‰ MARCH 2011
fighting for amanda’s dream In 1905, Amanda Reed’s heirs filed suit to break her will and claim her fortune. Only one man could save her great dream from destruction. By Ted Katauskas
page 32
The Quest Goes Live Page 7 Trapped In The USSR Page 14 ARACHNOPHILIA Page 26
Celebrating Reed’s Centennial 1911-2011 cover.indd 9
2/3/11 5:42 PM
REED
Annual Fund
100 100 years of reed.
years of giving.
make your mark. Providing a world-class education is only possible because of Reed’s generous extended community of donors. Use the enclosed envelope, visit giving.reed.edu, or call 877/865-1469 to make your Annual Fund gift.
cover.indd 16
2/1/11 3:18 PM
‰
Departments
march 2011
16 2 From The Centennial Com-
mittee
8
Features 14
Trapped in the USSR
100 Years of Reed.
3 Letters Dean of Inclusion. Reed U. Portland U. School of Rock. Above Average. That Old Sportin’ Life. Underground Restaurant. Was James Beard ’24 a Real Reedie? Corrections.
classic Lectures 38
Gal Beckerman ’98 explores the predicament facing Soviet Jews.
What Hum 110 is All About By Peter Steinberger
By Peter Ephross
16
Rapture of the Tiny
Artist Maggie Rudy ’80 creates a whiskered world
ALUMNI PROFILES 49
18
Ninth-Inning Conviction
The Reed baseball team of ’39 faced a ruthless foe at the state penitentiary.
53
20
A New School for Kathmandu
54
Xeno Acharya ’09 left Nepal to get away from the civil war. He went back to do something about it.
Can the Humanities Save the US Economy? Eduardo Ochoa ’73 holds key post in Obama administration.
By Juliette Guilbert ’89
23
Smashing Atoms—and Stereotypes Beverly Karplus Hartline ’71 built the DOE’s continuous electron beam accelerator.
By Will Swarts ’92
Return of the Grandmaster. The Quest Goes Live. Unbinding the Book.
Purple Reign
Ruth Wetterborg Sandvik ’38 rules Alaskan fishing town with a fist of lavender.
By Laurie Lindquist
6 Eliot Circular News from Campus
10 Empire of the Griffin
Connecting Reedies Across the Globe
Westwind. Chapter Updates.
11 Puzzled Corner. 12 Centennial Campaign Young Alumni Give a Damn.
47 Reediana Books by Reedies 48 Class Notes 63 In Memoriam 70 Centennial Poster Celebrating 100 Years of Reed.
Puja’s Lesson By Erica Boulay ’11
26
Webmaster
54
Bio prof Steve Black probes the enigma of the spider egg. By David Frazee Johnson
32
Saving Amanda’s Dream
11 heirs of Amanda Reed filed suit to claim her fortune. Only one man— the twelfth heir—could rescue her dream from disaster. By Ted Katauskas
on the cover: Martin Winch fought to uphold Amanda’s will.
01_TOC.indd 1
2/1/11 1:33 PM
‰
From the Centennial Committee
march 2011
www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 90, No. 1 Magazine editor Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu class notes editor Laurie Lindquist 503/777-7591 reed.magazine@reed.edu First day of class for Reed College students, held at 11th and Jefferson Street in downtown Portland, September 1911.
It’s 2011—the hundredth anniversary of Reed College’s founding. The college has chosen to mark its centennial by the occasion of its first classes in downtown Portland in 1911, rather than by the bequest that created its foundation in 1904, or by the construction of the first building in 1912. The choice signifies the importance of Reedies to Reed; there is perhaps no other college that is so clearly defined by its students. The centennial committee, composed of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and trustees, has been meeting since 2002 and has had many conversations about how the college should best celebrate its centennial. We want the entire Reed community and its many friends to be a part of this momentous occasion. The official celebration begins with Reunions 2011 (June 6–12), continues throughout the academic year, and ends with Reunions 2012. Special projects include: • Reunions 2011 and 2012. Don’t miss the chance to celebrate with the college and your classmates! Sign up at reunions.reed.edu. • A major celebration during the weekend of September 23 & 24, as well as a special Gray Fund event in downtown Portland, a centennial Canyon Day, and a Reed day of service. • A bound volume of the college’s history, told through the Oral History Project, featuring interviews of more than 200 alumni, faculty, and staff. (Available in September.)
• A volume of essays written by alumni, representing each of Reed’s majors and describing how their Reed experience influenced their careers. (Available in September.) • A limited-edition poster by renowned artist David Goines. (See page 70.) • A documentary about Reed by Oregon Public Broadcasting. • Restoration of the orchard at the northeast edge of the canyon. • A centennial website featuring significant material drawn from the archives. (See centennial.reed.edu.) • Five special editions of Reed (this is #1). The centennial is as much about the future as it is the past. In preparation for the college’s second century, Reed launched a comprehensive fundraising campaign, the Centennial Campaign, in July 2005, with a goal of raising $200 million. The campaign is scheduled to conclude in December 2012 and has raised $150 million to date. (See campaign.reed.edu.) So come to Reunions, dive into the archives, read the books, contribute a story to the Reed Stories website, and leave your own legacy as part of the Centennial Campaign. Let’s celebrate Reed College together! Roger Porter and Virginia Oglesby Hancock ’62 —For the centennial committee
2
graphic designer Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu alumni news editor Robin Tovey ’97 ADVISORY BOARD Diane Morgan ’77, Matt Giraud ’85, Naomi McCoy ’94, Caitlin Baggott ’99, and Jay Dickson [English, 1996–] Reed College Relations vice president, college relations Hugh Porter director, public affairs Jennifer Bates director, alumni & parent relations Mike Teskey director, development Jan Kurtz Reed College is a private, independent, non-sectarian four-year college of liberal arts and sciences. Reed provides news of interest to alumni, parents, and friends. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs. Reed (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly, in February, May, August, and November, 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.
FSC info here Please keep logos visually aligned under above column
Reed magazine March 2011
02_EditorsLetter.indd 2
2/1/11 1:37 PM
Letters to Reed Dean of Inclusion It is disheartening to note in the pages of Reed magazine the signs of administrative bloat [“New Faces,” December 2010]. I cast no aspersions on the talents of Bruce Smith, for example, but how did the college last a century and how did Reedies succeed without a dean of inclusion, engagement, and success? Too bad that Reed is joining the national trend among colleges and universities toward more and more administrative layers, and thus higher and higher tuition. (If the money must be spent, why not spend it on another faculty line or two in oversubscribed departments?) At least take some small comfort in the fact that Reedies’ tuition and fees are not subsidizing a bloated athletic program, as well—yet. —Chas S. Clifton ’73 Wetmore, Colorado
the college’s structure, personnel, budget, and planning must strive for Excellence (cf. Oxford English Dictionary) . . . —Tom Forstenzer ’65 Vannes, France We have reprinted only the opening salvo of Tom’s letter, which continues at great length, heaping scorn on Reed, Reed, Sullivan, and sundry other targets. Interested readers can find the full letter on our website. In response, I should note that author Jim Kahan ’64 spent many hours poring over documents and interviewing sources; calling his piece “entirely unresearched” is untrue and unfair. Furthermore, Jim made several attempts to interview Tom, even offering to meet him in Paris, but received no reply. Editor’s Note:
Reed U: The Case for Grad School
As I read your informative and accurate article, it struck me that it might be of some interest to place the events and attitudes depicted in the Editor’s Note: We understand that having a dean dedicated to inclusion, engagement, and success context of what the college at that time was like. When President Sullivan took the helm of may strike some readers as redundant since that is (one hopes) part of the job description of any dean. the college, it was half the size of today’s Reed. Nonetheless, while this is a new title, it is not a new The Reed of that day had an endowment of position. For several years, the college has employed around $1.5 million. Yes, they were different a dean of multicultural affairs as part of our mission dollars, but the interest on that endowment to ensure that Reed benefits from a diverse faculty, could barely maintain the place and pay salaries. staff, and student population. Conversations with The professional administration supporting experts in the field and staff members who have President Sullivan consisted of a registrar, a held this position convinced Dean Mike Brody and recorder, a controller, an alumni director, and a his team that the new title would more accurately dean of women students. The admission officer was a faculty member, as was the dean of men. reflect the functions of this position. Much of the functional support was provided by faculty committees, and, in at least two Reed U: No Pillow Fight For Reed magazine to publish Mr. Kahan’s entirely cases, by faculty wives. Importantly, there was unresearched and highly opinionated view on the no development group to raise money for the “grad school” struggle [“Reed U,” December 2010] college. Later in his tenure, Sullivan was able to can only be described as execrable journalism or add a vice president and an alumni fundraiser. slick propaganda. The editor failed to double-check But in his early years, as president, he was sources or seek more authoritative information expected to do nearly everything required to (written and oral) and is ultimately responsible keep the college afloat. Nationally, this was a time when a number of for turning turmoil, hot and sweaty, into a pillow small colleges were folding or reconfiguring. His fight, or chili into pablum. This is what Kahan’s article does. And it concerns fear that Reed could fold was real. Sullivan believed, a critical turning point in the college’s history. as did other national leaders at the time, that a Given the outcome of that struggle, the years small college would need at least 1,800 students slipping into relative mediocrity under at least to be fiscally viable. Rather than triple the size its recent and current history, may justify the of the student body, and risk diluting the quality distortion. As a professional historian, however, of students, he made a couple of creative suggesnow is now, then was then, and now never can tions. One was the graduate school model, but be legitimated by a misleading description of another was a cluster of three colleges, each the then. “Now” was and is never the overdetermined same size of Reed of that time. One was to be a outcome of Reed’s fairly conflict-ridden ’60s and science college, another in the social sciences, and ’70s. History also belongs to the “losers”—those the third a literature and arts college. Together, of us who believed then, and believe now, that they would bring the number of students close
Sullivan believed a grad school would strengthen Reed.
to 1,800. The UC Santa Cruz cluster college was the model. The faculty did not adopt this model. To consider the graduate school proposal, one has to understand some things about the college of that day. Unlike today, there was no expectation that faculty would be engaged in scholarly activities. The senior faculty, who controlled the curriculum, had in many cases been responsible for guiding the college through the Great Depression and World War II. Their teaching and committee loads had been so heavy that only a very few were able to develop scholarly work of their own. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, new faculty were being hired who felt it important to continue the research they had started prior to their arrival on campus. Thus, a coterie of new faculty and some senior members were hungry to become reengaged in research. Sullivan understood the advantages that scholarly studies would offer for both faculty and student intellectual growth. Indeed, when Sullivan came on the scene, Reed had effectively provided for student intellectual growth, but little opportunity existed for comparable faculty growth. It was largely for this reason that many whom I knew professionally had advised me not to accept the offer I had received from Reed the year before Dick Sullivan arrived. Sullivan also saw that the facilities, particularly those for science, were inadequate, yet the college had to compete with institutions with superior facilities. As a consequence, he raised funds for a new building to strengthen the college’s position in science. He also understood that in order to engage in scholarly work, one needed time that would not affect the quality of teaching. In this regard, he helped to raise foundation money to reduce teaching loads by enlarging departments. Across the board, he enlarged many departments, so that they could offer stronger teaching programs with march 2011 Reed magazine
03-05_Letters.indd 3
3
2/3/11 6:19 PM
Letters to Reed
Stan Moore, reputed to be a Marxist—and later important factor in the environment. I graduated ousted from his tenured position by the trustees from Reed with a degree in chemistry, then went additional areas of expertise. As he enlarged the for this failing—stood up and pretty much sided on to a career in environmental geology for more than 30 years. While the general education and faculty, he also enlarged the student body, but at with the padre. I consider this vignette to be a form of circum- specific chemistry training received at Reed have a slower rate, so as to improve the student-faculty ratio. His goal of strengthening the college to stantial evidence supporting the existence of the been of great benefit to me through the years, make it more competitive wasn’t just in science, University of Portland, way back then, because I I was at a distinct disadvantage in obtaining as the arts division was first formed on his watch. cannot conceive of an institution of lesser stand- advanced degrees in the geosciences. I believe Finally, let me point out that the only time ing than a university having personnel able to you are doing your students in the environmental sciences program a major disservice by not that a major inclusionary program was ever perform in this fashion. Speaking of personnel, are there any freelance offering at least some exposure to geosciences, launched at Reed was under his leadership; it particularly in the areas of groundwater studies was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Sixty- fact checkers out there? —Ivan Vesely ’55 and geochemistry. Many vital environmental three students, drawn from minority populations, Chiefland, Florida problems facing us today require a careful conwere brought to the campus. The financial crisis sideration of geosciences factors to solve them. referred to in the article, during the latter part of his presidency, grew out of this program; he Editor’s Note: Ivan is correct about the University of Water supply, disposal of hazardous and nuclear believed that the foundation had promised to Portland, which has been awarding degrees since 1925; wastes, and cleanup of contaminated sites are continue its support when the initial grant ran we are duly chastened. However, UP is primarily an among those critical problems. Surely at least a out, and constructed his budget based on that undergrad institution, apart from a couple of master’s visiting earth scientist would be of great benefit assumption. Unfortunately, the money never programs, and is not a research university; therefore, to the program. —Terry L. Steinborn ’68 came though, and the college found itself in the argument Sullivan and Vollum made about the Prescott, Arizona financial difficulty. lacuna in Portland was substantially accurate. My memory may be faulty on some particular points above, but of one thing I am certain: the Above Average Editor’s Note: Terry’s point about the importance Sullivan years were years of transition. Change Why am I not thrilled to learn that for two years of geology and allied disciplines to this subject is rarely easy to live with. Thus, there may have running, the average GPA of incoming students seems irrefutable; several peer institutions have been varied responses to his leadership. Old- is a towering 3.9? [Eliot Circular, December 2010] anchored ES programs in their geology departments. timers like me, and students from that period, I thought Reed scorned such trivial statistics; Unfortunately, Reed has no geology department; experienced their institution during a challenging it’s why we show U.S. News & World Report the in the absence of the financial support necessary time. But a college must evolve with the times door when they seek to rank us. to create one, the faculty decided to set up Reed’s to survive. No one should expect the Reed of 50 Aren’t we a collection of unusual intellects, all ES program within its existing departments. If any years from now to be as it was in 2010. Through too often unrecognized by our humdrum high readers feel compelled to remedy this situation, we it all, though, I would hope that the educational schools? Aren’t we a community of undiscovered encourage them to contact the development office. and scholarly values of our community of learn- talents, frequently so deeply immersed in our ing, which served as the foundation for the Reed pursuits that we don’t always manage to polish That Old Sportin’ Life of Foster, our first president, will be as much in the teacher’s apple and earn the shiny grades? I enjoyed your editor’s letter [“That Old Sportin’ play then, as they are today. It’s a relief to know there’s room in this hal- Life,” December 2010]. It reminded me of Jack —Laurens N. Ruben lowed demographic for reed-cutting oboists and Scrivens [phys ed 1961–99], who taught us how Kenan Professor Emeritus, Biology Chick-Fil-A managers. But would the Reed of to play squash back in the ’70s. He was a great today have bothered to admit an Albert Einstein, teacher, and I seem to remember he was also an with his notorious school record? Please tell me accomplished (ranked?) player. I truly loved the What about Portland U? It says on page 33 of the December issue that in we have not become a college of unquestioning game and played it well into my 30s. I also recall 1956 “there was no university between Eugene scholars, fearful of challenging rules lest they that my freshman year, a group of us earned the disturb our Teflon transcripts. name “Whole Earth Jocks,” I guess because we and Seattle.” Imperfect and proud of it, had long hair and tossed a football around! One The very first full-time job I had was in the sum—Lisa Daniela Kirshenbaum ’84 of our guys, Kevin Chin, was an avid cyclist who mer of 1951, helping to build a fish dam on the San Francisco, California used to ride down the hills above Portland at 50 Siletz River for the Oregon Fish Commission. There mph like a madman. And lastly, a mention of one were three other Reedies there (like me, foreigners): Carlos from Japan, Dave from [Nationalist] Editor’s Note: The towering GPA of this year’s fresh- martial artist and philosophy major, who was China, and Walter from Austria. We were all into lings is a product of two trends, one positive, one less fond of saying that Spinoza wrote that a strong the American work ethic, trying to really assimilate. so. First, Reed is an increasingly selective college that body is a reflection of a strong mind. —John Larkin ’77 Working with us were two guys from what they attracts outstanding students. Second, many high Marietta, Georgia called Portland U. I visited the place where they schools have succumbed to grade inflation, so GPAs said they studied, somewhere a long ways across can be misleading. However, if you spend a little time town, in a district called St. Johns. I thought it on campus you will soon realize that students today The Golden Years Of Soccer? looked like a regular campus, what with class are just as brilliant, iconoclastic, unconventional, Your editor’s letter referred to nearly a dozen buildings, dorms, and a gym. inventive, and imperfect as ever. sports—everything from raking leaves to footWas it actually a bona fide university? A year or ball—but omitted soccer. As this shows a lack so later, there was a Reed Union on the subject of School of Rock of knowledge of Reed history, I thought I would Can There Be Naturalistic Ethics? Upholding the I find it appallingly amazing that Reed can conduct write and tell you about soccer and the class of affirmative was a gentleman from Corvallis, said an environmental studies program [“Growing the ’77. Please understand that this is a “Reed Story.” to be a logical positivist. His adversary was a padre Curriculum,” December 2010] with no apparent While I haven’t intentionally exaggerated, I would from none other than Portland U. All I remember input from geology and related earth sciences. be foolish to suppose my recollection is exactly, about this learned disputation is that Professor Surely geologic conditions and processes are an factually accurate.
4
continued
Reed magazine March 2011
03-05_Letters.indd 4
2/1/11 1:35 PM
Despite having a few standout players, Reed had had a relatively unsuccessful soccer team in the years before my class’ arrival. Still, it played an intercollegiate schedule. I think in my era it was the only sport that did so. I’ll never forget seeing the faces of coach Vincent Panny [German, 1963–84] and captain Rick Wolin ’74 watching tryouts in the fall of 1973, amazed by the sheer number of moderately large, athletic young men who had come out. Several of my classmates moved right into the varsity squad, while others bided their time. In the first two years, we had unprecedented winning records, defeating both Oregon’s and Oregon State’s full varsity teams. By my junior year, UO’s and OSU’s varsity had moved on, although their club teams stayed in our league and were still strong teams. My senior year, we had a truly fine team, filled with upperclassmen. It starred Dave Alcorta ’77 at central defense and Dave Sterry ’78 at center half. Other stalwarts from my class included Dan Hunter, Chip Brown, and Morgan Paine, though there were many others. John Weber ’78 returned from a year in Germany and led the team in scoring. The strength of the team was defense. We roared through the league schedule undefeated, and were at something like 6-0 having only allowed two goals. That brought us up against our bitter rival Lewis & Clark, also undefeated, and we played to a scintillating 0-0 draw on our home field. My memory is that each team had only one shot on goal as the whole game was played in the middle of the field. 0-0 might seem boring to some, but I assure you it was not boring to those of us in the fray. We went into the state playoffs with that single draw blemishing a perfect record, but, alas, we had no happy ending. Playing with the wrong cleats on a wet Astroturf surface at Portland’s downtown Metropolitan Stadium, we slipped and slid to a 5-2 defeat at the hands of Willamette, a team we had defeated on their own grass field a month earlier. Even Alcorta got beaten, something some of us hadn’t seen in four years. An annihilation of Southern Oregon College in the third-place game the next day was scant comfort as we watched Lewis & Clark take the state championship. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect the falls of 1973 through 1976 were the golden era of Reed soccer. Here’s to my fellow teammates Herb Florer ’77, Reid Olson ’77, Scott Foster ’77, Mark Michaud ’78, Keene Satchwell ’78, and especially Bart, who died on Grand Teton over Paideia freshman year. (Sorry if I forgot someone or butchered his name.) —Will Beall ’77 Santa Barbara, California
Uncommon Tribute Regarding the article on Uncommons [“Reed’s Underground Restaurant,” December 2010]: It looks like terrific and tasty fun is being had by many. Incidentally, it also reminds me of a similar one-off experiment some of us did in the fall semester of 1992.
We were a group of five or six friends who lived together in the French House and shared a love of cooking and eating fine food—and a desire to avoid the commons whenever possible. Deciding it would be fun to cook for others, we concocted a plan to sell lottery tickets at $1 apiece, with the winner to get a gourmet five-course dinner for two on the night of the winter social. The tickets would pay for the meal. In the end, we sold so many tickets that we cooked two dinners for two winners and their dates. The French House incidentally has two dining rooms and a massive double kitchen, so this was easy to execute. We served each couple (in their separate private dining rooms) a lovely multicourse meal (alas, I forget the menu now), with white tablecloths and candlelight, and offered an in-house sommelier for the wine selection, a pair of waiters, and even a live violin serenade. Then the winners toddled off to the winter social and danced off their dinner (as did we)! —Julie Landweber ’93 Princeton, New Jersey
Bristling at Beard’s Mention?
him. He felt very good about Reed, and was thrilled when he was awarded an honorary degree.” There is no absolute standard for declaring who is or who is not a Reedie, but we think Jim makes the grade!
