Reed College Magazine September 2011

‰ september 2011

What is a Reedie, Anyway?

Proud members of the Class of ’11 provide clues to the elusive species.

Rucked & Mauled Page 12 Rethinking Herodotus Page 36 Burying the MG Page 76

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

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Save the Date

Parent & Family Weekend Friday & Saturday, November 4 & 5, 2011 www.reed.edu/parents/pfw.html

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September 2011

p h o t o s b y m at t d ’a n n u n z i o

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Features 12

Rucked and Mauled

Clash of the Ages at Centennial Rugby Match.

By Kilian Kerwin ’85

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Eleven from ’11 (+1)

Meet 11 graduates of the class of 2011—plus one more MALS grad (because we couldn’t resist).

By Randall S. Barton & chris lydgate ’90

Departments 2 Centennial Reunions Reflection Mike Teskey, Director, Alumni & Parent Relations, describes this exceptional event.

3 Letters Is Reed Too Far Out? Demographics out of Joint.

Who Needs a New Building?

Quest for Clarity.

classic Lectures 36

Herodotus and the Invention of History

kilian kerwin ’85

History professor reflects on the paternity of his discipline in the second in our series of classic Hum lectures.

4 Eliot Circular News from Campus March of the class of ’11 Diver Announces Retirement Our Brilliant Students Our Tireless Volunteers Students Press Reed to Tackle Sexual Assault New Faces

By Ray Kierstead

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Paying It Forward

Venkly Ganesan ’96 challenged Reed students to lend a helping hand to their classmates.

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centennial essay 44

By Randall S. Barton

Anthro major reflects on what he learned at Reed. Adapted from the forthcoming book, Thinking Reed.

Puppet Master

By Chuck Bigelow ’67

Luke Kanies ’96 is your system administrator’s new best friend.

ALUMNI PROFILES 53

A Kurdish Odyssey

Iranian American author Laleh Khadivi ’98 won a $50,000 prize for her first novel, The Age of Orphans.

What’s she planning next?

By Bill Donahue

9 Empire of the Griffin

Connecting Reedies Across the Globe

Reed Diaspora Pizza Local Hosts Needed Camp Westwind

10 Greatest Reunions Ever!

By Raymond Rendleman ’06 18

How Reed Saved Me from a Life of Crime

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In the Glade of the Giants

Alumni Hordes Sack Campus

49 Reediana Books by Reedies

Lucinda Parker ’66

51 Class Notes

Nuclear Collusion in Japan

65 In Memoriam

Ken Belson ’87

Professor Herb Gladstone [music 1946–80]

76 Apocrypha Tradition • Myth • Legend Burying the MG under the Library

SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Centennial Reunions Reflection eric cable

REED SEPTEMBER 2011

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 90, No. 3 Magazine editor Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu class notes editor Laurie Lindquist 503/777-7591 reed.magazine@reed.edu graphic designer Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu alumni news editor Robin Tovey ’97 VALIANT INTERN Lucy Bellwood ’12

Harris Dusenbery represents the class of 1936 in the all-class parade during one of the more memorable events of Centennial Reunions.

The event: Centennial Reunions, the official launching of Reed’s centennial year.

The challenge: to describe this exceptional event without lapsing into numbing hyperbole and cliché.

I beg your indulgence as I lapse.

When you plan for so many years and build high hopes, there is always the risk that the reality will fall short. This didn’t.

Which leads me to the indefensible hyperbole: no other college or alumni association in the country could have done this.

The elements of Centennial Reunions may sound typical for any college: class events, talks, demonstrations, a parade, fireworks, and so on. What was fundamentally different was the way the elements emerged and the embodied energy they emitted. Alumni stepped forward and offered their talents; my colleagues meshed the parts in such a way that what emerged was a transcendent experience for all who participated. It was a showcase of the best of Reed.

While the elements could be replicated, the spirit, intellectualism, energy, passion, creativity, and whimsy was pure Reed. I am indebted to myriad alumni and colleagues 2

who dedicated countless hours to make their parts memorable. Thank you for creating compelling content, conspiring with your cohorts and colleagues, and captivating the campus and its community.

We live in an age when cameras are ubiquitous. In this issue, you will see some of images documenting Centennial Reunions. You can go online (reunions .reed.edu) and see even more, including movies. Do it. The footage is amazing. If you were there, relive it and plan to return.

If you missed it, take it in and make your mark on future gatherings.

Can this be replicated? We will try.

Starting with Reunions 2012, we will begin the process of creating an annual alumni celebration of Reedie-ness, a Reedfayre. Those who return to campus will be reminded of what makes Reed distinctive and enduring.

I’m looking forward to the process and the product—clichés and all.

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

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

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

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

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

—Mike Teskey Director, Alumni & Parent Relations

Reed magazine SEPTEMBER 2011

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Letters to Reed Is Reed Too “Far Out”?

I usually find at least one article in the magazine that interests me, but that was not the case with the most recent issue [June 2011]. The articles were eclectic, to put it mildly, and none of them were interesting to me. I looked at the picture of the parade at a reunion and I thought how different Reed is today from when I was a student in the fifties. I could not imagine myself participating in this type of what I would have to call a spectacle.

I received an excellent education at Reed, but I have to say that I feel very little attachment to Reed. I felt that Reed was a unique place, then, but judging from what I saw in this issue of the Reed magazine, it strikes me as being really “far out” today. I know I am far too conservative for the present Reed College.

—John W. Thompson ’55 Lake Oswego, Oregon Editor’s Note: Sorry you found nothing of interest in the last issue. We try hard to offer something for classmates of every vintage and persuasion, from the left of Hugo Chavez to the right of Attila the Hun (and there are alumni at both ends). We are probably guilty of playing up Reed’s quirky side—after all, bike jousting makes for better copy than biophysics. But don’t judge the college by its pageantry. Judge it by the rigor of its curriculum, the dedication of its professors, the brilliance of its students, and the achievements of its alumni. The clothes, the hairstyles, and the tattoos have changed; the essentials, I suspect, have not.

Demographics out of Joint The worries about the Reed student body being insufficiently diverse are motivated by many good desires for the college and for society as a whole. I agree with Joel Batterman ’10 [Letters, June 2011] that missing out on a variety of perspectives impoverishes the Reed community.

However, I question the use of the current racial and ethnic percentages as a good way to measure the college’s “success” at encouraging diversity. Tracing the percentages of those who fall into which particular category succeeds most notably not in celebrating diversity but in reinforcing categories that are deeply flawed, hopelessly undefined, and always already in a state of flux. As an institution that celebrates critical thinking and challenges common perceptions of the world, Reed should be undermining (or at the very least restructuring) these categories, not maintaining them. Why is the institution

known for “thinking outside the box” perpetuating categories that have such hazy boundaries and such arbitrary distinctions, as if “race” really is an appropriate measurable quality? Separating people into “Hispanic, African American, and Asian” categories is hardly more sophisticated than the old neighborhood covenants designed to keep “Mongoloid, Asiatic, and Negroid” races out of the suburbs. Simply creating less offensive category titles in the name of progress does very little to address the fallacies of racial categorization in the first place.

Reed should be deconstructing and shattering these categories, not using them to chase some kind of percentaged ideal, as if students with particular backgrounds are meant to be landscape elements or pinches of spice. Sometimes the language of targeted recruitment sounds quite patronizing, hardly the tactic to invite people who are looking to transcend centuries of racism. I am reminded of a radical feminist adage from the 1970s, “You cannot break your chains by polishing them.”

—Scott Rausch ’92 Seattle, Washington

A Quest for Clarity The article “The Quest Goes Live” (Reed, March 2011) states that the Quest board’s decision to launch reedquest.org was bolstered by a referendum showing a majority of students in support. This is the complete opposite of what happened—with one or two minor exceptions, a majority of voting students (in total and from all four years individually) rejected the idea both as a whole and with respect to every given type of article. Senate and the Quest simply did not take any action in response to the vote. Also, it is not true that the Quest remained “stubbornly confined to print” for 98 years or that the Wild Wild Quest changed this fact even during last semester: various other websites have existed for brief periods in the past, and sin.reed.edu/quest/ was already up and running smoothly many months before reedquest was ever announced.

—Sam Shemitz ’11 Portland, Oregon Editor’s Note: We goofed. Only 40 percent of students supported an online Quest; 27 percent were opposed; and 27 percent neutral. This constitutes a plurality, not a majority. (Where are the poli sci majors when you need them?) We are sorry for this misstatement and for giving earlier Quest websites short shrift.

Who Needs a New Building?

In a world without the prospect of global warming, the plans for a new performing arts building might seem merely pricey and unnecessary.

However, given that Reed’s greenhouse gas emissions are already high for a small college situated in a mild climate, the plan strikes me as downright extravagant. Reed’s performing arts faculty are excellent, but should students be taught that only a palatial building will give them the “appropriate respect” they deserve?”

Thirty years ago, my peers and I in the chamber orchestra, Collegium Musicum, and dance groups were happy with what we had, and that was before the Vollum auditorium was finished, let alone Kaul Auditorium. A giant winter garden that “frames the view” is for whom, one might ask? The many students who want to conserve the beautiful Pacific Northwest and wider world? Despite green touches, the huge vertical and horizontal space and luxurious rehearsal areas would be heated and cooled using fossil fuels. Over the next years, scores of students will be choosing the new environmental studies major (a choice we did not have when my petition in 1979–80 for an environmental major was not accepted). Imagine, though, how improved the environmental studies program could be if some of the $38 million budgeted for a greenhouse gas–intensive arts complex were invested there instead.

—Susan Subak ’82 Washington, D.C. Editor’s Note: The architects assure us that the new building will be an icon of sustainability, employing natural lighting and heating whenever possible. For example, that winter garden will be illuminated by daylight and will double as the main ventilation pathway for the building. A “green roof ” will dampen sound, reduce runoff, and improve thermal resistance. Sensors will eliminate wasted energy in unoccupied spaces, skylights will reduce dependence on electric light, bioswales will capture rainwater, and so on. For what it’s worth, your view about the adequacy of existing facilities was not shared by the late music professor Herb Gladstone, who long lamented the loss of Botsford Hall in 1962 and spent years agitating for a replacement [see In Memoriam]. The money for the building comes largely from donors who share Herb’s vision. Your point about the importance of environmental studies is unassailable, of course.

Reed is proud of its new ES major and hopes to strengthen it further. We invite readers to contact the development office for more details.

SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Eliot Circular News From Campus

March of the Class of ’11 On a bright morning in May, the 336 members of the class of ’11 assembled in a gleaming tent on the Great Lawn to celebrate a momentous occasion—earning their degrees from Reed.

The commencement address was delivered by economist Pamela Cox ’75, vice president of the Latin America and Caribbean Region for the World Bank, who Graduates

Total: 336

Females: 188

Males: 148

issued three challenges to the graduates, namely, Change the World, Be a Citizen of the World, and Do Good.

“In today’s world, you are the global elite.

In a world of the haves and have-nots, you are the haves,” she told the audience. “Every day, thousands of migrants—Mexicans and Guatemalans trying to go to the U.S., North Africans trying to go to Europe, Africans

How they paid Percentage of students receiving financial aid: 52 percent Average aid package (including grant, loan, and work components): $34,196 per year 2010–11 institutionally administered aid: $22.5 million Average parental income of students on aid: $68,705 Average loan indebtedness upon graduation: $16,910

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Mathematics 16 Economics 14 Art 13 Classics 12 Religion 12

Poli Sci 11 Philosophy 11

For more details, see www.reed.edu/commencement.

Fall 2010 enrollment by ethnicity

Majors by the numbers Psychology 33 English 30 Biology 29 Anthro 28 History 25 Physics 18 Linguistics 17

and South Asians to North Africa—risk their lives in the hopes of a better chance for themselves and their families. You have that chance. What will you do with it? How will you contribute to making the world a more equitable, sustainable, and livable place for all of us?”

Sociology 10 Chemistry 10 German 8 Theatre/Lit 5 Chinese 4 Bio/Chem 4 Russian 3

French 2 Spanish 2 Math/Econ 2 Music 1 Music/English 1 Theatre 1 Math/Physics 1

Physics/Bio 1 Am Studies 1 History/Lit 1 ICPS 1 MALS 8

(student body)

American Native: 20 (1.3%) Asian: 162 (11%) Black: 53 (3.6%) Caucasian: 842 (57%) Hispanic: 105 (7.1%) Other/multiracial: 35 (2.4%)

Pacific Islander: 2 (0.1%) Unknown: 258 (17%) Total: 1,477

Reed magazine SEPTEMBER 2011

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photos: oppisite by vivian Johnson; left by stuart mullenberg

President Diver Announces Retirement President Colin S. Diver announced in June that he will retire at the end of the next academic year.

“I have loved Reed College more than any other institution for which I have worked, and I have loved being its president more than any other job I have ever held,” Diver wrote. “But the time is approaching when I need to seek new challenges, strike out in new directions, and, yes, smell the flowers.”

Since taking the helm in 2002, Diver, 67, has led the college through several significant changes.

Reed has become more diverse.

While the size of the student body has grown slightly (headcount now 1,477), the proportion of minority students has risen from 14 percent to 26 percent. At the same time, the college has doubled its spending on financial aid over the past decade, to $22.5 million a year.

Reed has also become more selective.

The college currently accepts 40 percent of applicants, down from 71 percent a decade ago, while SAT scores have climbed steadily.

On the academic side of the ledger, Diver has overseen key changes to Reed’s traditional curriculum, including a big investment in the performing arts, a new major in environmental studies, and an expansion of the hallowed Hum 110 syllabus to include Egyptian and Persian sources. The college has added 13 full-time faculty positions, pushing the student-to-faculty ratio down to 10.23 to 1.

Reed has also made far-reaching improvements to student life. The college has built several new dorms, allowing almost 70 percent of students to live on campus. It has also revamped its fitness, health, and wellness programs to help Reedies thrive in the intense academic environment.

Finally, Diver has strengthened Reed’s connections with alumni. More alumni now serve on the board of trustees, and alumni are returning to campus for Reunions in record numbers. In addition, the Centennial Campaign, launched in

2009, has raised more than $160 million.

Diver’s tenure has not been without controversy. One difficult moment came last year, after the drug-related death of a Reed student. Local prosecutors vowed that undercover agents would infiltrate campus at Renn Fayre, sniff out any illicit activity, and arrest all offenders.

The use of alcohol and other drugs remains a serious issue at Reed and at campuses around the nation. Rather than simply bringing down the hammer, however, Diver led an effort to improve the way Reed implements its policy, focusing on prevention, treatment, and common-sense enforcement.

Throughout his tenure, Diver has

“ I have loved Reed College more than any other institution for which I have worked.” —President Colin Diver Some presidents might have seized on the prosecutors’ threat as an ironclad rationale for getting rid of Renn Fayre (a perennial administrative headache). But Diver put his faith in Reed. Convinced that by working together, students, faculty, and staff could create an event that was both exuberant and safe, he declared that Renn Fayre would go ahead. The festival was celebrated with customary zeal, and despite the presence of undercover agents, no arrests were made and no trouble was reported.

remained popular with students (a notoriously demanding crowd), who have nicknamed him “C-Divvy.”

“Throughout the coming year I look forward to joining with many of you to commemorate Reed’s distinctive history, celebrate its contributions to society, and savor its indefatigable spirit,” Diver wrote in his announcement. “Let the centennial celebration begin, and let the journey continue.”

—Chris Lydgate ’90

SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Eliot Circular

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Our Brilliant Students kevin myers

Six Reed students won Fulbright Scholarships to support study or teaching overseas. Recipients include: Linguistics major Margit Bowler ’11 will travel to Australia to focus on Walpiri, an endangered Australian Aboriginal language spoken by 3,000 people in the Northern Territory.

Psychology major Colin Chapman ’10 will research eating behavior with Dr. Helgi Schioth at Uppsala University in Sweden, investigating a specific transporter in the hypothalamus to see if it may be partially responsible for cravings, and, ultimately, obesity.

Classics major Erik Erkkila ’11 will teach English in Turkey. He looks forward to understanding the ways that the ancient history of the country informs its modern history.

History major Jessica Mercado ’11 is looking forward to teaching English in Germany, where she spent her junior year and, between semesters, taught English at a camp for German children.

German major Kerstin Rosero ’11 will join the Teaching Assistant Diversity Program in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where she will be a language assistant at a high school that has a large number of students with immigrant backgrounds.

English major Elizabeth Wilder ’11 will teach English in Montenegro. She is enthusiastic about southeastern European literature and hopes to make a career translating and publishing more of it into English.

German major Daniel Carranza ’12 won a Beinecke Scholarship, presented each year to 20 students nationally who have demonstrated superior levels of intellectual ability, scholastic achievement, and personal promise to pursue opportunities in humanities or the social sciences.

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Smiles all ‘round: Fulbright winners Elizabeth Wilder ’11, Kerstin Rosero ’11, Jessica Mercado ’11, and Margit Bowler ’11 outflank Presdent Diver (wearing the tie, in case you weren’t sure).

Chemistr y/physics major Collin Perkinson ’13 won the Goldwater Scholarship, awarded to sophomores and juniors with outstanding potential who intend to pursue a career in math or the natural sciences.

Classics major Joseph Conlon ’11 won the Class of ’21 Award, recognizing an outstanding senior thesis, for his thesis on solving interpretive problems in Virgil’s Georgics (see Eleven from ’11).

Adviser Wally Englert [classics 1981–] says, “In each of the poem’s three main chapters, Joseph looked at a problematic section, discussed previous scholarship on it, and, through a combination of brilliant work on the theory of genre and close reading of individual passages, proposed original readings of each of the three sections. In addition, his senior thesis oral was outstanding.”

Joseph is beginning a graduate program at Princeton University.

Art major Allison Tepper ’11 also won the Class of ’21 Award for her exploration of outsider artist Melvin Edward Nelson. “There is no academic scholarship on this self-taught artist who worked as an electrician and inventor for most of his life and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia,” explains her thesis adviser, Dana Katz [art 2005–]. “Although Allie could have turned to the vast literature on Outsider Art (or Art Brut), she did not want to anchor her discussion of Nelson’s art in terms of his biography or pathology. Instead, she conceptualized his working method as an alchemical process that artfully records territory.

The story she tells of Nelson’s work marries process with product to examine the artist’s practice in cartographic terms. This thesis is a brilliant testament to Allie’s visual acuity, analytical criticality, and creative chutzpah.” Allie recently won an internship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

—Randall S. Barton

Reed magazine SEPTEMBER 2011

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Our Fabulous Volunteers leah nash

Jim Kahan ’64, Barbara Smith-Thomas ’64, and Virginia Oglesby Hancock ’62 were recognized for their service to the college during Centennial Reunions.

participating in them. Barbara has served as a member of the alumni board and the Portland chapter steering committee, and has volunteered for the Oral History Project, Reunions, and Renn Fayre.

She has also been a member of the Reed College Women’s Committee.

The Foster-Scholz Club also bestowed the Babson Society Award upon Jim Kahan ’64.

Inimitable, invaluable, and incredible, Jim served as de facto dean of the Alumni College for Centennial Reunions, created and produced the Gilbert & Sullivan show A Reed Century, volunteered for the admission and alumni career network, served on the alumni board and the Portland chapter steering committee.

He leads folk dancing at Reed, sings with the Boar’s Head Ensemble, and has made major contributions to the Oral History Project and to Reed Stories. If there has been a call for volunteers, Jim has been there, doing everything from staffing the alumni association table at grad fair to writing stories in Reed magazine.

Jim is married to Kathia Emery ’67, an interior designer with Emery & Associates, who serves as chair of the Foster-Scholz Club steering committee. His stepfather, Paul Pressman ’52, is a Reedie, as is his stepbrother Adam Pressman ’87.

Associate professor and award-winning poet Crystal Ann Williams [creative writing 2000–] has been appointed Reed’s first dean for institutional diversity.

“I’m looking forward to working with Crystal in the coming year to develop and strengthen diversity programs at Reed,” said President Colin Diver. “She has worked tirelessly to promote institutional diversity since arriving at Reed in 2000. She has, in short, been doing many of the very tasks that the position of dean has been created to undertake, and doing them extremely well.”

Williams sees the position as promoting the fundamental mission of the college. “Reed is a rigorous academic environment that is enriched

“ The job is not about changing percentages.”

—Professor Crystal Williams and deepened when there is a multitude of voices at the conference table,” she says. “I am incredibly honored to be appointed to this position, which formalizes work I so strongly believe in and which will allow me to work with faculty, students, and staff to help identify ways to ensure that Reed is the most inclusive and dynamic environment it can be.”

The job is not about changing percentages, she says. “We are interested in changing the culture to one that is fully inclusive and understands why a more diverse Reed creates a better learning environment for all students.”

Williams has been teaching at Reed since 2000. She has a BA from New York University and an MFA from Cornell University. She is the author of three collections of poems, most recently Troubled Tongues, and hopes to continue teaching as often as her new role allows.

owen carey

T he Foster- Scholz C lub has bestowed the Distinguished Service Award on two outstanding alumni.

Professor Virginia Oglesby Hancock ’62 [music 1991–] is a musician, faculty member, and tireless volunteer at Reed. In addition to teaching music theory and history, she directs the Reed Chorus and the Collegium Musicum, which she founded in 1966 with John Hancock [chemistry 1955– 89]. She conducts both groups in their annual public performances.

Ginny has served on the alumni career network, the Oral History Project, the presidential search committee in 2001, and umpteen faculty committees. She leads the Boar’s Head Ensemble, and has directed Gilbert & Sullivan events at Reunions. For the college’s commencement ceremony, she serves as student marshal, leads the Collegium Musicum, and reads the name of every graduate.

It is hard to think of recent alumni association activities that Barbara Smith-Thomas ’64 has not been involved in. This year she led the Portland chapter’s effort to organize tours around the region as part of Centennial Reunions.

It is to her credit that these tours filled up and many alumni enjoyed

Reed Appoints First Dean for Institutional Diversity

SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Eliot Circular

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Students Press Reed to Tackle Sexual Assault Constructive student protest last year has resulted in substantive enhancements in combating sexual assault at Reed. Students became involved in committee work, wrote broadsides in the Quest, performed guerrilla theatre in commons, and circulated petitions calling for action to correct shortcomings in Reed’s policies and procedures in the area of sexual assault.

Addressing several hundred students at a campus forum on sexual assault on April 27, President Colin Diver declared: “You have stirred up a huge debate on an important issue that’s got everybody’s attention.

The problem needs to be addressed. We want to do better.”

Changes to Reed’s confidentiality rules went into effect earlier that day. A review of Reed’s policies in light of a “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education made clear that Reed had been out of compliance with federal regulations. Institutions receiving federal funding may not prohibit either the accuser or the accused in a college disciplinary case involving a sex offense from redisclosure of the outcome of the case. Participants may now share the nature and outcome of the case, the identity of the accused, and the sanctions imposed.

The petition (signed by 847 students) anticipated several recommendations by a committee on sexual assault (COSA), established by Diver in fall 2010, which released its findings on April 26. In particular, COSA called for Reed to step up its education and prevention programming; hire an expert in sexual assault prevention; provide more support for survivors; and establish a special non-student hearings board for cases of sexual assault.

Subsequently, the position of assistant dean of students for sexual assault prevention and response was created and a search was launched in July. “It’s a very important position. The person in this role will have the full support of the college to develop a first-rate sexual assault prevention and response program at Reed,” said Mike Brody, vice president and dean of student services. “With the COSA report as a guide, the assistant dean will focus on education, prevention, and support for survivors.”

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Changing the jurisdiction of the J-board requires a change to the judicial board code, which can be a complex and lengthy process under the community constitution. The first step is a review by the Community Affairs Committee, whose chair, Paul Hovda [philosophy 2002–], is currently drafting a proposal to change the way Reed adjudicates cases involving sexual assault.

Calling the Police Of course, survivors of sexual assault at Reed can always call the police and bypass the J-board altogether. However, some anonymous students have been quoted in the media as saying that they were discouraged from doing so.

cedures. J-board chair Hannah Brannan ’12 explained that under the current code, parties can ask individual members of the J-board to recuse themselves from hearing a particular case if there is any concern about impartiality. Parties can also appeal the J-board’s decisions; Diver makes the final decision in all honor cases. Further, the J-board’s standard is “a preponderance of the evidence,” as opposed to the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” that governs criminal trials.

According to a summary published by the J-board, nine cases of sexual assault were adjudicated in the five years prior to the April forum. In each case, the J-board found a violation and imposed sanctions.

In six cases, the respondent was judged

“ The problem needs to be addressed. We want to do better.”

—President Colin Diver College officials have insisted, however, that complainants are encouraged to report sexual assault to the police. “Sexual assault is a crime, and we fully support students who would like our assistance in reporting incidents of sexual assault to the police,” wrote Gary Granger, director of community safety, in a letter to the Quest.

To underscore that message, several outside experts spoke at the April forum, including Multnomah County deputy district attorney Don Reese, Portland Police detective Ken Whattam, and Multnomah County victims assistance coordinator Helen O’Brien, who demystified how sexual assault cases are handled in the criminal justice system.

Granger reported that most complainants choose not to report these incidents.

In the last academic year, nine individuals reported 11 accusations of sexual assault.

Four of those reports were made within 24 hours of the incident; the remaining seven were made between 30 days and two years after the incident. All nine individuals were offered assistance in making a report to the police; all declined.

The Judicial Board Questions at the April forum revealed considerable confusion about J-board pro-

to have violated the sexual assault policy because there was an absence of effective consent. One of these students was expelled; five were suspended and required to participate in a range of educational and restorative activities. In the three other cases, the J-board found that there was effective consent, but that the respondent had nonetheless behaved dishonorably.

These respondents were not suspended or expelled, but did receive sanctions that included community service, workshops, evaluations, and no-contact orders. (These statistics do not include cases that were not fully adjudicated prior to the forum.)

Moving Forward Brody commended the students for their advocacy and for bringing the community together to effect change. “The strength and compassion of any community is revealed when its members face and attempt to resolve its most difficult problems,” he wrote in a letter to the community. “The town hall meeting showed Reed at its very best. As a community, we engaged an intensely difficult issue, aired our concerns, and took action toward making Reed a better, safer, and more responsive community.”

