktor Frankel.

Comics Tintin and Calvin and Hobbes.

—Bill Nelson ’62

student myself,” he says. “Reed changed my life and forged my interests. I feel a real debt to those years.”

By the end of the day, his throat is hoarse and his back is sore. It doesn’t matter. Students by the score have gone back to their dorms laden with literary treasures, made new discoveries, new connections, and new friends. For Bill, that’s reason enough to come back.

—Chris Lydgate ’90

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photo by kyle johnson

Road Warrior Runaway. Street musician. Cab driver. Author.

Vanessa Veselka ’10 built a career—and wrote a novel—that defies convention.

By Randall S. Barton

Distant wars are coming home to roost.

People are leaving the country in droves to escape the mushrooming violence.

The unrelenting doom menaces Della, a 27-year-old waitress who works in a vegan cafe in some alternate America.

“The world is a violent child,” she says, “and none of us will get to see it grow up.” She has nothing but scorn for sleepwalking middle-class Americans who shop in big-box stores and watch reality shows as the world crumbles around them. “I was sick of people acting against their own interests,” she says.

“Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing pen and pretending the bolt in the brain was a pathway to a better field.”

To jolt the bourgeois out of their complacency, she begins calling in fake bomb threats. A bomb threat, she reasons, is like Mom saying you’re in trouble, but not telling you why. It forces you to catalog your misdeeds. When real explosions begin striking her list of targets, however, Della is drawn into a world of disturbing consequences.

Della is the narrator in Zazen, a literary novel by Vanessa Veselka in which exquisite turns of phrase entwine with an engaging story about survival in a world gone wrong.

“Zazen has a power beyond the satire and the clever reimagining of today’s counterculture trends,” reviewer Katie Schneider writes in the Oregonian. “It also has heart and soul.” Judy Krueger in the New York Journal of Books calls it “a streaking flash

of barbed satire and 21st- century malaise.”

The book is one of five finalists for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction.

Vanessa is as dynamic as her novel.

Her thesis adviser, Lena Lencek [Russian 1977–], has a vivid memory of their first meeting. “She burst into my office filled with an intensity and focus that felt like a laser beam had bored its way through the wall,” she says. “It was clear she had managed to acquire a complex and deep biography.”

Born in 1969, Vanessa grew up in Manhattan, the daughter of a prominent journalist and a communist cowboy Marine.

She toddled off to 30 Rockefeller Center after school to nap in the green room. By the time she was tucked into bed, it was often 3 a.m. Although she grew up in a world of privilege, meeting celebrities in five-star restaurants, there was turmoil at home.

“Both of my parents were exceptionally charismatic people,” Vanessa says. “But charisma is volatile. It is a glamour that doesn’t always show you what’s there.”

Vanessa had a rebellious streak. Expelled from high school for truancy, she left home when she was 15 and hitchhiked across the country with her boyfriend, a 21-year-old petty thief who had jumped bail from Rikers Island. They picked up odd jobs in New Orleans and roamed up and down Interstate 10 looking for seasonal farm work.

They parted ways outside Gila Bend, Arizona. Vanessa dug ditches near Dateland, sold flowers on freeway onramps in L.A., and surfed couches in Spokane. march 2012 Reed magazine 21

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Road Warrior

tional. Nonetheless, her intellectual passion leaped off the pages of her application.

She also carried the strong endorsement of paleontologist Peter Ward and astrophysicist Mark Hammergren, two scientists she worked with at UW. Reed admitted her in 2004 with a full scholarship.

Vanessa was thrilled. She was also 36 years old with a toddler in tow. Study groups in chemistry, her intended major, tended to meet in the dorms at night— long after she’d picked up Violet from daycare. Though the DoJo now offers tutoring during class hours, at the time there was

“Vanessa challenged me in ways that really forced me to stretch and grow as a She inhabited a twilight state of sleep teacher,” Lencek says. “She had set herself deprivation, bedding down under bridges an impossible task: to write and revise, and in squats. Hitching rides with long-haul polish, and revise again a longish novella truck drivers provided snatches of sleep, or a short novel. I came on board in the lulled by the thrum of the engine. But Vansecond semester of her project.” essa’s eyes would pop open with every shift Vanessa had already generated a big of the gears, alert to potential danger. chapter in the novella, drilling down into When she was 18 years old, she bought her experience in Vienna. She was adaa one-way ticket to Europe, drifted mant she did not want to write a memoir. through Turkey and Yugoslavia, strum“I realized that I would have to do two ming her guitar on street corners, until mutually exclusive things in advising her she wound up in Vienna. on her thesis,” Lencek says, “get out of the “Vienna is the place where way, and create and maintain a I was born as an artist,” she controlled structure of writing says. “I love Vienna. It’s still so she would not conflate her my favorite city.” protagonist with herself.”

“Reed was the school I was always There she formed her first In addition to her thesis, band, the Remnant, which she was raising Violet and meant to be at. I wish I had gained critical success and working as a waitress at the found it earlier, but then I might not opened for the Ramones and Vita Cafe, a vegan restaurant Faith No More. on Alberta Street in Northeast have appreciated it. You have the Vanessa returned to the Portland. “There was no Daddy thrill of learning at the best teaching United States in 1991 and Warbucks to sponsor her Reed formed a rock band in Seattle education,” Lencek says. “She college in the country . . . I never named Bell. She enrolled for a did it all. Vanessa drew on her saw a bad teacher there.” brief stint at the University of proven survival skills—among Washington, but left midsethem the experience of having mester to go touring. Bell given birth to a child and of played gigs, released albums, having grown into a responsiand roamed the country in a van. They no math or science tutoring until 7 p.m. ble parent—to pace herself, keep her emoopened for acts like John Doe and the Worse, chemistry requires calculus, and tions in check, and keep her eye on the White Stripes, which Vanessa suggests taking calculus at Reed with no prepara- goal. It was an impressive performance.” owed more to her band’s longevity than tion in trigonometry, geometry, or interVanessa took two and a half years off any real promise. (Later she formed a band mediate algebra proved disastrous. from Reed to work on Zazen. Typically called the Pinkos with Steve Moriarty “I was actually doing really well in chem- students are required to reapply to the from the Gits.) istry but, like Alice after the rabbit, I was college after a two-year leave, but profesVanessa moved to Portland; got married; chasing calculus down a hole,” Vanessa sors argued on her behalf. Lisa Steinman gave birth to a daughter, Violet; and got remembers.

[English 1976–] argued that Vanessa was divorced. She was working 50 to 80 hours She hit the books every night, valiantly a writer of serious merit and should be a week as an organizer for the ILWU (Inter- trying to overcome the deficiencies in her given more time to finish her degree. national Longshore and Warehouse Union) preparation through sheer force of will.

“She hardly needed an advocate,” Steinwhen she began to ask, “What is it I love?”

She had never worked harder. But she man says, “being something like a force of could not catch up. nature quite on her own.”

A nontraditional student Her final grade for the course was a D. In 2007, Vanessa received an Osher During a walk along the Oregon coast, it It was time to stop fooling herself. She Reentry Scholarship, awarded to talented hit her. She loved rocks; for years, she had switched her major to English and decided students between the ages of 24 and 50 dreamed of returning to school to study to pursue something she was actually good working to complete their first bachelor’s geology. Tired of being a dilettante (who at—writing. degree. The scholarship, combined with hopes to rescue that word from ignomiVanessa loved her classes, but social her income from driving a cab at night, ny), she decided it was time to make her interactions did not come easily. It was allowed her to graduate in 2010. fantasy a reality. Needing to stay in Port- sometimes awkward being 15 years older “Reed was the school I was always meant land to share parenting duties with her than other students. Where Reed students to be at,” Vanessa says. “I wish I had found ex-husband, she had one obvious choice: typically call their professors by their first it earlier, but then I might not have appreReed College. name, Vanessa preferred to respect the ciated it. You have the thrill of learning at High school dropout, former teenage student-teacher relationship by keeping the best teaching college in the country. runaway, rock musician, union organizer— her distance and using their honorific No matter what you’re taking, I never saw Vanessa’s résumé was anything but conven- titles—Professor Lencek, Dr. Steinman. a bad teacher there.” continued

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kyle johnson

A novel approach Zazen’s postgrunge setting will be familiar to anyone who has lived in the Pacific Northwest. Della, the protagonist, has just completed her doctorate in paleontology and lives in an unnamed city that isn’t Portland, but shares some of its characteristics.

She works at a vegan restaurant, Rise Up Singing, where the workers’ refrain is “We all work in hell, but that’s okay ‘cause we don’t have to take out our piercings.”

The book’s title refers to a Zen Buddhist meditation to calm the mind and body.

“It was only on the second or third rewrite I realized what this book was about,” Vanessa says. “Can you sit still on fire? In a lot of ways that’s what we are asked to do in the world. Sit in that point where there are not necessarily any answers around you and just be horribly emotional and uncomfortable, but present.

It’s a frightening kind of presence in some ways. It’s a sublime kind of presence. It’s not a hippie kind of presence.”

No one is sitting still in Zazen. A bomb always looms, ticking like a metronome.

The taut suspense serves as a high wire for Vanessa’s surefooted prose.

Her heroine dispatches phonies like Holden Caulfield armed with a PhD. Della’s quixotic battles with restaurant patrons include using her dirty hands to scoop up tofu and operating the blender on “chop” because it’s louder. She narrates like a Raymond Chandler gumshoe: “It was the kind of talk you could get anywhere over spelt cookies and a microbrew.”

When a fellow conspirator questions the efficacy of her plan to topple a high-voltage tower, Della pounces. “I’d defended my dissertation against some of the best scientists in the world. Real jerks, some of them, and I didn’t feel like getting talked down to by some tinkering Robinson Crusoe of Anarchy Island.”

Published last summer by Red Lemonade, Zazen has what Vanessa calls a high rate of recidivism. Readers are buying multiple copies of the book to share with friends. “Zazen is an amazing achievement,” reads a typical comment on her website. “I found myself grinning frequently whilst reading . . . I loved everything about this book. Through your use of first-person, female characters with male (red-neck) names, your encyclopedic knowledge of all things yoga and vegan, love of rats, and fry-oil burning Mercedes, you won my heart forever and ever.”

Vanessa based the restaurant in Zazen on the old Cafe Vita on NE Alberta, across the street from its current location.

Vanessa returned to Vienna in 1993 for a reunion with her band The Remnant.

In addition to teaching writing workshops, Vanessa pays the bills ghostwriting and writing feature stories and is busy writing her second novel.

Her writing—like her life—has been shaped by frequently being some distance from the center. “Two extremes held in opposition is another form of balance,” she says.

Call it faith or delusion: some degree of self-confidence is required to write 30 hours a week for three and a half years with only the dim prospect of ever being

paid. Vanessa proceeds with abandon because she is not afraid to fail.

“I really believe it is better to try to do something really big and leap into failure, than to constantly stay on the side of irony,” she says. “Failure expresses our desires in such an open, vulnerable way.”

Further Reading Zazen by Vanessa Veselka. Red Lemonade, 2011. redlemona.de/vanessa-veselka/zazen Read more about the Osher Scholarships at www.reed. edu/ir/osher.html

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Reed anthropologist Charlene Makley examines the cultural collision between Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese capitalism.

By David Frazee Johnson

The film is short and shocking. Lobsang Konchok, an 18-year-old Tibetan monk from the Kirti Monastary in China’s Sichuan province, lies on the ground, smoke rising from his scorched skin. Horrified screams from passersby mingle with the sirens from emergency vehicles. His body twitches, showing faint signs of life. A Chinese security officer rushes into the frame, shouts “No filming!” and the screen goes blank.

Lobsang is one of a dozen Buddhist monks and nuns who have set fire to themselves in the past year to protest China’s policies towards Tibet. To most Americans, these desperate tactics mark a stunning departure from the philosophy of peaceful compassion that has made the Dalai Lama a worldwide spiritual leader.

To Reed anthropology professor Charlene Makley, they were sadly all too predictable.

Today’s Tibet, gripped by strife, is a far cry from the land that Makley first encountered in the mid-1980s as a freshly minted Middlebury graduate with a degree in French.

Visiting Tibet, with its snow-capped mountains, dusty roads, and intense poverty, “was an eye-opening experience,” she recalls. China’s economic boom was focused in those days on the eastern part of the country, far from the Tibetan regions.

Despite the tense and sometimes violent relationship between Tibet and China, by the 1980s gradual reforms had created a spirit of optimism, she says. At one point

AP Photo/Color China Photo

The Turmoil in Tibet she received an offer from Tibetan friends to open a school teaching English. “There was an ‘anything goes’ atmosphere,” she says. Soon after returning stateside, as she was preparing to go back to Tibet and open the school, she learned that a fresh round of protests had triggered a military crackdown. “The whole place shut down,” she says. “That spirit of openness was gone, and not coming back.”

By then hooked on Tibet, Makley pursued a degree in Asian studies at the University of Michigan, where she soon realized, almost by accident, that anthropology was a more natural discipline for her.

“I had proposed an interdisciplinary PhD in anthropology–Buddhist studies,” she says, “but as soon as I started the anthropology classes, I knew that was where I belonged.

These were my people.”

Having found her tribe in anthropology, Makley set about investigating the question that lies at the heart of modern Tibet: the conflict between China’s economic expansion and traditional Tibetan values of fierce autonomy.

She continued to explore this issue when she joined the Reed faculty in 2000.

“When I arrived at Reed,” she recalls, “I felt as though I was entering this tiny new world.” The anthropology department at the University of Michigan was home to dozens of professors; Reed boasted five. At Michigan, intro courses were held in cavernous lecture halls; at Reed, a class of 20 students is considered crowded.

Nonetheless, she was floored by the intellectual capacity of Reed students.

“What I discovered very quickly is that I loved the intellectualism, and the rigor with which students engage teachers here,” she says. “You can place the bar above the heads of students here, and they reach for it.”

Makley’s signature course is Anthro 362, “Gender and Ethnicity in China and Tibet,” which incorporates much of her field

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A Tibetan Buddhist nun looks out over Ganzizhou, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, 2006.

Tension between ethnic Tibetans and the Chinese government has risen in recent months.

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The Turmoil in Tibet

continued

research in the valleys of Labrang and Rebgong in the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai, which lie outside the former nation of Tibet but inside the larger (and older) Tibetan areas of western China.

Makley’s primary interest lies in the rapid pace of economic development in China and the conflicts it has created in Tibetan society. “All the rhetoric from China looks fabulous,” she says. “They talk about freedom of religious belief, and progress, but then there has been this massive stateled development push, west, since 2000.”