Remembering Fay Halpern Lande ’59
It was sad to read that Fay Halpern Lande ’59 has died (see In Memoriam). My main memory of Fay is that she introduced me to the concept of not wearing leather. I was 17 when I first knew her, and from a politically radical but otherwise quite ordinary family. I had heard of vegetarians, but never of someone so dedicated that she didn’t even wear leather! It was one of the ideas that began to open my mind so it could grow. I’m sure Fay never had any idea what she had done for me. I only knew her slightly and through other people. —Barbara Adams Bernhardt ’58 Lowville, New York
Corrections
Lutz
I was amused by the article on Uncommons. My Our piece on the demise of the legendary Lutz recollection was that our own cooking activities Tavern [“Last Call for the Lutz,” Dec 2010] wrongly in the dorms were on a far more primitive scale, suggested that the Lutz first opened in 1953, but such as heating up canned soup on a hot plate. Mary Spaeth ’53 pointed out that a photo of her However, one tiny sentence in the article rang out father, Rex Arragon [history, 1923–74], and other as somewhat of a misstatement: Reed can hardly members of the faculty council, lifting their glasses claim James Beard ’24 as “one of Reed’s famous at the Lutz during Project Week, appeared in the culinary innovators . . . .” While he did attend Reed Griffin of 1950. In fact, the Lutz opened in 1947. briefly, according to several biographies he was We apologize for the error. expelled after “a brief stay” due to homosexual activity. What a shame! Granted, it was 1922. Colin MacLachlan ’52 Hopefully times have changed. In our obituary of Colin MacLachlan ’52, we —Wendy Horwatt-Mitchell ’69 mistakenly saddled him with an imaginary middle & Andrea Horwatt-Mitchell name (“Alastair”). Daughter Claudia MacLachlan Los Angeles, California ’75 reported: “As a former newspaperman, my father told wonderful stories about the crazy mistakes that get into print when you are in the Editor’s Note: It was indeed a shame, and times have definitely changed. But the letter raises a fascinating publishing business. In that vein, I note that he point: was James Beard a true Reedie? He spent the has never had a middle name.” We’re sorry that bulk of his freshman year at Reed and cut a distinctive Colin, who got through life just fine without figure on campus. He won a prize for a Halloween dance anything in between himself and his surname, costume in full drag, took part in operatic productions, suffered this posthumous indignity at our hands. was elected as the treasurer of the freshman class. Then, according to his biographer Robert Clark, he “became Robert Ian Scott ’53 lovers with one or more male students and a profes- As a follow-up on the memorial piece about Rob sor” and was subsequently expelled. Unfortunately, (December 2010), Karen Lund Scott ’55 provided we found nothing in the archives to shed further specifics about his academic career: While pursuing light on this episode, and Jim does not mention it in a PhD, Rob worked as a full time instructor at the his autobiography. But there is little doubt that his University of Buffalo through a special program time at Reed left a deep impression. After his death that was instituted in order to qualify the univerin 1985, he bequeathed most of his estate, including sity for inclusion under the SUNY aegis; many his collection of cookbooks, to the college, creating the other candidates took advantage of the program James Beard Scholarship Fund. Reed presented him in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rob worked with an honorary degree in 1976. “There’s no doubt at the University of Buffalo, now SUNY, for six that Jim was expelled from Reed,” says lawyer (and years, and then moved on to Southern Oregon former Reed trustee) Morris Galen, who represented College in Ashland, Oregon, where he taught for Jim for the last 15 years of his life and helped draft three years before moving to Canada. Rob’s sons his will. “But he wasn’t the kind of person to dwell on were Dana G. Scott ’79, Ian, and Sam. Dana and that. He held no animosity at all, not when I knew Sam survive him. march 2011 Reed magazine
03-05_Letters.indd 5
5
2/1/11 1:35 PM
Eliot Circular News from campus
Dan Chung/Guardian News & Media Ltd
Poet Gary Snyder ’51 at his home near Nevada City, California.
The Grandmaster Returns Yes, it’s official. Pulitzer-prizewinning poet With a scholar’s rigor, a lover’s passion, Gary Snyder ’51 is returning to campus the heart of a bear, and the wise humor of a to be the keynote speaker for Centennial Bodhisattva, he has taken Asian and Native Reunions. American traditions into his experience of If Reed College in a hundred years had the working Northwest to imagine how helped to form no other notable graduate, we might belong to the North American Gary alone would have been contribution land and not just exist on it. Along the way, enough to American and international cul- he has practiced his values as thoroughly ture. From Reed, he went on to become, very and honestly as he has written them. In quickly, one of the few truly defining literary creating a new poetics to transmit ancient voices of the second half of the twentieth teaching, Gary Snyder exemplifies the spirit century and now the twenty-first. His intent and ideals of Reed College. For many of us from the beginning was not to make sono- who came of age in the 1960s, as well as rous verses but to write usefully, in ways for thousands more, he is the grandfather that serve human knowing and living. He of the tribe. —John Daniel ’70 describes poetry as “a tool, a net or trap to Gary will speak at Reed on Friday, June 10. For more details, catch the present; a sharp edge; a medicine, see reunions.reed.edu/. or the little awl that unties knots.” 6
Awl powerful: Gary ca. 1960.
Reed magazine March 2011
06-09_EliotCircular.indd 6
2/1/11 1:52 PM
The Quest Goes Live As the internet keeps redefining the mean- remains are ever exhumed, they may show ing of “publication,” virtually all American signs of longitudinal rotation. The specter newspapers now publish a digital edition, of unfortunate Quest articles “going viral” and have done for many years. And then, had administrators reaching for the aspirin. there’s the Quest. But the announcement also spurred For 98 years, the independent student news- howls of protest from a less predictable paper remained stubbornly confined to print. quarter—the student senate. Concerned Then, last semester, editors Andrew Choi ’13, that a worldwide Quest might reflect disJohnny Flores ’13, En-Szu Hu-Van Wright ’13, honorably on their beloved campus (or stoke Ethan Knudson ’11, and Katy Joseph ’11 made negative attention in the media), senators a momentous announcement—the beacon of threatened to revoke the paper’s funding. journalism was going online! Tensions ran high. Blood pressure in certain offices in Eliot In the end, bolstered by a referendum Hall went through the roof. As many class- showing a majority of students in favor of mates remember, the Quest has a some- the idea, the editors stuck to their guns, what checkered history. At its best, it has the Quest went online, and administrators provided the campus with lively reportage braced for impact . . . So far, however, the anticipated catastroand pungent commentary. At its worst— well, let’s just say that if Amanda Reed’s phe has yet to materialize. A glance at the
Bowled Over Eliot Hall was shaken to its foundations in December with the retirement of presidential assistant Kathy Rose. A veteran of five presidents and 21 Renn Fayres, Kathy has been a key administrative figure since before today’s freshlings were born. Her retirement party featured numerous tributes. Ed Segel [history, 1973–] composed a ditty to the tune of the Yellow Rose of Texas (“We know she keeps the Boss in line, she rules behind the scenes; She wards off forward faculty and all those pesky Deans.”)
The party also witnessed the revival of a grand Reed tradition—bowling on the third floor of Eliot Hall. Dean Ellen Stauder [English, 1983–] obtained a ball and pins and turned the corridor outside the registrar’s office into an impromptu alley, officiated by assistant registrar Ben Bradley ’88. President Colin Diver and trustee Dan Greenberg ’62 both bowled strikes, to general consternation. Kathy is succeeded by Dawn Thompson, who has worked at Reed for the past 14 years as director of college relations operations.
paper’s site (www.reedquest.org) reveals a heartening mix of news, reviews, and commentary that reflects undergraduate life in all its chaotic but eminently printable glory. “We took the Quest online because we wanted it to be a legitimate news source that took journalism seriously,” says Ethan Knudson ’11. “The internet lets us drastically expand our readership, giving outsiders a look at Reed that isn’t all about drug use and Renn Fayre . . . I think the process was absolutely worth it because it forced us to pay attention to the quality of the newspaper in a new way. We like to pretend that we still live in a bubble, but the awful truth is that the bubble popped a long time ago. Taking the Quest online gives students a powerful tool that I can only hope they’ll use for good.” —Sally Port
Ignite the Imagination of Reedies and Inspire Career Exploration! Join the Alumni Career Network, a group of alumni who provide valuable information, advice, and referrals to Reedies as they pursue career goals, graduate school, or professional school. The NeT work
• Helps Reedies to connect with other Reedies in specific fields and/or geographical areas. • Allows Reedies to see and get inspired by what other Reedies are doing. The oNliNe dATAbAse
• Provides secure, searchable career information posted by network volunteers. • Includes an open field where volunteers can post brief descriptions of their jobs, as well as comments about the Reed experience!
Join today by logging into iris at https://iris.reed.edu www.reed.edu/career/alumni/
Career Services
—Callie Graffi march 2011 Reed magazine
06-09_EliotCircular.indd 7
7
2/3/11 5:45 PM
Eliot Circular
continued
The Book Unbound
Inside Reed’s unusual collection of artists’ books.
Everyone knows the quintessential Reedie is a devout bibliophile, but when it comes to adoration, what are the limits? The cover? The pages? The content? Can the book stand alone as a work of art? What if it’s made of soap or printed with squid ink? What is it, really, that makes a book a book? The answers lie deep in the bowels of the Hauser Library behind the unassuming wooden door of the Pierce Room, which guards an unexpected cave of treasures: Persian rugs, mahogany desks, and bronze busts. But the eye is drawn to the strange objects on the shelves. Here’s a bold red cigarette case, opened to reveal excerpts from Mao’s Little Red Book painstakingly stamped onto individual cigarettes. Here’s a massive steel film canister, its contents a series of circular self-portraits by luminary artists and poets. The surrounding shelves positively bristle with volumes sporting photos by orin zyvan
GOING TUBULAR. This edition of John Ashbury’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror pushes the concept of “book” to its limit. Published in a hand-spun stainless steel canister, it features an actual convex mirror. The poem is set in radiating lines, so that the pages must be rotated (turned—get it?!) in order to read the piece. The book also includes a stone lithograph portrait by Elaine de Kooning. Arion Press, 1984.
8
“ If you can actually see the object and touch it, the experience is transformed.” —Professor Gerry Ondrizek irregular pages and sculpted spines, all crafted from a wealth of unorthodox materials—and all bent on answering the same set of questions. Welcome to the Artists’ Books collection—a rich, eccentric assembly of works, which all, in some way, blur the boundaries between literature, fine art, craft, and interactive sculpture. Headed by professor Gerri Ondrizek [art, 1994–], the collection includes nearly 1,200 titles, each one a variation on the possibilities of the book as a sculptural object. Ondrizek has been building the collection since 1996, when she first became interested in the Artist’s Book movement while on sabbatical. “The books are here to push the boundaries of fine art and challenge my students to explore the possibilities of creating pieces that draw upon the astonishingly rich tradition of the printed word,” she explains. The Artist’s Book movement began in the early twentieth century with a shift
toward exploring the boundaries of the book as a new medium of artistic expression. Since then, publishers, painters, political activists, and poets have all explored the idea, collaborating with one another to produce works from highbrow fine-press editions to cheap subversive pamphlets. Over the last decade, there has also been a resurgence of interest in traditional bookbinding and printing techniques, but Ondrizek is quick to distinguish the purpose of Reed’s collection from this broader trend. “I’m interested in developing it as an extension of the art world, rather than a demonstration of the craft of binding or letterpress,” she clarifies. “These are all works that we feel will push the students to think differently about their own artistic processes and the boundaries of fine art.” Ondrizek wanted to bring the artist’s book into the curriculum at Reed, but felt challenged by this problematic position in the hierarchy of the art world. The proponents of “Fine Art,” she says, have traditonally claimed that art is “not a book, or a box, or fashion, or design—but by reinventing a traditionally academic, intellectual item as the basis for a new field of sculptural pieces, we can fight that.” At the outset, the task was challenging due to the lack of available teaching materials. “There are articles on the subject,” she admits, “but you read literature on this stuff and just have no idea what it is you should be looking at—it’s so hard to describe! But if you can actually see the object and touch it, the experience is transformed.” In 1997, the art department gave Ondrizek the go-ahead to purchase Collective Farm, the collection’s first volume, and a new resource was born. Ondrizek currently teaches Art 368, “Image and Text: the Artist’s Book as a Sculptural Object” every three years. The class recently marveled over Takako Saito’s Book Chess No. 1, an interactive chessboard contained in a minimalist pale wooden box and populated by tiny letterpressed black and white booklets that serve as pieces. Since there are no distinguishing marks on the outsides of the booklets to identify the pieces, forgetful players must read out the text printed inside—generally a poem, proverb, or quotation—in order to
Reed magazine March 2011
06-09_EliotCircular.indd 8
2/1/11 1:55 PM
rediscover their identity. Halfway through a gambit, one might pause to read the following quotation from Emperor Charles V: “To God I speak Spanish, to women, Italian, to men, French, and to my horse, German.” There are, of course, challenges to working with such unusual material. “If you’re showing 18 students one tiny book, it can be hard to take it in and talk about it,” Ondrizek notes. “So we began looking for ways to enhance the collection—to let everyone spend time with the pieces.” In 2008, she worked with Marianne Colgrove ’84 [digital wizardry, 1989–] and a small army of students to develop an online gallery, complete with 16 fully-photographed books, biographies of the artists, further reading lists, and contextual information, all written and complied by students. The collection has drawn a lot of attention from the local community. Some of the most significant and intriguing books recently enjoyed display at an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Instructors from Portland State University, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and
Portland Community College have made it part of their curriculum. “It’s become a crucial resource for students and artists throughout the Portland area,” says Reed’s special collections librarian Gay Walker ’69. “There’s simply nothing else like it here.” Ultimately, Ondrizek sees the Artist’s Book as an avenue for communication. “A book can contain things, it can be a private, personal space,” she muses, sculpting a box in the air with her hands, “but I can also hand it to the next person—it’s like a room you can walk into. A potent distillation of experience.” After spending some time with the powerful physical artifacts in the collection, it’s hard to disagree.
DON’T SMOKE THE ART. Xu Bing painstakingly stamped quotations from Chairman Mao onto these Zhonghua cigarettes (yes, they’re real tobacco) to create his Tobacco Project: Red Book. Self-published, 2000.
—Lucy Bellwood ’12
Further Reading Reed College Artists’ Book Website: cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/ artbooks Museum of Contemporary Craft: museumofcontemporarycraft.org Cellulara and Case Study: installation works by Gerri Ondrizek at the Portland Art Museum [February 12th through May 15th]: portlandartmuseum.org
march 2011 Reed magazine
06-09_EliotCircular.indd 9
9
2/1/11 1:56 PM
Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe
Ben Salzberg
They’re easy to plan. We find a host, we pick a date and time, and we advertise. No pressure on the hosts to cook or reserve tables, and (hopefully!) not much cleanup afterward. They allow for easy socialization. It’s easy to talk to somebody else when you have a common goal—like killing zombies. They attract people of all ages. Since conversation need not be the main event, alumni of all ages have been known to show up. (Not to imply that we don’t talk about random other things as well.) They’re fun! Board games are fun. Period. So, bring on the zombies—er, I mean board games! —Beverly Lau ’06
Notes on Camp Westwind The 50 Reedies who attended Westwind in October witnessed an odd spectacle at the Oregon Coast: the sun! Its presence all weekend warmed copious beach frolicking, and hikes to High Meadows galore. The strong attendance—one of the largest in memory— also prompted an unusual change in protocol for the Saturday night beach bonfire. Because of the large numbers, impresario Xander Patterson ’86 graciously made participation in the talent show optional (there is no guarantee this will happen again, however). Johanna Colgrove ’92 and Paul Manson ’01 manned the kitchen once again this year, employing a small army of volunteers to cook some old favorites (smoked salmon hash) and new delicious dishes that kept people fed and nourished. Johanna looks forward to having 100 people at Westwind this year . . . but admits that might be too much cooking. —Amanda Waldroupe ’07
Chapter Spotlight
getting french in D.C. In November, 20 gourmands showed up (70 percent of them Reed alumni; quick, someone get a calculator!) for a catered French dinner delivered to the home of Paul Levy ’73 in Washington, D.C. The genesis was this: Deirdre Orceyre ’93 belongs to a women’s Brazilian drumming group called Batala. They held a performance in July, to which she invited Bennett Barsk ’82. Bennett won a silent auction for a catered French dinner to be delivered to the location of his choice. The event generated a huge response—ultimately the gathering was capped at 20 by the chef. The menu included salad, ratatouille (vegetarian), boeuf bourguignon (not quite vegetarian, because of that boeuf part), a selection of French cheeses, bread, homemade cookies, fruit, and wine. Service was excellent, Paul and his wife Nancy Huvendick were consummate hosts, and the food was exquisite. An outstanding time was had by all, and we definitely set a new standard for Restaurant Club events. We are contemplating making this an annual event.
zombies take Chicago We in Chicago discovered something new this year. Reedies LOVE board games! Personally, I haven’t met a Reedie who didn’t like to think about optimizing resource production to gain victory points. So far, we’ve had three board game nights, each centered around a different game. Our first event featured Settlers of Catan, which I learned to play at Reed. Our second event, held on Friday the 13th, featured Last Night on Earth, the zombie board game. (It even came with its own spooky soundtrack, which we played throughout the night!) —Bennett Barsk ’82 The most recent event introduced players to Carcassonne, a board game set in Medieval Find Yourself France, in which players build cities, roads, Seeking Reedies nearby? Check out our alumni chapters at reed.edu/alumni/chapters. and farms with intersecting tiles. Here are some things we like about Social media board-game nights: Follow a variety of alumni news on Facebook (including They’re cheap. People bring games they ReediEnews and Reed magazine), LinkedIn, and Twitter already own and we have a snacks-and- (the Doyle Owl has been spotted there too!). Look for local chapter groups on these forums as well. See alumni.reed. drinks potluck. edu/#social
10 Reed magazine March 2011
10-11_EmpireOfGriffin.indd 10
2/1/11 1:44 PM
Caption Contest! Last issue, we asked you for amusing captions for this histor ical Reed photo. And you answered. We received entries from classmates of all vintages and appellations. A sagacious owl has granted eternal timê to these lucky correspondents . . .
You know Reed. But how well do you know Reedies? A free bumper sticker to the first 12 readers who can correctly answer the following questions about our illustrious classmates. Note that this puzzle has been fiendishly designed to confound Googlers and encourage good old-fashioned browsing. And yes, the answers are all in this issue! Who won the Dylan Thomas Prize for her book of poetry? Who was profiled by the New York Times for his research into ESP? illustratioin for reed by s.britt
Who was elected to Congress as a freshman Republican from New York? Whose wedding was witnessed by a brood of hens? Who installed a pair of lasers between the physics building and Eliot Hall? Got ’em? Send us your answers in the enclosed envelope, or email puzzled@reed.edu. Hints available if the price is right.
Honorable Mention “Do you think that someday in the future someone will invent a machine which will simulate virtual archery games that people will be able to play indoors, on screens like televisions, regardless of the weather?” “Oh, come on, be serious, where will anyone ever find electrical engineers who will be capable of inventing electronic computing machines like that?” —Scott Benowitz ’96 “We warned you to leave the seat down!” —Michael and Elizabeth Lynn, parents of Alanna Lynn ’13 “Oh yeah?! Well, your mother reads secondary sources—so there!!” —John Belmont ’62
eric cable
Grand Winner “Professor Cronyn, we respectfully request that the chem exam be postponed until next week!” —Meg Turney Fried ’79
The Rarest Gift Alumni, faculty, parents, staff, friends, and a partridge in a pear tree enjoyed the annual Reed Alumni Holiday Party in December. Instead of French hens, guests enjoyed a wide array of other delectables, and afterwards indulged in a delightful yule log dessert (bûche de Noël). One stately bagpiper was enough to herald the traditional Boar’s Head Procession, and, later on, decidedly more than nine ladies were dancing to the big-band tunes of the Pranksters. Many wore their festive finery, and instead of gold rings, all partygoers went home with a Reed centennial lapel pin. (Bling makes everything merry and bright, doesn’t it?) See www.reed.edu/alumni/holidayparty for more photos.
Ready to make your mark? Pick up your pen and try your hand at the photo on the enclosed envelope. (Extra timê if you enclose an Annual Fund gift!)
march 2011 Reed magazine 11
10-11_EmpireOfGriffin.indd 11
2/1/11 1:44 PM
Centennial Campaign
Young Alumni Give a Damn Alumni Giving by Decade 900
number of donors
Reedies have been debating “Olde Reed” vs. “New Reed” for almost 100 years. Whether we danced to Glenn Miller or the Doors, Talking Heads or the Decemberists, the striding, heroic figures we looked up to as freshlings always seemed cooler, brainier, and purer than those whelps we gazed down at as seniors. But of late, New Reed has oneupped its forebears: younger alumni are giving back to Reed in greater numbers than ever before. Recent figures from the Annual Fund indicate that Reed’s youngest alumni are way ahead of earlier generations in terms of the sheer volume of donations. Over the past five years, the number of alumni giving to Reed in their first year after graduation has risen threefold—from 21 for the class of 2005 to 77 for the class of 2009. Over the same period, the donor rolls from generations of alumni up through the 1990s fell, while more alumni from the 2000s and 2010 gave: 640 alumni from the 2000s gave in 2010, charging ahead of the decade that preceded them. Eighty-two members of the class of 2010 contributed as well, unheard of in previous years, in which very few enrolled seniors donated. Why the turnabout? One reason may be that recent grads report more satisfaction with their time on campus. “When I went to Reed, there were students who loved Reed and students who hated Reed, and we had a fair proportion of both,” says trustee Konrad Alt ’81, whose son is a sophomore at Reed. “So I’m not surprised that a large percentage of alumni from that era are not enthusiastic about giving. But over the past ten to 15 years, the college has invested a lot in upgrading the quality of the student experience. Students today are having a better experience than they used to, and that’s reflected in these numbers.” Second, young alumni may have a clearer picture of how the college’s finances work. “The Class of 2010 Scholarship and the recent young alumni Annual Fund challenges have done a lot to raise awareness about charitable giving among young alumni,” says Sara Rasmussen ’05, who serves on Reed’s alumni development committee. “[There has also been] more frank conversation about Reed’s financial aid situation and its need for giving.” “I think there’s a greater effort to bring
800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 pre- 50s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
When they graduated
“ There’s been more frank conversation about Reed’s financial aid situation.” —Sara Rasmussen ’05
2010 scholarship drive, which raised a total of $11,707 (thanks in part to a challenge gift of $5,000 from President Colin Diver) and supported an undisclosed student who matriculated at Reed in fall 2010. The turnabout is especially encouraging because participation among Reed’s alumni is lower than at comparable schools. “This is one place where Reed doesn’t look very strong relative to other schools in our peer group,” says Hugh Porter, vice president of college relations. While colleges most similar to Reed can count on about half their alumni, in a good year only 30 percent of Reed alums contribute. This has serious implications for both philanthropic foundations and financial rating agencies, which consider the breadth of Reed’s donor base when assessing its financial prospects. “It’s a long-term challenge the institution can’t ignore,” Porter says. Inspired by the class of ’10, current Reed students are planning a new scholarship campaign—dubbed the Reedies for Reedies 2011 Scholarship—for the spring semester, soliciting the entire student body (not just seniors) with a challenge gift from Venky Ganesan ’96. Though no one knows whether they will better their elders, the omens are promising: five students had already given before the first day of class.
alumni into the fold,” says Michael Stapleton ’10, who helped lead the successful class of 2010 scholarship drive in his senior year. The Annual Fund has made a conscious effort to reach out to current students, according to Annual Fund associate director Lindsay Nealon. “We’re doing a better job of speaking to students while they’re here about the importance of philanthropy,” she says, “so, it’s not the first time they’ve heard about it after they graduate—they’ve heard about it all along.” This cultural shift is important, she notes, because alumni who give in their first year in the “real world” are more likely to support the college throughout their lives. Paradoxically, another factor driving contributions from young alumni may be the stinging critique of financial aid at Reed which appeared in the New York Times in June 2009. “There was a lot of anger directed at the college,” recalls Stapleton. In response, he and three other seniors launched a group —William Abernathy ’88 called Reedies for Reed. “It’s easy to critiFURTHER READING: cize,” he said of the Times article, “but [we believed] we should do something about it. Financial Aid At Reed, www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/ summer2009/columns/eliot_circular/4.html Let’s change, or step in the right direction of “College in Need Closes a Door to Needy Students,” www. effecting change, in a positive way.” nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10reed.html Reedies for Reed launched the class of
12 Reed magazine March 2011
12_YoungAlumni.indd 12
2/1/11 1:57 PM
REED
Eliot Society
100 100 years o f reed .
years of giving.
make your mark. Amanda Reed’s bequest founded the college for “the promotion of literature, science and arts.” As Reed celebrates its centennial, we invite you to join the Eliot Society by making a bequest commitment of your own.
