Reed College Magazine September 2012

‰ september 2012

reed ’s new president

The Advocate

Professor. Author. Attorney General.

John Kroger brings a wealth of experience—and energy—to Eliot Hall.

re’12 d’sUNLEASHED next prez Page 6 MOLECULAR FAREWELL,ASSASSIN JOHN POCKPage 20 come To reunions!

CLASS OF THE MANUFACTURE OF MEMORY Page 24

Parent & Family Weekend Friday & Saturday, November 2 & 3, 2012 www.reed.edu/parents/pfw.html

REED september 2012

Features 18

A Locavoracious Appetite

Amelia Hard ’67 is a driving force behind Portland’s public market.

Departments 02 From the Editor The Inside Passage.

03 Letters

By Raymond Rendleman ’06

16

Sexual Assault and Alcohol.

The Lion in Winter.

The Reed of the East.

Diversity and Racism.

Golf and Bernoulli.

Beneath the Iron Mask.

Hail, Comrades!

Cheap Wine and Horsemeat

Two snapshots of student life taken 50 years apart

By Carol Burns ’62 and Nisma Elias ’12

20

06 Eliot Circular

Class of ’12 Unleashed.

Profs get tenure.

Farewell to Arch and Hanawalt.

Wheeler finishes harpsichord.

Paying It Forward.

Giving Back— Our Way.

The Molecular Assassin

Researcher Kevan Shokat ’86 pioneers a new technique for fighting cancer.

By William Abernathy ’88

News from Campus

11 Empire of the Griffin

Connecting Reedies Across the Globe

Meet your Alumni Board.

Reedies in Israel.

Cricket Nabs Babson.

24

The Darkness of Memory Lane

Psychology professor Daniel Reisberg’s expertise on perception and memory is having an impact far beyond the classroom.

44 Class Notes 52 Reediana

Books by Reedies

Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany

By Ottomar Rudolf Coming of Age on Zoloft

By Katherine Sharpe ’01

By Bill Donahue

56 In Memoriam 28

The Advocate

Professor. Author. Attorney General.

Reed’s new president, John Kroger, brings a wealth of experience—and energy—to Eliot Hall.

By Chris Lydgate ’90

32

Twelve from ’12

Twelve proud members of the Class of ’12 talk about quantum dots and queer literature.

By Randall S. Barton

cover photo by leah nash

64 Apocrypha

Tradition, Myth, Legend

Griffin Infiltrates Rose Parade

‰

Letter from the editor

september 2012

The Inside Passage The back roads of Morrow County are paved with silence. The landscape is too vast, too remote, for small talk.

No trees, no birds. Nothing but the dull dun scrub, the gutted gullies, the pitiless sun, and the western wind that bends the ears of the parched yellow grass. The endless road seems less like a highway of commerce than an effort to interrupt the emptiness, to mark the territory as belonging somehow to the human race.

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine

At least, that’s how it feels when you’re pedaling through Six Mile Canyon, lungs aflame, the only sound your wracking breath and the scrape of the chain on a mutinous derailleur. I’ve come out here with Daniel Thomas ’89 for our annual bike ride. In past years, we’ve crossed the Coast Range, climbed the Deschutes River canyon, and explored the byways of Baker County. We’ve pedaled through places like Mist, Ruggs, and Shaniko, some of them pushing the definition of “settlement” to illogical extremes. Medical Springs was a roadside shack and a swimming pool. Jewell was a forlorn farmhouse. Kent was a grain elevator and a length of garden hose.

Why do we seek out these desolate places? Cycling is fundamentally a solitary pursuit and yet we do not feel alone. Morrow County offers a respite from the clamor of the city, the tedium of parking spaces and red lights and the mistyping of emails. Out here we move at our own pace. Out here we can take stock. Out here we can open up and talk about our hopes and fears, shout them to the world, let them echo through the canyons.

So when I found out that Reed’s new president, John Kroger, had pedaled solo across the country as a young lawyer escaping New York City (see page 28), he went up a couple of cogs in my opinion. Not for the physical conditioning—this is Reed, after all— but because he read Anthony Trollope along the way. And because a self-propelled expedition is not about conquering the landscape. It’s about mapping the interior—and contemplating the long and sometimes perilous journey that begins in youth and ends, if we are lucky, in wisdom.

—Chris Lydgate ’90

2

Reed magazine september 2012

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 92, 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 Miles Bryan ’13 ADVISORY BOARD Diane Morgan ’77, Matt Giraud ’85, Naomi McCoy ’94, and Caitlin Baggott ’99.

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.

Letters to Reed Sexual Assault and Alcohol

I’m skeptical of [assistant dean] Jyl Shaffer and Reed’s sexual assault prevention program [“New Dean Oversees Sexual Assault Prevention,” March 2012] because one word was missing from the article: alcohol. I suggested that the University of Colorado (whose freshman dorms are across the street from my house) develop a combined alcohol abuse and sexual assault prevention program. The woman in charge of the university’s rape education program strongly opposed this suggestion, saying that women have the right to get drunk anywhere, anytime they want, without fear of sexual assault. But the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Substance Abuse (the university’s alcohol policy board) and the university health clinic’s sexual health nurse both loved my idea. They organized students to design a poster, which was so popular that they couldn’t keep it on dorm hallway walls (the students took the posters to put in their rooms). Last year I taught a high school course about dating and relationships, which included two hours about alcohol and sexual consent. I hope that Ms. Shaffer sees the fundamental link between alcohol and sexual misconduct.

—Thomas David Kehoe ’82 Boulder, Colorado Editor’s Note. David is right to emphasize the role of alcohol. Indeed, Shaffer’s mission on campus is to help students understand the paramount importance of effective consent in sexual activity—and consent may not be effective if a participant is intoxicated. The purpose of the article was simply to announce Shaffer’s hiring and bring readers up to speed with changes in Reed’s adjudication process, rather than to examine the many factors involved in sexual assault. However, she encourages alumni who have an interest in this issue to send her an email at shafferj@reed.edu.

The Lion in Winter

Thank you for your profile of Puon Penn ’92 [“From the Lion’s Den,” June 2012]. Puon was a central part of my Reed experience. Puon and I roomed together in our first year, sharing a double in the antipodes of MacNaughton III, a room so far from central heating that our windows grew half-inch-thick interior ice sheets during Portland’s winter storm of February 1989. I was at the time of matriculation (and, arguably, am still) a deeply provincial kid from small-town Oregon. Rooming with Puon was both rewarding and frustrating. He and I had a cordial relationship, but didn’t connect right away, due to my own well-meaning but funda-

mentally superficial grasp of how difficult it was for Puon—who came most immediately from rough Oakland and Stockton, California—to adjust to the social norms of the white bourgeois intellectual misfits who populate(d) Reed. They were my people; they were not his.