The government is determined to exploit the natural resources of the vast Tibetan plateau, which Makley calls one of the last unexplored frontiers on earth. China’s hunger for timber, copper, lead, and zinc has put intense pressure on villages to sell land that has been in communal hands for centuries. Tibetan tradition holds that every mountain is inhabited by particular deities and demons, and inhabitants of the nearby villages are born into a lifelong spiritual relationship with these beings—relationships that are disrupted when the forests are felled and the land gouged by mineshafts. “Tibetans talk about being ‘swept east’ by the river of development,” Makley says. “They say, ‘There’s a wave, and we can’t stop it.”’

“With market-based development, you have increasing pressure,” Makley says.

“People want to use land in new ways and villages are selling off land to outside bidders.” As Tibetans watch their lands auctioned off for the benefit of outsiders, often ethnic Chinese from the eastern regions, their resentment simmers.

In Rebgong, tension over the uneven distribution of wealth boiled over into widespread protests in 2008, triggering a severe crackdown by the authorities. “As Tibetans have become more polarized by market-based policies, sovereignty is being increasingly thought of as an ideal,” Makley says “People want, via the Dalai Lama, a modernized, Buddhist-informed nationstate. This is a type of Buddhism that the state wants to curtail. They want a sanitized Buddhism, where you have docile, obedient monks and not much else.”

The unrest reached a fever pitch in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, when days of peaceful demonstrations led by Buddhist monks suddenly erupted in violence in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, with protestors overturning and burning cars, smashing store-

Charlene Makley, second from right, with Tibetan Buddist nuns in Labrang in 1996.

a

m

qinghai

d

o

gansu

Tibet Autonomous Region xizang

nepal

•Rebgong •Labrang •Kirti Monastary

g u - t s a n

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•Lhasa

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bhutan china •Lhasa

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China absorbed the former nation of Tibet in 1950, dubbing it the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

However, many Tibetans also inhabit the traditionally Tibetan areas of Amdo and Khan, now part of the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu.

fronts, and clashing with police officers. Several protestors were shot; many more were arrested. The unrest quickly spread to other Tibetan regions, despite the Dalai Lama’s appeal for calm. “The 2008 riot in Lhasa was shocking to people,” Makley says. “That footage was played all over the PRC.” In the aftermath, the state media began for the first time to use the word “terrorist” to describe Tibetan dissidents, particularly Buddhist monks. According to Makley, the government is deeply troubled by the emergence of monks participating in street demonstrations. The official term, “superstition,” for beliefs and practices that lie outside of, and that are therefore not subject to, rigid state bureaucratic structures, she adds, literally means “to be lost or deluded into belief.”

As the state tries to confine the monasteries into a manageable role, young

Tibetan monks are confronted with a stark reality. Historically, Makley says, “monasteries were not hermitages where monks would do nothing but meditate, but were monastic polities where Buddhism and governance were combined.” Some monasteries were essentially small towns, consisting of as many as 20,000 monks, who formed their own self-sufficient communities. No longer. Now, she says, “the role of monasteries as polities has been eviscerated, but many young monks think of their lamas as leaders who should still have that authority.” Unable to practice their religion to its full extent, watched everywhere by security forces, Tibetans are driven to desperate lengths.

The streets of Rebgong crackled with tension. “It was a hair-trigger atmosphere, this feeling that anything could happen at

rebkong

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any time. I remember feeling very tense if Students are drawn to her courses by Public Radio International’s “The World” I would see more than five people together their interest in China, but soon discover to discuss the wave of self-immolation out on the street. It meant that something

by Tibetan Buddhists. “What we’re see- that anthropology requires scholars to was about to happen.” examine themselves as they examine the ing is not I think this sort of irrational As the Olympics approached, Rebgong world. Students are taught to question the shift from previous kinds of protests from was put under de facto martial law, complete assumptions that color their view of subTibetans,” she said, “but it’s growing out of with military patrols and curfews. Writing an escalation and a sense of sheer despair.” jects like race, class, gender, and identity. of this experience in a recent summary For some, this can be frustrating; for

of her research, Makley says “The silence others, it is liberating. “I see anthropology that descended on places like Rebgong was Makley believes that anthropology is the as allowing you to do the dual process of stretched thin and tight as the goatskin ideal discipline to make sense of the com- thinking about yourself as you think about drums that Tibetan men use to fête the plex stew of issues facing Tibetan regions of the world,” Makley says. “Ideally, you come warlike mountain deities.”

China. “Anthropology is a metadiscipline,” to a new ground where you can think about The crackdown, Makley says, became an she says. “It is a set of critical frameworks, both simultaneously.” all-encompassing feature of daily Reed, it turns out, is an ideal life in the valley. “It inhabited home base for Makley’s research. their lives, making them unable Just as Reed faculty introduce “ There’s a wave, and we can’t stop it.” to go anywhere or do anything. new ideas to their students, stuIt is hard to explain to Ameridents, in turn, bring new work cans who have been insulated to her attention. “Student thefrom this level of state intrusion,” sis work is often cutting edge— she notes. “Your whole life, everyday rou- or even abstractly a fundamental skeptical they push me to look at new material, and tine, is subject to fear. In these valleys there sense that you take towards all social theo- this is very productive for my own research,” is no protected space.” ries and all socially proposed categories.” she says.

As an example, she recalls a friend who Rather than limit her research to politics or One boon to her teaching, she says, is beckoned to her one day, holding a finger to religion, she works to bring contesting the- Reed’s willingness to provide professors her lips. “Even in the inner sanctum of her ories into dialogue with her own empirical with the resources they need to pursue house I was used to her speaking only in a research. “The difference between anthro- research. “My teaching would get very whisper, but that day she told me that there pology and some other disciplines is that stale if I couldn’t get off campus, away from were rumors that the police had planted lis- there is a constant striving to break out of Portland, and into the field. My teaching tening devices in chimneys to spy on occu- the ivory tower, always trying to contextu- grows out of my research—I can assign alize what is happening in the real world.” pants, and gestured to her own chimney as things that I want to read for my own work Anthropologists working in China find she told me this.” because you can aim that high with stuthe question of state power inexorably tied Though security forces did not focus on dents here. You can design new courses that to their own research. Because they must American scholars, Makley felt that she are pushing you in a new direction. I can’t was a potential liability for her associates. obtain visas in order to enter the coun- imagine teaching in any other way.” try, there is a strong temptation to avoid “As one of the only white people in town I In her book The Violence of Liberation, was so visible, and was immediately a lia- controversy. “There is a huge interest in based on her research in Labrang, Makley studying China,” Makley says, “but at the bility if people were seen with me. All cell forecast the strife that culminated in the same time there is an increasing feeling of phone traffic was subject to scrutiny, and so crackdown of the late 2000s. Asked to prelimitation of academic freedom in terms of I was afraid to text or call anyone because dict what lies ahead, she finds few reasons then all my contacts would get in trouble. talking about China. The reach of the state for optimism. “Within China, there is very is so great that you risk being blacklisted That’s what I was most terrified of—most little public recognition that there are actuif you write about controversial subjects, al things that Tibetans are pained about, or people I knew had nothing to do with any particularly those dealing with Tibet.” protests, but just being rounded up and that they fear. All of that collective grief and The consequence, Makley says, is a ten- trauma is still there, and there has been no being put under surveillance would affect dency for scholars to avoid topics that they people’s careers and jobs.” ability to process that collectively. The only know will trouble the authorities. “What Unable to speak by cell phone, worried thing that is remotely optimistic is that that her emails would be intercepted, Mak- happens,” she says, “is that people simply China is not monolithic, but is a collection stop asking questions, and stop seeing cer- of people, many of whom are organizing for ley’s sole source of information was to speak tain connections. You blinker yourself. It is with her husband via Skype. As they would a different kind of future.” a very intimate process, having the state’s speak about innocuous subjects, he would Anyone viewing the footage of Lobsang way of thinking inhabit yourself.” hold up large cards bearing news that could Konchok, his twisted, smoking body lying China’s intrusion into the field of not be spoken. “He would write things like prone in the street, seeks reassuring words another demonstration in lhasa,” anthropology may concern scholars like about the future. What Makley’s research Makley, but it has done nothing to curb she says. “You get really paranoid because suggests, however, is that until Tibetans student interest. “Some days,” she laughs, “I you don’t know what technology the state feel that their grievances are addressed, feel like the area outside my office is a wait- these acts of protest are likely to become has, and you don’t know what they know.” ing room, crowded with students.”

In December, Makley appeared on more frequent and more desperate. march 2012 Reed magazine 27

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photo by hayley young

Breaking the Chain

Martina Morris ’80 looks at sexual concurrency and HIV.

By GEOFF KOCH

The defining moment in Martina Morris’s professional career took place in Uganda in 1993. Fresh out of grad school, she was giving a talk to a small group of African academics and public health workers on her dissertation, which explored how age differences between sexual partners might be related to the spread of the HIV virus.

As she described the mathematical model she used in her research, a man in the audience abruptly stood up.

“Can your model handle people having more than one partner at a time?” he asked.

No, Morris said, it couldn’t. In fact, she added, there was no mathematical model for overlapping partnerships, partly because it was difficult, but mostly because epidemiologists had never considered the issue relevant. Her answer evoked a startling reaction.

“He got up and walked out of the room,” she says. “This wasn’t a big lecture hall.

Everybody saw it. So there was a long silence after he left, and then I just stumbled my way through the rest of my talk.”

Afterwards, the field manager for the project Morris was working on pulled her aside. Many in Uganda were coming to believe that the practice of having concurrent sexual partners might be related to spread of the disease, the manager said.

At first, Morris was skeptical. It was well established that the spread of HIV was related to the number of sexual partners a person had over a given period of time. But who cared, epidemiologically speaking, if those partnerships overlapped? The issue seemed to have more to

do with morality than with medicine. As she considered the question more deeply, however, she reached the startling conclusion that the issue of concurrency was fundamentally different from the number of partners—and that it might play a dramatic role in the spread of HIV. The awkward experience left its mark on Morris, who is now a professor of both sociology and statistics at the University of Washington. Today there is a robust model describing the risks of concurrent sexual partnerships. Morris herself developed it. In a series of papers dating back to the mid-1990s, she has explained the model in great detail, along the way stirring up a surprising controversy.

Few dispute the basic facts on the ground about HIV in eastern and southern Africa, where more than 22 million people were living with HIV in 2009. Heterosexual sex remains the dominant mode of HIV transmission. The overall prevalence of HIV, though generally stable or falling, remains astonishingly high, at least by American standards: the prevalence in Uganda is estimated at 6.5%, in South Africa at 18%, and in Swaziland more than 25%. And these are figures for the general population. Specific groups, such as urban men aged 15–49, often show much higher prevalence, thousands of times the rate seen in developed nations. This vast difference cannot be explained by what’s generally seen as high-risk behavior: having lots of sexual partners, starting to have sex at

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Small Change, Big Effects

Modest variations in the concurrency rate—the proportion of people in overlapping sexual partnerships—can have a dramatic effect on a population’s vulnerability to HIV. KEY

1 partner 2 or 3 partners

Percent of people that are connected in the network through their sexual partnerships

45% 55%

2%

40% 60%

10%

37% 63%

41%

35% 65%

64%

When the concurrency rate is 55%, only 2% of this population is connected to the broader sexual network required for HIV transmission (top). But when concurrency reaches 65%, an astonishing 64% of the population is vulnerable, even though the number of sexual partners remains constant.

Source: Morris, et al. The Relationship Between Concurrent Partnerships and HIV Transmission, 2008. See www.aidstar-one.com/.

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Breaking the Chain

continued

an early age, and failing to use condoms.

Survey after survey indicates that these behaviors aren’t all that more common in Africa than elsewhere in the world.

The issue is multifaceted for sure. In recent years, much attention has been paid to male circumcision, which does reduce the risk of HIV transmission and is not commonly practiced in Africa. Yet neither is the practice widespread in much of Europe, Asia, or Latin America, where prevalence of HIV is much lower.

So what’s different?

One cultural norm that does seem to vary is the practice of having a small number of overlapping sexual partners.

There are many scenarios, but the classic example is the husband who also keeps a mistress, or a “side dish,” as it’s known in Uganda.

Data from a 2011 paper by Morris and colleagues in the journal PLoS ONE drive the point home. Among various groups of men surveyed in Uganda, anywhere from 27 to 32% admit to overlapping partnerships at some point in the last three years, the researchers report. In contrast, concurrency rates among men in the United States typically range from 9 to 23%, depending on race and ethnicity.

That may not sound like a big difference, but Morris’s research suggests that minor variations in sexual concurrence can lead to vast increases in overall transmission of

HIV. The reasons are twofold. First, HIV is much more virulent in the early stages of infection, so the chance of transmitting the virus is higher in overlapping partnerships because the interval between sexual contact with different partners is considerably reduced. (No courtship or chocolates to slow things down.)

Second, in an overlapping partnership, you go back to your previous partner, exposing her or him to whatever you picked up in the meantime. Concurrence is not so much a risk to individuals (it has the same effect as multiple partners) as it is to their partners, who are unwittingly exposed to infection without ever engaging in risky behavior.

Take a theoretical group of people

Day 1

These images are derived from a computer animation developed by Martina Morris and colleagues at the University of Washington that simulates the spread of HIV in a population of 10,000 young adults over a period of 10 years, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. The simulation begins on Day 1 with 10 individuals infected with HIV (the bigger dots). Women are circles; men are squares. Concurrent partnerships are represented by red lines, monogamous ones by blue. Over time, as partnerships form and dissolve, the virus spreads outward from the original vectors. Infection can occur in both monogamous and concurrent relationships, but transmission is accelerated in concurrent partnerships, which give the virus more paths along which to spread. The infection tree at bottom right shows the high proportion of concurrent partnerships in the path of the virus; note that groups with higher concurrency allow the virus spread both faster (more generations) and more widely (more individuals infected at each generation). To watch the animation, see http://statnet.org/movies. Source: Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, UW.

5 Years

Ten Years

images by Skye Bender-deMoll

How Concurrency Accelerates a Virus

Infection Trees

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Nearly 2,500 miles, much of which can be traversed on Interstates 84 and 80, separate Portland from Cleveland, Ohio, where Morris grew up. Her first exposure to Reed came in the 10th grade when she visited her high school library and pulled the massive College Board catalog of all U.S. colleges and universities from the shelf.

Reed caught her eye for two central and somewhat contradictory elements of its reputation, both of which are still celebrated today. The college gave its students vast amounts of freedom—in loco parentis was apparently not in the vocabulary, despite the college’s longstanding tradition in classics. At the same time, Reed maintained a highly demanding academic environment.

“Well, actually there were three reasons, I guess,” says Morris. “It was about as far away from home as I could get.”

Cleveland in the 1960s and ’70s was defined by social unrest and environmental disaster, including the infamous 1969 Cuyahoga River fire. The unfortunate “Mistake by the Lake” moniker seems to date to that era. This is perhaps why Morris was drawn to campuses known for their rigor and their beautiful settings. She consid-

photo by hayley young

where the concurrency rate is 55% (not as unusual as you might like to believe). On any given day, roughly 2% of this group is sexually connected to a larger network, exposing them to infection. Now nudge the concurrency rate up to 63%. Suddenly, the vulnerable population jumps to 41%.