Contact Kathy Saitas at 503/777-7573 or plannedgiving@reed.edu to make sure Reed can accept your gift as written. plannedgiving.reed.edu
cover.indd 13
2/1/11 2:11 PM
Trapped in the USSR A new book by Gal Beckerman ’98 explores the paradox of the Soviet Jews: stuck in a bureaucracy that would not let them go, but would not let them be. By Peter Ephross
Gal Beckerman ’98 (above) has earned glowing reviews for When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
In 1963, a young Latvian Jew named Yosef myself in the water so I could learn how Mendelevich visited an anonymous clearing to swim.” Gal’s grandparents survived the Holoin the forest of Rumbuli, a stretch of brush and fir a few miles south of Riga, and real- caust; his parents were born in Israel. Growized with a shudder that he was standing ing up in the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles, he developed a strong Jewish on a mass grave. identity. His intense focus on academics Beneath his feet lay the bodies of 25,000 alienated him from his peers in high school, Jews, shot by the Nazis and their Latvian collaborators during World War II, yet but he found a home at Reed. “I always had there was no official sign that anything a hunger for reading and learning, and Reed had taken place. Mendelevich joined other taught me what to do with that,” he says. Jewish activists in transforming the spot “Reed gave me an outlet, and this book is in into a memorial to the Holocaust—an act some ways a continuation of that desire to that unexpectedly launched the movement be intellectually engaged.” At Reed, he was inspired by a class taught to allow Soviet Jews the freedom to emiby professor Pancho Savery [English, 1995–] grate, a movement that would become a on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man— “an incredfocal point of international diplomacy and ible chance to explore one book in depth with a model for human rights campaigns. Writing about an issue with major geo- a professor who understood the right balance between directing students and letting them political implications, so many players, and a lengthy time span makes a difficult topic discover on their own.” Professor Darius for a first book, as Gal Beckerman ’98 read- Rejali [political science, 1989–] was another powerful influence. Gal also acted in a couple ily admits. The history of the Soviet Jewry movement is “a very big story,” he says. “For of student plays, including a kabuki-style a first book, the advice I would give some- production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Beggar one would be to find a very narrow subject or the Dead Dog. He majored in English and through which you could tell a bigger story: wrote a creative thesis, a novella about the son of Israeli parents that drew heavily on You write about that one baseball game in his own personal experience. 1959 and use it to tell the history of the After Reed, he took on another chalwhole world.” lenge—joining the Peace Corps. “I rememGal overcame the obstacles. When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone has received wide- ber telling people, I’m going to go to the spread media attention and some glowing Peace Corps. They were like, ‘You don’t seem like the kind of person who would go into reviews from National Public Radio, the New Yorker, Tablet, the Nation, the New the Peace Corps.’ That really bothered me. Republic, and Harper’s Magazine, which fea- That became my reason for wanting to go to the Peace Corps, because I wanted to be the tured a lengthy essay revolving around the kind of person who would do that.” book, calling it an “impressive history.” Gal served in Cameroon for two years, Tackling a challenge is nothing new for Gal; in fact, it is something of a lifelong pat- where he trained teachers and helped to set up a nursery school. Returning stateside, he tern. As a child, he was shy, struggling to decided to become a journalist—an intriguing overcome a stutter, but he was still involved career choice for a person who was once selfin school plays. “I think I was challenging myself, forcing myself to do something that conscious. He earned a master’s degree in jourfelt so against my nature in order to some- nalism from Columbia University and worked at the Columbia Journalism Review until joining how overcome all that awkwardness,” he says. “As perverse as it sounds, throwing the Jewish newspaper The Forward in 2009.
14 Reed magazine March 2011
14-15_Beckerman.indd 14
2/1/11 2:01 PM
beit hatfutsot photo archive
Tangled up in Red: Anatoly Shcharansky (front, center) and other refuseniks in 1976. Shcharansky later spent 9 years in the Gulag before being released by Secretary Gorbachev.
He’s also been a fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin. During a recent interview in New York City, Gal displayed the intellectual intensity for which Reed is famous. Dressed in a dark blue blazer and open-necked button-down shirt, he looked as if he had just stepped out of a classroom. “What’s special to me about this movement is that it combined—and this is a Reedie way of putting it—it combined the universal and the particular,” he says, referring to the universality of human rights with the particularity of a Jewish cause. The story he details is a tale of ordinary activists in two countries. In the United States, he focuses on how small groups of Jews, first in Cleveland and then in New York City, adopted the cause of the Soviet Jews—known as refuseniks because they were refused permission to emigrate—and catapulted it onto the agenda in Washington. Indeed, the issue helped coalesce the American Jewish community into the powerful political force it is today. Meanwhile, Soviet Jews faced a more existential challenge. “In Stalin’s period and after, it was almost impossible to maintain a semblance of Jewish identity,” Gal says. “By the ’60s, people were coming of age, and their connection with what it meant to be Jewish was their grandfather who would go once a year to the decrepit old synagogue
in the city and pray, or a grandmother who knew how to make gefilte fish or light some candlesticks. But, what did keep them aware of themselves as Jews was this stamp on their passport,” referring to the line on Soviet passports that identified their nationality. Relying on dozens of oral interviews with Soviet émigrés, Gal shows how they secretly maintained their Jewish identities. Many of them paid a terrible price. Mendelevich and better-known refuseniks like Anatoly (now Natan) Shcharansky lost their jobs
freedom of emigration a requirement for most-favored nation trade status—a direct challenge to Soviet policy. That legislation cracked open the floodgates. Starting in 1976, more than 1.5 million Jews left the Soviet Union and its successor states, emigrating mainly to Israel and the United States. “I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this is one of the overlooked, but most successful, human rights campaigns of the twentieth century,” Gal says. “It was a campaign that started from nothing—with
Refuseniks were sentenced to the Gulag for defying the Soviet state. and were imprisoned in the Gulag for their desire to learn Hebrew, observe religious customs, and immigrate to countries where they could practice Judaism freely. Two historical factors contributed to the movement’s launch: the Holocaust (many of the refuseniks building the memorial at Rumbuli were motivated to do so because they lost relatives to the Nazis or their collaborators) and the “thaw” ushered in by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which gave Jews and other dissidents just enough public space to organize. The movement’s first big victory came in 1975, when President Gerald Ford signed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which made
student groups and people who cared about this issue—and led to a global cause where you had Reagan pulling out a list of names every time he would meet with Gorbachev.” Weighing in at 598 pages, the book required a prodigious amount of research conducted on three continents. Back home in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and daughter, who turned one in October, Gal is thinking over his next project. He hasn’t reached a final decision but does know one thing: “It will be a lot shorter.” FURTHER READING When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry by Gal Beckerman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
march 2011 Reed magazine 15
14-15_Beckerman.indd 15
2/1/11 2:01 PM
Rapture Of The Tiny Artist Maggie Rudy ’80 creates a whiskered world resplendent with rodents.
In the judge’s chamber, from The House that Mouse Built, Mouse and Musetta exchange their vows, while Woolly Bear serves as witness.
The mice are everywhere in Maggie Rudy’s Mouseland, an attic studio situated in the hills of Northwest Portland, far above the city grid. One dons a paint-spattered apron and completes the portrait of a lady mouse dressed in vivid red. Two check the progress of a bean-sized loaf of bread baking in an oven. Three unpack a picnic lunch on a wind-swept field of green sweater grass. Four gather for a visit with Granny in her wee gourd house. Five submerge in a teacup, luxuriating in a steamy bath of cotton batting. They are sleek and flexible creatures, with gray-brown coats, soft white bellies, and pink noses. Their hands grasp. Their tails twist and bend. Their eyes reflect light in an uncanny way. They laugh, they dance, acquired some mice made of felt. She and they pine for love, they pluck tiny guitar sisters Susy ’79 and Annie dressed them strings, and read penny-sized books, paint- and placed them in a variety of settings. The ed with a three-hair brush. “rapture of the tiny” that she celebrated in Maggie’s fascination with mice began childhood has never left her. in the third grade, when her family moved After graduating with a degree in art to Lancaster, England, where her father, a from Reed, Maggie experimented with biologist, had a two-year postdoctoral fel- other media and continued her studies in lowship in physiology. She awoke from the field. She saw the work of EJ Taylor at her “baby stupor” to an English aesthetic the Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylthat would remain hugely influential in vania and was inspired to make dolls. For a her life: hedgerows, gypsy carts, and a field few years, she made commissioned portrait trip to the home of Beatrix Potter. From dolls with fired clay and Sculpey clay. She is a shop in Lancaster, the Rudy household also an accomplished artist whose paintings
Creator Maggie Rudy, surrounded by book sets in her studio, helps Musetta hang up the laundry with clothespins made from toothpicks.
16 Reed magazine March 2011
16-17_Rudy.indd 16
2/1/11 2:09 PM
Hungry Musetta, intent on the stolen cheese, is unaware of the danger lurking on a weathered baby shoe.
and drawings are represented by the Mark by Reed dance instructor Pat Wong [1975– Woolley Gallery. 2009]—the hardest class she took at the colAlong the way, she married Richard lege, she says, and where she learned about Alden ’75, raised two sons, Sam and Toby, gesture and how to embody movement. and kept her creativity percolating as a volIn addition to Pat, two other Reed unteer at their school, the Arbor School of instructors remain influential in her life. Arts & Sciences in Tualatin, Oregon, where One is calligraphy instructor Robert Palshe made puppets, costumes, and stage set- ladino [1969–84]. “I learned so much from tings for the school’s annual theatre productions—some of her puppets are on permaIt is the animate quality of the nent display in Arbor’s library. About 16 years ago, Maggie recalled the mice that instantly attracts Lancaster mice, and wondered if she could the viewer; they are centered; design a creature that was more lifelike. With characteristic ingenuity, she set to they are affected by gravity. work, experimenting with felt, paint, pipe cleaners, and little black beads. The result was a mouse, uniquely hers, requiring six or him,” she says; “mostly I think it was what seven hours of concentrated time to make. I’d call ‘reverence for the hand.’ His class“I have to be having a good day to make room was an unusual refuge, very different them,” she says. So far, she has made over from my studio art classes . . . there was just 600 mice—many enjoying life in the fan- a respect for history and craft, and no place tastic and timeless settings she creates for for egotism.” The mice evoke an emotional them, while others are protected from the response in viewers, who are ecstatic to find dust, sealed in canning jars like bewhiskered so much creativity coming from a manual preserves, and awaiting a turn at the fun. process. “I’m a believer in the hand,” says It is the animate quality of the mice that Maggie. The idea of channeling creativity instantly attracts the viewer; they are cen- through a digital process leaves her cold. “If tered; they are affected by gravity. Maggie you turn off the power, you have no product.” traces that movement back to a class given She also recalls classes taken from art
historian Peter Parshall [1971–2000]. For her forthcoming book, The House that Mouse Built, Maggie created a judge’s chamber inspired by the interior settings that Parshall presented in his Northern European Renaissance class and from portraits of Erasmus in his study. In the mouse chamber, light pours in through a leaded window onto the desk, behind which a white-wigged judge officiates at a marriage. An inkwell and quill sit in readiness. Parchment scrolls and weathered tomes line the bookshelves, where the blind mouse of justice perches on a sewing bobbin. The room is replete with a portrait, a floor tapestry, an arched wooden cigar-box door, and—this is Portland, after all—an upturned umbrella in an urn. Maggie’s mice have gained a loyal following on the internet, thanks to her blog MousesHouses, and she hopes interest will continue to grow with the publication of her book. Working with the mice already has generated remarkable energy—enough to push Maggie out of the burrow and into the limelight. —Laurie Lindquist Further Reading The House that Mouse Built. Downtown Bookworks, 2011. MouseHouses (mouseshouses.blogspot.com)
march 2011 Reed magazine 17
16-17_Rudy.indd 17
2/1/11 2:09 PM
Apocrypha
t r adi t ion m y t h lege nd
Ninth-Inning Conviction The Reed baseball team of ’39 faced a ruthless foe at the state penitentiary Baseball has no clock, but some games feel like eternal punishment, even when your opponents are serving life. The Reed Cardinals (as they were then) never forgot the game they played on April 22, 1939, inside the grim, gray walls of the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. First baseman Gregg Wood ’39, now a retired physician in Lake Oswego, remembers that the game began with a promising start. Third baseman Randy Gore ’39 led off with a homer. “You could hear the cons saying things like, ‘I’ll bet ya half a pack of butts on the visitors,’” Gregg says. The Cardinals’ optimism soon faded. As the game progressed, the Reed squad was alarmed to discover that the convict team included several expert players, including a hulking, masterful right-handed pitcher. Gregg can still remember being baffled at the plate. “We had ’em 1–0, but they had a player—Luke Crosswhite,” he recalls. “He just slaughtered us pitching. He was really terrific.” In fact, inmate pitcher Keith “Big Luke” Crosswhite was an extraordinary athlete
who would lead the OSP team to several regarding the quality of the bats, which we victories over professional teams in the next have been purchasing from you during the few years. (See sidebar.) past two months. Out of the number we Reed surrendered four runs in the third have bought, 15 of them have broke, which inning, and another three in the fourth. The would indicate they are not of very strong Cardinals “put up a game fight,” according material.” Perhaps they couldn’t hold up to to the Quest, notching seven hits, includ- so many fat pitches and big swings. ing Randy’s dinger and hits by Gregg and In fairness, the Reed squad didn’t benefit Robert Scholz ’40. But the “impotent Reed from very intensive training. The legendary attack” went nowhere, and the final score Charles S. Botsford [director of physical was a 10–1 pounding. education, 1912–52] encouraged students The Quest headline was unsparing: “Reed to play for the love of the game. He named Trounced by Prison Team.” skillful players as “masters,” and they often Pitcher Al Kronenberg ’41 never forgot ran the teams. “The idea was that we didn’t the game, reminiscing about it whenever have a paid coach, and we selected players he drove past the penitentiary. “‘There’s the to be the next year’s coach,” says Dick Irwin slammer,’ my dad would always say,” recalls ’42, now retired as chief of the U.S. Census his daughter, Janet Hill, adding that Al would and living in Alexandria, Virginia. describe the sound of the main doors closing Botsford’s philosophy was extolled in behind the Reed nine that day in 1939. affectionate eulogies after his death in 1967. The sound may have still been echoing in “Physical activity, games, and sports, Bots Al’s mind as he stood on the pitcher’s mound. believed, are for personal fulfillment, for Prison warden George Alexander indirectly mental as well as physical health, for enjoyweighed in on Reed’s pitching in an irate note ment, for fellowship, and for life after colhe wrote a couple of weeks later to a sporting lege days are over,” read one. goods supplier: “I wish to enter a complaint “Star athletes had his admiration and
18 Reed magazine March 2011
18-19_Baseball.indd 18
2/1/11 2:17 PM
blessing and he appointed them as ‘masters’ to teach others,” said Byron Youtz [acting president, 1967–68; physics, 1956– 68]. “But he was devoted to the inept, the uncoordinated, the timid, and the duffer, whom he led to the threshold where skill lay and where the pleasure and excitement of achievement came.” The Cardinals’ record that year was an undistinguished 4–13, although they managed to finish the season with a thumping 8–3 victory over Pacific College (now George Fox University). “We didn’t win a lot of games,” Dick says. “We weren’t very good, but we had a lot of fun playing.” But the subsequent careers and lives of the 1939 Cardinals are an eloquent testament to the wisdom of Botsford’s approach. Sure, they got pasted by the inmates, but the camaraderie they developed—and their love of the game—sustained them through their time at Reed, during World War II, and beyond. Indeed, many of them became lifelong friends. Al Kronenberg served with the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific, then became an executive with Weyerhauser. His career took him and his family to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia. Throughout his life, his varsity letter R remained one of his prized possessions. “Baseball was a huge part of his life,” says his daughter Janet. Al’s widow, Anne, said his Reed friendships formed a social core. “The wonderful thing about the teammates was that they stayed friends forever,” she says. At a memorial for Bill Martin ’41, Al recounted a bit of sibling rivalry and athletic folly. “[Bill] played left field in baseball, and his brother Curt played shortstop,” Al wrote. “An opponent hit a harmless fly, both called for it, both were stubborn, and they ran into each other. The ball dropped on the ground between them and they started a fistfight. By the time another player got the ball, the batter was on third.” “That group of men was so neat,” Janet says. “Nobody came from great wealth, but all those guys from Reed went out and did really great things.” Just not on a baseball field. —Will Swarts ’92 Will Swarts ’92 is a writer in New York. Old rugby teammates will quickly point to him as a prime example of Reed’s tradition of enthusiastic but unskilled athletes.
Memento: A baseball signed by the 1939 Reed Cardinals remains a prized possession of the Kronenberg family. Signatures include those of Al Kronenberg ’41, Dick Irwin ’42, Randy Gore ’39, Robert Scholz ’40, Gregg Wood ’39, Curt Martin ’40 Bill Martin ’41, Jack Kvernland ’40, Art Carson ’40, and Norm Petigrow ’41.
The Con and the Curveball Keith Crosswhite was just 19 years Crosswhite, a retired mathematics old when he went on a cross-country professor. Crosswhite won a gold watch at crime spree that ended in disaster on a prison track meet in July 1940. (The October 18, 1931. Crosswhite and an older friend, Eugene Register-Guard said the convict John Owen, 28, were driving through “was more interested in months and LaGrande, Oregon, when Oregon years than minutes and hours.”) After beating college and semi-pro State Policeman Amos “Spud” Helms stopped their car, suspecting it was teams, Crosswhite faced more serious linked to a stick-up robbery in Idaho competition. In 1942, he racked up four Falls. Owen shot Helms in the hand wins against the Salem Senators, a proand abdomen, a wound that eventu- fessional team in the Class B Western ally killed him. The two fled into the International League, close to today’s mountains and were found two days single-A level. The Senators offered him a contract. later by a posse. The warden was willing to let Owen and Crosswhite stayed mum on who pulled the trigger and were Crosswhite sign, so long as he only sentenced to life. Crosswhite served 12 pitched home games, but the plan was quashed by national minor league comyears before Owen confessed. “My brother was with the wrong missioner judge W.G. Branham. Crosswhite was paroled in 1943, person,” says his sister, Nell Crosswhite Jersak. After Keith’s arrest, their after Owen’s confession. The Seattle father—who was, ironically, a sheriff’s Rainiers looked at him, but were deputy in Springfield, Missouri—was barred from signing the ex-con. himself killed in a shootout and died Crosswhite returned to Springfield before he could plead for leniency at and remained a formidable semipro pitcher. He raised a family and lived his son’s sentencing. In the penitentiary, Keith Crosswhite quietly until his death in 1997. According to his brother, Joe, his ban from picked up the nickname “Big Luke.” “He became an outstanding ath- professional baseball was “one of the lete in prison,” says his brother Joe great disappointments of his life.”
march 2011 Reed magazine 19
18-19_Baseball.indd 19
2/3/11 5:49 PM
A School for Kathmandu Xeno Acharya ’09 left Nepal to get away from the civil war. His conscience made him go back to do something about it.
Xeno Acharya and village elders stand outside newly built Mechi Mahakali School.
By Juliette Guilbert ’89
Growing up in Kathmandu, Xeno Acharya physics program was good, and I liked the tried not to think about the war. hippie vibe,” he says). His parents urged him to focus on his By his junior year, he had overcome schoolwork—not on the armed conflict homesickness and the language barrier, between the government and Maoist reb- switched his allegiance from physics to bio, els, which was killing and dispossessing tens and started overachieving in precisely the of thousands of Nepalese. “My dad kept us manner his father must have had in mind. shielded from all that,” he says. That summer, he took organic chemistry, Easier said than done. On one occasion, worked full-time in a lab, and volunteered the police raided his family’s house, simply at Oregon Health & Science University—a because his parents belonged to the teachers’ 70-hour-a-week load. Still, it was getting harder to ignore the union (which was affiliated with the Communist Party). “We had to hide the under- news from home. By 2006, the trouble was ground magazines under the mattress,” he coming closer to his family, with mass protests and violence in the Kathmandu Valley says. Nonetheless, for the most part Xeno and refugees pouring into the city. Every was able to screen out the ugly headlines new report sparked a kind of survivor’s and concentrate on his studies. He applied guilt about being comfortably ensconced in to Reed “almost by accident” after seeing a the ivory tower, while his friends and famcollege brochure at a friend’s house (“The ily faced real peril. “I felt like I’d somehow 20 Reed magazine March 2011
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 20
2/1/11 2:22 PM
Nepal’s civil war displaced thousands of villagers who have swelled the slums of Katmandu.
betrayed everybody that was there—I’d basically just escaped,” he says. By the end of that hectic summer, Xeno found that he couldn’t stay away any longer; he took a leave from Reed to make his first trip home in three years. His parents weren’t thrilled with his decision, and not just because he was interrupting his studies. Kathmandu had become a dangerous place. “Going back home after three years was almost a culture shock,” he says. “So much had changed. There was a lot more pollution in the city, it was very overcrowded, and the crime rate had really gone up.” Restless in this restrictive environment, Xeno found himself walking along the Bagmati River in the evenings, wandering through the refugee camps that had sprung up on its banks. What he saw distressed him. “There’s no infrastructure,” he says. “The
people moved in over the months, and their houses are made up of tarps that they collect from the garbage cans and other places in the street, from sticks and twigs they put together with ropes. They pile this together and they make some kind of structure that will protect them from the rain. That’s all they have. No sewage system, no healthcare, no education.” Wanting to help, he volunteered at a local NGO that ran a school for the refugee children. It didn’t take long to figure out that the school was a sham, aimed at relieving foreign donors of their money: “When the donors came and visited, they would flood the school with numerous kids collected randomly from the village,” he says. He quit, disenchanted. But his walks by the river— and his talks with the refugees—continued. Peeling back layers of mistrust, he sat in march 2011 Reed magazine 21
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 21
2/1/11 2:22 PM
a school for kathmandu continued smoky, windowless shacks and listened to the stories of families who had lost everything and now placed all their hope for the future in their kids. Though these people needed absolutely everything—food, water, shelter, medicine, clothing—what they wanted was a school. Fat chance. The refugees had no real claim to this squalid patch of riverbank—in fact, the entire shantytown, with its 500 households, was illegal. The police blew through every few months, burning down their flimsy shacks. Why would the city bosses grant a building permit to a tent city they were bent on eradicating? Then there was the nearby maternity hospital, which suspected the refugees of pilfering supplies—it was sure to protest any attempt to make the camp more permanent. Not to mention the United Nations, which was planning to build a park on the site. All the while, of course, Xeno’s parents were pressing him to give up his crazy scheme and go back to college. What he needed was an ally with some political juice. The guy who fit that description was Indra, a village leader with Maoist connections. The only problem was that Indra wanted nothing to do with a wideeyed college kid. He’d seen outsiders raise hopes before, making promises of money or help to get what they wanted—data for their MA thesis, atmospheric photos of ragged children—and then disappearing. So Xeno went to visit Indra every day for weeks. He drew up plans for a school building to show that he was serious. And, eventually, Indra gave in. “He got in touch with the Young Communist League,” Xeno says— a Maoist paramilitary group that doles out rough justice in the refugee encampments. “Once he told the YCL we needed the permits, we got them.” By the time Xeno returned to Reed for his senior year in August 2007, the project was more or less shovel-ready. All he needed was the shovels—and the bricks, and the mortar—which would cost several thousand dollars he didn’t have. Enter Julie Kern-Smith, Reed’s assistant director of career services. She told him about the McGill-Lawrence Internship, which helps students pursue summer projects that place them in contact with diverse populations. Xeno applied and won $3,700 to provide education for refugee children. The catch: the money was not technically supposed to be used for construction. “So
Top: What do you want to be? Popular career goals at Mechi Mahakali include bus driver, pilot, scuba diver, and doctor. bottom: Second-grade students write acrostic poems using the letters of their names.