That said, though, we developed an enduring friendship. To this day I hesitate to lie inverted in my bed, remembering a night in a cheap hotel in Turin when, as we watched a dubbed episode of The Simpsons together, he saw my bare feet on top of my pillow and told me, visibly disgusted, that Khmer people are sickened by the sight of putting one’s feet where one’s head should rest. After we discovered the next morning that would-be car thieves had failed to steal (but had succeeded in damaging) our rental, a long drive the next day brought us to distant relations of his in Lyon, France, where we were both bemused by his relatives’ enthusiastic suggestions to hang out at a suburban mall when we asked what cultural attractions Lyon had to offer. On our last day in Europe, Puon handled the aggressive Parisian traffic capably; I wasn’t trusted to drive, as he’d only taught me to drive a standard transmission earlier on that trip.

Puon and I have stayed in touch after graduation and have seen each other from time to time in Chicago, the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, or wherever we have found ourselves. I invited him to my wedding in 2001, but never received an RSVP, and then was nonplussed when he materialized, Benjamin Braddock–like, at the back of the nave at St. Austin’s Church in Austin, Texas, as Alison and I recited our vows. “Isn’t anyone else coming?” he asked. He seemed to pity me because there were no other guests; perhaps he wasn’t aware that he’d arrived for the rehearsal.

On a more earnest note, though, I have always been impressed and not a little intimidated by Puon: his intellect, his bravery, his patient and determined approach to achieving his goals, his devotion to serving his beleaguered Khmer people. Knowing him has been one of the great gifts of my life. Your extended portrait of this accomplished alumnus is an honor that he unquestionably deserves and that I, among many others, deeply appreciate.

—Greg Barnhisel ’92 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Reed of the East

I am pleased by and grateful for the letter from Roger Andriola ’69 [Letters, June 2012], and I want to thank him for taking the time and trouble to write it. To learn that one has influenced a student intellectually in a way that he experienced

as a life landmark is the greatest gift a teacher can be given. Your readers may be interested to know that the story has yet one more Reed connection. When I was interviewed at Reed by the Yale law professor whose interviewing trip I emulated seven years later, I expressed doubts about whether a legal education would be sufficiently intellectually challenging (as opposed to arduous) for a Reed philosophy major with no interest in actually practicing law. He replied that Yale was different from the others. “At Yale, we like to think of ourselves as the Reed College of law schools,” he assured me. So I went there, and, as I compared notes with friends at Harvard and elsewhere, discovered that it was. I suppose one could say that it was a Reed orientation that my Yale-educated colleagues and I offered to the Reed-educated Mr. Andriola, obviously to very good effect.

—Michael E. Levine ’62 Woodbridge, Connecticut

Diversity and Racism

I was deeply disappointed, but not surprised, to read the arguments of Michael Schein ’76 and David Bloch ’93 against diversity hiring at Reed [Letters, June 2012]. These alumni claim to be “colorblind”—and insist that racism will only end when people and institutions become supposedly indifferent to race altogether. What they are truly blind to, however, is the disproportionate violence and discrimination that American people of color, along with women and queers, will continue to face at the hands of schools, the police, and their peers regardless of the priorities that Reed sets for faculty hires.

Michael Schein asserts that by setting diversity as a goal, “we create a rigged game” that treats white people unfairly. But he fails to realize that the game is already rigged. White people receive treatment in education, the workplace, and public space that is vastly superior to that experienced by people of color. Opposing the consideration of diversity in faculty hires is tantamount to closing one’s eyes and shouting loudly in the hope that racism will disappear if one just waits long enough. But if American history has taught us anything, it’s that racism is not going away.

The bubble is a lie. Reed students come from the rest of the world, and they return to it. They experience the effects of white supremacy and they perpetuate it. To ignore the disadvantages people of color face and to pretend that they don’t exist at Reed is to be complicit in that institutionalized, racist violence. Colorblindness may not be an overt racism, but it is certainly an insidious and real one. september 2012 Reed magazine

3

Letters to Reed My fellow alumni might prefer that Reed would sweep the ugly and awful truth of American racism under the rug. I, for one, expect better of my school.

—Ethan Knudson ’11 San Francisco, California Exactly when can we look forward to hearing the end of the “racism is no less poisonous when turned against a white person” lament?

[Michael Schein ’76, Letters, June 2012] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not say this, nor did he imply it when he said, “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” His children were African American, and if you ask me, and if you ask a lot of African Americans, that time has hardly arrived for black people and other people of color. It’s just way too easy for advantaged white people to complain that they’re not getting a fair shake.

Where is it spelled out that life is supposed to be fair for any person? Where is the evidence that it is so?

Mr. Schein states that “affirmative action was necessarily a temporary remedy, because it punishes new generations for the sins of those that came before.” Uh, huh. Germany is still making reparations for the unspeakable crimes against humanity that were committed many decades ago by Germany; is it “time to move on,” then?

Not that this is a perfect analogy; but where is it written that we stop making reparations when it suits our purpose?

And who says, outrageously, that “today, racial minorities benefit”? How often, in what ways; precisely what does a privileged white family know about the experience of being black in America? Yes, Mr. Schein, a white family whose daughter attended “one of the finest urban graduate schools” is a privileged family; check this out with anyone trying to survive in your nearest housing project. When you write, “In the 21st century, the adversity we all face is not principally determined by race,” have you checked that one out with those “streetwise kids of all colors”? We didn’t need the example of Trayvon Martin to bring home this point, but . . .

And who ever claimed that affirmative action “is based on the assumption that students cannot learn as well from persons of other races?” No, no, no. Affirmative action is an ongoing effort, however besieged, to level a playing field that may never in fact be level: the goal of a fair game with equal opportunity for all people is nowhere in sight; it’s not even imaginable in our lifetime.

I could go on and on, but I’m afraid this is one of those visceral, unresolvable divides like the debate over abortion. Suffice it to say you should count your many blessings: your daughter sounds like a wonderful person, a high achiever, 4

Reed magazine september 2012

a striver, a person of widely recognized good character, rich in nurture and nature, possessed of a topnotch education. I hope she appreciates how sweet and lucky her life is.