Push concurrency to 65%, and the vulnerable population vaults to 64%. Minor changes in concurrency, in other words, have profound implications for the spread of the virus. [See page 29.]

In sub-Saharan Africa, Morris believes, the elevated rates of concurrency create what amounts to an HIV superhighway, exposing vast numbers of people to infection.

“In a sense, what you have is a system like the interstate highways in the United States,” says journalist and public health consultant Helen Epstein, who coauthored the 2011 paper with Morris. “Each town isn’t connected to very many other towns, but you can get anywhere across the continent on that system.”

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Morris’s work is its corollary. If concurrency is the key to understanding the spread of HIV, concurrency is also the key to reducing it.

Number cruncher Martina Morris ’80 works with colleagues at the University of Washington.

ered Stanford and University of California, Santa Cruz, before deciding on Reed.

Morris proceeded to have what she says was a typical Reed experience in the 1970s.

She dropped out twice, traveled to prerevolutionary Iran, hitchhiked through Europe, and studied dance in New York. More important, she was profoundly influenced by the notoriously demanding professor

At a Chock Full o’Nuts coffee shop at 116th and Broadway in Manhattan, across the street from Columbia, Morris figured out the topic of her Reed thesis, which she would eventually finish, under Pock’s guidance, in 1980. Why, she wondered, did all the leftist organizations from the 1960s, particularly the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), eventually implode?

If concurrency is the key to understanding the spread of HIV, concurrency is also the key to reducing it.

John Pock [sociology 1955–98]. She still remembers sitting in Sociology 210 and taking furious notes during his lectures.

“I was hooked, basically, from then on,” she says. “He is the reason I am where I am now... the things that he showed me remain important to me, to this day.”

Pock has vivid memories of his former student. “She was the kind of student that the founders of Reed were thinking about when they set up the college,” he says. “She never took the easy answer. She investigated. She wanted to find out how things worked instead of just writing down a pat response. I’m proud of her.”

Morris felt Pock’s pull even in New York during her encore as a dropout. She’d traveled east to study dance, but on a whim wound up taking a course at Columbia from Robert Merton, among the country’s most eminent sociologists.

“As soon as I got in his class, it was, like, ‘Oh, my God, of course this is what I want to do.’” she says.

Her conclusion, relevant to the Occupy Wall Street movement today, was that the participatory democracy espoused by SDS is not a viable form of political organization. The only way it works, she found, is if individuals completely submit to the collective will, which of course is exactly the opposite of the reason people join such groups in the first place.

Morris, subject to withering attacks by colleagues in recent years, is not one to submit easily. Maybe studying the tumultuous activist movements of the ’60s inoculated her to this sort of criticism—or maybe it was defending her thesis before John Pock.

Both the tone and substance of the conflict were on full display on October 7, 2010.

That was the day of a World Bank–sponsored debate on this simple proposition: concurrent sexual partnerships have been and remain a key driver of HIV epidemics in southern and eastern Africa, and intermarch 2012 Reed magazine 31

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Breaking the Chain

continued

ventions to this effect should receive the majority of prevention resources.

That proposition is the central focus of Morris’s recent professional life, so it was perhaps only natural that she spoke first. At the end of her opening statement, Morris calmly looked into the camera and summarized her reasoning: “Concurrency can have a dramatic impact on network connectivity and offers the possibility of large prevention impact.”

The debate was structured as a threeon-three format, and as other presenters stood to make their case or rebut others, it soon became clear that real passion and quite likely even personal animosity simmer just beneath the surface.

Speaking via video conference from Johannesburg, South Africa, Brown University epidemiologist Mark Lurie all but accused Morris and other advocates of the concurrency hypothesis of shoddy work or even of outright lying, urging those in the audience to be wary of tricks and sleight of hand.

“You might believe that empirical evidence for concurrency is as rock solid as Mount Everest,” said Lurie. “In fact, rather than a mountain of evidence, the hypothesis rests on a very thin layer of ice.”

Lurie’s remarks are consistent with the stridency of the debate, which has been hashed out in academic journals in recent years. Stripped to its essentials, the criticism of the concurrency hypothesis is that there is little field evidence to support it: areas with high HIV prevalence do not always show high rates of concurrency, and areas with high rates of concurrency do not always have high HIV prevalence.

One big problem is that collecting reliable scientific data about sexual behavior is extremely difficult, especially in Africa, where levels of trust in the government are low. Surveys of sexual behavior are usually designed to be conducted in private. Respondents are supposed to be given assurances that their answers will be recorded anonymously. Epstein, Morris’s collaborator, who has seen several such surveys administered in Africa, says that in practice these guidelines are almost never followed.

“Think about it,” Epstein says. “Someone comes to you with a questionnaire and says, ‘I’m from the government. I’d like to know how many sexual partners you have and when you’ve had them.’ People

might be tempted not to answer honestly.

I know I would.”

Epstein, who earned a PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge before turning to journalism, prominently featured Morris in her 2007 book The Invisible Cure, which chronicled the catastrophic failure to reverse the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Convinced the concurrency hypothesis is correct and can save lives, Epstein has gone on to publish academic articles with Morris and speak on the topic to audiences around the world years after the publication of her book, which the New York Times Book Review described as a “bolt of clarity from the blue.”

“I guess I feel very strongly that she was right and that she’s been right for a long time,” says Epstein. “Until the rest of the world begins to really understand this and appreciate the meaning of this, and

Even while arguments continue among PhDs in the West, African governments and nonprofits have for years embraced the idea that concurrent partnerships pose real risk.

And they’re trying to do something about it.

Reducing concurrent partnerships was identified as the number one priority for prevention at a 2006 meeting of the South African Development Community, which encompasses 15 member countries. Since then, various Africa-based public health information campaigns, relying on everything from traveling skits and billboards to Facebook and YouTube, have been making waves across the continent.

One example comes from the Uganda Health Marketing Group. Staffed by Ugandan public relations professionals and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the organization won a series of awards in 2010 for its campaign titled

“ I’m from the government and I’d like to know how many sexual partners you have.” Would you answer honestly? implement the right sorts of programs that I think really have a chance at success, I don’t think I can quite let it go.”

Morris, measured throughout her interview with Reed and in the World Bank debate, becomes animated when asked about the resistance to her work among American and European academics.

“In some ways it’s a crime at this point that people are arguing that we shouldn’t even make this information available to people through a public health campaign,” she says.

Reasons behind the vehemence of the attacks are difficult to pinpoint. One possibility, both Morris and Epstein suggest, is the rise of quantitative purists in the social and health sciences who insist on unrealistically precise data to plug into their increasingly powerful computer models. Another is concerns about moralizing to African audiences, sensitive after a long history of racial stereotyping dating back to the colonial-era missionaries.

Still another is the self-serving behavior of Western scientists and aid agencies to find and trumpet data supporting work that’s most likely to be funded, including intervention programs focused on abstinence and condom usage.

“One Love—Get off the Sexual Network.” The goal: increase serial monogamy among the population by 5% by warning about the dangers of “side dishes” in relationships.

The campaign is blunt. In a January 2010 column for the Observer, an independent weekly newspaper based in Kampala, journalist Simon Kasyate wrote, “[T]his ‘sexual network’ campaign is really sending heavier jabs below the belt than initially anticipated. ‘Man, they have skits you don’t want to listen to when driving with your wife,’ a colleague said recently. ‘The guilt of the realism in the message makes you almost break down in confession.’”

Morris didn’t advise the campaign but says that in general she has been “remarkably impressed” by the locally planned and managed interventions focused on concurrency that have sprung up around sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS crisis remains widespread.

In Kenya, where Morris is currently working on a small intervention and research project, AIDS deaths still number close to 100,000 per year, according to UNAIDS. In contrast, AIDS deaths in the United States, which has a population more than seven times that of Kenya’s, number less than 25,000.

Despite the staggering nature of numbers like these, and the difficulty of work-

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ing halfway around the globe, Morris says there’s a strong sense of hope for the continent’s future among local Africans with whom she works. So, several times a year, she makes the arduous 24-hour flight from Seattle through Amsterdam to a major African city. In January 2012, that city was Nairobi, Kenya, home of one of her current collaborators, Kawango Agot.

“Martina is out in the field with us,” says Agot, director of Impact Research and Development Organization, a Kenyan NGO that develops public health programs aimed at the country’s vulnerable populations. “She spends the day drinking tea with women in villages, eating boiled maize, helping us push our vehicle when it gets stuck in the mud, and walking long distances when the roads become impassable. Then, when we get back to the office at night, she pulls out her laptop and works on these complex statistics.”

Those statistics seem likely to be a bone of contention among Western scientists for years to come. But perhaps not among everyday Africans. Evidence of this came on a recent Kenyan trip, when Morris had another memorable exchange with a local man with strong opinions about her work.

During a focus group to plan an intervention campaign, Morris was attempting to explain the risks of concurrency by having people stand in a circle and hold hands. Each person, she noted, is linked to just two people, but the entire room is connected. (See right.)

In the middle of her explanation, one of the older men in the community stood up and asked to speak.

“This is the medicine we’ve been waiting for,” he said.

Geoff Koch is a writer in Portland. He wrote the cover story, “Growing the Curriculum,” in the December 2010 issue of Reed.

Can the Circle Be Unbroken?

Serial Monogamy

Concurrency

Everyone holds hands with the person across from them

Everyone holds hands in a circle, again infect 1 case to start

Move end person to beginning, and shuffle the others down

That person’s partners get infected, and their partners get infected

Say 1 is case infected at the start .... 1st partner 2nd partner

At the end 4 are infected

and so on

Now at the end everyone is infected

GO FURTHER “Timing Is Everything: International Variations in Historical Sexual Partnership Concurrency and HIV Prevalence.” M. Morris, H. Epstein and M. Wawer. PLoS One. Nov. 24, 2010. http://bit.ly/u97Epq Watch an animated simulation of how concurrency accelerates HIV at http://statnet.org/movies Video of Morris at a 2011 World Bank debate on concurrency: http://bit.ly/vAxWuI Get Off the Sexual Network. AIDS prevention ad for Uganda TV: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hx33mnpBHXw The Side Dish Issue. P. Bakibinga. BBC World Service. Apr. 30, 2011. http://bbc.in/rRlCRj “Sexual network ad grating on nerves,” by S. Kasyate. The Observer. Jan. 24, 2010. http://bit.ly/vRK9ur

To explain how concurrency affects the spread of HIV, Morris, an accomplished dancer, often choreographs a simple exercise that requires the audience to get up and move around. First, she asks everyone to pick one partner, and hold hands for a moment. She then instructs everyone to let go and find another person with whom to hold hands. That’s akin to serial monogamy; by the end of the cycle, four individuals (the original vector, their current partner, their previous partner, and their previous partner’s current partner) were exposed to the virus. To demonstrate the risks of concurrency she asks the group stand in a big circle and hold hands. No individual has more than two partners, but it’s immediately obvious that the virus is no longer confined to a single partnership; the entire group is connected, and everyone is now vulnerable to infection from anywhere in the network. While Morris’s models rely on heavy doses of statistical analysis and computer coding, these hand-holding exercises have proven effective in a host of contexts, from a recent lecture at Reed to talks in remote Kenyan villages. “Really, this is just a classic sociological concept,” she says. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”—GK

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Thinking Reed

The Rest is History

By Susan Strasser ’69

For Reed’s centennial, Professors Roger Porter [English] and Robert Reynolds [physics] edited Thinking Reed, a volume of essays

by Reed alumni from each of the college’s academic departments who have distinguished themselves in their chosen field, be it history, medicine, journalism, or barbeque. The 33 authors reflect on the creative and often unpredictable ways that Reed inspired them, engaged them, and challenged them, and how they discovered in themselves the taproot of their achievements. This essay is adapted from Thinking Reed. You can purchase the entire book for a mere $19.95 at centennial.reed.edu/shop/ About the author: Susan Strasser ’69 has been praised by the New Yorker for “retrieving what history discards: the taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life.” Her books detail the creation of an American consumer culture. She did graduate work at SUNY Stony Book, and has taught at Evergreen State College, Princeton, George Washington, the Bard Graduate Center, and the University of Delaware, where she is Richards Professor of American History.

Susan will speak to the Boston alumni chapter on March 28, 2012. Details at www.reed.edu/alumni/rotr/.

I first heard of Reed from my older sister Judy. Judith Strasser ’66, history major, Phi Beta Kappa, was the author of a thesis about the history of Reed, and, later in her life, author of two published books of personal prose and two of poetry. I was a freshman when she was a senior, and she was a force. “From my (freshman) point of view,” a friend wrote me after Judy’s death in 2009, “she was a Reed icon, standing for all that was good and noble about the place.” I wish I had Judy to talk to about this essay: she thought about first-person writing more, and more seriously, than I. Not that it would have been easy to start the conversation: she would have been envious that I was chosen to contribute to this collection. But we were starting to do pretty well with our rivalries, and I like to think we would have weathered the hard parts so I could have had the benefit of her response.

My high school self would have been incredulous to hear that I would become a historian. I liked history classes, but was not drawn to their kind of history, about rulers and governments, politics, war, and diplomacy. More interested in social and cultural questions, I expected to major in sociology in college. At the beginning of my junior year, I gambled on a new course about a new topic from a new professor. American social history was taught

by David Allmendinger, who would leave Reed after two years and spend most of his career at the University of Delaware, where in 1999 I became his colleague. During fall 1967 and spring 1968, David introduced me to the idea that history could be written about people other than presidents and kings, and he encouraged my interest in housewives. He was fresh out of graduate school in a leading history department, and he knew what was happening in the field; when I asked whether it might be possible to do history about women, he let me know it was an up-and-coming thing.

Emphasizing primary sources in his teaching, he helped me to understand history as something I could do, not simply read about.

Other teachers did plenty to make me who I am. David sent me to SUNY Stony Brook to study with his professor from Wisconsin, Bill Taylor, whose original ideas about doing history and teaching it still frame my historical imagination and my pedagogical style. By then, numerous Reed faculty members had already made their marks on me. They included people on both sides of the political struggles of the time, which had cost the jobs of many young faculty, whose firings continue to embitter me and other alumni of my day.

Kirk Thompson’s extensive comments on my papers still inspire my teaching. Richard Jones’s course, structured to get us discussing history and not just history books, is a model for one of my graduate seminars. Lloyd Reynolds let me into his calligraphy class as a freshman and taught me how to look at letters and thus at everything; his influence still shows in my handwriting, my preferred fonts, and my attempts to bring beauty into everyday life. Dick Ehelebe ’49, and his wife, Helen Ehelebe ’49, ran the extraordinary bookstore and opened their home to its student employees, showing me the pleasures of adult lives enmeshed in work, family, and community. Many Reed students also served as teachers, beginning with Judy and continuing with those who became lifelong friends and with the two Reedies who have become “my” graduate students.