I just violated the rules,” he says cheerfully. After he graduated in May 2008, Xeno went back to Kathmandu, grant money in hand (plus another couple thousand he’d raised on his own), to build a school. “I was skeptical about whether all this could be done,” he says. “I worked laying the bricks myself, with the people.” By the end of the summer, the school was finished. And—for the simple reason that it couldn’t be burned down—it became the anchor of the community, the first step toward turning an ephemeral, vulnerable camp into a permanent settlement. The school now provides education to
more than 50 students from kindergarten through fifth grade, thanks to the help of several Reedies: Erica Boulay ’11 and Kritish Rajbahandari ’12 were awarded McGillLawrence grants to teach there last summer (see sidebar). Jennifer Rupert ’90 and Jenny Gadda (who works in Reed’s admission office) and her husband, Dean, help run Namaste Kathmandu, the Portland-based nonprofit that handles administration and fundraising for the project. Xeno himself is now pursuing a master’s degree in public health at the University of Washington in Seattle. Meanwhile, the school has become a sort of catalyst for
22 Reed magazine March 2011
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 22
2/1/11 2:22 PM
Puja encouraged other children to come to class—until her mother’s illness forced her to support the family.
Puja’s Lesson By Erica Boulay ’11
top: Lunch is served. bottom: Alisa. 10, brings a bouquet of flowers she gathered for her teachers.
change. Plans are afoot for a health clinic, playground, and garden. Once an anonymous slum, the community has gained a postal address and even a name—Paurakhi Gaun, or Diligent Village. “These people had no homes to go back to,” Xeno says. “They said, ‘We need a name, and we need to make this place look beautiful, like our homes were.’” Writer Juliette Guilbert ’89 lives near Seattle with her husband and two daughters.
FURTHER READING For more about Namaste Kathmandu, see namastekatmandu.blogspot.com.
Wearing the same pink shirt she has worn for 11 days straight, Puja holds her thumb to her face and studies its swirls and spirals. With her other hand, she carefully recreates the complicated patterns on a piece of white paper. Each finger, she notices, has a different design. Puja looks at her work and wipes the beads of sweat from her forehead. It is June in Nepal, and humid air bears down over the concrete schoolhouse, baking its tin roof like an oven. Outside, sludgecovered ducks waddle up from the Bagmati River and noisily try to mate. The river reeks of sewage. Puja turns to her little brother Prabesh and helps him find the swirls on his fingers. A small black puppy ambles into the classroom, wanders over to a boy contentedly drawing elaborate designs onto his paper, and licks the salt off his bare feet. The boy gives it a savage kick. Dogs are not pets in the slums of Kathmandu. The wind changes direction, blasting a cloud of sand into the classroom. The 14 children instinctively duck their heads down. When the gust subsides, Puja picks up her march 2011 Reed magazine 23
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 23
2/1/11 2:23 PM
puja’s lesson continued head and says, “Miss! Finished! Look!” She raises her completed project aloft, a colorful drawing illustrating the dermis and epidermis of her hand. Puja is 14 years old but looks about 10. The Mechi Mahakali School, where I interned from May to August 2010, serves approximately 50 migrant children whose parents generally have little education beyond the eighth grade. Most are part of the Dalit minority, the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system. The children live with illness, hunger, domestic violence, drug use, and the constant pressure to help their families survive. As the English, math, and science teacher for the second grade, I had to remember that for most of them, just showing up at school was a major achievement. One morning, while checking math homework, I noticed an absent face. Puja had only been coming to school for a month, but this was the third day in a row she had been
absent. Her brother Prabesh said their mother was sick in the hospital. This reason didn’t make much sense to me. Why could Prabesh come to school while Puja had to stay home? The students were just taking out their books when there was a sudden commotion: the students ran outside and jumped along the riverbank. “Puja! Puja!” they shouted. I put on my sunglasses. Across the river, I could see a thin girl poking around a mountain of garbage with a bag slung over her shoulder, hoisting a giant chunk of Styrofoam triumphantly over her head. The students around me applauded, and calculated the going rate for such a treasure. “Puja!” I shouted across the river. “I miss you! Come to school!” She shook her head. I watched as she turned and walked away down the riverbank, past gaunt cows and other children carrying bags, her long arms swinging with the weight of the Styrofoam, until smoke rising from burning trash obscured the view and her pink shirt faded out of sight.
24 Reed magazine March 2011
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 24
2/1/11 2:23 PM
Puja came back to see me six days later. Her eyes showed she had been crying.
Erica Boulay ’11 on her last day teaching at Mechi Mahakali. A few days later, the Bagmati River burst its banks and flooded the school and village. Photo by her Class 2 student, Bikas.
Puja came back to see me six days later. Her eyes showed she had been crying. After lunch—she was hungry—she took me by the hand and led me into the street. Dodging motorbikes, taxis, pedestrians, vendors, and air-conditioned government vehicles, we arrived at the gates of a maternity hospital. I was beginning to understand. Her mother was expecting another baby and was in no condition to work; her father was absent. Puja looked in my eyes, not wanting to let go. Her hand held mine tightly as we said goodbye for the last time. Helplessly I watched as Puja’s thin legs and knobby knees carried her past the row of guards to the ward where her mother lay. A few days later, I walked to the one-room shanty, made from bamboo, tarpaulin, and pieces of plywood, where Puja and her family used to sleep together on string mattresses over a cardboard floor. I knocked on the door, and it blew open. The blankets, shoes, plates, and cups were gone. Puja’s neighbor told me that the family had returned to the small village where they had lived before the war. The only signs that children had lived here were a few chalk drawings scrawled on the walls. I walked home from school and noticed the people on the street. Children missing parts of themselves, a few fingers, a foot, breathing together out of a bag filled with glue; a woman lying in the street nursing a tiny baby; a man with diabetic abscesses
on his legs held in the arms of his elderly wife. When I went to bed that night, I heard feral dogs barking as they traveled in packs through Kathmandu’s dark and dank streets. I remembered how Puja had dragged her little brother to school. When I returned to school the next morning, I kept looking for Puja. The reality is that Puja may never go back to school. The pressure to take care of her family will be intense. In a year or two, she will probably get married and have children of her own, and even that is an optimistic scenario. With her low level of education and her family’s economic hardship, Puja could become one of the 10 to 15,000 women and girls from Nepal who are trafficked into the Indian sex trade each year. I felt that I had failed her. Perhaps I had been naïve in believing the school could help Puja overcome all of the challenges she faced. But looking into the eyes of the other students gave me resolve to carry on. They were not daunted in the face of Puja’s and Prabesh’s departure. These kids didn’t have time to be sad. It was then that I realized that making the world a better place doesn’t begin with breaking the cycle of poverty; it starts with one joyful day in the life of a child who might otherwise be hunting for Styrofoam. I may never know what becomes of Puja, and this is difficult to accept. Nepal is chaotic, and the future is uncertain. I feel haunted by Puja’s memory, the ghost
Nepal
The mo u n tain kin g do m
Language: Nepali People: Nepalese Population: 30 million Per capita income: $440
Approximately half of working-age population unemployed. Remittance Rate: 19.4% of GDP
About two-thirds of female adults and one-third of male adults are illiterate. Agriculture employs 76% of workforce. 12,700 dead in 1996–2006 civil war. Gautama Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal. Nepal has a small but strong Reed connection, with five alumni and five current students.
of someone who is still alive. When I left Nepal in August, my students gave heartfelt speeches at an assembly. Not even the smallest nursery student made a sound to interrupt. They asked me to remember, and worried I might forget them. There is no way I ever will.
march 2011 Reed magazine 25
20-25_XenoAcharya.indd 25
2/1/11 3:51 PM
webmaster When his research hit a brick wall, Reed biology professor Steve Black didn’t flinch: he took a fresh look at a commonplace creature that does some pretty weird things with its eggs. By David Frazee Johnson photos by matt d’annunzio
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 26
2/1/11 1:24 PM
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 27
2/1/11 1:24 PM
webmaster continued
T
hey lurk in a back corner of the biology supply room, caged in clear plastic boxes: black widows with their telltale red hourglasses, brown recluses with their six eyes. Doomed crickets scurry back and forth in the cages as the spiders bide their time. Reed biolog y professor Steve Black chuckles when asked about the fearsome reputation of his research subjects. “If someone would have told me 10 years ago that I’d have black widows and brown recluses in my lab, I would have told them that they’re out of their mind,” he laughs. Black’s position as resident arachnophile is a relatively new role. He came to Reed from a postdoctoral position at Duke University in 1989, with an interest in the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. But after working with Xenopus for several years (including sending some up on a space shuttle flight), he began to have second thoughts. “It’s a wonderful animal,” he says. “But there are so many people out there working on Xenopus that it’s hard to find your niche. I figured I needed to work on something else.” Black turned his attention to salamanders, in particular Ensatina eschscholtzii, a humble creature that makes its home in the Reed canyon. At first, the salamanders seemed like ideal research subjects, until Black and his students encountered one major obstacle: Ensatina lays its eggs in the late spring, a most inconvenient feature for thesis students needing embryos for their research. Black winces as he recalls the strain this caused his students. “Each year, my thesis students would always be under stress, hoping for early egg laying, and it came down to the wire every time, and it just wasn’t healthy for anyone. I hated to let go of the salamanders,” he says, “but I slowly realized that I had to do it.”
Given the fundamental incompatibility between the life cycles of the Ensatina and the Reed biology senior, Black found himself at a professional crossroad. Then, in quintessential Reed fashion, his interest was piqued by a student. All her life, Crystal Chaw ’02 had been fascinated by spiders [See “Spider Woman,” Reed, November 2001]; she asked Black if she could pursue an independent research project on spider embryos. “They didn’t mean that much to me, honestly,” Black says. “I thought they wove beautiful webs, but that was about it.” Black was doubtful; Crystal “begged and begged.” He finally relented. Then he took a look at the spider embryos for the first time—and what he saw changed his life. In terms of their numerical diversity, spiders present a rich opportunity for research. Global species top 42,000, providing Black and his students with no shortage of candidates to test some of our most fundamental assumptions about developmental biology. “It’s considered a real bonus to have diversity of species,” Black says. “We can study spiders that are more evolutionarily derived, compare them with spiders whose traits are relatively ancestral, and learn more about the evolution of developmental pathways.” With such astounding diversity, one might expect to find the scientific community teeming with experts in spider development. Not so. Including Black’s lab at Reed, there are three professional labs in the world devoted exclusively to spider development. In fact, Black notes, most of the research predates the 1950s, when scientific interest in the subject petered out. The reasons for the abandonment of spider development are rooted in the rise of “model systems,” or animals that are easy to manipulate in the lab. Biologists believed
that organisms such as fruit flies, mice, and zebrafish would provide enough diversity to account for different styles of development. Following World War II, Black says, “Model systems emerged very strongly, and people jumped on that bandwagon.” Easy to maintain and readily available, model systems were studied in the hopes that they would offer insight into the biology of less accessible species. The trouble with model systems in biology, as in other disciplines, is that they can only provide a small part of the bigger picture. “While model systems are great, they don’t capture the variety and complexity of biological systems,” says Greta Binford, a professor of biology at Lewis & Clark College and an expert on spider biology. “For example, you have to go back somewhere between 400 and 500 million years to find a common ancestor to the arachnid and Drosophilia, which is a model system. That’s why it’s particularly helpful to see the work that Steve is doing.” Black initially approached spiders with the assurance of someone who knows his way around the embryological petri dish. “After years of studying development, I’d like to think that I’ve got great intuition about it, but then I see these spiders, and realize that not everything works so simply.” One of the paradoxes of evolution is that a characteristic or developmental process doesn’t have to be perfect, or even efficient, to be passed on. Any developmental solution that doesn’t kill the embryo can be seen as an evolutionary success. Spiders are a classic example; their embryos develop in ways that seem random, chaotic, haphazard, and just plain weird. Indeed, spiders confound the textbook view of embryo formation. “They do things in the most unlikely ways,” Black says. “For example, one species
28 Reed magazine March 2011
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 28
2/1/11 3:49 PM
HIS THOUGHTS EGGSACLY: Biology professor Steve Black examines how spiders confound the textbook view of embryonic development.
march 2011  Reed magazine 29
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 29
2/1/11 3:49 PM
webmaster continued
Crystal also found that Zygiella x-notata, a species of spider living on the blue bridge spanning the canyon, is especially hardy, and produces eggs for much of the year—perfect for thesis students who need constant access to spider embryos.
takes the body and cuts it in half and then migrates the left and right halves around the poles. To then call that a clever strategy—no one would characterize it that way, but it’s fascinating to see all these solutions to problems that the eggs face.” As a few hardy pedestrians straggle past If everything we know about the world on a recent cold and bleak November tells us successful embryos develop in a cer- afternoon, Black and student researcher tain way, what are we to make of creatures Molly Radany ’11 venture to the blue bridge, that develop in a completely different, yet bundled against the elements, looking for equally successful, manner? What does this egg sacs. “This weather is brutal,” Black mutteach us about our understanding of develop- ters as beads of mist gather on his jacket and ment? These are the questions that the spi- hat. “I really don’t expect anything to be ders raise—and that Black hopes to resolve. alive out here, but we need the eggs.”
technological acumen to Black’s lab, allowing him to create high quality video images of embryonic development. “When Emily came in,” Black chuckles, “I was taking these transparency sheets and literally holding them up to the screen with the images of embryos and tracing them on to the transparency with a pen. She gave me this look like ‘Grandpa, that’s not how we do it,’ and converted the whole process to Photoshop.” Emily, now a research assistant studying eye immunology at Oregon Health & Science University, recalls her early days as a thesis student in Black’s lab, saying, “I digitized his lab—my dad was a tech junkie, and that’s how I did things. I used Photoshop to go frame by frame and trace the cells. It was hard work, but I loved it.” Indeed, if there is one refrain that Black’s students share, it is that work in his lab is difficult, demanding, and unquestionably rewarding. Black, in turn, points to the integral role students have played in moving his research forward. “The inherent difficulty in the originality of the work,” he says, “seems to have attracted a certain type of person, and they’re really dedicated to the operation of pushing the lab ahead. The students have been uniformly wonderful; they’ve been dedicated—it’s been fabulous, and I’ve felt like I’ve had a bunch of colleagues working with me, not students. The spider stuff has emerged entirely at Reed—the students have really done it all. It’s a perfect Reed story.”
Crystal Chaw, now a PhD student in integrative biology at the University of California, Researchers face a Catch-22: Berkeley, laughs when she recalls her battle you can’t get a grant without to convince Black of the merits of spiders. “He had a hard and fast rule that he’d devel- data, but you can’t get data oped over the years at Reed—no indepen- without a grant. dent projects that weren’t frog oriented.” Eventually, he relented, and Crystal threw herself into the project, even workCrouching down next to one of the ing through Thanksgiving break. “It was one bridge’s flickering blue lights, he peers of the hardest, most frustrating things I’ve intently at a strand of glistening web, branever done,” she says. It also altered the tra- dishing a pair of tweezers. “Holy cow!” he jectory of Black’s career. exclaims, nimbly plucking several egg sacs That a tenured professor would have the from the web. “These guys are alive. Amazsubject of his research affected by a seren- ing. Really, they should all be dead by now, dipitous encounter with a student is hardly with this cold. There’s always more to learn.” unknown, according to former dean of the David Dalton, chair of the biology departfaculty Peter Steinberger. “Steve’s case is a ment, says this desire to learn has enabled perfect illustration of the interconnected- Black and his students to make headway in ness of teaching and research at Reed,” he a new field. “Steve found the unique and When he first made the decision to leave says, “Just as research deepens and enriches little-explored niche of spider development. salamanders behind and sally forth into teaching, so does teaching inspire and pro- He turned a few Reed students loose in this the brave new world of spider development, voke original inquiry. Indeed, these are two obscure world and let Reed creativity take Black realized that his lab was in dire need deeply intertwined and inseparable aspects over. Forget tradition—Reed students excel of additional resources. When it comes to of a single activity that defines Reed Col- in setting new boundaries, and it turns out support for new research, faculty often face lege—the activity of contributing to a high- the spider world was a perfect outlet for a maddening Catch-22: you can’t get a grant level intellectual enterprise in which stu- Reed creativity.” without data, but you can’t gather data withdents play a crucial role.” Several other students were instrumen- out a grant. Crystal’s project yielded a key discovery. tal in helping Black pursue spider developFortunately, Reed was able to provide “Spider eggs are incredibly fragile,” Black ment. Des Ramirez ’04, now a PhD student him with some crucial funding through a notes. “And yet, because they essentially live in evolutionary biology and neuroethol- faculty development grant that was made in the air, the spider puts down an impervi- ogy at the University of California, Santa possible by a larger grant from the Andrew ous coat around them to prevent them from Barbara, fondly recalls his work in Black’s W. Mellon Foundation. drying out. So, we had to come up with a lab. “Working on the spider project meant The faculty development grant allowed way to get through it without squashing learning a lot of new skills, and a lot of Black to hire staff and to publish an article the embryo inside . . . [Crystal] developed a trial and error. It was a real demonstration in Developmental Dynamics. With a peerkiller fixative that works much, much better of the joys and frustrations of doing sci- reviewed publication under his belt, Black than any other fixative being used for spider entific research. I’ve actually found myself was able to obtain additional funding from embryos out in the world. It preserves their referring back to some of the techniques I the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a private structure and freezes them in time so that learned then, both during my master’s and foundation based in Vancouver, Washington, you can look very carefully at where the cells even now for my PhD.” and the National Institutes of Health. are. It really transformed the work.” Meanwhile, Emily Vance ’05 brought her The temperamental nature of spider 30 Reed magazine March 2011
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 30
2/1/11 3:49 PM
PLUCKED FROM OBSCURITY. Steve Black and Molly Radany ’11 collect specimens from the Blue Bridge.
“Grandpa, that’s not how we do it.”
