‰ June 2014
Distant Vision
How Thomas Lamb Eliot shaped a college—and a city. the paradox of global warming | Can you paint a vermeer? | Why I don’t give to Reed
GAY WALKER ’69, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARIAN & ARCHIVIST FAVO R I T E I T E M S I N S P EC I A L C O L L EC T I O N S THE POISSY ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT FROM 1510 AMANDA REED’S HANDWRITTEN RECIPE BOOK COMRADES OF THE QUEST: AN ORAL HISTORY OF REED COLLEGE, BY JOHN SHEEHY ’82
“A Reed education is a great gift” — G AY W A L K E R ’ 6 9 Special Collections Librarian and Archivist
Will you make a gift to support the lifelong learning and engagement with the world that has defined Reed and its students, professors, and alumni for decades?
Use the enclosed envelope, visit giving.reed.edu, or call 877/865-1469 to make your “great gift.”
REED June 2014
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k e n d r i c k b r i n s o n , a b o v e : m at t d ’a n n u n z i o
FEATURES 12
Life Beyond Reed
Career profiles of two young alumni. By Romel Hernandez ariel zambelich
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Stroke of Genius
Producer Farley Ziegler ’84 makes a documentary about one man’s quest to reverse-engineer a Vermeer.
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By Laurie Lindquist 14
Into the Unknown
Eight Presidents’ Summer Fellows share their intellectual adventures for the summer of 2014.
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By Chris Lydgate ’90
Cliff Hanger
Robert Bridges ’74 built one of Los Angeles’ most astonishing houses.
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Poet || Artist
Jim Haba ’62 is at home on both the empty page and the empty canvas. By Laurie Lindquist
By Nisma Elias ’12 34
New Faces
10 Empire of the Griffin Letter from your alumni prez
Looking Back at Freedom Summer Fifty years on, Reedies reflect on the Summer of ’64.
By Randall S. Barton 22
Behind the Curve
Prof. Josh Howe explores the paradoxical history of global warming.
Distant Vision
How Thomas Lamb Eliot shaped a college—and a city. By Romel Hernandez
Eliot Circular Reed’s first building faces wrecking ball Professors Corner STEM Femmes arise Tiny Bubbles Scholarship for Abby Garcia ’10
By William Abernathy ’88
By John Young ’15 20
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Thirty years later, Arlene Blum ’66 scores key victory over flameretardants—again.
The Long Run
Why would a history major run 50 miles?
Keeping the Flame
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The birth of Mad magazine Raymond Chandler’s L.A.
40 Reediana
Books by Reedies
44 Class Notes 54 In Memoriam 64 Why I Don’t
Give to Reed June 2014 Reed magazine
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Letter from the editor
Conscience of a City
June 2014
www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 93, No. 2 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 graphic design assistant Kim Durkin ’13 alumni news editor Robin Tovey ’97 Valiant Interns Sandesh Adhikary ’15, Lauren Cooper ’16 ADVISORY BOARD Diane Morgan ’77, Matt Giraud ’85, Naomi McCoy ’94, Caitlin Baggott ’99 Reed College Relations vice president, college relations Hugh Porter Executive director, Communications & public affairs Mandy Heaton
He was an intellectual omnivore who read the Iliad to his children. A preacher who opposed the doctrine of eternal damnation. An outspoken champion of the poor and the disadvantaged. Formidable in debate. And he liked dogs. The Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot is, of course, the intellectual godfather of Reed College, the man who inspired Simeon and Amanda Reed to bequeath their fortune to a greater good. But as Romel Hernandez shows in his perceptive profile “Distant Vision,” on page 33, Eliot was not only the driving force behind Reed—he was the driving force behind some of Portland’s most important institutions. In a real sense, Eliot shaped the city. I think this is important because it is sometimes tempting for those of us who love Reed to regard its geographical setting as a mere accident, as if the college was some kind of interstellar spaceship that landed on this particular set of coordinates more or less at random (to 2
Reed magazine June 2014
the chagrin of local residents.) If we dig deeper into Eliot’s life, however, it becomes clear that Reed did not materialize out of hyperspace, but was constructed on a foundation that Eliot had been building for decades. Having championed orphanages, schools, parks, asylums, and libraries—each designed to make Portland a better city—he conceived of Reed as an integral part of the civic landscape, or, as he put it, “the crowning pride of this great metropolis.” Having the vision is one thing. Making it work is another. Luckily, Eliot possessed the force of personality and sense of determination to turn his idea into reality—surely the great difference between dreamers and doers.
director, alumni & parent relations Mike Teskey director, development Jan Kurtz Reed College is a private, independent, non-sectarian four-year college of liberal arts and sciences. Reed provides news of interest to alumni, parents, and friends. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs. Reed (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly, in March, June, September, and December, by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland OR 97202-8138.
—Chris Lydgate ’90
Letters to Reed Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may only run half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left. Read more letters and commentary at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.
Quest Centennial
Your article celebrating the Quest’s 100th year (“Shock! Horror! Quest turns 100,” September 2013) was most welcome, but deeply flawed. A fine weekly is defined by how it informs in hard times, times of conflict and change within the college. In this crucial sense, your writer overlooked the transition from student government to community government in 1963–64. Under the excellent and rigorously objective editorships of Myra Minkoff (Lader) ’65, Mark Loeb ’65, and, later, David Heifetz ’66, the Quest played a crucial role in making sure that students and faculty were informed of developments in the laborious process of producing an acceptable—if imperfect—constitution of community government. I inherited a draft constitution of community government from the previous student administration. I felt strongly that it gave away too much of our traditional sovereignty. After intense discussion in council, I was invited to revise the existing draft (which had been negotiated and written in secret). Certain changes were made, notably the maintenance of a student majority on disciplinary matters—previously our monopoly—and the inclusion of student minority membership for curriculum, faculty recruitment, and teaching evaluation. After council’s unanimous approval of the new text, the Quest printed it in toto on its first page. Included was a little box in bold type, by me, advising the students not to approve it because, I argued, it would have to be negotiated—this time with Quest coverage—with then-President Richard Sullivan [1956–67] and the faculty before taking effect and that, even if approved by all parties, it was unwise to disarm while the transition was not complete. The students agreed and community government remained a dead letter until a later crisis,
one in which the Quest played a leading role: the “Reed U” upheaval. Then, advised by the faculty members I trusted and admired, I asked the Quest again to call all the students together in the gym. With the argument that the college’s only shield against President Sullivan’s plans (again, secret) to turn it into a satellite university would have to be an alliance via community government with the faculty, it was unanimously adopted. Many students posed one condition, which I was anxious to avoid: if I would lead the student delegation in the community and serve one term as student body president, they would feel that their interests were safe. And with the Quest’s support and gritty resistance to President Sullivan, it was to be. We met with trustees around the country and sent a carefully worded letter to all alumni opposing the Sullivan plan. And we won! The Quest, also reaching trustees and many alumni, fought the good fight week after week. As a historian, I feel strongly that on its centennial an institution needs full praise. —Tom Forstenzer ’65 Vanves, France
Report of the Cannon
Your recounting of the episode of Sandy Macdonald ’46 and his little brass cannon (“Revolutionary Spirit,” March 2014), was amusing and edifying. Although I first met Sandy in a touch football game a few years before (yes, that’s righttouch football), I did not become a good friend until we were both in the debate club at Stadium High School in Tacoma. Other members included Gerald Meier ’47 and Gordon Baker ’48. Sandy did not demonstrate any eccentricities during high school, although I think he did wear a small jabot to a couple of parties. In any event, Sandy was our valedictorian, the only one in the class to have all As. Sandy went off to St. John’s College in 1942 despite the distance and the war. All reports were that he was extremely happy there. Thus, I was surprised to find him at Reed in the fall of 1943. At this time Sandy’s fascination with the 18th century became more apparent. One story was that his father dropped in to visit and was upset to find that Sandy had rigged up a canopy over his bed. Sandy became critical of the Air Corps premeteorology group that held a retreat ceremony at sundown on the Great Lawn. One afternoon during the ceremony, he reportedly opened the window, hauled out the Union Jack, and fired
off his cannon as he and Rollin Dudley ’46 sang “God Save the King.” I am sure Sandy would have been much less critical had the PMs done a proper slow march. Sandy thought there should be a fitting farewell for people who were leaving Reed in answer to a draft notice. So he got a bunch of us together to learn “Non più andrai,” the aria Figaro sings to Cherubino when the latter gets his call-up notice. We sang it at dinner in the Commons when someone was leaving; then I left at the end of the semester to go into the army. I do not know if the practice continued. Those of us who had known Sandy for any period of time agreed wholeheartedly that Sandy should not have been in the service; basic training would have crushed him. I asked him how it was that he was not taken. He said that if he got on the end of the line during the induction physical the doctor would have time to listen to him and reject him, which is what happened. I did not see much of Sandy after I came back to Tacoma in 1946. I returned to Reed that summer and then came east in 1948. I was told that Sandy went to work for the family construction firm, but he performed only menial tasks, ending up to be little more than the night watchman. I also learned that he withdrew socially and lived in a hut on the grounds of the construction firm where they found his body one morning. I never heard the cause of death. Any reflection upon Sandy is necessarily touched with sadness. He had a great sense of humor, was good fun at our debate club parties, and had good manners. He had certainly demonstrated a disciplined mind. —Stuart Gaul ’48 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Sartre, Toads, and Spycraft
Kudos to Chris Lydgate and the Reed magazine staff. Under his editorial leadership, Reed magazine has continually improved, and I think the March issue is the best one yet. The writing and production are first rate, and I particularly liked that the entire issue was focused on people—not just topics. The Pucci article was illuminating, the fire-belly toad article informative, and Sartre’s cookbook hilarious. I can’t wait to try some of those recipes. Keep up the good work. —Greg Clarke ’88 Rosemont, Illinois Thanks, Greg, the check’s in the mail We’re grateful for this hard-earned praise!
June 2014 Reed magazine
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news from campus
Reed’s First Building Slated for Demolition The sturdy brick building that housed Reed’s first classes is slated for demolition this summer, to be replaced by a 15-story apartment tower. Located at the corner of Southwest 11th and Jefferson, the building was erected in 1911 in a mere three months. Here the first Reed students—24 women, 26 men—sweated over their studies under the baleful eye of the first professors (including the formidable President William T. Foster [1910–19], who also taught English). The developer, the Molasky Group of Las Vegas, Nevada, has purchased the building from the city of Portland and plans to build 196 market-rate residential apartments, 13,000 square feet of commercial space, underground parking, and a roof deck. The old building—known as the Jefferson West—had many adventures during its long life. In addition to hosting Reed’s first classes, it was home to several colorful Portland institutions, including the Cordova Hotel, the Mural Room, the Jazz
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Quarry, and the Jefferson Theater, which in later years showed porno movies. (There is some irony in this juxtaposition, since President Foster led an effort to stamp out vice and prostitution in Reed’s early years, a triggering a neuralgic reaction in downtown business circles.) On the first day of class, September 18, 1911, students, faculty, and three trustees “picked their way through building debris to the small assembly room which their number filled to overflowing,” according to a firsthand account by Jean Wolverton, class of 1915. The Rev. Thomas Lamb Eliot gave an invocation and President Foster addressed the firstever crop of Reedies. “This day is pregnant with meaning,” he declared. “The future of this institution is, in a peculiar sense, in our hands . . . Our sense of the future committed to our care and our devotion to worthy ideals should create for Reed College a deathless spirit.” Then the speeches were over and it was time to crack the books. —Chris Lydgate ’90
tom humphrey
Eliot Circular
Professors Corner
Prof. Charlene Makley [anthro 2000–] won a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for her project on Tibet.
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Power and Politics in Tibet
Fighting HIV with Circumcision
Prof. Charlene Makley [anthro 2000–] received an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for her project, “The Politics of Presence: State-Led Development, Personhood and Power among Tibetans in China.” Prof. Makley began working in Tibet in 1992, when a trip to Labrang sparked an interest in understanding how Tibetans were rebuilding their communities after the collective trauma of socialist transformation in the ’50s–’70s. In 2008, Makley was conducting research in the region when the Chinese government declared a state of emergency over protests by Tibetans. Since then, more than 125 demonstrators have set themselves on fire to protest government policy in Tibet. Makley intends to write about her experience during this tumultuous period, the massive Sichuan earthquake, and the great spectacle of the Beijing Olympics, and would like her work to bring attention to the
Prof. Nicholas Wilson ’99 [econ 2013–] won a $74,000 grant from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation to investigate “Advertising for Demand Creation for Voluntar y Medical Male Circumcision.” Prof. Wilson will work in the Soweto district of Johannesburg, South Africa, in collaboration with Willa Friedman of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., and the Centre for HIV and AIDS Prevention Studies in Johannesburg. Results from recent medical trials in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa indicate that voluntar y medical male circumcision (VMMC) reduces HIV transmission by 51–76%. Based on this evidence, the World Health Organization has identified 13 countries with high prevalence of HIV and low prevalence of male circumcision
Reed magazine June 2014
underlying causes of the ongoing protests and self-immolation. Makley began working on the project in the early 2000s, just after China’s government launched the Great Western Development Campaign, which produced new dilemmas for Tibetans as the circulation of people, money, and information intensified in the frontier zone. Her primary fieldwork was conducted in 2007–08 in Rebgong, which is northwest of Labrang and the site of the famous Geluk-sect Buddhist monastery of Rongwo. “I deepened my analysis of state-local relations in the frontier zone in the wake of the 2008 state of emergency,” says Makley, “by bringing linguistic anthropological approaches to personhood, governance, and authority into dialogue with recent interdisciplinary debates about the very nature of human subjectivity and relations with nonhuman others—including deities and material objects.”
to focus VMMC campaigns. Wilson and his collaborators are using a door-todoor postcard-based social marketing campaign to test the efficacy of various information messages, framing devices, and costsubsidy in increasing adoption of this life-saving health technology. Wilson, whose research focuses on the economics of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, holds a BA from Reed, a PhD in economics from Brown and an MPA in International Development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He has taught at Williams College, was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, previously worked at the World Bank, and has worked as a consultant for UNAIDS and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
English Prof. Turns 100 Prof. William Couch J r. [ E n g l i s h 1 9 5 3 – 55] will be 100 in December! Couch’s wife, Osa Criss Couch, is preparing a retrospective look at his life as part of the birthday celebration, and she enlisted the help of Gay Walker ’69, special collections librarian, to find images from his time at Reed. Couch was the first African American faculty member to teach at Reed. He earned a BA from Roosevelt College and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. He taught in Chicago public schools and at West Virginia State College and Jackson State Teachers College. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was editor of the Jackson College Bulletin in
Prof. Couch with colleagues Cecilia Tenney [French 1921–63], Vera Krivoshein [Russian 1949–72], & Alan Logan [German 1953–60].
1948–51. He arrived at Reed after completing a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. “Dr. Couch has had a full, rewarding, and exciting life,” says Mrs. Couch. “Prior and after his Reed work, he
was engaged in numerous educational and cultural activities, which contributed to his meeting outstanding and renowned people in each category.” And, as a side note, she says, Prof. Couch is still driving!
leah nash
STEM Femmes Arise Reed students have formed a new campus group to discuss issues surrounding women in fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. The STEM Femmes got their start after Prof. Katherine Jones-Smith [physics 2012–13] gave a presentation about women in the STEM fields at a brunch last year. “The numbers were alarming,” says physics major Allison Morgan ’14, one of the founders of the group. Women hold just 26% of all STEM jobs, according to a study last year by the Census Bureau. They represent 13% of engineers and 27% of computer professionals. Women’s representation in computer occupations has actually declined since the ’90s. STEM Femmes hopes to support, inform, and encourage women, who often exit the STEM fields due to a lack of encouragement and guidance. This year the group hosted a panel
STEM Femmes sponsored a panel discussion by female alumni working as scientists during Working Weekend.
discussion about gender dynamics in the sciences that featured professors Kathryn Oleson [psychology 1995–], Kjersten Whittington [sociology 2007–], and Rebecca LaLonde ’01 [chemistry 2013–]. The event attracted nearly 40 people, including a number of men. The group also sponsored a panel discussion by female alumni working as scientists during Working Weekend.
Tally Levitz ’14 comes from a family where both parents are working scientists. She remembers a Reed class where students were asked to make presentations on famous scientists. Women made up half of the class, but there wasn’t one female scientist on the list from which to choose. “It may not be the 1970s,” she says, “but there are still huge gender disparities in STEM fields.” —Randall S. Barton
June 2014 Reed magazine
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Eliot Circular
Tiny Bubbles
Craniofacial Cartilage, by Christina Johnson ’15 and Chrissy Schmidt ’15, shows Zebrafish embryos treated with Alcian Blue stain show craniofacial cartilage to investigate the developmental effects of valproic acid, a common anticonvulsant drug and natural developmental regulator. The dark spots in the photos are bubbles, reminiscent of the underwater bubbles. A Control, by Christina Barrett ’15 and Ivy Hellickson ’15, shows a 19-hour old zebrafish embryo that served as an untreated control for an experiment in which embryos were exposed to different amounts of gamma radiation. Although this control is normal, many irradiated embryos exhibited heart and gut abnormalities as well as decreased survival rates.
These stunning images, along with scores of others, were all captured by Reed students for independent projects in Developmental Biology (BIO 351L), taught by Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012– ]. Students posted the micrographs (photos taken by a camera attached to a microscope) on the department’s Dive into Development blog, which held a contest to select a winner. Nearly 300 people voted for the image they found most interesting, beautiful, and/or provocative. The two images showcased here each received 82 votes to tie for first place.
Scholarship named for Abby Garcia ’10 Abby Garcia was a bright light, illuminating the lives of her parents and friends until her tragic death in 2008. Now her legacy lights the way for other comrades of the quest. Her father, Arthur Garcia, has established the Abigail Garcia Memorial Scholarship, to be given to a science major with financial need. This year it was given to chemistry major Drew Gingerich ’15. “Abby’s focus was on chemistry and she received financial aid,” Garcia says. “I thought it was time to give back for the great experience she had.” An extraordinary student, Abby started high school when she was 11 years old and completed her senior year as an exchange student in Thailand at the age of 14.
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As a 16-year-old freshman she blossomed at Reed. “Abby was a very freethinking person and loved the fact that although Reed has a very difficult course schedule, it allows students to take their own path to learning,” he says. Good grades and a focus on chemistry opened the door for Abby to work as an intern at the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona the summer after her freshman year. Invited to return the following summer, she was driving to her first day back at the plant when she died in a single-car crash. She was 18 years old. “I am not a wealthy man,” Arthur explains. “When Abby passed, I asked my friends and family to help however they
could in getting this scholarship funded. I was able to get through the tragedy of losing my daughter knowing that I had friends and family who cared so much about her.” —Randall S. Barton Contribute to the Abigail Garcia Memorial Scholarship at giving.reed.edu. Just write the scholarship name in the notes section when making the gift.
CFO Lorraine Arvin, Asst. Dean Rowan Frost (with Tess), and Trustee Adrienne Nelson.
New Faces Lorraine Arvin will become Reed’s chief financial officer when outgoing treasurer Ed McFarlane retires on June 30. Formerly treasurer and associate vice president for finance and administration at University of Chicago, Arvin says she was drawn to Reed because of the college’s tradition of leadership and innovation in higher education. “Reed is deeply committed to the excellence of its academic program,” she says. “I feel Reed is poised for continued success through this time of change in the industry.” Arvin will oversee all finance, budgeting, and investment responsibilities, including oversight of Reed’s $500 million endowment. “Lorraine Arvin is a proven leader in higher education and finance,” said President John R. Kroger. “Her experience will help make Reed even stronger than it is today.” Arvin earned a BS from the University of Illinois, and an MEd and PhD from Loyola University of Chicago, writing her dissertation on perceptions of educational equity in high-poverty schools. Rowan Frost was appointed assistant dean of students for sexual assault prevention & response in January, after winning strong support from the students, staff, and faculty who met with her during the candidacy process. Dean Frost coordinates campus-wide efforts to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct at Reed, including training and education for students, staff, and faculty. “Reed’s incidences of sexual and relationship violence are very similar to that of other colleges,” says Frost. “But Reed has recognized the problem, and has prioritized providing prevention education and resources for survivors.
Reed’s collaborative decision-making process is especially helpful as we work toward implementation of the Campus SaVE Act, which requires us to address dating and domestic violence and stalking. I feel very fortunate to be part of an amazing community of students, staff, and faculty who are committed to ending all forms of sexual and relationship violence on campus.” She came to Reed from Tucson, Arizona, where she worked with community organizations and the University of Arizona to build effective advocacy and prevention programming. Judge Adrienne C. Nelson joined Reed’s board of trustees in February. A Multnomah County Circuit Court judge in Portland, Nelson has served as president of the Multnomah Bar Foundation and president of the Oregon State Bar Foundation Board. “Reed’s reputation as a premier liberal arts college gives all of its graduates a value added education that serves as a solid foundation to begin a career or further one’s postgraduate education,” says Nelson. After coming to Oregon in 1994, she worked for Standard Insurance Company as a public defender and as senior attorney for Student Legal and Mediation Services at Portland State University. Nelson holds a BA in English and criminal justice from the University of Arkansas and a JD from the University of Texas Law School. She was recognized as one of the 100 most powerful women by the Northwest Women’s Journal. Gary E. Rieschel ’79 began his second appointment to Reed’s board of trustees in February. He is founder and managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners, a
leading venture capital firm in China with over a billion dollars under management. He has founded multiple firms in the U.S. and China, including Softbank Venture Capital, Mobius Venture Capital, and Saif Partners, and was a senior executive in the high tech sector at Cisco Systems, Sequent Computer, and Intel before becoming a venture capitalist. “Access to [technology] is as necessary for success to an individual and society in the 21st century as access to electricity and water were in the 20th century,” says Rieschel. “But access by itself won’t be enough. How individuals and societies manage the disruption to education, government, media, and social interactions that technology causes will be critical to success as well.” Rieschel holds a BA from Reed in biology and an MBA from Harvard. Final Stanza We were sad to learn of the death of poet Vern Rutsala ’56 on April 2, at the age of 80. Vern won the C.E.S. Wood Distinguished Writer Award at the Oregon Book Awards in March, in recognition of his enduring literary career as poet and teacher at Lewis & Clark College. His poetry collection The Moment’s Equation made him a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006. He was reported to have been in poor health for some time. Look for a tribute to Vern in the September issue of Reed.