Still, it was David Allmendinger who ended my career as an indifferent student.

My interest in women’s histor y stemmed directly from my interest in contemporary feminism, an outgrowth of some years of progressive politics. In the seventh grade I had started hanging out with young Quakers and Unitarians doing ban-the-bomb and civil rights politics

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when Judy became friendly with them and let me tag along. I started college in the fall of 1965, five months after attending the first Washington protest against the war in Vietnam and two months after Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. I graduated in 1969, five months after the Paris peace talks opened and two months before Woodstock. At Reed I was active in the movement against the war, and in what I believe to have been Reed’s first food co-op and first consciousnessraising group. And I was witness to and participant in Reed’s struggles over educational policy, over which those young faculty were fired.

Forty years later, I am grateful for the opportunities my generation had to believe in a relationship between serious critique and meaningful change, to make noise in favor of freedom and love, to grapple with exciting and fluid ideas about history, politics, art, food, music, and everything else that mattered.

I am especially fortunate to be among that generational sliver of women who encountered feminism during our college years, when there were not yet women on the radio or driving buses, nor more than a handful of women on the Reed faculty.

We yearned for models and mentors but thrived on inventing ourselves, making it up as we went along. By the time I was 30, teaching college with a new PhD, I had succeeded professionally beyond any expectation I could reasonably have had as a child. In important ways, the rest has been gravy. I have sensed a glass ceiling, and my topics and ideas and the attention they have received still sometimes cause discomfort and earn derision among older colleagues. But I have also received many honors and enjoyed many privileges, including the most secure job possible in a tanking economy, as a tenured professor on a unionized campus. And some part of me, remembering when there simply

weren’t many women in the room, can settle into being a threat with a wry sense of the familiar.

My intellectual output follows a chain that began in college. In a series of long footnotes, describing what historians had then written about stoves, refrigerators, and other household technologies, my Reed thesis, “Flour Power: Domestic Feminism in Advice to American Women, 1830–1865,” contains the germ of my dissertation, which in 1982 was published as Never Done: A History of American Housework. Much of Never Done concerns the introduction of new consumer products, and the final chapters of that book lay out many of the questions I explored in the next one, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, published in 1989, which describes the new relationships and new habits that went along with the new goods and markets of mass production. Its final pages suggest that we would do well to think about the environmental consequences of product creation, an awareness I came to during the years I was working on the book, thanks to the 1984 chemical spill in Bhopal, the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, and the garbage barge that roamed American waterways in 1987 looking for a place to dump its cargo. My next book, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, describes the highly developed recycling system that was part of 19th-century industry, the demise of the habits and skills of reuse that went along with hand production, and the seismic shift in people’s relationships to the material world as a consumer culture developed. And while the end of that book does not presage the one I am working on now—a study of the commerce and culture of medicinal herbs—I come to this topic with the toolbox of concepts and knowledge I started assembling at Reed.

As a scholar of daily life in a consumer culture, I am committed to the importance

Top: Author Suan Strasser ’69 in her student days.

Bottom: Her older sister, the late Judy Strasser ’66.

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Thinking Reed

of intimate subjects. We wear, eat, sit on, and clean our houses and bodies with consumer goods. We use intimate language to talk about them—I love my new car, my new shirt, that new cookie. We employ manufactured goods to express emotions, and to create family and ethnic solidarity, aspects of life we understand as personal and private. Ours is a consumer culture in the anthropological sense of “culture” that I learned about by reading Malinowski at Reed; its artifacts and rituals are for sale, or designed to get us to buy other things.

Literally consumers rather than producers, most of us do not sew clothes, build

Staying up all night talking with my friends about Hesiod or Machiavelli gave me a sense of what it meant to generate ideas as part of an intellectual community. houses, or make music; we cook less than ever. And as shoppers and media consumers, we are the constant objects of persistent, well-crafted indoctrination, created in the interests of concentrated economic, political, and cultural power.

Despite the critique implied in that sentence, the genesis of my work in the history of housework reminds me that the transformation to a consumer culture has also represented significant liberation, especially for women. I have written these books fully mindful of how little research and writing I could have accomplished if I had been washing my clothes using water heated over a woodstove, let alone on rocks by the river. I began a chapter of Waste and Want with a discussion of sanitary napkins, in part for the mischievous satisfaction of taking that taboo out in public, but also because it seemed important to come to grips with disposable products that are not easy to dismiss, and tampons were at the top of my personal list.

I started thinking about consumption as part of a political critique that developed in college and became more sophisticated during graduate school. At Reed I first grappled with the feminist idea that the personal

is political; I was influenced, too, by the hippie ethic of dropping out and spending little, though I never seriously contemplated hippiedom and my limited spending was mostly due to limited funds. Creating, with others, that Reed food co-op, I thought about how to connect my abstract understanding of capitalism with the realities of modern food distribution. In grad school I used my Reed-honed analytic skills to think explicitly about the relationship between consumerism and women’s oppression and the function of unpaid household labor, and while I did not personally slap “This ad degrades women” stickers on billboards, I mentally applauded those who did.

After all these years, and despite substantial changes in women’s lives, feminist arguments about advertising are still potent. Regionalist and aesthetic critiques of a homogenized culture have become global in scale. It matters ever more that consumerism elevates personal needs and desires over values of community and nature. And the arguments against social injustice still stand: the rich have more stuff, and buy it with money that could go to charity, be taxed for public use, or, while we’re dreaming, be shared with the workers. In contemporary culture, consumption helps define inequality, a task accomplished in traditional cultures by birth and caste.

As global climate change becomes more obvious and we settle in to a lifetime of wars over oil, the environmental critique of consumerism raises bottom-line issues.

Consumers don’t know how to get clean water or make gasoline; we barely comprehend how our lives impact the earth because the systems that comprise daily life are too complex for most of us to grasp at all, and for anybody to understand completely. It is reasonable for people outside of first-world consumer culture to want an equivalent level of convenience and comfort, and reasonable to question whether the planet can provide sufficient resources for all of us to live as I do.

History provides no straightforward solutions. In fact, embracing the concept of change over time—doing history—complicates the issues. But it offers a viewpoint from which we may observe that people in the past found other ways

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to be human, and from which we may ask important questions. Is everything for sale? Should it be? How might we go about reassociating ourselves with our bodies and the planet? What costs are incurred when commercial values frame all facets of life? To think in new ways about fundamental issues requires breaking silences and taboos; I have hoped, in my work, to stimulate discussion about doing the dishes, to make readers conscious about their trips to the supermarket, to interrogate what’s in the trash, and thereby to add a layer of perception, understanding, analysis, and critique to everyday life.

There wasn’t much room for that kind of thinking at Reed in the ’60s. But sitting in conferences, and staying up all night talking with my friends about Hesiod or Machiavelli for the paper we had due the next day, gave me a sense of what it meant to generate ideas as part of an intellectual community. Writing a thesis taught me the pleasures and pains of individual intellectual work. Coming to understand hard books gave me a lifelong confidence about reading other hard books. Spending four years in a universe of proudly unconventional smart people enabled me to become one, too. Being assigned more work than I could do perfectly, more work than I could even complete, taught me how to deal efficiently with a lot of material, to set priorities, to let go of perfectionism while maintaining serious standards, to discipline myself to work hard. Most fortunately, at Reed I learned to cultivate ideas that could keep me interested, and the train of thought I boarded then has kept me interested for more than 40 years.

In applying to Reed, my main apprehension was about signing up for another four years as Judy Strasser’s little sister. As in high school, I managed to make a place for myself that respected the shadow she cast without getting lost in it. At her deathbed we were still talking about our lifetime of competition and how it played out during the year we were both at Reed, what it might mean for me to live without my competitor, and how I might help her sons with their sibling rivalry. I flew home after she died, to find a stack of mail that included the invitation to write this essay.

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Centennial Essays

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Reediana Books by Reedies

“An Inefficient Truth” By Charles Collier ’72 (Essay in Critical Review, Vol 23, No. 1-2, 2011)

In the fitful debate about the role of the different assumptions and claims about market in the financial crisis, the effi- what markets can and cannot do. Moreover, cient-market hypothesis looms as a sort while the efficient market emerged from an of loyalty test. If you’re a conservative, intensely abstract and mathematical school free-market type—a Randian, Austrian, of financial economics, defining and ratioMilton Friedman-meets-Ronald-Reagan nalizing it often depends on elusive, and Chicagoan with a supply side often counterintuitive, definistreak—you view the notion tions of words and dubious of market efficiency as broadly tests. In fact, as Collier burrows correct; the market really can into the matter, many rationalprocess available information izations for market efficiency “efficiently,” certainly better resemble tautologies: prices in than cartoon bureaucrats in an efficient market are “correct” Washington can, and thus probecause they are produced by duce roughly “correct” prices an efficient market. (this is also one explanation The issue comes down to for why the market is so hard testability. How do we know to beat). that these prices are “correct,” Collier’s essay appeared in If you’re more distrustful Critical Review in 2011. based on available informaof the market, brought up tion? Can the hypothesis be short by Stiglitzean market breakdowns falsified, as Karl Popper once defined sciand convinced of imperfect competi- entific statements? This proves to be diftion and wandering equilibria, you view ficult, not least because financial markets the efficient market, and its accomplice, are forward-looking, and so we are always the rational-expectations hypothesis, as analyzing current prices as reflections of dangerous fantasies belied by empirical future projections. How do we know prices reality. Not surprising, that latter point reflect a rational interpretation of availof view has been accumulating adherents able data or a collective set of views, some after a period in which the efficient-market of which may be “right” while others are hypothesis seemed to reign supreme. That clearly “wrong”—that makes no progress reign ended with the kind of market break- toward equilibrium? After all, in the short down that proponents of the “strong” ver- run, market prices clearly move in a random sion of the efficient hypothesis had all but walk. How do we interpret that? As Collier ruled out as impossible. This has proved to writes, “Prices may be wandering randomly be a problem for the efficient crowd. not because the market is reacting to unpreStill, what has been missing in all this to- dictable new information, but because the and-froing is a rigorous examination of the consensus is unwittingly traversing the conceptual grounds for the efficient-market periphery of a colossal bubble that formed hypothesis. Now we have it in a paper writ- for no fundamental reason and is about to ten by University of Florida law and phi- burst for no good reason either.” losophy professor Charles Collier ’72 titled Even the University of Chicago’s Eugene “An Inefficient Truth,” published last year in Fama, the father of the efficient-market the journal Critical Review. Part of the dif- hypothesis, recognized the difficulty of ficulty of wrapping your mind around the proving the concept. To test the hypothesis efficient-market hypothesis is that it’s rhe- requires both actual prices and a sense of torically slippery, not only because it comes the corresponding equilibrium price in the in a variety of flavors—weak, strong, semi- future. “Market efficiency per se is not teststrong—but because each of them involves able,” wrote Fama in a 1991 paper. “It must

be tested jointly with some model of equilibrium, an asset-pricing model. ... We can only test whether information is properly reflected in prices in the context of a pricing model that defines the meaning of ‘properly.’ As a result, when we find anomalous evidence on the behavior of returns, the way it should be split between market inefficiency or a bad model of market equilibrium is ambiguous.”

As Collier comments, this is like seeing a car driven poorly and not being able to figure out if it’s the fault of the car or the driver.

Attempts to establish that equilibrium model, through financial economic innovations such as the capital-asset pricing model, have tended to unravel because of simplified assumptions and a belief in normal probability distributions; as a number of commentators like Tufts’ Amar Bhidé have suggested, market complexities outstrip the models.

Collier particularly questions the well-known arbitrage argument of the efficient hypothesis. This says that liquid, efficient markets with many investors free to buy or sell will quickly arbitrage away anomalies—that is, investor opportunities for windfall gains. In real markets, however, many small investors may be supplanted by a handful of large, sophisticated investors, who may find themselves holding what they view as undervalued assets, which, as funding pressures mount, they eventually have to bail out of before the market “corrects” in their direction. Collier’s example: the plight of LongTerm Capital Management, which imploded before its “rational” bets came home. “This analysis implies that arbitrage is ineffective in bringing about pricing efficiency. If even the low-hanging fruit—or rather, if especially the low-hanging fruit—cannot be picked off because of funding considerations, there is little chance that prices will reflect all available information as well as the ability to act on that information.”

Collier covers a lot of ground. He raises the question whether there is a kind of uniform rationality shaping markets— or whether investors adopt a range of

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impulses, from self-fulfilling prophecies to “election” behavior, in which speculators judge not whether the price is right or wrong but what the crowd thinks about the price (this observation was famously articulated by John Maynard Keynes in his metaphor of the newspaper beauty pageant). “If an ‘electorate’ that is ignorant or irrational is determining market prices,” he writes, “then trading based on a correct and rational bet against current prices would perform poorly relative to a weighted market index.” Prices may never catch up and return to a theoretical equilibrium. Markets can easily grow “unbalanced and unstable.”

Recent history has tossed some cold water on the efficient-market hypothesis, particularly the strong form. But given that as denizens of the markets we are always living for the future, it’s possible that we are too quick to describe the panic of 2008 as a bout of irrationality; in the longer view, perhaps that represents a rational correction based on new information, a milestone on the road to a new equilibrium, a new “normal.” Given that, Collier’s discussion of the untestability of the idea is devastating. If the hypothesis cannot be falsified, then it comes down to a matter of belief, faith or ideology. Such a market can thus be inflated into a broad metaphor for all aspects of life that involve valuing and judging. How would the world be different, he asks, if markets were inefficient? As he concludes, since the efficient hypothesis cannot be confirmed or disproved, “one is entitled to assume either that it cannot be spelled out or that the resulting picture would strikingly resemble the financial markets that we have actually been stuck with for all these years.” — Robert Teitelman Robert Teitelman is the editor in chief of The Deal LLC. We gratefully acknowledge his permission to reprint this piece, which originally appeared in the Deal Economy Blog (www.thedeal.com/thedealeconomy/.)

Charles Collier ’72 is professor of law and philosophy at the University of Florida. He recently published Meaning in Law: A Theory of Speech.

A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794 (Cornell University Press, 2011)

By Mary Ashburn Miller [history 2008-] How did the French revolutionaries explain, justify, and apprehend the extraordinary violence of the Reign of Terror? Mary Ashburn Miller, assistant professor of history and humanities at Reed, suggests that important clues to the French Revolution

about electricity and fire. Other revolutionaries were astronomers and engineers.

The new scientific ideas had enormous social repercussions.