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m at t d ’a n n u n z i o

Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

Reed Diaspora Pizza Save the evening of Thursday, September 15, for Reed Diaspora Pizza, when alumni around the globe welcome new grads into the fold. Help us celebrate the class of 2011 as they join the Reed diaspora, leaving campus for cities far and wide (or good old Portland!). Visit www.reed .edu/alumni/chapters/pizza.html for the list of locations.

Local hosts needed Reactor Gets New Director When Melinda Krahenbuhl laid eyes on a nuclear reactor, it was a case of love at first sight.

“I stood over the top of it and saw the blue glow,” she remembers. “It’s mind-boggling to be in the presence of something with such power. It was such an intense, blue, beautiful, and ethereal experience. I was sold.”

Krahenbuhl, who has a PhD in chemical/nuclear engineering from the University of Utah, took over as director of the research reactor at Reed in June. She is responsible for facilitating student research, interacting with the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), and keeping the reactor in compliance. She served as director of the reactor at UU for three years before becoming a researcher at Dow Chemical in June 2008.

“At Dow Chemical I realized how much I missed education in general,” she says. “The enthusiasm that students have about life makes a huge difference in your life.”

Krahenbuhl says Reed has always been known as having the best training program.

“At other colleges and universities they license four or five students a year,” she says. “We have 40 licensed operators on staff at Reed. Because the school is so unique, students can combine it with other disciplines that these big universities don’t see. The students here come up with some very interesting ideas about how to use it.”

Krahenbuhl is as passionate about nuclear education as she is about the blue glow (known to cognoscenti as Čerenkov radiation). “We can’t afford to give up nuclear education in the United States, particularly if we want to be the nuclear police. If you don’t have any programs you don’t have credibility. You need to have an educated society to make decisions about the future, and nuclear is going to be playing a role, whether in security, power, or research. It’s not going away.” —Randall S. Barton

Are you newly graduated from Reed and moving to a new community? Would you like to touch base with local alumni who can help you navigate unfamiliar waters? Are you a knowledgeable local alumnus/alumna who is willing to take an occasional call or have coffee with a fellow Reedie who is new to your area?

The “local hosts” option within IRIS (iris.reed .edu) is the key to connecting! By checking the “Alumni Local Host” box on the volunteer page, you can let your fellow alumni know they are welcome to contact you (via the preferences you have set for your personal directory listing).

Interested in finding a willing contact where you’re going? Go to the bottom of the directory search page and limit your search accordingly, or send an email to Ian Atlas ’91 at ian.atlas @alumni.reed.edu.

Camp Westwind The weekend retreat at Camp Westwind for alumni and their families, sponsored by the Portland alumni chapter, will be October 14–16, 2011. Join alumni from a variety of eras and swap Olde Reed stories and songs in a beautiful forested setting on the Oregon coast. A limited number of reduced-rate spaces are available for kitchen and cleaning crew people. For details and registration, please see www.reed.edu /alumni/westwind/.

SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine

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Greatest Reunions Ever! l eft photo by l ea h na s h; top- ri ght photos (from l eft) by lea h na s h, eri c ca ble, s tua rt mullenberg

A burst of confetti and a clamor of kazoos herald an awe-inspiring procession of generations in the Grand Parade.

Reedies by the score join the Great Skip Across the Great Lawn, just one of several events celebrating the legacy of dance at Reed.

“People from all vintages are always welcome at Reunions, whether it’s a milestone year for them or not,” says Mela Kunitz ’87, assistant director of alumni & parent relations.

leah nash

More than 2,600 alumni and guests descended on Reed June 6–12 for Reunions 2011, which marked the biggest gathering of the Reed tribe in recorded history. The weeklong celebration included no fewer than 232 events, ranging from a Reed opera (inspired by Gilbert & Sullivan) to an ’80s-vs-theworld rugby match to a keynote address from poet Gary Snyder ’51.

Alumni thronged the dorms (every room was filled), barbecued on the quad, and boogied in diverse and sundry ways, from pioneer reels to riot grrrl romp to New Orleans blues.

“We all had a great time at rugby and other reunion events,” wrote Sebastian Pastore ’90. “Best 12 hours I have spent on campus since 1984–88.”

“I don’t remember having so much fun before,” wrote Teri Reis-Schmidt ’76. “What a great party, wonderful gathering of the clans, and a roster filled with interesting (and some surprising) events.”

One reason for the surge in attendance was that many alumni jettisoned the needless obsession with quintuples and decided to make it “their year” regardless of the technical date of their 20th, 25th, etc. reunion.

leah nash

Alumni Hordes Sack Campus

For highlights—including class photos—see reunions.reed.edu. And don’t miss a special online interview with Gary Snyder ’51 on our new magazine blog, Sallyportal, at blogs.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

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Ferris wheel mesmerizes young and old on the Great Lawn.

Reedies applaud the elders at the Grand Parade.

Poet Gary Snyder ’51 gave the keynote address.

eric cable

Proud members of the class of ’58 proclaim virtues of capitalism, faith, and chastity.

Amanda and Simeon (okay, actually Joan and Colin Diver) get in on the fun with horse and buggy.

Big Scoop. Professors Kathleen Worley [theatre 1985–], Carla Mann ‘81 [dance 1995–], Colin Diver [prez 2002–], David Schiff [music 1980–], and Virginia Hancock ‘62 [music 1991– hoist spades and break ground for Reed’s new performing arts building on the west lawn.

leah nash

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Rucked and Mauled Clash of the ages at Reed rugby centennial match.

I was on the fence about attending Reunions this year. While the idea of going back for Reed’s centennial was appealing, I wasn’t sold. Then Benn Lewis ’85 made an offer I couldn’t refuse: “How about players of the ’80s challenge the rest of the calendar to a rugby match?”

Rugby. Of course.

Reed is an iconoclastic place and like all such places it creates its own icons. And nothing is more iconic than Reed rugby.

To those who’ve never played, it is hard to grasp the allure. A full-contact sport with no protective gear? How un-Reed.

How downright insane. And yet, for those who play, the attraction is irresistible.

Within the chaotic morass of individual achievement that is Reed, we ruggers are a feline herd. We work, play, and party together. The team is all.

A Facebook group sprang up, and suddenly ruggers who hadn’t set foot on campus in 30 years were booking flights from as far away as Calgary, New York, and London.

What was it about rugby that sparked this fervor? What compelled people to extract themselves from their manic modern lives, travel hundreds or thousands of miles, to incur certain injury?

Rugby is quintessentially Reed—quirky and outside the mainstream—yet simultaneously anti-Reed in that it requires teamwork, physical conditioning, and surrender to an arbitrary authority.

The origins of rugby at Reed are nebulous. According to John Hart ’77, the first squad included several refugees from the crew team, which bailed in 1973. Original cast members included Jim O’Neill ’76, Don Coppock ’77, Gordon Rickels ’77, Mike Gorby ’78, and Deane Little ’78.

“The first year (1974–75) was largely selftaught, using a book,” says John. “There was an exchange student from Keele who gave us a lot of pointers. Our first game, in fall 1974, was against Eugene. Ouch.”

There were “no coaches or support or funds or general adult supervision,” says Mike. “But also, no rules or legacy or established ideas!”

When I arrived at Reed in 1981, the “no coaches or support or funds” was still in effect though there was definitely a rugby

sub-culture on campus. I joined the squad my junior year and discovered that the rugby team played U of O, UW, OSU, and other state universities that dwarfed Reed’s tiny enrollment, as well as men’s teams from Portland, Salem, and Eugene. It was boys against men. Hard men, too: guys who worked in steel mills and factories while we went to hum conference and bio lab.

But against all odds, rugby flourished at Reed. The ’82–’83 team (including nine starters from the Centennial Match) went 8–1 and captured the Oregon B-side championship. In 1987, a group of Reed grads won the Eugene 10-a-side tournament.

In 1989, a touring side flew to Portugal to play the Portuguese national U-19 sevens team, and won the Taça Laranja (Orange Cup) at the Lisboa Sevens, a prestigious international tournament. Reed women’s rugby was also represented in Portugal: Jean Field ’84, Donna Anderson ’88, Maria Chora Lewis ’88, Carol Schultze ’88, Marya Zlatnik ’88, Laura Masterson ’91, and Elena Zlatnik ’91 won the

women’s division of the Coimbra Sevens.

Maybe there’s something about the game itself—putting your body on the line, depending on your teammates for protection and support—that forms a bond that withstands the test of time.

We held a pregame strategy session at the Horse Brass Pub the Thursday night of Centennial Reunions. Seats grew scarce and camaraderie swelled as old ruggers descended on what seemed like Olde Reed Central. Ditto the next afternoon at the Steele Street pitch, where our official practice session was disrupted every time another familiar face appeared.

The weather on centennial Saturday was perfect. The opposition, organized by Gerard Schneider ’00, graciously agreed to two 20-minute halves of a centennial match followed by two more friendly halves, so that everyone could get a run.

The shock and awe was palpable when our side—dubbed the 1980s First XV—

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photos by matt giraud ’85

1980s FIRST XV: 19 William Cussans ’83 1 John Burrell ’86 20 George Wehn ’84 2 William Ecker ’89 21 Caitlin Cray ’87 3 Zachary Thomas ’91 22 Amanda Six ’91 4 Bryne Anderson ’86 23 Brendan McConville ’85 5 Steve White ’93 24 Mark Verna ’87 6 Kilian Kerwin ’85 25 Kent Kirshenbaum ’84 7 Grant Raddon ’92 26 Steve Rollert ’92 8 Benn Lewis ’84 27 Jon Wehn ’88 9 Eric Contey ’83 28 James McQuillen ’86 10 Charles Epstein ’86 29 William Campbell ’88 11 Joseph Mellis ’89 30 Adam Green ’85 12 William Fitch ’86 31 Will Swarts ’92 13 James Ng ’87 32 Kurt Opprecht ’86 14 Russ Gorby ’83 15 Wayne Bennett ’93 16 Bud Boman ’84 17 Steve Walker ’84 18 Neville McClure ’86 Tries: Thomas (8'), White (25') Conversions: Lewis (9'), Bennett (26')

took the pitch. Kit designed for the occasion by Matt Giraud ’85 was embroidered with logos from 1980s mainstays: Tom Peterson, Quality Pie, the Hotcake House, and, of course, Lutz Tavern. Each served as a totem from which we drew a hidden power, a shared boost—like an elixir of nostalgia-fueled energy.

And although our hair was grayer and our waistlines more imposing, we found ourselves (with respect to Dave Brubeck) all together again for the first time. William Cussans ’83 was awestruck: “It’s amazing . . . this is the exact same back line I played with 28 years ago.”

The match itself was basically over 40 versus under 40. Our oldest player was 55; their youngest still couldn’t legally buy beer.

Olde Reed vs. New Reed or, more accurately, Older Reed vs. Newer Reed. They had vim and vigor on their side. We had determination. And maybe a little of that old mojo.

On the sidelines, family and friends who were skeptical (or appalled) at the proposition of a motley crew of ruggers

reconvening to relive their glory days witnessed a hard, fair, and sporting match.

Cheering us on were ’80s ruggers Lynn Spitaleri ’82, Leigh Hancock ’84, Jess Dubey ’85, Cathy Ciarlo ’87, Corinna Wilborn ’87, Darci Rudzinski ’90, Sasha John ’91, Naomi Rubin DeVeaux ’92, and Martha Richards ’92. Our touchjudge was Barbara Bond ’84, captain of the U.S. National Team that won the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 1991.

When the final whistle blew, the score was 14–10 to the elders. Though we were drunk with victory, the “W” was superfluous. It was the event itself that was magic; we had carried the day before it even started.

Afterwards, Older Reed invited Newer Reed to an extravaganza at the home of Laura Masterson and Eric Contey ’83.

Master Chefs George Wehn ’84 and Jon Wehn ’88 roasted two pigs donated by Bryne Anderson ’86 and libations were laid on by brewmaster Sebastian Pastore ’89 and wine deity William Fitch ’86.

NEWER REED: 1 Robert Kahn ’11 1980s injured reserves: 2 Chris Spetzler ’95 Scott Grice ’91 3 Paul Manson ’01 Sebastian Pastore ’89 4 Jim Louisell ’05 William Baker ’85 5 Blaine Dickason ’94 Doug Helton ’85 6 Chris Lockey ’98 Michael Cooney ’87 7 Ian MacDonald ’10 Evan Rose ’86 8 Alex Stein ’97 Uel McMahan ’87 9 Gerard Schneider ’00 Greg Ness ’91 10 Kurt Huffman ’93 11 Jeff Hubbard ’99 12 Ryan Cook ’09 13 Rick Beaumont ’08 14 Tedros Abraham ’10 15 Nima Shokat ’99 16 Josh Einsle ’00 17 Bryson Davis ’09 18 Robin Woods ’06 Tries: Schneider (15’), Davis (39’)

As we gathered to ref lect on our common love and respect, we paused to remember Milton Fischer ’87 and Michael Babic ’89, taken from us before their time. What we would have given to have those beloved men stand beside us one last time.

The truth is that we’ll probably never get this 1980s crew together again; even if we did, our competitive window is closing fast. In a way, we got lucky that the 100 years of Reed coincided with our sellby date as players: old enough to impress onlookers that we’d play at all, young enough to have one last good match in us.

In any case, the centennial match was—without hyperbole—a once-in-alifetime event. To have missed it would have been to deny my own existence.

—Kilian Kerwin ’85 Kilian Kerwin ’85 is director of Youth Rugby and chairman of the Santa Monica Rugby Club; executive committee member of Southern California Youth Rugby; and a member of the USA Rugby National Congress.

The 1980s First XV contributed $4,225 to the Annual Fund.

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Centennial Campaign

Paying It Forward Venture capitalist challenges students to lend a hand to their classmates.

Venky Ganesan ’96 could never have afforded to come to Reed without the scholarship that brought him from India to America.

Now managing director of Globespan Partners in Palo Alto, Venky hasn’t forgotten that act of kindness. Together with his wife, Dr. Preetha Basaviah, he provided matching funds for a student initiative, Reedies for Reedies, in which students raised money for a scholarship for an incoming freshman.

(See opposite page.) He matched all gifts of $15 or more up to $3,000 and agreed to contribute another $2,000 if more than 250 students chipped into the scholarship.

Too often people defer the lives they’d like to lead, he says, and get bogged down in tedium. “Young people are often the same way about charity. They say, ‘I’m not ready to support the things I believe in now. I’ll do it later.’ I’ve learned the power of doing it now. Reedies for Reedies is a great way for students to think about supporting the college now, as opposed to deferring it to some time in the future.”

Thanks to generous donors, roughly 52 percent of Reed students now receive financial aid, with the average package being $34,000 per year.

“Someone before you decided to pay it forward so that you could have a higher education,” Venky says. “If you believe Reed is a special place where people can live the life of the mind, then we all should support it, to make it possible for some person, who may not even be born yet, to come here. It’s a dividend we are giving to the rest of the world and to our future generations.”

Venky has vivid memories of arriving at Reed his freshman year at age 17. “For the first time in my life I was in a place that shared my intellectual interests. Here was a place where intellect and ideas are valued and people spend time discussing them.”

He studied mathematics and economics for three years at Reed before going to Caltech to study computer science for two years. “The juxtaposition of a fairly progressive student body and faculty with a fairly conservative curriculum lends itself to a rigor of thought and process, and is what makes the place special,” he says.

“Reed students comprise a rainbow that offers a vast spectrum. One cannot truly be open to new ideas without considering all viewpoints.”

His experience at Reed has been crucial to his work at Globespan.

“People come in with a dream and our job is to help make those dreams a reality,” he says. “I find people who are idealistic, who believe they have come up with some innovation that will make the world a better place. Yes, they want to make money. But most importantly, they want to make meaning. They believe that by making meaning, they make money. I join them on that journey.”

“ Your life gets dramatically richer when you get involved in giving. Service to something else is the best way to drive meaning and purpose into your life.” —Venky Ganesan ’96 Venky and Preetha are frequently called upon to raise money for institutions they are involved with, including the India Community Center and their children’s school.

“You find your life gets dramatically richer when you get involved in giving,” he explains. “Service to something else is the best way to drive meaning and purpose into your life, and it’s a good motivator. I do my job as a venture capitalist better because I know why I do it. I do it so that I can give.”

—By Randall S. Barton

CAMPAIGN PROGRESS $200 $175 $150 $125 $100 $75 $50 $25

As of June 2011, Reed has secured approximately $158 million in gifts and pledges toward the $200 million Centennial Campaign goal. To learn more, or to help us reach that goal, visit campaign.reed.edu/giving/.

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An Owl in the Hand Is Worth Two on the Head If you’re walking through the library and get hit in the head by a squishy owl, chances are you’re about to have a close encounter with one of the Reedies for Reedies.

“It’s an oddly effective marketing strategy,” says Erica Boulay ’11, one of six students on the Reedies for Reedies Scholarship Committee [see Eleven from ’11]. The student-led effort solicits funds to provide a gift for one incoming freshman, based solely on financial need.

“The owls are really soft, so it doesn’t hurt when you throw them, and it gets the attention of people walking by looking down,” adds Amzar Faiz ’13. “They actually enjoy it.” Amzar takes aim, calls out their names, and they respond, “Oh, owls.’’

“We put up signs advertising the scholarship and tabled in the library a lot,” Erica says, “but you have to get their attention.

When someone comes to the table we give them a squishy owl. Amzar decided it would be an excellent idea to hit people with the owls. That way they would come over and say, ‘Why did you hit me with the owl?’ And we’d give our pitch. We also put the owls on the ground so that people will trip over them. They see the owl and say, ‘Oh, can I keep this?’ and we say, ‘Sure, but first let us tell you about Reedies for Reedies.’ They usually end up giving us money.”

The Reedies for Reedies: Reed-Based Financial Aid scholarship fund follows in the footsteps of the Class of 2010 Scholarship, begun by seniors to create a scholarship for one Reed student.

“A lot of schools have the senior class gift in honor of their class,” says Christine Evans, assistant director of the Annual Fund, who oversees the efforts of Reedies for Reedies. “Historically we’ve had a hard time doing something like that at Reed.

For whatever reason it’s difficult to rally students here around their class.”

Initially the Class of 2010 Scholarship focused on soliciting funds from seniors, but the committee soon decided to broaden its base and began accepting gifts from all students. The campaign eventually raised $11,707, a combination of donations from 212 students and matching dollars from President Colin Diver.

“Students campaigned with ‘Help us get Colin’s money,’ and it was exciting to have the committee formally request that he

pay up,” Christine says.

This year a committee of one freshman, three sophomores, one junior, and a senior dubbed the group “Reedies for Reedies.”

The committee organized a number of broad email campaigns to the entire campus, hosted events such as free pizza, and sponsored a T-shirt giveaway in which they gave away 200 shirts in 20 minutes.

“I had an event in the quad where people could tie-dye their shirts,” Erica says.

While they were tie-dyeing, Erica asked, “Did you know about Reedies for Reedies?”

Venture capitalist Venky Ganesan ’96 agreed to match all gifts of $15 or more up to $3,000. (See opposite page.) In addition, if 250 students participated, he agreed to contribute another $2,000. By June 1, more than 250 students had given $5,905, ensuring Venky’s entire match and rounding out a grand total of $10,905.

“How often do you get a chance to help a fellow student come here?” asks Erica.

“Why not do it? Building community is about getting people to think what it means to be a Reedie. When we were at the tables it made people think, ‘Oh, you guys are giving to another student? That’s really nice. Even though I’m kind of grumpy because I’m going to the library, I actually like being a Reedie. So, I’ll give you some money.’ It’s building positive energy.” —By Randall S. Barton

Miss browsing the bookstore? Browse online!

Visit bookstore.reed.edu to order Reed goodies, gifts, and centennial memorabilia.

REED COLLEGE BOOKSTORE bookstore.reed.edu • Jules Wright • 503/777-7757 • wrightj@reed.edu

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Puppet Master Luke Kanies ’96 has become your system administrator’s best friend.

By Raymond Rendleman ’06 vivian johsnon

If you were building a new car, you probably wouldn’t try to create a new method of insulating electrons, invent a four-way rotational friction-reduction system, and sheathe it in a brand new shock-absorbing material of your own design. You’d probably use standard wire, wheels, and tires, so you could concentrate your energy on the design innovations you really want to make.

The same is true for software, according to Luke Kanies ’96, yet computer geeks spent decades reinventing the wheel by independently coming up with identical sequences of ones and zeros.

Puppet allows you to skip a lot of stupid details that don’t matter to you.

So why not gather the best sequences of code in a place where anyone can access them, so that they can focus their time on designing better websites?

Sounds simple. The reality was anything but.

In 2005, Luke quit a safe job earning six figures at a software management company to start up Puppet Labs, which automates certain networking chores so that system administrators can concentrate on more important issues.

“Puppet is a very simple way to make your software infrastructure work, allowing you to skip a lot of stupid details that don’t matter to you,” Luke says.

For the first three years, the venture made no money—in part because the basic system was given away free. Luke worked 80 hours a week and literally ate beans to support his startup. Since then, however, his business has achieved international acclaim. Everyone from federal agencies to Apple now deploys Puppet code in their networks. Investors have been duly impressed, last year betting to the tune of $5 million, up from $2.5 mil-

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lion the year before, that Luke can leverage Puppet’s popularity to sell commercial software that runs on top of the basic Puppet system.

Starting the company in Nashville, Luke moved to Portland in 2009, reclaiming the mecca of free thinking for software that he equates with the move of the film industry from Florida to Los Angeles in the 1930s. Just as Los Angeles didn’t have the sticky copyright laws of Florida, Portland is attracting a lot of spinoff activity from Intel’s investments.

“It’s a good cultural fit, because everyone knows that this is the place to be an innovator,” he says.

Although he majored in chemistry, Luke soon realized that his education at Reed was eminently transferable to the software industry. “I didn’t know anything when I first started the business, and I was just going through this process of discovery,” he says. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to build a model of reality, and science is all about trying to build a reality, understanding it, adjusting it, rinsing and repeating. Programming has a lot of overlaps with that.”

Among the company’s 40 employees are three other Reedies: Beth Raby ’06, José Palafox ’09, and Michelle Carroll ’10—music, philosophy and sociology majors respectively—whom Luke credits as having been integral to the company’s recent success.

Luke returns to metaphor to explain why such different types of people flourish in the programming world. Puppet itself is a transferable function, so it helps to have lots of different types of people creating the computer code.

“I’m not under any circumstances telling people they need to do one thing or another with this code,” he says. “One of the things I learned from Reed is that you can do something that feels like failure, but you got through it, and that’s great.

Life is bloody complicated, and you have to find your own definition of success.”

COME EAT FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE COMRADES OF THE QUEST An Oral History of Reed College

By John Sheehy ’82 Hardbound. 400 pages.

Oregon State University Press. $34.95.

Preorder (through September 1) $29.95.

Constructed from the oral histories of past presidents, professors, alumni, and trustees, this book charts the colorful— and often dramatic—evolution of the Reed community over the college’s first century.

THINKING REED

Centennial Essays

by Graduates of Reed College Edited by Professors Roger Porter and Robert Reynolds Hardbound. 400 pages. Reed College. $19.95.

In this collection of essays marking the college’s centennial, thirty-three alumni reflect on their careers as they look back at Reed and the intellectual community that helped shape their accomplishments.

Preorder together and save (through September 1). $45.95.

CENTENNIAL POSTER Created and produced by David Lance Goines 16.5” x 24”. $50.

Renowned poster artist David Lance Goines visited campus and experienced Reed classes firsthand before designing and printing this limited edition commemorative poster. All proceeds from poster sales will directly support student financial aid.

To order, visit bookstore.reed.edu.

Explore 100 years of Reed at centennial.reed.edu.

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A Kurdish Odyssey Novelist Laleh Khadivi ’98 writes about three generations of war, revolution, and exile.

By Bill Donahue • photos by ariel zambelich

At first, it was just random scribbling: a few scrawled notes and the odd fictional vignette scratched in a spiral notebook as she killed time between shifts at the jazz club where she worked as a cocktail waitress. Laleh Khadivi ’98 was just chilling out, postcollege, in 2003—dialing into her yoga practice and taking long hikes in the mountains near her San Francisco home.

When she wrote things down, it wasn’t as though some epic tale was roiling inside her, eager to spill out onto the page. She’d never published any fiction, and didn’t even have dreams of doing so. Rather, a couple of insistent questions tugged at her: Who was she? And where had she come from?

Laleh was born in Iran in 1977. Her Kurdish family fled the country for the U.S. two years later, after Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power, declaring a jihad on soldiers who remained loyal to the departing shah.

She retained no memory of the exodus, and grew up a nomadic American, the daughter of an itinerant businessman, stationed first in Dallas, then Los Angeles, then Atlanta.

She watched MTV. She listened to Bob Marley and ate Pizza Hut pizza. It wasn’t as though the cry of the muezzin dominated her childhood.

And yet the Khadivis spoke Kurdish at home. They celebrated Zoroastrian New Year, with Laleh’s aunts and uncles crowding the house. Laleh was aware of a deeper, ancestral story. Indeed, on one cross-country driving trip in 2002, she’d zigzagged to Chicago anpd Dallas, so that she could interview four of her father’s siblings about their coming of age deep in Iran’s Zagros Mountains.

So she wrote. She envisioned a distant village with no running water: a high, windy place ruled over by old men with long flowing beards . . .

It’s now a cool, bright afternoon in San Francisco in 2011, and Laleh is kicking back in a breezy San Francisco café. She is thin, with black hair and dark eyes, and she bears the glazed, distracted look of someone who spends long swaths of time all alone, concentrating. She is a restless physical presence, always twisting and stretching her back and her hands, and she is not prone to moderation. “My yoga class starts in— what?—20 minutes,” she says at one point, checking the clock. “But sure, I’ll have another beer. I’ve been writing 10 hours a day. I feel like I haven’t left my apartment for months.”

Over the past seven years, she has turned herself into an author.

In 2009, Bloomsbury USA published her first novel, The Age of Orphans, which tells the story of Reza, a Kurdish boy whose father is killed by Iranian soldiers in the Zagros Mountains in 1921. Reza is captured by the invading Iranian troops and grows up as one of them, ultimately becoming a merciless hunter of his own people. Publisher’s Weekly praised the book’s “strong, unflinching voice” and “penetrating vision.” The London Independent said the novel was “remarkable for its beautiful and brutal poetry” and described it as “bleakly expressive and always sensitive to the alterity and particularity, the poetry and the politics of an individual life.” The book was

translated into Dutch, Hebrew, and Italian.