—Moira Dwyer Zucker ’72 Manhattan Beach, California

Golf and Bernoulli

In the June 2012 issue of Reed, David Widelock ’69 replied to my “Burning Question,” saying I should have kept doubting the fireman’s statement that with higher pressure the rate of water flow decreased. David cites his experience as a landscape architect and the Golf Engineering Associates Technical Help Series, which says, “Higher pressure will cause greater flow through any given pipe size, but as the flow increases, the pressure will decrease downstream due to friction loss because water velocities increase as well.”

David and golf engineers are certainly correct that higher pressure at the source will increase rate of flow through a pipe. But what happens downstream can be surprising. A thought experiment will illustrate. Imagine you are watering your lawn with a garden hose.

The valve to which the hose is connected is fully open, but you close the nozzle so water doesn’t flow at all. Now imagine you poke a small hole into the hose anywhere along its length. What happens? Water shoots out the hole and into the air. The higher the pressure in the hose, the higher the water will shoot up, but the rate of flow through the hose is close to zero. Now imagine you open the nozzle fully (or take it off completely). The rate of flow through the hose shoots up, but what happens at the hole you poked into the hose? The water stops shooting up; pressure has dropped to just about zero.

If the local water supply increases power to its pumps, then the rate of flow will increase, but pressure in the hose will remain near zero because there’s nothing to impede the flow.

If you don’t want to ruin a perfectly good garden hose, you can try the same experiment by pretending to blow a stopped-up trumpet.

Try to force air past your closed lips: high pressure, but zero rate of flow. Now open your lips and allow the air to flow. What happens to the pressure?

—Richard Daehler-Wilking ’73 Charleston, South Carolina

Beneath the Iron Mask

To temper the image of the late Reed anthropology professor Gail Kelly ’55 [“The Iron Maiden,” June 2012], she wasn’t so steely in my experience, though certainly she wore an iron mask.

Three years following my Reed graduation, I settled in Vancouver. Not long after, I turned around when someone tapped my back at a bookstore, and there was Gail. (I always called her Gail without any repercussion or warning to say “Miss Kelly.”) I’d only known her from my sophomore stint on the Reed senate, several

of Jim Webb’s [English, 1965–71] notorious Sunday teas, and when I tried to sell her my portable stereo (“You expect to get that much?”), trying to raise funds to run off after graduation to live in Europe forever with my new lover. (She never once alluded to my being gay, yet it was an open fact, and she had close gay friends.)

So, after she appeared out of the blue, we went for tea at the nearby Hotel Vancouver, and remained good friends until her death 33 years later. A week before her passing, I raced down to Portland on her call and took her on her last outing: indulging two of her favorite pursuits— dining at an upscale trendy restaurant and browsing in a shop. She did love everything to do with consumption; we once hatched an elaborate scheme to produce a documentary television series on shopping. My favourite scheme, though, derived from when she helped organize the first Alumni College, for Reed’s 75th anniversary. It focused on the humanities of the year the college was founded. Ever afterwards, we immediately called one another to share our latest discovery of any 1911 event, trivial or pivotal.

Over the years she often tried to get me to be as passionate about shopping as she was, and usually for some oddball item she’d taken a fancy to—Welsh furniture comes to mind. Once, when I arrived to pick her up at her jungle-like garden house in Eastmoreland, she got into my shiny new black Volvo sedan, disparaging the fact that I hadn’t bought a Jaguar. I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her on that last visit with the news that I was soon to be ordained a Zen monk.

—Gareth Sirotnik ’69 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Hail, Comrades!

Ever since I attended the storytelling group at our 50th reunion in 2004, I’ve been waiting to find out what Cricket Parmalee ’67 would do with our motley recollections. We all learned things we had not known in our Reed days from the stories others told: about lesbians, McCarthy, our attitudes toward our Korean War, etc.

After reading the first half of Comrades of the Quest, covering Reed’s first 50 years, I found insights on this great school, its conflicts, resolutions, and changes that I never knew. I saw photos of our infamous losingest football team in the nation, the Old Commons, my profs, old friends, and recalled an impressive calligraphy note written to me. Well worth its weight in memories and understanding.

Thanks, Cricket and John Sheehy ’82, for this herculean effort.

—Don Green ’54 San Francisco

MORE LETTERS! Read about Grokking 1963, Buddhism, and the real Tchad Moore ’92 on our website, www.reed.edu/reed magazine.

for sharing your love of Reed in conversations with alumni from across the country and around the world. You have created a new community of leaders for the college and have helped secure $3.7 million in gifts for Reed’s Annual Fund just this year. We are grateful for your dedication and tireless support.

Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Konrad Stephen Alt ’81 Deborah Kalahan Altschul ’75 Jessica Leigh Stern Benjamin ’93 Erica Roth Boulay ’11 Richard W. Cuthbert ’73 Glenn C. Davis ’68 W. Doug Evans ’84 Steven B. Falk ’83 Amy Ulrich Geary ’97 Jay M. Hubert ’66 Noah P. Iliinsky ’95 Linda Hammill Matthews ’67 Christopher Matley Moses-Jenkins ’02 Sara A. Rasmussen ’05 Mark Alexander Srere ’81 Michael Bradley Stapleton ’10 Daniel Krantz Toffey ’07 Gina Nicole Vorderstrasse ’10

Griffin Initiative, Reunions and Thankathon Volunteers Laurence Abramson ’80 David Thomas Adler ’63 Mary Stuart Waterbury Alvord ’55 M. Scott Anderson ’73 Susan Elizabeth Arney ’81 Sandra Blake Boles ’90 Frits Brevet ’50 Eric D. Britton ’82

David R. Buckler ’85 Suzanne Bletterman Cassidy ’65 Sung Kyu Choi ’87 John A. Crosley ’67 Kenneth Leybourne Custer ’01 Arwen Isaac Dave ’89 Rachael M. Dorr ’76 Steven J. Dubnoff ’66 David Elesh ’62 Mary Locke Eysenbach ’54 Anthony H. Fisher ’80 Peter W. French ’68 Meg A. Turney Fried ’79 Anne E. Schmitt Gendler ’81 Robert Gordon Gillespie ’55 Margaret Goldwater ’71 Laura L. Graser ’73 Paul Halpern ’83 David R. Hardy ’71 Karen Fisch Hensley ’76 Michael J. Herz ’58 Jeri S. Janowsky ’78 Gloria Drenguis Johnson ’79 Majda Sajovic Jones ’64 Mark Warren Kelley ’78 Margaret Rhoads Kendon ’59 Sheila R. Klatzky ’67 William Cha-Won Koo ’83 Charles E. Krakoff ’78 Keith L. Kutler ’80 Kim D. Lambert ’78 Steven H. Lamm ’63 Stephen J. Leibovic ’77 Arthur D. Levy ’73 William Bennett Lewis ’84 Gwendolyn L. Lewis ’65 (deceased) Jeffrey M. Mason ’79 Lynn Mayer ’58