embryos, Black says, made support from the Murdock trust especially helpful. “One of the things about working with spider embryos is that it’s just not easy,” he says. “Having good people in the summer helps move the project along, and gives them full-time immersion in the spider world and brings them up to speed in advance of starting a thesis. The support from the Murdock Trust was invaluable.” The NIH grant allowed Black to cast an eye towards his project’s future, stock his lab
with supplies, hire student researchers over his attention next. “The standard answer to the summer, and, most important, hire a that is that you want to bore down and go full-time technician (Kay Larkin ’91) to pro- completely molecular and understand the vide a consistent level of expertise in the lab. molecular mechanisms for everything the Dean of the faculty Ellen Stauder notes embryo is doing,” he says. “However, my that Black’s work speaks to the value of fac- lab’s strength is in cell-level analysis of the ulty research that is so closely connected to entire embryo. Nobody else is looking at Reed students. “Steve’s lab is a space where how the embryo actually assembles—my artificial distinctions between teaching and goal in the next few years is to understand research break down,” she says. “The insti- the diversity of design solutions for making tutional support Reed has given Steve and a spider embryo.” his students has supported not only their Looking around the lab, with its eightprojects but also this model of doing scien- legged specimens and its arachnophile décor tific teaching and research. His success in (complete with a homemade “spider bite receiving external funding is a testimony kit”—cocktail shaker, glass, and a bottle to the value of Steve’s scholarship to the of Tanqueray), one would never guess that scientific community. We’ve made support Black was once a neophyte in this unusual for faculty research such a vital part of the field. “I’ve had such good fortune here,” he Reed Centennial Campaign because we want says, reflecting on his career at Reed. At to provide this kind of targeted support to many schools, he notes, curious and motivated undergrads are the exception. more faculty like Steve.” “I guess I’m cursed,” he chuckles. “I’ve had With the lab up and running, staffed by an eager crew of student researchers, and them from day one.” generating scholarly publications, the natu- David Frazee Johnson is grants & special gifts officer at Reed. ral question concerns where Black will turn march 2011 Reed magazine 31
26-31_SpiderMan.indd 31
2/1/11 3:50 PM
fighting for amanda’s dream
32-37_Winch.indd 32
2/1/11 2:29 PM
In 1905, eleven heirs of Amanda Reed filed suit to break her will and claim her fortune. Only one man—the twelfth heir—could save her dream from destruction. By Ted Katauskas
On May 11, 1912, thousands of people converged on a muddy cow pasture on the east side of the Willamette River to witness a momentous occasion—the laying of the cornerstone of the Arts and Sciences building (now known as Eliot Hall), the first permanent structure on the Reed campus. Excitement among Portland’s citizenry ran so high that organizers secured a train of 11 cars to carry the throng to the remote location. After leading a rousing chorus of “America the Beautiful,” Dr. William T. Foster, the college’s first president, stepped forward and positioned a copper box on a granite slab beneath the gently swaying cornerstone while Charles H. Dodge, grand chaplain of the Masonic order, recited a list of the box’s contents. “The tackle that held the stone suspended over its bed creaked, the slab settled gently into its place and the grand master tapped Martin Winch: a hint of defiance in his eyes. free the steel pins with which it had been suspended,” recounted the Oregonian. “Then The dispute made him a pariah in his he completed the ceremony of sprinkling own family. But that was just the beginning. the stone with the symbolic grains of corn, Obsessed with fulfilling the dying wishes of wine and oil, and turning, mounted the ros- his aunt and uncle, Winch spent the next trum and spoke the closing words of the four years jousting with his fellow trustees ceremony, prophesying a worthy building, over the academic soul of the college. He housing a great institution.” ultimately lost—lost not just the battle, but The grand celebration drew many of Port- the friendship of the only person who truly land’s most prominent citizens, but one face understood him. was conspicuously absent from the crowd. You get a hint of his isolation from a phoMartin Winch, the nephew of Amanda tograph taken mid-life, a stiff formal porand Simeon Reed, and the executor of their trait of Winch gazing expressionless at the will, was nowhere to be seen. His absence camera, receding hair oiled and parted down was particularly striking because he played the middle, moustache neatly trimmed, eyes a monumental role in the creation of Reed peering with a hint of defiance through College. Without Winch, the college would barely noticeable frameless round spectacles almost certainly have been stillborn, stran- balanced upon the bridge of his nose. gled by heirs seeking to claim Amanda But to gain a sense of how this drama Reed’s fortune for themselves. played out, to render more than a twoAlone among these heirs, Winch, a social dimensional daguerreotype image of who misfit with barely a high school educa- Winch really was, you need to travel backtion, took it upon himself to champion his ward in time, carefully sifting cubic feet of aunt’s dream and rescue her legacy from brittle-to-the-touch paper—letters, court the clutches of self-interested relatives in transcripts, ledgers, telegrams, and newsone of the most sensational court battles in paper clippings—archived in the sub-basePortland’s history. ment of Hauser Library and in the vault of
the Oregon Historical Society. Many pieces are missing from the historic record and may never be found. But with perseverance, it’s possible to assemble the most obvious pieces of the jigsaw into a border that frames the complicated and tragic puzzle of Martin Winch. For as long as he could remember, Winch had worshipped his Uncle Sim. Growing up in Quincy, Massachusetts, the boy heard endless stories about the colorful character who quit school at 15, cut leather in a shoe factory, and then spirited his bride, Amanda, off to the wilds of Oregon to seek his fortune. When Simeon Reed arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1852, Oregon was still a territory and Portland was a trading outpost with fewer than a thousand inhabitants, isolated from the rest of the world. The city’s only link to civilization was the steamship. Sensing an opportunity, Simeon invested his earnings in a startup that grew into the biggest shipping line in the Northwest, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company—the Google of its day. The startup flourished and Simeon became a millionaire. He flaunted it. He built a garish mansion, a filigreed edifice with a slate roof perched atop a grassy knoll, with a burbling fountain and a cow grazing on the lawn. A founding member of the Arlington Club and an avid hunter (but not a good shot: an accident claimed two fingers on his dominant hand), he was a flashy dresser and drove a landau carriage with sterling harnesses to church. With a quick wit and a round belly, he was the toast of Portland’s elite despite the fact that he was clearly nouveau riche (“Mr. Reed’s taste was always for the gaudy,” recalled one friend). Amanda Reed on the other hand, was the yin to Simeon’s yang: petite, reserved, a homebody who shunned ostentation, delighted in the laughter of children, and for their pleasure, purchased a magic lantern and a music box. march 2011 Reed magazine 33
32-37_Winch.indd 33
2/1/11 2:31 PM
fighting for amanda’s dream continued But the Reeds themselves remained childless until their 12-year-old nephew Martin arrived by steamship in 1871, grieving the untimely death of his father, and moved into their home. Uncle Sim assumed the role of father, and Martin became his protégé, quitting school after a few years to take a job as baggage clerk in the family business, building his own press, and running a print shop at night. In 1880, Uncle Sim sold his quarter share of Oregon Steam Navigation for $1.25 million ($26 million today)—a profit of 2,378 percent—and rolled the windfall into a vast holding company and diversified his portfolio, accumulating mines, railroads, an iron foundry, real estate, farms, livestock, and, his passion, thoroughbred race horses. He built the tallest building in Portland, named it the Abington Building after his hometown, and installed Winch in a corner office on the top floor, as business manager, to oversee the entire operation. As much as Winch admired his Uncle Sim—even naming his only son after him— the two men couldn’t have been more different. While Simeon chomped on Cuban cigars and swilled bourbon in the Arlington Club, Winch abhorred excess and joined the Temperance Legion. While Simeon played poker and raced horses, Winch tallied receivables. While Simeon was rotund and robust, Winch was slight and sickly, prone to anxiety, depression, and crippling rheumatism. Winch was also a perfectionist who obsessed over details—a quality that made him an effective business manager but a difficult friend. Fixated on following Uncle Sim’s exact wishes, he sought approval for even the most minor decisions. (“Just before you left, Aunt Mandy asked me to get a gardener . . . He is, I should judge, about 27, a nice looking man and has an open honest face and looks as if not afraid of work.”) Uncle Sim never even opened many of his letters. In 1892, Simeon’s kidneys began to fail. His doctor suggested a warmer, drier climate, so he and Amanda retired to Pasadena, California, and bought Carmelita, a mansion on 18 acres. Winch handled the move, sending three railcars of furniture, rugs, paintings, and statues to Pasadena. Three years later, Simeon suffered a paralytic stroke and died, leaving everything to his wife and urging her to devote a portion of the estate to “a suitable purpose of permanent value that will contribute to the beauty of this city and
the intelligence, prosperity and happiness that controls the will, not the place where of its inhabitants . . . all the details I leave they died or where they lived. The heirs had entirely to the good judgment of my wife in a legitimate argument. It was a factual issue. which I have full confidence.” What was Amanda Reed’s intention: did she Winch dutifully kept the business empire intend to remain in California or did she chugging along until Amanda died at Car- intend to return to Oregon?” melita of complications from gastritis and For Reed College, the answer would kidney disease in 1904. He was at her side, mean life or death. The Oregonian stated it holding her as she took her last breath. most succinctly: “MILLION AND A HALF Her will, revealed two weeks later, caused AT STAKE! If Her Home Was in Pasadena, a sensation. After providing for her heirs the Bequest to Reed Institute Is Void. If in (particularly Winch, who received $100,000, Portland, the Legacy Is Legal.” more than anyone else) and some favorite Winch stood to benefit if the will was charities, she directed the vast bulk of the overturned; after all, he was an heir, too. But estate, a king’s ransom, to found an “institu- he had held Amanda’ hand on her dying day tion of learning” in Portland. “SCHOOL FOR and vowed to carry out her wishes. He could CITY!” the Oregonian exclaimed. not let the relatives carve up her fortune But the excitement was premature. One without a fight. morning in October, a California lawyer Imagine the packed gallery of the Multarrived at Union Station, walked to the nomah County Courthouse on May 12: the Abington Building, climbed the stairs, and heirs on one side and Winch, alone save his wife and son on the other, watching in dismay as Gibson, the heirs’ lawyer, led a The heirs had a legitimate parade of coachmen, maids, nieces, and nephews to the witness stand, where they argument. Under California laid bare one unpleasant detail after anothlaw, Amanda’s will was invalid. er: how Amanda often spoke of Pasadena as her home, how she dreaded the dreary knocked on Winch’s door. His name was winters of Oregon. Gibson clearly relished James A. Gibson, and he had come to make needling Winch, who dutifully recounted certain inquiries about the estate. His the day he packed up the Reeds’ mansion motives soon became clear. Eleven heirs, for their move to Pasadena, everything from hungry for the fortune, were plotting to the furniture to stones in the garden to the wage legal war. family cow grazing on the front lawn (“Q: Was that the cow that had been used in conNews of the suit they filed in Multnomah nection with the residence, to give the famCounty Court on February 7, 1905, splashed ily milk? A: Yes.”). Gibson even put Winch’s across front pages from Seattle to Los Ange- 16-year-old son, Simeon, on the stand, les. “Heirs Bring Action to Break Document,” demanding that the teenager admit that ran the headline in the Oregonian. Aunt Manda had once been put on a train to In their complaint, the heirs argued that Portland against her will. (He didn’t.) during the last 10 years of her life, Amanda Most entertaining was Winch’s wife, Nelhad made her home in California, not Ore- lie. When asked if she had ever heard Amangon. This claim, if true, would have profound da compare Oregon’s climate to California’s, legal significance, because in California— she responded tartly, “I have not heard Mrs. unlike Oregon—the law limited charitable Reed express the awful horror of the Oregon bequests to no more than 30 percent of an climate which others seem to have.” estate’s value. (At the turn of the century, In spite of the parade of witnesses, the many states had similar “Mortmain” stat- judge ruled that Portland was Amanda’s utes, modeled after a medieval decree that domicile, a verdict the Evening Telegram prevented barons from bequeathing feudal trumpeted with gleeful irony (“MRS. REED land to churches.) LIVED HERE!”). But the heirs were not The heart of the issue was the interpreta- going to give up easily. They appealed, lost, tion of the legal term “domicile.” “Domicile then appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court. is the place you intend to make your perma- They also brought their suit before a more nent home,” explains Bernie Vail, a profes- sympathetic judge in the superior court of sor of law specializing in wills and trusts at Los Angeles, launching a whole new trial. Lewis & Clark Law School. “It’s the law of As that trial advanced, Winch received the deceased’s domicile at the time of death a remarkable letter from Carrie Graham, a
34 Reed magazine March 2011
32-37_Winch.indd 34
2/1/11 2:31 PM
courtesy of oregon historical society
Amanda Reed (in rocking chair) at home in Carmelita ca. 1900. Her residence in California would raise troubling legal implications for her will.
friend of Amanda, who wrote to say that she had been following the legal drama in the newspaper at the Boston Public Library and wished to testify by mail. Winch took one look at what she had to say and wired her money for a train ticket to California. In the Los Angeles courtroom, Graham recounted a conversation with Amanda that took place on a visit she made to Carmelita in May 1903. The two friends were discussing a newspaper article about the death of a wealthy Californian whose heirs contested her will. Amanda had deemed the matter “a disgraceful affair,” Graham recalled. “I said I hoped she had hers fixed up good and tight so no one could break it. She said no one could break her will . . . Then she seemed indignant over my question, and asked me who I thought would contest her will. I told her that I knew none of her relatives but Mrs. Winch . . . and I didn’t think she would contest it if she never got a cent; and then she talked about it . . . and then tears came to her eyes and she says, ‘If I thought any of my relatives would contest my will, it would break my heart.’” You can picture the heirs squirming on the courtroom benches.
“She told me that this will was to provide for an institute of art in Portland, Oregon,” Graham continued. “And I said that might possibly be a reason or an excuse for contesting the will, and she said that her husband had left all her relatives as well provided for as he thought necessary, and that he certainly had a right to leave his money just as he pleased . . . she said it was a matter of trust with her.” Winch’s decision to buy Graham a ticket to California may have been the best he ever made. Her testimony was the riptide that finally wrenched the will from the heirs’ grasp. The heirs lost the case in Los Angeles and finally conceded defeat in December 1906, when the Oregon State Supreme Court upheld the lower courts’ decision, and cleared the way for the founding of the Reed Institute, the precursor to Reed College. The Oregonian reported that the news “was received with much pleasure by Martin Winch,” who noted that Amanda wanted her fortune to benefit the people of Oregon. “And as executor of her will, I shall spare neither pains nor expenses to carry out her wishes to the letter,” he said.
Unfortunately, his tenacity would soon erode his triumph. For a literalist like Martin Winch, following his Aunt Manda’s last wishes to the letter would prove to be as impossible as reaching the summit of an Escher staircase. Her will mandated “an institution of learning, having as its object the increase and diffusion of practical knowledge,” including “departments of learning, galleries of art, natural and technical museums, appliances for manual training, and other appliances and appurtenances.” But it also specified instruction in “literature, music, the arts and sciences.” “She didn’t have a clear idea of what the institution was going to be,” says magazine consultant John Sheehy ’82, who is compiling an oral history of Reed. “What plays out, after the court case is settled, is a battle between Martin Winch and Thomas Lamb Eliot.” The Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot dominated Portland’s cultural landscape. Hailing from a storied family with roots in Boston and St. Louis (which included T.S. Eliot), he founded the First Unitarian march 2011 Reed magazine 35
32-37_Winch.indd 35
2/1/11 2:32 PM
Two days later, Winch wrote a letter to public schools and is being generally talked of and discussed everywhere, is going to Eliot reiterating his objections and comChurch, the Oregon Humane Society, and take possession of the whole country,” and plaining that the trustees were ignoring the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society; worked opined “that the real province of the insti- Amanda’s wishes. Eliot responded with a to improve conditions in the county jail; tute is to supply fields not already covered conciliatory letter: “it seemed to us that in ministered to orphans, the poor, and the or that I felt would soon be covered by the meeting the offer of the Ladds [is] consismentally ill; championed public schools, the public or other philanthropic schools, that tent with the highest interests of the Instipublic library, and women’s right to vote. our work should be higher than they are tute. My only regret is that owing to your He enjoyed the confidence of many of the likely to go.” In other words, Reed should sickness and absence you did not [agree] city’s leading citizens, including Simeon and be less like Harvard, more like Portland with this decision.” Amanda Reed, who sang in his choir. But Winch was in no mood to comproCommunity College. In 1887, Eliot had sowed the seed for his At an impasse, Eliot invited Wallace But- mise. He replied in pencil, his penmanship greatest ambition with Simeon Reed (who trick, the secretary of the General Board of conveying so much anger the abbreviated once said that children in public school Education, a higher-education think tank script is barely legible: should be taught “useful industry,” and funded by John D. Rockefeller, to Portland advocated that school hours should be lim- to investigate and make an unbiased recDear Sir, I beg to ack recpt of yr letter of 7th and ited so they could do their real learning on ommendation. Winch, whose health was have noted contents in reply can only say I the factory floor). He wrote Simeon a letter, never strong, was too sick to meet with the regret deeply your action in the matter and proposing a lasting legacy, a “Reed Institute inquisitor. While Eliot wined and dined Butwere it in my power to stop it I would do so. of Lectures,” and joked that it would “need As the trustees and myself have had opposite a mine to run it.” views on all most everything that has so far “The guy who was at his ear, who planted Eliot envisioned a stronghold come up, I realize that I am powerless to be the idea of the college in Simeon’s mind, was of the liberal arts. Winch of any service to Mrs Reed in this matter. I Thomas Lamb Eliot,” says Sheehy. “Simeon enclose my resignation as Trustee which you dies, Amanda Reed calls Eliot in for a con- wanted a technical school. will please deliver to them at the next meetsultation, and he takes the opportunity to ing of your board. assist in shaping the will. You can see his Truly yours, MW invisible hand there in the contradictory trick at the grand ballroom of Portland’s fanintentions . . . There’s her husband’s prefer- ciest hotel, Winch convalesced at a retreat ence for manual training on the one hand, in Hood River. The board accepted Winch’s resignation and Eliot’s preference for the arts and litWithout Winch to advocate for a voca- on June 29, 1910, two weeks after an unforerature and science on the other. They are tional school, the outcome was predictable. tunate event that, for Winch, must have diametrically opposed.” Buttrick recommended a liberal arts school, been an unbearable public humiliation: the Eliot, whose father founded Washing- and the board voted to accept his recom- sale of Amanda’s furs and jewels outside the ton University in St. Louis, harbored grand mendation. Eliot traveled to Hood River to county courthouse. For more than two years, Winch had ambitions for Reed as a beacon of learning break the news. and culture. Winch, ever loyal to his pragOutmaneuvered, Winch reluctantly pleaded with the feuding heirs to allow matic aunt and uncle, insisted that Reed agreed to back the plan, accepting a compro- him to sell his aunt’s personal effects to a should be a vocational school. mise that left open the possibility of adding private buyer “in as quiet a manner posIn April 1909, Winch transferred the industrial training to the curriculum in the sible,” but the heirs, worried that a collector assets of the Reed estate, which, thanks to future. “PORTLAND IS TO HAVE BIG COL- would underbid, insisted on a public auca local real estate boom, had blossomed to LEGE—Trade School Idea Is Dropped” the tion. Winch loathed the idea: “As an heir and participant in this bequest, I am unalter$1,821,560.48—$44 million today—into Oregonian declared. the coffers of the Reed Institute, and the Winch and Eliot dueled again over the ably opposed to the hawking of these things, struggle for Reed’s soul began in earnest. school’s location. Winch favored a practical which have been a part of Mrs. Reed’s life, at Eliot wrote to the presidents of practi- close-in tract in what is now Laurelhurst. a public sale, and will never give my consent cally every liberal arts school in the United Eliot preferred Crystal Springs, a 40-acre to such a course,” he wrote. Nonetheless, the heirs prevailed. On the States, including his cousin, the president cow pasture in Sellwood, which in that of Harvard, asking whether they believed day seemed far from the bustle of the city, morning of June 12, 1910, collectors, bargain hunters, and the simply curious packed Portland needed a liberal arts school or a offered as a gift by the Ladd family. technical college; almost unanimously they In February 1910, Winch, now recuperat- into a ramshackle cigar stand outside the sent replies embracing the former. Not to ing at a hotel in Los Angeles, heard that the county courthouse and haggled over Amanbe outdone, Winch took a train to the East board had chosen Crystal Springs, and fired da Reed’s jewel-studded rings and bracelets and watches, her sealskin coats and sable Coast, visiting 12 cities and asking the off an exasperated telegram: muffs, even a feather boa, a public spectacle same question of the directors of 32 trade laid bare in the pages of the Oregonian. protest against the selection schools and industrial colleges. He conof crystal springs site the city is “Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and cluded: “I became convinced whilst in the growing north not south rubies, all of the finest water and of magEast that the movement for manual trainnificent size glittered profusely at the door ing, which is now being taken up by the fighting for amanda’s dream continued
36 Reed magazine March 2011
32-37_Winch.indd 36
2/1/11 2:32 PM
Rev. Eliot dominated Portland’s intellectual landscape.
Beside the seaside. Amanda Reed with companions (human and canine) on Catalina Island, California, in 1900.
his name is securely held in the history of the College, that coming generations may know the gratitude we owe him.” Eliot himself would be haunted by the unfulfilled compromise he made with Winch Jan 11. Martin has rheumatism badly today and did yesterday also. It was sprinkling this to add vocational training to the curriculum. evening . . . For the rest of his life, he had to fend off Nov 22. Martin worse today, nervous and gibes from locals who felt that Simeon and depressed. I am awfully worried . . . Amanda would have preferred something Dec 25. A sad Christmas for us. A lot of more practical. presents but Martin took no interest in them . . . As to the coming generations, they would Not ‘Peace on Earth’ for us. Poor, poor Martin . . . know Winch’s name from the eponymous dorm in the Old Dorm Block; from his son, Even as Winch declined, the great endeav- Simeon Reed Winch [trustee 1935–46]; or he helped set in motion gained momen- and from his daughter-in-law, the legendtum. In July 1910, Eliot hired William Tru- ary Mary Winch [trustee 1978–92]. There Owing to the absorbing character and fant Foster to be the college’s first president. is also the rather enigmatic bronze plaque limitations of specific tasks in which he was The following year, Reed’s first class convened dedicated to Winch’s memory in the Capeengaged, Mr. Winch was something of a at the corner of Southwest 11th Avenue and heart Room, inscribed with a masterpiece of recluse and led a detached life. There was Jefferson on a property that, as the story understatement: “He rendered valued aid in thus placed, at times, somewhat of a barrier goes, Simeon Reed had won in a poker game. the founding of this college.” between him and the outer moving world Winch’s true monument is Reed itself— of men and things. The conditions of his life It was snowing on the morning of January which is somewhat ironic, considering may also have emphasized some peculiari4, 1916, and the entire student body and that his vision for the college was so radities of disposition through which he was at the instructors packed the chapel. Stooped cally different. Nonetheless, his memory times misunderstood, and by some, even with age and hard of hearing, Thomas Lamb is enshrined at Reed in a very literal way. antagonized . . . He endured bravely almost Eliot stepped up to the pulpit, squinted at At that grand ceremony a century ago, the lifelong pains in body, and perhaps for this the double-spaced onionskin notes in his copper box sealed under the cornerstone of reason in his later years many of his thoughts hands and announced that Martin Winch Eliot Hall contained several artifacts, includand acts were “Like sweet bells jangled out ing a clause from Amanda Reed’s will—and had died two weeks before. of tune and harsh.” “It is a great memory we have of this man a photograph of Martin Winch, defiant to who, in a generation of bitter striving for the very end. Winch seems to have spent the entire personal gain, proved faithful to a trust, Ted Katauskas is a Portland writer. year of 1911 bedridden, according to the loyal to his city and scornful of meaner leather-bound journal he gave his wife, Nel- things,” Eliot said. “We shall see to it that
of the Courthouse yesterday morning . . . The booth of the blind cigar dealer was used for the sale, and sheltered a large crowd of diamond buyers, while rain poured outside. Most of the interested spectators were jewelers, although a number of ‘ultimate consumers’ picked up bargains . . . Mrs. Reed’s furs went at great bargains, and were eagerly snapped up by the dealers.” The sale netted $5,759.80. Split 15 ways, each heir received a check for $384. The sale seemed to throw Winch into an emotional tailspin. Many years later, after his death, Eliot would hint at the way Winch’s struggles had warped his personality:
lie, for Christmas in 1910. In a barely legible scrawl, Nellie documented her husband’s sad decline:
march 2011 Reed magazine 37
32-37_Winch.indd 37
2/1/11 2:32 PM
Classic Lectures
What Hum 110 Is All About By Peter Steinberger
I’ll be returning to Hum 110 next year after non-Greek materials, but those materials a long hiatus. During my time as dean, I have changed over time. Most recently, and taught one or another course every year, but up until this year, the spring semester was always in political science, never in Hum. I devoted to the study of imperial Rome and love teaching political philosophy, but I also Rome’s encounter with its eastern periphery, love Hum 110. So I’m absolutely thrilled to roughly from Augustus to Augustine. Traditionally, the goals of Hum 110 have get back in the course—especially now, with been several: to introduce students to seriits terrific new syllabus. I do have one regret, however, and that’s ous college-level work, to introduce them to the absence of a number of wonderful Hum Reed’s distinctive approach to teaching, and lectures that are no longer part of the course. to provide an opportunity for rigorous writing I miss those lectures. They brought astonish- instruction. Perhaps most importantly, Hum ing insight and erudition to the difficult and 110 seeks to introduce students in a systemchallenging materials of the ancient world; atic way to the various disciplines—history, and it was with that in mind that I first pro- literature, philosophy, aesthetics, social sciposed the publication of some of the best of ence—of which the liberal arts are composed. The course also serves important sociothem. I’m delighted that this will now finally occur as part of Reed’s 100th birthday. Three logical functions. All first-year students at superb lectures will be published in subse- Reed are reading the same thing at the same quent editions of Reed, and I’m honored to time. When it’s Herodotus week, for example, have the opportunity to offer here a general the campus is awash in copies of the Histories; this kind of curricular uniformity has introduction to the series. proved to be invaluable in creating a strong sense of intellectual community. For many Hum 110: A Primer Since 1943, Humanities 110—or Introduc- first-year Reedies, Hum 110 is a powerful tion to Western Humanities—has been the common experience, perhaps more so than foundation of the Reed College curriculum. any of their other experiences, academic and As most of you know, Hum 110 is an inten- nonacademic alike. Thus, one frequently sive, year-long course required of all first-year hears Reed freshmen fervently discussing students. The basic principles of the course, yesterday’s lecture or tomorrow’s reading and a significant portion of the actual sylla- not just in the classroom but in the dining bus, have remained largely unchanged over hall, the locker room, the dormitory, and time. For over 60 years, students in Hum elsewhere across campus. Moreover, the per110 have engaged in the study of archaic and sistence of the course over time has created classical Greece, focusing on Homer, Hesiod, powerful connections across cohorts, since the lyric poets, the plastic arts (including many generations of Reed College alumni vase painting, sculpture and architecture), have read, and at least to some extent have Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sopho- remembered, the very same texts. Hum 110 is truly multidisciplinary, taught cles, Euripides, Aristophanes, the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle. Of course, the syl- by 20 to 25 members of the faculty typically labus has always also included substantial representing 8 or 9 departments including
38 Reed magazine March 2011
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 38
2/1/11 2:35 PM
English, history, philosophy, religion, art his- Wednesday, and Friday for Hum lecture. The tory, political science, French, Spanish, and lectures themselves are apportioned more or classics. Each member of the faculty teaches less equally among the teaching staff, hence his or her own conference throughout the most faculty offer two or three lectures per year. Conferences are composed of 15 or 16 semester. students, and meet 3 hours per week. While the so-called “Reed conference method” in The Tradition of fact varies considerably from faculty member Hum Lectures to faculty member, in almost all cases the Lectures in Hum 110 are designed, in large principal goal is to teach through conver- part, to provide agendas for conferences. sation, understanding conversation to be a During lectures, faculty present historical kind of “unrehearsed intellectual adventure”1 and scholarly background, raise interpretive where student-to-student interaction is cru- questions, and make arguments. In doing so, cial and where the faculty member functions, students and faculty encounter what is, in to the degree possible, as merely one inter- effect, yet another text—a secondary text— locutor among many. to be analyzed and debated together with the In addition to conferences, however, the day’s primary text, thereby helping, in the course also includes three hours of required best of circumstances, to enrich and elevate course-wide lectures per week. It is a long- conference discussions. As such, the lectures standing Reed tradition that the entire fresh- play a distinctive and extremely important man class gathers at 9 a.m. every Monday, pedagogical role.
march 2011 Reed magazine 39
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 39
2/1/11 2:36 PM
Classic Lectures
Reedies are expected to approach their studies in a manner that might be called scholarly. They are not necessarily expected to be full-fledged scholars in the strict sense—ours is an undergraduate education, not a professional one—but they are expected to acquire the habits and dispositions characteristic of people whose primary goal is not to receive, store, and reproduce information that is already well established but, rather, to engage in original, open-ended, critical inquiry. In this context, Hum lectures are intended to serve as models of scholarly argument. They are offered to students as exemplars of what it might mean to formulate and defend an original thesis of at least some intellectual consequence.