Next year, Bloomsbury will release her second novel, The Walking, a sequel which stars Reza’s son, Saladin, as he makes a journey familiar to thousands of Iranians.

Nineteen years old, he flees the Ayatollah’s Iran in 1979, traveling by bus across Turkey and by boat to the Azores before landing in Los Angeles to lead a lonely and desperate émigré’s existence. The two books are part of a projected three-volume series—a final work will dwell on Saladin’s son, a Los Angeles surfer who is all but oblivious to his Iranian roots.

The heroes of the trilogy are, roughly speaking, contemporaries of Laleh’s grandfather, father, and brother, and they’re beset, as the émigré Khadivis have been, by cultural alienation. Still, Laleh insists that her books are not based on the family tales she heard on her cross-country ramble.

“I had to forget those stories before I started to write,” she says.

Her novels are, after all, the opposite of dry, factual reporting. They’re poetic and lyrical—reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez in their magical, exuberant language. When young Reza visits a cave with his male mentors to be ritually circumcised, he beholds the ancient drawings of turbaned men on the rock wall there and imagines his father saying, “Just as I am your father you will one day father and the land has fathered us, the lines of Kurd blood do not cross but flow together from their time to ours.”

No one in Khadivi’s family ever spoke in such incantatory tones, and none of Laleh’s relatives quite inhabited the fictional world

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Stick-to-itiveness. Laleh Khadivi ’98 tapes ideas for her books on the wall of her apartment.

A Kurdish Odyssey

continued

she envisions, for it is more keening, more violent and sensually thrumming than everyday life. In a traitorous moment that launches The Walking, Saladin obligingly assists the Ayatollah’s armed thugs. After they murder 11 Kurds, he shoots up the corpses as they lie in the dirt—and is forever haunted by his transgression. Far away from home, perching midmigration in Istanbul, he imagines the voice of one man he shot: “But here I stand, in a photograph that never fades on every newspaper in the city: tall, broad through the shoulders and chest, bandaged hand over strong heart, to tell you that even in your new life, even far away, you will belong to us, children of the mountain town, the earthbound dead.”

Laleh’s books are, at bottom, inventions.

They’re the impassioned work of a young writer groping to make sense of the blood coursing within her, and they were born, arguably, in Hum 110. “I’m a person of color,” she says, “and I didn’t want to read

the dead white males. But I’m glad I did; that stuff is the foundation of all literature and film that follows it. You can’t understand narrative without it.”

And narrative soon became Laleh’s calling. In June 1998, just a month out of Reed, she met filmmaker Jonathan Stack at a cocktail party in Manhattan. Stack had just shot The Farm, a sympathetic documentary about inmates at Angola prison, in Louisiana. He hired Laleh to raise money so he could screen his film for police crews, and for correction officers and judges. And as she immersed herself in Stack’s project, she also worked on her own prison documentary. 900 Women, released in 2000, sensitively tracks the daily lives of six women at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. It played at festivals nationwide.

But Laleh was dismayed by the film’s reception. “Online,” she explains, “people were saying catty things about the women in the film—you know, ‘her hair looks stupid.’ I’d gotten those women to trust me, and I wasn’t serving them. And I couldn’t deal with the split life of a documentary filmmaker—you go into some prison on

the bayou, and then you come back to an art opening in New York, to raise money.”

A careful, pragmatic person might have reconciled with the need to glad-hand every now and again. But Laleh elected instead to flee New York and travel cross-country.

She interviewed her relatives. She says she had “no agenda other than learning where I came from.” But, she recorded the interviews, and later, in San Francisco, reading Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment, it struck her that novels could reach people in ways that film could not. “You can get inside a character,” she says, “and you tell your story to one person at a time, and you’re using language and poetry, rather than facts. That’s a seductive way to reach people.”

She wrote in her spirals. She imagined Iran, and she wrote about men, she says, “because that way I could write about history and power.” In 2003, she became serious enough about fiction to embark on the standard fine artist’s apprenticeship odyssey.

She enrolled in a MFA writing program at Mills College in Oakland, landed a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, and another at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2008, she

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won a $50,000 Whiting Award, given each year to a handful of emerging writers “of exceptional talent and promise.”

Along the way, she came to recognize, as all writers do, that good fiction is never simply a digest of prosaic everyday life; it is instead a response to all the great books that have come before. “You’re in dialogue with other writers,” says Laleh before dwelling on her own literary obsession. “William Faulkner read Shakespeare, the Greeks, the Bible, and Moby Dick,” she says.

Naturally, Laleh read these same books herself, plus most of Faulkner’s dense gothic works. She read the entire Old Testament one winter while living alone by a lake in Wisconsin. “I didn’t want to leave the house—it’s such a great narrative,” she says.

“It’s beautiful and terrible, and filled with incantations and questions of faith. And the Book of Job—that fucked me up for a while.

Here was this regular dude who just kept getting punished. Job was so relentlessly hard.”

Faulkner was more influential, though, and Laleh is especially worshipful of As I Lay Dying, a fractured 1930 novel that relies on 15 narrators to capture one woman’s slow death and the spirit of her loving but complicated family. In writing The Age of Orphans, she essentially stole Faulkner’s structure, employing numerous narrators— the protagonist’s father, a sapling, a soldier in the Shah’s army, a flock of birds—to tell Reza’s story. She homed in on Faulkner’s language, too—on his unbridled assertions (“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth”) and on his driving, run-on constructions: “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” is a phrase he intoned once, describing the themes that a writer must explore.

“If you’re going to talk about difficult, complicated things like race and history, you’re going to have to break down language as Faulkner did,” Laleh says. “All those ‘ands’ he used—the sharpness of the writing goes away, and you just start following the narrative. You let it carry you to those interstitial places where most writers can’t take you.”

In writing her books, she tried to reach those places, too. “You have to get low,” she says. “You have to get into your writing. In Wisconsin, my diet consisted of espresso and whisky. I wrote all day, and then at around 10 at night I’d go out and walk on the frozen lakes for one or two hours. It was like walking on the shell of an egg. It was desolate, and so cold that my eyeballs froze.

When I got home, I’d edit.”

In time, she was able to place The Age of Orphans on a shelf beside As I Lay Dying.

But then something unexpected took place.

The prize, the attention, and the success almost killed her writing. “I started taking myself seriously,” she says, with regret.

As she worked on her sequel, she tried to channel the spirit of Chilean novelist Robert Bolaño, whose deadpan sentences about grisly subjects—murder, for instance—chill by virtue of drubbing repetition. The shoe didn’t fit. “Over three years, I wrote an

response is flecked with the narcissism that drives all art: the author comes to believe more and more in the power of words, and in the alchemic magic of the writing process. She may not adorn her office door with the label that haughty James Joyce coined for himself—“priest of the eternal imagination”—but, still, she begins to think of herself as the cat’s pajamas, as a prophetic “human condition” expert.

Almost necessarily, Laleh has a little bravado. In San Francisco, when we meet

Good fiction is never simply a digest of prosaic everyday life; it is a response to all the great books that have come before. entire book,” she says, “and it was awful, flat. It just didn’t . . . vibrate.” She threw the manuscript out.

Last year, she remembered another novel of migration—The Grapes of Wrath,

by John Steinbeck—and looked closely at the book’s structure. In evoking the flight of westward émigrés from their droughtstricken Oklahoma farms in the 1930s, Steinbeck alternates between chapters that zero in on one family and shorter, more piquant interludes in which the entire Okie flock speaks as “we.”

This was the literary model she’d been looking for. She sat down in her writing studio. The room was impeccably ordered, with books in neat stacks on the floor. The walls bore straight rows of small yellow Post-It notes bearing prominent dates in Iranian history. Amid all the chronologies was a circa 1915 photo of gun-wielding Kurdish chieftains, and in the front row, barely visible, was her grandfather, a small, barefoot boy. She thought, “I descend from those people.” She thought, “For all my life, I’ve wanted to belong to something, and now I’m creating that connection. I’m easing out of that discontent: Even among the dead, I have company.”

She wrote almost without stopping for six months. In April she emailed me to say she’d finished the draft the previous evening. Over the ensuing months, she would nitpick over the manuscript, but mostly she’d just tighten up the odd sentence. The new version works: Bloomsbury is about to print several thousand copies.

How on earth does a young writer absorb such resounding affirmation? The standard

at her house, on a hilly street in the Mission District, she makes several sweeping pronouncements as we sit in the sparely appointed living room drinking whisky and beer: “John Updike never won the Nobel Prize because he wasn’t in dialogue with the human condition—he was in dialogue with the New England condition. . . . There’s never been a single great novel written about low self-esteem.”

“What about The Great Gatsby?” I interject.

“That was about low self-confidence.”

Desultory comments aside, Laleh is harnessing her energy for numerous projects. She is training for her first-ever half marathon, bringing to the enterprise the same monastic discipline she’s invoked in writing: on her kitchen calendar, in small script, she’s tallying her daily mileage.

Meanwhile, she’s hoping to make a feature film on immigrant sex workers and also contemplating other, more distant possibilities. “I’d like to open a school for artists trying to complete projects. The Finishing School, it’d be called. It could be anywhere, except that I don’t want to leave the country. My parents are here, and I want to take care of them. I’m kind of a traditionalist in that way.”

Soon, she pours a shot of whisky, and then slugs it down, as prelude. It’s 9 p.m. now, and she has evening plans. “I don’t want to write novels all the time,” she says, heading outside. “I’d go crazy—you’re in your own universe, not beholden to anyone.

I want to do other things, make other kinds of art. It’ll inform my writing, I’m sure.”

Eventually, we step through her iron gate, onto the sidewalk, and then she lopes down the hill, towards the glittering lights in the valley below.

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Eleven (+1) from ’11

By Randall S. Barton & Chris Lydgate ’90

Another year has passed, and another outstanding crop of Reedies has been unleashed on an unsuspecting world. To give you some idea of the astonishing accomplishments of the class of ’11, we approached eleven good-natured seniors and one MALS grad (because we couldn’t resist) and got them to talk about themselves, their theses, and their time on campus. You might be surprised at what they had to say . . .

Maya West

English

Hometown: Seoul, Korea Adviser: Stephan Clarke Thesis: Home What it’s about: A grief memoir about the death of my father, who died when I was a teenager. It started out as a novella about something else entirely but evolved over the course of the year.

What it’s really about: How we construct “self” through narrative.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I dropped out of three other colleges, because they mostly felt like exercises in credentialing. I was working as a translator but feeling creatively stifled.

Cool stuff I did: Oil painting. Montaigne. Yoga.

Bill Ray’s lit theory class. Just hearing the name Baudrillard still fills me with the kind of conflicted passion/dread traditionally reserved for estranged ex-lovers. Hum 110. And Pete Rock [creative writing] had a huge impact.

Influential books: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. Tristram Shandy was an astounding enaction of literary theory.

Favorite spot: The library breezeway. Whether it was 3 p.m. on a Friday with a leisurely sandwich or 3 a.m. during finals week with a clutch of bleakfaced peers, that bench always did me right.

Random thoughts: Reed is an amazing place. The professors are incredible—I know these are semantically vacuous words, but it’s true. It’s been a transformative experience. There’s no sphere of my life Reed hasn’t touched. I was a lot more cynical before Reed. Before, college was mostly about “investing in the future,” but that didn’t really work for me. My father’s death made me wary of putting your eggs in one basket. But the quality of the education at Reed, the sense that you are here to learn, not to get a good grade, but to understand—that made me feel engaged and challenged at every turn. It was a fabulous experience. There’s so much here. I never could have done it without financial aid, particularly the Osher Scholarship and the Eddings Scholarship.

What’s next: I’m giving myself two years to write before I start panicking.

A pair of doll’s heads, a clutch of favorite novels, and an old Underwood comprise some of Maya’s muses.

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Austin Campbell

biology

Hometown: Inglewood, California Adviser: David Dalton Thesis: Allelopathic effects of western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) What it’s about: Western junipers, like most trees in the pine family, leach secondary metabolic compounds into the soil and air. These compounds have a whole range of effects, including reducing seed germination and protecting the trees from bacteria and herbivory (i.e., being eaten).

What it’s really about: Why western juniper is taking over Eastern Oregon and threatens commercial ranching.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I wanted to get to know everyone and see everything. I was definitely more immature. I tried to impress people when I got here, but I quickly learned that people want to get to know you for the real you.

Influential book: City of Walls by Teresa Caldeira. It talks about home defense as an essential signature of wealth.

Favorite spot: The greenhouse. It’s the warmest place on campus and it’s beautiful at night.

Cool stuff I did: Student body vice president. Treasurer.

Ism. Peer mentor. House adviser. Admission intern.

Random thoughts: The Reed biology department is amazing because of its ability to invigorate students with passion for science and individual exploration.

As an undergraduate, you can design independent projects from ideas that you get in the lab. Reed has given me the ability to pursue ideas in other fields, so my education hasn’t just been focused on science. I’ve definitely benefited from financial aid, and I thought it was proper to give back. I gave to the Reedies for Reedies fund. Reed fundamentally changed the way I view the world and analyzed things. It’s a great school, a great institution. I’ve learned a lot here and I think it’s important to give back, to give other students who couldn’t afford it the opportunity to come here.

How Reed changed me: Before coming to Reed, I viewed the world as a collection of disjointed entities.

I was worried only about my day-to-day grind, like whatever I did was really important. Reed has made me more aware of the world around me. It’s not just about me, it’s about engaging with people, connecting to people of different backgrounds. Reed makes you think critically and teaches you never to accept one answer as the right answer. Challenge that answer and keep challenging that answer until you find your own truth. My time on senate taught me a lot about how to be a leader, how to take feedback, and getting in touch with the issues people have. Sometimes people will say they have an issue with something, but there’s often an issue beyond the issue.

“When you plant a seed, you never know if and how it’s going to grow. It’s sort of like thesis and life in that way. You just have to wait and see what happens”

What’s next: I am going to Greece to work as a counselor for a residential school.

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Eleven for ’11 continued

Nick Salter

mathematics

Hometown: Evanston, Illinois Adviser: Jamie Pommersheim Thesis: A Fourier-Analytic Approach to Polytope Euler-Maclaurin Summation What it’s about: A polytope is a geometric object like a polygon or a polyhedron. Euler-Maclaurin summation tells you how to add up a function on the lattice points in a polytope. In my thesis, I use Fourier analysis to get a version of this.

What it’s really about: How to make change with 7-, 11-, and 13-cent pieces.

Who I was when I got to Reed: A kid from the Midwest who was genuinely excited to finally get the chance to ride his bike up a hill in the rain.

Influential books: A First Course in Modular Forms by Fred Diamond and Jerry Shurman.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Favorite spot: The Great Lawn is a big green slice o’ heaven.

Favorite courses: Hum 110 with Jay Dickson. Abstract algebra with Pommersheim. Summer projects with Jerry Shurman. Physics 200 with Darrell Schroeter.

Cool stuff I did: Learned why the snake lemma is awesome, how to roast my own coffee, how to operate a nuclear reactor, and how to order a beer in Hungarian. Won a crossword puzzle tournament. Got a lot out of working as a tutor in math and physics.

Random thoughts: This semester I was diagnosed with hemochromatosis, a disease that causes my body to store too much iron. The treatment for this is to give blood once a week, which is not a walk in the park for someone who used to get sick just thinking about needles. But I want those laurels too much to let it get in my way.

How Reed changed me: Reed made me a whole lot stronger in the three Rs. It gave me a love for the Talking Heads, Herodotus, dogs, and sunny days. It gave me a framework for how to live the rest of my life, and one that I’m really blessed to say that I had a chance to get.

What’s next: I’m going to the University of Chicago on a McCormick Fellowship to get my PhD in math.

“A typical day studying polyhedra.”

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Moriah Tobin

physics

Hometown: Las Vegas, Nevada Adviser: Mary James Thesis: Energy Spectrum Characterization of the Reed Research Reactor Neutron Beam What it’s about: I used foil activation analysis to measure how many neutrons are going at what speeds in the center of the reactor core, and compared that to a spot 30 feet above the core where the neutron beam exits the pool. I compared these measurements to the spectra of neutrons emitted from U235 through fission, as well as the Maxwellian distribution of thermal neutrons.

What it’s really about: Playing with radiation for the good of SCIENCE ^.^ Who I was when I got to Reed: Crazy bohemian science potter.

Influential books: Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths. Ada or Ardor by Nabokov. I really liked reading Lucretius in Hum 110. He was an atomist.

Favorite spot: The canyon. It’s a great place to rebalance when Reed gets stressful.

Cool stuff I did: Shot Husum Falls in a whitewater raft.

Was introduced to ballroom dancing and feminism. Pulled myself 200 feet up into the canopy of an old-growth tree thanks to the Gray Fund. Sexual Assault Task Force.

Honor Council. Women’s Association of Reed Physicists.

Learned to operate the nuclear rector. Did a summer internship at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Random thoughts: Neither parent graduated from college, so my family doesn’t have a lot of experience with that lifestyle. But I don’t like to be defined by the obstacles I’ve faced. I like to be defined by the things I do. I ask questions. I use the resources at hand. In the end, it’s a net gain. I would not have been able to be here without financial aid, and I am incredibly grateful to Reed’s commitment to fund every qualified applicant possible.

How Reed changed me: In my time at Reed I have been exposed to an incredible quantity of brilliant, interesting, and diverse opinions, viewpoints, and lifestyles. They have worked to broaden my horizons and made me a happier and better-balanced person. Critical thinking (cliché, I know) has really become the cornerstone of all aspects of my life—plus an open mind.

What’s next: University of Wisconsin to work on PhD in experimental neutrino physics.

Thesis close-up:

The Inner Life Of Neutrons On a rare sunny afternoon in April, Moriah was sitting on a bench outside the library, valiantly attempting to dent the ignorance of a magazine editor and explain her thesis, which has to do with energy levels of neutrons in the core of the Reed reactor.

Noting a thick cloud of incomprehension settling on the interviewer’s brow, she jumped to her feet.

“Maybe it would be simpler just to show you,” she declared. “Have you ever seen a nuclear reactor?”

Jauntily elbowing aside objections, she led the way to the daunting depths of the Reed reactor and pointed out the neutron beam, a metal tube, evacuated with nitrogen that channels neutrons from the glowing core. Racing to a whiteboard, she sketched graphs and equations to explain electron potentials and neutron speeds. Then she showed off little disks made of niobium, manganese, and cadmium that are used to measure neutron energy.

Theory predicts that the neutrons at the top of the beam will demonstrate a certain energy spectrum; in reality, the spectrum depends on all sorts of confounding factors. By the end of the lesson, I was confident of one thing: if you like passionate explanations, ask a Reed physics major. —CL

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Eleven for ’11 continued

Adrienne Lane

political science

Hometown: Columbus, Ohio Adviser: Alex Montgomery-Amo Thesis: Risky Genes: Analysis of International Biosafety Negotiations and the Shifting Notions of Sustainable Development

Favorite spot: Public Policy Workshop! Some of my best ideas have been outlined during white board sessions in the Eliot basement.

What it’s really about: GMOs are scary but maybe they can help us get rich and protect the environment.

Obstacles overcome: I have struggled with the culture shock that comes with upward class mobility—I had never heard of kale before I came here. I came from a part of Columbus where I’m the only one of the friends I know that is going to have a four-year degree, let alone from a private college. I don’t think my friends growing up were any less intelligent than my friends at Reed, but they just never got an opportunity like this.

Who I was when I got to Reed: My freshman self was some amalgamation of idealism, enthusiasm, and naïveté and that is probably still true. My first day on campus I joined an anti–bottled water campaign and everyone got to know me as the “water girl.”

Random thoughts: Thanks to the great financial aid I have received, I have been able to come to this amazing school.

I’m not going to have any debt when I graduate. Very few people can say that.

Influential book: Governing Water by Ken Conca.

How Reed changed me: Through my social, emotional, and academic struggles, I have been forced to leave few stones unturned. I am glad that I finally know what I want to cultivate in myself. Reed makes you intimately aware of all your strengths and weaknesses.

What it’s about: I examine the diplomatic negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. These negotiations reinvigorated disputes over the meaning of sustainable development because this protocol tries to cope with the potential transboundary risks of new technology.

Cool stuff I did: Think Outside the Bottle campaign.

Supplemental Hum 110. Camp Wellstone activism training. Went to New Orleans to help residents recover from Hurricane Katrina. Worked as editorial assistant for the Election Law Journal. Thesis wedding.

Dance parties. Traveled to the Klamath River basin to study water disputes. It was amazing because we saw how politicized the science was—every single stakeholder had their own biologist.

Thesis close-up:

What’s next: Hawaii. I’m going to teach my roommate to drive. In a less escapist vein, I am pursuing environmental policy internships.

The politics of GMOs

“GMO” refers to a genetically modified organism. For example, “Roundup Ready” crops that have been modified with a gene that confers resistance to glyphosate. The term “GMO” carries with it a particular political connotation, often negative. It’s been co-opted by people who are against GMOs, or at least their widespread use. “Living modified organisms” is more politically neutral and more specific. It refers to things that are alive, like seeds.

I’m looking at the political framing of GMOs and the risks they pose when they’re traded across borders—the idea being that a GMO might pose new risks in a new geographic context. A GMO that is relatively uncontroversial in the United States might pose different risks in a tropical climate or an area where they don’t have irrigation or when the local species are different. I looked at the political negotiations over the interstate trade of these biotechnologies.

I could have gone deeper into the science of GMOs and their objective risks, but what I was interested in is the politicization of risk and the role it plays in negotiations.

My overarching interest lies in sustainable development—how can we develop our economies but also take care of the environment, be good stewards, and make space for future generations to have prosperity. This is a political concept that proposes that we can get rich and save the world. —ARL

“Fun at Reed often involves colors, costumes, and dancing. My friends collected all kinds of shiny outfits in this beloved “treasure chest’”

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Erica Boulay

English

Hometown: Wells, Maine Adviser: Gabriele Hayden Thesis: Shaharazad’s Sisters: Performative Feminine Authorship at the U.S.-Mexican and E.U.-Moroccan Borders What it’s about: The lasting effects of colonialism upon feminine identity at the U.S.-Mexican and E.U.Moroccan borderlands as demonstrated in works of literature by female authors and/or protagonists.

It compares a postcolonial novel to a borderland novel, and the unique conflicts over the right to authorship staged at the geographical and theoretical frontiers between the global north and south.

What it’s really about: Liberation through literature!

Who I was when I got to Reed: Idealistic, adventurous Plain Jane from Maine.

Influential books: Caleb Williams by William Godwin and Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

Favorite spot: The pool. Many of my best ideas have come to me underwater.

Random thoughts: Scholarships help to promote socioeconomic diversity at Reed. They help students attend Reed who might not be able to afford tuition.

I’m grateful for the financial aid I received. As a phonathon caller, I feel especially thankful towards alumni who love Reed enough to help Reedies like me.

Cool stuff I did: Studied Arabic in Morocco and Spanish in Guatemala. Taught English in Kathmandu.

Became a lifeguard. Wilderness First Responder.

Worked at an immigration law office. Volunteered as a Hispanic Girl Scout leader. Ultimate Frisbee.

Quest. Phonathon. Reedies for Reedies Scholarship Committee. Drove the night bus. Picting.

Obstacles overcome: I’ve learned how to seek out mentors and opportunities. Reed taught me how to digest criticism and move on. Working for for a small nonprofit provided many opportunities to think creatively and make the most of limited resources.

How Reed changed me: I am less intimidated by challenges and can transfer my creative energies in more meaningful ways. I had the opportunity to argue with extremely knowledgeable people. I’m grateful for my time abroad in Morocco, where I engaged with a wide spectrum of viewpoints.

Most of all, Reed was a place of high expectations where I felt respected, trusted, and believed in.

What’s next: Camp counselor at a girls’ camp in Maine, and then to become an ESL educator and earn a degree in international education policy.

Erica displays a drawing by one of her Nepali students from Mechi Mahakali, a school run by non-profit Namaste Kathmandu.

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Eleven for ’11 continued

Jessica Gerhardt

psychology

Hometown: Santa Monica, California Thesis: A Crying (Prejudice) Shame: The Effects of Confronter Gender on Perceptions of Sexism Adviser: Kathryn Oleson What it’s about: Research has examined how confronting prejudice may help reduce prejudicial behaviors in the future. What makes someone an effective confronter or ally?

My thesis examines the role a confronter’s gender plays in perceptions of sexism.

What it’s really about: Why male allies are important in combating sexism.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I came here with an open mind and a lot of excitement.

Influential book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

Favorite spot: The frog on the west lawn. It’s a great place to sit and watch the sunset.

Cool stuff I did: Peer mentor. Ism. Oh For Christ’s Sake. Improv comedy. The Vagina Monologues.

Playing ukulele and singing with my band, Just Orange. House adviser. Admission intern. Pool.

Random thoughts: I love that people can be themselves here, like the kid who plays his lyre on the lawn. Walk around campus and you’ll see weathergrams, those little brown pieces of paper hanging from trees with poems on them.

You’ll overhear people talking about colonialism and contemporary pop—that’s so Reed. I’ve been so blessed to be able to come here, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have financial aid.

Sophomore through senior year I worked as a house adviser, which covered my room and board. I loved living with freshmen because they kept me rejuvenated—reminding me of the excitement I felt as a freshman about Reed.

How Reed changed me: I was raised Catholic and my faith has really deepened in the time I’ve been at Reed, which is ironic because our unofficial slogan is “Communism, Atheism, Free Love.” I’ve developed incredible relationships with unique and inquisitive people. I have become someone my friends can confide in and trust. I have confidence in my passions and my future, vulnerability in my heart, and a desire to love and serve others.

What’s next: I’m going to pursue music for a year.

“After seeing a Flight of the Conchords concert with some fellow Reedies at the Arlene Schnitzer Hall, Bret McKenzie signed my ukulele chord chart: ‘Ukes, not nukes’. Wise words.”

An Epiphany in the Chapel There’s a Christian group on campus called Oh For Christ’s Sake, and after I read The Alchemist, we were having a prayer vigil in the [Eliot Hall] chapel. I took a shift from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. and I was sitting in the chapel praying and something related to that book struck me. It was as if God was telling me, “You need to do this with music.”