June 2014 Reed magazine
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Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe
From the Alumni Prez
As most of you will already be aware, Reed is currently engaging in a strategic planning process. More or less coincidentally, the alumni association has been doing something similar. Our long-range vision, as described in the strategic plan for 2012–22, includes the goals to “provide leadership development opportunities in areas such as governance, strategic planning, and fundraising; and encourage and support efforts to develop new and creative ways to engage alumni in the life of the college.” Unfortunately, in looking into various historical practices, we realized that some of our formal policies and procedures serve to hinder, rather than help, our goals. For example, the committee and chapter structure as written into the constitution is quite limiting. The constitution recognizes only one committee (Reunions), and does not provide for any means of formally recognizing new standing committees, nor any means of associating with groups that are not formally committees of the alumni association. As new groups of alumni begin to work with college in new activities, it would be good for the alumni association to have a way to recognize and coordinate with these groups, even if some of those groups might remain independent of our formal structure. Things like Alumni Fundraising for Reed, Working Weekend, and the outreach committee’s recent work with admission show that alumni can provide a valuable contribution to the college, but some sort of structure is required in order to build a stable, ongoing process. Relating more purely with alumni, the structure of alumni association chapters has worked
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well for some years, but some have noticed limitations, in that the constitution states that chapters must be local organizations. Given the spread of networking and ease of travel, we are now finding communities that organize themselves on the basis of interest rather than geography, and may have members spread all across the country, or even the world. It might similarly be good to create a way for such communities of interest to be recognized by the alumni association. Finally, in a more procedural area, our nominations process is extremely cumbersome. It requires a great deal of work by the nominations committee and the nominees very early in the process, followed by a long empty downtime between nomination and finally taking office. While there certainly needs to be some waiting period sufficient to enable the possibility of challenges to the slate proposed by the nominations committee, the current procedures, requiring almost a full year between nomination and appointment, seem somewhat excessive. In recent years both the number and quality of candidates have increased tremendously, and it is something of a waste to set our volunteers aside for so long a time. In this area also, given the improvements in communication over the last 20 years, it seems that we could produce something more streamlined while retaining the ability of members to challenge candidates. For these reasons, the alumni board of directors has formed an ad hoc policies and procedures committee. This committee, chaired by Kristen Earl ’05, board secretary, will consider and propose changes to our bylaws and constitution to align them with the vision and goals we have adopted. Changes to the constitution require the consent of the alumni association as a whole, so be aware that proposals will be coming forward in the future. We also welcome comment from the alumni association as a whole. The current board guidebook is available from the alumni board website (www.reed.edu/alumni/board_of_alumni), where you can also find the strategic plan and the current constitution and bylaws. If you do have advice, please contact me (reedie@byshenk.net), or any members of the alumni board. —Greg Byshenk ’89
Win a King’s Ransom Have you ever wanted to study at Cambridge? In 1995, John Sperling ’48, founder of the University of Phoenix, established a fund at Cambridge University to support a scholarship for Reed alumni to pursue doctoral studies at King’s College. Sperling’s gift of over £700,000 has so far supported eleven Reedies at King’s College. Reed is now seeking two new recipients to begin doctoral studies at Cambridge in 2015. All Reed graduates since 1995 are eligible to apply for the Sperling Studentship through Reed’s committee on fellowships and awards. The nominees must also apply directly to their chosen doctoral programs at Cambridge. Applications are considered in all fields except medicine. Students are expected to work closely with tutors and to move quickly into their own independent research. Most of the programs require a master’s degree for admission. As it is difficult to be admitted to Cambridge without the explicit endorsement of a potential adviser, applicants are encouraged to make contact with the department that interests them. Applications are due by noon PST, November 20, 2014. For more information, search for “sperling” at www.reed.edu or email Michelle Johnson, fellowships adviser at Reed, at johnsonm@reed.edu.
Plan of Attack After a year of examining fundamental issues facing the college, Reed’s strategic plan is coming into focus. Planning committees have delivered a series of reports to inform a faculty, staff, student, and trustee planning meeting in June. In addition to 11 on-campus planning groups that included faculty, staff, students, and trustees, the planning process convened on-campus focus groups for alumni, parents, and staff and an alumni and parent advisory advisory group known as Strategic Planning Partners. The college also conducted an alumni survey, which was filled out by 3,174 alumni (that’s you). Check out progress reports at www.reed.edu/strategicplanning. What ME Worry? Dept.
The Birth Of Mad Magazine Nearly two dozen Reedies and friends came together in March to learn about the Great Comic-Book Scare of the ’50s and how it led to the birth of the inimitable Mad magazine, that irreverent and zany publication that is still going strong after more than 60 years. Descending on the home of Mad collector Bennett Barsk ’82 in Alexandria, Virginia, the D.C.–area denizens discovered the links among psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, PhD chemist Bill Gaines, Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, composer Irving Berlin, and the U.S. Supreme Court. They saw pristine examples of early issues, as well as books, art, collectibles, and a large number of downright oddities. Mad’s unique place in American life stems from a national bout of hysteria in the ’40s and ’50s that blamed juvenile delinquency on comic books. Schools, libraries, and the American Legion organized comic-book burnings in an effort to cleanse the young and impressionable minds of the day. Two Senate investigations ultimately led to numerous state bans of particular comic-book titles, as well as
the creation of the Comics Code (a restrictive set of censorship guidelines for comics). Bill Gaines, the publisher of a number of horror, terror, and crime comics, along with a humor comic called Mad, decided to give in to the popular sentiment, abandon all of his titles, and change Mad from a comic book into a magazine, thereby averting the censors altogether. A SPITEFUL GRATEFUL nation has been CURSING THANKING him ever since. [Did Alfred E. Neuman hack into the system?—Ed.] Guests included Walt Mackem ’61, David Adler ’ 63, Paul Sikora ’70, Leslie Overstreet ’71, Paul Levy ’72 and his wife, Nancy Huvendick, James Haley ’78, Juliet Wurr ’80, Randy Hardee ’80, Randy’s son Eric (potential ’18; he’s been accepted!), Mark Srere ’81, Jimmy Falkner ’82, Kelly Falkner ’83, Eric Wallace ’96, Margaret Anderson ’05, Nisma Elias ’12, Tristan Roberts ’12, Brian Moore ’13, Sandesh Adhikary ’15 (wearing a way cool Alfred E. Neuman Mad t-shirt from Nepal, which Bennett is trying to get his hands on), and friends of Reed, Anders Lundegard and Bob Pennington (both hailing from Northwestern).—Bennett Barsk ’82
Fallen Angels
Chandler, master of hardboiled heartache.
It started with drinks and ended in a quadruple murder. And along the way there were tantalizing plot twists and devious turns—from visits to an old flophouse to a favorite watering hole. The 30 alumni and friends who participated in our Raymond Chandler noir weekend in Los Angeles learned how the physical spaces of ’40s L.A. shaped his world and factored into his fiction. And to cap things off, we saw the inner workings of a crime lab, replete with blood splatter analysis and a retracing of a real homicide investigation. As Chandler once wrote, “a good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.”—Anna Mann
June 2014 Reed magazine 11
Life Beyond Reed
This month, we introduce a recurring series on alumni careers. Our goal is to explore how the liberal arts interact with the job market, help students connect the dots between their studies and their future, and prompt readers—that's you—to join the Reed Career Network. For more, check out www.reed.edu/beyond-reed.
Kendall Taggart ’09
Data reporter, Center for Investigative Reporting, San Francisco
Taggart crunches numbers for a living, but she’s not an accountant, engineer, or mathematician. She's a journalist—a “data reporter” working on hard-hitting investigations for the Center for Investigative Reporting. The nonprofit, nonpartisan center produces watchdog journalism that is in short supply nowadays. Taggart is particularly proud of a recent exposé on the exploitative business practices of unscrupulous charities. She spent a year creating a vast database, conducting interviews, and cowriting the award-winning series. (See cironline .org/americasworstcharities.) After Reed, Taggart waited tables in her hometown and worked as an intern before moving to the Bay Area. She knocked on doors until she got a temp job at CIR in 2010, and she has stayed ever since. “Maybe it’s the Reedie in me,” she says, “but I knew I wanted to be the kind of journalist who was into researching and digging into documents and data.” Senior Thesis/Adviser: "Torture: The Social Logics of
the Exception in the War on Terror." Prof. S. Tahir H. Naqvi [anthropology] Why Reed: I visited Reed the
first day of Renn Fayre, and I walked out of a dorm room at 8 a.m. to see six naked people painted in blue. I thought that was pretty exciting. I also liked that Reedies had a genuine curiosity for everything interesting. No matter the hour of the day, you could have this rigorous intellectual conversation with anyone and everyone; there was never a time when you couldn’t dork out.
Childhood career aspirations:
I wanted to be a cat at one point, but I don’t think that was a career goal. Maybe a spy. I liked Harriet the Spy and was always writing in notebooks. I remember sitting in my friend’s tree house, diligently noting everything the neighbors were doing. Why journalism: I got a good hunch of what I wanted to do with my career during my sophomore year at Reed, when my idea of a perfect Friday night was sitting in the bathtub and listening to On the Media on NPR. And then on Sunday waking up and devouring the New York Times before doing anything else. Whenever I got to do both those things, I considered my weekend a success. Why journalism matters:
Government agencies and corporations and advocacy groups are constantly putting out numbers to justify their positions and their claims about what’s going in on the world. Reporters need bigger and better data skills to make sure those numbers aren’t a lie, and to hold them accountable. Best part of my job: It’s pretty
unusual to get paid to do something that’s genuinely interesting, and that also makes democracy work better. Worst part of my job: Can I get back to you if I come up with something?
Luke Kanies ’96
CEO, Puppet Labs, Portland
Kanies quit a corporate job with a six-figure income to start his own software company because, he admits, “I don’t make a very good employee.” He struck out on his own in 2005 and founded Puppet Labs, which makes open-source software to manage data networks. He and his wife, Cindy Ellis Kanies ’97,went through some tough years in the beginning, but Kanies built his company from a struggling startup to one of the fastest-growing tech companies in Oregon, with an up-and-coming reputation on the national scene. As Puppet Labs’ CEO, Kanies takes pride in shaping its maverick culture—a reflection of his own experience at Reed. “I think of myself as a corporate antigen,” he says. “I believe you should be able to walk into a company and speak your mind openly, and say, ‘This is how things should be different.’” Not surprisingly, Reedies make up 5% of Puppet Labs’ 270 employees—not bad for a college without an engineering school. Thesis/Adviser: "Attempts at
Radical Change in Cytosolic Soy Ascorbate Peroxidase." Prof. David Dalton [chemistry] Why Reed: I eliminated all
schools with fraternities, sororities, or organized sports. Then I looked for the best school that was as far away as possible from Tennessee. While looking at Reed, I learned about the Guerrilla Theatre of the Absurd, and how when Dan Quayle came to town to speak they ingested red, white, and blue mashed potatoes and vomited them up. I thought, that’s the school for me. Why everything I needed to know I learned playing pool: I like to say I minored
in pool at Reed. There’s a strong correlation between programming and the things it takes to succeed at pool in terms of focus and practice, and not necessarily playing to win, but playing to figure out how to win. The game isn’t necessarily about winning tournaments or making specific shots, but about becoming a better pool player.
What makes a successful entrepreneur: Perseverance.
Every entrepreneur gets smashed in the mouth; every entrepreneur fails painfully and miserably. What great entrepreneurs have in common is that they can screw everything up, then pick themselves up from the ground, brush off their pants, and get back to work. Worst thing about my job:
I spend nearly all day working with other people to help them accomplish things, rather than getting to directly do things myself. Best thing about my job: I’ve built a machine out of great people who are doing good and interesting and, you know, pseudo-important work. Advice to the class of ’14: You don’t know anything about anything. Your job now is to figure out how you can be useful to society, and that can take a while. Just remember, you’re going to screw up anyway, so be more concerned with how you’re going to react to screwing up then about getting everything right the first time.
President’s Summer Fellowship 2014 Winners Photos by Christopher Onstott
What if you could devote a whole summer to a project you had designed—a project that combines intellectual pursuit, imagination, adventure, personal transformation, and service to the greater good? The President’s Summer Fellowship offers students a chance to do just that. Inaugurated by President John R. Kroger, with generous support from trustee Dan Greenberg ’62 and his wife, Susan Steinhauser, the fellowship attracted scores of creative proposals this year. From a competitive field, the fellowship committee has selected eight outstanding projects for the summer of 2014.
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Harvesting Energy from Fluids Nicholas Irvin ’15, physics
As we search for alternatives to fossil fuels, wind and water roar around us with untapped energy. Unfortunately, scientists do not understand fluids as well as they understand solids or gases; thus, we cannot fully harness the energy of fluids until we better understand their flow. I will investigate this problem at the Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory in Minneapolis, Minnesota, using the laboratory’s cutting-edge facilities to examine the fluid dynamics of waves and wind; I will then use this research to brainstorm innovative designs to generate energy. Afterwards, I will put together a short curriculum that teaches Portland students about the possibilities of clean energy, shows them how researchers use the scientific method, and gets them excited about what they can do with their education.
maddy wagar ’16
Robert Swinhoe: Consul and Naturalist
Migrant Memories: Stories of the Eritrean Exodus
John Young ’15, history
Winta Yohannes ’15, psychology
Scientific knowledge is never produced in a vacuum. The history of science is replete with examples of how the particular conditions (social, political, economic, etc.) of a particular place and time make possible and constrain both the kind of scientific knowledge and the way in which that knowledge is produced. While riffling through the voluminous work of the influential 19th-century naturalist Robert Swinhoe, one might never suspect that Swinhoe was also a member of the British diplomatic corps in China and Taiwan. So to better understand the scientific work of Swinhoe the celebrated ornithologist, I want to better understand Swinhoe the consul, the historical actor shaped by British imperialism. To do that, I need to retrieve Swinhoe’s consular records from the London National Archives. Then I will pore over the documents, analyzing them closely and adding my findings to a study of Swinhoe’s natural history that I began last summer.
Every month, thousands of refugees flee Eritrea to escape severe political and civil oppression, which includes extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, and indefinite detention. Many of them head north to Libya, where Italy’s seemingly accessible coast entices them across the Mediterranean Sea. Yet last year, Italian fishermen, afraid of being prosecuted for aiding illegal immigrants, watched as over 300 Eritreans drowned less than a kilometer away from shore after their boat caught fire and capsized. This summer, I will make a film about this tragedy and the plight of the Eritrean refugees in general. I will interview Eritrean refugees in Uganda, Italy, and the United States. Being an Eritrean immigrant myself, I will explore the diaspora within my own family and demonstrate how film can be a medium for promoting social justice. I have created a partnership with the Center for Intercultural Organizing, which will help me produce my film and share it with the Portland community.
Bluegrass and Community in Modern Appalachia Katie Halloran ’15, biology
Bluegrass is a complex art form, both musically and socially. Because bluegrass draws from so many different influences, it transcends social boundaries like age and class and brings together people from radically different backgrounds. I’ll spend the summer in Asheville, North Carolina, learning about bluegrass music and the community that forms around it. I’ll play with as many people as possible, making connections and trying to figure out how and why playing music creates a community. Through this work, I hope to improve as a mandolin player, gain the skills necessary to support a bluegrass jam at Reed, and ultimately learn more about building community in general.
June 2014 Reed magazine 15
feature
Campus within Walls Photojournalism Project Maddy Wagar ’16, psychology
I believe that every person has a story—and also has a right to tell that story and be heard. Prisoners in our society tend to be dehumanized and cast aside, effectively silenced as a result of being judged based upon their criminal history. Through a photojournalism project, I intend to create the space for prisoners to share their stories, and be recognized for their full and complex humanity. I will focus on a population of prisoners working toward self- and life-improvement at the Campus within Walls college program located at the Lunenburg Correctional Center in Virginia. The Campus within Walls program serves around 90 inmates on track for release, and provides an accredited four-year college degree to dedicated students. I hope my project will empower these individuals and illuminate the benefits of a rehabilitative approach in our prison system.
Badminton Odyssey Chris Stasse ’16, history
The sport of badminton, while given little attention in the U.S., is one of the most popular sports in China; indeed, the Chinese dominate international badminton competition. But like any sport, badminton in China does not merely showcase a drama of physical achievement; rather, it carries huge cultural and political import. The idea behind this project is to explore firsthand the pedagogical approach the Chinese government has taken to training its top players and how badminton has become a cornerstone of Chinese national pride. I will travel to China, visit badminton clubs and training centers, interview rising players, and play and train with the people I meet there. As a lifelong lover of the sport, I am eager to hone my racquet skills in addition to broadening my understanding of Chinese language and culture. I hope to return with insights and experience to expand the Reed Badminton Club and continue coaching at the Portland Badminton Club.
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The Pots and Potters of Old Thimi Briana Foley ’15, religion
Ceramic pots occupy a central position in the rituals and traditions of the indigenous Newa culture in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. Unfortunately, traditional earthenware is being increasingly displaced by mass-produced plastic. I’m going to spend the summer in Old Thimi, a small community in Kathmandu, to live among the traditional potters and farmers known as Prajapati. I’ll interview the potters, document their techniques, catalogue and photograph their traditional pots, and learn how to throw them myself.
“ I believe that every person has a story—and also has a right to tell that story and be heard.” —Maddy Wagar ’16
D E E R
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h t i w l e rav
4 and beyond 1 0 2 n i
maddy wagar ’16
"The tour was like a rolling Hum conference by day, a late night bull session at the Lutz by night. In other words, just the perfect Reedie outing." ―John Sheehy ’82
Green Molecules and Green Chemistry Labs Johnny Mendoza ’15, biochemistry
Classroom chemistry is notoriously wasteful. At Reed, for example, students in Chem 201 conduct a synthesis that requires 900 pounds of reagents to produce 1 pound of the end product, acetylferrocene—and this ratio is typical of many syntheses requiring high-purity products. This summer I’ll work in the classroom/lab of Reed alumna Julia Robinson-Surry ’06, at Bard High School Early College Queens in New York City, where we’ll construct environmentally conscious organic chemistry experiments for her early-college students. If all goes well, we’ll submit our findings to the Journal of Chemical Education. I will also learn about and synthesize analogues of a group of oxidation catalysts known as Fe-TAMLs, which have enormous potential for neutralizing toxic pollutants. The goal of this project is to get me thinking like a green chemist, while giving other aspiring chemists the opportunity to do the same.
Oaxaca ∙ Verona ∙ D C ∙ the Sierras Curaçao ∙ Normandy ∙ Greece ∙ P uerto Rico Check out our alumni travel opportunities at www.reed.edu/alumni/travel
The Long Run Why would a Reed history major run 50 miles?
By John Young ’15
It’s not about the time on the stopwatch. It’s not about some kind of pleasure in pain. It’s not about the medals or the bragging rights. And it’s certainly not about the carbohydrate gel. It’s about The Challenge. About turning yourself inside out and really seeing what you’re made of. That’s Reed College. Most everyone here tackles The Challenge in their own way. Running is only one way. Shoot, it’s only one of my ways. I spend more time doing work for each of my classes than I spend running. Transnational water appropriation treaties and the civilizing discourses of 19th century British bogland reclamation
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projects, however, don’t always make for the most exciting magazine articles. On April 5, I ran the American River Ultramarathon—50 miles of downright oldfashioned fun. That is, the chasing down the antelope and running away from the sabertooth tiger kind of old fashioned. The course was beautiful—mile upon mile of paved bike paths, gravel roads, and singletrack trails. Bookstore manager Ueli Stadler and I ran together and we kept a fairly constant pace for the first 30 miles. In a pre-race strategy session the night before we agreed 1) that we had ordered too much vegetable chow-mein and 2) that we should start the venture off at a conservative 9:00/mile pace.
In a 50-mile race it is essential that you start slow. Push yourself too hard in the first half and you may never finish the second. We managed to stick to our strategy for the most part, although we did speed up a couple of times at the beginning—once, enraptured by the energy and beauty of the event, Ueli and I accidentally fell into a comfortably casual 7:40/mile pace. [A blistering speed!—Ed] After pacing, the next essential is fuel. In our training, Ueli and I had made downtempo running analogous to walking for our bodies. Put another way: the average person could probably walk for 9 hours. All we did in our training was to raise the physiological baseline so that we could run for 9
m at t d ’a n n u n z i o
tempt the suppressed and repressed appetite of the advanced pedestrians: sweet and salty. Fortunately I managed to keep my body fueled but personally—after 9 hours of the sweet stuff—I felt like puking rainbows. I didn’t want to even look at anything sugary for several days afterward. Running with Ueli was an absolute pleasure. The race would not have been nearly as meaningful without him. We had spent
three evenings per week and did calisthenics three mornings per week. That is my favorite part about The Challenge—conditioning. I learned how to condition for The Challenge from the legendary Prof. Douglas Fix [history 1990–]. “Coach” Doug. Gee whiz, I bet he has no idea. Prof. Fix lit a fire under my ass my sophomore year. In his Chinese Humanities course, I picked up a sorely needed measure of dili-
I would never have guessed that working to be a better Reedie would turn me into a better runner.
hours—if we chose to. The limiting factor became not muscular fatigue but the availability of caloric surplus. The average human body has enough glycogen to go about 20 miles, so we had to eat on the run to fuel the rest. The aid stations, strategically placed every 4–5 miles, were like oases in the desert flowing with milk and honey. We ate baked potatoes, PB+Js, bananas, apples, pears, energy gels, Gatorade, soup, M&Ms, Oreos, Pretzels, Coke, Sprite, etc. etc. M&Ms? Oreos? Soda? I never eat that stuff in my regular life. But simple sugars are simple sugars. As distance runners well know, running can suppress the appetite during and for a time after a run. The aid station foods, then, are carefully chosen to
time training together and had bonded in ways that can perhaps only form over the shared 20-mile runs around Portland, rain or rain, weekend after weekend, month after month. Per our pre-race agreement, we maintained a stoic silence for the most part, though we couldn’t help but crack up somewhere around Mile 13 when a woman shouted, “You’re almost there!” We traded off pacing one another and stuck together for the first eight hours. Then Ueli, suddenly filled with a third or perhaps fourth or even fifth wind, put the hammer down somewhere around Mile 44. When I put my own foot on the gas nothing happened. I have a lot of experience with that particular phenomenon—my family drives a Geo Metro. I was the youngest person to complete the race this year, finishing in 8:54:52, six minutes behind Ueli, who is surely Reed’s very own Odysseus. We got a lot of recognition in our Reed swag. Some were impressed that Reed had produced “athletes,” and “jocks.” Others wondered how we found time to train when we had so much studying to do in the trees whilst naked. The toughest part of the course comes at Mile 47. Known as the “Damn Wall,” it’s a heart-wrenching 1200-foot climb that stretches for 2.5 miles. As I ran up the Damn Wall the former race director was kind enough to ride alongside me on his bicycle and keep me company until I reached the Damn Top. Eying my shirt, he said, “Stay in school!” I assured him that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I trained for this race for 22 weeks. In that time I ran 1179 miles. I also cycled
gence and discipline. As many of my peers can attest, Doug has the (terrifying) ability to inspire a thirst for The Challenge. Thus parched, I endeavor to apply his ethos not only to my coursework but also to my job at SEEDS and my ultracurricular pursuits. I would have never guessed that working to be a better Reedie would turn me into a better runner, or even a “runner” at all. I never participated in high-school athletics. Interestingly, counter-intuitively, and maybe even paradoxically, I wonder if it is only at a place like Reed where the bygone spirit of collegiate amateurism can still thrive. What next? Right after the race, I took a few days off. Then I did a few weeks of recovery training— basically a kinder, gentler version of my ultramarathon training. On May 5th I began training to run the Portland Marathon for the third consecutive year. The race is in October and I hope to break the 3:00 mark this time. I’m still unsure about next spring. I have agreed to run Boston with a friend if he qualifies. If not, then I will probably train for the Great Divide Mountain Bike race, a continuous clock, self-supported mountain bike trek from Canada to Mexico by way of the Rocky Mountains. In any event, I’m sure I’ll find something to complement the life of the mind during my senior year. Until then, I’m busy training for the next big challenge—writing my thesis. EDITOR’S NOTE: John and Ueli both completed the American River Ultramarathon on April 5, thereby becoming, as far as we know, the first Reed team to run in a 50-mile race. John recently won a President’s Summer Fellowship to investigate influential British ornithologist Robert Swinhoe [1836-77]. See page 15.