Mesmer, for example, argued that the natural and the social worlds were linked by a magnet-

Using natural metaphors to justify the Reign of Terror. can be found by looking at eighteenth-century ideas about the natural world, particularly earthquakes, lightning , mountains, swamps, and volcanoes.

Revolutionaries repeatedly deployed these events as metaphors, drawing on notions from the natural science of the day about regeneration, purgation, and balance. After all, the revolution took place against a backdrop of extraordinary scientific ferment. The Austrian physician Franz Mesmer arrived in Paris in 1778, electrifying audiences with his demonstrations of animal magnetism. Although Jean-Paul Marat was best known as a revolutionary leader, he also wrote

ic flux. The revolutionaries took this idea to its logical, if frightening, extreme. If thunder and lightning could clear the atmosphere of evil humors, and if volcanic eruptions could create more fertile soil, then episodes of violence, no matter how regrettable, were sometimes necessary to forge a new political order.

Po i n t i n g t o t h e devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which killed thousands of people but which ultimately led to the city’s rebirth and renewal, the revolutionaries portrayed bloodshed as an inevitable phase that France must undergo before she could be restored to her true destiny. —Anna Mann

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Reediana

continued

The Inquisition of Climate Science by Jim Powell [president 1988–91].

(Columbia University Press, 2011) In what is deemed the first book to comprehensively take on the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, Jim presents the most prominent deniers while dissecting their credentials, arguments, and lack of objectivity. Written for the general reader and non-scientist, this book is carefully researched and fully referenced. Jim is executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, a partnership among government agencies and laboratories, industry, and higher education dedicated to increasing the number of American citizens with graduate degrees in the physical sciences and related engineering fields. He was president of Reed from 1988–91.

Joan Campbell Snodgrass Callaway ’54 published the memoir It’s An Ill Wind, Indeed . . . That Blows No Good (CreateSpace, 2011), relating her climb out of the abyss after the sudden death and loss of her husband and son through a fire in their home. The memoir is a hopeful exploration of grief from the vantage point of a widow and her teenaged children, who lost not only a father and brother, but also a mother as they had always known her. (See Class Notes.)

An essay by Cliff Sather ’61, “Mending Nets of Relatedness,” appeared in Anarchic Solidarity (Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph 60, 2011). (See Class Notes.)

Howard L. Rheingold ’68 has published Net Smart: How to Thrive Online (MIT Press, 2012).

Knowing how to make use of online tools without being overloaded with too much information is an essential ingredient of personal success in the 21st century.

Howard instructs readers on how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully. (See Class Notes.)

Jude Bijou ’69 has completed a book documenting her journey to create a unified theory of human behavior based on six primary emotions, Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life (Riviera Press, 2011). Everyone yearns for more joy, love, and peace, but can too often be mired in cycles of sadness, anger, and fear, Jude says. “Despite the desire for emotional health, individuals can fashion their emotions into weapons that hurt themselves, others, and their chances for a harmonious life. Dealing with our emotions constructively is the key to living better.” The book addresses topics such as coping with unsolicited advice, dealing with indecision, and clarifying priorities. Jude is a marriage and family therapist and a student of Eastern philosophy who developed the ideas for the book while helping her clients find more fulfilling lives.

caustic commentary as Lauren tries to make sense of her world (www.ridingthecyclone.com).

Growing up in extreme isolation amid suburban affluence, she suffers from the profound disconnect between appearance and reality.

Seeking freedom from her terrifying home in an idyllic private high school, Lauren finds her inner chaos mirrored in the upheavals of the ’60s.

The Systematic Screening and Assessment Method: Finding Innovations Worth Evaluating, coedited by Laura Leviton ’73, examines the rationale, application, and outcomes of the Systemic Screening and Assessment (SSA) method, an innovative and cost-effective way to assist program funders, practitioners, and researchers in selecting promising innovations and then preparing them for further, more rigorous evaluation.

The book won an outsanding publication award from the American Evaluation Association in 2011.

Romantic Sobriety: Sensation, Revolution, Commodification, History by Orrin N.C. Wang ’79 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

Orrin explains how themes of sensation and sobriety, along with Marxist-related ideas of revolution and commodification, set the terms of narrative surrounding the history of romanticism as a movement. The book is both polemical and critical, engaging in debates with modern thinkers such as Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benn Michaels, and Slavoj Žižek, and it presents fresh readings of writers such as Wordsworth, Kant, Shelley, Byron, Brontë, and Keats.

Orrin is professor of English and Comparative Studies at the University of Maryland.

When Lauren Ruth Wiener ’75 was six, her mother died without warning.

More interested in dating than childrearing, her father left her in the care of a violent, unhinged nanny. A riveting first-person account, Riding the Cyclone, careens like the Coney Island roller coaster from gutwrenching sadism to hilariously

Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China & Europe by Jean-Laurent Rosenthal ’84 and Bin Wong (Harvard University Press, 2011).

The authors argue that political differences were responsible both for China’s early and more recent prosperity and for Europe’s difficulties after the fall of the Roman

Empire and during early industrialization. Drawing on 20 years of research, the book provides an historical perspective on institutional change that has surprising implications for understanding modern transformations in China and Europe and also yields insights in comparative economic history.

(See Class Notes.)

Lisa Kemmerer ’88, associate professor of philosophy and religions at Montana State University, Billings, published an astonishing five books in 2011–12. “I never dreamed I would write even one book, but Reed has a way.” In Animals and World Religions (Oxford University Press), Lisa explores animal-friendly teachings in the world’s indigenous and dominant religious traditions, including Vedic/Hindu, Buddhist/ Jain, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She writes with a keen eye to contemporary relevance, practical application, and moral hot spots (such as our relations with the natural world and dietary choice).

Standing at the intersection of religion, ethics, and animal advocacy, Animals and World Religions demonstrates that rethinking how we treat nonhuman animals is essential for anyone claiming one of the world’s great religions.

Lisa edited Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice (University of Illinois Press), addressing interconnections between speciesism, sexism, racism, and homophobia, clarifying why social justice activists in the 21st century must challenge intersecting forms of oppression. This anthology presents gripping personal narratives from 14 activists who have personally explored links of oppression between humans and animals such as cockfighting, factory farming, vivisection, and the bushmeat trade.

Lisa also edited Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women’s Voices (Paradigm).

While it is one thing to strive for a cause that pri-

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marily benefits you or your loved ones, it is quite another matter to take up the torch on behalf of others, especially pigs, dogs, gibbons, or lobsters. The book highlights 18 courageous members of a vibrant animal advocacy movement that is overwhelmingly powered by women.

These activists take us with them as they lift factory-farmed chickens and cows from quagmires of filth, free gigantic sea lions caught in the death grip of fishing gear, and secure undercover footage of dogs crying for mercy on vivisection tables. In the process, they expose the many ways that most of us are complicit in the suffering and exploitation of nonhuman animals.

Notes and short features by Bob Sallinger ’91 contribute significantly to the second edition of Wild in the City: Exploring the Intertwine (Oregon State University, 2011), including a section on the Reed College canyon, cowritten with Zac Perry, Reed’s riparian restoration specialist. The book is an excellent resource for helping readers get out of the urban jungle and into 56 different greenspaces in Portland and Vancouver, Washington, and offers maps and directions to explore the sites by foot, bike, or paddle.

Lisa also edited Call to Compassion: Religious Perspectives on Animal Advocacy (Lantern Books), a collection of stirring essays on the place of animals within the philosophical, cultural, and everyday milieus of spiritual practices both ancient and modern. From Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism, through the Abrahamic traditions, to contemporary Wiccan and Native American spirituality, Call to Compassion charts the complex ways we interact with the world around us.

Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West, by Tonio Andrade ’92, was published by Princeton University Press in 2011. During the 17th century, Holland created the world’s most dynamic colonial empire, outcompeting the British and capturing Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Yet, in the SinoDutch War—Europe’s first war with China—the Dutch met their match in a colorful Chinese warlord named Koxinga. Part samurai, part pirate, he led his generals to victory over the Dutch and captured one of their largest and richest colonies, Taiwan. How did he do it? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of European and Chinese military techniques during the period, Lost Colony provides a balanced new perspective on long-held assumptions about Western power, Chinese might, and the nature of war.

(See Class Notes.)

Finally, Lisa edited Primate People: Education, Advocacy, and Sanctuary on Behalf of Primates (University of Utah Press, 2012). In the last 30 years, the bushmeat trade has led to the slaughter of nearly 90% of West Africa’s bonobos, perhaps our closest relatives. Earth was once rich with primates, but every species, except one, is now extinct or endangered. How have our economic and cultural practices pushed our cousins toward destruction? Would we care more about their fate if we knew something of their individual lives and sufferings? Would we help nonhuman primates if we understood how our choices threaten their existence? To the latter two questions, this anthology answers yes.

David Lukas ’93 self-published a book in 2011, Sierra Nevada Birds: A Compact Field Guide Companion (www.luka guides.com). “I have authored or contributed to over 40 books and written over 200 newspaper and magazine articles, but this is my first foray into selfpublishing and it’s been a blast.”

The book provided information about all 322 species found in the Sierra Nevada and is designed for

hiking and backpacking. David works as a freelance naturalist and teaches natural history programs all over California.

Yoram Bauman ’95 published The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume 2: Macroeconomics (Hill and Wang, 2012), coauthored with and illlustrated by Gray Klein.

“People don’t usually chuckle over unemployment, inflation, and recessions,” says Nobel laureate Eric Maskin. “But they’ll get plenty of laughs out of this book—and a good introduction to macro, too.” Read excerpts at standupeconomist.com. In addition, translations of Volume 1: Microeconomics have been published in Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, Italy, and Germany. Editions for Indonesia, Thailand, Poland, and France are scheduled for release later this year.

Cognitive Set Theory, by Alec Mead Rogers ’95 (ArborRhythms, 2011). In his book, Alec applies mereology and set theory to perception and thought. Using generic concepts such as part, whole, and reference, he explores the physical, perceptual, and conceptual universes. This book will appeal to those at the crossroads of psychology, linguistics, logic, mathematics, and philosophy, and provides hierarchy and diagrams to illustrate key points.

Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, coedited

by Jeremy Walton ’99 (University of Chicago Press, 2010). The 21st century has placed new stress on the relationships among anthropology, governance, and war. Facing prolonged insurgency, the U.S. military has taken a new interest in anthropology, prompting intense ethical debate. These essays consider how anthropologists can, should, and do respond to military overtures, and they articulate anthropologi-

cal perspectives on global war and power relations. This book investigates the shifting boundaries between military and civil state violence; perceptions and effects of American power around the globe; the history of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice; and debate over culture, knowledge, and conscience in counterinsurgency. It also sheds new light on the fraught world of Pax Americana and on the dilemmas faced by anthropologists and military personnel alike when attempting to understand and intervene in our world. Jeremy is assistant professor of religious studies at New York University.

My Sweet Saga by Brett Sills ’01 (Admiral J. Press, 2011). This novel relates the story of Brandon, a 30-something who is struggling to relate to the people and the events in his life. Weeks away from his wedding day, he is jolted by the sudden appearance of his estranged, erratic, and oddly eccentric father, who demands that he accompany him to Sweden.

Escaping from reality in the U.S., Brandon reawakens to life through an encounter with a woman named Saga. Brett may have a second book up his sleeve, but meanwhile is busily engaged as a multioptioned screenwriter and freelance ad writer whose first feature film is scheduled to shoot this winter in Ontario, Canada. His blog is Peeling Back the Skin (peelingtheskin.blogspot.com).

Dubultnieki: Un Citi Stasti, a first book by Toms Kreicbergs ’07, was published in Latvia in 2011 and is winning rave reviews in Riga.

Against the odds for a work of sci-fi and fantasy, mainstream critical reaction has been enthusiastic, resulting in extensive coverage across national print, radio, and television media. Dazed and happy, Toms remains hard at work on a dystopian young adult novel he hopes will be his first English-language book. (See Class Notes.)

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In Memoriam Howard Eliot Wolpe ’60 October 25, 2011, in Saugatuck, Michigan.

Congressman, diplomat, professor, and author of a landmark piece of legislation that helped push South Africa to abandon apartheid, Howard combined a passion for justice and equality with a grasp of hardnosed politics.

“I used to insist that my greatest political strength was my fallibility,” Howard said in 2008. “I have always argued that when people can call you by your first name, that is a way of narrowing distance and improving communications. To hold onto power by putting yourself above the people is ultimately counterproductive.”

Howard’s mother was a clinical psychologist; his father, a pediatrician. He was 16 when he took the train from Los Angeles to Reed, drawn to the college for its brainy reputation. His freshman roommate was the future economist Lester Lave ’60. Howard treasured the sense of autonomy, the irreverence, and the testing of assumptions he found at Reed. “I think that my life and my career has always continued those characteristics that I loved so greatly, so deeply when I was here at Reed.” Howard served on the student senate, was a resident adviser, and fulfilled his P.E. credits through folk dancing and grueling basketball drills. He earned a BA in political science, studying with professors Maure Goldschmidt [political science 1935–81], Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94], and John Pock [sociology 1955–98]. “The work I did in sociology and political science helped inform my approach to politics and my understanding of politics.”

Howard pursued political science at MIT, where a course on African studies sparked his interest in African nationalism; he spent two years in Nigeria working on his dissertation.

In 1967, he moved to Kalamazoo to teach political science at Western Michigan University. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated a few months later. Howard left the classroom and moved into the streets, he said, where his interest in racial and ethnic conflict acquired a more practical relevance. King’s assassination outraged the nation; Howard became one of the founders of Action Now, an organization focused on race and poverty in Kalamazoo, which brought him unexpected public visibility as an activist and agitator. It also led to a position as Kalamazoo city commissioner.

Thus he found himself in the unusual situation of playing a dual role, both as an academic

Howard Wolpe ’60 stands before the Michigan State Capitol with a sheaf of files and hopeful smile. Kalamazoo Gazette, 1975.

teaching the politics of race and as a local official struggling with racial conflicts. In 1972, he was elected as a Democrat to the Michigan House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the House Committee on Corrections and discovered the racism embedded in the Michigan correctional system. He then served as a staff member for U.S. Senator Donald Riegle, and, in 1978, was elected to the U.S. Congress, representing Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, and Lansing. He served seven terms in Congress, chairing the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Africa.

Howard’s most significant accomplishment was the Comprehensive Anti-apartheid Act of 1986, which imposed sanctions against American companies doing business in South Africa—a turning point for the apartheid regime, or so it seemed until President Reagan vetoed the bill. Howard then led the effort to overturn Reagan’s veto. “The white minority regime will abandon apartheid, and will agree to enter into negotiations with the credible black leadership of the majority of the population, only at that point when it concludes that it has more to lose than to gain by attempting to hold on to apart-

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heid,” he declared on the floor of the House.

Congress ultimately overturned the veto by a thumping majority (313–83 in the House, 78–21 in the Senate). “That single legislative success made all the years I spent in Congress worth the effort,” he said.