Hum 110 is not a Great Books course, though nearly all of the readings would qualify.
authors are no longer active members of the Reed faculty. The publication of these lectures is, thus, an especially meaningful development. In my mind, they are exemplary Hum 110 lectures, and they were certainly crucial in the development of my own understanding of the materials in question. David Reeve on the development of ancient thought, Ray Kierstead on the unfolding of ancient historiography, and Tom Gillcrist on the origins of ancient tragedy: for many years each of these lectures was immensely important in shaping and enriching the education of Reed students and faculty alike. Individually, they were landmarks of the course. Today, reading them together can provide a serious and stimulating, albeit selective, introduction to important aspects of ancient civilization. Indeed, the high quality of these lectures and the range of topics they address suggest that they should be of value not just to undergraduates but to all students of the ancient world and of the Western humanistic tradition in general. They have been explicitly designed to bring serious scholarly materials to bear on very large issues of broad concern, and to do so in ways that speak to connections among a variety of cultural forms. As such, their appeal should be wide ranging indeed.
A notable feature of Hum 110 is that the study of antiquity becomes, for many faculty, a kind of second field specialization. Indeed, this is not really a course for amateurs. Over time, most faculty, regardless of discipline, develop considerable scholarly expertise in ancient history, society, literature, and art, such that conferences can be conducted at a high level and lectures can be serious, chal- The Principle of Density lenging, and informed by the best and most Making sense of these lectures requires recent scholarship. Over the years, faculty understanding that they were presented as have taken their lecture responsibilities seri- part of a humanities course, understandously, largely for pedagogical reasons, but ing humanities here in a rather distinctive perhaps also because they are lecturing to sense. Traditionally, Hum 110 has not been colleagues as well as students. Of course, conceived as a Great Books course, though lecture styles vary considerably, as does the nearly all of the readings would by any stanpedagogical effectiveness of the lectures dard qualify as great indeed. Similarly, it has themselves. In any given year, however, not been regarded primarily as a history the various lectures compose, collectively, course or a course on Western civilization, a fairly systematic approach to the ancient though the syllabus obviously has a strong chronological dimension. At Reed, a humaniworld of Greece. The three lectures that we have chosen ties course is understood to be a multidisto publish in Reed are no longer part of the ciplinary exploration of one or more social course, for the simple reason that their formations.2 It is an investigation of culture,
40 Reed magazine  March 2011
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 40
2/1/11 2:36 PM
viewed in its manifold representations and from a multiplicity of perspectives. The strategy is to examine at least some of the principal artifacts of the culture in question— including, though not limited to, significant and substantial works of art, literature, and philosophy—explicitly and systematically in the context of one another. Thus, for example, the Medea is read self-consciously in the light of Platonic philosophy, Platonic dialogues in the light of Thucydidean history, the Peloponnesian War in the light of Euripidean tragedy, and so on. The goal, at least in part, is to look for connections, and for differences as well, with a view toward characterizing the underlying unities and tensions, agreements and conflicts, of which a culture is composed. Thus, for at least some faculty, and certainly for me, an essential, even defining feature of Hum 110 is what might be called the Principle of Density. The syllabus describes, in part, a dense, complex, multilayered, internally resonant structure of socioculture experience. Sometimes the resonance is explicit, often only implicit. But students in Hum 110 are encountering texts that have, arguably, very powerful, comparatively immediate, and multiple connections with one another: literary, historical, ideological, linguistic, philosophical, political, sociological. As products of a “single” social formation—single in the sense that it embodies a substantial degree of unity and continuity, even as it evolves over time—they resonate with one another in all kinds of ways. At least, that’s my hypothesis. The systematic exploration of this resonance is, in my opinion, an important feature of the course, an important part of what makes it a humanities course. To be sure, density is not the only substantive feature of Hum 110. We want our students to learn how to read works of quality and influence; we want to expose them to some important and influential historical materials; we want them to tackle issues of perennial concern; and we won’t complain
if, in the process, they acquire some erudition. To all this, the recently revised Hum syllabus—which is being taught for the first time this year— adds an important new element. For what I believe to be the first time, the core materials on ancient Greece are now being studied systematically in the context of broader developments and influences characteristic of the larger Mediterranean world.
My own view is that the ultimate goal of a Reed education is to teach students how to think. Scholars have long known that the Greeks did not live in utter isolation but were, quite to the contrary, active participants in powerful systems of economic, social, and cultural interaction involving, at various times, Phoenicia, Egypt, Persia, Rome, and many others. In an important sense, the richness of ancient Greece cannot fully be understood or appreciated without addressing the ways in which it both differed from and was also profoundly influenced by the diverse and substantial societies with which it came into contact. By introducing students to important elements of this interaction—by asking them directly to study, for example, Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic materials side by side with the materials of ancient Greece— the new syllabus reflects both important currents of modern scholarship and a newfound emphasis on crucial questions of cultural diversity.
Disciplines My own view—not shared by all members of the faculty by any means!—is that the ultimate goal of a Reed education is to teach students how to think; teaching students how to think means, in the first instance, introducing them to and giving them some facility with the disciplines. A discipline is, one might say, a particular mode or man-
march 2011 Reed magazine 41
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 41
2/1/11 2:36 PM
Classic Lectures
ner of thinking, composed of a more or less a particular material object—with a view distinctive set of concepts, theories, and toward analyzing the chemical properties of methods that have proven to be useful over the paper on which it was printed, the ink time in making sense of this or that feature with which the words were reproduced, the of the world. Literary analysis is a discipline glue with which the pages were bound. But characterized by a dazzling array of distinc- in each case, the goal would be to render the tive concepts—things like narrative structure object intelligible according to the canons and synecdoche and alliteration and sign and and criteria of the discipline. so on—each of which serves as a tool for To learn a discipline is, I would argue, to classifying or categorizing some set of phe- develop a disciplined mind, and a disciplined nomena. As such, literary analysis is sharply mind is essential for making sense of things. distinct from, say, the discipline of chemistry, Without discipline, our thinking is apt to be which is characterized by an equally dazzling literally chaotic: unorganized, disconnected, but quite different and unrelated set of con- random. The world presents itself to us in cepts and categories. It is not uncommon, of infinite ways. We are constantly bombardcourse, for different disciplines to study the ed by an incalculable range and variety of same thing, but they would study that thing experiences; when we simply react to those in very different ways, using a very different experiences, when we fail to impose on them set of concepts or categories. Thus, a literary some kind of order or structure, then analcritic might study a book with a view toward ysis, judgment, and intelligibility become analyzing its rhetorical properties, whereas impossible. We become lost, confused, and a certain kind of physical scientist might powerless. The connection between one study the very same book—understood as thought and another dissolves, and with it
42 Reed magazine March 2011
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 42
2/1/11 2:36 PM
dissolves the capacity to define, to classify, to assess, and to think coherently. We lose, in effect, that which makes it possible for us to be civilized, hence that which makes it possible for us to be human. I believe that Hum 110 teaches disciplined thinking in two ways. First, it introduces students to certain fundamental manners of thought—philosophic, poetic, historiographic, aesthetic—by examining some of their earliest systematic and selfconscious expressions. It teaches students what it means to think like a philosopher by looking at the invention of Western philosophy, as manifest in the thought of Thales, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It considers the activity of being a historian by exploring the discovery, at least in the West, of the very idea of history in Herodotus and Thucydides. It contemplates what it means to reflect on the world in literary terms by encountering the epic, lyric, and dramatic foundations of our literary heritage. Second, Hum 110 explicitly pursues these manners of thought by comparing them with one another. It seeks to show not just what it means to think like a historian but how thinking like a historian might be different from thinking like a philosopher or poet. It thereby provides students with a larger sense of how the various disciplines or manners of thought are different from one another and how they might, nonetheless, share an underlying commitment to coherence, to the power and intrinsic value of systematic intellectual endeavor. The three lectures that will be presented in subsequent editions of Reed both describe and inspire the pursuit of disciplined thought. As such, they reflect and embody the conviction—long central to the mission of Reed College—that the sharp distinction between pedagogy and scholarship, between education and inquiry, between the formation of the intellect and the activity of being an intellectual ultimately collapses in the face of a serious and self-conscious commitment to the life of the mind.
The lectures
“Darkness, Light, and Drama in the Oresteia” by Thomas Gillcrist. Gillcrist is a graduate of Duke University and did his postgraduate work in English at Harvard. He taught at Reed, both in the English department and in the humanities program, from 1962 until his retirement in 2002. “Herodotus and the Invention of History” by Raymond Kierstead. Kierstead went to Bowdoin College and earned his PhD in history at Northwestern University. He taught at Yale and Catholic University before joining the Reed faculty in 1978, from which he retired in 2000. He is the author of Pomponne de Bellievre: A Study of the King’s Men in the Age of Henry IV (Northwestern University Press, 1968). “Ionian Thinkers” by C. D. C. Reeve. A graduate of Trinity University (Dublin) and Cornell, Reeve taught at Reed from 1976 until his resignation in 2000. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Philosopher-Kings: The Argument of Plato’s Republic (Princeton University Press, 1988), Practices of Reason: Aristotle’s Nichomachaen Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1988), and Love’s Confusions (Harvard University Press, 2005). He is currently professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Peter J. Steinberger is Robert H. and Blanche Day Ellis Professor of Political Science and Humanities. He has taught at Reed since 1977; he has also served as chairman of the department of political science, dean of the faculty, and acting president of the college.
Endnotes 1 Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), p. 198. 2 In addition to Hum 110, the Reed curriculum includes three sophomore-level humanities courses, one on Early Modern Europe from Dante to the age of Louis XIV, a second on Modern Humanities from the Glorious Revolution to the Second World War, and a third on Chinese Humanities focusing on the Qin/Han and Song dynasties.
march 2011 Reed magazine 43
38-43_HumLecture1.indd 43
2/1/11 2:39 PM
Reediana Books by Reedies
Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes By Mark Bitterman ’95 (Ten Speed Press, 2010)
What is this book? Tracing the social and culinary evolution of salt, it’s a kind of history. Exploring the surprisingly complex chemistry of salt and salt production, it’s also a science book. Big and lavish, it could be a coffee table book. An intriguing collection of recipes: it’s a cookbook! Salted is all these things—and a manifesto, too. Salt is a key ingredient in cuisines across the globe, but most of us have never tasted its varieties. With infectious enthusiasm, Mark examines the mineral’s history, from the first evidence of salt production during the Neolithic period, to the rise of salt as currency, the salt trade, and the prevalence of salt taxes (which helped pay for the construction of the Great Wall of China). By the 1960s, industrial salt production had all but wiped out artisan salt makers, but the modern food movement has led to a resurgence of artisan salt—with an astonishing range of flavors—from Ghana to Korea to France to Pakistan. The hair-raising description of the industrial process by which table salt, kosher salt, and sea salt are produced may lead some readers to toss their box of Morton in the trash. Fortunately, Mark suggests plenty of alternatives, with full descriptions of hundreds of different varieties. In the final chapter, he shows how to use salt strategically in recipes—such as Cyprus hardwood smoked salt, to spice up flambéed bananas, or Kona salt, for a knockout rum cocktail. Some of these salts are available from the stores Mark runs with his wife, Jennifer Turner Bitterman ’95 . (See www.atthemeadow.com.) Mark makes a persuasive case that salt is one of the great unsung heroes of the countertop. This book will change the way you think about it. —Liz Colie Gadberry
44 Reed magazine March 2011
44-47_Reediana.indd 44
2/1/11 3:16 PM
Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change Juliane L. Fry, assistant professor of chemistry, et al.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: How Medical Imaging is Changing Health Care By Jeff Goldsmith ’70 and Bruce Hillman
(University of California Press, 2010)
(Oxford University Press, 2010)
In many ways, this book reads like “The Guinness Book of World Records,” delivering factual tidbits so weird and so delightfully jarring that they’re almost unseemly. On November 2, 2007, we learn, a hailstorm walloped Bogota, Colombia, with 59 inches of ice and freezing water. In Yakutsk, Siberia, women in reindeer coats often wait outside for the bus when the temperature is -49 Fahrenheit. There’s a deeper story, though, in the lavishly illustrated encyclopedia: the earth is a lovely place, offering up more beauty and natural surprises than a layperson could possibly fathom. Who knew about “ball lightning,” which manifests as a ball of light that rolls on the ground and climbs trees? Or “sastrugi,” which are irregular wind-carved furrows and ridges in snow? Fry and her coauthors maintain a tone of pleasantly restrained wonder, and they have organized their book quite logically, into six sections that start with the basics (“What is weather?”), then look at nature’s furies (thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes) and the origins of climate science, before assailing us with the inevitable dark punch line: all the splendors you’ve seen heretofore—such as the sastrugi-rippled snows of Kilimanjaro—are in peril. To quote: “The marked increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has no precedent in approximately the last 1 million years,” and the change “may rival or even exceed the meteor impact K-T extinction event, which brought the age of the dinosaurs to the end... In the aftermath of the 2006 East African drought, one Kenyan farmer’s herd plummeted from 85 cows to five.” The pictures sound the same disquieting note. Here, for instance, is an emaciated Ethiopian infant, his ribs bulging thanks to a drought and a famine. In conclusion, the encyclopedia provides a glimpse into humankind’s brave and varied fight against climate change. In 15 hopeful pages, we learn about recycling and reforestation and the virtues of Portland’s MAX train. Encouraging stuff, certainly, but it’s a detour from all the science before it. And, it is not really necessary. The science in this book, so clearly enunciated and so lyrically terse, sounds its own haunting call to action. —Bill Donahue
“Medical imaging” is a decidedly unglamorous phrase. Yet the technology it refers to—the ability to peer inside the human body without having to cut that body open— represents one of the greatest achievements in history. In this provocative book, the authors examine the advent of imaging in its myriad forms (X-ray, ultrasound, CT scan, etc.) and how it is transforming both the practice and the business of medicine. And, make no mistake about the “business” part. With a staggering 687 million imaging procedures performed in the U.S. each year, at an annual cost of $170 billion, imaging has become a key medical profit center. Jeff and co-author Bruce Hillman chart the complex forces driving the phenomenal growth of imaging, from arcane Medicare rules to self-interested physicians (some of whom earn lucrative fees for sending patients to the scanner) to the fear of malpractice lawsuits. But the real culprit, they conclude, is more fundamental: our collective discomfort with ambiguity, or as the authors put it, “the impossible quest for medical certainty.” The book abounds with fascinating historical anecdotes. You probably remember (at least the fuzzy outlines of) Wilhelm Röntgen’s remarkable discovery of X-rays in 1895. But did you know that the Beatles were indirectly responsible for the first CT scanner? (Flush with cash, their label EMI backed an unlikely innovator, whose primitive equipment required nine hours to make a scan.) The book’s real contribution, however, is its careful examination of the conflicts this amazing technology has generated. Some of these conflicts, such as the turf war between radiologists and oncologists, are primarily of interest to specialists. Others, such as the debate over using CT scans to screen smokers for lung cancer, illuminate the twisted workings of modern medicine. —Chris Lydgate ’90
march 2011 Reed magazine 45
44-47_Reediana.indd 45
2/1/11 3:16 PM
Reediana
continued
Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts (Oxford University Press, 2010), by Margot Minardi, assistant professor of history & humanities, focuses on how commemorative practices and historical arguments about the American Revolution set the course for antislavery politics in the nineteenth century. The book is centrally concerned with the relationship between two ways of making history, through social and political transformation on the one hand and through commemoration, narration, and representation on the other. Making Slavery History examines the relationships between memory and social change, between histories of slavery and dreams of freedom, and between the stories we tell ourselves about who we have been and the possibilities we perceive for who we might become. Via close readings of films and literature, John Urang, visiting assistant professor of German at Reed since 2007, investigates the erratic economy of romance in that most planned of economies, the former German Democratic Republic, in his book Legal Tender (Cornell University Press, 2010). Most broadly, Legal Tender asks: why do we tell so many love stories? What do love stories do that make them so indispensable and so ubiquitous? John’s contention is that love plots provide a robust and elastic framework within which to address discrepancies between the claims of ideology and the conditions of lived experience. The book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of East German cultural history, as well as to general theories of modern Western romance.
Sally Watson ’50 has published her 22nd book and first nonfiction title, Tailwavers (iUniverse), the tale of an ailurophile and her collection of cats and friends in England and America, told partly in letters. Sally joined a cat rescue group and collected an assortment of her own, called the Cataclysm. Their letters describe champions and moggies, local doings and loco cats, contretemps, calicoes, and cat shows, with style, observation, and wit. An essay by Larry MacKenzie ’62, “A Pedagogy of Respect: Teaching as an Ally to Working Class Students,” was published in Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of Teachers (Boynton/Cook, 1998). (See Class Notes.) Galen Cranz ’66 is coeditor with Eleftevios Paulides of Environmental Design Research: The Body, the City, and the Buildings in Between (Cognella, 2010). Galen describes the book as a new reader for those who teach humanenvironment relations and social perspectives on architecture.
Flamenco Project: Una ventana a la visión extranjera 1960–1985, the catalog-book for the exhibition Flamenco Project edited by Steve Kahn ’66 and Ignacio González, was published in 2010 by Cajasol/Obra Social in Spain. The bilingual edition contains museum-quality photography documenting the foreign experience of gypsy flamenco in Andalucia, and essays by prominent aficionados, historians, and critics.
“Javier, Dying in the Land of Flowers,” Fred Rogers ’66 published “Taking by Deborah Ross ’68, appears in Your Home’s Energy Temperature” Breaking Waves, a benefit anthology in Home Power magazine (issue 139, for the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Relief October–November 2010), a pubFund, and is available in electronic lication focused on do-it-yourself, format from bookviewcafe.com. grassroots approaches to renewable Deborah’s story was first published energy. Fred explained how to quantify the energy savings resulting from in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1996. insulation and conservation based on information available from NOAA An edited collection, and the regional climate centers, and Text and Genre in illustrated the approach using data Reconstruction: from his home in Reno, Nevada. To Effects of Digitalizaread the article, visit www.dri.edu/. tion on Ideas, Behaviours, Products and Jane Burbank ’67, Institutions, by Wilwith her husband lard McCarty ’70, Fred Cooper, recentwas published by Open Book Publy published Empires lishers (2010). Incorporating scienin World History: tific, sociohistorical, materialist, and Power and the Politics theoretical approaches, the work of Difference (Princexplores topics such as how computeton University ers have affected our relationship to Press, 2010). This study starts with language, whether the book has ancient Rome and China and ends become obsolete, and how digitizawith the present. “It would be of tion is shaping our collective identity, interest to people thinking about world history, and the problems with for better or worse. (See Class Notes.) nation-state politics.” Jane says she pulled out all of her old humanities texts in order to create the book. Home Winemaking for Dummies, by Tim Patterson ’68, was published by John Wiley & Sons last fall. “Though I am not the first Reedie to publish a Dummies book, it’s still far from the standard universitypress literary trajectory commonly found among alums. For that matter, although there are a handful of Reedies in the wine business, that’s not a core Reed career track, either. Perhaps it was my year of classical Greek with Fred Peachy [classics, 1956–82] that got me interested in Dionysus and his fellow revelers; perhaps it was my stint as student body president that got me used to embarrassing myself in public; or perhaps it was the knowledge that a world-famous wine region sprang up in the Willamette Valley starting the year I left Portland, making me forever play catch-up.” (See Class Notes.)
Grounded: The Works of Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg (BlueImprint, 2010) showcases the design of a leading Canadian planning, urban design and landscape architecture firm founded by Marta Farevaag ’71 and partners Chris Phillips and Greg Smallenberg. Grounded is a comprehensive, thought-provoking, and visually stunning book, composed of essays by foremost architects, landscape architects, planners, and historians, who touch on the approaches to design used by PFS. An interview with Marta and her partners is interspersed between the essays, forming the thread that holds the book together.