I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No I don’t. I’m a psychology major. There’s a billion wannabes out there. Music is a really competitive field.”

“Go for it. Give it a chance. Think about all the ways things have already been handed to you.” I thought about the idea of beginner’s luck, the connections I have back in L.A., the people who have encouraged me, how my confidence has grown because of music. And I thought, “Maybe I do have a shot at this.”

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton talks about how it’s important to strike a balance where you’re in wonder and awe, but also have the audacity to spit at the stars. A fairy tale isn’t a fairy tale if the knight isn’t afraid of the dragon. He has to have the audacity to take on the dragon in order for there to be a story. It’s important to have that balance in life. —JG

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Salim Moore

Art

Hometown: Pasadena, California Thesis: Out of the Cauldron: Witchcraft in the Art of

Hans Baldung Grien and David Teniers the Younger Adviser: William Diebold What it’s about: Exploring how the figure of the

witch developed in early modern Europe.

What it’s really about: How seeing is believing.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I was a total

greenhorn. In high school, I pretty much played Dungeons and Dragons and video games. When I came to Reed, the floodgates opened. I had to hit the ground running.

Influential book: The Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh myths.

Favorite spots: Prexy and the canyon. They both have beautiful music.

Cool stuff I did: Discovered how to brew

beer, speak the language of dance, play the accordion, and spin fire. Performed with YAM, an improv comedy troupe that never uses the same name twice. (Yaks And Mandolins, Your Aunt Mary, etc.) KRRC. Drum Kore. Worked with the roughest and toughest tumblers of them all—canyon crew!

Random thoughts: In addition to financial aid, I also won a $5,000 scholarship through the Douglas Williams Fencing Tournament.

Swordplay builds character and teaches you discipline. Financial aid is a great way in which the Reed community manifests itself. One of the best parts about being at Reed is you see the community from the ground up. I was giving a tour this morning and one of the prospects asked me, “Is everyone at Reed on a first-name basis?” and I said, “Yeah.”

How Reed changed me: Sometimes I think of my Reed experience as a boat. I am a sailor and Reed is the ship. Reed taught me how to think about the world in other ways. Some of that happened inside the classroom, some of it happened outside the classroom. I learned how to be comfortable in my own shoes, walk the walk, and talk the talk.

What’s next: Teaching art.

Thesis close-up:

Imagination and Witchcraft My thesis looks at how the imagination works and how artists convince people to believe in things they can’t see. In the case of witchcraft, you have Hans Baldung Grien, who was a student of Dürer. In their prints, they have these images of witches riding backwards on goats, summoning hailstorms, cooking sausages, doing all these bad things.

(Cooking sausages is the worst, actually.)

Of course, no one’s ever seen a witch flying through the sky or riding on a goat. But back in 1510, when an artist presents that vision, it’s like a photograph in the New York Times.

It’s definitive. Viewers have their beliefs affirmed in what they see. “Yes, I’ve heard the stories about witches eating babies and now I see it to be real.”

My thesis also focuses on gender.

Originally, witches could be male or femail. After the publication of Malleus Maleficarum, which declared that witches were women, the imagery shifted. Grien was one of the first artists to use the cauldron as a symbol for a woman’s body.

A lot of time you’ll see witches casting hailstorms out of cauldrons or conjuring vaporous mists, which were understood to represent menses. Artists took brooms and cooking forks—domestic objects that women used around the house—to show how witchcraft was female. When people saw the images they said, “Okay, this is what an evil witch looks like.” Though witchcraft may seem outdated, it still has relevance. When you read into the images you begin to understand how the imagination affects both the future and the past. For example, science fiction looks forward to things that don’t exist.

Sometimes we have to imagine a better world before we can create it.—SM

“This little fellow is a Waldorf gnome. Asha and Amir, my younger brother and sister, had gnomes as a part of their education. I brought this gnome to Reed with me to remind me of them. I’ve had it since freshman year.”

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Joseph Conlon

classics

Hometown: Pleasantville, New York

Thesis close-up:

Adviser: Wally Englert

Virgil the Innovator

Thesis: Poetics and Genre in Virgil’s Georgics

Virgil published the Georgics about the same time the Augustan poets were beginning to feel a sense of their own independence from their Greek predecessors, from the Alexandrian and Athenian traditions. They were coming into their own and questioning what it meant to write Roman poetry, to use the Greek poetic forms in a Roman context.

What it’s about: Georgics is a poem about farming in the Italian countryside, which includes philosophical musings about the cosmos, elegiac longings for Saturn’s Golden Age, and even an epic about a beekeeper. My thesis explores how the Georgics pushed the limits of its genre, and how poetry functioned in Augustan Rome.

What it’s really about: The nature of poetry and the poetry of nature.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I came to Reed from a Jesuit high school in Manhattan. I had no idea what to expect.

Influential book: I read the Iliad 10 times the summer before I got to Reed and then 4 or 5 more times in the first two weeks of class. The beauty of Homer’s verses and the magnificence of his world are what inspired me to teach myself Greek.

Favorite spot: The canyon has been a great escape.

Random thoughts: It’s amazing that someone like me, who comes from a pretty modest background, can go to a place like Reed. I wouldn’t have been able to come if it weren’t for financial aid. I feel incredibly blessed. Increasingly, the arguments put forth to justify a liberal arts education are falling on deaf ears. People don’t want to hear about enriching the self through literature—they want to see scientific and economic progress. But I know this is knowledge worth having. I don’t know exactly where it’s going to benefit society in the larger picture, but I do think that I’m a better person for having studied Latin and Greek. It’s something I want to pass on.

Cool stuff I did: Studied Greek, Latin, Russian, Chinese, and Quenya (a variant of Elvish).

Squash. Softball. Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Missed the first semester of first year Greek and taught myself the material over winter break, studying every day for 12 or 13 hours. Memorized every rule and every form. (Wally adds, “He joined the class halfway through and ended with an A+ for the course!”) Class of ’21 award.

How Reed changed me: At Reed there is a constant demand, both from your peers and your professors, for clarity of thought. Reed has sharpened my ability to express myself in writing and in conversation and in so doing has fostered a pursuit of truth and learning.

Latin is a pristine, structured language, very efficient. If something doesn’t need to be there, it’s not there. Every word is placed very carefully in a sentence, and the development of the language coincided with the Romans’ drive to structure the world. As the empire grew, they built these roads that were straight for miles. You see an analogy between the way these people were constructing the world around them and the way their language changed at the same time.

Greek, on the other hand, is a much more flowing language. There are fewer rules about how to spell words. Letters change to sound more beautiful as you’re reading a poem. And the language developed a more philosophical bent. Greek is much more adept at discussing philosophy, music, and poetry than Latin, which has the vocabulary to talk about politics, economics, and the affairs of the state.

Virgil’s plot is pretty dry. He doesn’t always pick the most captivating tales.

But the poetry itself, when you read it in Latin, is so powerful. At its heart poetry is trying to come head-to-head with the human experience. It is an exercise in exploring the limits of language and the way in which we can construct metaphors. It’s very appealing to work through a poem and see the way the poet is innovating. Using language in a new way is required of every poet. If you’re not pushing the limits of each word and the limits of the grammatical structure, then you’re not writing poetry, you’re writing prose in columns.—JC

What’s next: Begin work on PhD at Princeton in Greek poetry.

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Rosalie Lowe

literature/theatre

Hometown: Ketchum, Idaho Thesis: Text in Space: Experimental Adaptations of Canonical Plays by Three Contemporary Directors Advisers: Kate Bredeson (theatre), Catherine Witt (literature) What it’s about: An investigation into the styles of director Ariane Mnouchkine and director Elizabeth LeCompte, as seen through their re-imaginings of texts

by Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams. And how my own direction of Horror, or Her Mirror, an adaptation of a Henrik Ibsen play, places me between them.

What it’s really about: Women directors imagining or imaging text written by men.

Who I was when I got to Reed: Resolute and private. I grew up in a small town in the Rocky Mountains. I felt disconnected from my peers and never fully comfortable in expressing myself. I was very isolated.

Influential book: The Theatre and its Double by Antonin Artaud.

for a beautiful and immense growth for every individual.

People feel inspired to take advantage of the moment.

Cool stuff I did: Played several roles in Reed Theatre productions. Directed two plays: Horror, or Her Mirror and Miss Firecracker Contest. Acted in two movies. Reed Arts Week. Learned how to embrace the relentless showers and appreciate sunshine on a whole other level. Navigated Portland on my bike. Learned French. Delved into metaphysics and the plurality of worlds. Questioned what it means to be a human being, an earthling, and an artist.

How Reed changed me: Reed has made me fearless in a way I never thought I would be. It has given me a sense of community, providing incomparable connections to wonderful, unique, inspiring, and intelligent individuals. Here I have found companions for life. Within this community I have discovered the compelling uncertainty that comes with the acceptance of chaos; this has allowed me to embrace life in all its capriciousness. I have also overcome writing paralysis and doubt in the power of theatre.

What’s next: I’m moving to New York to learn the theatre business.

Favorite spot: The west lawn. It has beautiful skies and is so calming.

Random thoughts: From the moment I came to Reed I felt this immediate sense of release, intellectually, physically, and spiritually. Everyone was very open with each other.

It has a lot to do with the Honor Principle. We all took care to make sure everybody got the honor and respect they deserved for what they had to say. That really allows

“Our long habit of seeking diversion has made us forget the idea of a serious theatre, which, overturning all our preconceptions, inspires us with the fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon us like a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten.

Everything that acts is a cruelty. It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that the theatre must rebuild.”

—from Theatre of Cruelty by Antonin Artaud

“This silver leaf mask is a relic from my childhood and maintains a meaning for me that fuses ideas of magic with theater.”

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Carmen García

Spanish

Hometown: San Diego, California

Thesis close-up:

Adviser: Craig Epplin

Creacionismo Theory

Thesis: El Pulso del Mundo: Primitive and Posthuman Poetics in Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor

Initiated by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro around 1912, Creacionismo is a literary movement in which the poet creates a highly personal imaginary world rather than describing nature.

One thing that Huidobro says in his manifesto is that each poetic act or gesture should be something completely new. So it’s a step away from the mimesis of Plato, where poetry is just sort of copying something. It’s a move forward to the creation of new worlds.

What it’s about: I analyze Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro’s avant-garde poetic school, Creacionismo, and its obsessive view of language as the intersection between modernity and prehistory.

I look at how Huidobro uses the poetics of machinery, such as conveyor belts, windmills, and cars, in order to create a poetic gesture.

What it’s really about: Chaplin meets Cervantes meets Steve Reich.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I got voted the biggest hippie in my high school, which is kind of embarrassing.

Influential books: Mallarmé’s Divigations, Deleuze’s Dialogues, and, of course, Don Quixote. I’m prone to exaggeration, but I think of my life in terms of before Don Quixote and after.

Favorite spots: The sauna! B.Y.O. lavender bath salts.

Random thoughts: When I first came to visit Reed, I sat in on a hum conference and I had the feeling that this was my place; that I needed to come here. I knew it was expensive. My dad and I found this empty classroom in Eliot and had a talk. I remember telling him, “I know this is the place for me.” And he said, “I really want you to go here, but we need to see about financial aid.” Because of that financial aid, the Edding grants, and the Reed grants, I was able to come here.

I can’t stress enough what an incredible gift that is.

Cool Stuff I did: Climbed Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams.

SEEDS. ESL coordinator. Barista at the Paradox.

Dance! RAW director of artist hospitality. Translated poets. Spanish tutor. Studied in Buenos Aires. Lived in Old Dorm Block. Learned how to cuss in French.

Read Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation.

How Reed changed me: I learned how to harness the tools of intellectual and creative inquiry.

Additionally, I have finely tuned my abilities of balance, having to juggle a full course load with three jobs, a social life, and enough sleep.

What’s next: Summer fellowship with the Nation magazine, then teaching English in Paris. Then grad school in international foreign policy. I want to be a diplomat.

His poem Altazor deconstructs language as it proceeds in the hope that it will create a new language at the end. It’s really out there. The first line in English is something like: “I was born at the age of 33, on the day that Christ died, between the hydrangeas and the airplanes and the heat.”

That’s probably the most normal, everyday sort of line that it has. And then he starts making up his own language, starts making up words. So it’s pretty avant garde.

Huidobro is engaged in a sort of creative destruction. That’s an economic principle, as well as a religious principle exemplified by the Hindu god Shiva, who is both a creator and a destroyer. Huidobro does that with his poetry. He’s creating things and creating language, but at the same time he’s deconstructing language as we know it. Some parts are completely unintelligible, really gibberish. The last lines are scrambles of letters and then sounds, or like the letter “e” six hundred times. So it gets pretty gnarly.

There are a lot of avant-garde poems where you can look at the historical context to explain why it’s so weird, for lack of a better word. But, with Altazor, I feel like a lot of the existing scholarship doesn’t arrive at a satisfactory answer—at least for me. So I’m trying to go a little further. —CG

“My feet have extremely high arches and I used to drive my ballet teachers crazy breaking pointe shoe after pointe shoe. Thankfully I’ve since discovered forms of dance—modern, contemporary, etc.—that don’t require shoes!”

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Osamu “Sam” Muramoto

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS)

Hometown: Portland, Oregon Adviser: Margaret Scharle Thesis: Death and Wellbeing—A Reply to the Epicurean Puzzle What it’s about: Epicurus famously claimed that death is nothing because it has no time or person to harm; before death it is not yet, and after death it is no more. I argued that the standard account against Epicurus is flawed and presented an alternative view of human life and death.

What it’s really about: Man’s existence extends beyond his lifespan in the social and historical dimension.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I am a neurologist with an interest in bioethics and the neuroscience of mind. What I knew was science. Before going through MALS I thought philosophy was somewhat vague, floating around, inaccessible. Now, philosophy and science are tightly linked in my mind.

Influential book: Contingency, Irony and Solidarity by Richard Rorty.

Favorite spot: The library, where I can immerse myself into deep thoughts and daydreaming.

Cool stuff I did: I learned how to deal with real philosophers in terms of their thoughts, writings, and behaviors. I was also able to publish two papers based on the coursework at Reed in respectable medical journals.

Why I took the MALS program: Having been born in Tokyo and attended medical school there, I wanted to

go through formal education in English. Philosophy is basically an art of language and many concepts cannot be successfully translated. You can communicate the message of the pieces in translation, but you lose the subtlety of the messages. Heidegger, for example, wrote in German, and in German you can combine words together to make a new word, which translators struggle to translate. So they paraphrase Heidegger’s words. The same is true if I read American philosophical writing in Japanese; they have to paraphrase in translation. You lose the direct power of the words that appear in the original writing.

Obstacles overcome: I had to make an enormous leap from my previous higher education, received almost four decades before in a different country, in a different area of study, and in a different language. In every subject I studied at Reed, I needed extra groundwork to brush up the very basics. I purposefully took many undergraduate courses and studied along with young students, who are younger than my own children.

How Reed changed me: I am now able to think, read, and talk more clearly and logically than before, particularly in the area of philosophy. This change helps my further pursuit in bioethics tremendously. After all, an old dog has proven, at least to some extent, to be able to learn new tricks.

What’s next: Teaching medical students about ethics, particularly in end-of-life issues, at Oregon Health & Science University.

Thesis close-up:

The Epicurean Puzzle Though Epicurus (341-270 BC) is often mistakenly associated with the notion “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” in reality, Epicurean philosophy advocates achieving tranquility by limiting one’s desires and banishing the fear of gods and death.

The Epicurean universe is composed of only atoms and space. The mind, like the body, is made up of atoms that disperse into the void at death. Death, then, equals annihilation, as no mind exists to experience this state of being. Simply stated, the puzzle is that you should not fear death, because when you die, the mind is annihilated and there is literally nothing that can harm you.

The standard response is that death is bad for the person who dies because he could have enjoyed more goods in a counterfactual world in which he did not die. The problem with this argument is that the subject who can evaluate this comparison is absent under the premise of Epicurus as well as that of Descartes, and thus the standard account basically faces the same problem as that of Epicurus.

But, if we understand human existence differently from this Cartesian (“I think, therefore I am.”) picture, we have a third dimension of human existence, which is social relationship.

Social relationships continue with your loved ones and are also dependent on historical time. My argument against this standard account implies a protest against the Cartesian understanding of human existence as embodied mind. —SM

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d e e r f o s r a e 100 y Celebrate the Intellect & Creativity: The Books & Art VOX POPULI REEDIANI

A chorus of voices comes together to harmonize the melodic lines of an ideal college. More than 1,500 alumni, retired faculty, staff, and administrators participated in the 12-year-project that resulted in Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College.

In the words of editor John Sheehy ’82, the book “portrays the courageous attempt through the decades of a community trying to live up to those ideals, and always falling short.” Preorder now and save at bookstore.reed.edu; to be published in February 2012.

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POLISHED MIND/ SPARKLING LIFE

There’s no question that Reed vigorously polishes the mind, but how well does it prepare one for life? Thirty-three alumni look back at the place that ignited their passions and helped shape their accomplishments in Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays by Graduates of Reed, edited by professors Roger Porter and Robert Reynolds.

Preorder your exclusive copy now at bookstore.reed.edu; expected to ship in September 2011.

EMPIRE OF THE GRIFFIN

Remember studying on the great lawn beneath the maple trees?

Renowned poster artist David L. Goines was commissioned to create this image commemorating Reed’s first hundred years. Order these limited edition posters now at bookstore.reed.edu; all proceeds will directly support student financial aid.

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! n o i t elebra

c e h t n join i

Celebrate the History: The Movie THE STORY OF REED’S LEGACY

An episode of OPB’s Oregon Experience explores the legacy of the college in Reed, a film by Beth Harrington. As founding president William T. Foster’s “ideal college” gains national renown, it becomes a lightning rod for criticism locally.

Can Reed continue to be an open institution, or must the college bow

to forces wanting to shut down political dialogue?Coming to your living room screen in October 2011.

Celebrate the Community: Day of Service IT TAKES A VILLAGE

One hundred volunteers will converge on 10 sites for the biggest day of service in college history.

Reed community members and their families can connect as they work together to make tangible contributions to the community sorting food, building houses, or restoring the environment. Pay it forward on Saturday, April 14, 2012.

Register at www.reed.edu/seeds.

Celebrate the Action: The Festivities!

HOOPLA!

NIGHT ON THE TOWN

Mark your calendar for a campus- and community-wide celebration that includes music, food, a 5K run, and other activities.

During the festivities we will dedicate the restored orchard of fruit and nut trees at the northwest edge of the campus—selected by students as their centennial project. Visit centennial.reed.edu/ events/ for details. Save the date: September 24, 2011.

The Gray Fund committee is planning a centennial celebration in downtown Portland for spring of 2012. Stay tuned for more.

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COME TOGETHER

The 2012 alumni Reunions, dubbed Reedfayre, will bring the centennial celebrations to a close. Break another attendance record: May 29–June 6.

BACK TO THE MEMORIES, FORWARD TO THE DREAMS

Relive 100 years of inquiry, community, and integrity at our centennial website which opens a virtual door to our archives via slide shows and fascinating histories of each decade. Always open at centennial.reed.edu.

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Classic Lectures

HERODOTUS AND THE INVENTION OF HISTORY

By Raymond Kierstead

“Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not be forgotten in time, and great and marvelous deeds—some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians—may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.”

To the historian, these opening lines of Herodotus’ Histories represent something akin to a sacred text, the beginning, it is sometimes argued, of the practice of history, or at least of history as a critical mode of inquiry into the past. Like many claims of origins and intellectual paternity, the venerable cliché that Herodotus was the “father of history” may be a bit suspect. Perhaps he had Greek predecessors who deserve the name historian, such as Hecataeus of Miletus. Perhaps there are other traditions of historical writing that ought to take precedence when we consider the formation of the historical imagination over time; the Biblical history of the Jews comes immediately to mind in this case. Yet there is an argument to be made that Herodotus, in weaving together the stories of his and other cultures, in taking the conventions of Greek religion and Greek epic and making those conventions meaningful to contemporary or near-contemporary events, in constructing a dense narrative of those events, and, finally, in his prodigious questioning of his world about its memories of the past, “invented” history. And this is the case I’ll try to make today.

Herodotus’ history of the war between Greeks and Persians dates from roughly the mid-fifth century. By this point, we are in a period when Greek culture had been quite thoroughly penetrated by critical modes of thinking, first in the realm of philosophy as part of the intellectual legacy of the Ionian Greeks. In the case of Herodotus, who, to some degree at least, shared in the so-called Ionian enlightenment, critical intelligence

was directed to human affairs in time. With Herodotus we encounter the beginning of the historian’s attempt to wrestle with the concept of time: to give shape to time and to memory and to impose a certain order upon the seeming chaos of human actions over time. In his opening lines, Herodotus not only evokes the idea of war narrative in an epic mode, not only an interest in the totality of human experience, but perhaps above all he evokes the idea of explanation, “why the two peoples fought one another.” In so doing he established history at its very “birth” as an explanatory enterprise, an interpretive discipline. However good the stories that are the heart and soul of his work and however compelling his narrative, Herodotus was no mere storyteller. His “invention” was designed not only to entertain, but also to compare, to explain, and to interpret.

This “invention” has not always been admired. Near-contemporaries such as Thucydides and later classical historians such as Plutarch were contemptuous of Herodotus’ work. Even in later antiquity we uncover the great insult to Herodotus’ work: “The Father of History; The Father of Lies.” Stories of naked queens and children served up as pies were thought by later practitioners of the historical art to demean history as a serious intellectual enterprise. This mélange of conventional stories and conventional wisdom, improbable events and equally improbable conversations, gossip and hearsay, condemned Histories as hopelessly unreliable and unscholarly. However, and fortunately for us, we stand at the far side of that 2,000year divide and are part of a historical culture

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within which Herodotus’ reputation is secure.

Indeed, strange to say, we inhabit an intellectual and cultural world where Herodotus may be considered something of a hot subject: an important figure in debates over diversity and Eurocentrism, and even a bit player in the Academy Award–winning film The English Patient. I am afraid that my subject is somewhat less trendy. I want to try to measure Herodotus’ achievement from the perspec-

tive of a modern historian and to search out certain affinities between his strangeness and our strangeness.

We can begin to measure Herodotus’ achievement by brief consideration of the intellectual traditions that he inherited. He was located in a culture that was shaped by myth and epic, and there are some good reasons, as we shall see later, to regard Herodotus as standing squarely in that dual tradition.

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Classic Lectures

Thus Werner Jaeger in his classic, Paideia, wrote: “His work was the resurrection of the epic tradition . . . or rather it was new growth from the epic root.” But the very word “invention” that I have chosen to use in analyzing Herodotus’ achievement argues for innovation more than resurrection. For the idea that human societies require history, that it is an inevitable part of cultural baggage, is anthropologically false. Although one may argue plausibly that all societies depend to one degree or another on tradition—i.e., the need to relate past and present—myth and poetry may serve this purpose well enough.

Historical inquiry ought not to be understood as simply the inevitable evolutionary outgrowth of other modes of thought, let alone

The idea that human societies require history is anthropologically false. as part of a broader evolution from primitive to more advanced culture.

There were possible influences on Herodotus, influences conventionally attributed to his Ionian background. Thus Charles Fornara takes us a step beyond Jaeger when he writes that, “Herodotus perhaps united epic theme with Ionian method.” Historiographer Herbert Butterfield argued that the very geographic situation of the Ionians between cultural worlds, at a crossroads of trade, on the fringe of a great empire—“the meeting place of Mediterranean civilizations”—impelled an interest in other peoples and thus the origins of a kind of historical inquiry. It is in this ethnographic context of an attempt to understand neighboring peoples that one best observes Herodotus’ remarkable capacity to describe other cultures and their differences (they pee that way; we pee this way). Herodotus, with his keen observation of cultural detail, was a master at drawing cultural boundaries between Greek and barbarian, democracy and despotism, West and

East, Persian and Scythian. But, in assessing his ethnographic method, it is equally important to note that Herodotus understood that those boundaries were permeable. Egyptian civilization could, for example, be a source of Greek civilization. At a more general level, Herodotus had the capaciousness of mind to transcend ethnography and recognize that there could be, at certain moments in time, similar elements of greatness and of baseness in very different civilizations. That meant that the known world could not simply be divided antithetically between Greek and barbarian. There was great value in, but, also limits to, the ethnographic analysis of difference that is so conspicuous a part of Herodotus’ achievement.

Herodotus also stood heir to the tradition of Ionian critical thinking or rational inquiry. He openly recognized the influence of the late sixth- and very early fifth-century “historian,” Hecataeus of Miletus. Hecataeus was a questioner of traditions who sought to purify and rationalize the legendary inheritance of the Greeks and to purge some of the miraculous from the received tradition. For example, a King Aegyptus was said by tradition to have had 50 sons and a certain Danaos 50 daughters. Hecataeus concluded that each had 20. His attempts to sort out legends and stories and to establish the most likely and most commonsensical solution clearly shaped Herodotus’ method of inquiry and generated a tradition of separating fact from fancy, what some would see as the very essence of historical practice. This is evident in Herodotus’ skeptical treatment of ancient stories about the origins of the wars between Greeks and barbarians. Herodotus’ keen analysis of the differences between Eastern despotism and Greek liberty may well have derived in some fashion from speculative tradition among Ionian thinkers on the responsibility of climate for the character of states. In short, we can place Herodotus in a broad intellectual setting, as long as we understand that none of the Ionian traditions comprised history as such. For better or worse, as is inevitably

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quoted in lectures such as this, “there was no Herodotus before Herodotus.”

Herodotus’ unique invention, history, may be understood in several ways. He told an epic story of war and great deeds that was at bottom a human story. In the tradition of Hecataeus, Herodotus sought to separate fact from myth, to query his sources, to get the story right. In so doing, Herodotus established what would be the fundamental framework and subject matter of this new form of inquiry. History would deal with near-contemporary and contemporary events. As in epic, war and the causes of war and the clashes of cultures at war would be the essential subject matter of history. It would examine political life. In a certain sense, history would be polis literature, that is, a serious reflection on political cultures from the perspective of Greek political experience in the fifth century.