The act stipulated that South Africa would have to release Nelson Mandela from prison before the sanctions could be lifted. When Mandela was finally released in 1990, one of the first things he did was to call Howard to thank him for his work.

During his congressional career, Howard also authored the African Famine Recovery and Development Act, the Pollution Prevention Act, the Industrial Process Efficiency Act, and the Taxpayer Right to Know Act. Leaving Congress in 1992, he made an unsuccessful bid for governor of Michigan, then became a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.

President Bill Clinton appointed him as special envoy to Africa’s Great Lakes region. In this capacity, Howard supported peace talks that helped bring an end to longstanding civil wars in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Most conflict in Africa has nothing to do with tradition,” he said. “The groups that are in conflict today are groups that have emerged in the course of urbanization and economic and social change.” Howard later served as a public policy scholar and director of the African Program and the Project on Leadership and Building State Capacity at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he directed postconflict leadership training programs in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.

Tragedy struck in 2006, when he and his second wife, Judy, were caught in an undertow while swimming together on vacation in Guatemala. Howard made it to shore; Judy drowned.

In 2009, President Obama appointed him special adviser for Africa’s Great Lakes region.

Howard retired from the State Department a year later and moved to Saugatuck, Michigan, where he taught at WMU. Howard was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the boards of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, Africare, and Pathfinders International, and on the advisory board of Coexistence International.

He taught at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, and wrote extensively on Africa, American foreign policy, and the management of ethnic and racial conflict.

Howard received the African American Institute’s Star Crystal Award for Excellence and the Sierra Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Last year, he contributed an essay for Thinking Reed, a collection of essays published in honor of the college’s centennial. “My four years at Reed College shaped not only my diplomatic and political orientation,” he wrote, “but also

provided some very practical insights into the nitty-gritty of political life—the determinants of voting behavior, techniques for direct personal voter contact in elections, and the importance of personal relationships in political life and its institutions.” Survivors include his third wife, Julie Fletcher, and his son, Michael.

Jean Reed Prentiss ’33 October 27, 2011, five days short of her 100th birthday, in Tualatin, Oregon.

Je a n w a s b o r n a t Neahkahnie, Nehalem, Oregon, “when it was just a big open space under the mountain.”

Her father, Samuel Reed, cousin to Simeon Reed, came to Portland from Boston in 1902.

Fortified with a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT, Samuel worked on the electrification of Portland before moving further west and purchasing 800 acres on the Oregon coast. His bride, Beulah Kendall Reed, though not an “open air person,” traveled on foot—the only route open from Cannon Beach—to the home built by Samuel in Neahkahnie in time to deliver twins Jean and Ruth Reed Morgan ’34. Jean, Ruth, and their sister, Marion Reed East ’26, were all Reedites. Jean, known as Jo at Reed, earned a BA from the college in general literature. She created three-minute plays for student programs in the chapel, helped decorate for dances in commons, drew cartoons for the Griffin, and served on student council. Summers during her college years were spent assisting her mother at the Kah-Ni-Tavern, a hotel built by her father, and after graduation she worked for Lipman Wolf & Company in downtown Portland. Her interest in making a career as a retail buyer ended when she met John Prentiss.

They married in 1937 and later moved to Neahkahnie to assist her family and her ailing father. During World War II, Jean worked in a lumber mill in Longview, Washington, while John served in the navy. Back at Neahkahnie after the war, the two raised three daughters, Catherine, Alexandra, and Deborah. Jean also worked in the school district as a library cataloger and materials processor, volunteered for the Tillamook County library board and citizens advisory committee, put together family histories, collected stamps, camped, and enjoyed bird watching. “I did not use my Reed education toward a career,” she wrote, “but a good education is never wasted.” In telling us of Jean’s death, her daughter, Deborah, wrote, “Reed was a special place to her, and I grew up with stories of her years there.”

Paul Gottlieb Hafner ’34

September 15, 2011, in Longview, Washington, after a prolonged illness.

Paul’s parents came to Portland from Germany and Switzerland. His father was minister of the First German Reformed C hurch for 50 years, and the family home next to the church building is still known as Hafner House. In an interview in 2010, Paul said that automobiles were a rarity on Portland streets during his childhood, which made it possible for him to sled from the West Hills into downtown Portland in winter and play baseball in the streets in summer. He walked to school, including to Lincoln High School. “I was not particularly inspired as a student in the first years.

The last two years, I took chemistry with Miss Emma Griebel. It was really the thing that got me interested in chemistry, and she was the one who inspired me to go to Reed.”

Paul commuted from Southwest Portland to the college with the help of Mark Rosumny ’34 and an old Model T. “When we got to Ross Island Bridge, you know, there’s quite an incline there from west to east, and the old Ford could barely make it to the top. So, being chemists, we knew about certain things, among which was benzene. We would get a few hundred ccs of benzene and put them in the little old Ford Model T, and that thing would take off! We’d pass everything on the bridge.” Paul recounted other events related to his study of chemistry at Reed, when the fourth floor of Eliot Hall was devoted to science and included student laboratories, a stockroom, a lecture room, a library, and an office for Ralph Kempton [Kampy] Strong [chemistry 1920–34]. “Being in the attic, the chemistry labs didn’t have many windows; they had little dormers facing out onto the campus. In each dormer was a table where students would study. This is important because Dr. Strong lived in Eastmoreland, about five or six blocks from the school, and he would walk to school every morning about 8:42½.

He always had his black umbrella and he had a measured stride. We had sentinels out in the dormers to let us know when ‘the boss’ was coming so that everything was in order by the time he arrived . . . . He was very strict and there was no monkey business up there.

You almost trembled in his presence, because you would ask a question, and then he would clear his throat and say, ‘Did you look it up?’ I think the thing that I learned from Dr. Strong was the ability to study and look up things for myself.” Overall Reed was a tremendous experience that allowed him to move confidently into graduate school. He earned an MA in march 2012 Reed magazine 57

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In Memoriam

continued

biochemistry and an MD from the University of Oregon, specializing in orthopedic surgery.

After serving in the Army Medical Corps, Paul ran the crippled children’s division at the UO medical school. In 1953, he moved to Longview, Washington, becoming the only orthopedic surgeon for miles around. “From the first day in the first month that I was here, my practice was at a maximum. I didn’t have any breaking-in process.” He worked in private practice in Longview until 1985, when he became director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at St. John Hospital until retiring in 1990.

Children were of primary concern for Paul; he conducted clinics for disabled children for the Cowlitz County Health Department and served on the board of directors of what now is Shriners’ Hospital for Children in Portland.

His professional associations included membership in state and local medical societies and the American Medical Association, as well as the North Pacific Orthopedic Society and the Western Orthopedic Association. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and served as a member of the medical staff at St. John and Cowlitz General hospitals. He also wrote “Early Medicine in Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Counties” for Saddlebags to Scanners: The First 100 Years of Medicine in Washington State (1989).

Paul married Frances H. Struble ’35 in 1941. They had two daughters, Mary, now deceased, and Ellen, of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Frances died in 1962, and Paul later married Helen R. Anton, a nurse anesthetist, who survives him. He and Helen traveled, gardened, and golfed. Paul enjoyed making bread, especially stollen. Paul is remembered as an adept, dedicated, kind, and professional man of medicine, and a gentleman with a keen sense of humor who enjoyed life and was liked by his patients and colleagues. He had very little leisure time, but understood the sacrifice required by his profession and was drawn to Gandhi’s words: “A life of sacrifice is the summit of art, and it is a life which is full of true joy. He who wishes to serve will not waste thoughts on his own personal comfort. His service, like his virtue, is his reward, and in it he will find his contentment.”

Elizabeth Ann McCracken McDowell ’34 November 3, 2011, in Portland.

Betty came to Reed as a transfer student and a daydodger, along with her sister, Mary McCracken Lathram ’36. Their father was a dentist, and three of his patients were Reed instructors.

Additionally, T.L. Eliot officiated at her parents’ marriage, and her maternal grandfather’s farm was adjacent to the land on which the college was

built. “There was a lot of lobbying for us to go to Reed,” Betty said. She majored in psychology and took a minor in education. Following graduation, she did social work during a longshoremen’s strike in Kelso, Washington, and then enrolled at Claremont McKenna College, where she received an MA in clinical psycholElizabeth McCracken ogy. She taught high McDowell ’34 and James McDowell in 1995. school in Nevada and in Portland, with subjects ranging from Latin to social sciences, and from P.E. to arithmetic. In 1940, she married James N. McDowell, whom she had met during her first year in high school; they raised six children. Betty was a dedicated volunteer in her community. For decades, she served on the board of Catholic Charities and Services and assisted with counseling and providing resources to those who needed food, lodging, or petrol. Survivors include four sons, two daughters, 13 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and her sister, Mary. James died in 1995.

Frances Mesher Keller ’37 September 10, 2011, in Seattle, Washington.

Frances was 16 when she entered Reed. She studied at the college for two years and later completed a BA in sociology at the University of Washington. In 1940, she married Howard S. Keller ’37. They established a successful, multistate, wholesale plumbing business, the Keller Supply Company. Frances was devoted to her family; enjoyed a good mental challenge, a game of cards or Scrabble; and treasured her travels with Howard. They were active in their community, especially for endeavors related to children and education. They provided funding for the Keller Children’s Fund for the Jewish Family Service; the Howard and Frances Keller Faculty Research Fund in support of history and social sciences at Reed College; the Howard and Frances Keller Endowed Professorship in History and the Howard and Frances Keller Research Fund at the University of Washington; and the Frances and Howard Keller Family Lecture Series at Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Frances is remembered for her kindness, strength, quick wit, and no-nonsense approach. Survivors include her daughter and two sons, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Howard died in 2009.

John Leasing Selling ’37 January 23, 2010, in Monroe, Washington.

John was the grandson of Ben Selling, highly regarded businessman, politician, philanthropist, and social advocate, who built Portland’s

historic Selling Building, designed by A.E. Doyle, in 1911. John’s father, physician Laurence Selling, was cofounder of the Portland Clinic, and his mother, Adelaide Selling, established the Selling Family Scholarship at Reed. John left the college after two years and worked in the wholesale grocery business. He also served in World War II. He and Carol Sanier Selling ’44 married in 1945 and had three children. He later married Lenore Friedman. John found his calling as a real estate broker. He received the professional achievement award from the Institute of Real Estate Management and taught commercial and industrial real estate at Mt. Hood Community College and Portland State University for a decade. He traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad for real estate training and conferences, and enjoyed camping and cooking his special barbecue.

In his public obituary, we read that he was a vibrant, inquisitive, and giving person—a participant in life, not a spectator. He was perpetually optimistic and demonstrated a willingness to take on new challenges throughout his life.

Survivors include his wife, Lenore; his daughter and two sons; two grandchildren; and his sister, Margaret Selling Labby ’40. His brother, Philip Selling ’35, predeceased him.

Elizabeth Emily Gedney Christensen ’38 October 22, 2011, in Lompoc, California.

Bess grew up in Orchards, Washington, losing her father to the Spanish influenza when she was two. She enrolled as a member of the inaugura l c l a s s o f C l a r k [Junior] College in Vancouver. There she met and fell in love with Harold E. Christensen. Concerned about the financial challenges the couple might face during the Great Depression, Bess’s mother forced them to part. Bess went on to Reed and completed a BA in English. “My appreciation for my years at Reed is very great, in the opportunity to study with fine professors and bright, serious students,” she wrote. After graduation, Bess taught at the Washington State School for the Blind, worked at the Clark County Sun newspaper, and was an old-age assistance worker for the Clark County Welfare Department. During World War II, she worked at the Kaiser shipyard in Vancouver.

After the war, she visited her brother in New York City and returned to Vancouver by tramp steamer through the Panama Canal. In 1948, she and Hal were reunited and married. A year later, Bess completed an MA in English from the University of Washington and began a 38-year career in editorial research for the American College Dictionary [Random House]. She was assigned periodicals to read in search of new words, new

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usages, and variant spellings—it was a portable career and the perfect complement to Hal’s career in the air force. After years of relocating, Bess and Hal settled in Lompoc, California, in 1975.

They were active volunteers in the community, and Bess continued her volunteer work after Hal’s death in 2000. She served on the Lompoc General Plan Advisory Committee for 10 years and was a founding member of the Lompoc Valley Botanical and Horticultural Society and a member of the boards of the Lompoc Museum and the Lompoc Library Foundation. She was vice chair of the North County Citizens Planning Association and served on the Lompoc City Blue Ribbon Committee and on the city Water and Utilities Commission. Bess was a regular contributor to the “Forward View” column of the Lompoc Record and was a member of its citizen editorial board. She edited the book A Naturalist at Play in Coastal California and Beyond, and also wrote Acres of Loveliness: The Flower Seed Industry in Lompoc Valley. Bess received many awards and honors for her civic involvement. Among these were the 1995 Lompoc Woman of the Year, the 2003 La Purisima Audubon Society Linda Sehgal Conservation Award, the 2006 Lompoc Flower Festival Parade Grand Marshal, the 2007 SBCAN Northern County Giving Back to the Community Award, and the 2009 Citizens Planning Association Community Asset Award. She also received the Clark College Foundation Presidential Award for Excellence in 2010. Bess and Hal had one daughter, Christina, who survives them.

Robert A. Lee ’38

November 10, 2011, in Lakewood, Washington.

Bob’s family moved from Spokane, Washington, to Portland when he was two. His interest in journalism led to a position as editor of the school paper and to a job as a stringer for the Oregonian while he attended Benson High School. He studied at Reed for two years, working nights at the Oregonian, before transferring to the University of Oregon, where he earned a BA in English. At the university he met another budding journalist, Catherine (Katy) Taylor, whom he married in 1941. Bob was a reporter and editor for the Oregonian for the next two decades. He also served as a radio technician in the navy during World War II and founded the Portland Reporter, an independent daily that ran for four years. In 1960, he accepted a position with the New York Times. He was managing editor of the West Coast edition and retired after 20 years as head of the make-up desk and associate news editor. Bob and Katy moved to Portland in 1981. Retirement provided opportunities for travel to Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, and for visits with their daughter and two sons and their families, who survive him. Katy died in 2005. “Throughout his life, Bob was known for his kindness and compassion, his liberal politics, keen intelligence, and wit.”

Alice Maxine Meigs Schott Richards ’38

June 20, 2011, in Redwood City, California, following a bout with pneumonia.

Alice attended Skidmore College for a year, spent a year in Switzerland studying German, and then enrolled at Reed. That one year at Reed was the high point of her academic life, she said in 2003.