46 Reed magazine March 2011
44-47_Reediana.indd 46
2/1/11 3:16 PM
Voices from the Hemispheres, by Kenneth Harrison MALS ’71, presents more than 100 poems written over 50 years. Published by Vantage Press in December 2010, Voices showcases Ken’s inventive ideas and powerful lines. Who else would compose an elegy to a pencil, an ode to the thumb, and make a sly comparison of the ritual of shaving to an act of murder? (See Class Notes.) Burning Forest: The Art of Maria Frank Abrams, by Matthew Kangas ’71, published by the Museum of Northwest Art in 2010, contains dozens of images of Abrams’ paintings and mosaics and also tells the story of her life. Her work is contained in the library collection on Mercer Island, where she lives, and also in numerous other collections, such as the Seattle Art Museum and the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington.
graphic development and social history of the American West in the 20th century, and includes community studies of the Klamath Indian Reservation and Vanport City, both in Oregon. Heather is also editor of Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
The House that Mouse Built, by Maggie Rudy ’80, is available this month from Downtown Bookworks. The book features Maggie’s marvelous mice in her hand-constructed sets. Maggie was encouraged by husband Richard Alden ’75 to produce a book that featured her art; Elsa Warnick ’64 assisted with the proposal. The House that Mouse Built will entertain readers of all ages with its imaginative scenes. (See mouseshouses. blogspot.com.)
Van Havig ’92, head brewer for Rock Bottom Breweries in Portland, published “Maximizing Hop Aroma and Flavor through Process Variables” in the Technical Quarterly (Volume 47, 2010) of the Master Brewer Association of the Americas.
Doug Forsyth ’77 writes about the Old West End Historic District in Toledo, Ohio, where he lives, for American Bungalow. His most recent article was “The Wealth of Craftsmanship” in issue 66 (Summer 2010). Doug let us know that Jeanne Brako ’78 was cited as an expert on American Indian textiles in the same issue. David Henry Sterry ’78 is coauthor of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Workman Publishing Company, 2010), described as the best, most comprehensive book for writers. The guide demystifies every step of the publishing process, offering assistance on topics such as selling a proposal, finding an agent, and self-publishing. (See Class Notes.)
Deepak Sarma ’91 has published Classical Indian Philosophy: A Reader (Columbia University Press), the first book in more than 50 years to outline India’s key philosophical traditions. Deepak draws on seminal texts to clarify Indian philosophy’s basic language, positions, and issues. Organized by tradition, the volume covers six schools of orthodox Hindu philosophy, Jain philosophy, and the Mahayana Buddhist schools of Madhyamaka and Yogacara. In his acknowledgements, Deepak cites Ed Gerow [religion 1985–96] as a key influence. (Sorry we mangled this last time, Deepak.) (See Class Notes.)
The Big Wish, by Carolyn Digby Conahan ’83, newly published by Chronicle Books, is replete with Carolyn’s delightful illustrations. When Molly gathers dandelions for a world-record wish, which one will she make? Everyone in her town has an idea and wants her to make the decision, but how do you pick one wish for the world? Heather Fryer ’89, associate professor of history at Creighton University, is the author of Perimeters of Democracy: Inverse Utopias and the Wartime Social Landscape in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2010). The book examines the influence of federally run communities on the demo-
Shadab Ali Khan Hashmi ’95 has just published Baker of Tarifa, a book of poems based on the history of the Abrahamic cultures of Islamic Spain, Al Andalus. Poet Eleanor Wilner praises Shadab’s luminous, spare language, and her ability to capture the essence of Al Andalus. Shadab’s poetry has appeared in New Millennium Writings, the Cortland Review, Hubbub, the Bitter Oleander, and Nimrod International. (See Class Notes and shadabhashmi.com.) In September 2010, Eve Lyons ’95 published a poem in Houston Literary Review and a short story in the literary magazine Word Riot. Last summer, she participated in a juried poetry workshop with one of her heroes, Marge Piercy, which was “an amazing experience on many levels.”
Jesse Spohnholz ’96, assistant professor of history at Washington State University, has written The Tactics of Toleration: A Refugee Community in the Age of Religious Wars (University of Delaware Press, 2010). In November 2010, Jesse came to Reed to present the related lecture “Twisting & Twisting & Twisting the Truth: Dissimulation as a Strategy for Preserving Peace during Europe’s Age of Religious Wars.”
Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War, by Molly Todd ’96, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2010). The book examines how the peasant campesinos of northern El Salvador responded to the civil war that wracked the country from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s by taking to the hills. Molly is an assistant professor of history at Augustana College, specializing in Latin American history. Chris Anderson ’02 is coauthor of CouchDB: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly Media, 2010). The book explains how CouchDB’s schemaless document model is a good fit for common applications, and covers the basics of building mobile and offline capable web applications. The book is available through Amazon, and a free web version is at guide. couchdb.org. (See Class Notes.)
march 2011 Reed magazine 47
44-47_Reediana.indd 47
2/1/11 3:17 PM
In Memoriam Virginia Anne Simmons Wolf ’36 September 15, 2010, in Bethesda, Maryland, from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.
A writer and entomologist, Ginny grew up in Portland in the 1920s. Her education began early: “My dad would bring home great rolls of butcher paper, and we would lie on our stomachs in front of the potbellied stove, copying the entire front page of the morning Oregonian in block letters. We could read and write long before we went to school.” At Reed, she earned a BA in literature and also met Harry E. Wolf ’41; they were married in the Eliot Hall chapel in 1938. After Harry completed a degree in physics from Reed, the two did graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma. Following World War II, Harry began a career as a physicist in underwater research with the U.S. Naval Ordnance Lab in Maryland. Ginny worked as a writer and editor. In the 1940s, she sold several stories to national magazines, including a story set at Reed about climbing Mt. Hood. In the 1950s–60s, she focused on science writing and became publications officer of the entomology research division for the USDA, completing a graduate-level program with the USDA in 1965. A year later, she published “Titling Biological Publications for Proper Storage and Retrieval” in the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America. Ginny and Harry moved to Hawaii in 1968; there she did editing and writing for the entomological laboratory at the University of Hawaii, while he served on the military’s science advisory group. Ginny continued to write and edit for Hawaiian scientists for 18 years. She also served as Maryland state chairman of international relations for the League of Women Voters. She published her poetry and played five versions of the recorder. Her education at Reed was the foundation for her career, she said. “I learned to think on my feet, hold up my end of an argument, and write well.” Survivors include her son, Peter; her daughter, Catherine Wolf Swan ’66; and two grandchildren, including grandson Carl J. Swan ’06. Harry died of brain cancer in 1999.
Ruth Wilhelmina Spoerli-Herman ’38 May 4, 2010, in Portland.
Ruth was born in Portland, the daughter of Swiss emigrants. Her father was a wood craftsman who made furniture; Ruth attended Reed
as a day-dodger, earning performed double bass with the Portland Youth a BA in sociology. She Philharmonic. At Reed she studied foreign languagthen pursued a career es and fell in love with William F. Martin ’41. The in social work. During couple married and raised their five children on World War II, she was a cattle ranch near the Clackamas River. Outside employed as a medical of ranching, Barbie enjoyed golfing, fishing, and social worker with the traveling. She did calligraphy, played bridge, and American Red Cross, was a fan of the Portland Trail Blazers. She was serving in military hos- a member in many local organizations, including pitals in the Pacific. In the Reed College Women’s Committee. After Bill 1949, she earned an MA in social work from Case died in 1986, Barbie remained at the ranch, raisWestern Reserve University. Two years later, she ing and showing Angora goats, and spinning and joined the staff of the crippled children’s division knitting their fleece. In the early ’90s, she sold the at the University of Oregon Medical School (now ranch and moved to northwest Portland. Barbie is Oregon Health & Science University); she retired remembered for her beauty, courage, dignity, and as chief of the OHSU social work unit in 1986. humor. Survivors include 1 son and 3 daughters, At the age of 72, Ruth married Jack Herman; it 9 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, and a was her first marriage. “My life has not been all brother. A son died in 1977. work,” she wrote in retirement. “I have been able to travel worldwide as a bird watcher, skier, and John B. Gray AMP ’44 tourist, as well as enjoying gardening and grow- March 5, 2010, in Florissant, Missouri. ing roses.” She and Ruth Wetterborg Sandvik ’38 John attended Reed in the premeteorology promaintained their college friendship, visiting one gram, and earned a JD at St. Louis University. He another and traveling together. She also enjoyed practiced law in the firm Gray, Stewart & Clarkin. keeping up with Beth Tabor Mullady ’38 and Ellen Knowlton Johnson ’39, and was an active Inez K. Haskell ’44 member in the Foster-Scholz Club. Ruth’s three May 31, 2010, in Portland. stepsons survive her. Her husband died in 1993. Inez was born in Portland and earned a BA from Reed in history and a BS in library science from the University of Washington. She was a librarian for Harry Donald Setterberg ’39 Multnomah County Library. A sister survives her. October 22, 2010, in Des Moines, Iowa. With a BA in mathematics from Reed, Don Loyd B. Nesbitt Sr. AMP ’44 moved to Klamath Falls, July 8, 2006, in San Jose, California. Oregon, where he taught A resident of Fargo, North Dakota, Loyd enlistmathematics, science, ed in the Army Air Forces in 1943, and came to and music, and met Reed in the premeteorology program. He earned music teacher Eleanor a BS in physics from Rutgers University and marSmith; they married and ried Ruby Lee Parr. He and his family moved to moved to Seattle in 1941. Alplaus, New York, where he worked as a physiDon worked as an engi- cist for General Electric. In 1968, he was transneering supervisor for the Boeing Company for 37 ferred to the nuclear energy division in San Jose, years. He and Eleanor shared a love of music. Don California, where he worked as a chemical engiwas a gifted banjo and guitar player and performed neer specializing in off-gas systems for nuclear with the Seattle Banjo Band, the Banjokers, and power plants. Survivors include his wife, three the Seattle Mandolin Orchestra. Survivors include children, and five grandchildren. Eleanor, a son and daughter, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Don’s brothers Jean Locke Webster James M. Setterberg ’37 and Gordon A. Setter- Whipple McNutt ’45 berg ’42 were also Reed graduates. October 4, 2010, in Hillsboro, Oregon. Jean was the daughter of Gladys L. Keck Webster ’18 and Dean B. Webster ’16. She knew Barbara Ann Besson Martin ’41 of Reed through her mother, who maintained August 17, 2010, in Portland. The daughter of a Portland physician, Barbie lived connections to college friends, and through her briefly in Vienna, Austria, where she discovered father, who served the college in various capaca passion for art and music. Returning to Port- ities, including trustee and acting comptroller land, Barbie attended Lincoln High School and during World War II. Jean did well in high school, march 2011 Reed magazine 63
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 63
2/1/11 4:10 PM
In Memoriam
continued
Reed was very important to Lee. “He wore a Reed baseball cap until his final days.” Survivors include his wife, sons Matthew and Simon, and his sister, Dorothy Shindler.
she said, but found it difficult to be successful right away at Reed. “I was what was known at the time as a ‘greasy grind.’ I just kept my nose to the grindstone and plowed through the assign- Robert Cordon Ragsdale ’49 ments.” In an oral history with Muriel Reichart January 30, 2008, in Glendale, California. Wyatt ’46, Jean provided a delightful account Bob earned a BA from of many Reed memories, including the first GilReed in philosophy and bert & Sullivan production, ice skating on Reed a BLS in librarianship Lake, the arrival of the premeteorology students, from UC Berkeley. He and her work in commons and in the library. The worked for 34 years in experience at Reed fueled her growing interest in public library service, government affairs, the arts, and contemporary including as director of literature. “The whole spectrum of the world’s the public library for knowledge was opened to me.” She earned a BA the ci t y o f Cov ina , in general literature from Reed and a BA in librarCalifornia. ianship from the University of Washington. For three years, she worked as a children’s librari- C. Melvin Bliven ’50 an at the Arleta branch of Multnomah County September 2, 2010, in Wedderburn, Oregon. Library. In 1948, she married James E. Whipple Mel earned a BA in phys’49; they had two children. Jean worked at public ics from Reed, where he libraries in Ohio and California before rejoining met Ruth A. Hess ’52. the Multnomah County Library as a children’s They were married for librarian. Her library career spanned 26 years. 25 years and raised two In addition to interests in literature and histochildren. Mel’s career ry, Jean enjoyed singing and acting, and took was centered on the up tap dancing midlife. A second marriage, to design, manufacture, Eugene E. McNutt, lasted 20 years, ending with and maintenance of Eugene’s death in 1994. Survivors include her lasers and technical son, Evan D. Whipple ’74; her daughter, Lauren; instruments. His comand two grandchildren. In memory of her parents, pany, Laser Technical Jean founded the Dean B. and Gladys K. Webster Instruments in Lake Oswego, developed the Memorial Scholarship at Reed. laser guidelines used in precision woodcutting by sawmills around the country. He maintained a friendship with Professor Jean Delord [physLee Stanley Baier ’48 ics, 1950–88]; in 1979, he provided the physics October 13, 2010, in North Yarmouth, department with a pair of lasers to create a highMaine, from natural causes. Lee had already begun speed computer data link between the physics his studies at Reed building and Eliot Hall. (Classmates of the when he made the deci- appropriate vintage may remember their enigsion to volunteer for the matic red beam, which was visible on foggy U.S . Ar my. He was nights.) Mel enjoyed genealogy work, travel, and selected to serve with time outdoors. In retirement, he moved to Wedthe 20th Armored Divi- derburn, where he built a home just a few feet sion in Europe; after the from the Pacific Ocean. Survivors include his war, he returned to son, daughter, stepdaughter, stepson, and a Reed and completed a granddaughter. Mel was also married to BarbaBA in general literature. ra Walker, who died in 2004. He continued his academic career at Columbia University, where he Gordon Paul Means ’50 earned a doctorate in English literature—his August 12, 2010, at home in Chaska, Minnesota, specialty was the work of John Milton. In 1958, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. he met Ursula Howe. They married in Wood- Gordon was a political scientist, sociologist, lands-Kent, England, the following year, and set- and author of several books on Southeast Asia. tled in North Yarmouth in 1966. Lee was pro- His parents were Methodist missionaries, who fessor of English at the University of Maine until worked to develop schools and clinics for the retirement. He also was a founding member of Sengoi and Temier peoples in northwest MalaySt. Bartholomew Episcopal Church in Yarmouth, sia. Gordon lived in Sumatra, Singapore, and and for many years played with the recorder Malaysia before the family returned to the U.S. choir. He loved gardening, baroque music, and in 1939 and settled in Spokane, Washington. He “a finely (and very often a not-so-finely) crafted joined the navy at 18, and came to Reed on the pun.” His daughter-in-law, Susan Baier, who pro- G.I. Bill. Gordon earned his BA in political scivided the details for this memorial, noted that ence, writing his thesis on the political problems
Political scientist Gordon Means ’50.
of the Malay peninsula, and later earned a PhD in political science from the University of Washington. Gordon’s academic career was centered on Southeast Asia, particularly the conflicts among culture, religion, and modernization. Fluent in Malay, he taught at Willamette University, Gustavus Adolphus College, the universities of Iowa and Washington, the University of Minnesota’s Institute of International Studies, and McMaster University. He had teaching and research exchanges with universities in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and China. He was a member of McMaster University’s political science department in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, from 1967 until his retirement in 1992. He achieved worldwide recognition for the breadth of his scholarship and was honored in 2004 as one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twenty-first century. His books included Malaysian Politics: The Second Generation, Political Islam in Southeast Asia, and The Past in Southeast Asia’s Present. He also was coeditor of the first Sengoi and Temiar dictionaries. Gordon had two daughters and two sons with his first wife, to whom he was married for 29 years. In 1987, he married Laurel Braswell, a professor in the English department at McMaster. They retired to Chaska, Minnesota, in 1996. In his public obituary, we read that Gordon lived his life to the fullest, “whether writing, lecturing, researching, enjoying family camping, strenuous canoeing in the Boundary Waters, fast-paced golfing, or competing even faster on the tennis court.” Friends and colleagues remember him as a humble man, generous with both knowledge and help, who was devoted to family, was full of humor, and had an unerring practical sense. Three days before he died, Gordon completed an edition of his father’s notes, fragmentary manuscript, and
64 Reed magazine March 2011
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 64
2/1/11 4:10 PM
Bill Riggle ’50, at age 80, by the Sacramento River.
photographs describing his parents’ work among the Sengoi from 1931 to 1980. Gordon is survived by his wife, Laurel; four children; three stepchildren; and eight grandchildren.
William H. Riggle ’50
February 18, 2010, at home, in Brentwood, California.
Bill was born in Long Beach, California. During the Great Depression, his father’s search for work took the family to Seattle, where Bill went to high school. “I have fond memories of Seattle’s old Broadway High, which we used to call affectionately the ‘Pine Street Jail,’” he wrote to a classmate in 2004. “I particularly recall with pleasure my four-year membership in the band.” Bill attended Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, until he turned 18 and was summarily drafted into the army. Trained as an infantryman in Georgia and as an artilleryman in Arkansas, he went overseas with the 744th Field Artillery Battalion. “We landed in England and crossed the Channel to join General Patton’s 3rd Army. ‘Old Blood and Guts’ led us across France and deep into Germany, with side trips to Czechoslovakia and Austria.” Discharged in 1946, Bill came to Reed on a scholarship. “Reed afforded me a semi-cloistered life, wherein I could gradually overcome my very jaundiced opinion of mankind formed from nearly three years of army service.” He and 12 other veterans, the “13 Inmates,” as they called themselves, lived on the second floor of a residence hall that had been converted from an army barracks. “Inmates” included Alan Aspey ’50, Louis Corrigan ’50, Mason Gaffney ’48, Walter Mintz ’50, “Pete” Pedersen ’50, and Fred Schatz ’50. Bill’s interest in music continued at Reed. He joined Portland Symphony Society and from time to time brought instrumental ensembles from the orchestra to perform in Winch, Capehart. It was a class in summer 1948, presented by Helga C. Peters [German, 1942– 48], however, that became synonymous with his memory of Reed. Frau Peters introduced the veterans in her class to the novels of Erich Maria Remarque. Bill was deeply touched by her choice and her understanding of the experiences he and his classmates had encountered in the war. In Letters, in the November 2001 issue of Reed, Bill
wrote that Frau Peters “was the most unforgetta- Kalman Joseph Cohen ’51 ble, and without question the most beautiful and September 12, 2010, in Durham, North Carolina. keen-spirited, instructor” he encountered on his Economist, professor, academic journey. “By comparison, all of my other and author, Kal (known instructors were from ‘Dullsville.’” Bill earned a as Joe when at Reed) BA from Reed in general literature and went on earned a BA in matheto the University of California, Berkeley, where matics, graduating Phi he earned a MA and EdD while teaching English Beta Kappa, and was for 14 years at a nearby suburban high school. He selected as a Rhodes joined the faculty of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Scholar. “Attending Reed Education as academic administrator in 1966 and College was a major pivretired in 1983. In retirement, he was involved otal point in my life. At in numerous civic projects. He served as library Reed, I developed a deep commissioner for Contra Costa County (Califor- intellectual curiosity, fueled by both faculty and nia) and was a member of Concord, California’s fellow students. The social, academic, and athletTask Force. Bill was married to Grace Slater for ic opportunities interwove, offering a balanced 40 years. Two years after her death in 1992, he and challenging lifestyle.” Kal played trombone accepted a second opportunity for happiness in for Gilbert & Sullivan productions, square danced a marriage to Gisela Travis, who had been wid- in the student union, participated in informal owed. They made their home in Brentwood. Bill sports and recreation and outing club trips, thoroughly enjoyed the music of Benny Good- worked part-time in commons, and also operatman and Roy Orbison, but he especially delight- ed a campus laundry and dry cleaning facility. He ed in symphonic classical music. He was a vora- treasured his memories of the academic life and cious reader of science, history, and poetry, and the related gab sessions. The Reed experience proappreciated good writing. Gisela, who provided vided an ideal foundation for work at Oxford Unithe details for this memorial, wrote that Bill was versity, he said, where curiosity and the ability to a scholarly, refined, and gracious man. “He was work independently were required. He received interesting, interested, and had a warm sense of an MLitt in mathematical logic from Oxford and humor. He lived by Bible principles, always tak- completed a PhD in economics at Carnegie Instiing the ‘high road.’ His speech was measured tute of Technology in 1959. “Although my proand deliberate. His gentle spirit contributed joy fessorial career started in economics, gradually and harmony. Bill was esteemed and beloved by my interests switched to banking, finance, and those who knew him. He was a most remarkable securities markets.” He was a tenured professor human being and a wonderful husband.” Survi- in three business schools: Carnegie Mellon Univors include Gisela, a daughter and son, and a versity, New York University, and Duke Univergranddaughter. sity. He did research in and taught management science applications in banking. His research moved into microstructure of securities markets Alan Reid Brodie ’51 with teaching in corporate finance. He began his October 18, 2010, at home in Chicago, Illinois. Alan grew up in Portland, tenure with Duke in 1974, and was Distinguished the son of F. Walter Bank Research Professor at Duke University’s Brodie ’23 and medical Fuqua School of Business, retiring in 1993. He pioneer Jessie Laird also was a visiting professor in Sweden, Denmark, Brodie ’20 and brother China, and Singapore. Kal received numerous of Laird C. Brodie ’44. scholarships, fellowships, and research grants He earned a BA from from many sources, including the National SciReed in general litera- ence Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the ture and a JD from the FDIC. He wrote 8 books and over 80 articles on University of Chicago. banking, mangement, security market microHe served in U.S. Army structure, corporate finance, computer simulaIntelligence in Germany for a year, after which he tion, and microeconomics. He also swam more returned to Chicago to practice law. Alan special- than a mile every other day, vacationed in the ized in employee benefits with Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, mountains of North Carolina, and was a Duke and retired in 1987. His passion for archaeology University basketball fan. He and Joan C. Newled to travel in the Middle East. He also enjoyed man were married in 1956. She survives him, as opera, contemporary music, and modern art. He do two sons, one daughter, five grandchildren, was a member of the visiting committee of the and a brother. Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and served on the National Advisory Council at Phyllis Jeaneanne Reed. In 1988, he endowed the Brodie Family Graham Anderson ’53 Scholarship at Reed to recognize the college’s September 6, 2010, in Springdale, Arkansas. importance in his life and in the life of other Phyllis thrived at Reed, where she earned a BA members of his family. A sister and extended fam- in psychology and theatre. Among her treasured ily members survive him. memories were the fluent recitations of archaic march 2011 Reed magazine 65
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 65
2/1/11 4:10 PM
In Memoriam
continued
French by Rex Arragon [history, 1923–62, 1970–74] and the lectures of Stanley Moore [philosophy, 1948–54]. At Reed she discovered the “sheer joy” of analyzing ideas and arriving at unpredicted conclusions in a humanities conference. She later wrote: “I recall with amazed gratitude my good fortune in having selected Reed for my undergraduate education. The scope of instruction and the depth of reading required remains my standard for quality education. One of the most valuable investments of time I have ever made.” Married in 1955 to air force officer Harold J. Anderson, she spent four years in Japan. At AOI Sound Studios, she acted in programs for the Armed Forces Radio Network, dubbed sound tracks, and narrated documentaries. She earned a master’s degree in library science from Catholic University and a master’s degree in gifted education from the University of Connecticut, and had a career as a school librarian and a talented and gifted education teacher. To her list of accomplishments, Phyllis would add owner and manager of a mountain resort, pipe organ musician, and cofounder and director of a community youth theatre. Phyllis also held a Federal Aviation Administration certificate, which enabled her to give ground instruction to prospective pilots. She was engaged in church and church mission activities throughout life, and was enthralled by a good murder mystery. She is survived by her husband, three sons, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a sister.