June 2014 Reed magazine 19
Cliff Hanger
Who built that amazing house? A Reedie, of course.
photos: Trevor Tondro / The New York Times
By Randall S. Barton
It appears to have been set down on a freeway viaduct by a funnel cloud. Built in the Brutalist style, the house looms 70 feet above Sunset Boulevard, the cynosure of LA cool. Constructed largely of concrete and wood, it is nonetheless a magnet for architectural junkies and Hollywood tour buses. Everyone from the New York Times to passing motorists wants to know: what’s the story? Robert Bridges ’74 designed and, with the help of two other guys, spent six years building this house. He poured runnels of concrete, built the furniture, and in 1991 took occupancy with his wife and three sons. “Brutalism is an unfortunate architectural term,” Robert says. “It has to do with a kind of naked expression of structure. After the two world wars, through modernism there was a desire to remove adornment and express structure. Brutalism was a style along that path.” The house appears to float on the horizon, but is anchored by 68 driven steel pilings, each 13-inches in diameter. Barring force majeure, it’s not going anywhere. A Los Angeles native, Robert studied at Columbia University before transferring to Reed. The early ’70s were an exciting time at Reed: Steve Jobs was on campus, classes were small, and the environment was conducive to serious scholarship. Robert enjoyed classes with Prof. T.C. Zimmerman [history 1964–77] and Prof. Owen Ulph [history 1944-–79]. He majored in American studies and wrote his thesis on land-use planning with Prof. John Stryker [political science 1972–76]. He also had fun playing handball with Prof. Jerry Rosenblum [art 1970–74], who kindled a latent interest in fine art. By the time he graduated, however, the devastating effects of the OPEC oil embargo were rippling through the economy. “It was a very desperate time,” he remembers. “There were no Wall Street jobs, venture capital positions or teaching positions. My job opportunities were doing construction on the Alaska Pipeline or working in the fish hatchery on the Columbia River. It was a very different world. But I survived and am proud of what I’ve accomplished.” While at Reed, Robert discovered a talent for building and selling homes. A house he
Robert Bridges at his home in Los Angeles. Built on concrete columns and cantilevered over the hillside, Bridges’ brutalist home has become a Sunset Boulevard landmark.
purchased, remodeled, and lived in as a student, sold for twice what he had paid when he graduated. From then on, he kept a hand in building and real estate. After obtaining a degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, he began designing homes for clients. But he realized that his business required more knowledge of finance, which was a field that interested him. He got a master’s of real estate development from the University of Southern California and now teaches real estate finance in both the graduate and undergraduate programs at USC’s Marshall School of Business. As a consultant, Robert specializes in real estate feasibility studies for large development projects. “I’ll look at a site and make recommendations about its highest and best use,” he says. “It involves architecture and finance, and is a synthesis of everything I’ve already done.” As someone who’s journeyed down many paths in higher education, he can argue persuasively for both liberal arts and preprofessional degrees. “The preprofessional degree doesn’t do a real good job of educating people,” he says, “but we place kids in jobs that sometimes pay in excess of $100,000. We do a really good job of preparing kids to go out and be productive, creating products and services—the
material things that society needs.” On the other hand, there is lasting value to a liberal arts education. “The humanities allow us to assume our place in the continuum of history and understand the experience of our predecessors in the broadest possible way,” Robert says. “Man has been on earth too long for us to think that we are unique, that others coming before us haven’t had some of the same thoughts, ideas, feelings, and inspirations. We stand on the shoulder of others rather than reinvent the wheel constantly.” A perfect world, he says, would enable a student to combine the liberal arts experience with a graduate degree, though it is an elitist model not all can afford. “It harkens back to the ancient concept of what a baccalaureate degree is,” Robert explains. “The term bachelor means you’re not wedded to a particular discipline. The master’s degree is where one gains mastery in a particular field, and a doctoral degree means that you administer to the educational needs of your practice.” One might take issue with Robert’s opinions of preprofessional versus the liberal arts, but as his house is built of concrete, he can safely throw stones.
June 2014 Reed magazine 21
Poet || Artist Jim Haba ’62 is equally at home on the blank page and the blank canvas. By laurie Lindquist
You could say that Jim Haba is a man of many words. An established poet, professor of English and world literature, and founding director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival—the nation’s largest poetry event—he has earned national recognition for his literary work. Recently, however, we were surprised to learn that while directing the festival, the Dodge Poetry-in-the-Schools Program (1986–2008), and teaching at Glassboro/ Rowan University (1972–2003), Jim sustained a “parallel life” as a visual artist. Poetry was Jim’s first love, but he wrote very little during his time at Reed, with the exception of work done for a class with Prof. Ken Hanson [1954–86]. And though he and classmate Larry McKenzie served as 1962 coeditors of the Reed literary magazine Ursus, he did not publish any of his own work. At both Rutgers University, where he taught English (1966–72) and at Glassboro/ Rowan, he supported poetry by arranging readings and workshops by accomplished poets, “which finally led in 1975 to finding ways to write my own poems,” he says. Over the next decade, Jim won several poetry prizes and was awarded the New Jersey State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry in 1985.
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A year later, he directed the first Dodge Poetry Festival, “knowing that the scale of the project would almost certainly require that my own work take a back seat.” But the writing continued, scaled down to a handful of pieces per year for two decades, while the festival blossomed into a major cultural event, earning him the 2000 Betty Kray Award from Poets House for service to the field of poetry and the 2011 Paterson Literary Review Award for lifetime service to literature. In 2006, Jim designed and printed two chapbooks of his own work, 31 Poems and Love Poems. “I am happy with my poems, would be lonely without them, and regard them as natural complements to my paintings.” His study of studio art began at Douglass College, while he was teaching at Rutgers and had completed a PhD in English from Cornell University. In 1968–70, he studied drawing and sculpture in evening and summer classes at the Studio School in New York City, and in 1975, he mounted his first solo show of paintings in Princeton. Sharing a studio with his wife, Erica Barton Haba, a tile muralist, he designed and produced his own ceramic tile murals in 1984–2004, commissioned and sold through major tile stores in Boston and New York City. “My tile mural
designs derived from earlier work with black and white paper cutouts and these designs always featured pure colors on a white background, or the reverse.” In the mid-’90s, he began experimenting with larger collages on painted paper, incorporating an increasingly broad range of colors and featuring “lots of application texture.” Papers were cut, assembled, and glued together to form each painting. These preliminary collages formed the basis of a body of work that continues to evolve and mature. Last summer, Jim and Erica mounted two shows of paintings—the first at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, and the second at Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art in Newark. In December 2013, he finished a new series of 10 large paintings, Music/Dance. Jim says that he is grateful to Reed for deepening his experience of intellectual rigor and contributing to his growing awareness of history and context. “Significant contributions to anyone’s maturation,” he says, though he also yearned for something less rational and more rooted in imagination during those years. “Having come to Reed intent on acquiring what I knew it had to offer, and after largely succeeding in that acquisition, I still found that only after I had obtained the PhD, our standard intellectual credential, could
photo by robin damstra salant | cut outs by jim haba
I finally begin to allow myself to discover what that ‘something else’ I had yearned for might be. Only then could I start to fill out the life that has subsequently brought me some fortunate success and much personal gratification. “I have happily followed the development of the broader and more stimulating artmaking culture that seems such a part of Reed’s current campus life and often wonder how I might have been able to benefit from such imaginative richness during my own student days.” Go Further
View the full scope of Jim’s work at www.jimhaba.com.
Listen, Friends We live like barnacles clinging to rocks swept night and day by tides of love. Let’s not waste time asking if war is ever good. With each flood curiosity, desire, ecstatic action. With each ebb suspicion, dread, armored solitude. What stands between us and what we want? What could we want except to live as love, fluid and in motion, unafraid and eternal? Listen, Friends, this drunkenness needs no wine. When did we last kiss as if it were our last kiss?
Coming Home As I cross the Outerbridge and angle north, smoothly passing back into New Jersey, with the low sun filling the sky on my left, and a thin, flat cowboy’s song on the radio, I think again of Homer and of Helen, so beautiful that he describes her only as “shining,” his way of talking about God; strange divinity indeed. An empty vessel, and in the emptiness value itself, and also utter shame, utter worthlessness: Helen, the natural and permanent queen, Helen, the hopeless slut. And how Homer loved her! Seeing her beauty, her emptiness, her despair, and his love, I also see that this road under my wheels is holy, that the cement divider curving beautifully beside me is holy, conceived and built with such care, the ordered line of bright green rebar arches successively covered by the single steel form, all the hands at work, the bodies applied, the minds dedicated, sighting, measuring, adjusting, all full now of western light in which I see that the steering wheel is holy, that the voice on the radio is holy, and my own hands, holy. I could be losing my mind or maybe my mind is just breaking free but I believe I am driving into the space between my ideas and nothing I ever did in my life has been this easy.
june 2014 Reed magazine 23
Stroke of Genius Producer Farley Ziegler ’84 makes a documentary about one man’s quest to unlock the artistic secrets of Johannes Vermeer.
By Laurie Lindquist
The luminescent quality of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings has astonished viewers for 350 years. How did he achieve such incredible photorealism a century and a half before photography was invented? That’s the question that drives the film Tim’s Vermeer, released this spring by Sony Pictures Classics and a high point of the 37th Portland International Film Festival. The documentary focuses on a Texas inventor named Tim Jenison who is obsessed with figuring out—and duplicating—Vermeer’s secret techniques. The film has received numerous nominations and awards, including a 2014 BAFTA nomination for best documentary. For Farley Ziegler ’84, who produced the film in collaboration with the magical duo Penn and Teller, the project represents the consummate synthesis of art and science. Jenison’s understanding of Renaissance artistic techniques—primarily the camera
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obscura—stemmed from David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters and Philip Steadman’s Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces. But many details about Vermeer’s particular methods and his life (1632–75) in Delft remained elusive. Led by insatiable curiosity, Jenison proposed an experiment: if Vermeer achieved the exceptional quality of light and dimension that distinguishes his work by utilizing a machine, could a nonpainter employ the same technique and replicate a Vermeer? Although Jenison had never held a paintbrush, he undertook the challenge. It was a “journey into obsession no one was prepared for,” says Ziegler. Through incremental stages, characterized by both failure and breakthrough, Jenison explored his hypothesis and transformed his theory. His obsession drove him to the point of physical and mental exhaustion, but he refused to give up until he had an answer—an unexpected
discovery that defies the conventional wisdom about Vermeer. Ziegler found a “wonderful boldness” in Jenison, who, being neither a painter nor an art historian, was able to view Vermeer’s work through a unique lens. “That he looked at the paintings differently, and, as a consequence, that they yielded different information, is so compelling!” It’s easy to stop looking and to stop asking questions when something seems apparent, Ziegler says. “Rigorous inquiry and the desire to challenge accepted modes of thought, rather than taking things at face value, track very closely with what I learned at Reed, or, more accurately, how I learned to learn at Reed.” Describing herself as an ardent fan of the humanities, Ziegler majored in English at Reed, working with adviser Prof. Gayle Pemberton [English 1983–84] and Prof. Rick Gray [German 1982–83] to write her thesis on “The Mysteries and Manners of Eudora Welty.” She also recalls favorably
kendrick brinson
Left: Farley at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles Above: The Music Lesson, also known as Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman, by Johannes Vermeer ca. 1662–65. In Farley’s film, Texas inventor Tim Jenison attempt to reproduce this image by reverseengineering Vermeer’s techniques.
the courses taught by Prof. Bill Lankford [English 1977–81], Prof. Robert Segal [religion & humanities 1975–81], and Prof. Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–]. A “late bloomer” in her undergraduate years, Ziegler possessed confidence, an appetite for learning, and an eagerness to participate fully in the classroom in courses she took later in life—first in New York, and later at the Getty Museum and with T.C. Boyle at the University of Southern California. “Much to my delight, my learning at Reed has turned out to be time-release.” Ziegler worked as a marketing manager for Institutional Investor, writing and overseeing production of the magazine’s commercial, marketing, and advertising materials. Living in New York City, she took classes in playwriting at Playwrights Horizons, and then applied to and was accepted into the graduate program at Columbia University. At the same time, she had fallen in love and moved to Paris with her then boyfriend. “I could
always go back to grad school later, whereas . . . Paris!” While overseas, she had the realization that in order to learn how to write, she simply needed to begin writing. “I did not need to go to school to do that.” From Paris, she moved to Los Angeles and began a career in film as an assistant to director David Fincher at Propaganda Films. She was story editor and creative executive for director Sean Penn at Clyde Is Hungry Films. With Christina Ricci, she created and ran the production company Blaspheme Films. Ziegler served as Production Executive at Single Cell Pictures, bringing Being John Malkovich to the screen; as a collaborator on the National Public Radio series Joe Frank: In the Dark; and as a producer, with Penn Jillette, of the documentary comedy The Aristocrats. During the seven months that it took Jenison to paint, Ziegler spoke with him every day through a video Skype feed. The intimate quality of the film comes directly from this communication. For the project,
Ziegler also worked as a videographer; traveled with Jenison and the crew to England, Holland, San Antonio, and Las Vegas; and played an integral role in the editing done with Patrick Sheffield and Penn and Teller as they created an 80-minute story from 2,400 hours of film. Though the project was initiated from the standpoint of science, the framework of the film is built on the human experience, says Ziegler. Jenison’s search to uncover a technique leads him into the presence of the artist who created it. It is a journey that will resonate with anyone who has engaged in and answered to the demands of intellectual pursuit. And for everyone there is an unexpected gift that results from viewing Tim’s Vermeer, Ziegler says. It is a surge of enthusiasm to follow one’s own passion—“and to never throw in the towel.” Go Further Learn more at sonyclassics.com/timsvermeer.
June 2014 Reed magazine 25
Keeping the Flame
Thirty years later, Arlene Blum ’66 scores key victory over flame-retardants—again. by William abernathy ’88
As you read this, you may well be sitting on some sort of cushion—a cushion in all likelihood filled with flame retardant chemicals. When you sat down, the cushion ejected an invisible cloud of organohalogens and organophosphates, some of which you have by now inhaled. But it’s no use holding your breath— if you’re like most Americans, you already have measurable quantities of flame retardants in your blood. The health effects of these chemicals are not fully understood. They can damage your endocrine system, interfere with your nerves, even—possibly—give you cancer. Maybe they’ll do nothing. Eventually, your body will get rid of them, and they’ll find their way to the ocean. Because they take years—even decades—to break down, they’ll bioaccumulate, working their way back up the food chain. Are you still sitting comfortably? Arlene Blum has waged a long campaign to scale back the load of flame retardants on people and the environment. In recent years, the battle has revolved around Technical Bulletin (TB) 117, a strict furniture flammability standard that requires all padded furniture sold in California to resist combustion when it comes into contact with an open flame. Despite its good intentions, TB 117 effectively meant that virtually every padded chair and couch in America was stuffed with flame retardants. Her long road to TB 117 should sound familiar to many Reedies. Coming to Reed from Chicago, she majored in chemistry, inspired in part by Prof. Jane Shell ’59 [1962–65]. She studied organic chemistry with Prof. Marsh Cronyn ’40 [1952– 89] and inorganic with Prof. Tom Dunne [1963-95]. Her thesis, written with Prof. Fred Ayres [1940–70], analyzed fumarole emissions from Mount Hood. This combined the two passions, both kindled at Reed, that would shape her life—chemistry and mountaineering. “We had one comfortable chair in our
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house,” recalls Reed roommate Sylvia Paull ’67, “and Arlene took possession of it... she’d read Agatha Christie mystery novels, nonstop, and she ate sweets.” “Friday night she’d disappear... and she’d go mountain climbing all weekend,” Paull says. “It was like a transformation. It looked like one of those ‘before and after’ diet ads. She’d come home Sunday night athletic, trim, glowing.” Attaining her chemistry doctorate from University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, Blum punctuated her research into the structure of RNA with increasingly hair-raising expeditions to far-off peaks. As a woman, she met fierce resistance in both disciplines, which she answered with quiet perseverance. “She’s very slow,” says Paull, “Incredibly slow. When I’ve been climbing with her, she’ll start two hours before anyone else even gets up. But she never stops.”
“ That’s how things should be. You do good science, and it changes policy.” After losing a climbing partner in a fall in the Himalayas, Blum vowed in 1975 to focus on “practical research that would have a direct positive impact on the world.” She began working in the lab of Berkeley chemist Bruce Ames, who urged her to research Tris— known to chemists as tris (2, 3,-dibromopropyl) phosphate—a flame retardant that was widely and heavily used in children’s pajamas. “We found a child who’d never worn Tristreated pajamas.” Blum says. “We had the child wear Tris-treated pajamas for one night, and we found Tris breakdown products in her urine.” “She looked at it,” Ames says of the chemical found in the child’s urine sample. “It was screamingly mutagenic.” What followed was a lead article Blum and Ames published in Science with the blunt subtitle, “The main flame retardant in children’s pajamas is a mutagen and should not be
used.” Three months later, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned Tris in children’s clothing. “That’s how things should be,” Blum says. “You do good science, and it changes policy.” This victory did not lessen the conflict she increasingly felt between the lab and the outdoors. In 1978, she led an all-woman ascent of 26,545-ft Annapurna I, the world’s 10thhighest peak, widely acknowledged as its deadliest. Though the expedition was a success, with two women summiting, two others died during a second summit attempt. Her research contributed to a 1979 ban on dibromochloropropane, an organohalide fumigant and nematocide that remains detectable in groundwater to this day. In 1980, she led another all-women’s expedition on the first ascent of India’s 22,217-foot Mount Bhrigupanth. The tension between adventures and halogenated hydrocarbons
ariel zambelich
In 1977, Arlene Blum’s research led to a ban on flame retardants in children’s pajamas. Thirty years later, she was floored to find the same chemicals in padded furniture.
came to a head that year with the election of Ronald Reagan, a president openly hostile to the regulations that gave her research teeth. She chose the outdoors. “I really regretted not having an academic career,” Blum says. “I was an assistant professor at Wellesley, and then I had a job at Berkeley, where I taught and did research, and I gave those both up.” She spent the next 26 years trekking, writing, and raising her daughter, but never lost her passion for chemistry. At a chemistry meeting in 2006, she encountered Bob Luedeka, director of the Polyurethane Foam Association. The foam industry had used a flame retardant called “Penta” (pentabrominated diphenyl ether) which was banned in 2005, due to its toxicity, persistence, and tendency to bioaccumulate. Chemical suppliers had assured Luedeka that Penta was safe— right until they withdrew it from the market.
When she asked what the foam manufacturers were using to replace Penta, his response floored her—Tris, the same chemical she’d gotten out of kids’ pajamas 30 years before. At Luedaka’s invitation, Blum dug out her ancient notes and delivered a stemwinder on flame retardants to a national meeting of polyurethane foam makers. This time, however, the flame-retardant industry fought back, unleashing a public relations campaign featuring sham consumer groups, scare videos, and hit pieces on Blum in industry magazines. Nonetheless, the weight of evidence began to tip the scales against the flame retardants. To aid this struggle, Blum founded the Green Science Policy Institute and recruited leading experts in toxicology and fire safety. Five bills on flame retardants were snuffed in the California legislature as flame-retardant lobbyists spent over $23 million to protect the dubiously effective, but highly profitable
TB 117. Repeatedly given 11th-hour reprieves, the flame-retardant rule was finally killed by the same executive who gave it life in 1975— Governor Jerry Brown. “Resistance to Arlene is futile,” chuckles Sylvia Paull. “I have learned that many a time.” Blum declines credit for the victory— she maintains that her only contribution has been to educate people—but her role is undeniable. While she is happy to see a new generation of home furnishings that won’t be pumped full of persistent organic pollutants, the flame-retardant manufacturers haven’t quit. They are now pushing to impose standards that would pump computer and electronic cases full of flame retardants. Outstaffed and outfunded, Blum seems unfazed. “Everything that I’ve worked on has seemed impossible,” she says, “and then we’ve succeeded.”
June 2014 Reed magazine 27
Behind the Curve Prof. Josh Howe explores the paradoxical history of global warming.