In the latter aspect as least, Herodotus reflected less his Ionian background, his generally cosmopolitan outlook, and his profound interest in cultures than his acquired Athenian allegiance. As the late Moses Finley wrote, “His political vision was Athenian and democratic, but it lacked any trace of chauvinism. He was committed, but not for one moment did that release him from the high obligation of understanding . . . Nothing could be more wrongheaded than the persistent and seemingly indestructible legend of Herodotus the charmingly naïve storyteller.”

Though one must add here that his history, as a reading of book I suggests, stands somewhere at the boundaries between artful storytelling and explanation.

In sum, Herodotus defined the boundaries of his invention, history, and tied that invention to the Greek, and particularly fifthcentury Athenian, passion for the political life and for political understanding. No more than we can understand fifth-century tragedy outside the polis can we understand history in its earliest manifestation outside of polis political culture.

In establishing a narrative of the Persian Wars, in separating many facts from myths,

in devising enormously complex chronologies of events, Herodotus laid fair claim to his posthumous title, Father of History. On occasion, however, one encounters a fairly naïve interpretation of Herodotus that confuses the achievement of this eminent fifth-century Greek with certain modern ideas about the possibilities of scientific history, ideas that held that historical statements or generalizations derive from the true facts of history, patiently accumulated and clearly arranged. In this light, Herodotus’ prodigious attempts to sort out truth from fiction and to compare and criticize different accounts of the same event look indeed like the beginning of an evolution that, with some unfortunate detours, culminated in modern historical method. Now, only nonhistorians suffer the delusion that history is in any sense a science, a discipline in which one argues in a simple linear way from fact to generalization. The human mind—alas, even the historian’s mind—is more complicated and interesting than that. In fact, a careful reading of Herodotus suggests that he probably has far more in common with his friend Sophocles, the fifth-century writer of tragedy, than with any post-Renaissance or modern historian. Although this might appear to be a negative comparison and judgment, it is certainly not meant to be. The narrowest conceptions of history as an empirical discipline have long since been consigned to the trash bin reserved for intellectual silliness, and modern historians increasingly appreciate not Herodotus’ prodigious fact-grubbing, worthy as it may be of admiration, but rather his imaginative capacity to give shape to time—time being the historian’s medium and the shaping of time the historian’s principal task.

The great originality of Herodotus was most certainly not his empirical method, but rather, as I argued near the beginning, his attempt, once he got his selected facts in order, to interpret and explain the human past. The intellectual power of his opening sentence rests on his determination to find reasons for the great war, reasons that would explain the greatest of human events. The stories and facts that

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Herodotus patiently gleaned in his travels and oral interviews did not lead inexorably to his historical explanations or to his reasons. Rather, I would argue, his understanding of the deep patterns of divine action and of human history made sense of the facts and events he discovered, fit into a pattern, and then recounted. If Herodotus has a special affinity to modern historians, I would suggest that it rests on his discovery that facts, however fascinating, do not speak for themselves. Time and again, Herodotus tells us he has selected out what was worthy to be remembered. His principle of selection—selection being the key to historical architecture—depended very much on his sense of patterns in history, on his sense of the shape of time or those forces that order human events.

What do I mean by patterns? One such pattern Herodotean history shared with, if it did not borrow from, tragedy: the idea of the general instability of the human condition, of the reversals of fortune that were the human lot, and the associated political idea of the rise and fall of states. Another, related, pattern had to do with pride and fall and punishment. Time was the working out of such archetypical patterns. Historic time was, then, not unlike tragic time, a point made most obvious in the first book of Herodotus’ history, particularly in the story of Croesus.

History, as the story and analysis of human things, could never penetrate and understand the divine and fated processes. History could, however, as an incomplete and partial science or field of knowledge, read some of the signs of those processes working in the world.

Perhaps this is the thrust of Momigliano’s statement that, “even if we did not know that Sophocles was a friend of Herodotus’, we would perceive the latter’s connections with the former in moral, religious, and political feelings.” In sum, from Herodotus we begin to perceive that though the gleaning of facts may be the first crucial step in history, it is not history. History is accomplished only when time is given shape and when explanation and interpretation occur.

The idea of Herodotus as the progenitor of a certain empiricist idea of historical method continuously runs aground precisely on the question of the divine shaping of his history.

A German classicist puts it provocatively and pithily: “Herodotus was the first and last representative (in the ancient world?) of theological historiography.” Fate and divine will were indeed historical forces for Herodotus, and human events were played out in a moral universe controlled by those supernatural forces. History, as the story of human things, inevitably reflected, however dimly, the divine plan. Yet to characterize Herodotus’ work as “theological historiography” goes too far.

However intellectually unsatisfying to us moderns, Herodotus’ capacious sense of history encompassed both the divine plan, patterning, and human freedom and action (in this, not unlike both epic and tragedy). This marriage in Herodotus of a sense of overarching pattern and passionate interest in the human thing— in the earthly city—can be illustrated by the theme of the rise and fall of states.

Greek history in general, and that of Herodotus in particular, was founded on the idea of the general instability of all things.

“The very notion of rise and fall,” Jacqueline de Romilly writes, “seems to be rooted in the inner sensibility of the Greeks. “ This insight was the source of what I find to be the Greeks’ most engaging and attractive intellectual characteristic, a grim and unrelenting realism about things, focused on such themes as pride and punishment, that united, as I have noted, tragedy and history around a common theme.

In this, at least, Herodotus did not part from tradition. He tried, according to Fornara, “to show that, within the larger design woven by fate, good fortune was unstable and intrinsically corrupting, whether for individuals or for city states.” It was Herodotus’ discovery that the study of human things, of human events, illustrated great moral themes. And such themes were part of his explanatory framework. Before his disastrous expedition against the Greeks, for example, the emperor Xerxes was warned, “You know my Lord, that

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amongst living creatures it is the great ones that God smites with his thunder, out of envy of their pride. The little ones do not vex him.

It is always the tall trees which are struck by lightning. It is God’s way to bring the lofty low” (book VII). Yet even this seminal moral principle did not exclude human responsibility or make less important human action. In the case of Xerxes, Romilly writes, “The pattern of rise and fall . . . had its warrant in God’s intervention, but the link is provided by the overconfidence and the imprudence of the King.” History’s domain was precisely that realm of linkage and the realm of contingency where human choices, mistakes, successes, and disasters served as signs and markers of metahistorical patterns and processes. (One might want to think through the great story of Croesus with this thought in mind.)

The same principle applied to states. The series of episodes, some legendary or even mythic in character, that progressively trace the nature of Eastern despotism and plot the rise and fall of the Persian Empire, suggests the deep patterning of the historical process along familiar lines of crime and retribution, rise and fall, hubris and nemesis. Even Athens, the ultimate victor and principal beneficiary of the Persian Wars, appears to have been an instrument of divine planning and an agent of divine will. In book VIII, for example, we are told of a storm in which the Persian fleet was battered and reduced in size, more equal to the Greek fleet. Herodotus writes, “All this was done by the god, that the Persian armament might be made equal with that of the Greeks . . .” In book VII Herodotus attributes the success of the Greeks in defeating the Persians to the Athenians and declares, “Greece was saved by the Athenians . . . It was the Athenians who— after the gods—drove back the Persian king.”

In my view, it is a misinterpretation of Herodotus and the unity of his histories to assume that in these passages he did not mean what he clearly stated: that Athens, in leading the defeat of the Persians, was doing the work of and enjoying the protection of the god(s). That this was not simply a man-

ner of speaking or a conventional patriotic bromide is, I think, demonstrated by the total structure of the histories from beginning to end, a structure that time and again reveals Herodotus’ ability to link the metahistorical and the world of immediate human action.

Neither individuals nor states are to be understood simply as robot-like instruments of the heavenly script or of the often obscure and rather ominous rules that governed time.

If universal rules—rise and fall, crime and

“Know thyself,” Herodotus admonishes time and again. retribution, pride and punishment—applied to all and if no individual or state could forever escape destiny, nonetheless there were fully human ways to live and to act in time.

“Know thyself,” Herodotus admonishes time and again. That is, know one’s place and that one is not a god, a theme of both epic and tragedy. Know that, whatever the gods may order, moderation, self-control, and selfrestraint are the necessary qualities of the good life. The great political theme of fall and decline, had a necessary countertheme: the rise of states. And for Herodotus, the most conspicuous examples of risen states in his time were the two very different Greek cities, Athens and Sparta. Their greatness, displayed in the Persian wars of the early fifth century, raised questions about the divine plan and fate, but also questions at the human level about the conditions of Greek success generally and of Athenian success in particular and whether that success might be perpetuated over time. Herodotus advanced a bold hypothesis: political success was related to the character or culture of a society. The particular genius of the city-state was its adherence to self-imposed law, in other words a certain conception of liberty. It was not climate that explained the dynamic quality of the Greek states aligned against Persia, nor riches, but law that defined a political culture within which liberty, collective self-discipline,

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Classic Lectures

and civic heroism could all prosper. To a question about the Greeks posed by Xerxes, Demaratus responds, “ . . . poverty is Greece’s inheritance from of old, but valor she won for herself by wisdom and the strength of the law . . .” (book VII). Romilly writes of Herodotus’ explanation of Greek success: “Early practical experience was turned into a discovery.” Virtuous citizens, informed by law, brought about the greatness of states and, moreover, the promise of stability and the possibility of staving off the decay and inevitable fall that states shared with all organisms. For states, as for individuals, there was then a realm of freedom, a realm of contingency where good cultural traits and sound constitutions potentially made a difference, perhaps assured the rise of states

Herodotus understood one big thing (yes, historians can be hedgehogs). and their longevity. Thus culture and constitutions, and the relations between them, became a major theme of Herodotus’ study.

It is fair criticism of Herodotus that he never fully integrated his levels of explanation, ranging from the metahistorical to the motivations and actions of states and individuals, into a satisfactory whole. This may inevitably be true of “theological history.” Especially if, as David Grene has argued, “there are two worlds of meaning that are constantly in Herodotus’ head. The one is that of human calculation, reason, cleverness, passion, happiness. There one knows what is happening and, more or less, who is the agent of cause. The other is the will of the Gods, or fate, or the intervention of daimons . . . And this power’s relation to man is bound up with a maddening relation between man’s reason and understanding and such ‘signs’ as the Divine has allowed us to have of its future or past intervention.”

With Grene’s analysis, we return to an ear-

lier theme. It is among the historian’s tasks to attempt to read these signs and to relate them to change over time. Yet, and this is the principal point of the lecture, Herodotus’ discovery that the great moral and religious themes that suffused his thinking could be linked intellectually to the patterns of human affairs and actions—to the processes of history—had, perhaps ironically, the effect of advancing the idea that human things could be explained in human terms and that tentative, if not ultimate, explanations could be offered about the way the world works.

At this juncture, Herodotus connects remarkably to a modern historical sensibility. Modern historians generally do not fall into the vocabulary of pride and fall, divine retribution and such. Yet a few, some of the best among them, continue to contemplate the great issue of historical necessity and contingency. Contingency is the historian’s natural field of play, but the idea that forces beyond direct human control and immediate understanding constrain human freedom and agency also informs at least one corner of the modern historical imagination. In this, at least, the modern historian may be far more comfortable with Herodotus—even with his outlandish tales—than with those sober founders of the modern profession who established the “science” of history.

I would like to conclude this lecture on the “invention” of history with a few summary remarks on Herodotus’ historical method. We have seen that there are some snares packed into the notion of Herodotus, Father of History, and the association of his fathering with the emergence of critical rationalism in a modernizing mode. While there is some truth in these generalizations, we shall badly misread Herodotus if we expect to find in him a fact-driven historian who understood history as a sequence of events linked in some linear fashion by cause and effect. Herodotus understood one big thing (yes, historians can be hedgehogs): There were great permanencies that governed universal history, and those permanent things

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appeared in human history in different times, places, and settings. To his credit, Herodotus thought it important to record and to explain those appearances, and thus he opened the realm of contingency—of human actions— to methodical study and to interpretation.

His selection of facts, then, was not an impartial exercise, a gathering of data in the manner of a modern social scientist. And, to be sure, Herodotus viewed the world and its history through the categories of a Greek mind. But Herodotus did not believe that history was just one damn thing after another. His history was driven by a worldview and by his theories and his understanding of the permanent things at play in the universe.

He selected episodes to relate and accepted events as true that conformed to his ideas of the patterning and processes of history, episodes and events that confirmed the boundaries of the world he knew, but also illustrated the transgressions of those boundaries.

As we think about the problem of reading this ancient historian, let’s conclude with an episode from book VIII, an episode that takes place well after the great victories over the Persians, victories won by the Athenian admiral, Themistocles: The Greeks, since they decided against pursuing the barbarians’ ships further . . . beleaguered Andros with the purpose of taking it. For the Andrians, the first of the islanders to be asked for money by Themistocles, had refused him. Themistocles put his proposition in these words: “We Athenians have come with two great gods to aid us, Persuasion and Necessity, and so you should render up your money to us.” But the Andrians answered this by saying, “. . . we have a most plentiful poverty of land and two useless gods, who never quit our island but love to dwell in it . . . Penury and Helplessness. These are the gods we Andrians possess, and so we will give no money.” Such was the answer of the Andrians, and they gave no money and were now besieged . . . Themistocles, whose greed for money was insatiable, kept sending threatening messages to other islands . . .

What are we to make of this? Through an earlier conversation at the Persian court, we have learned that the Greeks were a particularly formidable enemy because of their institutions and law-bound culture. We have also learned that from the beginning of their known history the Athenians have been prone to rashness, error, and mistakes. At the height of the Greek, and particularly Athenian, fortunes after the defeat of Persia, we now observe the corruption and the excesses of some of the victors who undertake a brutal little imperialist shakedown of the Andrians and other islanders. We consider the dictum that good fortune breeds pride, excess, and then downfall. Perhaps, as we observe the rapacious barbarity of some of the Athenians, we even question the distinction between democracy and despotism, civilization and barbarism, between us and the other. We wonder if the Athenian political culture, based on self-governance and self-discipline under law, will hold in the face of Athenian success. In thinking like this, we have entered the mental world of Herodotus, the Father of History.

Ray Kierstead, Richard F. Scholz Professor of History & Humanities, Emeritus, graduated from Bowdoin College and received his PhD in history from Northwestern University. In 1956, he received a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the University of Paris and there developed an interest in his principal scholarly field, early modern France. After some years of teaching at Yale University and the Catholic University of America, he joined the Reed faculty in 1978, retiring in 2000. During retirement he has continued to lecture in the humanities program.

These classic Hum lectures were selected by Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–]. For more in the series, see www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

Further Reading Jacqueline De Romilly, The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek Authors (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991) Charles W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)

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Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays by Graduates of Reed

Rescued from a Life of Crime Chuck Bigelow, Anthropology, 1967

Reed College saved me from a life of crime.

The thing is, I never would have gone to Reed if I hadn’t gotten into too much trouble in high school. Rebellious and bored, I pursued studies outside the curriculum, such as distilling a gallon of apple brandy — which got my friends roaring drunk — and blowing up a bit of the old school with homemade pyrotechnic—which lit up midnight like a lightning flash and woke the neighborhood for a mile around.

I went from honor roll to probation amid dire predictions of my dark future. My high school swore to inform the FBI of my misdeeds if ever I applied for honorable government service, say the CIA, and promised to put in a bad word if I applied to Ivy League colleges, so I applied to Reed by a principle of antisymmetry. Repulsed by my high school’s rigid, conservative authoritarianism, I wanted a college that was relaxed, liberal, and egalitarian. Smothered by my school’s hypocrisy and petty-mindedness, I wanted a college that promoted serious debate and broad inquiry.

I doubt that my high school bothered to warn Reed of my misdeeds, but if it did, Reed didn’t care, because one fine fall day I sat on a hard wooden bench in the Reed chapel listening to the first freshman humanities lecture. Charles Svitavsky intoned the first lines of the Odyssey: “Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polytropon . . .”

“Tell me, Muse, of the many-turned man . . .”

What could be cooler than this, I thought, words a poet spoke 3,000 years ago still echoing in English from Greek borrowings and coinages like android, polymer, tropism, and muse. If Odysseus was polytropon — “many-turned” — did that mean “muchtraveled” or “very tricky”? How did the epithets work, I wondered?

Reed demonstrated how modern forms come from ancient motifs, them-

selves much-traveled and many-turned. In Humanities 110 conference, when we talked about Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, weaving the shroud by day but unraveling it by night to avoid remarriage, a colorful Texan in the class opined, “Here’s Penelope waiting faithfully for her man, while ol’ Odysseus is out there shacking up with every broad he meets. It’s the old double standard.” We laughed, even Professor Richard Jones.

Like so much else I learned at Reed, it was smart, funny, and spontaneous, but also sincere, and it came from a combination of student and professor.

A few years ago, the movie Transformers thrilled teen audiences with giant, marauding robots and a sexy nymph, played by an actress aptly named Fox, who enthralls a scrambling young hero for two hours. It reminded me that for 3,000 years, the Odyssey has thrilled audiences and readers with man-eating Cyclops and a sexy nymph aptly named Calypso (“she who conceals”) who enthralls a wandering hero, Odysseus, as her love slave for seven years. As my Reed classmate might have said, “Hey, it’s the same ol’ story!”

When you learned something new at Reed, it wasn’t simply a fact, but a tool and an opportunity to discover more patterns and parallels. Because of this, I wasn’t bored at Reed, unlike in high school, so my delinquent tendencies were rechanneled.

I didn’t lose my taste for pranks, but I learned to enjoy the intellectual jest. For a course taught by James Webb, I rewrote Euripedes’ lurid tragedy, the Bacchae, as a news story from the National Enquirer: “Queen rips son to shreds with bare hands!

Crazed by mind drug made from grapes, carries home head as souvenir! Freaky feminine sex cult feared!” Okay, it was the sixties.

Without explicit grades, honor rolls, or

other status substitutes for real knowledge, Reed students delighted in devising unexpected ways to discover new things and to cast known things in new light. The physicist Richard Feynman has said the “pleasure of finding the thing out” was the theme of his intellectual life, and for me that was half of what Reed was about. The other half was the fun of sharing what you found out.

Many of the more interesting — or at least more entertaining — things were done outside of class, to amuse, puzzle, or astonish other students. When an offhand conversation in the library suggested that men’s and women’s graffiti were different, I collaborated with a female anthropology student to conduct cross-gender graffiti tours of the men’s and women’s rooms in the library. (The graffiti were different.)

“Grape jokes” were a group of riddle-puns that conflated unlike entities, one of which was always a grape or something related to grapes (wine, raisins, etc.). When they were briefly popular at Reed, I devised a kind of symbolic logic to analyze their humor as semantic distance between the entities contrasted with their phonological similarity. (Q: What’s purple and conquered the world? A: Alexander the Grape.) I circulated an informal paper about this among my classmates in linguistics (in a course taught

by David French ’39), but they complained that my analysis of humor wasn’t funny. I wondered why there was a gulf between the analytic and the sensible.

Turns out, the problem had been posed 24 centuries earlier by Democritus of Abdera, an early atomist known also for his sense of humor. In his dialogue between the intellect and the senses, the intellect says, “Ostensibly there is color, ostensibly sweetness, ostensibly bitterness; actually, only atoms and the void.” The senses reply, “Poor Intellect, how can you defeat us when

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Evolution of an alphabet. Red lines trace the ductus, or path of the writing tool; broken lines indicate the part of the ductus that is invisible because the tool is not in contact with the writing surface. The Latin alphabet has largely evolved from the interplay of the opposing tendencies between formal alphabets such as the Roman capitals, in which most of the ductus is invisible, and cursive alphabets, such as Chancery cursive, in which most of the ductus is visible. Calligraphy by Kris Holmes ’72, from Scientific American, August, 1983.

Photo of Chuck Bigelow, from 1967 Griffin.

from us you borrow your evidence?” (I found this fragment quoted in an essay by Erwin Schrödinger, the quantum theorist also known for his theory of color.) To follow a train of thought not taught in class, but perhaps for which class has prepared you, and unexpectedly to find yourself in the company of A-list thinkers like Democritus and Schrödinger that for me was almost as much fun as brewing bathtub brandy or blowing up part of the school, and a whole lot safer.

For me, Reed’s influence was more a matter of style than content. Not specific skills or facts, but rather a manner of thinking, an attitude toward learning, a taste for the recondite, a delight in a joke that illuminated a problem, a conviction that to learn the most interesting things, you had to teach yourself.

With one exception, the courses I took at Reed did not become the foundation of my career, though the ways professors approached their subjects often permeated how I later thought about things. It took me years to appreciate the truth of trenchant comments by Gail Kelly [’55], and the same for wry remarks by Howard Jolly.

The exceptional course was calligraphy, which I took in my senior year as a diver-

like primitive belief systems than scientific understanding. So next I studied visual perception with Gerald Murch at Portland State University, from whom I learned theories of feature detectors and spatial frequency channels in the visual system.

Though fascinating, those scientific theories did not offer practical guidance in matters of legibility and typographic aesthetics, or so I first thought.

Later, living and working in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I took a course on the physics of information at Harvard’s extension school. One evening, listening to a lecture on sampling theory, I realized how it corresponded to the theory of spatial frequency detection in the visual system, and how both theories explained some difficult technical and aesthetic problems of digitization of typographic letter forms. As a corollary, the same concepts explained some puzzles in the evolution of typographic forms.

I should emphasize that much of my insight was neither original nor subject to rigorous proof, but no one before had put the disparate pieces together in quite the same way to address technology, art, and cultural evolution. Donald Day ’68 (an old friend from Reed, who had also studied calligraphy with Reynolds) and I summarized

sion unrelated to my major, anthropology.

For Lloyd Reynolds, calligraphy was not a mere decorative craft but literacy itself, the basis of civilization. His enthusiasms ranged from the scribes of ancient Sumer, who invented writing thousands of years before the Greeks borrowed the alphabet from the Phoenicians, to the artistry of Chinese calligraphers such as the third-­century (CE) brush wizard Wang Xizhi, still admired today in China and Japan, to the medieval scholar-scribe Alcuin of York, who led the Carolingian Renaissance and helped devise and promulgate the ancestor of the basic Roman alphabetic script we use today.

Inspired by Reynolds, I later studied typography with Jack Stauffacher at the San Francisco Art Institute. Stauffacher, like Reynolds, was an enthusiast, but for the printed book, not the handwritten manuscript. From Jack, I learned of the great Venetian s­ cholar-printer Aldus Manutius and his typefaces, and of their designer, Fran­cesco Griffo of Bologna. Jack then asked me to be his teaching assistant, which led me deeper into a career in typography.

I admired Lloyd and Jack for their vision and enthusiasm, but I didn’t believe traditional explanations of calligraphic and typographic aesthetics, which seemed more

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Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays by Graduates of Reed

Bigelow

continued

these ideas in an article on digital typography for Scientific American. Published in 1983, it included calligraphic illustrations and diagrams by Kris ­Holmes ’72, who had studied calligraphy at Reed with Robert Palladino and Reynolds. All in all, a Reed production. As at Reed, we combined the pleasure of finding things out with the fun of sharing them.

Niels Bohr reputedly said, “Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.”

Despite that caution, our article ended with a prediction. Commercial development of digital typography was at the time focused on imitating traditional analog types in digital form, but we argued that the imitation was merely a phase of technological transitions. We saw it as a pattern: early printed books imitated manuscript books, early automobiles imitated carriages, and so on. We predicted that when digital typography matured, designers would create forms directly for the digital medium and digital type design would enter a creative and innovative phase. This view was not widely held in the typography industry, but it turns out that we erred mainly in underestimating the magnitude of what was to come. In 1983, there were fewer than a hundred digital fonts for computer printers, and none was original. Today, there are more than 150,000 fonts available, a large portion of which are original designs made in the digital era.

Yet, Kris Holmes and I weren’t satisfied merely to analyze such phenomena. We wanted to create forms to appeal to the senses as well as to the intellect (shades of Democritus). In 1982, we began the design of a new, original family of digital typefaces for laser printers and computer screens.

There were no guidebooks or manuals, little information, and few tools. Every aspect of the design had to be determined by guesswork and experiment. It was a good thing we had learned at Reed to think outside the box. Of course some of our ideas turned out to be right, others to be irrelevant, and some to be wrong, but we kept innovating.

Several pundits in the field scoffed at our efforts. They knew the present and believed the future would be like it, only more so. But, one who encouraged us was world-famous type designer Hermann Zapf,

with whom Kris and I had studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Zapf had been a pioneer designer of digital types for high-quality typesetting systems, and his encouragement helped us believe we were on the right track.

We named our new design “Lucida” from Latin lux (light) because it would be made out of light (laser, CRT, LCD, etc.) and was intended to be clear and rational. Although designed for computers, Lucida was not computeristic or nerdish in style. Mindful of Reynolds’ passionate insistence on the importance of handwritten forms, we

would have called that form the ch’i — the spirit-breath. Our approach, to seek the essentials of historical models and to adapt them to modern technology, runs throughout the Lucida extended family of typefaces.

As with other things we learned at Reed, the influence is not specific, but a manner, an attitude, a taste, a delight, a conviction.

We showed the first printed specimen of Lucida in 1984 at a London meeting of the Association Typographique Internationale. By the middle of the next year, we had expanded it into seriffed and sans-­serif families, including Roman, italic, and bold varia-

As with other things we learned at Reed, the influence is not specific, but a manner, an attitude, a taste, a delight, a conviction. looked back to Italian Renaissance handwriting and early Roman typefaces for our inspiration. We didn’t try to copy traditional forms directly; they wouldn’t have worked. Instead, we tried to distill their essential legibility and adapt them to the procrustean raster restrictions of digital displays and printers. We had to simplify, simplify, simplify, reducing forms to their bare essentials so they would still be readable and congenial in look, despite having been sliced and diced in a digital grid and rendered amid halos of extraneous noise.

The Lucida Roman lowercase is indirectly based on early-fifteenth-century handwriting developed by an Italian humanist and Florentine chancellor, Poggio Bracciolini.

The capitals are based on first-century Roman inscriptional capitals that Kris had learned to brush write from Palladino at Reed. Palladino in turn had learned them from Edward Catich, who had extensively researched the Trajan inscription in Rome and had given workshops at Reed.

Lucida Italic is based on the chancery cursive taught by Ludovico degli Arrighi in his little manual, the Operina of 1522.

