ALUMNX NOTES

1971

GRAY COX (Experimental Summer Program) is alive and well, still living in Bar Harbor with his wife Carolyn and teaching at COA. This summer, he decided to use a marine device to practice social distancing and bought a Zodiac and spent lots of time gazing at MDI from Frenchman Bay, teaching grandchildren how to catch mackerel, and pondering how best to teach new courses on artificial intelligence and on the history of God.

work moving the cluster into the 3rd Milestone of growth, overseeing 100+ core activities including children’s classes, study circles, and devotional gatherings. Recently appointed to the Town of Wayland Racial Advisory Committee, she is helping to organize townwide conversations on racial justice and a large event June 13 celebrating Race Amity Day.

the country. We have legislation pending in the Massachusetts and California state houses to align entire states with this treaty. Despite the pandemic, it’s been a good year for nuclear disarmament!” (Photo is of Timmon with the Maltese Ambassador to the United Nations, Carmelo Inguanez, who promised to read Timmon’s book on nuclear weapons, and subsequently got his country to sign and ratify the treaty.)

1977

TOM FISHER and wife Tonya, a healer and fellow traveler for the past four years, are weathering out the COVID-19 storm at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Wintergreen in Central Virginia. They have a view of pastures, woodlands, and The Priest, (which has the longest continuous incline along the Appalachian Trail, if you ever want to crash with them while taking it on). He remains a facilities architect and a senior manager for Job Corps campuses across the country. He is also designing, developing, and building buy-and-hold residential real estate in Charlottesville, and is arranging financing for a net-zero duplex near the University of Virginia. Kids are launched but living nearby and it’s been great being “Grandpa” to five grandkids, most of them now teenagers.

FRAN POLLITT is serving as Area Teaching Committee secretary for the Metrowest Cluster (Baha’i Faith). She has lent her share of

1978

JACKSON GILLMAN received the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence Award. His 2020 Oracle performance can be seen on youtu.be/ Exhzn3B0w5M. His weekly family program, sponsored since 2013 by the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park, continues on Zoom during the pandemic. Email jxsong@ comcast.net for the Friday morning link.

TIMMON (MILNE) WALLIS was involved in the 2017 negotiations for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which, in 2020, achieved its minimum number of 50 ratifying countries and finally entered into force as binding law in those countries on Friday, January 22, 2021. He writes, “Our global network, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. I have been working to build support for this treaty here in the United States ever since, and I am happy to report that we so far have ten members of Congress on board with it, along with numerous cities and towns across

1979

ANDREA LEPCIO is still a playwright, but she has become a personal trainer and yoga teacher in recent years. In 2020, she launched Mighty Fit to offer fitness and yoga online. Learn more at mighty.fit. She lives in Bar Harbor.

1981

JANIS BIONDI writes, “No big news, but I have been living on Cape Cod since 2013 working as a gardener and independent wild commercial shellfisher. I’m taking the winter off from shellfishing to work on my painting.”

LIZ LUNDBERG retired from riding race horses for a living in 2012, after 30 years, and is currently writing a memoir entitled; The Far Turn, about becoming a thoroughbred jockey. She is still working her “day job” as a custodian for Hancock County Schools on the N. Panhandle of West Virginia, and recently began a new career in network marketing. She says, “This would seem to be the opposite of what someone with my background ought to be doing, or should want to do. This makes it all the more important that I strive to educate others about the possibilities inherent in this business strategy. I have had some amazing adventures, both the best and worst of which I am grateful to have experienced. One enduring tradition in my family is relative poverty given our lofty, educated status, and hating Big Business. So I am pleased to announce that this new adventure is about making money without compromising my personal integrity. The mission of the company I am working with is in line with the spirit of human ecology.”

1982

MARIE MCCARTY and STEVE

BAIRD ’83 live near Homer, Alaska, and are getting through COVID-19 restrictions working at home, hiking, and snowshoeing. Their closest neighbors include fellow COA graduate Shan Burson ’83. Marie is the executive director of Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, a nonprofit working with willing landowners to protect important wildlife habitat and recreational lands. Steve is the research coordinator at Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, a partnership between NOAA and the University of Alaska that works to enhance understanding and appreciation of the Kachemak Bay estuary and adjacent waters and lands. Their two young-adult children are both in Colorado at the moment, and they look forward to visiting them when travel is safe again.

1984

BROOKS MCCUTCHEN and JANIS STEELE ’86 recently moved out from under The Ocean Foundation’s friendly sponsorship umbrella after seven years to launch their own 501c3, the Island Reach Foundation. They write, “Intersecting cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, global health and, of course, human ecology, we work in partnerships with communities across topics of food sovereignty, agroecology value-webs, biocultural conservation, gender, and climate activism. Our 2020 film, Immuto (Change), about change agents on the frontlines of the climate crisis, from Vanuatu to Viet Nam, Morocco, the UK, EU, and US has won awards and been screened in film festivals around the world. We also created a 3-D virtual gallery as a companion viewing guide for the film. It’s all licensed under Creative Commons and available to view for free at the foundation’s website, IslandReach.org. Without human ecology, we dunno what we’d be doing!” months away from opening their store. He writes, “Fertile Ground is a Black-led organization building food security and community development in Southeast Raleigh, North Carolina, which is predominantly inhabited by people of color. We call ourselves a food co-op but we are really a local food system in a single organization. We have growers and consumers as members, and when we get our store open, workers will be members as well. Fertile Ground is part of a nationwide network of people building liberation through cooperative community development, with the long-term goal of building a cooperative economy. In a related bit of news, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, has agreed to take my collection of books on the history of the international cooperative movement. It is a great relief to know that, on my death, the collection (some 250 books) will be kept together in a place where it can be used. Not that I’m planning on dying anytime soon, but as Guatama taught, I have not escaped aging and death. So I plan on dancing while I can.”

BILL STEVENS, wife Sara, son Noah, and several neighborhood friends just built an outdoor oven in their backyard in Lanesville, Massachusetts. They’ve been cooking pizza and baking bread for curious friends and neighbors. Having lots of winter weekend picnics!

1988

JIM SENTER has been on the board of Fertile Ground Food Co-op going on four years and they are 18

1985

PAUL BOOTHBY writes to say, “I’m not sure if this is the kind of news you’re looking for, but I retired in 2020 after 25 years of ministry as an eco-humanist Unitarian Universalist. I’m sure other folks have livelier stories to tell, but we all retire, eventually (if we’re lucky).”