By Chris Lydgate ’90
In 1957, a young meteorologist named Charles Keeling placed instruments in California, Antarctica, and Hawaii to perform what was then considered an obscure measurement—the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. Since then, the Keeling Curve has become one of the most iconic images in the history of science. It represents seasonal undulations in the atmosphere as plants in the northern hemisphere absorb and release CO2. It represents global warming, industrialization, and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. It also represents a tragedy. That is the thesis of Prof. Josh Howe [environmental studies & history 2012–] in Behind the Curve, which examines the history of climate change from Keeling’s first tentative conclusions to President Obama’s second inaugural address. Stripped to its essentials, Howe’s
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argument is that the debate over global warming has become a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense. Because the warming is taking place over the course of decades, it cannot be readily detected by the ordinary person; for this reason, we must rely on scientific measurement and interpretation, which means we must rely on scientists. Unfortunately, scientists, by and large, are profoundly uneasy in their role as advocates. Instead, they typically call for more research to fill in the uncertainties, assuming that more information will automatically lead to rational decisionmaking—a belief Howe, quoting one of his historical actors, refers to as the “forcing function of knowledge.” Behind the Curve demonstrates convincingly that this faith is misplaced—after 50 years, we have more knowledge about the effects of CO2 on global warming than ever, yet the curve keeps climbing. Compounding the tragedy, however, he also shows that the insistence of scientists (and environmentalists)
m at t d ’a n n u n z i o
up the wrong tree,” he says. “I was really interested in political history.” Before long, he was poking around the filing cabinets of Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider, who encouraged him to investigate the history of global warming. The theory that industrialization—and its reliance on burning fossil fuels—might drive up the world’s temperature was first proposed in 1938 by a British steam engineer named Guy Callendar. But the first solid evidence didn’t emerge until 1957, when oceanographer Roger Revelle and physicist Hans Suess published a paper documenting an increase in atmospheric CO2. “Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future,” they concluded. Howe argues that the modern science of climatology was born in the Cold War, amid hysteria over Sputnik, anxiety about nuclear annihilation, and the possibility, both tantalizing and terrifying, that humans might learn how to control the weather. Page after page, Behind the Curve demonstrates the profound tension between sci-
straying from the doctrine of impartiality and nearly lost his job at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. As the evidence mounted for the catastrophic effects of global warming, some scientists made their warnings starker. In 1981, NASA scientist James Hansen published the results of a new atmospheric model (dubbed Model II) that predicted the effects of higher CO2 levels, including the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and a rise in the sea level of up to six meters—enough, as Hansen wrote, “to flood 25% of Florida and Louisiana, 10% of New Jersey, and many other lowlands throughout the world.” As head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen’s prestige was unimpeachable. But as a government scientist, he was also vulnerable—the Reagan Administration simply cut off his funding. Hansen’s predicament reflected a brutal dilemma. Simply stockpiling knowledge about global warming had little effect on the political sphere. But if you entered into that sphere and became an advocate, you risked your prestige—and your position. In response, scientists believed that if
“ Since the 1960s, climate scientists have approached their roles as advocates uneasily.” —Prof. Josh Howe on the primacy of science in the debate over global warming has given their opponents an easy target: science itself.
Sitting in his office on the fourth floor of Eliot Hall, which looks across the parapet to the Great Lawn, Howe has pursued an unlikely road to becoming an environmental historian. Growing up in Boise, Idaho, his early hopes of becoming a professional skier were cut short by an accident on Mount Bachelor that shattered his right leg in several places. After getting a BA from Middlebury College in history and creative writing, he worked as a freelance sports journalist, an English teacher, a photographer, and a ski coach, before going to Stanford to pursue a PhD in history. Howe had intended to specialize in 17thcentury French agriculture until a stultifying three-hour lecture on 16th-century coin-collecting nearly made him quit grad school. “I began to realize I’d been barking
ence and politics—or more accurately, the anxiety among scientists that their credibility would be torpedoed if they allowed themselves to be lured from the safe harbor of factual inquiry into the treacherous shoals of politics. Fundamentally, as Howe states, “The scientists believed that more and better science would inform appropriate policy discussions, in which they did not need to take sides.” Through the ’70s and ’80s, the impact of rising CO2 became more and more clear. Scientists amassed reams of data to document the planet’s warming trend, but the only political goal they achieved was to win funding for further study. In 1976, Stephen Schneider published The Genesis Strategy, sounding a call to arms in the face of looming climate catastrophe. The book became a cause célèbre and landed Schneider an appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Among the scientific establishment, however, Schneider faced anger and resentment for
they could speak with a unified voice—a consensus—they could reduce their political exposure and amplify their influence. But scientific consensus turned out to be a conceptual Frankenstein that would haunt the debate over global warming for decades. All it took was a couple of dissenting voices to shatter the perception of unity. “As both environmentalists and anti-tobacco advocates learned during the 1970s and 1980s, destroying consensus by manufacturing doubt was easier than forging even an overwhelming majority of agreement, let alone a unanimous viewpoint,” Howe writes. It is, of course, far too early to tell how this tragedy will be resolved. But by examining the role scientists have played in the climate debate, Howe provides fascinating insight into the uneasy interplay among science and politics. It also brings to mind Cassius’ words in another epic tragedy. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
June 2014 Reed magazine 29
Looking Back at Freedom Summer Student civil rights activists singing as they prepare to leave Ohio to register black voters in Mississippi. The 1964 voter registration campaign was known as Freedom Summer.
By Nisma Elias ’12
It was a scorching August night, and there was tension in the air. David Goodyear ’67 and two other civilrights workers had stopped to buy cokes at a Texaco station in the little town of Laurel, Mississippi. They had traveled to this remote part of the state to register black voters for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, a movement that triggered a furious backlash from conservative whites. Days before, the dead bodies of three civil-rights workers had been discovered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, less than 100 miles to the north, beaten and shot by the KKK. While they quenched their thirst, a car pulled up. Men got out brandishing clubs. The gas station locked its doors and turned out its lights, and Goodyear knew he and his friends were in trouble…
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“If I get emotional, don’t be surprised” warned Bernard Wasow ’65 to the circle of Reedies gathered before him. “This is very personal for me.” We were standing above the main lobby of the Newseum, a museum in Washington, DC that combines news history with stateof-the-art technology and interactive exhibits (it boasts the largest display of unaltered sections of the original Berlin Wall, including a three-story East German guard tower), and Bernard was about to lead us through a new exhibit titled “1964: Civil Rights at 50.” 1964 was a pivotal year for the long struggle for civil rights in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. had electrified the nation with his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington the year before. The assassination of President John F.
Kennedy had bequeathed new momentum to his Civil Rights Act, particularly in the Senate, where Southern Democrats had bottled up previous attempts for decades. To demonstrate how the Jim Crow system prevented black Americans from voting, civilrights leaders focused attention on Mississippi, where less than 7% of eligible black voters were registered to vote. Groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) launched the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. The idea was for civil-rights volunteers to go from door to door and encourage voters to register. The project involved black Mississippians and more than 1,000 volunteers from around the country—among them roughly a dozen Reedies.
After the last day of classes in May, 1964, Ray Raphael ’65 and Fred Winyard ’65 loaded up a station wagon full of donated
PRNewsFoto/Newseum, Ted Polumbaum
Fifty years on, Reedies reflect on the Summer of ’64
Singing in the rain. Students protest outside the 1964 Democratic Party National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, asking for color-blind voting laws for delegates and voters alike.
In his naiveté, Raphael had committed a cardinal sin— he stopped at a stoplight. which were set up encourage political participation by teaching the history and philosophy of the civil rights movement, along with math, reading and other subjects. “We head up with the car full of supplies, and I was driving,” Raphael says. “When on the way, all of a sudden, Charlie and Stokley hit the ground, down on the floor in the backseat and start swearing. ‘Why are they sending us these greenhorns, who don’t know what they’re doing?’” In his naiveté, Raphael had committed a cardinal sin—he had stopped at a stoplight. For a car carrying both black and white passengers with a Northern license plate, stopping at a stoplight in a small town in
Mississippi was an invitation to disaster. After this dramatic incident, the Reedies drove up to Hamer’s house and were greeted by the matronly trailblazer herself—toting a gun. Hamer was an inspirational figure in the civil-rights movement. A former cotton picker, she had made headlines by singing hymns while black Mississippians were registering to vote. In 1963, she was arrested and beaten in jail but refused to be intimidated and become a key organizer of the Mississippi Summer. “She said it was awesome we were down there doing this, and part of their struggle,” says Raphael. “She was the most amazing woman I had ever met in my life.”
Focusing the Spotlight
The rationale behind the Freedom Summer campaign was not simply to register voters, but also to focus the media spotlight on the issue of racial discrimination in the South.
June 2014 Reed magazine 31
Bob Adelman / corbis
clothing and supplies and headed south to the Committee of Federated Organizations’ (COFO) office in Oxford, Mississippi. Raphael was already a committed civil-rights activist; he had spent his freshman summer in North Carolina with the National Students Association, assisting with voter registration, tutoring students in integrated schools, and working to desegregate public facilities such as swimming schools and baseball stadiums. One of their first assignments was to take a load of supplies up to Ruleville, to deliver to a woman named Fannie Lou Hamer. “Nobody knew who Fanny Lou Hamer was at this point, she was just a local activist,” explains Raphael. “At the very last minute they said there were two other people who needed a ride.” The other two turned out to be SNCC field secretaries Stokely Carmichael—who would become a prominent figure in the Black Power movement— and Charlie Cobb—who was instrumental in promoting the concept of Freedom Schools,
1965 griffin
Marilyn Morgan Olmstead ’65
Freedom summer
Freedom Summer was a pivotal experience for Ray Raphael ’65.
“We were going down there as Northern white volunteers, as privileged people basically, and knocking on the doors of black people who live there and asking them to make a dangerous move, which is to register to vote, and possibly face recrimination from local whites from doing so. Who are we to do that?” mused Raphael. “This is sensitive stuff—and stuff that I didn’t feel comfortable with, and I’m not comfortable with it now. But it was a part of the game— to nationalize the issue. We were kind of tools—our job was to get national attention.” The work was anything but glamorous. Fred Winyard spent several weeks in a college basement in Holly Springs, unpacking donated books, sorting them, and reboxing them to start libraries. “I went with the first truckload, unpacked the first Freedom Library in Clarksdale,” he says. “The Sheriff told me of a new law in Mississippi which prohibited unlicensed libraries, but was obviously reluctant to enforce a law he thought was dumb.” Tension was never far from the surface, however. Two libraries were destroyed by arson later that year. In June, three civil-rights workers—Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, white students from New York, and a local AfricanAmerican, James Chaney—disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their torched station wagon was found a few days later. Despite the sinister circumstances, many Americans refused to believe that the volunteers had been murdered. “I was struck how difficult it was to convince congressmen
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Bernard Wasow ’65 in fall 1963. “This photo reminds me of how empowered we felt in those days,” says Maryilyn Morgan Olmstead ’65, who registered voters in Watts. “We could do anything we wanted to set our minds to.”
that they probably had met foul play,” said Wasow, who went to Washington, DC. with other Freedom Summer volunteers to lobby Congress about civil rights. “Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, for example, wanted to speak of nothing but the danger that Communists would control the summer project.” The bodies of the three men were found on Aug 4, 1964, brutally beaten and shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their murders drew national headlines and shook the movement to its core.
Murder and Intimidation
When the lights of the Texaco Station winked out and the doors were bolted shut, David Goodyear and his two companions knew they were in for trouble. The ‘Freedom House’ they had been working on to serve as a center for the registration drive in Jones County had stirred up a lot of resentment in the community. Within moments, a group of men confronted them, threw them to the ground, and attacked them. Luckily, someone called the police. “We ourselves would never call
the police for any reason, of course,” says Goodyear. “I will never know who that good citizen was or how long the beating with clubs and hob-nailed boots would have continued without the cops rolling by. We were pretty much unconscious by then.” When the case went to court, Goodyear was represented by a lawyer by the name of Ed Koch—who would later become Mayor of New York City. Koch jotted down some notes on the case in the September 1964 issue of The Mississippi Front: “...On Friday, I returned to Laurel to assist in the trial of two more cases. This time they involved two white COFO workers, a young man and woman who had been engaged in voter registration. They had been assaulted— thrown to the ground, kicked and beaten—at a gas station while buying cokes. Their alleged assailant appeared in court with witnesses who testified that he had been at home during the time of the assault watching Bonanza on TV. The cases were dismissed.”
The alleged assailant was also the nephew of the judge for the case. During the trial,
ap photo / fbi, file
Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, left, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, right, disappeared near Philadelphia, Miss., June 21,1964. They were abducted, killed, and buried in an earthen dam in rural Neshoba County. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter for orchestrating the killings.
Goodyear was spat on and told “You’re dead!” by KKK members. Goodyear recounted how even Koch bore his share of spit and RC cola bottles thrown at them in court. “We got out as fast as we could, but the next morning the Laurel newspaper blasted my picture on the front page so everybody in town would know who to look for,” he wrote. “The FBI had given the paper one of the photos they had taken during their ‘investigation.’ A fellow worker named Ulysses and I drove straight back to L.A. the next day without stopping.” Two months later the Freedom House that Goodyear had been building in Laurel was blown up with dynamite. The FBI didn’t solve that case. Goodyear continued to be persecuted by the FBI, who interrogated him for hours. “They were more interested in my political affiliations and the plans of the COFO project than the beating,” says Goodyear, now an artist living in San Francisco. “They opened a file on me and followed my activities for several years after that summer.”
The Aftermath
Coming back to Reed after the summer was almost surreal for some volunteers. “I think going to Mississippi was a bit like going to war,” says Wasow. “One returned having experienced so much, finding it so difficult to make it real to others, who had just had another ordinary summer.” Winyard resumed his studies at Reed, wrote his economics thesis on the status of minorities in the postwar American economy, and later became a systems analyst. “Just an unglamorous guy doing unglamorous things,” he says modestly. Other returning activists were irked by their classmates’ disengagement with civilrights issues. “There was very little action
at Reed other than collecting for the summer; there were only a handful of activists,” Raphael laments. “I remember trying to organize at Reed felt a little bit like pushing uphill. When I would try to coordinate people toward some action, I would hear replies like ‘I’m working on my thesis,’ or ‘I’m working on the qual.’” “It seemed like people were putting more emphasis on their personal careers—for me that was a point of frustration. I was more motivated by something that was larger than our academic careers. It felt like swimming against the grain.”
reputation; then it was not hospitable at all to the peace movement. It wasn’t until much later that Portland liberalized.” Against this conservative backdrop, the Reed activists kept a high profile. “Portlandwide peace movements probably had a third of the demonstrators from Reed,” says Raphael. “We were known as being radical, although in my mind we were not radical enough. When we had demonstrations, the local (Portland) papers, which were very conservative, would make a point of saying it was just a bunch of Reed students, even though two-thirds of the crowd were not from Reed.” Considering the perils of being involved in Freedom Summer, hazards that could continue long after the summer was over, what compelled these Reedies to put their lives at risk? Wasow, who pursued a career in economics and serves as chief US economist for the Globalist Research Center, puts it simply. “Somebody had to do it,” he says. “Why somebody else?” Fifty years later, the legacy of Freedom Summer is still coming into focus. While it did not succeed in registering many black voters, it galvanized national support for
Two months later, the Freedom House that Goodyear had been building in Laurel was blown up with dynamite. The FBI didn’t solve that case. Wasow agrees. In terms of advocating for civil rights, “there was nothing serious on campus as far as I remember,” he says. “I felt Reed was an inward looking world. It made no effort to be inclusive of black culture. It felt itself little responsible for bearing the change that the whole country had to bear.” Portland may have a progressive reputation today, but it was a different city in the 1960s. “Portland was very backward on these issues. When we had the first peace demonstrations in ’64-65, small ones, we had stuff thrown at us,” says Raphael. “I drove around a very noticeable black ‘54 Pontiac Hurst that could carry a lot of people in the back, going to demonstrations and such,” he says. “This right-wing group called Young Americans for Freedom put sugar in my gas tank at one of the demonstrations. I had to redo the entire fuel system one at a time to get that stuff out of there. Now (Portland) has a great liberal
ending segregation and dismantling Jim Crow laws, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It paved the way for young people across the country to get involved with political issues, and provided an organizational template for student opposition to the war in Vietnam. But Freedom Summer was not only a historical event. It had a profound impact on the volunteers who took part in it. “It was pivotal for me, and my personal development as a citizen and a human being,” says Raphael, who is now a historian and author in Northern California. “It was a compelling, driving interest that really still shapes me.” The volunteers took part in the campaign because they wanted to change America. What they didn’t realize at the time was that they would also change themselves.
June 2014 Reed magazine 33
Distant Vision
How Thomas Lamb Eliot shaped a college—and a city. By Romel Hernandez courtesy of oregon historical society
man of contradictions—contradictions that are woven deep into the fabric of the college he created. He was born to a privileged family but felt that he had to prove himself. He was an insider and an outsider, a visionary and a canny political infighter, a big-picture guy who obsessed over details. He had a boundless thirst for social justice but suffered no fools. Insomniac, iconoclast, voracious reader, intrepid outdoorsman, he was, in a sense, the first true Reedie.
Eliot was born in St. Louis in 1841, and graduated from Washington University (which had been founded by his father). He was an unexceptional youth, an average scholar with a weedy constitution. As a teenager he came down with a mysterious condition that impaired his eyesight so much he found it difficult to read more than 15 minutes at a time without excruciating headaches. At 19, he booked passage on a ship to China in the hope that an ocean voyage might improve his eyesight. It didn’t work. Discouraged, he quit the trip in San Francisco and returned home to St. Louis. He enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War but never saw a battlefield. The only time he fired his musket was
Stepping ashore, the greenhorn preacher didn’t cut a particularly impressive figure. many in Portland—would certainly have given tall odds that the greenhorn preacher wouldn’t last long. Eliot hailed from a branch of a prominent family of Boston Brahmins that had settled in St. Louis. There, his father, William Greenleaf Eliot, also a Unitarian minister, established himself as a religious and civic paragon, a veritable pillar of society. Fellow Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson even dubbed the elder Eliot the “Saint of the West”—no mean standard for young Thomas to live up to. But Thomas was not content to dwell in his father’s shadow. He was determined to
34 Reed magazine June 2014
Eliot not only stayed—he thrived, becom- under orders to shoot at a deserter trying to ing “The most influential individual who lived run away from camp. (He missed.) Eliot dreamed of becoming a minister in Portland, bar none,” according to city historian Chet Orloff. Wielding a grand vision like his father. He attended Harvard Divinity and a relentless drive to get things done, he School with a plan embraced by many young played a central role in creating and shaping men of the time: to go West. During his sojourn in San Francisco, Eliot the educational, cultural, and civic landscape of Portland. He had a hand in steering virtu- had been advised by a minister in that city: ally every major public institution in the city, “The Pacific Coast claims every man who has crowning his career with an achievement that ever seen it and is willing to sacrifice himself to would have made his father proud: the found- it.” And so it would be. Eliot was determined to follow in the footsteps of his formidable father, ing of Reed College. Despite his achievements, there is a cer- writing to him: “I long for an experience such tain quality of restlessness to Eliot. He was a as yours in some way off point, where I may
C o u r t e s y o f S p e c i a l C o l l e c t i o n s , H a u s e r M e m o r i a l L i b r a r y, R e e d C o l l e g e .
In the small hours of Christmas Eve, 1867, a young preacher, his wife, and their sick baby son stepped onto the Willamette River wharf of a dank, dark Portland. The waterlogged trio had just endured what the man described in his diary as “the misery, stench and consummate horror” of a storm-tossed, five-day steamer journey up the coast from San Francisco. He was anxious to start his first real job as the minister of the new Unitarian Church in a raw frontier town of some 7,000 souls—many of them lost. Standing five foot six and weighing 135 pounds, Thomas Lamb Eliot did not cut a particularly impressive figure. His health was less than vigorous, his eyesight wretched. His dark, wavy hair and smooth-shaved chin soon earned him the moniker “boy preacher” among the rugged inhabitants of Conscience of a city. Eliot, c. 1869. his new home. The Portland of the time was a muddy, rough-hewn settlement, pockmarked make his own mark—and he had his work with tree stumps, said to have more broth- cut out for him. els, taverns, and gambling parlors than any “The significance of the life of Thomas other city on the West Coast. Eliot wasn’t Lamb Eliot lies in the fact that coming to such even the congregation’s first choice. He was a frontier town, whose character in almost only offered the post after two other men all respects relating to the higher interests of had turned the job down. Watching Eliot step man was yet to be determined, he remained ashore, a gambling man—and there were here,” wrote his biographer, Earl Morse Wilbur.
grow with the people. As a young man, with peculiar advantages and facilities, it seems as if I am suited for this and no other work.” After the war Eliot bided his time in St. Louis as a tutor and an associate minister in his father’s church. In 1867 he received job offers the very same day from two Portland churches: one in Maine, the other in Oregon. The choice was easy. “Oregon settled,” he scribbled in his diary the next day. After taking charge of the First Unitarian Church, Eliot noticed that his Sunday services drew the same small group of congregants every week. Determined to reach a wider audience, he rented the Oro Fino Theatre downtown to preach to the “unchurched.”
Eliot rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation—to the horror of Portland’s conservative clerics. As a Unitarian, Eliot would have automatically come under suspicion by the other churches in the city. Unitarians believe that God is a single entity, and that Jesus Christ is not divine—unlike most Christians, who believe in the Holy Trinity of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Unitarians in the 19th century were freethinkers who believed that reason and science could coexist with faith in God. They had a reputation as social dogooders, and were deeply involved with the abolitionist, suffrage, and temperance movements of the era. Eliot was no firebrand orator (the Oregonian described him as speaking “gently, with almost childlike simplicity”), but his ideas were new and, to some, dangerous. He did not care about fitting in with the city’s religious establishment; he spoke his heart and his mind. Nevertheless, Portlanders crowded the Oro Fino to hear Eliot’s sermons, such as “On Retribution,” in which he argued against the dogma of everlasting damnation. He avowed that while he was certain of divine judgment and punishment of sinners, “it did not take the form of eternal suffering.” He called on his listeners—many of whom had not set foot inside a church in years—to make a break from such dogmatic, fire-and-brimstone teachings and embrace a more loving God.