This is the form of italic handwriting that Reynolds and Palladino taught at Reed. In the finished Lucida designs, those specific antecedents are nearly undetectable. The processes of simplification and technical adaptation to low-resolution imaging removed most historical details, but the essential form remained. Reynolds, using a term from traditional Chinese art theory,

tions. Major manufacturers of digital printing software and hardware did not, however, immediately adopt it. Although innovative in technology, the big manufacturers were imitative in typography. Lucida fonts were first released by a small laser printer manufacturer, the Imagen Corporation, and were initially available on only a few hundred computer systems. Despite initial indifference and eventual fierce competition from large firms, we persevered, and in time the industry caught up with our designs. Today, Lucida fonts are available on several hundred million computers, in a greatly expanded family of styles and weights.

Part of the pleasure of finding things out is anticipating what is to come. Prediction is difficult, but you can try to see what clouds, whether dark or light, loom on the horizon. We began our Lucida designs before personal printing and on-screen reading became ubiquitous, but now that most technical and aesthetic problems of digital typography have been solved, what’s next? Well, what are fonts for? Last summer at Rochester Institute of Technology, I helped organize a conference on the future of reading. We invited authors, scholars, vision scientists, graphic designers, publishers, computer scientists, and students to ask, answer, and argue over troubling questions. Will a new age of widespread, seductive multimedia and a deluge of shortform texts — text messaging and tweeting — cause a decline in literacy, especially in the deep, extended, immersive book reading

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from which earlier generations have derived crucial information and ideas? Will a few monster firms digitize all the world’s books and hold them commercially captive? Will digital reading — web browsing, searching, blogging, and tweeting — make us undiscriminating? Already, some pundits warn us that the brains of young people are being altered by the frenzied instant gratification of digital distractions-on-demand. O tempora, o m ­ ores! Well, I’m from the sixties, insofar as I can remember them, and we found out a little something about brain alteration back then, too. These latest fears remind me of the paranoiac science fiction movies of the fifties in which the minds of humans get taken over by space aliens. Today, however, the aliens aren’t from outer space, but are soulless corporations that purport to serve us online with cyber-augmentation of our mental and social lives.

And so what if digital media are making us illiterate? Is illiteracy really so bad? In the grand parade of human progress, illiterates invented toolmaking, agriculture, domestication of animals, weaving, pottery, wine making, poetry, and storytelling — all the arts and crafts of prehistory and much of what we think of as civilized arts today. Before the Odyssey was written down, Homer (or poets like him) entertained audiences by oral recital. Moreover, illiterates invented writing, or so it stands to reason. Who else could have done it?

(Actually, the archaeological record suggests that the invention of writing was a long, slow process taking many generations.)

Despite the virtues of literacy we all enjoy, the dark side of literacy has long been its association with the domination of some social groups by others (as observed by the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, whom I read at Reed). Within a society, literates tend to be wealthier and more powerful than illiterates, while between societies, the more literate have often dominated the less. Hence, can changes in literacy cause changes in allocation of power?

In eighteenth-century England, the literacy rate was roughly 50 percent or less for men and 25 percent or less for women (data vary by location, time period, and social class). In the nineteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution, England promulgated universal education to compete against rival nations, and the resultant

Holmes & Bigelow adapted their font Lucida Sans to display digital typography for Kiksht, a native language of the Pacific Northwest.

increase in literacy eventually caused a shift in power within English society. By 1900, literacy rates had risen above 90 percent for both men and women, and a consequence of the nearly fourfold increase in literacy for women was political agitation for women’s suffrage: having achieved literacy on a par with men, women demanded, and eventually won, parity in voting rights. That leads to another question: do increases in authorship rates cause social changes?

The vision scientist Denis Pelli and I studied the rate of increase in authorship since the invention of printing. Within a century there were major social, cultural, religious, and economic upheavals, including the Renaissance, the Reformation, mercantilism, and European imperialism.

It seems reasonable to surmise that printing, by vastly increasing the capacity of information channels, ignited or spurred these historical developments. In reaction, official censorship was established, often wielding the death penalty. That seems medieval, but of course it is still going on today in some countries.

Pelli and I observed that the number of authors of books published each year in Europe and America increased nearly tenfold every century until the twentyfirst century. But when we looked at the most recent decade of electronic media, including blogging, Facebook, Myspace,

Twitter, and YouTube, we found that the rate of authorship (depending on how one defines “author”) had increased tenfold each year. This huge increase in authors has been associated with social disruptions and conflicts, including political protests over elections in Iran; legal disputes over copyright, privacy rights, and cyberbullying; international security concerns over publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks; and reactionary imposition of electronic censorship in several countries.

It seems to me that societies can absorb gradual increases of information exchange without threat to established social institutions, but when societies acquire or adopt new technologies that transmit far more information than the channel capacity of established institutions, severe disruptions follow.

I like to think that our Lucida type designs helped solve a few technical and aesthetic problems in a time of transition in the technology of literacy, and that our pioneering efforts encouraged others to make further explorations, but we were only part of a bigger trend. Advances in digital typography over the past three decades laid the foundation for textual information exchange on a grander scale than previously imagined. Social networking, text messaging, book digitization, e-book proliferation, spam email, wikis — all are based on vastly SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine 47

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Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays by Graduates of Reed

continued

easier and speedier modes of text creation, transmission, and rendering.

My remarks may make it seem as if my Reed interests and later studies invariably led to substantial achievements, but that’s far from the truth. Although I have told of a few investigations and undertakings that turned out to have practical applications, I have left out many more that remain unfinished despite years of work and others that led nearly nowhere.

Despite my mentions of the Odyssey, my happiest time at Reed was spent reading myths that came not from ancient Greece, but from West Linn, Oregon, just south of Portland. In 1929–30, near the Willamette River, an elderly Native American woman, Victoria Howard, told a fabulous set of stories in her native language, Clackamas Chinook (or Kiksht, as she called it), to a young anthropologist named Melville Jacobs.

Howard told of a lost world, often comic, often tragic, and often just plain strange, not fitting into the Greek, Roman, or European canons of thought. Coyote trades assholes with Skunk and gets into trouble. A cross-dressing wife murders her husband without explanation; the blood drips onto his daughter sleeping on the bunk below.

Coyote goes on his own odyssey up the Columbia River, grapples with monstrosities, gets into trouble with girls, but eventually makes things right for the Indians who will soon come to the land. A young woman wishes on a star and finds a young man in bed with her the next morning.

Howard also narrated heartbreaking oral histories of the coming of white men (whom the Clackamas called “Bostons”) and the plagues that wiped out most of her people; how they died; how soldiers forced the survivors into concentration camps, where the old people wept.

Howard was probably Oregon’s finest narrator. Her stories are as enchanting and gripping as ancient Greek myths but earthier, unsmoothed by centuries of literary refinement, and more compelling and unsettling for their roughness. They are marvels of linguistic and narrative subtlety that no one will ever again appreciate fully, since her language is lost. Yet, despite her greatness, she remains nearly unknown, an obscure old woman who spoke instead of

wrote in a nearly incomprehensible, dying language in a culture destroyed by invading Euro-Americans. The same thing could have happened to our classical literature. Had the mighty Persian empire beaten the Greeks at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea, the stories of Homer might today be only obscure footnotes to the mythography of minor tribes, and the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides never written or known at all.

Tradition tells us that Homer, if he existed, was blind, so we may surmise that a scribe skilled in the new technology of the alphabet wrote down the Homeric epics as the bard dictated them. So it was with Howard and Jacobs: a gifted woman with an astonishing memory, telling the stories of her lost culture one last time, entrancing a dapper young New Yorker to write it all down in his field notebooks in a special phonetic alphabet. Howard died soon thereafter, and Jacobs spent the next quarter century editing, transcribing, and typing the texts until he published them in the late fifties.

I still read and marvel at these stories, in both English and ­Kiksht. Four decades after I first read them at Reed, they still fill me with an unquenchable sense of loss: for Mrs. Howard, who died unrecognized before I was born but whose spirit animates the stories; for Jacobs, whom I knew and admired for his indefatigable efforts to salvage the extant remnants of native literary cultures; for David French, who astutely recommended I study these texts at Reed; and for the late Dell Hymes ’50, eminent

Frank Cost

Bigelow

Typefaces play a central role in establishing identity, as the author demonstrates with two bags of chips.

linguistic anthropologist who generously helped me study and work on the texts for a project, still unfinished, to publish them in a new edition. I have to admit that, contrary to my youthful enthusiasm at Reed, I will never understand more than a fraction of the richness of these stories.

Chuck Bigelow ’67 studied typography at the San Francisco Art Institute, perceptual psychology at Portland State University, linguistics and information technology at Harvard Extension School, type design at Rochester Institute of Technology, and cinema at UCLA, where he received two Sloan fellowships and a Goldwyn award for screenplays about science. While a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellow and professor of digital typography at Stanford, he organized the first international conference on the art and technology of digital typography. As professor of graphic arts at RIT, he co-organized an international symposium on the future of reading.

This essay was adapted from Thinking Reed: Centennial Essays

By Reed Graduates, edited by Professors Roger Porter and Robert Reynolds, in which 33 alumni reflect on their careers as they look back at Reed and the intellectual community that helped shape their accomplishments.

REED COLLEGE CENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN “As members of Reed College’s centennial generation, we inherit a great tradition, and an even greater responsibility.”

—PRESID ENT COLIN D IVER

INQUIRY COMMUNITY INTEGRITY

Gifts and pledges to the Centennial Campaign • have added $104 million to the endowment to date; • have raised nearly $18 million in Annual Fund contributions toward our goal of $20 million.

The campaign runs through December 31, 2012.

Find out more at campaign.reed.edu.

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Reediana Books by Reedies

Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America

By Kaori O’Connor ’68 (Routledge, 2011)

If you happen to be wearing clothes right now, chances are you’re wearing Lycra. At least a small amount, perhaps woven into the laces of your shoes or the elastic band of your underwear. And if you’re not wearing any clothes as you read this, well . . . odds are the Dupont corporation is somehow involved in whatever it is you are doing.

From the bristles of your toothbrush to the folds of your shower curtain, the overlooked materials of the daily American existence are infused with textile technology largely developed by a single corporate entity. And if that doesn’t sufficiently raise your hackles, anthropologist Kaori O’Connor ’68 wants to take you on a trip to the mall to search for a pair of size 18 Lycra leggings.

Kaori, a University College London research fellow who investigates fashion as sociological phenomenon, looks at the lack of tight-fitting exercise gear for ample women and discovers a conspiracy of sorts in which manufacturers use product placement to shape the culture at large. Simultaneously, she presents multiple views of histories of the Dupont company and of Lycra, all the while explaining basic anthropological concepts with embedded terminology such as “cohort analysis” and “multi-sited ethnography.”

Reedies will find this approach refreshing, familiar, and distinctively Reed. By taking a “studying up” approach to decoding the wealthy networks of production and marketing, the author delivers a fun and fascinating account—on a subject that oddly affects us all—to the new mass-culture anthropology. Plus, there are pictures of Jane Fonda in legwarmers. —Mary O’Hara ’12

The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s

By Richard Wolin ’74 (Princeton University Press, 2010)

To many Americans, China is a quasi-totalitarian state turned economic juggernaut. But in the late 1960s, China was something different. For young idealists, Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution represented a utopian movement, powered by students and peasants—a life-affirming alternative to the sclerotic, corrupt USSR. Many leading French thinkers were even more credulous than their students. In The Wind from the East, historian Richard Wolin ’74 meticulously describes the influence of Maoism on France’s intellectuals in the runup to and aftermath of May 1968, when strikes by college students and 11 million workers nearly brought down de Gaulle’s government.

Richard treats Jean-Paul Sartre most sympathetically.

Sartre’s Marxist-tinged existentialism was eclipsed in the early 1960s by the structuralism of Louis Althusser, Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan, which shifted agency from people to the language they use. But when French students hit the streets in 1968, it was Sartre they looked to as an intellectual mentor, and for the next two years he affiliated himself with Maoist journals, joining demonstrations, and writing and testifying on behalf of anti-authoritarian causes.

Foucault was as much the engaged intellectual as Sartre.

After May 1968, he and his colleagues challenged France’s still-medieval penal system, drawing on the Maoist example (and America’s Black Panthers) to foment street-level action.

Foucault’s analyses of sexuality, though less beholden to Maoism, helped fuel the burgeoning gay rights movement.

Richard is unkinder to Philippe Sollers, founder of the avant-garde French journal Tel Quel, who appeared to hitch his ideological wagon to whichever leftist organization was in the ascendency. In 1974, Sollers, Barthes, and feminist scholar Julia Kristeva flew to China to see the Cultural Revolution for themselves. What they saw on their Chinese junket was carefully orchestrated, and their reports faithfully followed the Maoist playbook.

Not long afterward, those who had blithely worn Mao jackets and quoted his “Little Red Book” were chastened as the murderous zeal of Mao’s Red Guards came to light, followed by the unconscionable regime of Cambodian Communist Pol Pot. France’s public intellectuals relinquished revolutionary dreams in favor of human rights.

The Wind from the East devotes more ink than is necessary to its players’ theoretical sparring, but the author’s energy pulls the reader along, and he convincingly argues that Western-style Maoism made a positive transition into gay rights, women’s rights, and human rights that persists to this day.

—Angie Jabine ’79 SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine 49

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Reediana

domain through a critical revision of Michel Foucault’s investigation of ethics. He argues that Foucault’s approach is a productive point of departure but needs substantial revision to be of genuinely anthropological scope. James illustrates his program with two case studies: one of a Portuguese marquis and the other of a dual subject made up of the author and a millenarian prophetess. The result is a conceptual apparatus that is able to accommodate ethical pluralism and yield an account of the limits of ethical variation, providing a novel resolution of the problem of relativism that has haunted anthropological inquiry into ethics.

continued

Memoirs of the Phoenix: Shatterings

by Reece Harris ’55 (Outskirts Press, 2011). The myth of the phoenix has resonated down the ages from the priests of ancient Egypt to the settlers of Arizona. If the phoenix were to write its memoirs, it might wrestle with subjects such as how death preserves and enhances life; how the American Indian Swan-Woman wove the first basket; how the first poem rose up from Dawn; how problems of translation reveal secrets about the roots of language; and how geometry came to be.

Reed and Reedies are mentioned at least 23 times in The Portland Red Guide, the definitive account of the Rose City’s crimson history by provocateur Michael Munk ’56, now published in a second edition by Portland State University’s Ooligan Press.

(See Class Notes.)

Robert Mann ’60 has published two e-books on the Kindle: Managing your Anxiety: Regaining Control When You Feel Stressed, Helpless, and Alone and The Candy Butcher: A Gothic Tale. He is currently working on The Handbook of Fearlessness: Outgrowing Panic Attacks and Fears.

“The Evangeline,” a short story by Linera Lucas ’71, was published in the Boomtown anthology. The story is set during World War II and recounts the rescue at Dunkirk from the perspective of a woman boat captain and her female crew. Read more about Linera’s work at lineralucas.blogspot.com.

Susan Silas ’75 has published eyes wide shut (Horned Screamer Press, 2010), a portfolio of 24 archival ink jet prints reproduced in book form, which is part of an ongoing series found birds, 2000–present. The book includes two short pieces, “Found

Bird” and “Bird of Prey,” and is available at www.susansilas.com.

(See Class Notes.)

Bones Beneath Our Feet: A Historical Novel of Puget Sound by Michael Schein ’76 (Bennett & Hastings, 2011). A moving historical epic of the conquest of Puget Sound by the “Boston” tribe; it is lyrical fiction, deeply rooted in the people and events. The book resonates with tenderness and betrayal, misunderstanding and fear, greed and sacrifice—all the richness and grit of life.

Michael is also the author of Just Deceits: A Historical Courtroom Mystery (www.michaelschein.com).

James Freeman ’78 has published his 17th book, Irish Wake: In Loving Memory of Us All (PublishAmerica, 2011), a collection of 10 interwoven short stories. Royalties benefit students at Bucks County Community College, where James has taught ethics, creative writing, and composition for nearly 30 years.

Just Trust Me: Finding Truth in a World of Spin by Randy Kasten ’78 (Quest Books, 2011). Randy examines why deceptions occur—not only in advertising,

media, but also in social and business interactions—and suggests ways to detect them. He also provides strategies for surmounting the barriers to truth: our willingness to believe what we want to believe; the absence of accurate information; and the rise of the professional spinmaster.

Bob Levin ’79 is coeditor of Work Meets Life: Exploring the Integrative Study of Work in Living Systems (MIT Press, 2011).

The book is the result of seven years of cooperative effort between researchers at the University of Colorado and at Darwin College, University of Cambridge.

“The content and approach of the volume comes very directly from the research I started with my Reed thesis, and two of the contributed chapters specifically pick up where my thesis left off.” Bob cites his thesis adviser, Steve Arch [biology, 1972–] and Christine Mueller [history and humanities, 1973–2004] as guides and inspirations. Bob is director of the Center for the Integrative Study of Work at the University of Colorado. This is his fourth book.

An Anthropology of Ethics by James Faubion ’80 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), with a cover illustration by Vera Sideraki ’90 (see Class Notes). James conducts an empirical inquiry into the ethical

A Spanish translation by David Berrigan ’83 appeared in the magazine S/N New World Poetics. David translated The Sonnets, which were written by his father, Ted Berrigan.

Living with Koryak Traditions: Playing with Culture in Siberia (University of Nebraska Press, 2011) by Alex King ’91 examines the culture of Koryak people, who live on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Siberia.

The Koryaks have been in the middle of contradictory Soviet/Russian colonial policies that celebrate cultural difference across Russia yet seek to erase those differences.

For most Koryaks, tradition does not function simply as an identity marker, but also helps to maintain moral communities and support vulnerable youth. Alex also makes innovative arguments about theories of tradition and culture for anthropology. (See Class Notes.)

Jousting Armadillos & Other Equations: An Introduction to Algebra by Linus Rollman ’96 (Arbor School of Arts & Sciences, 2011). Linus wrote this nontraditional textbook to make algebra accessible to students who don’t intuitively gravitate toward math. He has been teaching math at the Arbor School in Tualatin, Oregon, for 11 years.

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In Memoriam The Maestro Herb Gladstone [music 1946–80]

By John Vergin ’78

I was in Prexy when I heard the news. That it saddened me was no surprise. But the sharpness of the feeling, the pang, was unexpected.

Herb Gladstone was gone; for me that meant the loss of a teacher, a mentor, a friend, and a living link to a deep and marvelous tradition.

When I came to Reed as a freshman in 1974, Herb was already a legend, the subject of endless anecdote. Tall, lanky-thin, with gray wavy hair, he walked with a gait sometimes shambling, sometimes energetic. His eyes, behind big glasses, were intelligent and given to humor. In dress he managed to be both natty and slightly disheveled. And the pipe, omnipresent, was always in mouth, in hand, or at its furthest remove, in pocket. The effect was thoroughly professorial.

His knowledge of music was vast, as was his grasp of other subjects, history in particular. It was imperative that one understand things in context, with perspective.

He decried rote learning of dates and facts.

“If you think history is irrelevant, you had better go back and think about it more.”

But his wide-ranging interests could be a classroom liability. Digression lurked at every turn. The original topic would reemerge in the fullness of time, and one was enlightened (and often amused) by the meandering route. Some students wanted, no doubt, a more laconic approach.

I, however, who learned by slow absorption, found Herb’s gentle prodding to be ideal. And curiously, the digressions often cued the memory for the key material.

In making music, the man was different.

He had energy. He had flair. He had a knack for bringing disparate forces together. He corralled, charmed, and pushed until the music sang. Music flowed out of him; joy and work side by side.

I had the good fortune to dine at his famous table. I recall delicately poached sole, accompanied by a beurre blanc sauce involving peeled grapes. To a young person waking to the possibilities of fine cooking, it was revelator y. And each course was served with its proper wine, expertly chosen, and poured with a generous hand.

In those days he drove a late-60s Cadillac Coupe de Ville which boasted the most capacious trunk hitherto devised by Detroit.

The trunk came in handy on Herb’s pilgrimages to San Francisco, when he would return laden with cases of fine wine.

In the fall of 1976, I took a course on Beethoven from Herb. It was a small class.

Betty Booher ’78 and Steve Engel ’77 were there, and a couple of others. Herb would arrive late, rushing slowly. We would arrange ourselves sparsely around the big table in Capehart, and wait in silence while Herb filled and lit his pipe; a moment sacrosanct.

I was on shaky ground scholastically that term, and Herb knew it. To hold my interest he assigned me the task of learning and performing a Beethoven piano sonata for the class. Yes, I still had to analyze, but he knew I loved to play, and his idea worked. His was the only class I was still attending by the end of that term.

Later, I decided to abandon the life academic. Herb’s recommendation had secured me the job as organist/choir director at All Saints Episcopal up the hill—the pay was slender, but sufficient for survival.

I knew Herb in his final years at Reed.

By his own admission, he was tired. He had fought a damn good fight for over three decades. And though he still enjoyed evenings with his Reed poker cronies (the “Little Brothers”), many of the younger faculty, while aware of the legend, did not know the man himself.

Herbert Ballantine Gladstone was born in 1915, in Albany, New York, an only child. Three years later the family moved

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In Memoriam

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to Nutley, New Jersey. At six or seven he took piano instruction from Miss Conklin, who complained of his fidgeting. By high school he was acquainted with the guitar and saxophone and formed a dance band, The Starlight Serenaders. He enjoyed athletics, especially tennis, and worked at the local tennis club for playing privileges. Colgate took him as an undergraduate, granting him a degree in literature in 1937. College friends introduced him to a wider scope of classical music. He heard Kirsten Flagstad sing Wagner in New York, beginning a lifelong love of the composer.

After Colgate, he worked for two years for Standard Oil of New Jersey as an office flunky. Salary: “low.” In 1939 he entered Princeton as a graduate student, again in literature, but soon switched to music. He saw possibilities. He studied under Roger Sessions, roomed with composer Milton Babbitt, and palled around with a zany physicist named Richard Feynman.

Herb earned his MFA in 1942. His thesis on the motets of Orlando di Lasso came long before the early-music revival.

Princeton kept him on as a Fellow; he met Leigh Wilson, a student at nearby Westminster Choir College. They were married in 1945. “He got me at 18,” she said. They came to Reed the next year.

Prior to Herb’s arrival in 1946, Reed had no music department. Classes were given more by chance than design. Herb developed a curriculum based on the one he knew from Princeton: appreciation, history, harmony, analysis, composition.

For 14 years, he was the department. He taught all academic courses, supervised theses, led an orchestra, a chorus, and several small ensembles.

In the spring of 1947, students approached him with the notion of staging a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Their request had precedent. During the thirties and forties, students had devised a vaudeville performance dubbed The Spring Crisis that reflected their anxiety over junior quals, senior theses, and April in general. Something more grand was now wanted. Herb had never done G & S, but approached an equally fresh faculty member, Carl Johnson [drama 1947–51], and they agreed to plunge in.

Herb could not have known that this was the tip of a personal iceberg; that he

would be doing G & S for the next two decades at Reed and beyond. But he found immediately that the material suited him. Gilbert’s dry sardonic wit, unique play of language, crunching ironic commentary on all strata of society; all this he enjoyed immensely. And Sullivan’s music, though often derivative, was very skillful; at its best, glorious; at its worst, well, still pretty good.

Both students and faculty were involved from the start. Professor Bill Alderson [English 1943–64] was prominent in the first production, The Pirates of Penzance, as the sergeant of police. Herb recalled that

purchase of Reed’s first harpsichord—a double-manual Neupert from Germany— which was loaned extensively to Portland musicians with the proviso that “Courtesy of Reed College” appear in the program.

World-class musicians (such as Marian Anderson and Pete Seeger) performed on campus. Herb served on the boards of various Portland music organizations. Suddenly Reed’s semi-permeable membrane was a bit more open with the give-and-take of musical good will.

The effect on campus was salutary.

Music became a means for students and

Herb was a true Reed type: smart, independent, talented, quirky. He taught music because he loved it.

Alderson led a reprise of the policemen’s chorus, sung entirely in Latin, to the noisy appreciation of the Reed audience.

So it was Gilbert and Sullivan every spring. In December the annual Christmas concert was held in a chapel bedecked with boughs and replete with candle-bearing acolytes. These latter were usually offspring of the faculty, including Herb’s and Leigh’s young boys, Bruce and Duncan. The remainder of the year was given to Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, and Mahler, to give a short list.

Early in Herb’s tenure he instigated a monthly performance venue called Sound Experiments. These events, often presented in the old student union (before a blazing fireplace) were wildly eclectic in nature.

The first was a jazz performance: from then on, it was soup to nuts. Students, faculty, and guests performed in a setting designed to encourage innovation. Student compositions were performed, sometimes overseen by Herb, sometimes not.

Following World War II, Reed’s townand-gown relationship with Portland grew somewhat strained. President Peter Odegard [1945–48] hoped the music program would help to strengthen friendly bonds with the community. Herb’s open nature, persuasiveness, and sheer love of music did just that. He cajoled Portland Symphony players onto campus to perform and instruct. Local musicians participated in the Gilbert and Sullivan productions, and comprised the bulk of the swelling audiences. Herb oversaw the

faculty to collaborate on projects that were both work and play. Herb felt strongly that Reed needed this. He was a frank admirer of the students’ academic self-reliance, their intellectual prowess. Yet he saw a role for music to teach social responsibility and help students develop loyalty to something beyond themselves.

It must have been exciting to father a department; and a luxury perhaps, in being the department. But over time, Herb began to chafe at the limitations. And he felt frustrated by Reed’s odd pose of reticence towards the performing arts.

Help began to arrive in the 1960s: James Kurtz [1961–66], Mark DeVoto [1964–68], Robert Crowley [1969–70], and Leila Birnbaum Falk [1969–2009].

Leila and Herb were the mainstays of the department for many years. She found Herb to be a most congenial colleague. In the seventies, Doug Leedy [1973–76] and Phil Kelsey [1977–79] pitched in until David Schiff [1980–] stepped up to the podium after Herb retired.

Back in 1953, Herb hired gifted pianist Fred Rothchild [applied music 1953–78], to run the applied music program. Until then, Herb had performed that task himself. Fred would be given faculty status in 1968, and though he did not teach academic courses, his presence increased the scope of music at Reed; he was a strong figure on campus until his retirement in 1978.