Lawrence F. Meadows ’82 Judith A. Murray Merion ’72 Robert A. Morris ’65 Celia Hansen Morris ’64 Kenneth N. Moss ’74 Ronald L. Orcutt ’66 Susan C. Orlansky ’75 Ritankar Pal ’93 Puon Alexander Penn ’92 Karl M. Peters ’83 Lawrence O. Picus ’77 John G. Pierce ’79 Lucille Harris Pierce ’43 Tracy Nicole Poe ’91 Lee Matthew Pollack ’02 Peter W. Preston ’77 Constance E. Putnam ’65 Jeffrey H. Reichwald ’84 Peter N. Reinthal ’78 Stephanie L. Ricker ’80 Lawrence R. Rinder ’83 Richard C. Roistacher ’65 Jean-Laurent Rosenthal ’84 A. Richard Ross ’72 Kenneth Edward Schriver ’85 Freddi Segal-Gidan ’76 Mark B. Seidenfeld ’75 Thomas M. Shapiro ’63 Mark L. Share ’86 Susan Beth Poltun Share ’86 Kenneth J. Singleton ’73 Robert Lloyd Smith ’57 Timothy Andrew Solomon ’96 John W. Sondheim ’63 Jeanne Halsey Steed ’47 Paul G. Stern ’73 Elspeth Teagarden Tanguay-Koo ’00 Dedie Uunila Taylor ’69

Gregory C. Thayer ’79 Ian A. Twombly ’87 Patricia Kinslow Tyson ’81 Allen T. Unsworth ’60 James C. Waggoner ’68 James M. Ward ’81 John S. Weber ’78 Rachel Lynn Wolcott ’93 Bradford L. Wright ’61 Robin J. Wright ’79 Rozelle Brown Wright ’61 Mayumi Yamashita ’87

Young Alumni Volunteers Alessandra Naomi Baniel-Stark ’11 Graeme Douglas Blair ’06 Eleanor Blue ’05 Michelle Lynn Carroll ’10 Emily Corso ’10 Bonnie Joann Cuthbert ’10 Kassondera Celest Dallavis ’08 Jane Newton Davis ’03 Laura Ellen Diamond ’04 Rachel Louise Fredericks ’04 Jessica Elizabeth Gerhardt ’11 Hilary Gray ’08 Casey Marie Jones ’05 Advait Mahesh Jukar ’11 Frances Marie Kershaw ’10 Charli Rena Krause ’09 Christine Elisabeth Lewis ’07 Rachel Elizabeth Mossey ’11 John Mikel Parker ’10 Rosa Elizabeth Schneider ’10 Andrei Stephens ’08

Use the enclosed envelope, visit giving.reed.edu, or call 877/865-1469 to make your Annual Fund gift.

Alumni Fundraising for Reed

THANK YOU, Alumni Fundraising for Reed volunteers,

Eliot Circular news from campus

Graduates

How They Paid

Cool Thesis Titles:

Total: 298

Percentage of students receiving financial aid: 50%

Female: 171

Average aid package (including grant, loan, and work components): $35,990

Tevon Edwards, Political Science: China Syndrome? Normal Accidents, High Reliability and Nuclear Power Plants

Male: 127

2011-2012 institutionally administered aid: $28.6 million

Matthew Lambert, Physics: the perfect skipping stone

Average parental income of students on aid: $68,910

Aaron Webb, Biology: Constructing a Nitrogen Budget of the Reed College Canyon

Average loan indebtedness upon graduation: $20,840

Casey Yazejian, Physics: Killing SchrÜdinger’s Cat: The Effect of Entanglement on Interference Visibility

Class of ’12 Unleashed

leah nash

Kathleen Aston, Linguistics: Don’t Touch Me with that Tone of Voice: An investigation into aspects of audio-tactile integration Courtney Fraser, Linguistics: And I was like :( : Emotive Features, Tone, and the Construction of Gender in Instant Messaging D’nae Henderson, History-Literature: Red Water, Black Magic, and White Jesus: Political, Natural, and Supernatural Disasters in New Orleans in 1927, 1965, and 2005

The bright May morning sparkled with enthusiasm and laughter as family and friends descended on campus to celebrate Commencement with the 288 members of the class of 2012 under the majestic white tent on the Great Lawn.

The ceremony began to the rousing sound of bagpipes. Graduating seniors applauded the professors who guided them during their time at Reed. In an act of symmetry and acclaim, the graduates were then applauded by their professors after they had collected their shiny new diplomas.

In his final commencement speech, outgoing President Colin Diver poked fun at graduating with Reed on the “10-year plan.” He was surprised nonetheless, when Don Berg ’12 shouted from the audience that he chose the 25-year plan. (Don first arrived on campus in 1986!)

Diver then mentioned three virtues that he hoped the class of ’12 would carry with them in their lives: forgiveness, gratitude, and love.

“Gratitude is, in Cicero’s words, not only the greatest of virtues but also the parent of all the others. For the privilege of having been in this place, at this college, surrounded by these people, you and I have so much to be thankful for. So, let’s start today, now, to embrace that good fortune by feeling gratitude and expressing gratitude.”

In his commencement address, NPR reporter Robert Smith ’89 encouraged the graduates to develop a style of work that is unique to them; something that they contemplate at the end of a day and know only they could have done it in just that way. Departing from usual platitudes, he didn’t tell the graduates to “live their dreams,” but suggested that it takes time to develop one’s voice and that it’s okay to emulate others during the process.

Smith also noted how in the story of the hero’s journey, or the epic myth, you never hear about the failures and disappointments it took to succeed, or the part of the legend where the “hero just wants to chill for the summer . . . the mighty king who just wants to figure stuff out, get his head straight.” This leads to important information being ignored—all those periods that are just as significant to shaping the person we become and the voices by which we know ourselves.

Congrats, class of 2012. We look forward to hearing your voices as well. —Nisma Elias ’12

september 2012 Reed magazine

7

Eliot Circular Last Lectures

Hanawalt Checks Out Norman F. Carrigg College Librarian Vickie Hanawalt started her career in libraries when she was in junior high.

“I was paid 90 cents an hour working at the local library,” she remembers.

“They let me file catalog cards, which was very good for a seventh grader. I’ve never looked back.”