Edmond Stewart Miksch ’54 July 30, 2010, in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania.
Edmond grew up in a family with a strong Reed legacy. His father, Walter P. Miksch, taught French [1928–29]; his mother, Florence Stewart Miksch, attended the college, as did his sister, Gretchen Miksch Turner ’54; and his uncle, (William) Blair Stewart ’21, also taught at the college [economics, 1925–49]. Edmond earned his BA from Reed in physics and completed a PhD in applied physics at Harvard University. In 1967, he moved to Pittsburgh to work for U.S. Steel, and he was also an engineer for Westinghouse and Alcoa and an independent patent agent. Later, he was a consultant with Veritas Engineering Company. Edmond and his wife, Mary F. Hall, had four daughters, who survive him, as do six grandchildren. Mary died in 2008.
Colleen Ruth Lamont Smith ’54
August 5, 2010, in Riverside, California, from progressive supranuclear palsy.
Colleen attended Cottey College, studied two years at Reed, and received a BA in English
Art Washburn ’57 dedicated himself to the education of the deaf.
literature from UC Berkeley. In 1986, she earned was her legislative assistant in Washington, D.C. an MA in counseling psychology from Chap- He held several management positions for the man College and was a licensed marriage, fami- state of Oregon and Multnomah County; Goverly, and child therapist. As a breast cancer survi- nor Bob Straub appointed him director of the Orevor in Eugene, Oregon, she became founder and gon Department of General Services and of the state coordinator of the Oregon Breast Cancer Department of Environmental Quality. Bud was Coalition and backed legislation for the Oregon an executive assistant to the governor for two Women’s Health and Wellness Act of 1993. Sur- years and was vice president of Schnitzer Steel vivors include three sons and four granddaugh- for 12 years. He was also a member of Reed’s ters. A son predeceased her; her husband, Wil- alumni board and served as an alumni trustee liam Smith, to whom she was married for 22 (1979–83). His consulting firm, Kramer & Associates, provided a bridge between the private secyears, died in 1977. tor and the municipal, state, and federal agencies that regulate it. In 1969, he married Ann RenLoren “Bud” Kramer ’55 nacker. In retirement, Bud and Ann lived on the October 22, 2010, in Hillsboro, Oregon. An influential force in Oregon coast, where he continued to participate Oregon politics for many in community and political affairs, including stepyears, Bud was born in ping into a temporary post as Clatsop County Brookings, South Dako- manager. In his public obituary, we read that Bud ta, and lived through a was known for his “brusque, decisive manner” but “ r o u g h - a n d - t u m b l e ” that ”inside the gruff exterior beat the heart of a childhood in various marshmallow.” He also offered unflagging suptowns in the U.S. before port to young people, serving as a mentor and moving to Portland in helping them to find jobs. Survivors include his 1944. While enrolled at wife, three sons and a daughter, and two grandReed, he was drafted children. Bud’s brother, David Kramer ’53, also into the army. He returned to Reed after his dis- attended Reed. charge and earned a BA in political science, completing the thesis The Effect of Precinct Organiza- Arthur Orbison Washburn ’57 tion on the 1954 Election. In 1955, he married September 29, 2010, in Del Norte, Colorado. Patricia Paulson. They had two sons, including Art grew up in Denver and enjoyed writing short Adam S. Kramer ’81, and later divorced. Bud stories in high school. While serving in the air began his political career managing the 1956 force, he won a short story contest sponsored Multnomah County presidential campaign of by the Air Force Times. From then on, he wrote Adlai E. Stevenson. He later managed the reelec- stories and poems whenever he could. Art spent tion campaign of Representative Edith Green and three years at Reed; he edited the Quest, majored
66 Reed magazine March 2011
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 66
2/1/11 4:11 PM
in philosophy, and wrote his thesis on the medieval theologian Richard Hooker. He also learned calligraphy from Lloyd Reynolds [English and art, 1929–69]; he practiced and taught the craft throughout his life. After Reed, Art dedicated himself to the education of the deaf. He earned an MS in education from Gallaudet College, and a PhD from Columbia Pacific University, and taught deaf children for 45 years. Art taught at the state schools for the deaf in Colorado and Maine; at Riverside Community College in California, the Community College of Denver, and the University of Northern Colorado Lab School in Greeley; and in several public schools. He promoted the use of sign language for preschool children, taught workshops and classes, and wrote A Seeing Essential English Thesaurus. Art’s prose and poetry were published in three collections: Shadow -maker, with poetry depicting scenes from the San Luis Valley in California; Miss Lavington’s Bomb, a collection of short stories and poetry; and Eye of the Heart (see Reediana). “Although philosophy did not frame my present career, all my life-thinking comes from Reed, from the broad regions of thought engendered there,” Art wrote. “And I cannot imagine what this thoughtful life would have been without the Reed experience.” “He was very proud of his time at Reed and felt that he had the best education,” said his wife, Pauline Greiner Washburn, to whom he was married for over 39 years. “He never failed to bring that into conversation, and talk about Reed with young people who he thought could benefit from an education there.” Art was a faithful supporter of Reed and sent us several beautifully calligraphed letters, which adorn the editor’s office to this day. Three weeks before he died, he spent an hour sharing his knowledge of calligraphy with a good friend. A celebration of Art’s life took place, at which some of his paintings, calligraphy, and photographs were on display, in Del Norte in December 2010. There were readings from his books, and one of his poems, set to music by friends, was performed for the occasion. Survivors include his wife; sons Christopher, Peter O. Washburn ’87, Eric, Kirk, and Jon; nine grandchildren; and a brother.
our lives,” she wrote. The couple raised two sons and two daughters, and had four grandsons. From his public obituary, we share this tribute: “Justus was a successful man if success is defined as one who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of women and the respect of intelligent men; who left the world better than he found it—whether by an improved argument, a perfect recipe, or a rescued soil; who never lacked appreciation for Earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who always looked for the best in others and gave them the best that he had; whose life was an inspiration; and whose memory is a benediction. He has filled his niche and accomplished his task.”
Fay Halpern Lande ’59
September 20, 2010, in Columbia, Maryland, from cancer.
Fay grew up in New York City, the daughter of labor activists. She earned a BA from Reed in philosophy and returned to New York, pursuing further study in philosophy at Columbia University. Fay lived in New York’s East Village during the late 1960s and early 1970s and helped found an alternative children’s day care co-op devoted to providing a creative and nurturing environment. She pursued an interest in fine arts and earned an MFA in painting at Indiana University–Bloomington in 1964. Her artistic endeavors also included puppet making, tie-dye, and batik on silk. She used natural dyes and worked to ban a synthetic red dye because it was linked to bladder cancer. Fay was married to Robert Lande for 32 years. They met in New York and were married in Vienna, Austria, where Robert had moved for work. Fay taught classes on tie-dye at a college in Vienna, making her Yiddish sound as much like German as she could; she got herself admitted to medical school; worked for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, answering correspondence; and did interviews for the English language radio station, Blue Danube Radio. Fay was also confronted by the remnants of anti-Semitism in Vienna. She and her family returned to the U.S. three years later so that she could take care of her mother, who was ill. Fay’s experiences in Vienna and the caring she received from Orthodox women at the time of her mother’s death were influential in Fay’s decision to become more religious. She was a member Justus Howard Georg Freimund ’58 of the Lubavitch Center for Jewish Education in Columbia, Maryland, where she was appreciated June 10, 2010, in Bellingham, Washington. Justus was a strong advocate of public service as a woman of strong convictions and faith. Fay and social justice, who identified his intent to worked as a freelance writer and as an editorial work in criminal and communal justice while at assistant and writer with the Baltimore Sun. NewsReed. He left the college after three years, and paper colleagues praised her intelligence and sencompleted a BA in psychology and an MSW at sitivity and her gifts as a writer. Above all else, Fay Portland State University. During his career, he was devoted to her husband and two daughters, developed programs for juvenile and adult correc- and to her two grandchildren, all of whom survive tions and held positions with the National Coun- her. “She was the emotional core and support of cil on Crime and Delinquency and the Washing- our family,” Robert said. Donations in Fay’s name ton State Department of Corrections. News of may be sent to the Lubavitch Center for Jewish his death came from his wife of 52 years, Joann Education, 770 Howes Lane, Columbia, Maryland Schwichtenberg Freimund ’58. “Since we met at 21044, for construction of a small library, which Reed in our freshman year, Reed is significant in will be named for her.
Fay Lande ’59 wrote features for the Baltimore Sun.
Thomas Michael Shepard ’60 September 20, 2010, in Portland.
A Portland native, Tom attended Reed for two years and completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Washington. Survivors include his wife, two sons, three stepchildren, 14 grandchildren, and sister.
Anne Hiltner ’63
September 10, 2010, in Cleveland, Ohio.
An internationally recognized scientist and engineer, Anne earned a BA from Reed and a PhD from Oregon State University in chemistry and went on to be Case Western Reserve’s first female professor of engineering. Case Western’s president stated that Anne was a remarkable academic leader, a researcher of extraordinary ingenuity and accomplishment, whose career served as an inspiration. Anne joined the university in 1967 and worked as a research associate before joining the laboratory of Eric Baer, then chairman of the macromolecular science department. They had “a powerful scientific collaboration” and recognized a personal compatibility that led to their marriage in 1999. “The dream of every faculty member is to try harder, harder,” Baer said. “She always climbed mountains.” In 1974, as assistant professor of macromolecular engineering, Anne became the university’s first female member of the engineering faculty. Seven years later she founded the Center for Applied Polymer Research (CAPRI), an organization that encouraged collaboration across disciplines and laid the groundwork for the program she considered her greatest achievement, the award of a 10-year, $40 million National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center (STC), the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS). Anne published nearly 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals and received multiple honors from professional scientific organizations. Bauer noted: “Her greatest joy was her involvement with the graduate students. She loved the creative, productive side of her work.”
Alan Avilla ’64
September 18, 2010, in Red Bluff, California.
Alan was at Reed for a little more than a year and completed an undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley. He was a master counselor with the Red Bluff DeMolay. Survivors include a sister. march 2011 Reed magazine 67
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 67
2/1/11 4:11 PM
In Memoriam
continued
Michael Mallin ’64 in the Reed library.
Michael George Mallin ’64
March 26, 2010, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Dave Borst ’69 in 1985, shortly after his son, Doug ’07, was born.
Michael earned his BA from Reed in general literature, an MA in international relations from [1955–92]. Bert Brehm recalled: “I remember the University of Sussex, and a JD from the Uni- David for his fine work in my class, but mostversity of Chicago. Settling in Toronto, he spe- ly from conversations about music or science cialized in Canadian income tax, working for as a future career.” After returning from VienCCH Canadian and Arthur Anderson Chartered na, Dave told Brehm that music would always Accountants and teaching the intricacies of tax be an important part of his life, though not a regulations. He later developed his own business, career focus. Said Brehm, “I remember numerMichael Mallin Edit, providing editing services ous similar conversations: science, graduate for comprehensive annual business and person- school, medical school, on the one hand; music, al income tax guides. In his public obituary, we art, dance, theatre, on the other. What better read: “He was a meticulous researcher, cultivat- evidence of a lifelong liberal education?” Dave ed excellent relationships with other Canadian went on to attain an MA in zoology and a PhD in tax experts, and prided himself on his excep- biology from UCLA. His postdoctoral work was tionally high editing standards.” In the 1990s, with Howard Bern at UC Berkeley, “a very distinMichael moved to the Virgin Islands, where he guished endocrinologist and one of my profescontinued to edit tax guides and enjoyed the sce- sors and a good friend,” Frank Gwilliam noted. nic beauty of the Caribbean. Survivors include Dave was assistant professor at the Universihis wife, Anna, and his daughter. Two daugh- ty of Connecticut, and, in 1985, he accepted a position as a professor of biology at Illinois State ters predeceased him. University. Near the end of his tenure at Illinois, he was named Distinguished Professor, the highDavid Wellington Borst Jr. ’69 est honor the university bestows. He was activeSeptember 27, 2010, in Winter Springs, Florida. Dave spent five years pursuing an undergrad- ly involved in research focused on growth and uate degree. Arriving at Reed in 1964, he was development in insects and crustaceans, and split between a love of classical string bass and maintained a lab at the Marine Biological Labohis interest in biology. He also took an interest ratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Gwilliam in radio. “He loved being the manager of KRRC,” said, “Our paths crossed at the Marine Biological wrote his son Douglas T. Borst ’07, who pro- Laboratory a couple of times and I heard about vided the details for this memorial. Records for him through my membership in the American the management of the radio station were found Society of Zoologists. He was a good scientist mixed among Dave’s notes for Biology 110. and a good guy. I’ll miss him.” In 2005, having After two years at Reed, Dave moved to Vien- sent a son to Reed and a daughter to Oberlin, na, Austria, to study string bass. After another Dave accepted a position as chair of the biology two years of study there, political tensions and department at the University of Central Florida changing interests brought him back to Reed to and moved to Winter Springs. He was actively major in biology. There he rejoined the compa- involved in teaching there until shortly before ny of biology professors Bert Brehm [1962–93], his death. During his career, he was appointed a Frank Gwilliam [1957–96], and Laurens Ruben Fogarty International Fellow at the University of
Liverpool, United Kingdom, and was a member of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, the Entomological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He loved his family and science, and was a devoted teacher. He remembered Reed fondly and regaled friends with stories of library stairwell haircuts, the Doyle Owl, and studying for humanities while skiing on Mt. Hood. Survivors include his wife, Susan True Wardwell Borst;daughters Allison and Stacy; son Doug, two grandchildren; and two sisters.
Christopher John McClellan ’72 July 13, 2010, in Yamhill, Oregon, from cancer.
Born in New York City, Chris began his college education at Columbia, flunked out twice, and was then drafted. Following a brief and relatively uneventful stint in the army, he enrolled at Reed—with a wife in tow and a daughter soon to come—and earned a BA in economics. He raised a family and had a career in finance in San Francisco, where he was vice president with Pacific Asset Management, was president of Van Strum & Towne. He was instrumental in the founding of LyÇee FranÇais International, and served on its board of directors. Chris had a passion for gastronomical pleasures, a keen interest in literary and philosophical discourses, and an unwavering fondness for travel (particularly of the international variety). He shared fond memories of Reed with his children, each of whom also graduated from Reed. He is survived by his wife, Cecilia McClellan; children Sylla McClellan ’94, Catherine McClellan ’97, and Greg McClellan ’01; sons-in-law Corey Guinnee ’94 and Benji Fisher ’94; and grandchildren Walker and Marion Guinnee and Isaac Fisher.
68 Reed magazine March 2011
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 68
2/1/11 4:11 PM
David Friedlander ’73
August 15, 2010, in New York City.
David completed studies for a BA in music at a community college in New York. He was a TM1 practice manager with the Application Consulting Group in New Jersey and president of Vector Space in New York City. Survivors include his wife, son, and sister.
Frederic Burrier Caldwell ’76 February 18, 2008, in Portland.
Fred came to Portland from Pensacola, Florida, in the mid-70s. He studied biology at Reed and later earned a BS in social science from Portland State University. He worked in the mental health field and was married to Kathryn Heffner for seven years. Survivors include Kathryn, his mother and stepfather, and a brother and sister.
Susan Hornstein O’Dea ’76
October 1, 2008, in Vienna, Virginia, from cancer.
Susan, whose father was an officer with the CIA, Chris McClellan ’72 had an unwavering fondness for travel. was born in Tokyo, Japan, and spent her childhood moving to duty stations around the world. Miranda Hinsdale Breger ’93 She attended Reed and was a graduate of George June 27, 2010, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Washington University. She became vice presi- At Reed, Miranda focused her studies on English dent and general manager of Deltek Systems in literature. A celebration of her life took place at McLean, Virginia, a software development com- Chesterwood, a National Trust Historic Site in pany. Survivors include her son, mother, and Stockbridge, in July. two brothers. Her husband, Michael O’Dea, died in 1997. Hugh Bradley Dornan ’94
James Christopher Meade ’76 September 1, 2009.
Christopher earned a BA from Reed in philosophy, writing his thesis on the concept of intentional action. He last resided in Warwick, Rhode Island.
Alison Cadbury MAT ’79 October 29, 2010, in Eugene, Oregon, following a prolonged illness.
Alison came to Reed with a BA in English from Boston University. A prose writer, “wicked” Scrabble player, and valued member of several Eugene writing groups, Alison was the recipient of literary and scholarly awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Oregon Literary Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Fulbright award. The Fulbright award supported research for her book Panigyri: A Celebration of Life in a Greek Island Village, which she described as an ode to the culture and people of the village of Naousa. Her association with the island of Paros, in the Aegean Sea, began when she was a tourist in 1971 and extended to a five-year residency. “I had been drawn to the island by pictures of many-colored fishing boats and snowwhite cubical houses, and was curious about the people who created such beauty.” Alison taught writing and literature at Golden Gate University and at Lane Community College, from which she received the faculty recognition award for excellence in teaching. “Her love of words was the impetus of her life.”
June 18, 2010, in Darwin, California.
Hugh, who died at 39, had a great passion for life and saw himself as a jack-of-all-trades and a Renaissance man. When notifying the college of Hugh’s death, Ben Salzberg ’94 wrote, “He had long dreads and cowboy boots when he first came to Reed, and was totally straightedge. He had a radio show on KRRC, when it was in the Doyle basement, and played only roots reggae from a whole milk crate of CDs he brought in. He was also the guy who got me started brewing beer.” Michele Jonsson Funk ’94 wrote: “Hugh and I went to Reed together. My most vivid memory of Hugh is from there. One day when the cherry trees were blooming, he climbed one and hung from an upper branch shouting ‘Beauty! Truth! Joy! Love!’ in reference to a scene from A Room with a View.” Hugh studied classics at Reed and earned a BA in classics from UC Irvine. Professor Walter Englert [classics, 1981–] said, “I remember Hugh as an incredibly bright, generous, and kind person, and an enthusiastic student of Greek and Latin.” Anna Billstrom ’94 recalled Hugh in his role as a dorm dad at Reed: “I remember Hugh telling us freshmen/women at Reed: bring something from home; despite how cool you think college is, you will get homesick. Aw. He wrote a sweet letter as a prospy, and he was equally sweet as a dorm dad.” Hugh began work on a PhD at the University of Virginia in classics and considered teaching writing. From there, he recounted to Michele, he had a miserable experience in legal publishing—“not that
Hugh Dornan ’94. Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu.
legal publishing was bad, but the cubicle life could not have made me unhappier.” For three years, he worked as a cabinetmaker, a skill he maintained in later years on behalf of his friends. Three years ago, he was still in a period of transition, but happily reevaluating his priorities, he told Michele. “I’ve never really been successful by society’s standards, and at least I have reached some sort of peace with that. I have fantastic friends here in Charlottesville, and great people from my past whom I long to reestablish contact with.” Friends gathered in Charlottesville to remember him on the occasion of his 40th birthday in September 2010. Hugh’s Facebook page carries many pictures and remembrances, including one from friend Winston Barham, who shared this stanza from the Roman poet Catullus commemorating the death of his brother: Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. “Accept these offerings flowing with a brother’s tears, and forever, brother, hail and farewell.” [Translation by Walter Englert.] Pending: As Reed went to press, we learned of the deaths
of the following individuals; please contact us if you have memories of them that you wish to share. Lucy Shepard Beebe Howard ’37, Marian Stevens Larson ’37, Nancy Lindbloom Simmons ’39, Alan Dean ’41, Irma Gevurtz Robbins ’41, Barbara Hervin Schwab ’41, Louis Stang ’41, Elizabeth Edson Raymond ’43, Dorothy Grooms Macfarlane ’44, Rosellen Layton Lawton ’46, Lloyd Lyman ’48, William Telfer ’48, Mary Carson Brodie ’49, David Pearson ’49, Dick Brownstein ’52, William Verry ’55, William Ringnalda ’57, Lorene Tompkins Reierson MAT ’65, Paul Hummasti ’67, Steven Galper MAT ’68, Danny Young MALS ’70, George Szabo MALS ’77, Melissa Barrett Dobbs ’91, Sharon Mussen ’93, Allison Notter ’00.
march 2011 Reed magazine 69
63-69_InMemoriam.indd 69
2/1/11 4:11 PM
100 Years of Reed To celebrate Reed’s centennial, the alumni association commissioned this original poster by David Lance Goines, a Berkeley artist whose work is well known to collectors. Derived from a woodcut, the poster features four students sitting on the Great Lawn under a sycamore tree with the Old Dorm Block in the background. Goines created the black-and-white line-drawn image, prepared
the woodblock carving, introduced color, and finally printed the eight-color poster in his own shop. We invite you to celebrate Reed’s centennial with your own copy of this limited edition poster. The price is $50. Net proceeds will benefit the association’s scholarship fund, which supports financial aid. Order yours from the Reed bookstore at bookstore.reed.edu.
70 Reed magazine March 2011
70_Goins.indd 70
2/1/11 3:14 PM
Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202-8199
Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon
jarod opperman
Christian Anayas ’10 practices italic script at Paideia workshop on calligraphy.
cover.indd 11
2/1/11 3:20 PM
Darn, wish I had worn plaid!
TIMES CHANGE: THESIS BEARDS STAY THE SAME Photo caption by Devin Tydides Bambrick ’08.
Book it back to Reed for Reunions 2011! Save the dates: June 6–12, 2011. • Register today at reunions.reed.edu. Free lodging in the dorms for those who register by March 1, 2011. • Keynote by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gary Snyder ’51. • Philosophical musings and insightful waxings with presidents Bragdon, Koblik, and Diver. • Not your reunion year? No problem. All alumni are welcome to celebrate Reed’s 100th birthday! Gather your tribe and make the pilgrimage to enjoy food, music, and activities created by Reedies for Reedies.
cover.indd 15
Facebook: Reed College Centennial Reunions 2011
Email: alumni@reed.edu
Check out the latest Riffin’ Griffin posts: blogs.reed.edu/the_riffin_griffin/
Phone: 503/777-7589
2/1/11 3:44 PM