36 Reed magazine June 2014
No such thing as Hell? conservatives crowed. Heresy! Many also questioned the propriety of holding a religious service in a theatre, especially since it stood next door to a notorious drinking establishment called the Gem Saloon. Some even speculated the entire undertaking was nothing but a ploy “to make theatre-going reputable, and to encourage loose morals,” Wilbur wrote. The leading ministers in town disdained Eliot’s liberal theology so much that they tapped a Baptist minister to rebut Eliot in a public debate. The dueling ministers caused quite a stir—“town all agog,” Eliot wrote in his diary, sounding pleased with himself. He was making the impact he had sought. Taking once again to the stage at the Oro Fino, which was packed to the rafters, Eliot dismantled his rival’s case point by point. “It is often necessary,” he preached, scolding his critics a touch sanctimoniously, “for one who craves the spirit of the Cross to pray, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they say.’” Eliot’s sermons, hundreds of which are stored in the Reed archives, provide insights into his thinking not only about faith, but also about the pressing issues of the time, including temperance, suffrage, and immigration. He denounced greed and corruption— both moral and political. Over his career he returned again and again to what might be seen as the central message of his ministry: that faith must be grounded in service to community and God. In an 1867 sermon, “Ambition and Aspiration,” he established the theme that defined his own career. Drawing a distinction between ambition, which he believed was rooted in selfishness, and aspiration, which he saw as essentially selfless, he challenged his congregation: “Shall life’s work be taken up for the prizes which it holds out, of wealth or power or reputation, or for service?” Every man, he said, must consider whether “he is doing the work of God or the work of the Devil—there can be no compromise.”
As Portland grew from a ramshackle river port to a bustling city, Eliot became increasingly prominent as a champion for the poor and dispossessed. He founded the Children’s Home and the Boys and Girls Aid Society, and was the longtime president of the Ladies’ Relief Society. He founded the Oregon
C o u r t e s y o f S p e c i a l C o l l e c t i o n s , H a u s e r M e m o r i a l L i b r a r y, R e e d C o l l e g e .
T.L. Eliot
Eliot (c. 1865) believed faith must be grounded in service.
Humane Society, after witnessing a carriage horse whipped in the street. He pushed for reform of the deplorable conditions at the county jail and insane asylum, which he visited frequently and where he also established libraries. He won election as superintendent of the county schools and instituted major reforms in the shambolic public education system, imposing stricter licensing requirements for teachers. Twice a week, he would drive in his carriage to visit classrooms, where he “observed and counseled, encouraged or admonished the teachers as the case might be,” Wilbur noted. He helped lead a campaign to create free kindergartens for children from impoverished families.
courtesy of oregon historical society
Partner in Faith: Henrietta Eliot Thomas Lamb Eliot fell in love at first sight with Henrietta Robins Mack in 1861. Her Congregationalist family, however, was opposed to Eliot’s more liberal Unitarianism. Etta, as she was known, set out to bring Tom around. Instead, he got her to become a Unitarian. Theirs was a strong partnership, and although Thomas, as a man, inevitably got much of the credit, Etta’s role cannot be overstated. First, she was willing to join him on his venture to Oregon—no easy undertaking. She took dictation of his sermons when his headaches made writing impossible. She was such an excellent writer that some even wondered whether she wrote her husband’s sermons. She later published poetry, as well as two novels. She joined him in the many social causes he championed and was friendly with prominent figures such as women’s suffrage leader Abigail Scott Duniway and mental-health advocate Dorothea Dix. By all accounts, she was deeply devoted to her husband, and protective of him, too. Matthew Paul Deady, Oregon’s first federal judge, described a lecture given by Eliot: “The little man
“We would have called him ‘pushy’ today,” Orloff notes. “He wasn’t arrogant, but he was very demanding of himself and of everyone around him . . . He would have been difficult to be around, but he was the type of person that got things done.” Eliot was everywhere. When Portland suffered a devastating fire, he served on the relief committee. When the city put together a parks plan, he brought in the Olmsted Brothers, famed for creating New York’s Central Park. When Portland wanted a new library, he recruited a young A.E. Doyle, whom he had met on a trip abroad to Italy, to be its architect. (Doyle would go on to design Reed’s campus and its early buildings, including the one that would later bear his patron’s name—Eliot Hall.)
Eliot also served on the boards of the Portland Art Association and the Library Association of Portland, steering those organizations toward the founding of the Portland Art Museum and the Portland Public Library (now the Multnomah County Library). It is a measure of Eliot’s vision that many of these institutions endure to this day, notes Orloff. “Almost without exception, these institutions have not only lasted—they have thrived,” he says. “You can say his influence grows even today.” Despite his growing prominence, Eliot never forgot his duty to society’s outcasts. “He was tolerant, patient, and sympathetic with odd people, cranks, fanatics, and waifs,” Wilbur wrote.
was quite ambitious in some passages. His strong, resolute, nervous wife sat near me and I had a good opportunity to observe her. She never took her eyes off him during the hour of the lecture, and looked as if she was in labor every line of it.” Every day of his life, Thomas carried with him a scrap of fabric from a gingham dress Etta wore when they were courting. Throughout their lives together, he would surprise her with myrtle blossoms, a gesture that carried a secret significance. Although there is no direct evidence, the friendship between Etta and Amanda Reed must have played an important role in Amanda’s bequest. The two women sang together in the choir and exchanged regular letters after the Reeds moved to California. Both were intelligent, strong-willed women who were steadfast supporters of intelligent, strong-willed husbands. “His sphere of activity was largely in the public eye, hers was largely behind the scenes,” wrote Wilbur. “But in either case there was the fullest cooperation of the one with the other.”—RH
This torrent of energy took a toll on his health. In addition to his poor eyesight, Eliot was an insomniac who worked himself to the point of nervous exhaustion. Ill health forced him to take several sabbaticals over the years. Eliot was nevertheless an avid outdoorsman who loved exploring Mount Hood (Eliot Glacier was named for him). He was part of the hiking party that “discovered” Lost Lake near Hood River, where he built a summer house. He also found the time to raise eight children with his wife, Henrietta. (He was by some accounts a rather strict father, often absent due to his many professional obligations.) All the while, Eliot took care of his Unitarian congregation. In 1879, his flock
June 2014 Reed magazine 37
T.L. Eliot erected a new chapel called the Church of Our Father. And it was in the church— among the choir, in fact—that he first glimpsed the tantalizing possibility of fulfilling a lifelong dream.
Eliot and Simeon Reed made strange bedfellows. Eliot was a slight, courtly gentleman, scion of an eminent New England family (T.S. Eliot was his nephew). He was a family man, a teetotaler who liked nothing better than to wind down reading Dante, Cervantes, or Homer (he considered the Iliad the greatest book written and read it aloud to his children), even if it brought on headaches. He was “by natural instinct, aristocratic,” Wilbur wrote, noting that he was “scholarly in his tastes, and of a poetic temperament.” Reed, on the other hand, was a burly,
In 1887, Eliot wrote to Reed thanking him for a birthday gift and planted a seed: “There is always something to busy us, always something to develop. I want you to celebrate some of these birthdays by founding a Reed Institute of lectures and art and music and museum. It will need a mine to run it.” Later he wrote again to Reed, urging him to consider “some noble and wise philanthropies or services of your time and country, especially of the city and people among whom you live.” Eliot was diligent in keeping up his courtship. When the Reeds moved to California, Eliot continued to visit. Simeon Reed died in 1895, Amanda Reed in 1904. When her will—providing the fantastic sum of $2 million for “an institution of learning”—was finally revealed, it caused a sensation up and down the West Coast. (The bequest was challenged in court by 11 of Amanda’s heirs, who would almost certainly have succeeded were it not for the efforts of her devot-
A shrewd political operator, Eliot outmaneuvered his rival. blustery swell who dressed in fancy suits, smoked big cigars, and sipped expensive whiskey. A self-made man who rose from lowly store clerk to control the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which monopolized shipping traffic on the Columbia and Willamette for the most of the 1860s and ’70s, he was one of the most successful businessmen in the West. He held investments in an array of business interests, from cattle to steel to racehorses. He never attended high school, let alone college. Eliot was a high-minded social reformer, while Reed was a ruthless capitalist. But fortune had brought them together in the Unitarian Church, where Reed and his wife, Amanda, sang in the choir. Before long, as Orloff says, “They saw something in each other.” Reed would have admired Eliot’s sense of purpose, Orloff suggests. And Eliot would have appreciated Reed’s acumen. Both men were brilliant in their own spheres, hardworking to the extreme, and obsessive about details. Neither minced words when it came to money. Eliot himself invested in real estate and owned several properties. Over the years Reed occasionally sent Eliot checks for $100 or so to spend at his discretion on charitable causes. Eliot had bigger things in mind.
38 Reed magazine June 2014
ed nephew, Martin Winch.) In 1906, the Oregon Supreme Court upheld Amanda’s will and set the stage for the founding of Reed College. But Eliot’s work was not yet done. Amanda’s will stated that the college should have “for its object the increase and diffusion of practical knowledge among the citizens of Portland.” But it also stipulated her gift should be dedicated to “general enlightenment, intellectual and moral culture, the cultivation and development of fine arts, and manual training and education.” Depending on how one read the will, this directive was either ambiguous or contradictory. John Sheehy ’82, author of Comrades of the Quest, believes that Eliot, on his visits to California, persuaded Amanda to expand the possibilities for how the money might be used. “Eliot had an invisible hand in Amanda’s will,” Sheehy says. “He really got her ear, and got her to put in some language that opened up the question.” Winch, who fought his own relatives to uphold Amanda’s will, was convinced that the Reeds had envisioned a vocational school focused on “manual training.” Eliot, however, was determined to shape Reed into a college of liberal arts and sciences in the mold of Harvard.
Sheehy is certain that Simeon Reed would have endorsed Winch’s plan. “The Reeds would have had a vocational school—there’s no doubt in my mind,” he says. “Simeon Reed dropped out of school at 13. He was opposed to public education and didn’t necessarily believe going to college was that useful.” That wasn’t going to stop Eliot. A shrewd political operator with years of experience in the public eye, Eliot outmaneuvered his rival. Winch didn’t stand a chance. Eliot recruited like-minded higher education experts from the East Coast, including his own cousin, Harvard president Charles Eliot, to bolster his case before the board of trustees, who approved the liberal arts concept. Bitter in defeat, Winch resigned from the board. One wonders if Eliot suffered any twinge of regret. As he had preached so many years before, either you do the work of God or the work of the Devil—”there can be no compromise.” Reed College finally opened its doors
courtesy of oregon historical society
Thomas Lamb Eliot (far right) on a picnic with friends from the First Unitarian Church.
in 1911. Eliot, by then 70 years old, was named president of the board of trustees. Ever mindful of details, he had a hand in everything from the hiring of the college’s first president, William T. Foster [1910– 19], to designing the college seal to proposing a Latin motto—ut luceat omnibus, “light to all”—that was somehow never officially adopted (which may explain why the tonguein-cheek parody “atheism, communism, and free love” is still around). Eliot dropped into classes regularly to engage professors and students, though he left the day-to-day management of the college to Foster and, later, President Richard Scholz [1921–24]. He served on the board until 1924, when his health, always fragile, began to fail. For several years he retreated from public life, spending time at his homes in Hood River and Neah-Kah-Nie on the Oregon coast. In June 1931, Eliot was persuaded to deliver Reed’s Commencement address. The Oregonian reported on the event with
a photograph of a white-whiskered gentleman dressed in academic robes and resting his hand on a walking stick. Eliot told the 40 members of the Class of ’31 that he remembered the ups and downs of student life, empathizing with “the floundering proportionate to the seriousness with which they enter upon college work.” After all, he had done some floundering himself as a young man. In the midst of the Great Depression, he urged the graduates to persevere through hard times and to stay true to themselves, noting the importance of “concentration which becomes consecration and a sense of vocation.” The effort of speaking in public left the 90-year-old depleted. “I must not do it again,” he told his family afterward. Several years later he suffered a severe coronary thrombosis, which rendered him an invalid until his death on April 26, 1936.
Thomas Lamb Eliot’s legacy abides across Portland, and nowhere more so than at Reed. Orloff sees his imprint on the college today, “in the sense of it being independent, of being different by sheer dint of energy and intellect.” As Sheehy says, “Eliot’s vision is what puts everything into motion. He’s really the intellectual founder of Reed.” Eliot himself set out his vision in an essay for the Oregonian in 1910: “[Reed’s] service will be for every citizen; its influence is not for a day, nor year, nor for decades only, but for centuries, as a source, a promoter of high intelligence, an inspiration to the body politic, a provider of the highest forces of civilization, it ought to be and will be the crowning pride of this great metropolis. Its promise should be, and is, that the poorest boy or girl within our gates shall have an equal opportunity with the richest to gain the very best education, equipping them for efficiency, leadership among men and a realization of highest manhood and womanhood.”
June 2014 Reed magazine 39
Reediana Books by Reedies
Return to the Land of the Head Hunters: Edward S. Curtis, the Kwakwaka’wakw, and the Making of Modern Cinema Coedited by Aaron Glass ’94
(Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2014).
Romanticized depictions of Native Americans as noble savages or remnants of a dying race dominate popular conceptions of the continent’s indigenous people, even today. In anthropology and art history, analyzing this “vanishing savage” mythos has gone hand in hand with a greater privileging of voices of native people themselves. Aaron Glass has made major contributions to this discussion, notably in 2010 with The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History (coedited with Aldona Jonaitis). In a new book, Glass and coeditor Brad Evans turn to ethnographic film—in particular In the Land of the Head Hunters, a 1914 silent documentary about precontact rites of the Kwakwaka’wakw (“Kwakiutl”) Indians of coastal British Columbia. Its director, Edward S. Curtis, had already become world-famous for photographic portraits of American Indians. For decades, Head Hunters was lost, and we read here the story of its rediscovery, its reexamination, and a dramatic screening in Alert Bay, B.C., where it had
The Oracles Fell Silent
Lee Oser ’86
Hemingway has been glorified for seeking truth by stripping away the extra words. Lee Oser takes the opposite tack. The Oracles Fell Silent, Oser’s second novel, tracks down many truths: Did an aging pop star kill his best friend? Is the troubled narrator a virtuous man? Does God exist, or even add value? Who is the woman with the red Ferrari? And it does so in an avalanche of incorrigible detail. Oracles is not a particularly thick book. You can read it in a weekend. But each sentence contains a revelation of pop culture, chewy details, delightful turns of phrase, and a salty sense of humor. It’s a 40 Reed magazine June 2014
been shot, and where Kwakwaka’wakw people, including descendants of the film’s actors and advisers, provided new soundtrack and commentary. Like most of his contemporaries, Curtis assumed he was recording something on the brink of vanishing entirely. To be fair, many Kwakwaka’wakw of his day would also be surprised if they could see, today, the extent to which their traditions have survived the juggernaut of missionization, economic exploitation, boarding schools, and criminalization of their central potlatch ceremonies. Curtis also seemed confident he could capture an untainted, pure, precolonial way of life—even as he staged scenes, swapped costumes back and forth, and took pains to keep trappings of modernity like European-style buildings and ships out of shot. The benefit of hindsight tempts us to dismiss Curtis’ naïveté or his fetishization of authenticity. But the many voices brought together here—art historians both native
and non-native, activists, anthropologists, even a renowned modern Kwakwaka’wakw documentary filmmaker—reach for a more nuanced critical appreciation of the film’s legacy. Though as much a colonial as an indigenous artifact, it also contains “true” ethnographic data, albeit of a mediated kind. While the arrogance of Curtis’ “salvage ethnography” project rankles modern sensitivities, it is undoubtedly a valuable record of an intercultural encounter, observer and observed. Curtis’ romanticism and its pernicious subtext—that recording tribal cultures is necessary because preserving them is futile or foolish, and that such recording is a white privilege—are rightly seen as part and parcel of colonialism. One Tsimshian art historian refers in this volume to Curtis “frantically trying to capture the ‘disappearing Indian’ by shooting us with his colonial weapon of choice—the camera.” But as Glass, Evans, and their contributors show, Curtis and his native collaborators have left something that can be bent to new uses as a bulwark against cultural erasure. —Christopher F. Roth ’90
(Wiseblood Books, 2014)
murder mystery and coming of age story, in which the young ghostwriter, Bellman, tries to ferret out the truth about his employer, Sir Ted Pop, a British rock star decamped to the Hamptons with his third or fourth wife. The book builds to a delirious cacophony of competing, overlapping, and often ludicrous stories, featuring characters whose own grasp of reality, truth, and trust veers from the paranoid to the paranormal. Bellman, described by Sir Ted as “thick as a brick, but no Judas,” may be the only trustworthy character in the book, but as the stories
and his own world unravel he trusts himself less and less. It’s no surprise that Oser, who put himself through Reed driving a cab, washing dishes, and holding down the bass in the popular Portland new wave band, the Riflebirds, would write a strangely convincing novel about the weird world of rock fame and the search for God and meaning. What is surprising is that he manages to create a thrilling work of fiction in which even this devout atheist reader hopes that someone will find truth, a higher purpose, and conviction in his own virtue before everything comes crashing down. —Caitlin Baggott ’98
Notes on Travel in Formosa Edited by Prof. Douglas Fix [history 1990–] The late 19th century was a pivotal time for the island of Taiwan. China was weakened by the Opium Wars. Colonial powers such as Britain, France, the United States, and Russia were eying new territory for trade and conquest. Japan, newly emboldened by the Meiji Restoration, was flexing its muscles in the East China Sea. Now this fascinating era is illuminated by a fascinating character, Charles W. Le Gendre, a Civil-War veteran who served as American Consul in Amoy and later as an adviser to the Meiji government. His epic Notes of Travel in Formosa have finally been published, thanks to editors Prof. Douglas Fix, Elizabeth C. Ducey Professor of Asian Studies & Humanities at Reed, and John Shufelt of National Tunghai University. Hailed as a “monumental work” by the Taipei Times, the book provides “a
(Tainan’s national museum of taiwan history, 2012)
much-needed insight into the life of Charles W. Le Gendre and the larger mosaic of Taiwan history being shaped in the mid to late 19th century.” Unearthed from the Library of Congress, Le Gendre’s “Notes” are presented with 120 photographs, illustrative paintings Le Gendre commissioned by Japanese artist Kobayashi Eitaku, and maps that LeGendre collected or composed from his travels. With observations on geology, natural history, and indigenous languages, customs, languages, and diplomatic intrigue, the “Notes” provide key insights into this turbulent time. The edition also includes a biography of Le Gendre (a naturalized Belgian American and Civil War veteran), and an essay by Fix about the agenda of paintings and photographs.
Many Reedies were involved in the early phases of the project, including Teresa Freeman ’01, Ben Murphy ’01, and Tim Spivey ’01, who transcribed the handwritten manuscript copy. (Ben also checked the manuscript against Le Gendre’s reports to locate potential overlap in content.) Kyle Steinke ’00 photographed the illustrations in the original manuscript used for the publication. Trina Marmarelli, director of instructional technology services, and her student staff helped stitch together digital scans of several of Le Gendre’s maps. Two librarians, Sally Loomis, former interlibrary loan assistant, and Cynthia Hoff, electronic resources specialist, helped the editors obtain hundreds of books and articles from libraries in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan. The Chinese edition (Li Xiande Taiwan jixing, 李仙得臺灣紀行), was translated by Profs. Fix and Charlotte Hsiao-teh Lo [Chinese 2003– 09] and released in October 2013.
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything Barbara Ehrenreich ’63
(Twelve/Hachette Book Group, 2014)
Barbara Ehrenreich has long been an outspoken social commentator. A member of The Nation’s editorial board and the founding editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (economichardship.org), she has explored cultural and social phenomena ranging from midwifery to warfare. Her best-known book is Nickel and Dimed, a vivid chronicle of her two-year immersion in the minimum-wage economy. She is also a self-described fourth-generation atheist. What Ehrenreich is not known for is having any firsthand acquaintance with mysticism. But in Living with a Wild God, her 19th book, she reveals that throughout her teenage years, she repeatedly experienced otherworldly moments, which were as hard to describe as they were unsettling. One day, looking at a tree, she recalls, “something peeled off the visible world, taking with it all meaning, inference, association, labels, and words.” Rather than confiding in her brilliant but preoccupied parents, she kept a journal in
which she tried to make sense of these incidents. She sometimes took the reductionist view that “every now and then I simply stopped doing the work of perception and refused to transform the hail of incoming photons into named and familiar objects.” But she also wondered if these experiences had any bearing on the other question that consumed her young mind, namely, why do we exist? Arriving at Reed in 1959, during what she calls “the great surge of scientific reductionism,” she resolved to focus on the buildingblock disciplines: mathematics, chemistry, and physics. But the thesis experiments that she set up with Prof. Jean Delord [physics 1950–88], measuring semiconductor effects on the corrosion of silicon, yielded inexplicable voltage oscillations that seemed to be almost supernaturally mocking her efforts to account for them. By 1965, when she was a graduate student in quantum chemistry at Rockefeller University, her colleagues were facing the
Vietnam draft and her research gave way to antiwar activism. By the ’70s, she was a married socialist with two children, and, as she puts it, “thoroughly embedded in the affairs of my species.” But after surviving cancer in her 50s, she began revisiting the questions laid out in her youthful journals, and the result is this remarkable memoir. In language that is always lucid, accessible, honest, and tinged with humor, she displays not just the intellectual courage to challenge her inherited onenote atheism but the audacity to speculate on the forms a consciousness beyond our own might take. —ANGIE JABINE ’79 June 2014 Reed magazine 41
Reediana The English Breakfast: The Biography of a National Meal, with Recipes, by Kaori O’Connor ’68 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). One of the best-loved national meals in the world, and an edible symbol of England and Englishness, the English breakfast is investigated in detail by Kaori, who provides historical analysis, a look at the meal in its present state, and, in the epilogue, she looks at the “devolved” breakfast in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Kaori includes nearly 500 recipes by three celebrated culinary figures of the Victorian age: an elite hostess, a thrifty housekeeper, and a pukka colonial colonel. “Mixing anthropology, cultural biography, the invention of tradition and the study of cookbooks as social documents, The English Breakfast is a truly unique work of food history.” Pineapple: A Global History, by Kaori O’Connor ’68 (University of Chicago, 2013). From the moment Christopher Columbus discovered it on a Caribbean island in 1493, the pineapple has seduced the world, becoming an object of passion and desire. Beloved by George Washington, a favorite of kings and aristocrats, the pineapple quickly achieved an elite status among fruits that it retains today. Kaori tells the story of this culinary romance in Pineapple, an intriguing history of this luscious fruit. The pineapple was the ultimate status symbol, she reveals—London society hostesses would even pay extravagantly to rent a pineapple for a single evening to be the centerpiece of a party. She also illustrates how canning processes—and the discovery of the pineapple’s ideal home in Hawaii—have made it available and affordable throughout the year. Pineapple is also packed with vivid illustrations and irresistible recipes from around the world. Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–62, by Katherine Verdery ’70 and Gail Kligman ’71 (Princeton University Press, 2011). In 1949, Romania’s fledgling communist regime unleashed a radical and brutal campaign to collectivize agriculture in this largely agrarian country, following the Soviet model. Peasants under Siege provides the first comprehensive look at the far-reaching social engineering process that ensued. In the book, Katherine and Gail 42 Reed magazine June 2014
examine how collectivization assaulted the very foundations of rural life, transforming village communities that were organized around kinship and status hierarchies into segments of large bureaucratic organizations, forged by the language of “class warfare” yet saturated with vindictive personal struggles. Collectivization not only overturned property relations, the authors argue, but was crucial in creating the party-state that emerged, its mechanisms of rule, and the “new persons” that were its subjects. Drawing on archival documents, oral histories, and ethnographic data, Peasants under Siege sheds new light on collectivization in the Soviet era and on the complex tensions underlying and constraining political authority. Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police, by Katherine Verdery ’70 (Central European University Press, 2013). Nothing in Soviet-style communism was as shrouded in mystery as its secret police. With the end of communism, many of the newly established governments— among them Romania’s—opened their secret police archives. From those files, especially Katherine’s own voluminous one, as well as her personal memories and interviews with acquaintances who turned out to be informers, Katherine has carried out historical ethnography of the Romanian Securitate. Secrets and Truths is not only of historical interest but has implications for understanding the rapidly developing “security state” of the neoliberal present. (See Class Notes.) An Insider’s Guide To Publishing, by David Comfort ’71 (Writer’s Digest Books, 2013). David’s newest book is a long-overdue self-helper for the million midlist, backlist, and no-list writers still waiting for deliverance by a survival manual based not on Publishers Clearing House you-too-can-be-a millionaire-novelist! fiction, but on the sobering realities of an overpopulated, hypercompetitive, bestseller-driven profession which is marginalizing literary novelists and editors. This publishing exposé is based not only on the author’s 30 years in the industry, but on the observations and advice of top editors, agents, and literary scholars. Most importantly, it reveals the publishing trials and tribulations of historic and current authors—from Hemingway to Harper Lee to Roth to J.K. Rowling. Excerpts from the title appear in Pleiades, the Montreal Review, the Stanford Arts Review, InDigest, Writing Disorder, Eyeshot, Glasschord, Line Zero, and Johns Hopkins’ T.J. Eckleburg Review.