After 25 years as head of the Eric B. Hauser Librar y, working for six deans and six Reed College presidents, Vickie is retiring. She came here in 1987 from Berkeley where she was the assistant head librarian of the Moffitt Undergraduate Library at the University of California.

As a librarian, Vickie enjoys fostering conversations between people and books.

“There are conversations waiting to happen, and we’re a place that makes that possible,” she says.

In addition to developing the library’s collections and preparing its budget, she hires and manages the librar y staff. Because the relatively small staff tends to remain longtime members of the Reed community, each addition makes a huge impact.

Under her aegis, the college joined the Orbis Cascade Alliance, offering access to the combined collections of its 37 member institutions. Students can search for titles online and get their hands on the books within days.

Reed’s own collection of 630,000 volumes is not a generic, just-add-water kind of undergraduate compilation, Vickie says, but echoes the curriculum.

“It’s a reflection of what we teach and what our students work on for their theses. There are peaks and valleys in the collection. It’s got contours to it, which is important, especially as we are now able to get other materials through Orbis.”

The collection is the heart of a building that has been enlarged twice in her tenure but hasn’t lost its charm. It still offers plenty of nooks and crannies for

8

Reed magazine september 2012

students to inhabit—a phenomenon that never fails to impress visiting colleagues.

“When I go to other campus libraries I’m sometimes struck by the opposite, the degree to which they seem impersonal, underused, and somewhat without character,” Vickie says. “Students identify with this place as part of their education and we try not to mess that up.”

The library may form the academic nucleus of the college, but the origin of intellectual discovery, she says, lies within.

“At some point it’s personal, happening within yourself. When you take advantage of all these resources, human and otherwise, you are the center of that change.”

Professor Peter Steinberger [political science 1973–] admires Vickie’s consummate professionalism and the serious intelligence she brought to the job. “She also brought a profound love for all the things that make Reed different, distinctive, and wonderful,” he says. “Virtually from day one, she was a Reedie at heart.”

As her career at Reed comes to a close, she anticipates the process of reinvention and being able to read at her leisure. A friend gave her a bookmark inscribed with “Vickie Hanawalt is reading this book and it’s 10 a.m.”

—Randall S. Barton

Hutto Named New Librarian Following Hanawalt’s retirement, Dena Hutto will be the new Norman F. Carrigg College Librarian. Dena has been at Reed for 16 years, most recently as the director of reference and instruction. The college conducted a robust national search that brought several top candidates to campus. But in the end, the search committee, with the help of extensive feedback from others in the community, concluded that she was best positioned to continue the fine work of her predecessor. Congratulations, Dena!

Profs Get Tenure Kristen Anderson psychology Specializes in developmental psychopathology, addictive behaviors. Received PhD in 2005 from University of Kentucky.

Arch de Triomphe After teaching at Reed for a full 40 years, professor Steve Arch [biology 1972– 2012] will enter the fall semester with emeritus status.

The decision to retire did not come easily. But Arch did not want his love for teaching to cloud the perception of his effectiveness. “I didn’t want to die in my office, literally or intellectually,” he says.

Arch advised more than 170 thesis students, roughly 50 of whom went on to earn PhDs or to hold research positions as MDs. “The best feeling is knowing when you’ve been instrumental in turning somebody’s intellectual light on,” he says. The most rewarding part of retiring for Arch has been the messages from former students. He said he comes close to tears when he receives letters and comments saying that a student discovered the interest of a lifetime in his class. Arch adds with a grin, “It’s special knowing that you’ve touched a life in a permanent, and hopefully not damaging, way.”

“Spending time with the students becomes the reason you’re here,” he says with conviction and a hint of mourning.

He warns new professors; especially those who come from other institutions, to guard their time and not fall prey to the addictive side effect that accompanies extended office hours. “It’s attractive and compelling to open minds to intense intellectual experiences . . . It’s the reason to come to Reed, but it will take all of your time if you let it.”

Arch has had a colorful career.

Standing six-foot-two and weighing 255 pounds, he went to Stanford in 1960 to study biology and play linebacker and fullback for the Cardinals. After graduating, he was drafted by the Chicago Bears, but decided instead to get his PhD at University of Chicago. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he traveled to Mississippi to register disenfranchised voters. In 1968, he was at the legendary Democratic National Convention

Paul Currie psychology Specializes in neuroscience, neuropharmacology, appetitive behavior.

Received PhD in 1995 from University of Manitoba.

Alexei K. Ditter chinese studies Specializes in classical Chinese literature, prose and narrative studies, Chinese literary history. Received PhD in 2009 from Princeton University.

in Chicago, standing toe-to-toe with National Guardsmen who were deployed to help the police “preserve disorder,” as Mayor Daley infamously stated.

“He is a larger-than-life figure,” says his colleague Janis Shampay [biology 1990–].

“He’s the quintessential professor.”

“You never have any doubt where Steve stands on an issue,” says colleague David Dalton [biology 1987–]. “He has a strong personality that manifests in a strong will when it comes to adherence to high standards.”

But his legacy at Reed will be defined by what he loved doing most—mentoring students. His dedication was recognized in 2008, when he won the mentor award from Oregon Health & Science University’s Medical Research Foundation, which declared, “Professor Arch has demonstrated rigorous scientific practice while directly mentoring research students and providing leadership in the biology department’s educational mission.”

Meanwhile, Arch plans to write a textbook on physiology and keep shooting hoops at the Reed gym, where the noon basketballers will enjoy the privilege of dodging his elbows. —Kevin Myers

Marat Grinberg russian language & literature Specializes in Russian Jewish literature and culture, Russian and European Modernism, Soviet literature, poetics, and cinema studies. Received PhD in 2006 from University of Chicago.

Timothy Hackenberg psychology Specializes in behavior analysis, comparative cognition, behavioral economics. Received PhD in 1987 from Temple University.

Jing Jiang chinese studies Specializes in modern Chinese literature and culture, theories of modernity, nationalism, subjectivity, gender studies, film studies. Received PhD in 2006 from University of Michigan.

Tamara Metz political science Specializes in Liberalism and its critics, feminist and postmodern theory, theories of freedom. Received PhD in 2006 from Harvard University Suzy C.P. Renn biology Specializes in the evolution of genomes, evolution of behavior. Received PhD in 1999 from Washington University School of Medicine.

Sonia Sabnis classics Specializes in Latin and Greek literature, imperial prose. Received PhD in 2006 from University of California, Berkeley.

september 2012 Reed magazine

9

Eliot Circular Wheeler Unveils Harpsichord—26 Years Later

10 Reed magazine september 2012

photos by vern uyetake

Alumni from many eras gathered in the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery during Reedfayre to witness a unique occasion—the unveiling of a French double harpsichord built by professor Nick Wheeler ’55 [physics 1963–2010] and a performance on it by Bonnie Garrett [private music 1988–2010].