Reed’s Collegium Musicum, founded by professor John Hancock [chem 1955– 89] and Virginia Oglesby Hancock ’62

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[music 1991–], gave its first concert in 1967. Though not part of the department, the Collegium’s success demonstrated the need for more music on campus. (Herb had tagged Virginia as among his most capable students. She would later return to Reed as a professor in music.)

In the Reed archives is an undated letter from Herb to Paul Bragdon [president 1971–88], five pages, single-spaced, that I would place circa 1973. Even with the situation improved, Herb insisted that Reed do more for the performing arts.

Academically, Reed “need make no apologies” for its musical offerings, he said, but lagged behind in terms of size of faculty and physical resources. Herb cited five colleges comparable to Reed, Swarthmore and Pomona among them, whose music faculty ranged from five to eight. Reed had two, sometimes two-and-a-half. “The discrepancy,” he wrote, “is embarrassing.”

Causing further distress was the loss of Botsford Hall, an old war surplus building installed shortly after World War II. Though not a true theatre, it did have a proscenium stage, wing space, a workshop, and dressing rooms. It could seat around 700. It had been the home of the increasingly popular G & S productions for a decade. Unfortunately, its roof was severely damaged during the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, and Botsford was torn down. That was the end of large-scale productions at Reed. Botsford’s replacement— the theatre that was constructed over the stream in the canyon in 1972, Herb declared “useless.” He had wanted Reed to build a real theatre, of ample size, containing a proper stage and orchestra pit.

Herb also urged Bragdon to allocate money for the restoration of the chapel organ. Installed in 1916, and employed in performances such as Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, the instrument had fallen into advanced decrepitude. I was among the last students to practice on it, and sang in Herb’s performance of Mozart’s Mass in C, when the concert came to a shuddering halt, the organ having developed dyspepsia. It had to be turned off, then on again—twice— before recovering sufficiently to continue.

Alas, funds were not forthcoming, and the organ was removed, only the non-speaking façade pipes remaining.

Herb concluded, “In our philosophy of music as a part of the liberal arts, the curric-

Left, Fred White ’50 and Leigh Gladstone perform in The Mikado, a Gilbert & Sullivan production in Botsford Hall in spring 1948. Right, Gladstone with students, 1950.

ulum is central, and performance is a necessary, and hopefully a beautiful adjunct. The two should be integrated, and one should illuminate the other.” Then finally, “But dammit, why must we be so small!”

Herb, and others after him, kept the wheel squeaking. The department grew.

The faculty was increased to three, and recently to four. Enrollment in applied music is strong. And at long last, a bona fide performing arts complex (first proposed

In retirement, Herb enjoyed a happy new marriage, travel, winters spent in southern California, cooking, wine collecting, and tennis. Helene, Herb’s second wife, died in 2003. He stayed active and sharp well into his nineties. His memory was remarkable, and he left an impressive oral history for the Reed archives.

Herb loved Reed. He was a true Reed type: smart, independent, talented, quirky.

He taught music because he loved music.

Herb kept the wheel squeaking. His vision of a performing arts complex is now taking shape on the west lawn. in 1961) is about to rise on the west lawn, (See “Rhapsody in Brick,” Reed, June 2011).

In 1959, after a healthy decade at Reed, Herb’s G & S ambitions grew. He formed, with the help of E.B. MacNaughton [president 1948–52], and Ernest Bonyhadi ’48, the New Savoy Company. The New Savoy performed an ambitious repertory (e.g.

Pirates on Thursday, Mikado on Friday, Pinafore on Saturday) for two seasons at the Civic Auditorium, then in the wonderful old Oriental Theatre on SE Grand Avenue for another three. For choreographer, Herb hired a bright, energetic, talented young PSU graduate named Judy Massee [dance 1968–98] who would become the leading light for dance at Reed, as Herb had been for music. She loved working with Herb.

“He was a taskmaster in rehearsals,” she says.

Things had to be right. But he never withheld praise. He worked hard and had fun, and expected the same from cast and crew.

Myself, I came ‘round in full ellipse to teach voice as a part-time staff member of the Reed music department. My students enjoy the fact that I teach at the school I dropped out of. I have a life in music, in part because people like Herb showed me I could.

Some years ago while walking across campus, I was passing by the then-stillivied Eliot Hall and fell into conversation with a woman who was clearly lingering and reminiscing. She had been a student in the fifties and we compared the inevitable notes of then versus now. “What of Herb Gladstone?” she asked. “Retired,” I replied.

She had studied under Herb and had been in many a concert in the chapel. We stood gazing up at the tall arched windows. She smiled quietly. “Those were good times,” she said. “Those were very good times.”

Singer, musician, and composer John Vergin ’78 teaches voice at Reed and was recently profiled in the magazine. (See “Active Voice,” June 2011.)

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Brunhilde Kaufer Liebes ’35 March 11, 2011, in Novato, California.

“Books were always important,” Brunhilde once told an interviewer. As a girl, she often visited the Belmont library in southeast Portland. “I read books from one end to the other. I said, ‘books are my best friends,’ because people sometimes changed.” Her love of books led her to Reed, inspired her to start a bookstore, and prompted her to volunteer at the library in Mill Valley, California, even in her 90s. Brunhilde earned her BA in sociology and anthropology, writing her thesis with Alexander Goldenweiser [sociology 1933–39]. She had strong memories of the political tenor of the time, when Reedites brought food and supplies to the Portland dockyards to support the longshoremen in the great West Coast waterfront strike, and hanged Adolf Hitler in effigy. (“We knew he was a horrible man.”) After graduation, she worked for the alumni association and typed the manuscript for Goldenweiser’s textbook Anthropology: An Introduction to Primitive Culture. She did graduate work at the University of Hawaii, where she met Richard Liebes; they married in 1939, and were together until his death in 2006. Brunhilde was known as “a pillar of Mill Valley culture”; she lived in the city for over 50 years. She enjoyed Israeli folk dancing; hiking, camping, and backpacking; and was active with the Sierra and Alpine clubs. Survivors include two sons, three grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren.

Beatrice E. Radding Matin ’35 January 17, 2011, in Portland.

Beatrice attended Reed for one year. She was a licensed real estate broker, and shared a realty business with (David) Danny Matin, whom she married in 1945. She served on the Women’s Council of Realtors, including a stint as president, and was director of the Oregon Association of Realtors. In 1989, the Portland Board of Realtors named her realtor of the year. Beatrice was also a volunteer for the Chamber Music Society of Oregon. She had one son.

Victoria Frances Summers ’35 March 31, 2011, in Sun City, Arizona.

Vickie earned a BA in mathematics from Reed and an MA in hygiene and physical education from Wellesley College. She taught high school mathematics for Department of Defense overseas dependent schools in the Philippines, Okinawa, Germany, Spain, and Turkey, and traveled in 40 countries before retiring in 1980.

Mary Ursula Coleman ’37 March 16, 2011, in Rowlett, Texas.

Mary’s father, Matthew J. Coleman Sr.’21, attended classes at Reed as a day-dodger until the influenza epidemic of 1918 hit Portland. To

Mary Coleman ’37 admires chiselwork at her 50th class reunion.

Vickie Summers ’35 taught math and traveled overseas.

contain the spread of the disease, college officials prohibited day-dodgers from coming onto campus. This interruption in Matthew’s college career was sufficient to terminate it. However, he built a home near Reed, hoping that his children would attend the college. Mary and her sister and brother, Ellen Coleman Simpson Gruetter ’36 and Matthew J, Coleman Jr. ’39, fulfilled his dream. Mary had a passion for art.

She began drawing at age 6 and went to Saturday morning art classes at the Portland Art Museum. At Washington High School, she took all the art classes she could squeeze in, then attended the Museum Art School, studying drawing and painting, watercolor and ink, and pottery, in a combined program with Reed. She studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69] and did a painting for her thesis, An Easel Painting: A Portrait Study of My Sister. Mary was on student council and also chaired the committee that planned Friday night dances in commons, which she thoroughly enjoyed. After graduation, she worked for the National Youth Administration and then married Harold L. Tivey ’38. They had two daughters and a son. Harold served in World War II and later became a radiologist. Mary and Harold divorced in 1959, and Mary supported herself by teaching art, primarily at Cleveland High School; she retired in 1976. “I awoke on the first morning of retirement and said to myself, ‘Ah, what do you want to do? Really want to do?’

And that is when I started drawing and painting again.” She designated one bedroom of her apartment as a studio and painted in oil and

watercolor, which she exhibited in numerous shows. Mary painted and danced until pain from arthritis prevented her from doing so. At age 80, she performed a Viennese Waltz Gold Level III at the Portland Rose Showcase and Medal Ball. Mary said that her interest in the subjects she studied at Reed never waned. She read Scientific American and Science News Weekly as a pastime. “Reed was, has been, and continues to be the most exciting place for the human brain. It built my life.”

Paul Metz ’37

February 2, 2011, at home in Portland.

Paul was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved with his family to Por tland in the 1920s. He studied biology and chemistry at Reed and went on to earn an MD from the University of Oregon Me d ic a l S cho ol i n 1939. He did his residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland, St. Mary’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. During World War II, he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Europe. He began his private medical practice in Portland in 1950 and was a surgeon for 42 years at Physicians and Surgeons and Holladay Park hospitals. In retirement, Paul did research in infectious disease at Providence Portland Medical Center. He reported that the work he accomplished reminded him of being back at Reed.

“A new lease on life expresses my feelings too mildly.” Paul was a valuable member of the research lab team and coauthored several papers, finally retiring from medical research at age 92. Paul and Lorraine Nelson were marr ied for 53 years. Sur vivors include Lorraine, sons Steven J. Metz ’72 and Michael S. Metz ’80, a grandson, and two great-granddaughters.

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Doris Louise Bailey Murphy ’38 March 21, 2011, in Santa Rosa, California

At 101, after a full life as a community activist and social worker, Doris was known as the sweetheart of Occidental, California.

Friends and colleagues adored her, describing her as elegant, literate, independent, f lirtatious, cranky, compassionate, and fully dedicated to the people and causes she supported. She grew up in Portland and began her college education at the University of Arizona, Tucson. It was a poor fit. “I played, joined a sorority, did all that stuff. Didn’t like it, but did it,” she said. She returned to Portland and fell in with literary and political types, many of whom attended Reed. During the next year, she employed close friend Jack Huggins ’36 and his brother, Roy, to help with her literary magazine, The Dilettante, and started an art colony on Portland’s waterfront. She then enrolled at Reed, spending the first three months on academic probation. After taking a literature course from Barry Cerf [English 1921–48], she was hooked. “I went full circle, from proper sorority life to writing a paper on prostitution and interest in social work, even while my interest in literature and arts never left me.” Inspired by Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69], Victor Chittick [English 1921–48], and Alexander Goldenweiser [sociology 1933–39], she completed requirements for a BA in sociology and then left for San Francisco to be near Jack, who was at UC Berkeley, and to get a job in social work; none were available in Portland at the time. “It was a small town then. A lot of people knew about Reed, and Reed was thought of as being a very politically liberal college, which it was, quite frankly.”

In San Francisco, she worked for the Traveler’s Aid Society, helping runaways, wives fleeing abusive husbands, and others. She lived in an apartment on Nob Hill, and spent time with a community of writers and artists. The group often met at the Iron Pot restaurant in San Francisco, where she met a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World and rising leader of the American Federation of Labor, Joe Murphy. “I knew I’d found the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with.” In 1942, she got a job with the American Red Cross, a position she held for 13 years. Doris and Joe married in 1948 and spent time on their rural property near Occidental. Ten years later, union violence in San Francisco prompted them to seek the safety and seclusion of the countryside.

Joe created a nursery on the land and raised rhododendrons, while Doris took classes at

Mary Evers ’39 (far left, front row) on Campus Day, October 10, 1935; professors Marcus O’Day [physics 1926–45] and A.A. Knowlton [physics 1915–48] stand far right (Knowlton in boots) in the second row. Professor Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69] stands cross-armed second row center, with college nurse Evelyn Cathey to his left.

UC Berkeley, earned an MSW in social work and public health, and became a psychiatric social worker. (She attempted to retire at 65, but worked as a therapist until age 90.) After Joe’s death in 1987, Doris created the Joseph A. Murphy Center for Labor Education and Social Action—a nonprofit devoted to labor education. She formed the Occidental Community Council and also created the Sonoma County Council for Community Services to provide senior meals, rides, and health-care programs. Following a conversation with a choir member about the lack of performance space in Occidental, she conceived of the Occidental Center for the Arts and led fundraising efforts to build it—her 100th birthday was celebrated at the newly opened center. In addition, Doris wrote for and helped edit the Occidental newsletter The Village Quest, and wrote a column in Russian River Monthly. She hosted fundraisers for the Occidental Health Center and the Peace and Justice Center.

In 2006, she published Love and Labor, a memoir of her extraordinary life. The book was praised for its energy and beauty and Doris’ evident love for life and the written word. “Reed very definitely directed my life,” she said. “Had I not gone to Reed and become close friends with all these really great people, professors and students, my life would have been very mundane. As it was, Reed influenced my thinking tremendously, about politics and the world. It also gave me this great education, and things I never would have gotten in a university. It’s hard work going to Reed. Any of us who have been there know that.” Survivors include her two nieces.

Marjorie Helen Barnard ’39 February 28, 2011, in San Francisco, California.

Marjorie earned a BA in psychology from Reed, and got a job in the civil personnel division of the War Department.

She worked as a manager and teacher in the General Ser vices Administration in San Francisco for 31 years.

When her retirement began in 1973, she traveled the world, visiting Asia, Africa, and Europe, and celebrating her Swedish heritage with trips to Scandinavia. The people, cultures, animals, and plants that she encountered on her journeys fascinated her. She related her discoveries through her delightful stories and an amazing collection of memorabilia. Marjorie combined interests in art history and American Sign Language to become a museum docent, conducting tours for the hearing-impaired at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She loved opera, and not only held season tickets for the San Francisco Opera, but also scheduled her travels to coincide with operatic performances. Survivors include her nephew and niece, children of her brother Robert C. Barnard ’35.

Mary Jane Davidson Evers ’39 February 21, 2010, in Neptune, New Jersey.

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father was reassigned to duty in New Jersey.

She enrolled in Douglas College for Women, now part of Rutgers University, and completed a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1939; she later earned an MEd from Rutgers. In 1940, she married James Evers; they settled at the Jersey Shore and raised five daughters, Sally, Barbara, Helen, Susan, and Nancy, and a son, William. News of Mary’s death came from William. “She always had a warm spot for her time there,” he wrote. Daughter Helen remarked: “I remember her telling me that in a very happy life, her time at Reed was among her happiest memories. She loved the relative freedom she enjoyed there, and the long talks and sharing ideas with intelligent male and female friends.

She also mentioned having a class with a professor she greatly admired, Barry Cerf [English 1921–48]. And she was always so proud of the reputation for intellectual rigor that Reed has been associated with.” After raising her children, Mary taught for 20 years in the Neptune Township public school system. She was a community volunteer, who was active in many organizations, including the PTA and the MediCenter, and she also served on the altar guild of Trinity Episcopal Church in Asbury Park. “Positive and down-to-earth, intelligent and always caring, Mary Jane has been our closest friend, our anchor, our balance, and our delight. She will be greatly missed and impossible to forget.”

Survivors include four children, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Nancy, predeceased her.

three daughters. Evan was Madras’ only doctor for much of his early career and often had to drive as far as Prineville and Bend to see his patients. He made house calls throughout Jefferson County, interrupted his personal time to assist in crises, and delivered a great number of babies. Tony Ahern, brother of Daniel J. Ahern ’82, writing for the Madras Pioneer, described Evan’s role in his own family, where he served as a lifesaver. “He plays a key role in so many family stories that you can compare him to Jimmy Stewart in the 1950s—very comforting, incredibly busy, and damned good. The magnificence rests in the collection. The impact of one man on so many lives and families within our hometown is staggeringly impressive.”

Evan and his family spent his days off skiing at Mt. Bachelor or hiking in the mountains.

Evan also liked ice-skating, swimming, biking, rafting, wildflowers, books, music, photography, and huckleberry pie. In his later years, he walked daily, using a modified ski pole for a walking stick. Survivors include five children, three grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. His daughter, Mary Ann, preceded him in death. “Dad always had fond memories of his years at Reed, especially the adventures with the outdoor club on Mt. Hood. He formed a lifelong friendship with Marsh Cronyn ’40 [chemistry 1952–89] based on their outdoor adventures,” David told us. Evan’s brother and sisterin-law were Lloyd Thomas ’47 (see Pending) and Mary Lou Williams Thomas ’47.

He also did freelance scriptwriting for public radio, and, in retirement, volunteered as a writer and editor and in public relations. Bob and Margaret built a home in Portland’s west hills, where they lived for 50 years. Bob hunted chukars with his Brittany Spaniels; led tours for the local Alfa Romeo car club; and traveled with Margaret throughout Oregon, the U.S., and Europe. Said Jim, “Dad was a tough fellow, who survived and thrived for more than 10 years after he was told he had 6 months to live with asbestos-induced lung cancer. Good to have ancestors like that.”

Peggy Virginia Keilus ’42

March 24, 2011, in New York, New York, from cancer.

Peggy was born in Portland and attended Lincoln High School. She spent a year at Reed, which she would later identify as a highpoint in her life. She joined the navy during World War II, and was stationed in New York, where she worked as a ham radio operator and learned Morse code. Afterwards she remained in New York and, as was common in those times, studied to be a secretary rather than continue her formal education. She worked for Pinkerton’s New York Racing Security Service and the Brotherhood Synagogue. Peggy also attended the theatre and wrote poetry.

Ruth Cahill ’43 and Esther Dorles Lewis ’42 in 2004.

Ruth Mary Cahill ’43 March 23, 2011, in Portland.

Bob McGill ’40 on his 90th birthday at Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Country doc Evan Thomas ’39 and wife Dorothy in 1954.

James Robert McGill ’40

Evan Watson Thomas ’39

Bob grew up in Portland, where he attended Grant High School and read his way through the public library. He studied at Reed for a year and earned a BA in English in the honors program at the University of Oregon in 1946.

There he met another voracious reader, Margaret DeCou, whom he married in 1942. They were married for 64 years and raised a son, Jim McGill ’70, and daughter, Margaret. Bob worked in media for 37 years. He was a scriptwriter for KGW radio, an assistant manager for the Oregonian, and an executive for KOIN TV. Bob enjoyed two decades as an adjunct instructor in broadcasting at Lewis & Clark College.

March 18, 2011, in Madras, Oregon.

Evan was born in Portland to Welsh immigrants and attended Grant High School. He earned a BA from Reed in biology and an MD from the University of Oregon. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in India, where he treated between 70 and 100 patients a day while stationed at the Lido Road Staging Area. After the war, he set up a practice in Madras, Oregon, as a family doctor and surgeon. He met Dorothy E. Michael there; they married in 1948 and raised six children—three sons, including David R. Thomas ’81, and

March 22, 2011, in Portland.

The youngest of three sisters to graduate from Reed, following Kathleen Cahill Dougall ’37 and Doris Cahill Litchford ’40, Ruth earned her BA in biology from Reed and an MS from the University of Rochester. During World War II, she served in the Red Cross in England and Scotland, an experience that changed her focus “from fruit flies to people.” She returned to Oregon to became a social worker in Baker and Multnomah counties, and later served as an administrator in the state department of social services. She was proud of her role in the state foster care system, where she helped children achieve permanent adoption. Although Ruth lived most of her life in the northeast Portland home in which she was born, she enjoyed travel to faraway places—several times to Africa, and once on the mail boat to the Aleutian Islands.

Ruth also was active in Reed’s Foster-Scholz

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Club. Her devotion to calligraphy, learned from Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69], appeared in Christmas cards sent to her friends.

Each card included a holiday poem she had composed and lettered. For the last six years of her life, longtime friend Esther Dorles Lewis ’42 managed her care. Ruth had two nieces and nephews, including Doris’ son, George Litchford of Albany, New York, who was a regular visitor and was Ether’s back-up for Ruth’s care.

We thank Esther for her help with this piece.

Ruth Mitsuko Nishino Penfold ’43

July 23, 2009, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, from complications related to Parkinson’s disease.

Ruth was a junior at Reed in December 1941, when she and her family, along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans, were banished to internment camps. Before she left, she ent r u ste d her mother’s precious ikebana tools to the Reed library. (Ruth, Gus Tanaka ’45, and Hattie Katawara Colton ’43, were featured in the article “On the Home Front” in Reed, November 1999.) After the war, Ruth married a fellow internee from the Minidoka camp in Idaho, and moved to Canada, where she worked as a legal secretary. She took pleasure in opera, theatre, bonsai, gardening, cooking, and baking. Ruth was a member of the Hamilton Ikenobo Ikebana Society for many years, and was a board member of the Women’s Institute of Ontario and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. She also enjoyed family camping and travel with husband Frank Penfold. In 1985, she earned a BA in sociology and fine arts from Brock University and was honored at the ceremony as the year’s oldest graduate. Survivors include a daughter, a son, and two grandchildren. Thanks to Gus Tanaka ’45 for his help with this piece.

Hulbert Elmer Sipple ’43 February 21, 2011, in Los Angeles, California.

Bert earned a BA in chemistry from Reed and became a research chemist and petroleum engineer for the Shell Chemical Company. He worked initially in the Bay Area with army ordinance, and eventually assumed responsibility for product development and petrochemicals in 11 western states. In 1952, he married Mary Retherford; that same year he studied lubrication engineering at MIT. Bert retired in 1982 after 40 years with Shell. In retirement,

he and Mary led an active life in Long Beach and in their numerous travels. He pursued interests in skiing, golf, fishing, biking, piano, photography, ham radio, candle making, and remote-controlled airplanes. A voracious reader, he approached life with enthusiasm and a trademark joie de vivre. Survivors include Mary, a son, a daughter, and three grandchildren.

Eleanor Patricia Beck ’44 March 22, 2011, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.

Patricia grew up in Seattle and came to Reed, where she became the first woman student body president. She later cited Sally Hovey Wriggins ’44, Victor L.O. Chittick [English 1921–48], and Edna W hitman Chittick [music 1931–39] as major influences. “It was a marvelous experience to participate in an intellectual community. I think it must have been Reed’s education that taught me to ask questions about anything and everything, and it was a splendid introduction to the landscapes and culture of Portland and Oregon.” After earning her BA in history, Patricia received a scholarship to Stanford University, but the program’s lack of intellectual rigor disenchanted her. She quit and got a job as a copy editor at Time-Life, first in New York and later in London, then moved to Ceylon [Sri Lanka] to be a nursemaid for British friends. She contracted polio, but recovered the use of her limbs thanks to excellent nursing. Following that, she got a job on the Ceylon Observer, an English-language newspaper, and traveled extensively in the East before returning to England. She held a brief position with the Press Association/Reuters and then set up her own public relations and printing company with fellow Reuters employee Stanley Clark. In 1958, she became a British citizen, citing her abhorrence for the violence and for the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. among her reasons for doing so. At age 50, Patricia enrolled at agricultural college and worked 10 years on farms in England and Scotland. She then became a librarian at St. Leonard’s boarding school in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Among her many pursuits in retirement, she learned about the stars and birds and mammals, and repaired the gaps in stonewalls near her home that were made by sheep and cows.

Ray Denning March ’44 May 1, 2003, in Cottonwood, Arizona.

Ray attended Reed for three years and joined the army in 1942. Nearly 50 years passed before he reconnected with the college and inquired about his classmates. “My three years at Reed are a constant source of fond memories,” he wrote. Ray’s wife Ruth died in 2002.

John C. McCarthy AMP ’44 January 9, 2011, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

John attended Reed in 1943 in the premeteorology program. We learned that he was chief clerk for the Minnesota State Supreme Court.

Kennard Morganstern AMP ’44 November 3, 2007, at home in Long Island, New York.

Kennard attended Reed in the premeteorology program, and went to Washington University, where he earned bachelor and doctorate degrees, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, Pi Mu Epsilon societies. He started three companies, Nuclear Consultants; Radiation Dynamics, producing high-voltage accelerators; and Medical Sterilization, providing offsite sterilization for hospitals. Kennard and Lee were married for 47 years; she died in 2001. His second wife, Dali, survives him, as do his three daughters and son, eight grandchildren, and sister. “His love of life was an extraordinary gift to all who knew him.”

Priscilla Joubert Schwejda ’45 February 14, 2011, in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Percy, as she was known at Reed, earned a BA in political science, and worked for Braniff Airways in Texas after college. A layover in Chicago led to a visit to the Jane Addams Hull House, where she took a job as the organization’s program secretary. At Hull House, she took piano lessons from Donald Schwejda; they married in 1948. Don’s teaching and study took them to Indiana and to Pacific University in Forest Grove. Percy spent 15 years at home, raising their four children before becoming a teacher’s aide. After earning degrees from Pacific University and Western Oregon University, she taught reading for Yamhill schools. “Children need to be encouraged to take risks when reading.

They need to be given the opportunities to try a lot of things and not to fear failure,” she said.

Percy used songs, poetry, plays, and puppetry to point out differences in written and spoken language and to demonstrate the beauty of language. “Although my formal study for teaching took place long after I attended Reed, the habits of critical thinking and methods of research that I learned there were invaluable for academic work. And, hopefully, the Reed passion for learning was contagious for my students.”

Outside of teaching, she enjoyed camping with her family, photography, calligraphy, drawing, painting, and sculpture. She appreciated the marvels of nature found in bird watching, viewing a sunrise or sunset, or in hiking. She also attended Elderhostels around the country and was a longtime member of St. Anthony’s Parish in Forest Grove. Percy, Betty Havely Golding ’45, and Eleanor May ’45 gathered once a year for 30 years in the summer to reminisce about Reed. Survivors include two sons and daughters, six grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and two sisters.

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Elizabeth Redfield Marsh ’45 October 10, 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth came from a family devoted to science.

(Her father, Alfred Redfield, made significant contributions to the field of meteorology.) She attended Reed for two years and married Charles R. Marsh in 1943. Twenty years later, she earned a BS and PhD in geography from Penn State. Elizabeth was instrumental in founding Stockton State College in New Jersey, which she said was modeled after Reed. She taught environmental studies at Stockton and served as divisional chair of natural sciences and mathematics (1971–86).

In retirement, she taught part-time at Bucknell University, volunteered with the Pennsylvania Interest on Lawyers Trust Account board, and was board president of Lewisburg Prison Project.