The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IX: 1831, by Dan Feller ’72, editor-in-chief (University of Tennessee Press, 2013). This volume presents more than 500 original documents, many newly discovered, from Andrew Jackson’s third presidential year. They include his private memoranda, intimate family letters, and correspondence with government and military officers, diplomats, Indians, political friends and foes, and citizens throughout the country. From clearing the cabinet to pursuing Indian tribes west of the Mississippi, Jackson’s third presidential year was marked with strife, winding down in time for his reelection campaign. Volume IX offers an incomparable window not only into Andrew Jackson and his presidency, but also into America itself in 1831. Dan is editor and director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson and professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Modern Cinderella, by Thomas Owen ’73 (CreateSpace, 2013). A fan of Sherlock Holmes for as long as he can remember, Thomas has given the master detective a mystery to solve that is outside his realm: uncovering the identity of a mysterious woman who attended the prince’s masked ball. Assisted by Dr. Watson, Holmes seeks to unlock the secrets behind one of England’s wealthiest families in this modern-day rendition of an ancient and well-loved tale. Thomas is the owner of Lazy River Books in Boston, Massachusetts, and will be pleased to receive feedback by email (writethomas49@gmail.com) on his new book. The Curse of Van Gogh, by Paul Hoppe ’76 (SparkPress, 2014). In his first novel, Paul introduces readers to Tyler Sears, newly released from a federal prison and steering clear of crime while working as a bartender in New York City. Sears’ simple life is challenged one day when an invitation to the season’s hottest art event arrives and leads him to famed art collector Komate Imasu. Learning of Imasu’s threats to his family, Sears decides to gamble, and ups the ante to a breathtaking level. He plunges headfirst into a world of art forgers, hit men, Yakuza, a femme fatale named Chanel N°5, and the hideous curse of Van Gogh, in order to pull off the greatest art heist in history. (See Class Notes.)
Beyond Post-Traumatic Stress: Homefront Struggles with the Wars on Terror, by Sally Hautzinger ’85 (Left Coast Press, 2014). When soldiers at Fort Carson were charged with a series of 14 murders, posttraumatic stress disorder and other “invisible wounds of war” were thrown into the national spotlight. Sally, who is an associate professor of anthropology at Colorado College, and coauthor Jean Scandlyn argue for a new approach to combat stress and trauma, seeing them not just as individual, medical pathologies, but also as fundamentally collective cultural phenomena. Their deep ethnographic research, including unusual access to affected soldiers at Fort Carson, also engaged an extended labyrinth of friends, family, communities, military culture, social services, bureaucracies, the media, and many other layers of society. Through this profound and moving book, they insist that invisible combat injuries are a social challenge demanding collective reconciliation with the post-9/11 wars. The article “Clinging to Each Other, We Survived the Storm,” by Monica Wesolowska ’89, was published in the Modern Love section of the New York Times in February 2014. Monica teaches fiction writing at UC Berkeley. She and her husband, David Fisher, have two sons, Miles, 8, and Ivan, 6. Her book chronicling the life of their first son, Holding Silvan: A Brief Life, was published in 2013 and reviewed for Reed by Prof. Lena Lencek [Russian 1977–], Monica’s thesis adviser, in March 2013. Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, by Patrick Burkart ’91 (MIT Press, 2014). In 2006, a group of software programmers and file-sharing geeks protested the police takedown of the Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing search engine. The Swedish Pirate Party, and later the German Pirate Party, came to be identified with a “free culture” message that came into conflict with the European Union’s legal system. In his book, Patrick argues that pirate politics can be seen as “cultural environmentalism,” a defense of internet culture against both corporate and state colonization. He links the Pirate movement to the Green movement, arguing that they share a moral consciousness and an explicit ecological agenda based on the notion of a commons, or public domain. Patrick is an associate professor in communication at Texas A&M University.
Idiot’s Guide to Zen Living, by Domyo Sater Burke ’93 (ALPHA, 2014). In order to obtain the benefits from Zen practice, one needs to understand what it is and how to change thinking and actions to achieve it. In this book, Zen monk and sensei Domyo offers a beginning path to enlightenment and peace, which is open to all individuals. She provides an introduction to what Zen is—and what it isn’t—a foundation for how to get started in Zen practice, explanations of the essential teachings of Zen, and step-by-step instructions for engaging in Zazen meditation. (See Class Notes.) Mediating the Global: Expatria’s Forms and Consequences in Kathmandu, by Heather Hindman ’93 (Stanford University Press, 2013). Transnational business people, international aid workers, and diplomats are all actors on the international stage working for organizations and groups often scrutinized by the public eye. With 20 years of research experience in Nepal, Heather looks at the complex role that global middlemen and women play in this country. Described as an “illuminating exploration of the lives and cultural space occupied by expatriates operating within the global development regime,” Mediating the Global reveals the day-today experiences of elite foreign workers and their families. (See Class Notes.) Silence in Catullus, by Ben Stevens ’98 (University of Wisconsin Press, December 2013). Passionate and artful, learned and bawdy, Catullus is one of the best-known and most critically significant poets from classical antiquity. An intriguing aspect of his poetry that has been neglected by scholars is his interest in silence, from the pauses that shape everyday conversation to linguistic taboos and cultural suppressions and the absolute silence of death. In Silence in Catullus, Ben offers fresh readings of this Roman poet’s most important works, focusing on his purposeful evocations of silence. This deep and varied “poetics of silence” takes on many forms in Catullus’ poetic corpus: underscoring the lyricism of his poetry; highlighting themes of desire, immortality-in-culture, and decay; accenting its structures and rhythms; and, Ben suggests, even articulating underlying philosophies. Combining classical philological methods, contemporary approaches to silence in modern literature, and the most recent Catullan scholarship, this imaginative examination of Catullus offers a new interpretation of one of the ancient world’s most influential and inimitable voices. (See Class Notes.)
Field Experiments and Their Critics: Essays on the Uses and Abuses of Experimentation in the Social Sciences, by Dawn Teele ’06, editor (Yale University Press, 2014). From David Hume and John Stuart Mill to Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, social scientists have always argued about which tools are most appropriate for analyzing the complexities of economic, political, and social life. In recent years, proponents of “experimental” methods have entered this age-old debate. The growing group of experimentalists insists that the best way to identify relationships of cause and effect in the social world is through randomized interventions. Importantly, they move beyond the inferential limitations imposed by laboratory environments by taking experiments out into the field, testing subjects enmeshed in their everyday lives. But not everyone is convinced that field experiments are indeed supreme. Critics claim that these realworld interventions involve logical inconsistencies, impose excessive constraints, and raise ethical dilemmas avoided by the tried and true tools of observational research. This volume frames and interrogates the great debate by presenting the contrasting views of influential researchers in politics, economics, and statistics. Dawn is a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a PhD candidate in political science at Yale. Ein Self: Early Meditations, by Emily Aviva Kapor ’07 (Vatichtov Press, 2014). The book is a collection of essays, poetry, and translation, which Emily wrote during the first year and a half of her gender transition. Subjects range from gender to sexuality to Jewish rituals to Transgender Day of Remembrance to autism and love. The book’s title, she says, is a play on the phrase Ein Sof, a Kabbalistic name for the divine: “endless.” “This reflects a dual theme: firstly, that my transition is not something I feel I will ever ‘complete’ or ‘be done with,’ but something that I will be carrying with me for the rest of my life, and secondly, that a crucial component of transition for me has been seeking out the ineffably beautiful qualities of my own existence, the ein sof of myself—my ein self.” (See Class Notes.)
June 2014 Reed magazine 43
In Memoriam We welcome your contributions on behalf of alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of the Reed College. Please send obituaries and remembrances to us at by email (reed.magazine@reed. edu) or by mail to Reed magazine, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202. Photos are welcome, as are digital images at 300 dpi. In Memoriam is now online: www.reed.edu/reed_magazine
Robert Joseph Corruccini ’38 January 10, 2014, in Boulder, Colorado.
The son of an Italian o p e ra s i n g e r, w h o became founding musical director of the Portland Opera, and an operatic singer from Nebraska, Joe earned a BA in chemistry from Reed, an MA from Oregon State College (University), and a PhD from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in physical chemistry. While at Oregon State, he met graduate student Mildred B. Witham; they married in 1941. Joe worked for the U.S. Bureau of Standards (National Institute of Standards and Technology) as a research physicist, and later as an administrator for 30 years in Washington, D.C., and in Boulder. His work on calibration of thermocouples was later incorporated into the International Practical Temperature Scale. In the ’60s, he did research on liquid hydrogen fuel for the Saturn V rocket program that carried astronauts into space. Joe fostered an appreciation for opera, played bridge, enjoyed reading, and did mountain climbing. He made the first ascent of the Reid Glacier Headwall route on Mount Hood in 1938. Survivors include two sons, a daughter, and four grandchildren. His wife died in 2013.
Chester Albert Schink ’41
November 22, 2013, in Portland, following a short illness.
Born and raised in Portland, Chet came to Reed, where he earned a BA in chemistry. He went on to complete a master’s degree in biochemistry from Oregon State College (University), 54 Reed magazine June 2014
and was recruited for service in World War II by the Hercules Power Company in Washington, D.C. He also served at Radford O rd n a n c e Wo r k s . Following the war, he returned to Oregon State, where he completed a PhD in organic chemistry, and where, on a blind date, he met Hannah Johnson. “Her willingness to type his PhD dissertation convinced him that he’d met the right girl.” The couple married in 1947 and moved to New Jersey, where Chet worked for the DuPont Company in their research and development office. In 1951, Chet and Hannah and their children returned to Oregon. He was employed with Krishell Laboratories, a small agricultural chemical company that did research on antitumor agents and heterocyclic and other biochemical compounds. In 1956, he began a 30-year career at Tektronix, where he managed the electrochemical laboratory, developed a company-wide chemical safety system, and was a leader in worker safety. He was a member of the American Chemical Society and a founding member of the Portland Section. He also taught general and organic chemistry at Mt. Hood Community College. Colleagues greatly respected Chet for his integrity and support; his wealth of knowledge, generously shared; and his practical insights, humor, and wisdom. Chet is also remembered as a patient, determined, and compassionate individual. He loved to travel and he achieved a lifelong goal of visiting all 50 states; he and Hannah also traveled to western Europe, Scandinavia, and Australia, and cruised the Mediterranean. A great conversationalist, and loyal to friends and family, Chet maintained strong friendships throughout his life. He gardened and enjoyed community activities, including a longstanding role with the Masons and as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts, 4-H, DeMolay, and Job’s Daughters. He also was a member of St. Mark Lutheran Church. In retirement, Chet used his keen interest in history to volunteer for the Portland-based Urban Tour Group, a nonprofit providing historical tours of Portland for schoolchildren. Chet and Hannah established the Chester and Hannah Schink Science Book Fund at Reed. Survivors include Hannah, a daughter and son, one granddaughter, and two great-granddaughters.
Howard F. Wolfe ’41 January 22, 2014, in Portland.
A Portland resident, Howard came to Reed from Lincoln High School and earned a BA in biolog y. He also earned an MA in biochemistry and a PhD in immunology. During World War II, he was an army medic, serving in both the European and Pacific campaigns. He survived the landing on Omaha Beach and a kamikaze attack on the hospital ship Comfort. Back in Portland, he became director of the Portland Allergy Clinic laboratory. He volunteered with youth education at Temple Beth Israel and with youth rehabilitation for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department. He supported Grant High School’s Dad’s Club and Meals on Wheels. Howard loved the Oregon coast, tennis, and basketball, and cheered on the San Francisco 49ers and the Oregon Ducks. Howard and Frances Aiken Wolfe were married for 70 years. She, along with their two sons, five grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren, survives him.
Ellis Bischoff ’42
December 31, 2013, in Des Moines, Washington, from cancer.
A Portland native, Ellis followed his brothers, Jerome G. Bischoff ’31 and Theodore M. Bischoff ’37, to Reed, where he studied for two years. He then transferred to Oregon State College (University), and completed a BS in forest engineering in 1943. During World War II, Ellis served as a naval officer aboard PT boats in the South Pacific, and after the war he returned to the Pacific Northwest, where he was involved with the formation of, and became a partner in, the Mountain Fir Lumber Company. During his long career in timber, he testified before Congress concerning the timber industry, reports his cousin Edward Kessler ’50, who provided details for this memorial. In Portland in 1946, Ellis married Mildred Haugen, who was the love of his life, says Edward. Ellis and Milly had three sons, and enjoyed traveling, visiting family and friends, and taking a scheduled break from Pacific Northwest weather in the California desert. A love of boating led to Ellis’ association with yacht clubs in Portland; in Port Ludlow and Everett, Washington; and in travels to Alaska. He also enjoyed fishing and photography. Ellis is remembered as a bright, warm, witty, and sensitive man, full of love, and a friend to all. In addition to
Ellis Bischoff ’42, far right, in 1940, with Reed Ski Team members Gorder Facer ’41, David Smith ’41, and McGregor Gray ’41.
Edward, survivors include Millie; sons Kenneth, Robert, and Lawrence; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Jack Edward Battalia ’43 January 29, 2014, in Portland.
A Portland native Jack earned a BA in biology from Reed and entered the University of Oregon Medical School (Oregon Health and Science University), leaving in 1943 to do service in the U.S. Army Air Force in Virginia. Following the war, he completed surgical residency at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland and at the medical school. Jack was proud of the quality and context of his professional life. He practiced general surgery at Good Samaritan from 1954 to 1986, and he was active in the Oregon Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the Multnomah County Medical Society, and the Portland Surgical Society. He served as medical director for Montgomery Ward and as a medical consultant for a number of insurance companies, including Safeco and Liberty Northwest, and for several Portland attorneys. He also was company physician to numerous Portland businesses. Jack volunteered as a medical adviser for the Portland Boxing Commission for 29 years and spent a number of years as a member of the Oregon Boxing and Wrestling Commission. He chaired the International Boxing Federation and U.S. Boxing Association medical committee for 12 years. His priority, he said, was “don’t let them get hurt.” Jack enjoyed fishing and hunting
accompanied by a trusty canine companion, as well as woodworking and gardening. He was a longtime member of Rotary. Survivors include a daughter and three sons, born to Jack and his first wife, Doris Risley, who died in 1982; two stepsons, shared with his second wife, Cora, who died in 2004; five grandchildren; and his companion Gladys Kinzel. Jack suffered from the affects of Alzheimer’s disease for many years.
George Wesley Anthony Jr. AMP ’44
Marion M. Josselyn Grant ’43
Julian Norman Fotre Jr. AMP ’44
January 10, 2014, in Phoenix, Arizona, following a major stroke.
The daughter of a U.S. diplomat, Marion was born in Chongqing, China, and received her early schooling in China and British Columbia. She studied for two years at Reed, completing a BA in general literature. At the college, she met economics major Robert E. Grant ’43. They were married in 1945. Bob’s career with First National City Bank/Citibank in the overseas division led to their living in Africa, Asia, India, and the Middle East for nearly 40 years. Marion’s own experience of living outside the U.S. helped ease her family’s adjustment to new cultures. Bob retired in 1986 and they moved to Arizona. A kindhearted and considerate individual, who lived to please others, Marion is survived by Bob and their daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren, and four greatgrandchildren. During their life together, Marion and Bob remembered Reed favorably and were generous donors to the college.
June 4, 2012, in Filer, Idaho.
A native of Filer, George took his early schooling in the town and came to Reed for the premeteorology program. Public records (Idaho State Journal, 1963) indicate that he later worked as a nuclear physicist in California and had three daughters. September 5, 2008, in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
Jay came to Reed in the premeteorology program and served in the army air corps during World War II. He was a graduate of Purdue University, and worked in the steel supply industry, retiring as an executive at Castle Metal. Survivors include his wife, three daughters, two sons, and 13 grandchildren.
Robert Dryden Hoss ’44 February 6, 2014, in Tacoma, Washington.
Bill, as he was known, earned a BA in physics from Reed and a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT. He married Dolores Ashkar in 1944 and they enjoyed 69 years together. During World War II, Bill served with the marine corps in China and then worked for Honeywell in Portland, Anchorage, and Minneapolis. In 1956, he joined Weyerhaeuser Company as a design engineer and became project designer and the company’s first manager of information services in Tacoma. He retired from Weyerhaeuser as regional manager June 2014 Reed magazine 55
In Memoriam in Longview, Washington, and was a consultant for 10 years following that time. Outside of his work, Bill volunteered with Little League and the Boy Scouts, and was a tutor in reading and mathematics for elementary school children. He competed in golf tournaments and served on the board of many foundations. Bill and Dolores moved to Tacoma in 2007 to be closer to family. Well respected and loved by family, friends, and colleagues, Bill is survived by his wife, his daughter and two sons, eight grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
Margaret Rose Sullivan Guthrie ’47
December 4, 2013, in Santa Rosa, California.
Madge (or Sully) was a valedictorian in her Colorado high school and received a scholarship to Reed, where she pursued an interest in chemistry. Madge and George B. Guthrie ’40 married in 1946 and moved to Pasadena, where Madge enrolled at Caltech and completed a BS in chemistry. They then moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and began a family. Following their divorce in 1960, Madge went to California. She was a science editor for the Stanford Research Institute, and there met Bruce Barclay. They married and made a home in Malibu. She became a resident of Santa Rosa in 1991. Madge was a photographer, a writer, and an editor, who sought to convey intellectual joy and to combat ignorance through her work. She took pride in her personal library and read thousands of books, noting each one in the journal she began in high school. Beyond an enjoyment of reading and a passion for learning, Madge developed an expertise in numerous other subjects that fascinated her, including sewing and acting. She is remembered as an engaging individual who enjoyed lively and in-depth conversation on a wide range of topics. Reflecting on her education later in life, Madge stated that Reed was part of a continuum of learning and a gem in recollection. “The variety of learning Reed provided increased knowledge and confidence, useful in my several occupations.” Survivors include three sons and three grandchildren.
David Wilson Williams ’48
August 7, 2013, in Yakima, Washington.
David attended Reed for two years, leaving for military service in the army, and then returning to the college to complete a BA in biology. In 1947, he married classmate Florence Boyrie ’49. He went on to earn an MD from the University of Oregon Medical School (Oregon Health & Science University) and to do his residency at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 56 Reed magazine June 2014
and at the Veterans Hospital in Portland. Completing that in 1956, he opened a medical practice in Yakima. David was devoted to his family, which comprised two daughters, including Susan E. ’72, and three sons, including David E. ’75. Over the years, David W. and Florence also welcomed eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren into the family fold. For 35 years, he organized family reunions, and was named by one grandchild as the “conductor of the family orchestra.” David was dedicated to providing excellent medical care for his patients and to improving health care in the Yakima community overall. He pioneered the use of pacemakers and introduced enterology. He founded Cornerstone Medical Clinic and served as senior partner in the practice until his retirement in 1994. Colleagues revered him. During his career, he was chief of medicine at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, a visiting consultant at Toppenish Memorial Hospital and at Yakima Osteopathic Hospital, and an assistant clinical professor for the University of Washington Yakima Family Practice Program. He was a member of many medical boards, including the Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and the Washington State Medical Society. His medical associations included the Yakima County Medical Association, the Washington State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. He was named a fellow o f the A mer ican Colle ge o f Gastroenterology in 1976 and a master in 1994. David also was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, Rotary International, and a longtime supporter of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, the Capitol Theatre, and the Yakima Valley Museum. During retirement, David and Florence traveled throughout the world and visited all seven continents. Survivors include Florence and their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Burton Irwin Gevurtz ’50 November 18, 2013, in Portland.
The youngest of four children, and brother of Irma Gevurtz Robbins ’41, Jane Gevurtz Green ’44, and Suzanne Gevurtz Itkin ’48, Bud studied at Reed for a year. He completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon, and then joined the naval air corps as a pilot. He loved flying and maintained his skill as a pilot throughout his life. He also enjoyed skiing, fishing, and playing tennis. Bud and Suzanne Gilbert were married in 1954 and raised a daughter and son. Both the Gevurtz and the Gilbert families operated successful furniture businesses in Portland. Bud managed the Gevurtz family business for many decades. Suzy died in 1989 and Bud married Bernice Rosenfield Lynch in 1997. Bud and Bernice enjoyed their travels to places around the world. Survivors include Bernice, and Bud’s children and four grandchildren.