“It made me want to get to the source material of things very often, and encouraged some radical feelings I already had. I was affected by the times we lived in, simply that this was a very controversial period in American life.” She recalled political discussions with professors such as Monte Griffith [psychology 1926–54] and Alexander Goldenweiser [sociology 1933–39]. “There were groups that were concerned with the New Deal and all its problems and some of the issues of war and peace. And there was a lot of worry about what was going to happen to the country, but there was also quite a lot of hope. The great clouds of war and the growing clouds of fascism were worrying us.” Alice left Reed to marry and raise a family and maintained a lifelong friendship with her roommate, Cecelia Gunterman Wollman ’37. She received a BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to earn an MA in anthropology from Stanford and a junior college teaching credential from San Francisco State College. She was an instructor of cultural anthropology at the College of San Mateo and had three sons, including Peter Meigs ’59.

Oma Izetta Woodcock Singer ’38

2011, in Washington.

Amy grew up in South Bend, Washington, immersed in the culture of her mother and her ancestors, the Chinook Indian tribe. Amy’s mother taught her the Chinook language and customs, shared her knowledge of medicinal plants, and insisted that Amy and her siblings live by the Chinook honor system and with absolute integrity. Amy attended South Bend High School, but transferred to the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon, after witnessing racial discrimination aimed at one of her sisters. At Chemawa, she met young people from Montana, Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming, and California; unfortunately, they were forbidden to use their native languages and there was no instruction in Indian culture.

The school’s “outing system,” designed to place young women in homes as maids and housekeepers, bored Amy, who aspired to be a teacher. “And one day the home economics teacher came to me and said, ‘I know of a placement in Portland where you could go.

And, maybe if you went there and you learned about the college in the city, maybe you could go there.’” Amy was hired as a housekeeper by professor Larry Hartmus [classics 1930–39], who soon recognized her passion for knowledge (she read her way through the family’s

Amy Woodcock Singer ’38 and her husband Bill Singer ’32.

Amy was one of Reed’s first Native American students.

library) and recommended she seek admission to Reed. She was accepted in 1934, becoming one of the college’s first Native American students, and later winning a scholarship from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Psychology professor Monte Griffith [1926–54] advised Amy’s thesis, “The Nature and Source of Referrals to the Child-Guidance Clinic,” for which she earned a BA. Amy also babysat for professor Frank Munk [political science 1939–65]; one of her charges was the young Mike Munk ’56. (Must have been a tough assignment! —Ed.) In the process of doing thesis research at the University of Oregon Medical School, she met William Singer ’32, MA ’34. They were married two days after Amy graduated from Reed. Intending a career in social work, she took classes at the University of Washington and held positions in public welfare in Multnomah County and Benton County. During World War II, she followed Bill on stateside military assignments and worked for a number of organizations related to the war effort, such as the War Price and Rationing Board, the American Red Cross, and the Travelers Aid Society. They welcomed a daughter, Jane, and Amy returned to the workforce as a substitute teacher when Jane was seven. Amy later earned a master’s degree in social work at Portland State University and did social work in Portland public schools and with Head Start in Vancouver, Washington, retiring as program director. In retirement, she was a community volunteer, including with Friends of Hospice, and was an elder of the Chinook tribe. She and Bill traveled to Europe and collected Indian baskets. Her closest Reed friends were Helen Wheeler Hastay ’39 and Millard Hastay ’41. “I’m sure if I had gone to some school like what they called then normal school, I probably would have just been a teacher and stuck to whatever academic things I had, and not really branched out as much. I think that Reed inspires you to get out and do other things.” Amy said that Reed also encouraged her lifelong interest in politics, but that she and Bill never caught on to the politics of the workplace. “The advancement in our careers was based on conscientious performance and perseverance.” Amy and Bill march 2012 Reed magazine 59

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made a generous gift to the William and Ruth Griffith Memorial Scholarship Fund at Reed in memory of their beloved professor, Monte Griffith. Survivors include her daughter, Jane; granddaughters Elizabeth Belt and Wendy Belt Wallace ’97; three great-grandchildren; and her sister, Myrtle. Bill died in 1992. Donations may be made in her memory to the Chinook Tribe Recognition Fund, PO Box 368, Bay Center, Washington 98527.

John Jay Faris ’43

January 12, 2011, in Lacey, Washington.

John earned a BA from Reed and a PhD from the University of Washington in physics. He taught in universities in Colorado and Wisconsin and spent a number of years training teachers and developing curriculum at the University of Andalas in Indonesia. John married in 1942; he and his wife, Esther, had four children.

William R. Dugan AMP ’44 September 9, 2011, in Eugene, Oregon, from respiratory failure.

Bill attended Reed in the premeteorology program while serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces.

From his friend Harry Bernat AMP ’44, we learned that Bill attended many of the Reed premeteorology reunion gatherings. Bill also studied at Harvard and received a BS in architecture from the University of Oregon. He later earned a master’s degree in education. He was a teacher and a principal of Bailey Hill, Gilham, and Edgewood elementary schools in Eugene.

Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Alice; three sons; and two grandchildren.

Charlotte Lee Kilbourn Easter Kress ’44 November 10, 2011, in Missoula, Montana

Charlotte was born in Chicago and moved with her parents to a mining camp in the Colorado Rockies, where her father worked as an engineer.

She earned a BA in sociolog y from Reed, financing her education by working in navy shipyards. She worked for the Red Cross in France during World War II, crossing the Atlantic in a ship convoy. On the Mediterranean in Nice, France, during the war she met Robert B. Easter; they married in 1947.

The couple lived in Missoula, built a summer cabin on Inez Lake, and raised three children.

Charlotte was very involved in her children’s many activities. She led Camp Fire Girl groups, supported the Missoula music program, and helped to initiate a local swim team. She was passionate about wildlife, conservation, and

environmental issues. She joined Missoula’s Gals Against Smog and Air Pollution, served as president of the Missoula Sierra Club chapter, and lobbied for environmental groups in Helena, Montana. She earned an MS in environmental studies from the University of Montana at 60.

Her love of adventure took her to the top of Mount St. Helens, on an African safari, and in one of the first tour groups to travel in China after the borders opened. She participated in disaster relief efforts with the American Red Cross in St. Louis and interviewed prospective Reedies. Charlotte wrote that Reed helped expand her tolerance and understanding of others’s ideas, activated to a greater degree curiosity and interest in intellectual and political forces, and emphasized a need for action. “It strengthened a natural interest in doing something not limited to material gain, but contributing something to the betterment of world situations.” Charlotte married Jackson Kress in 1997; they were gloriously happy together until his death in May 2011. Her survivors include a son and two daughters; two stepsons and one stepdaughter; eight grandchildren; and her brother. A gracious, giving, intelligent, adventurous, and loving individual, “she lived her life with the belief that obstacles were there to be overcome and that dreams could be achieved if one put forth a bit of effort.”

Floy Ione Wetzel Matthews ’44 November 15, 2011, in Beaverton, Oregon

Floy came to Reed from LaGrande, Oregon, and earned a BA in psychology. She continued her studies in psychology at Columbia University, where she received an MA and met William I. Matthews, whom she married. They had one son, Wells Matthews ’76. Floy’s career in clinical psychology included positions in New York, Iowa, and Vermont. She was the staff psychologist at the Hamilton Center, a mental health center in Rockville, Indiana, until she retired in 1985. In Rockville, Floy volunteered for adult literacy and was a voracious reader, with her own key to the public library. She also acted as a general contractor and built a spectacular house in the woods, which attracted a peacock she named Picasso. Birds, raccoons, and squirrels were frequent visitors to her house, and occasional foes. “She trapped a large cat harassing her pets, only later realizing it was a bobcat,” Wells told us. In retirement, Floy maintained a limited private practice and volunteered in a county hospice program and with the Parke Adult Tutoring Service, a young adult literacy program that she started in Parke County, Indiana. She returned to Oregon in 1996 to be near her family and enjoyed

attending a Beaverton Library book group and teaching classes at the Elsie Stuhr Center.

Survivors include her son, daughter-in-law Joanne Oshiro ’78, and granddaughter Laura.

Stephen Daniel Nemeth ’45 October 14, 2011, in Sunnyvale, California.

Stephen attended Reed for a year in 1941– 42 and was an electrical engineer for HewlettPackard and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation. He was married for 55 years and is survived by his wife, Eunice, and his son.

Earl M. Ringle ’46

May 6, 2011, in Spokane, Washington.

Earl earned a BA in chemistry from Reed and worked as a chemist for Kaiser Aluminum, traveling the world to the company’s various plants (his favorite was in Ghana). He was a ham radio operator, a hobby he picked up when he was 16 and pursued for many years, communicating with people around the world using call sign N7ER. His first wife, Inez, died from cancer; he and his second wife, Jean, were married for 37 years. In retirement, he worked part-time at the Spokane Opera House. He and Jean enjoyed travel and showing horses. She survives him, as do a daughter, a stepdaughter, and two grandchildren.

Robert Walter Johannsen ’48

August 16, 2011, in Urbana, Illinois.

Bob grew up in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Portland and graduated from Washington High School. His father, Walter Johannsen, was in the Student Army Training Corps at Reed in 1918–19. Shortly after Bob entered Reed, he was drafted into military service. During World War II, he served in Europe, using his skill in mathematics to determine the location of enemy artillery. He returned to the college, where he earned a BA in history. At Reed, he met Lois Calderwood ’50; they married in 1949 and were together until her death in 2008. Bob earned a PhD from the University of Washington, and taught there and at the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1959.

During his long career with the university, he taught 19th-century American history: the trans-Mississippi West, the age of Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Mexican War. His course on the Civil War was one of the most popular at the university. Bob received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an appointment to the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study, and he was named the J.G. Randall Distinguished Professor of History. Among his many publications, his book Stephen A. Douglas is considered the definitive biography of the

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Little Giant and earned Bob the Francis Parkman Prize for Literary Distinction in the Writing of History. He also received an LHD in history from Lincoln College. “One of the most valuable aspects of my Reed education was the instruction I received in writing, instruction that began in my freshman year and extended throughout my Reed years,” he wrote in 1981. “The emphasis Reed placed on the quality of self-expression proved to be highly significant to my later education. In addition, I received a solid grounding in the canons of historical scholarship from my mentor, Dorothy O. Johansen [history 1934–84], and from others on the Reed faculty.

I cannot stress enough the importance of Reed’s liberal education on my career. Nor can I exaggerate the debt I feel I owe to my Reed education for the foundation it gave to my career. I still draw on that experience in an amazing number of ways.” Bob brought graduate students together in informal meetings at his home. The Little Giants, as they were known, later became professional historians, and 11 members of the group published Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Johannsen in 2006. In addition, the Robert W. Johannsen Undergraduate Scholarship Fund was established at the university. Bob was active in many historical organizations, including the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Great American People Show, a theatre company based in New Salem. He contributed to several documentaries, including The Civil War by Ken Burns. Bob enjoyed travel, photography, concerts, plays, stamp collecting, gardening, and baking bread.

“He was a devoted husband and father who lived his life with integrity, honesty and humility. He will be deeply missed.” Survivors include his two children, Nancy Johannsen Morrice ’76 and Robert D. Johannsen; four grandchildren; and his sister. Bob’s family suggests that contributions in his memory may be made to Reed.

Leonard W. Shoepe ’49 September 2, 2011, in Portland.

Leonard was a graduate of Franklin High School in Portland. He served in the U.S. Army and then studied briefly at Reed and at the American Institute of Banking. He had a 30-year career with Multnomah County, retiring as county treasurer in 1982. Leonard created oil, watercolor, and pastel paintings, which were shown in numerous art exhibitions. Survivors include three children and four grandchildren.

Eleanor Susan Haas Merriam ’50

October 4, 2011, in Glendora, California.

Susan attended Reed in 1946–47 and then transferred to the University of Washington.

She was a pilot in the Women’s Air Corps and worked for the State Department as a logistics planner for routing military supplies during World War II. Her career was as an

accountant in the publishing industry, and she was an accomplished classical pianist. Survivors include three sons, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and a brother.

Robert Luis Autrey ’53 September 4, 2011, in Portland.

Rober t grew up in Galveston and Houston, Texas, and had his first introduction to Reed when he was 13, on a visit to his mother’s friend, Vera Prášilova Scott, portrait photographer and wife of Arthur F. Scott [chemistry 1923–79; acting president 1942–45]. His ambition to attend the college, sparked at that time, was fulfilled in his junior year, when he transferred from Rice University; he earned a BA from Reed in organic chemistry. “I was a complete grind, buried in the chemistry building. I remember those invaluable occasions when I left the familiar cocoon of the chemistry building to trek over to Winch and the Capehart room for music composition classes with Herb Gladstone [music 1946–80]—what a welcome change!”

Robert completed a PhD in organic chemistry at Harvard and took a postdoctoral fellowship at Imperial College in London. While there, he also studied opera and ballet at Covent Garden. His passion for collecting records from the beginning of the acoustical era, 1870s–early 1900s, began with recordings he purchased in London.

“The records weren’t terribly valuable then, and they still aren’t,” he said in an interview in the early ’70s. “But they got me started on a hobby which is a serious attempt to do two things: to find performances of music that can be tied directly back to the composer—performances about which there is a degree of authenticity— and to document performing styles that were typical in the 19th century.” His collection grew into the thousands. Robert’s phonodiscs also included recordings purchased by his father during his visits to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in the ’30s. For 15 years, Robert taught organic chemistry at the University of Rochester, Harvard, and the Oregon Graduate Center, where he was a founding member. He served as assistant editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society and became partner in a scientific publishing venture, Chiron Press, pioneering work on ecology. Robert supported the Portland Opera, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Chamber Music Northwest; enjoyed chess; and was a co-owner of Westry Wines with his son David Autrey ’89 and daughter-in-law Amy Wesselman ’91. Robert provided a generous donation to Reed College in memory of Vera Prášilova Scott, creating the Vera Scott Student Prize. He and his first wife, Nadja Scott, daughter of Arthur and Vera, had three sons. He and

Joella Werlin were married for 32 years.

Survivors include Joella; Robert, David, and Michael Autrey; a stepson and stepdaughter; and four grandchildren and stepgrandchildren.

William Douglas Hershey ’56

April 11, 2011, in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Bill attended Reed for three years and completed his BA at the University of Washington. He did graduate work at Cornell, was a historian with Historic Sites Research in West Virginia, and was an instructor in history at Temple University in Philadelphia. His wife, Constance, and son, Christian, survive him.

Frank Curtis Douglas ’57 November 14, 2011, in Bailey, Colorado, of complications from a heart condition.

Frank earned a BA from Reed, an MS from the University of Illinois, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut in physics. He was a member of the National Honor Society and the American Physics Society, and had a career as a materials scientist with United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Frank and his wife, Diane Mesmer Douglas, moved to Colorado after Frank’s retirement in 1992. They skied in the Colorado Rockies, ran a team of Siberian huskies, and grew orchids.