“This is a Reed instrument and its first public appearance. It’s something I’ve fantasized about for 60 years,” Nick remarked at the event.

Nick became fascinated by the harpsichord (the distinguished ancestor of the piano) while playing at a concert during his freshman year at Reed and resolved to build his own instrument one day. He began work in 1985, when he was A.A Knowlton Professor of Physics. While the bulk of the carpentry and metalwork were completed in the two years that followed, the venture languished for two decades, as his teaching and other things took greater precedence. Nick was not able to put finishing touches on the instrument until his retirement.

Returning students and friends continued to ask over the years when and if the project would ever be finished. “It is a doubt which, I confess, I sometimes shared: it gave me anxiety because I did not want to leave to my heirs the problem of figuring out how to dispose of a stringless box that looked like a harpsichord, but was unplayable.” However, friends such as Professor Kathleen Worley [theatre 1985–] helped along the way by picking up some golddipped hardware and wood scrapers.

The case of the instrument is painted a shade of plum, while the support trestle and bench are eggplant, intended to make the instrument “seem to sit like a flower at the top of an unobtrusive stem.” Reversing the polarity of the piano keyboard, the natural keys are made of black ebony, while the sharps and flats are made of white bone. A range of woods, such as birch, poplar, plywood, maple, and ebony—some of which was salvaged from the old pipe organ in the Eliot Hall chapel—makes up the body of the harpsichord. The rosette, which serves no acoustic purpose but traditionally occupies a position in the middle of the

Professor Nick Wheeler, at home with the harpsichord he built over a span of 26 years. Below: The rosette is carved from Swiss pear wood with an inlay of ebony and ivory.

“ This is a Reed instrument . . .

It’s something I’ve fantasized about for 60 years”

soundboard, has six interwoven circles and is carved from Swiss pear wood with an inlay of ebony and ivory. The lustrous golden leaf on the name board was designed by Lee Littlewood ’68, a professional sign painter, who studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69].

Bonnie taught piano and harpsichord at Reed and also witnessed the humble beginnings of the instrument.

“When I heard Nick was building a double harpsichord (a harder task than just a single harpsichord), I wondered ‘How is he doing this? While being at Reed and a full-time professor?’ Then when I saw his tools and wood shavings in his office, I thought the physics department was a wonderful place.”

She awed the audience with three short scores by FranÇois Couperin, which

—Nick Wheeler ’55

introduced the audience to the color and possibilities of the two keyboards. Four compositions of another famous harpsichordist, J.S. Bach, served to demonstrate the range of dynamics of the five-octave keyboards; these were followed by the textured and elegant work by Jacques Duphly.

After giving the performance a thunderous applause, alumni took time to admire the harpsichord and to ask questions of both Nick and Bonnie. The harpsichord, which now resides in Nick’s home, may be on loan to the Portland Baroque Orchestra and to the Portland Opera from time to time, or may make an appearance in another concert. Nick’s symphony of dedication to the instrument will doubtless reverberate in the notes that it sounds in all the years to come. —Nisma Elias ’12

Empire of the Griffin Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

Meet Your Alumni Board

A new slate of officers took the helm of Reed’s national alumni board in July and will serve a one-year term in the following roles. Meet the executive committee below and find out who participated in Foster-Scholz Battle of the Bands, who worked as a security dispatcher, and who’s interested in amateur radio!

Scott Foster ’77

Chantal Sudbrack ’97

Greg Byshenk ’89 Vice President

Secretary

3-2: Chemistry (Reed) / Materials Science & Engineering (Columbia U)

Philosophy

Biology

Physics

Thesis: “Some Problems with Alasdair MacIntyre’s Whose Justice?

Which Rationality?”

Thesis: “Prey Selection and Caloric Reward in Falco Sparverius”

Thesis: “Two-Dimensional Conductivity in Thin Films”

Adviser: David DeSante

Advisers: Bill Peck and Marvin Levich

Adviser: Ken Davis

Student activities: men’s soccer goalkeeper, KRRC deejay, various theatre productions

Student activities: Canyon Day lead organizer

Lives in: Northern Sonoma Coast, California

Day job: Retired manager of analytical sciences for Chevron Energy Technology Company

President

Thesis: N/A Student activities: dorm mom for Scholz III, rugby, lifeguard, orchestra, Foster-Scholz Battle of the Bands, lab instructor for Nat.Sci Lives in: Cleveland, Ohio Day job: materials research engineer for NASA. Alumni board stuff: Life Beyond Reed, Working Weekends 2012, chapter -leader council Volunteer work for Reed: alumni board, organizer for social gatherings in Northeast Ohio, Reed Oral History Project, chapter rep. (Chicago), 1othreunion class leader 2007/2012, Reed Career Network.

Random interest: learning how to combat an unmanaged bamboo grove inherited with her new home

Student activities: student body treasurer, student body president, soccer, security dispatcher, night bus driver Lives in: Portland Day job: relocating from the Netherlands Alumni board stuff: outreach committee, social media, www.reedie.org Volunteer work for Reed: alumni board, 2012 Rose Festival Parade float volunteer, webmaster for Reed Alumni Webcon, Reed Career Network.

Random interest: the dysfunction of the U.S. political system as a result of the structure of political primaries and the decline in party function

Day job: district administrator for Coast Life Support District [Emergency Medical Response] Alumni board stuff: Reunions/ Reedfayre committee chair Volunteer work for Reed: alumni board, chapter rep (Washington, D.C.), college fair rep, prospie interviewer, 30th-reunion class leader 2007, Reed Career Network.

Random interest: celebrating the Great American Songbook through frequent jazz-ensemble performances on the remote California coast

What do these committees really do?

Life Beyond Reed (LBR) supports the career development of current students, recent grads, and mid-career grads through mentoring and other opportunities. The LBR committee helped orchestrate the first Working Weekend in February.

Nearly 200 students participated in 10 career panels plus a “StartUp Lab,” where students presented their ideas to potential investors.

The outreach committee works closely with chapter leaders to increase alumni engagement by developing events, creating opportunities to connect via social media, promoting IRIS participation for a stronger career network, and helping foster a broader relationship with the Portland community.