Eric Oswald Stork ’50
February 2, 2014, in Arlington, Virginia, from kidney failure.
A brilliant and controversi al bureaucrat , whose stand on motor vehicle emissions made him a “thorn in the auto industry’s flesh,” Eric Stork defied stereotypes and faced career challenges with integrity and vision. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, sent to Britain as a child, and at age 13 came to the United States, settling in Washington state. After serving in the army, he studied at the University of Washington for two years before transferring to Reed, where he earned a BA in political science, writing his thesis on the Pacific Northwest Field Committee of the Department of the Interior. His years at Reed were an enjoyable and positive experience, he said. “Being young, being out of the army, working hard at my studies and at various jobs to pay the bills, and associating with fascinating people whom I recognized to be a lot smarter than me.” At Reed, deliberating on his future, he determined that the most significant changes in his life would come from decisions made by the federal government. If he wanted to make a difference, to “make a dent,” he said, he would need to enter government service, “where the dents are made.” After Reed, he earned an MS in public administration from the Maxwell School in Syracuse, New York, then entered the federal government through an elite junior management assistant program. One year later in Washington, D.C., Eric met Dorothy (Dottie) Sams; they were married in 1953 and raised four children. To develop expertise in diverse areas during his 28-year career, Eric accepted positions in several federal agencies, including the interior department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He joined the Federal Aviation Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, where he became deputy director of regulatory compliance. He also was a budget analyst with the U.S. Information Agency. It was “grubby work,” but valuable. “Those people who were in budget were always saying ‘you must’ and ‘you can’t,’” he told the Washington Post in 1978. “I knew they were lying, but I didn’t know why, so I figured I’d better learn it.” In 1968, he took a midcareer break at Stanford University and then joined the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For the next eight years, he directed the motor vehicle air pollution control program. “Our mission was to develop and establish emission standards, test new vehicles for compliance, and perform related activities like fuel economy testing. That highly controversial job was the most fun I had in my professional life.” In 1973, the Detroit Free Press wrote about a debate between Charles
Heinen, Chrysler’s auto pollution control engineer, and Eric (“generally stingy with his words, he thinks carefully before talking”) on the topic of the emission control device, or whether an automobile pollutes or runs efficiently. Eric sent a copy of the article to Prof. Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84] along with the remark: “This sort of describes the work I’m in. The reporter has me about 10 years older than I am—that would mean that I was born before my mother was married; no wonder the auto industry sees me as such an inexorable bastard.” In 1976, the Oregonian quoted Eric as saying that the real challenge to automotive air pollution control was to find a way to keep cars properly adjusted throughout their “useful lives,” rather than requiring that cars be built clean. Eric saw federal regulations on this issue as imminent, and believed that intelligent regulations were necessary to achieve social goals such as clean air and food, safe drugs, and job safety. “Right now everybody condemns regulations as bad, and I think that’s a terribly naive point of view,” he told the Post. “In our day and age complete laissez-faire is just impossible.” Without an intelligent system of federal regulations, Eric noted, every essential thing would be managed centrally, leading to statism. With the advent of the Carter administration and a newly appointed head of the EPA who differed from Eric in his approach to regulations, Eric was fired in 1978. Eric wrote to Reed, “I’m really not bitter about being fired from this job. For the past eight years I’ve had more personal impact and more visibility, and thus more fun, than any other civil servant I know. It’s been a one-and-a-half-million kind of federal assignment, one in which I never thought I’d survive even a year. Since everything in this world must come to an end, I’ve long been prepared in my mind for being asked to step down.” His reaction to the news was exceptional. “That’s not the way bureaucrats are supposed to operate,” reported the Post. “ He’s just a professional bureaucrat, one we’ve been exceedingly lucky to have around.” Through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, Eric accepted a two-year visiting fellowship in interdisciplinary engineering studies and public policy at Purdue University. During this time, he received invitations from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Sweden to assess their auto emission control programs and to attend conferences. Eric retired from federal service in 1980 and worked as an independent public policy consultant on motor vehicle emission and fuel economy matters for nearly a decade. He then entered a 17-year second career as an independent consultant on auto emission and fuel economy, traveling to all 50 states and to all continents but Africa, and retiring finally in 1997. Of his retirement, he wrote, “I greatly enjoy the luxury of being able to spend or waste my time as I please without feeling guilty for
failing to meet obligations to organizations or clients.” He and Dottie enjoyed life with their children—Nancy, Judith, Kevin C. ’89, and Elle—six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. All survive him, as does his sister. Eric and Kevin established the Eric Stork and Kevin Stork Scholarship at Reed in 2002.
Vivienne E. Brenner Morley ’51 January 30, 2013, in Ithaca, New York.
Vivienne earned a BA in mathematics at Reed, writing the thesis “A Study in Elementary Valuation Theory,” and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She attended the University of Chicago, where she met Michael Morley, whom she married. Both Vivienne and Michael taught mathematics at Cornell University.
Florence Kerr Riddle ’51 October 22, 2013, in Portland.
Granddaughter of Reed trustee James Kerr [1914–30], daughter of Katharine Kerr Riddle ’21 and Matthew Riddle ’17 [biology and health services 1917–41, regent 1947–51, trustee 1951–56], and sister to Elizabeth Riddle Jackson ’47, Florence was preordained to be a Reedite, she said in an interview in 2007. Which was just as well—for her, Reed was a paradise. Florence participated in the outing club and musical groups. “I belonged to a chamber group, a recorder ensemble that also had a harpsichord and strings that played with it, and we performed in Sound Experiments, as they were called.” She fondly recalled hearing the work of student composer Bob Crowley ’49 and singing in the Commons after dinner, with guitar accompaniment most often provided by Warren
Roberts ’48 or Gale Dick ’50 (“who for me is a personification of the Reed ideas”). Florence was elected to student counsel and was a Reed Traveler in her senior year, visiting local high schools to speak with students about the college. But more than these associations, Florence said that the interactional style of learning at Reed, including humanities conferences and Reed Unions, really inspired participation and encouraged personal development. “What happened when I went to Reed is that my world suddenly became much larger. Even before I left the country and Portland at the end of my Reed years, very unexpectedly I’d already changed my whole way of thinking about the world through what happened to me in the humanities courses. For me, the academic experience was really the crucial thing. I loved it.” Her best friend was Barbara Morris Dickey ’51, and she valued the teaching of many faculty members—“they were all stellar as far as I’m concerned”—including Ralph Berringer [English 1946–53]; Dick Jones [history 1941–86], “a master of the conference method”; Frank Jones [English 1949–56], “who introduced me to the concept of comparative literature”; and Victor Chittick [English 1921–48], “one of Reed’s most splendid people.” Florence graduated with a BA in general literature and earned a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at the University of Bristol. She then spent a summer at a university in Germany, working on modern language proficiency in anticipation of a degree in comparative literature. The next year she entered Yale and was severely challenged by unrelenting prejudice directed toward her as a woman. Having experienced education at Reed in the setting of a community of scholars, she found the exclusion all the more disheartening. She stayed one year, and completed an MA in 1957. She then taught English at a private school in Providence, Rhode Island, and from there went to New York, where she worked as an editorial assistant in a publishing house for four years. As in Europe, she met up with many Reedites in New York. She had a Reed roommate and Reed friends who also had Reed roommates. Still intent on completing an advanced degree in comparative literature, she enrolled at the University of Washington, where Frank Jones was teaching. He served as her adviser and she earned a PhD in 1968. Then she returned to Portland, where she taught at Portland State before taking an assignment at the University of Victoria. She earned an applied linguistics degree in 1983 at Portland State, and then taught English to second-language learners. She did freelance writing, primarily about Portland’s history and its wild spaces, including the Reed canyon. She volunteered for her church, and for local organizations on issues of land-use planning and the interface between nature and culture. Through classes at Portland Community College, she gained proficiency in June 2014 Reed magazine 57
In Memoriam using a computer, paving the way for a job as an administrative assistant at Oregon Health & Science University, which would provide some financial security in retirement. “I think the term ‘Reed experience,’ or ‘Reed personality,’ does have a meaning to me,” Florence said. “It has to do with that person who has experienced himself or herself as a nonconformist without the opportunity for self-realization within a conventional situation, and then feels a real liberation at being listened to, and is free to make a decision and choose a direction, and not only encouraged to but expected to, and challenged to really exert and to learn.” Survivors include Elizabeth; brother Matthew Riddle II; nieces Sarah Riddle, Ann Riddle, Kate Jackson-Keil, and Rachel Jackson; and nephews Matthew Riddle III and James Riddle.
Carol Crowther Richards ’52 December 2012, in Aurora, Oregon.
Carol attended Reed for one year and continued her studies at the University of Washington, UC Irvine, and the Claremont School of Theology. She was director of education for the Riverside district of the United Methodist Church and lived in Redlands, California. Carol married John A. Richards, a mechanical engineer who died in 2009. They had three sons.
Donald Elliott Rehfuss ’53 March 18, 2012.
Don earned a BA from Reed and a PhD from the University of Oregon in physics, and taught at San Diego State University from 1962 to 2004. He was the father of two daughters and two sons.
James Clayton Almond ’55 January 3, 2014, in Elk Grove, California.
Jim attended Reed for two years, and also studied at Brigham Young University and the University of Washington. He completed a doctorate in chemical engineering and mathematics and worked in computing in Stuttgart, Germany, guiding the installation of the first supercomputer in Europe at the Universität Stuttgart. He was a technical consultant for the university for more than 20 years, and served at the European Weather Research Center in England, and as technical lead for Daimler Benz in Stuttgart. He also was director of the University of Texas Center for High Performance Computing in Austin. Jim enjoyed outdoor recreation, singing, and performing music on guitar, cello, and ukulele. He and Anna (Nanni) had five daughters and a son, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren—all survive him. Jim was 58 Reed magazine June 2014
an adventurer, a teacher, an historian, and a gardener. His passion for life touched many individuals throughout the world.
Merlyn Leslie Anderberg ’55 December 4, 2013, in Spokane, Washington, from complications of heart disease.
Merlyn earned a BA in biolog y from Reed, where he was a resident adviser in Foster-Scholz, and played intramural football and basketball. He gained skills in problem solving and acquired an interest in a great variety of subjects during his studies at Reed, which helped him excel as a teacher, he later reported. Following graduation from Reed, Merlyn attended the University of Washington Medical School, leaving the program after three years to go into education. He earned a BEd and an MEd from Whitworth College, and taught biology in public schools in Spokane for several years. He then earned an MS in biology at the University of Oregon. In 1966, he married nurse and educator Gretchen Reim and joined the faculty in life sciences at Spokane Community College. A year later, he moved to the newly opened campus of Spokane Falls Community College. During his career as a college instructor, he taught zoology, human anatomy, and physiology, and served as department chair. Merlyn and Gretchen had two sons and two daughters and enjoyed gardening in their orchard property on the Little Spokane River and spending family vacations at their home on Spirit Lake, Idaho. Merlyn was drawn to a multitude of multimedia projects in retirement. He supported Reed as a volunteer for admission, and attended both his 40th and 50th class reunions. “Reed has continued to excel and to make alumni proud,” he remarked. In addition to his wife and children, Merlyn is survived by seven grandchildren.
earned a BA in general literature with honors, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She went on to earn an MA in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and moved to Austin to teach freshman composition at the University of Texas. Barbara then became a book editor for the University of Texas Press. She subsequently served as an editor for publications of the Texas State Historical Association, including Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the encyclopedic reference volume The Handbook of Texas: A Supplement (Vol. 3, 1976). In 1959 she married cattle rancher Franklin C. Stockley; they lived in a rustic, 19thcentury, wooden ranch house north of Elgin until his death in 1993. In the late ’90s, she did some of the grant writing that led to the Elgin Historical Association’s obtaining the funds necessary to rehabilitate the then-derelict former railroad depot into the local history museum it has become, the Elgin Depot Museum. One of the permanent exhibits in the museum presents an enlargement of a photograph of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, which marked the opening of the museum in 2002, in which Barbara appears alongside other members and officers of the historical association. At that time, she was still living out on the ranch, albeit in a modern manufactured home, until she moved into town in 2006. She served as a volunteer docent at the museum, working principally behind the counter on the historical newspaper archiving project, from its opening until 2011, when her declining health made her participation no longer feasible. Survivors include her brother, Alan Donnell; nephew Howard Donnell, who provided this memorial; nephew John Goode; niece Helen Donnell; and cousin Gordon Gray.
Gary Robert Field ’56 May 8, 2013, in McLean, Virginia.
Barbara June Donnell Stockley ’55 December 5, 2013, in Elgin, Texas.
Barbara and her family moved from Washington to Hawaii when she was 8 years old. She graduated from high school in 1943 and worked for the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor until she left to attend Reed, making her way to Oregon on a navy transport ship in summer 1945. After two years at the college, she went back to Honolulu but returned to Reed in 1953 to finish her studies and write her thesis, “The Face and Symmetry of Truth: A Study of the Imagery of Sir Thomas Browne.” Barbara
Gary grew up in Oregon and earned a BA from Reed in political science. He attended law school
and earned a PhD in political science at the University of Oregon, doing his doctoral research in Turkey as a Fulbright scholar. He then joined the faculty in political science at San Fernando Valley State College, leaving that for a career as an intelligence officer with the CIA . He was a member of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church, the Middle East Institute, the American Political Science Association, and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Survivors include his wife, Joanne Taylor Field, to whom he was married for 53 years; two daughters; and three grandchildren.
Herbert Walum ’58
December 7, 2013, in Bremerton, Washington, from cancer. Gail Abrahams Petersen ’61 at the “Woodstock Arms,” an apartment house on Woodstock Boulevard.
Michael Mahoney ’62 was a journalist and a lawyer.
mundane. The ambiguity of life.” In addition to Laurel, survivors include sons Ben and Josh; grandchildren Shana and Akiva; and his companion, Moira McCluney. “In memoriam, please do something nice for someone in his name. He always had a kind heart.”
Clackamas County for several years. He returned to San Francisco in the ’80s, working for the district attorney in Santa Clara County and in a legal firm before opening a solo law practice. Survivors include his wife, Linda Elmlund Mahoney ’61, and his brother, Kevin.
Antonette Elmer Duncan ’60
David Wallace Williamson MA ’63
May 6, 2013.
Herb took college-level mathematics classes when he was 13 and earned a BA in mathematics from Reed. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, he completed a PhD in mathematics, writing a dissertation on prime numbers that was of particular value for code breaking. After teaching at Harvey Mudd College, he was enticed to join the elite number-theory faculty at the Ohio State University, where he taught until his retirement. Midlife, he discovered tantric Buddhism and founded the Karma Thegsum Choling Tibetan Buddhist center in downtown Columbus. Herb loved string quartets, photography, abstract mathematics, woodworking, cosmology, Puget Sound, cats, and trying to make sense of what other people felt. He was eternally grateful for the education that Reed afforded him, reports Laurel Richardson, his former wife who provided this memorial. “Reed gave me a wonderful education and a family when I needed one,” Herb wrote. Surviving a difficult childhood, alcohol addiction, mind-altering drugs, heart surgery, peritonitis, sepsis, prostate cancer, and a first bout of colon cancer, he chose to forego a third round of chemotherapy when colon cancer returned. Herb wanted to spend his last months living normally, chopping wood and carrying water, and he died near his log cabin on the Dosewallips River, not far from his childhood home of Port Orchard. Herb once remarked: “There is a saying that I did not make up, but expresses in humor what I think is important and sums up my life: the connection between the abstract and the grounded, the mysterious and the
Toni attended Reed for two years and completed a BA in psychology at San Francisco State and later a certification for counseling at Oregon Health & Science University. She worked as a counselor and as a bookkeeper. She had a daughter and grandson and lived in Lake Oswego.
Gail Ann Abrahams Petersen ’61 January 28, 2014, in Reno, Nevada.
Gail earned a BA from Reed in English literature, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. That same year, she and Fredric F. Petersen ’61 were married. Gail earned a postgraduate certificate in education from the University of London in England and an MA in reading instruction from the University of Nevada at Reno. Her vocation was elementary school teaching, and she taught in schools in Reno for many years before retiring in 2010. She had a number of interests, chief among which were folk dancing and listening to and playing early music. Survivors include Fred, children Soren Petersen ’87 and Sophie Petersen ’93, two grandchildren, and her brother, Karl. “She will be sorely missed.”
Michael Vincent Mahoney ’62 November 28, 2013, in San Francisco, from a stroke.
Michael earned a BA in political science from Reed and worked briefly as a reporter for the Oregonian and other newspapers before taking a job in 1966 with the San Francisco Chronicle, where his father had also worked. He left the paper to attend law school. In 1974, he completed a JD at Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, and was a deputy district attorney in
January 31, 2014, in Everett, Washington.
David attended Longview Community College, served with the army during World War II, and taught high school and community college courses in English. For nearly 20 years, until his retirement in 1986, David taught at Edmonds Community College. He greatly enjoyed competitive sailing, backpacking, mountain climbing, and snow sports, and was a member of the Everett Mountain Rescue Unit for 25 years. On his 70th birthday, he climbed Mount Whitney with his wife, Stella. The couple were married for 49 years, until her death in 2000. Survivors include his son and daughter, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and his dear friend, Karen Stolworthy.
Virginia Elizabeth Davis ’65 October 22, 2013, in Portland.
Ginny earned a degree in history at Reed, completing the thesis “Henry Adams: A Political Biography of an American Intellectual.” After graduation, she worked at Harvard Business School, intending to enter the doctoral program in communications. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in her 20s, Ginny spent two decades in an out of psychiatric institutions. Prof. Jack Dudman ’42 [mathematics and dean of students 1953– 85] and Barbara Reid Dudman ’60 [mathematics 1966–69] were instrumental in Ginny’s care during the difficulties she encountered while she was at Reed and when she returned to Portland in the late ’70s. Ginny completed an MA in English and creative writing and poetry from San Francisco State in 1978, and then June 2014 Reed magazine 59
In Memoriam traveled to Ireland, where she spent a summer writing and studying Gaelic. In Portland in later years, she became involved in the local literary community and gave poetry readings and occasional workshops. She also completed and published several poetry collections, including Rivers in the Left Quadrant, Anima Speaking, and Civilization of the Heart. Supported by the insight of a compassionate director and mentor, Ginny was employed for a number of years as a secretary in the Oregon Health Division. His accidental death forced her to deal with management less understanding and with the loss of her job as well as the opportunity to be meaningfully employed for the rest of her life. She volunteered with Oregon Consumers Network, the World Federation for Mental Health, Oregon Advocacy Center, and Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Program, and received an outstanding service award from the Mental Health Association of Oregon. She maintained a connection to Reed, and donated a bookplate collection done by her aunt, artist Donna Davis. She had one daughter and one sister and lived alone. Says Caroline Miller ’59, MAT ’65: “She was a published poet with a keen eye for life’s injustices. Having once been homeless, Virginia had a soft spot for the downtrodden. More than once, she opened her home to those desperate for shelter. Beyond that, she collected art to the extent that money and paying in installments made it possible. She harmed no one and helped as many as she could. She struggled with her inner demons every moment of her life, and I admired her for the grace with which she carried her burden. She was a brilliant woman, a poet with a tender heart, but so troubled with mental illness that her life was shattered.”
sponsoring an annual most versatile horse award. He rode with the Yamhill County Posse for years. Al married and had three children. Survivors include his son and two daughters, three grandsons, and two great-grandchildren.
Frank H. Wolf MAT ’66 December 9, 2013, in Portland.
Frank graduated from Pacific University in mathematics in 1951. His career as a teacher and athletic coach, spent in public and private high schools in Oregon and in Portland, spanned 38 years. During retirement, Frank and his wife Margaret Hipple, whom he married in 1947, lived in Manzanita on the Oregon coast, where Frank became involved in city government. Frank and Margaret were named Manzanita citizens of the year in 2005. Frank was also a veteran of World War II. Survivors include a daughter, four sons, and five grandchildren. His wife died in 2007.
Warren Quincy Miller ’67 February 4, 2014, in Clarkston, Washington, following a 12-year battle with cancer.
Willard Alan Willett MAT ’65 May 3, 2013, in Newberg, Oregon.
Al grew up in eastern Oregon, the youngest of six boys. He drove tractors, sang baritone, and loved opera. He was a naval aviator during the Korean conflict, and remained in the naval reserves for a number of years after the war. Building on a BA in secondary education, Al considered teaching music, but then earned a master’s degree at Reed in behavioral science and taught school in Parkrose High School. On a fellowship, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, intending to earn a doctorate in counseling psychology. He decided instead to become a professional pilot and took a job with Pan American Airways, flying 20,000 miles during his 25-year career. In retirement, he bought 17 acres of land outside Newberg, which he registered as Sanctuary Farm. He did research on horse breeds and built a herd of Morgan horses. He made trips to meet with other ranchers, led 4-H groups, and was involved in the Pacific Northwest Morgan Horse Association, 60 Reed magazine June 2014
Warren grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix, Arizona, taking many camping trips with his family to the mountains and deserts of the West—trips that influenced his life and his land ethic. Gay Walker ’69 remembers Warren as having a quiet and pleasant disposition and as a good calligrapher. They studied together with Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69] in his calligraphy and graphic arts class in 1966–67. During the summers of his Reed years, Warren worked at the Teton Valley Ranch and for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in Arizona and Washington. After graduating with a BA in physics from Reed, he went abroad to Europe, traveling with only a knapsack and with an idea of finding employment there. Gay was in London at the time for a junior year abroad and met Warren there. They hiked all over northeast London to Victoria Park. From a rubbish pile behind an apartment building, they foraged
edible mushrooms and cooked them in her dorm room. Gay says, “He was entertaining, already a lover of the outdoors, and a good judge of mushrooms!” Warren spent a winter reading in London and a winter working with an avalanche research center in the Swiss Alps. In the early ’70s, he moved to Idaho, and for decades was a ranger in the only all-wilderness ranger district, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. He also worked in the Nez Perce National Forest and was facilities manager for the U.S. Forest Service in the Moose Creek Ranger District. His did campsite and trail maintenance, location surveys, and trail crew management. He also performed range condition surveys and surface-water surveys of high elevation alpine lakes. Warren’s interest in preserving the skills of traditional tool maintenance and use, in particular the sharpening and use of crosscut saws, led to his training with master filer Martin Winters, and subsequently to long hours of practice, further research, and the publication in 1977 of his Cross-Cut Saw Manual, which is considered the premier training guide for the skill in the U.S. (He taught the skill through an annual training program for 20 years, and for the centennial celebration of the USFS in 2005, he demonstrated the skill at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.) Warren established a minimum-impact homestead up Little Canyon east of Peck, Idaho, utilizing solar panels and transporting water by hand. Focusing on his interest in the physics of optics, computers, and photogrammetry, and in natural history, he partnered with wilderness conservationist Dick Walker on aerial photography contracts to document the health of regional stream drainages and caribou wintering grounds in the Selkirk Mountains of Washington state, the Idaho Panhandle, and southern British Columbia. At a contra dance in 1990, sponsored by the Palouse Folklore Society, Warren met Sandra Lilligren, a graduate student in geology and a parent, who shared his love of wilderness, having grown up in an USFS family in southern Oregon. They explored the West together on canoe and rafting trips and on hikes and camping adventures. Semiretired in the ’90s, Warren worked at a variety of odd jobs. He was a strong and gentle man, treasured for his ethic, his humor, and his joy. “Warren made a wonderful career and life of his commitment to the life of authenticity, dedicated to conservation and preservation of the environment,” says Linda Blackwelder Pall ’67. “This was nurtured at Reed and blossomed to fruition in the wilderness Northwest, especially in north central Idaho. We will miss his presence and realize that we shall not see the likes of him again.” Survivors include his wife and her daughter and family, his brother, and extended family. A celebration of Warren’s life will take place at Hells Gate State Park in Lewiston, Idaho, on May 31. It will be an informal gathering along
the Snake River providing an opportunity to share stories and a potluck. Contributions in his memory may be made to the William R. (Bud) and Jane Buckhouse Moore graduate research at the University of Montana, Missoula; to the Selway-Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation; or to any other conservation organization.