“What Reed actually did for me,” Frank wrote 30 years after graduating, “was to provide a broad and solid platform in the humanities and peripheral fields, which I believe to be indispensable to the proper formation of a balanced view of the world and of life in general. Without this, one cannot adapt to the changes constantly occurring, nor can one distinguish the good from the bad. For this, Reed will always have my support.” Survivors include his wife and his brother, George C. Douglas ’60.

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Jacqueline Lee Gibson ’62 October 30, 2011, in Helena, Montana.

Jacquie attended Reed and the University of Montana, later earning a BA in English at the university in 1975.

“Thank goodness there was Reed to prepare me for the real world. I still consider my year at Reed as the most significant year of my life, most influential, most important,” she said. Jacquie married Michael Gonsior in 1960.

They settled in Missoula and had three daughters. While her daughters were growing up, Jacquie volunteered with Camp Fire and taught middle school English. Following divorce, she returned to the University of Montana and earned an MA in communications. In 1984, she began her life with her partner, Sandra J. Shull, and also founded Family Mediation Services. From 1988 to 1997, Jacquie developed and directed the University of Oregon’s mediation program and then moved to Helena, where she became a founding member of the Collaboration Institute. Throughout her life, she practiced and taught mediation, conflict management, and communication, and was also an enthusiastic mentor for embryo mediators. Jacquie played piano and sang beautifully, performing in choral groups, most recently with the Helena Symphony Chorale. She was an enthusiastic booster of the arts, studied many of them, and succeeded in most. Survivors include Sandy and Jacquie’s daughters.

Remembrances may be made in her memory to Reed College.

Barrett Lynn Tomlinson ’64

September 1, 2011, in Portland, after a brief fight with an aggressive cancer.

B a r r y c a m e to R e e d f ro m R i ch l a n d , Washington, and earned a BA in chemistry. He went on to earn a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and lived in Santa Clara, where he wrote computer programs for scientific and commercial use. Barry devoted much of his spare time to Science Buddies—a nonprofit developer of software, content, and other resources for informal science and engineering education—and volunteered as a tutor for Kaiser Permanente. He also mentored troubled youths through the Bill Wilson Center, worked with the Boy Scouts, and enjoyed camping and hiking. The Tomlinson Family Scholarship, which will provide financial aid for a student in mathematics and natural sciences, was established at Reed a few days before Barry’s death.

Barrett Lynn Tomlinson ’64

Tania Gail Lipshutz Levy ’68

Survivors include his parents; his sister, Sue Yount; his niece, Carmen Yount ’92; and his nephew, Mason.

Tania Gail Lipshutz Levy ’68 September 1, 2011, in San Francisco California, from complications following a heart attack.

Tania earned a BA from Reed in Russian. After graduation, she homesteaded on 80 acres in Mendocino County, California, and earned certification in occupational therapy, working as a therapist for learning-disabled children. Her passion for the environment and for recycling led to a BA in environmental design from Sonoma State University and positions with Garbage Reincarnation, a nonprofit recycling and education center in Santa Rosa. During that time, she worked as a consultant and lobbyist on recycling and waste management issues, and cowrote “Garbage to Energy: the False Panacea” (Santa Rosa Recycling Center, 1983), a whole-systems look at the waste-to-energy concept. She also did graduate studies in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley.

Among many accomplishments, she helped to establish and to implement California’s bottle bill in the late ’80s. Tania was a recycling specialist for the California Department of Conservation and recently retired from Berkeley’s recycling program. In retirement she planned to devote time to more environmental groups and causes, and, at the time of her death, she was working with Californians against Waste and with Marin County on a plastic bag ordinance. Tania married Andy Milberg, a video producer and artist, in 1985, and she raised a son, Daniel.

Barbara Landale Stitt ’71

October 17, 2011, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Barbara earned a BA from Reed in biology and psychology and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in biochemistry and genetics. She taught biochemistry at the Temple University School of Medicine, with a research focus on the molecular mechanism of Escherichia coli transcription termination factor Rho. In 1984, she married Charles Grubmeyer.

Her hobbies included reading, gardening, collecting glass paperweights, and attending antique auctions.

Linda Grace Ludwin ’73 September 2011, in Saltaire, West Yorkshire, U.K., from cancer.

Linda was born in Buffalo, New York, the eldest of five daughters, and spent most of her childhood in Newton, Massachusetts. She earned a BA from Reed in fine art. As an undergraduate, she studied in Zaria, Nigeria, where she met Steve Daniels, whom she married upon

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graduation. Linda spent several years teaching sculpture at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and received an MA in fine art and sculpture from the university in 1977 for her thesis on Yoruba woodcarving. She worked as an assistant to the curator at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan, and then as lecturer in the department of fine arts at Ahmadu Bello. Linda and Steve relocated to Cornwall, England, where her daughter, Katherine, was born in 1979. Linda later got a job as coordinator and manager at the Milton Keynes Community Workshop Trust in Buckinghamshire. In 1986, she joined the faculty at Leicester Polytechnic as a lecturer in arts administration. She was a member of the technology faculty at the Open University Centre for Technology Strategy in Milton Keynes and cofounder of the film company Big Pond Productions. Film units formed the focus of her thesis, “The One-Shot Deal: Temporary Organizations, UK Feature Film Units, and Learning Organization Theory,” which earned her a PhD from the Open University in 2004.

She became senior lecturer and program leader in arts and cultural management at Chester College, University of Liverpool. “Linda was a woman of integrity, extremely independent and always true to her ideals—a power to be reckoned with,” says her sister Judy. “She applied her gifts as a teacher not only to her students but also to many others who crossed her path. Her trait of being unapologetically unconventional, coupled with her compassion, had a life-changing influence on many.” Her daughter, her mother, and four sisters survive her. Our thanks to her friend and roommate, Liza Hirsch Medina ’74, and her sister, Judy, for their help with this piece.

Lew Carey Sayers MAT ’73 October 4, 2011, in Dallas, Texas.

Lew was instructor in English and developmental and technical writing for 36 years at Mountain View College and was highly regarded by students and fellow faculty members. He earned a BA in psychology from Dartmouth College and served with honor in the U.S. Army in 1969–72. His master’s degree from Reed was in English. Outside of teaching, Lew was a mentor for area youth, volunteering through the Trinity River Mission and other programs, in order to help individuals find success in academic and professional endeavors and to make decisions that improved their lives overall. In addition, he enjoyed fishing and playing basketball and tennis. “Lew Sayers made a difference in all the lives he touched.

His unbridled optimism, kind-hearted spirit, brilliant sense of humor, calm patience, and enduring compassion made him a great teacher and a treasured friend.” Survivors include his wife, Jan, and his sister and brother.

Linda Grace Ludwin ’73

David Thomas Zager ’74

Carolyn Holzman ’77 and Chris Cooksy ’78 in the botanical gardens in Rome, Italy, in 2006.

David Thomas Zager ’74

left the college—after some fits and starts— in 1977 to join the Portland Mime Workshop.

The rigorous physical and technical training in Decroux and Grotowski methods combined with freewheeling improvisational theatre that she first encountered there informed her work ever after. She attended L’École de Mime de Montréal in 1981 and received a BA from Portland State University in 1996, receiving the Kellogg Award for outstanding senior in English. A founding member of both Portland Mime Theater and DoJump! Movement Theatre, she shifted gradually from performing to teaching. She taught widely in the Portland area, most notably as adjunct professor of theatre at PSU from 1984 until her death. Dancers learned to act and actors to move under Carolyn’s guidance. She was a master in the weaving of many disciplines into integrated, magical, sly, or slapstick-funny, complex but comprehensible theatre. Her students and colleagues remember her as a brilliant artist and generous and insightful mentor who nurtured any creative spark into a flame.

Carolyn created works of physical theatre, including adaptations of short stories by Gogol (“The Nose”) and Dostoevsky (“White Nights”), which she wrote, directed, and produced, not to mention designing the costumes, set, and stage. While her professional life was focused on theatre, she was also a nonpareil

June 20, 2010, in Nashville, Tennessee, from cancer.

David earned a BA from Reed in political science and went on to earn a JD from Memphis State Law School and an MBA from Columbia University. He was a successful lawyer and businessman and a beloved husband and father.

Survivors include his wife, Kitzi, three daughters and three sons, two grandchildren, and his mother and two sisters.

Carolyn Louise Holzman ’77

August 5, 2011 in Portland, from sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest.

Carolyn came to Reed in 1973 to escape Houston, Texas. She was a typical Reedie in many ways. It was her character, rather more than her intention, that drove her to shun convention: there was always some more interesting, more engaging and creative, funnier and more passionate way to make or perceive something, anything.

In fall 1973, she began hanging out in the commons’ basement pinball and pool hall, avoiding papers and professors and seizing the opportunity to meet and play with other escapees. She met Chris Cooksy ’78 over rounds of eight ball and High Hand. Inseparable since spring 1974, they were married in 1981. True to her whimsical, idiosyncratic vision and unable (or unwilling) to harness it to serve Reed requirements, Carolyn

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vegetable gardener and fruit orchardist, house renovator (showing a rare talent in both tilework and real estate), metalworker, pianist, Scrabble player, and house rabbit lover. At Centennial Reunions Carolyn and Chris reunited with a few out-of-town friends who had slipped away somewhere in the decades.

For this reconnection all will be forever grateful. Immediately picking up conversations and jokes where we left off so long ago, we planned future gatherings. We never dreamed that this would be our last chance to celebrate life with Carolyn. She leaves scores of people, in Portland, and all over the world, bewildered and heartbroken. If you have stories you remember about her days at Reed or after, please share them with Chris (chriscooksy@ gmail.com). Telling and hearing these stories will keep Carolyn with us, as she should be.

Reed thanks Chris Cooksy, Meg Riley ’77, Rebecca Smith ’79, and Jim Pearson ’79, who created this memorial to Carolyn.

Nicole Aiyen Halpin ’84

September 5, 2011, in Seattle, after a two-year battle with brain cancer.

Nicole was born and raised in Seattle and studied at Reed for one year. During her time on campus, she cowrote and starred in the film American Taboo. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in film from UCLA and taught film studies at Columbia College in Chicago.

In 2005, she returned to Seattle, where she met her partner, Justin Harris. Nicole described herself as “a poet from the [Pacific] Northwest, who joyously misspent her youth in Hollywood.” Justin, her mother and brother, and three sisters survive her.

Mark Patrick Petteys ’85 October 22, 2011, in Hood River, Oregon.

Mark was born in Pendleton but grew up all over Oregon, as his father worked for the U.S. Forest Service. After graduating from Hood River Valley High School, Mark attended Columbia University for a year and then transferred to Reed, where he earned a BA in physics and met Phyllis Manos ’86; they married in 1983; their son, Guthrie, was born in 1991. The family shared Mark’s love of the outdoors. Mark took Guthrie rock hounding and whitewater rafting.

They fished, played chess, and enjoyed music together. Mark’s fascination with science led to further studies, including in chemistry, geology, hydrogeology, and mathematics. After working as a research assistant at Oregon Graduate Institute, he earned an MS from Boise State University in geophysics, writing his thesis on the use of field-flow fractionation to characterize colloids. He later worked as a research scientist and developed charged particle optics and other scientific systems.

Mark’s musical talents first emerged at the age of 8, when he got his first banjo and taught himself to play. He gained such fluency. that he performed throughout the U.S. with musicians such as Tex Williams, Grandpa Jones, Tiny Moor, Mark O’Connor, and the Country Gazette. He was a studio musician for Capitol Records in Nashville in 1977 and was declared Northwest Regional Banjo Champion in 1984. He taught banjo at the Northwest Folklife Festival, the National Old-Time Fiddle Festival, and the San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Festival. In 2005, he formed a bluegrass and western swing band, Ida Viper, which produced several recordings, including Some of These Days. “Mark was a funny storyteller and loved to laugh,” Phyllis says. “He called musicians in the middle of the night to discuss chord changes or tunes.

He enjoyed camping trips with friends and had a zest for life.” Mark was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, which caused pain and numbness in his feet and hands, but maintained a positive attitude until he died. He was buried in Petteys Cemetery, a pioneer cemetery in Ione, Oregon. Longtime friend Greg Eibel, instrument machinist in the Reed physics department, transported Mark’s body in his 1962 Chevrolet Suburban, Pete. Survivors include Phyllis, Guthrie, and Mark’s mother, grandmother, and two brothers.

Benjamin Catin Tombaugh ’01 February 2011, in Taiwan, from colon cancer.

We learned of Ben’s death from his sister, Hilary Tombaugh Norton. “He had a very playful spirit and was always making jokes,” she wrote, “but he also worked very hard.” Ben was salutatorian

at Gresham High School and earned a BA in mathematics from Reed. During his junior year, he studied math in Budapest and learned to speak Hungarian. After the semester ended, he was invited to stay on as a volunteer English teacher in a small town in Slovakia and became so passionate about teaching that he returned to Slovakia after he graduated. Ben went next to teach in Taiwan, where he met Celine Kao; they married in 2010. At the time of his death, he had traveled through much of Europe and Asia. He spoke German and Hungarian and was nearly fluent in Mandarin. He took thousands of photos; images from his travels may be viewed at www.bentombaughphotography. com. “His death at such a young age is a tragedy,” Hilary wrote, “but he lived a very full life and the seeds of that were planted early. I want to thank all of his teachers and Reed College for giving him such a great foundation for his amazing travels.” Survivors include Ben’s wife, mother, and sister.

Staff, faculty, and friends

Juana Edith Ukolov

August 8, 2011, in Troutdale, Oregon.

Juana was a member of the student services staff and an instructor in belly dancing at the college until 1983. Robin Moore ’74, who informed us of Juana’s death, recalled that Juana assisted deans Jack Dudman ’42 [1953– 85] and Pat Hanawalt [1959–82] beginning in the 1960s. We learned that Juana lived in Gresham when she worked at Reed. She raised a family and she taught belly dancing in a studio in her home. Two years ago, she moved to Troutdale. “Her graciousness and real concern for students will be remembered by many,” Robin wrote.

Pending Bernard Ross ’37, Walter Ihl ’41, Miriam Annunen Beasley ’43, Alfred Fell ’46, Alava Huckins ’48, Jesse Green ’51, Nancy Wilson Tanner ’52, Carolyn Van Vliet Wade ’52, Mary Arragon Spaeth ’53, Thayron Sandquist ’56, Marva Frost Hutchins MAT ’63, Renee Bergman MAT ’66, Carolyn Russell MAT ’66, Ann Farber Baldwin ’70, Robert Miner ’86, Lily Kanter ’07, Levi Dulcos ’15; Alfred Bork and Howard Waskow, faculty; and Deborah Martson, friend.

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CON BRIO. Biology major Kira Jacobson ’15 warms up a few moments before playing Handel, Sibelius, and Haydn with the Reed Orchestra in November 2011.

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