Jay Hubert ’66 Past President

Lives in: San Rafael, California

Alumni board stuff: outreach committee, strategic plan, Life Beyond Reed Volunteer work for Reed: alumni board, alumni fundraising for Reed, Bay Area Reed campaign committee, class gift chair 1991/2006/2011), alumni admissions representative, Reed Career Network.

Random interest: amateur radio: high-speed digital communication for emergency backup

Four Join Alumni Board

The Reedfayre committee develops programming for Reedfayre (aka Reunions) such as alumni college, Gastronomy NW, and local excursions. The committee also supports leaders from milestone years in increasing attendance and enouraging a gift from their class.

The nominating committee selects five new at-large members of the alumni board who will serve three-year terms. Committee members are the immediate past president of the alumni board (chair), the current president, and three non-members of the alumni board.

We extend a hearty welcome to four sterling alumni who were elected to three-year terms on the alumni board: Steven Seal ’01 Portland, OR David Devine ’96 Vancouver, BC Julia Chamberlain ’03 Boulder, CO Paul Levy ’72 Washington, DC

Learn more about the alumni board, including how to contact its members, at www.reed.edu/alumni/board_of_alumni/index.html

september 2012 Reed magazine 11

Empire of the Griffin Reedfayre Honors Cricket and Comrades of the Quest 1938–69], who showed him the library and said, “the rest is up to you.” Leaving this meeting, George came out the north exit of Eliot—the same steps where Cricket stood as she unwound the tale—and saw a couple in the woods “doing something that I had never seen done outdoors before.”

Impressed by these two experiences, George decided that “Reed was the place for him.”

John Sheehy ’82 was honored for his role as editor of Comrades of the Quest, a volume of “almost biblical” dimensions that was, John said, the closest thing Reed has to scripture. Despite its heft, he noted that the “director’s cut” would be longer: “Reedies appear incapable of expressing themselves in a

leah nash

Reedfayre ’12 traveled backward and forward through time to celebrate outstanding alumni, staff, and faculty.

Cricket Parmalee ’67 was honored with the Babson Society Award for her contributions to the Oral History Project and the Reed Stories Project—the stories collected by both projects were central to the making of Comrades of the Quest. Presenting the award, alumni board president Jay Hubert ’66 described Cricket as a “storytelling master” who has delighted audiences with stories painstakingly collected from generations of alumni.

Cricket recounted a favorite story, that of George Joseph ’51, who visited Reed as a prospie. He met professor Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history

Master storyteller Cricket Parmalee ’67 nabs the Babson Award.

single sentence when a dissertation will do just as well.”

Finally, honorary alumni status was granted to retirees: Professors Steve Arch [biology 1972–2012], Steven Black [biology 1989–2012], Librarian Vickie Hanawalt [1987–2012], and President Colin Diver [2002–12].

Arch, who taught at Reed for 40 years, recalled a student evaluation shown to him by an administrator at the end of his first semester that read simply, “Fire Arch.”

Looking back on his long career, Arch concluded, “I’m really glad he didn’t fire me.”

—Alexander Blum ’13

Reedies Reunite in Israel In 1948, a young Reed student named Elihu Bergman ’50 joined volunteers to bring holocaust survivors to Israel before it became a recognized State. In April 2012, 64 years after Eli’s brief but important sojourn, 18 Reed alumni and family members who live in Israel gathered together to celebrate the Reed Centennial—the first gathering of Reed alumni in Israel.

Many in the group originally came to Israel on visits or married Israelis and remained; others were Zionists who moved to live a more complete religious life.

The genesis of the gathering came when Don Green ’54 was visiting his son in Israel and happened to meet Nahum Gilbar ’79, who works as a tour guide at Shilo, where Jews lived for the first 300 years after leaving Egypt. Don called alumni & parent relations for names of other

12 Reed magazine september 2012

Reedies in Israel, and together they agreed to meet in the city of Rehovot in April for what proved to be an emotional reunion.

“For expatriates, meeting Reed alumni is an especially rare opportunity,” said Martin Land ’77. “Before this gathering I had never been among 18 Israelis who had even heard of Reed College. It was an absolute pleasure to spend a few hours with people who share the Reed experience and speak about the kind of education we enjoyed in a common language.”

“I could not have become the person I am today without my experience at Reed,” said Rich Brownstein ’85.

Don kindly wrangled updates from the Reedies in attendance, which are included in this issue’s class notes. But, he asks, why stop there?

T here are 750 alums residing abroad, scattered among countries in all continents. Reed boasts impressive

contingents in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Athens, Berlin, Paris, and major cities in Australia, New Zealand, India, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, not to mention the UK and Canada.

Do you long for a taste of the Reed spirit but live too far away to visit Portland? Organize a gathering in your own city by contacting Todd Hesse, hesset@reed.edu, in alumni & parent relations.

photos by leah nash

Reedfayre ’12 Alumni Hordes Seize Campus Generations of alumni sacked campus for Reedfayre (the celebration formerly known as Reunions) in June.

We submit for your approval some random images: the class of ’67 declaring victory outside Old Dorm Block; President Colin Diver brandishing a CliffsNotes version of Comrades of the Quest; a self-propelled conveyance known as the Pedalounge darting across campus with alarming vigor; Reedies lacing up the skates for a boogie session on the roller rink in Kaul; and the class of ’92 belting out Bohemian Rhapsody.

Mark your calendar for Reedfayre ’13, June 12–16, 2013!

See more highlights, including class photos!

reunions.reed.edu/highlights.php

september 2012 Reed magazine 13

Profiles in Philanthropy

Paying It Forward

By Randall S. Barton

Thirty-eight individuals, mostly Reed alumni, have given more than a million dollars to support the Centennial Campaign and shape the college’s future. Each of these extraordinary gifts comes with a story. But few donors can match the philanthropic determination of Dick Lingelser ’55.

Demonstrating the clarity of purpose that has propelled him through life, Dick has given back with gusto. His story reads like one of the Horatio Alger novels he devoured as a boy.

Dick grew up in San Francisco in a home where money was tight. When he was eight years old, he earned money collecting bottle deposits and picking fruit in the San Joaquin Valley. Later he worked for a sporting goods store and waited tables. At night he read the rags-to-riches novels his father brought home. Dick identified with Alger’s protagonists as well as other heroes such as Tom Swift and the athletic Merriwell brothers.

Dick excelled in chemistry and trigonometry and envisioned a career in physics. When it came time to consider college, he followed the example of the fictional Merriwells and applied to Yale. But his homeroom teacher encouraged him to look at a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. To his delight, Reed offered him a scholarship, covering tuition, books, and room and board, through the George F. Baker Foundation.