Lawrence S. Karush ’68
August 27, 2013, in Los Angeles, from cancer.
A renowned pianist, composer, and educator, Larry is revered for his performance and improvisation in jazz, 20th- and 21st-century Western classical music, African-based percussion, and the music of North India. He began taking classical piano lessons at six. In his teens, he was introduced to the art of improvisation by his teacher Sam Saxe. “He was the first person to show me there was an equivalence between Mozart and Art Tatum,” he said in an interview. During his junior year at Reed, Larry heard saxophonist Charles Lloyd and his quartet in performance. “The band was so free and together at the same time.” The concert happened in the right time and place to introduce Larry to all of the possibilities of improvised music and to motivate him to perform it, he said. Larry graduated from Reed with a degree in psychology and later earned an MA from New York University. In 1968–73, he was in Berkeley, avoiding political entanglements in favor of doing music. “I had a nice little shack in the Berkeley flatland, and I just holed up and did my practicing.” For 14 years, he lived in New York. The experience provided him the best education “in all senses of the word,” he said. Larry and Michelle Berne, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and a dancer and choreographer, were married with a son; they returned to California in 1989. Larry did seven recordings and appeared in festivals in Canada, Europe, and South Africa. He was the recipient of grants and commissions from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the NEA/Arts International, Meet the Composer, the California Arts Council, and the city of Los Angeles. In addition, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition, and was nominated for the 2008 Herb Alpert Foundation Prize in Music. He performed solo jazz and also worked with musicians John Abercrombie, Jane Ira Bloom, Jay Clayton, Bennie Wallace, and Oregon. He performed world music with Kanai Dutta, Francisco Aguabella, and Glen Velez, and contemporary classical music with Steve Reich and Terry Riley. In the ’90s, he joined Glen Moore and Glen Velez to create the improvisational trio Mokave. He also toured with his own band, the Larry Karush Ensemble. Larry taught music for more than 30 years in New York City and Los Angeles. He lectured and gave demonstrations at colleges and universities, including the University of California, Tufts, Brandeis, New York University, Reed, Berklee College, and the California Institute for the Arts. As an artist
in residence and lecturer at the University of California (1991–94), he offered courses in jazz, improvisation, and world music. Most recently, he was on the faculty of Occidental College in Los Angeles. A memorial concert for Larry, organized by Prof. David Schiff [music 1980– ] was performed at Reed in February. Survivors include his son, Clayton.
James Edmund Story ’68 February 27, 2010, in Roseburg, Oregon.
Jim completed a BA in chemistry from Reed and went on to earn an MS in counseling psychology from Lewis & Clark College and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of New Mexico. He was program director for the ADAPT counseling outpatient program in Roseburg. Jim and his wife, Margaret, had one daughter.
Bonnie Ann Stockman ’69 October 8, 2013, from ovarian cancer, at home, in Oregon City, Oregon.
An “army brat,” Bonnie grew up in various places, including Georgia, Alaska, Monterey, California, and Washington state, before coming to Reed, where she studied psychology when she wasn’t folk dancing or having other adventures. She took a break from Reed to study Zen Buddhism at the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Monastery, and spent a summer living in a miner’s cabin above Amador City, California. In 1974, Bonnie graduated from Portland State University with a BA in psychology and a certificate in social service. Her husband, David Lynn ’70, writes: “Bonnie combined a tremendous technical ability with a deep abiding passion and concern for other living
creatures and the world they inhabit. That shows up in her early social work and community action jobs, her time as an ombudsperson for the startup HMO Cascade Health Care, later as a customer care specialist and systems analyst in the information technology department for various banks and finally Con-Way Trucking. While she was holding all of those positions, she actively participated with Oregon Equestrian Trails, which campaigns to keep Oregon trails and the environment generally open for use by people and their horses. Poet Gary (’51) Snyder’s book Mountains and Rivers without End was everywhere in her thoughts and actions.” Bonnie was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in 2009, shortly after returning from a trip to Iran in search of oriental rugs. Her response to her diagnosis was a renewed determination to live every moment to its fullest. She took early retirement, which freed her to travel to Turkey and China (more carpets!), and to Hawaii, Washington, and California. She went horse camping on Mount Hood and participated in maintaining various horse campgrounds. Not content with that, she embarked upon the study of Argentine tango and tai chi chuan, including the sword form. She volunteered with the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Oregon and Southwest Washington and with support groups for women with reproductive cancers. She served as a consumer reviewer for Ovarian Cancer Research Program proposals for the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. Bonnie spent the final weeks of her life at home in rural Oregon, surrounded by her family and close friends. According to her wishes, she was cremated wearing an old pair of jeans, a T-shirt with the John Muir quote “The mountains are calling and I must go,” earrings from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, sexy underwear, and red satin tango shoes. This memorial was written by Deborah Ross ’68, who helped care for Bonnie and her family in the final weeks of Bonnie’s life. Survivors include David and two grown children.
Margaret Clark Potheau ’70 October 31, 2013, in Sherborn, Massachusetts, from metastatic melanoma.
Margo was at Reed for two years and completed her undergraduate education at Boston University. A talented horsewoman, she won many dressage and jumping competitions in her youth in El Paso, Texas, and later, before her children were born, she drove a BMW in stock car races was a member of the BMW Car Club of America. Margo ran a mail-order business and was certified as an EMT and a medic. She worked as a home health aide and as a volunteer for the Sherborn Fire Department. She enjoyed athletic competitions and celebrated the successes of the Patriots and the Red Sox. A woman of strength and a gentle spirit, Margo is survived by her daughter and son and her sister. June 2014 Reed magazine 61
In Memoriam
Psychologist Michael Owren ’77 in Norway.
Pamela B. Canty ’73
February 11, 2014, at her home in Portland.
Pam earned a BA from Reed in psychology, completing the thesis “Reality and the Psychoanalytic Theory.” and following graduation worked as a mental health therapist for several years. She later did banking collections and was a credit manager, while taking courses at Portland State University with the goal of earning an MBA. Pam and Robert R. Granville ’76 married and had one son, Joseph; they lived for a time in Panama, where Robert served as a medical officer in the army. Her friend Sandy Sheehy, who notified the college of Pam’s death, wrote, “Pam always valued the education she received and the friends she made at Reed.”
Jennifer Craven ’74
September 30, 2012, in Washington.
We recently learned of Jennifer’s death from her cousin, Philip Craven. Jennifer attended Reed for three years, with a focus on biology and psychology. In the ’70s, she also worked with children in day care centers and with special-needs children in shelter homes. She organized and supported the newly established Outside In Clinic in Portland, and was a bookkeeper, debt collector, and salesperson for other businesses in Portland and Seattle. Jennifer earned an AAS in digital electronics technology and an AA in business and accounting at North Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington. One of her instructors reported, “Jennifer was not only an ‘A’ student in my class, but she was also a delightful person, helpful to her classmates, cooperative with the school faculty, and, in general, well liked by all.” For Hewlett Packard in Everett, she calibrated, tested, and repaired electronic instruments. She then became a caregiver for her father when his health deteriorated, and studied health information technology at Shoreline Community College. Following her father’s death in 1999, Jennifer completed a course in medical records, and in 2009, she earned a BS in audiology from the 62 Reed magazine June 2014
University of Washington. She was thrilled to complete the degree, though shortly thereafter, reports Philip, she received a diagnosis of cancer. “She was extremely intelligent and a lifelong student. Very warm, with a lovely laugh,” Philip recalls. “I was proud of her courage during treatment and, especially, in using the Death with Dignity statute when treatment failed.” In addition to Philip, survivors include her mother, Clare, brother, Gilbert, and the Ferris families. Her sister, Bronwen Craven ’72, died in the ’70s.
Marian Dorothy Brennan ’76 November 25, 2013, in Washougal, Washington.
Marian received a BA in English literature from Reed and went on to study law at Lewis & Clark College. She later earned a black belt in karate and taught at Karate for Women in Portland. She is remembered for her wit, her kindness, her generosity, and her fabulous cooking. Survivors include her life partner, Susan Helene Fletcher, two sisters, and a brother.
Michael J. Owren ’77 January 15, 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia.
A teacher and scientist who analyzed the biological foundations of animal and human communication, Michael was born in Oslo, Norway, and raised in Alaska; New Hampshire; and Bergen, Norway. He attended Reed, along with his sister, Turid L. Owren ’74, and earned a BA from Reed in psychology, working with adviser Prof. Allen Neuringer [psych 1970–2008] to complete the thesis “Dejection, Disgust, and Despair: A Layman’s Guide to Two Theories of Blocking and Overshadowing.” Michael went on to earn a doctorate from Indiana University in experimental psychology in 1986 and taught psychology
and neuroscience for over 25 years, first while doing postdoctoral work at the University of California, Davis, and later at the University of Colorado at Denver, the University of Otago (New Zealand), Reed (1995–97), Cornell University, and Georgia State University. At the time of his death, he was an adjunct professor at Emory University. Michael loved teaching and served as a mentor to many undergraduate and graduate students. His research analyzed vocal phenomena in both animals and humans. He pioneered digital spectral analysis techniques, first developed in speech science for use in studies of animal communication. His work challenged a predominant view by showing that animal vocalizations “work” by influencing attentional, arousal, emotional, and motivational states in the listener, rather than by imparting representational messages. Michael’s empirical studies are widely recognized for their rigor and attention to detail. Longtime colleague Drew Rendall, chair of the University of Lethbridge psychology department, characterized Michael’s work as exceptional in its clarity of thought, expression, and vision. “His research techniques were widely embraced and became a standard part of the analytic toolkit of animal bioacousticians. Michael deployed his technical and methodological rigor investigating phenomena of very broad importance to theories of the origins and evolution of signaling systems in animals and humans, and he thus made enduring theoretical contributions to the discipline.” In addition to its academic recognition, Michael’s work generated interest in the popular media, including a Chicago Tribune article in 2003, which described his feline communication research as the “how of the meow.” Throughout his life, Michael enjoyed running and singing, and performed professionally with an a cappella group, Cool Shooz, in Denver. Friends and family enjoyed his dry wit and extensive knowledge on a great many topics—from beer to basketball to politics and world geography. Survivors include Turid, brothers Henry and Thomas, and 13 nieces and nephews. A memorial service for Michael was held in the Psychology building at Reed in March. Michael’s family, who provided this memorial, suggests remembrances to Reed College.
opened her home to faculty and students of Reed and made many friends in the Reed community. Survivors include two daughters and sons; two grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Fred died in 1969.
William Wood Wessinger February 7, 2014, in Portland.
Cynthia Natalee Thatcher ’88
August 8, 2013, in Denver, Colorado, following a long illness.
News of her death came from her mother, Margarita Thatcher, who conveyed Cindy’s love for Reed. Cindy earned her BA in philosophy, working with faculty advisers Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94] and C.D.C. Reeve [philosophy 1976–2001], and completing the thesis “Characterizations of Love in The Brothers Karamazov.” In 2000, she completed an MA in creative writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She became a Buddhist teacher and was a contributor to many online resources for Buddhist study. In 2008, she published Just Seeing: Insight Meditation and Sense-Perception through the Buddhist Publication Society. The book explored in depth the Buddha’s significant teaching “When seeing, just see; when hearing, just hear,” relating to the practice of insight meditation. Cindy touched on the two kinds of reality—ultimate and conventional—expounded in the Abhidhamma, through the example of a pointillist painting that can be viewed in two ways. In addition, the book contains meditation instructions for beginners, an appendix on the perceptual process as described in Buddhist metaphysics, and a crossword puzzle of Pali terms. Just Seeing has been translated into Spanish and German. Describing the book, one reader noted Cindy’s eloquent and expressive language. Memorial services were held for Cindy at Buddhist temples in California, Colorado, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
Jennifer Ariane Nonas ’00 January 1, 2014, from pneumonia.
Jen had an intense two-year struggle with cancer, which she charted in her blog, jenandlumpy .blogspot.com. Jen’s blog, while created for her to chronicle her experience with cancer, serves as an exemplary resource guide for those navigating the journey of cancer as a bystander. Along with narrating the battles with the cancer forms she named Lumpy, Sneaky, and the Rebel Forces, Jen catalogued what forms of support are actually helpful (and not helpful), and provided insight into how cancer may affect relationship roles. Jen came to Reed from West Milford, New Jersey, and earned a BA in psychology, completing the thesis “How Happy Will I be if I Lose? The Effect of Sensation Seeking on the Self-Prediction of Emotional States”
with her adviser, Prof. Kathryn Oleson [psychology 1995–], who, along with Jen’s friend Moira Tofanelli ’99, contributed significantly to this memorial. After Reed, Jen worked as a web developer with CollegeNet in Portland and then attended Drexel University, where she earned a master’s degree in art therapy; most recently, she worked for WES Health Care in Philadelphia. Jen’s graduate thesis was on optimism, a practice she herself engaged in throughout her life and health struggles: continuing to delight in tastes of gelato when well enough; scripting an anticancer lullaby; creating a cancer cell cat toy so that her cat “could kill some cancer, too”; relishing chance meetings with neighbors while practicing walking on her prosthetic leg on sunny days through her Philadelphia neighborhood, Passyunk; and finding pride in her daily accomplishments. While a consistently cheerful and lighthearted person, Jen held a depth of understanding of the world and herself that many can only hope to manifest. She demonstrated such self-awareness when, postamputation, she penned on her “little leg” a quote from Walt Whitman: Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing Strong and content I travel the open road. Survivors include her parents, two sisters, two brothers, and her fiancé, Kenneth Lamb.
Staff, Faculty, and Friends
Grace E. Frazier Courts December 22, 2013, in Portland.
Grace was raised in Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan, and learned to be a stenographer after graduating from high school. Her parents were friends with the parents of Prof. Frederick A. Courts [psychology 1945–69]. Grace and Fred met in childhood and married in 1936. They lived in California and Missouri as Fred completed his education and began his teaching career. Grace was a wonderful homemaker and mother, “the best cook, friend, and counsel to all of her family.” She volunteered with the Red Cross, the Sierra Club, and the Democratic League of Women Voters. She
Great-g rands on o f Portland brewing legend Henry Weinhard, Bill earned a BA in economics from Cornell in 1940. During World War II, he served in the army in the Aleutian Islands, and after the war worked as a freight forwarder in Pendleton and for a steamship company in Portland, before becoming assistant treasurer for the family-owned Blitz Weinhard Brewing Company. Through night classes, he became a CPA and took on additional responsibilities for the company, later operating the business with his brother, Frederic G. Wessinger ’50. They sold the brewery to Pabst Brewing Company in 1979. Bill was elected to Reed’s board of trustees in 1967 and served until 1978. He believed in supporting the state and the community, and among the list of organizations he supported were the High Desert Museum, the Portland Opera, Boys Club of Oregon, the Nature Conservancy of Oregon, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He was appointed to a number of state commissions and committees, and helped create the first student housing for Portland State University and purchased land that would expand the boundaries of Forest Park. He directed both the Blitz Weinhard Foundation and the Wessinger Family Foundation and established the Henry W. and Romayne Wessinger Scholarship Fund. Bill and Patricia Lue, noted philanthropist, were married in 1946 and had five children. Weekends provided time for the family to camp, hike, and ski, and summers were spent in central Oregon. Bill, who was an early member of the Mazamas, hiked with Pat throughout the Cascades; they explored the Canadian Rockies, and took other extensive and challenging travels abroad. Pat died in 2011. Survivors include 3 daughters, 2 sons, 14 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.
Pending
As Reed went to press, we learned of the deaths of the following people: Harold Wyatt ’38, Millard Hastay ’41, Andrew Johansen ’48, Steve Gilbert ’52, Vern Rutsala ’56, Jeanne Savery Casstevens ’60, Gordon Owen ’62, Bruce Saunders ’63, Jim Compton ’64, Sue Singer Burnett ’66, Seth Roberts ’74, Michelle Gaudreau ’85, Laura Padilla ’96, and Finnian Burn ’00. Share your memories of classmates with us via email (reed.magazine@reed.edu) or post them online at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/in-memoriam. You can still send them the old fashioned way to Reed magazine, 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland OR 97202.
June 2014 Reed magazine 63
the backpage
Why I Don’t Give to Reed By Eric Eschen ’95
As a graduate of ’95, I do what most Reed alumni do. I receive the Reed magazine, skim through it until I get to my years, and look for past friends hoping they’re doing well. I receive a yearly call from a friendly Reed student asking for a pledge. I visit the campus when in town and remember days gone by. I also do not give. The reason is simple. Superficially, I would say I felt that tuition for my time at Reed was enough of a contribution. However, and more honestly, I have a thinly veiled animosity towards Reed. While a student at Reed, I
eventually dropped out of the sciences. His argument was that if she had attended a less competitive program, like a state school, she would have been more likely to graduate and become a scientist. His reasoning went that it is better to be a big fish in a little pond than face the overwhelming competition of the sea. What this line of argument is missing is the bigger picture of what a school like Reed gives to its students. At Reed, I made
end is good.” With a bigger picture in mind, I realize the problem was never Reed, but my struggle to find the difficult balance between work, fun, friends, and family. I’ve discovered there is never enough time for any of these things, and I can feel inadequate as a principal, father, husband, or I can accept that given so much time in a day, I need to choose how to spend it. If someone else is more driven in one of those areas, what a gift for me to learn
It had always been a battle inside me when I looked back at my college years. never really excelled, but feel I acceptably passed through with Bs and Cs. I never had the dedication of my roommate, who truly embraced the life of an academic and spent countless hours pushing himself to do better. I spent countless hours socializing, playing rugby, or just procrastinating. I remember sitting at a table in commons in the last days of my senior year with my roommate and two other friends. Somehow it came up that one of them was going to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and the other two nonchalantly said that they were too. I was not. I always felt that I had not completed Reed the way I should have. I did not meet the expectations of Reed and instead merely, adequately, finished. It had always been a battle inside me when I looked back at my college years. I let Reed down. And when you have such a feeling, you can either take responsibility or you can blame something else. I chose to blame, move on, and not give. Malcom Gladwell, a social scientist, recently wrote about a bright high school senior who went to Brown University and how she struggled in o-chem and
64 Reed magazine June 2014
Such, such were the joys. Eric and unidentified classmates pose for the Griffin in 1995.
friends from all over the world. I learned to play rugby, which became a lifelong passion. Pete, our amazing rugby coach, always said, “Wherever you go in the world, you can find a rugby game.” I carried that gift with me in my travels and still smile when I think of playing. Back in Idaho, I became a teacher, a principal, and then enrolled in a PhD program. I finished this last summer, and afterwards visited Portland on a family trip. I stopped by Reed and walked through the thesis tower. I pulled out my thesis and laughed at the formatting that so closely follows a dissertation. Reed had prepared me well and had also opened so many other doors beyond academia. In my thesis dedication, I wrote (paraphrasing), “Reed has truly been a love/hate relationship, but the
from that person and make my own decisions based on my priorities. The lessons I learned at Reed (including in the classroom) are a priority to me. I believe in what Reed offers and believe that other students who are not able to afford the tuition should be given a chance to experience the school (even if they are not in the top 5%). Who really wants to stay in a small pond, when the sea is so much more exciting and challenging? And as we look back at our years, will we look at what we could have been, or come to peace with what we were and who we are? Enclosed is the first of my monthly checks. I hope it can help. Eric Eschen is the principal of Pathways Middle School in Meridian, Idaho. To find out more about how you can give to Reed, see www.reed.edu/givingtoreed
Alumni, parents, and friends: Alumni, parents, and friends: Save the date for Save the date for
Leadership Leadership Summit Summit
September September 19 19 & & 20, 20, 2014 2014 Leadership Summit is an annual opportunity Leadership Summit is an annual opportunity for members of the wider college community for members of the wider college community to deepen their engagement with Reed. to deepen their engagement with Reed. You are invited to You are invited to • get the latest news about strategic planning; • get the latest news about strategic planning; • discuss the results of the alumni survey; • discuss the results of the alumni survey; • volunteer in career, alumni, and development programs; • volunteer in career, alumni, and development programs; • connect with volunteers, parents, and friends; • connect with volunteers, parents, and friends; • enjoy Community Day festivities, including the Reed College 5K; • enjoy Community Day festivities, including the Reed College 5K; • advise current students on career networking. • advise current students on career networking. Registration and a preliminary schedule will be available soon. Registration and& a preliminary schedule be available soon. Contact alumni parent relations with will questions at 503/777-7589 or alumni@reed.edu. Contact alumni & parent relations with questions at 503/777-7589 or alumni@reed.edu.
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SHADES OF GRAY. Prof. Peter Ksander [theatre 2011–] and Marisa Kanai ’15 work on a shadow theatre performance of Gilgamesh for Theatre 396, Puppetry and Performing Objects.