She had three sons and one daughter.

Melba Ince (Fast) Murphy Niemela ’46 February 19, 2011, in Salem, Oregon.

Melba grew up near Antelope, Oregon, spending her early years with her grandparents on their farm. She attended high school in Portland and earned a BA from Reed in psychology. “The joy of learning instilled at Reed continues to enrich my life,” she wrote nearly 50 years after graduating. After earning a certificate from the Oregon College of Education in 1959, she taught science in the Salem-Keizer School District. Melba specialized in the geology of the Bend area and the marine biology of the Oregon coast. We learned from former student Harold Hickok that her teaching could be likened to “a warm, gentle tornado.” She had absolute confidence in her students and their intellectual capacity. “She pushed the mind farther and farther. Everything was so exciting; you couldn’t get enough.” Melba had a passion for reading and for discussing the works of the ancient Greeks. She also reveled in trips to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

“Anyone who had the great pleasure of driving with her to a performance there received five hours of a pre-play lecture on every conceivable aspect of the play,” Harold told us. Melba also liked to hike, camp, fish, and ski, and to bring family members together in her home. Survivors include two sons, grandsons, granddaughters, and great grandsons, and a brother. One son predeceased her.

Frank Theodore Koehler Jr. ’48 January 6, 2011, in Portland.

Bud’s studies at Reed were interrupted by service as a navy pilot in the Pacific during World War II. He studied at Reed for three years before transferring to the University of Oregon. In a political science class at the university, he met Patricia M. Cain ’49, who was a transfer student from Reed.

They married in 1947 and raised two daughters and two sons. Bud’s career in insurance began in

1948 with the Charles W. Sexton Company. He was also a member of the City Club, the Portland Chamber of Commerce, the University Club, and the Elks, and was actively involved in Little League, the Boy Scouts, the United Fund, and the Portland Parks Bureau.

Clifford Kentner Scott ’48

life master in the American Contract Bridge League and attended tournaments in Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, and California. Two tournament partners were Carol Ellsworth Wilkinson ’51 and Stuart Oliver ’52. Robert spent considerable time visiting old mining towns of the west, and traveled extensively in Mexico, wintering in Puerto Vallarta, where he owned a small grocery store. He was married to Cicely Hargrove; they divorced, after which he adopted a son, who was a Nicaraguan refugee. Survivors include his son and five grandchildren.

May 4, 2011, in Greenbrae, California.

Kentner attended Reed for two years before pursuing a long career in commercial banking, real estate, and nonprofit accounting. In 1985, he founded Emergence International, a community of gay and non-gay Christian Scientists, and served as editor of the journal Emerge! In the first issue, he described the journal’s mission: “To focus on solutions, not problems. Its goal will be to inspire, to uplift, to heal. Re-fighting church battles will not be part of its mission, but diversity and respect for individual points of view will be. Its columns will be open to the discussion of controversial ideas.” Kentner also played piano and recorder and was interested in genealogy, history, and politics. Survivors include his life companion, Sterling Rainey, a son, and a sister.

Robert Egan Sullivan ’49 January 26, 2010, in La Mesa, California.

Robert earned a BA from Reed in chemistry and an MEd from Oregon State University. “The most important thing I learned at Reed was to keep an open mind and to believe very little that I heard without first conducting my own investigation.” Robert said he could never forget Reed’s chemistry department and taking classes from F.L. Griffin [mathematics 1911–56].

Robert taught chemistry, mathematics, and general science in public schools for several years then worked as a physical chemist for the U.S. Navy in Pasadena and San Diego. He became a computer specialist, performing scientific programming, and served as a training coordinator.

In San Diego, he served on the missionary commission of San Carlos Methodist Church. As a result of his experiences with the organization in border towns of Mexico, he began studying Spanish. This study led to a BA in Spanish linguistics and a translator’s license from San Diego State University. Robert helped translate Invitación a la muerte, by Mexican dramatist Xavier Villaurrutiua, a play based on Hamlet set in modern day Mexico City. His favorite activities were reading, travel, and bridge. A frequent participant in bridge games at Reed, he later became a

Richard Lee Biggs ’50 March 23, 2011, in Portland.

During World War II, Dick was a yeoman in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific and a court reporter for court martial trials in Shanghai. He came to Reed on the GI Bill and earned a BA in economics. In 1958, he received an LLB from Northwestern College of Law, and practiced corporate law with Martin, Bischoff, Templeton, & Biggs and also with Lindsay, Hart, Neil & Weigler. He later became a solo practitioner, and provided legal aid to seniors through the Legal Aid of Oregon Senior Law Project, where he was listed among their “longest serving and most valued lawyers.” Dick served on Reed’s alumni board of directors and as an alumni trustee. “There are some, but only a few, institutions which are attempting to alleviate the problems our society has today,” Dick said. “I believe that Reed is one the places that can help solve them by training good minds.” He resigned from the board in 1978 in order to accept an appointment to the Oregon Educational Coordinating Committee from Oregon governor Bob Straub. Dick and June E. Anderson ’49 married and had two sons and a daughter. In 1971, he married Joan Wong, a community activist and communications professional, who was also a member of the Reed College Women’s Committee. Joan wrote: “The thing I most admired always about Dick was his terrific intellect. He read deeply and had broad knowledge about everything.” He was also admired for his quick wit and his green thumb.

Born on his grandfather’s farm in Nampa, Idaho, Dick had his own vegetable garden by age nine.

He created wonderful gardens throughout his life. “It’s time to plant the carrots” was among his final words. Survivors include his wife, son and daughter, stepson and two stepdaughters,

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five grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.

A son and stepson predeceased him.

Frederick I. White ’50 January 11, 2011, in Coquille, Oregon.

Fred attended Reed for the better part of five years, earning a BA in psychology. A modest man, and a natural comedian with great musical gifts, Fred had parts in numerous Gilbert & Sullivan productions at Reed and was in New Savoy productions in the fifties in Portland.

Rosemary Lapham Berleman ’48, who sang and performed with Fred at Reed and throughout his career, told us that he was famous for his wonderful performance as Ko-Ko in The Mikado [see image, page 67] and as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers. From Rosemary, we also learned about his later work. “What some may not know is that after retiring to Bandon, Oregon, for several years, he was coaxed back onto the stage by members of the Bandon Playhouse.” Fred played the shopkeeper in Annie Get Your Gun in 1987 and his duet, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly,” brought down the house. He also played a “fantastic” Elwood Dowd in Harvey. Fred directed and wrote for playhouse productions. For the orchestra in My Fair Lady, which he directed, he recruited high school students and local musicians from nearby towns. “It could have been a disaster, but he pulled it together. Another triumph!” Audiences loved his work. “All he had to do was to walk onto the stage in a pair of tights and he would bring down the house.” Before entering Reed, Fred served in World War II. He made the crossing to Normandy on D-Day, his birthday, and was severely wounded during the operation. He received a medal for his bravery in a raid on a German machine-gun position. Fred also volunteered with Free Flight and owned a 1946 Ercoupe 415-C airplane. Thanks to Rosemary for her tremendous assistance with this piece.

Raymond T. Haas ’52

September 11, 2010, in San Francisco, California.

Ray grew up in Chicago, and following the untimely death of his mother, moved to California to live with an aunt and uncle. He studied for two years at Reed, where he met Patricia A. Miller; they married and raised three children.

Patricia died in 1970. He is remembered for his quick wit and his sense of humor.

Renate Hayum ’53

January 27, 2011, in Seattle, Washington, from breast cancer.

Born in Tüningen, Germany, Renate emigrated with her parents to the U.S. in 1938. She spent two years at Reed, later earning a BA in business administration and an MLS from the University of Washington. Renate entered the Sisters of Providence in 1986—in deference to her parents, who would have opposed her, she did not enter the order until they had died—and professed

final vows in 1992. Her ministry assignments during her 25 years with the order included work as an auditor, an accountant, an editorial assistant, a librarian, an administrator, a research assistant, and an accounts representative, taking her to numerous locations in Washington and California, and in the Philippines. She retired in 2007. Renate loved classical music and reading. Our thanks go to Elaine Miller Meuse ’52, who notified us of Renate’s death.

Ralph Russell Wilkinson ’53 May 10, 2011 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ralph earned his BA from Reed in chemistry and went on to get a PhD from the University of Oregon in physical chemistry and an MBA from the University of Missouri. Ralph was a research chemist at the VA Hospital and for Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City. He taught at Rockhurst College and Cleveland Chiropractic College, from which he retired as professor emeritus. In addition, he consulted in biochemistry toxicology related to environmental outcomes. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a member of the American Chemical Society and Sigma Xi Association. In retirement, he volunteered as a tour guide at the Kemper Museum of Modern Art. Survivors include his wife, Evelyn.

Walter Bruce Clyde ’55 February 22, 2011, in Portland.

Walt grew up in southeast Portland and attended Franklin High School. After studying at Reed for three years, he transferred to Portland State University. In 1961, he married Judy E. Dennis; they had one son. For nearly 47 years, Walt worked as a paint chemist in Portland for companies such as General Paint, Glidden, Lilly, and Rodda. He was active in several professional organizations during his career and served as president of the Pacific Northwest Society for Coatings Technology. Walt’s interests included archaeology, the history of the American West, golf, fishing, and travel. He is remembered for his gentle humor and his ability to see the positive side of any situation. Survivors include his wife and son.

Barbara Reid Dudman ’60

April 4, 2011, in Portland.

Barbara came to Reed from Huntington High School in California, where she had graduated with honors. At Reed, majoring in mathematics, she met Jack Dudman ’42 [mathematics

Barbara Reid Dudman ’60

and dean of students 1953–85]; they married in 1958 and were together until his death in 2008. She spent a year in southern Mexico on a Russell Sage Foundation Grant in 1961, and earned an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962. Their only child, a son, Joseph, was born two years later. From 1966– 69, Barbara was an instructor in mathematics at Reed, and she taught mathematics at Catlin Gabel School, Parkrose Middle School, and Clackamas High School. The family hiked and camped and greatly enjoyed travels throughout western U.S. and in Europe. Survivors include Joseph, and Barbara’s brother and sister.

Lester Barnard Lave ’60

May 9, 2011, at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, following a brief struggle with cancer.

One of the nation’s leading environmental economists, a prolific scholar, and an inspiring professor, Lester commanded wide respect for his visionary approach to issues of global energy and public policy. He studied at Reed with economists Carl Stevens ’42 [1954– 90], Arthur Leigh [1945–88], and George Hay [1956–83], who served as adviser for his thesis Applications of the Theory of Games to Economics. “The most important experience in my intellectual life was Reed,” Lester said. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and went on to study at MIT and Harvard, where he earned a PhD in 1963. That same year, he accepted a position at Carnegie Mellon University. With the exception of four years as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in the early eighties, his academic career was at Carnegie Mellon, researching issues such as health effects of air pollution, toxic chemicals in the environment, and greenhouse effects.

“I have the job of focusing my work on highly controversial issues and generally have the fun of showing that the conventional wisdom is wrong,” he wrote.

Lester was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, in recognition of his work on air pollution. In 1984, he was named James H. Higgins Chair of Economics [Harry B. and James H. Higgins Professor of Economics and Public Policy], and, in 1987, he was awarded the George Leland Bach Teaching Award. He served as chair for SEPTEMBER 2011 Reed magazine 73

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In Memoriam

continued

ter collaborated in research on health care with his wife, economist Judith Rice, whom he married in 1965. The couple had twins, a son and daughter, and two grandchildren—all survive him. His brother, economist Charles Lave ’60, died in 2008.

Emery C. Jennings MAT ’61 July 19, 2010, in Littleton, Colorado.

Lester Barnard Lave ’60

Carnegie Mellon’s economics department, and was also Professor of Urban and Public Affairs, and Professor of Engineering and Public Policy.

He published or contributed to 28 books and to more than 400 other publications. (Reed’s Hauser Library holds over 160 of his publications.) He received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and a blizzard of other agencies, foundations, and companies. He served on a White House Taskforce in the Carter Administration and testified before Congress on many occasions.

In recent years, Lester examined problems in green design and the energy market. He helped to establish Carnegie Mellon’s Green Design Institute, where he conducted research on sustainability, life-cycle analysis, alternative fuels, and energy prices. He was also co-director of the Electricity Industry Center and a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP).

He received the Distinguished Achievement Award of the Society for Risk Analysis and the Richard Beatty Mellon Environmental Stewardship Award, given by the Air and Waste Management Association. Decades after graduating from Reed, Lester wrote, “One of the things I wasn’t taught at Reed was how much of a role luck plays in our lives. Hard work and discipline are necessary, but a large amount of luck is needed. How I wish I had been lucky enough to have a few more IQ points.”

Economist Seth Blumsack ’98, who studied under Lester at Carnegie Mellon, remarked, “Lester is the quintessential Reedie. He is a very intense guy, clearly brilliant, passionate, a really good thinker, intellectually agile. He has tackled all sorts of problems that on the surface had nothing in common, but is able to apply insights in one area to others.” Mark S. Kamlet, provost at Carnegie Mellon, said Lester reached the highest plateaus in scholarship and friendship. “His work transcended many fields, most notably in areas of risk, the environment, and economic decision-making.

The world has been changed by his work.” Les-

Emery earned a BS in economics from Lawrence University, a master’s in teaching from Reed in mathematics, and a PhD from the University of Denver. He taught high school and college mathematics, including a stint at Lower Columbia Junior College in Longview, Washington. For seven years, he worked as an industrial accountant before entering the field of school administration. At Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado, he served as dean of admission, vice president, and acting president, and was appointed treasurer and business manager at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Emery married Jean Weeks in Longview, Washington, in 1952; they were together for 44 years. They retired in Littleton in 1986. Survivors include two brothers.

David Van Campen ’61

December 7, 2010, from a head-on automobile collision on a freeway in Peoria, Illinois.

David attended Reed for two years and lived in Kewanee, Illinois. We were unable to learn anything more about his life.

Ann Almquist Niles ’63

April 7, 2011, in Seattle, Washington, from leukemia.

Ann was born in Burbank, California, and moved with her family to Grants Pass, Oregon, when she was five. She majored in economics at Reed and wrote her thesis on immigration and the economic development of Israel. At Reed, she met Philip H. Niles ’63. They were married the day after graduation and moved to Canada to attend graduate school at the University of Toronto. They also lived in London before relocating to Northfield, Minnesota, where Phil joined the history faculty at Carlton College. After completing an MA in library science at the University of Minnesota in 1969, Ann joined Carleton’s library and took charge of acquisitions and collection development. They had three children: Ian Niles ’88; Colin, who died in childhood; and Nell Niles Edgington ’95. Ann and Phil retired in 1998 and returned to Oregon, where they divided their time between Neahkahnie on the Oregon coast and Portland’s Pearl District. Ann developed a second career in urban development and transportation and did volunteer work with the city of Portland and the Pearl District Neighborhood Association on a variety of projects such as the streetcar, the light rail, bike lanes, and wide sidewalks. The Northwest Examiner presented Ann’s family with a

Ann Almquist Niles ’63

posthumous lifetime service award for her work. Survivors include Phil, their children and three grandchildren, and her sister, Sue Almquist Dodd ’66.

John Jay Salasin ’63

March 26, 2011, in Rockville, Maryland, from a stroke.

John attended Reed for a year and later earned a BS in zoology from George Washington University. He and Susan E. Crawford ’64 were married in Portland in 1964, and had two daughters.

John continued his education at the University of Minnesota, where he earned an MS in neurophysiology and a PhD in computer and information science. During his career in information technology, he worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

John was an expert in the field of Natural Language Understanding. In recognition for his outstanding work at the agency, he was presented with the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2008. John is remembered for his dry wit and his enjoyment of photography and landscape gardening. Survivors include Susan, their two daughters, two grandchildren, and his beloved greyhound, Ginger.

Michael Scott Moss ’82

March 10, 2011, in Veneta, Oregon, from pneumonia.

Michael attended Oregon State University and Reed, where he received a BA in political science. He was a writer and comedian. Survivors include his life partner, Crystal Miller; his parents; two sisters; and two brothers.

Joanna H. Ramwell Arpee ’83

March 4, 2011, at home in Virginia, from ovarian cancer.

Jo was born in England, attended high school in Virginia, rode her bike 900 miles across the Continental Divide, lived in France for a summer, and studied chemistry at the University of Virginia—all before transferring to Reed, where she earned a BA in English literature. Reed helped her to develop skills in critical thinking and in intelligent and thoughtful communication, she

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met his future wife, Miwako. In 2004, they married and moved to Fukui, Japan. Despite dealing with cancer for six years, Ken taught English at the National University of Fukui and opened a private English language school.

He enjoyed time with his family, as well as camping, tennis, skiing, biking, bodysurfing, traveling, and skydiving. Survivors include his wife and children Hiro and Hannah; his mother, Nancy Raney; his stepfather, William Raney ’58; and two sisters and brothers.

Jo Ramwell Arpee ’83 on the zip-line, showing that she remained a Reedie at heart.

wrote. “It’s hard to say who taught me more: my professors and the curriculum, or my wonderful classmates, housemates, and friends.” After graduation, Jo moved to the D.C. area, worked for a cancer research fundraising organization, and was a chef at a vegetarian restaurant. Soon thereafter, she joined St Margaret’s Episcopal Church, where she met her husband, John Arpee. Jo’s passion for cooking and her concern for nutrition led her back to school to earn an MS in nutritional sciences from the University of Maryland in 1993. She was active in the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and a frequent contributor to the Food Allergy News.

Jo and John welcomed three children through adoption, Paul, Samuel, and James, and eventually settled in Herndon, Virginia, where she volunteered to “help Reedies find Reed” for the Admission Alumni Network. “Always eager to be involved, Jo served at every opportunity with love and enthusiasm, often in leadership roles,” John wrote. “Jo was never lukewarm and she was profoundly committed to other people. She used to say that acts of service are her love language. Judging by all her service, she had a lot of love, and, as her husband, I was greatly blessed.

Jo will be missed, remembered and loved by all who knew her. Thank God her suffering is over and she is now at peace.”

Kenneth Lee Atkinson ’90

April 23, 2011 in Fukui, Japan, from lung cancer.

On the way to earn a BA in French from Reed, Ken spent a year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. After college, he returned home to Santa Cruz, California, to manage the Sash Mill Cinema, and then moved to France to study culinary arts. In the nineties, he cooked for Val d’IsFre, a ski resort in the Rhone-Alpes; at La Varenne, a French cooking school outside Paris; and at the Cordon Bleu cooking academy in Paris. At the academy, he

Jordan Alexander Burby ’11 April 24, 2011, in Tustin, California, after a short battle with cancer.

A native of Orange County, Jordan graduated from Tustin High School, where he was a member of the Model United Nations program, and attended summer programs at Stanford and at Oxford. Travel with the Model United Nations program and travel and camping with his extended family were treasured experiences. Jordan enjoyed books, music, being with friends and family, and learning about a wide range of subjects. He studied at Reed for three years, intending to major in religion. A memorial fund for Jordan has been established to support educational endeavors at Tustin High.

To learn more about this fund and Jordan’s life, please visit jordanburby.com. Survivors include his parents, John and Carol Garrett, and grandparents, Joe and Carol Quartucci. His father, Bill Burby, predeceased him.

Staff, Faculty, and Friends

Shaffer Eugene Thompson

Editor, Reed magazine, 1985–95 March 16, 2011, in Coralville, Iowa.

Editor emeritus of Reed, and former director of the college’s publications, Gene grew up in Iowa and earned a BA in English and history at Grinnell College. He did graduate work in English at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin, and taught high school English and journalism.

Gene’s first taste of the joys of college pub-

lications came in 1964, when he served as editor of the Grinnell Magazine. At Grinnell, he also taught humanities and writing and was dean of students. He worked for many years at Whitman College as director of publications before coming to Reed in 1985. “Reed has its eye on academic quality above all, so that those whose job is selling it have the best possible foundation to stand upon,” he wrote.

Gene completely revamped Reed’s publications, and was responsible for broadening and strengthening the magazine you now hold in your hands.

Gene maintained a strong rapport with students. “Gene was a very encouraging figure to me at Reed and was instrumental in helping me get through my thesis year,” wrote Darrel Plant ’90. “He offered me a part-time position laying out the Reed weekly newsletter that helped my wife and me limp through the spare period while I completed my thesis in the spring of 1990. A few years later, as I was putting together a short-lived book review magazine, Gene gave me encouragement and tips, then he ran a piece on my run for the state legislature in Reed. He always had a ready smile and would make time to talk about books, printing, or whatever else came up. I fell out of touch with him after he left Reed and I’m going to regret for a long time not following through on tracking him down.”

Gene loved sailing. He lived aboard his boat and sailed on the Columbia River and through the islands of Washington state. In 1999, he returned to Iowa to be with his partner, Caitlin Robinson. In retirement, he became a radio-control airplane hobbyist with the Iowa City Aerohawks; created a website, Forever 73 (forever73.com); formed Dryland Sailor Publishing; and undertook extensive reading and writing projects. Survivors include Caitlin, two sons, and a brother. Memorial contributions in Gene’s name may be made to the Council Bluffs Public Library.

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: Paul Wiseman ’33, Cordelia Dodson Hood ’36, May Director Georges ’37, Laura Tunnell Gleysteen ’40, James Whipp ’41, Caroline Newberger Canafax ’42, Maxine Howard Crites ’42 & MAT ’65, Dorothy Glassberg Hutchison ’43, Patricia Moore Egner ’44, Richard Hum AMP ’44, Robert Calderwood ’46, Gerald Meier ’47, Lloyd Thomas ’47, Sharonn Goodman Gittelsohn ’48, Ames Hendrickson ’48, Elisabeth Bauman Lewis ’48, Peter Wilhelm ’48, Richard MacCamy ’49, Joseph Frazier ’50, Donald Houser ’50, Joan Petersen Kelley ’50, Darryl Johnson Stark ’50, George Howard ’51, Jean Scott ’51, Richard Coovert ’52, Edgar Jacobs ’55, Albert Benson MAT ’64, Margaret Ayre Brown ’65, Gail Jacobson MAT ’68, Elinor Friedberg ’92, and Mary Hansen, friend.

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Photo courtesy J.J. Valtz

Apocrypha

tradition • myth • legend

Burying the MG For many years, a curious legend has circulated at Reed claiming that a British sports car lies buried beneath the Hauser Library. Generations of Reedies are acquainted with this tale; most have dismissed it as too outrageous to be true.

Future anthropologist Chris Roth ’90 even wrote an influential piece for the student handbook (still in print) citing the story as a classic example of mythological embroidery, in this case reworking an older tale of a police car supposedly buried in the canyon during Prohibition.

Fresh evidence has come to light, however, suggesting that the story is true after all. After interviewing several participants and obtaining this photograph (see right), we present the following narrative.

In the mid-eighties, classics major Mark Verna ’87 was the proud owner of a fabulous, green, soft-top MG Midget, then as now an iconic roadster.

Upon graduation, he moved to Alaska to earn money for grad school and left his beloved MG in the care of friends.

Due to a combination of mechanical trouble and longdistance communication issues, the car spent the summer and fall in the east parking lot, gathering grime, mold, and neglect.

Eventually, it was relocated to the Red House, a Reed house at Southeast 40th and Schiller, where its decrepitude grew sufficiently advanced to alarm the neighbors, who filed a nuisance complaint with the city.

In May 1988, a band of troublemakers hatched an audacious scheme. A construction crew had dug a giant hole behind the library and was getting ready to

pour the foundation for a new addition. Why not lay the MG to rest in a place where it would never, ever incur the insult of another ticket?

On the appointed night, a score of Reedies towed the car down the hill, armed themselves with shovels, picks, and mattocks, and began to excavate a hole in the bottom of the official hole. First they had to dig through a layer of gravel, a noisy business that drew the attention of Dick the security guard, who was somehow intercepted before he came upon the scene. The conspirators then labored for several hours to quarry a chamber of the desired volume. When this had been accomplished, they rolled the MG into its grave.

Unfortunately, it stood a few inches proud of its sepulchre, so they popped the tires and flattened the windshield to get it to the proper depth. They covered it up with earth and smoothed the gravel back in place just as dawn’s rosy fingers appeared. Hours later, several of them marched in commencement, where one of the pranksters was scolded by his grandmother for having dirt caked under his fingernails.

Rumors began to fly, but nothing looked amiss at the site.

The foundation was duly poured and the addition built. Eventually the participants graduated and the story began to sound like a fairy tale.

Even after examining this photo, some experts remain skeptical. Geotechnical consultant Frank Fujitani, who visited the excavation many times, thinks the car must have been buried elsewhere. Architect Larry Bruton of ZGF says the

Dirty deed. Reedies surround half-buried MG Midget in 1988.

Is a British sports car really entombed beneath the Hauser Library? concrete forms in the photo don’t look quite right. Towny Angell [facilities operations director 1989–]doubts that a bunch of guys with shovels could have dug a hole so neat, so square, and so fast.

These objections only make the pranksters roll their eyes. “I have to apologize to the experts,” says William Abernathy ’88. “But there is a car down there.”

Readers will recognize faces of several classmates in the photo. William, who says he popped the tires himself, asks why a mob of Reedies would bury a car on another construction site. As to the possibility that the photo is faked, one imagines that counterfeiters would come up with a more

artful fabrication.

To be sure, the episode is enveloped by an atmosphere of coyness—several conspirators declined to speak publicly about it, some out of discretion, some out of guilt. (It was, after all, a classic car, and Verna was understandably distressed by its untimely demise.) Some prefer to keep the story in the realm of myth, rather than history.

In terms of imagination, daring, and outright chutzpah, however, this deed must rank among the most astonishing pranks in Reed histor y—even if its ultimate proof lies buried beneath a thousand tons of concrete.

—Chris Lydgate ’90 See more photos of the MG’s burial at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

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REED

Eliot Society

100 100 years of reed .

years of giving.

make your mark.

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

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

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Reed College

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon

leah nash

Scrawl of the Wild. Reunions 2011 featured a portable graffiti project, known as GHOTI, masterminded by Don Asher ’83. Alumni scribbled thoughts in various categories, including oxymorons, pangrams, acronyms, paraprosdokians, slogans, and several varieties of insult. (One of our favorites: Forget world peace—try envisioning using your turn signals.)

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