On his first day at Reed he received a phone call informing him that his mother had died. By the time he returned from San Francisco, he was too far behind in his courses to continue in physics. Eventually he was drawn to economics and in particular to legendary professor Art Leigh [economics 1945–88], who supervised his thesis, “A Dollar Dilemma: Cyclical and Structural Explanatory Hypotheses as Applied to the Postwar European Situation.”

After a stint in the Navy Reserves, Dick was hired at Proctor & Gamble, concurrently earning his law degree. In 1968, P&G was ordered to divest itself of the recently acquired Clorox brand and Dick moved to Clorox to start up a

14 Reed magazine september 2012

Linda and Dick Lingelser

procurement department. Since retiring in 1999, he has continued to do consulting and volunteer work.

At Clorox, Dick joined the Amanda Reed Society, begun by President Steve Koblik [1992–2001] to encourage donations of $10,000 to the Annual Fund. The college combined his $5,000 gift with a matching gift from Clorox. “I loved making Clorox put the other five grand in,” Dick says.

Over the years Dick and his wife, Linda, have given a million dollars to Reed. His endowment philosophy reflects his investment philosophy: timing is everything.

“Watch your stocks, the market, the interest rates, and your company’s giving program,” he advises, “and try to time the gifts you’re making in a way that is beneficial to your portfolio and any tax burdens.”

One example of Dick’s approach is his gift of shares in Philippine Long Distance to Reed. Since his purchase, the stocks had increased 80-fold in value.

“Donating those shares meant I didn’t have to pay the capital gains on them, and the college received a lot more money than I’d paid for those stocks,” he explains.

Minimizing tax burden through philanthropic giving is nice, but it isn’t the driver in Dick’s case. As a student who benefited from a full-ride scholarship, he pays it

forward with a vengeance.

“When I was finished at Reed, the college opened up the books and showed me that my four years at Reed had cost George F. Baker $5,080,” he says. “People are shocked at the high cost of education today, but back in ’55 a gallon of gas cost 30 cents.

What does it cost today?”

Emeritus Professor Ottomar Rudolf [German 1963–98] and his wife, Catherine, befriended the Lingelsers on a Reed alumni trip through southern Germany in the fall 2006, and the two couples have remained good friends.

“The Lingelsers are fun because they are inquisitive,” Ottomar says. “Dick is a typical Reed intellectual, with a very dry sense of humor, and he doesn’t like fools. Who does? He is excited about everything and takes delight in all kinds of technical matters, which makes for a great travel companion.”

Dick is involved not only with his alma mater, but with his community. For many years, he volunteered as a docent at the Point Reyes National Seashore and was named Volunteer of the Year in 2010 before moving to Medford, Oregon.

To find out more about planning a gift to Reed, see www.reed.edu/givingtoreed or contact Kathy Saitas, director of planned giving, at 503-777-7759 or saitask@reed.edu

Centennial Campaign

Giving Back—Our Way

By Chris Moses-Jenkins ’02

encouraged donors to reach toward a $500 gift; some have stepped up their commitment to $1,911 to honor the founding of Reed; others have chosen to make important leadership gifts with monthly contributions of $85 or $160.

These successes have confirmed our belief that Reedies have the capacity and desire to give, and furthered our sense that an alumni-led effort has tremendous potential for strengthening the college’s financial

Sustaining donations don’t fall from the sky, immaculately conceived, and delivered by wishful commandment. Just like a senior thesis, pieces get assembled over time and create the greatest whole.

This leads to our second goal: expanding the equity of contributions across all those who give. For too long, the college has relied on a small number of reliably generous alumni who have given at disproportionately higher rates than their peers. The Annual Fund needs a robust number of gifts at every level, not just at the top and bottom. Our Griffin Initiative has used generously donated matching funds and benefited from countless volunteer hours to expand the number of alumni giving at the Griffin level of $1,000 per year. (We now have 538 Griffin donors, with a goal of 565 next year.). Matches have also

future. Moreso, the many great conversations and creative ideas about events and activities—the real and sustained desire for engagement—have given us hope for an alumni body that is itself truly enriched through its support of the college.

Our work is just beginning. The AFR has ambitious goals for increasing alumni support, but our most exciting conversations come from envisioning a Reed alumni body that knows itself better, nurtures its relationships, and finds many fulfilling connections with the sustained life of the college.

So when you get a call from a current student (or an alumni volunteer), pick up the phone. Or go to www.reed.edu/givingtoreed and see how you can get involved.We’re excited for your ideas, your visions and, above all, your commitment to the power of alumni-based fundraising for Reed.

lucy bellwood ’12

What happens when you turn 100? Ideally, you’re financially independent. Ideally, you’ve passed through your adolescent angst, made it through a midlife crisis or two, and have the energy, vigor, and confidence to truly flourish in your second century.

We have celebrated a great deal at Reed’s centennial. Yet, as alumni we still have our work cut out for us. The college is in solid financial health, especially given the economic crises of the past five years, and will soon conclude a successful $200 million campaign. But strength is more than a balance sheet. A strong Reed is one with broad and active alumni participation, the resources to ensure the best possible education for its students, and a determinaton to innovate.

What will this take? A group of alumni have been developing a number of efforts under the moniker “Alumni Fundraising for Reed,” or AFR for short. We believe that alumni participation, volunteerism, and yes—giving— is the heart of the college. We’ve grown from a handful of Reedies brainstorming around a San Francisco conference table to an established steering committee with three working groups and over 90 volunteers who have done a phenomenal job strengthening Reed’s Annual Fund.

We’re concerned about money—or more truthfully, how many alumni give back to the college. Reed’s current giving rate lags embarrassingly far behind our peers. We’re most interested in expanding participation and developing a culture of philanthropy. Reed is something to believe in and something to support. The more we’re able to be counted, the more organized and generous we are, the greater investment we’ll have as stakeholders in the institution’s future.

The AFR’s focus on young alumni has been tremendously successful. Recent classes are giving at higher rates than ever before (we hit 889 donors in fiscal year

2012, up 51% since 2007) which is crucial for the long-term future. Current students are also giving back in record numbers.

Why is this so important? Without fail, those who begin early with reliable gifts, however modest, and continue to contribute as their circumstances allow, make up the bulk of Annual Fund donors and provide the vast majority of total value contributions in the long term. The myth of the got-rich-and-then-gave is just that.

september 2012 Reed magazine 15

Cheap Wine and Horsemeat

We recently stumbled across an essay in the 1962 Griffin addressing the (then purely theoretical) Class of ’12.

We are honored to reprint it, along with a response.—Ed.

A Certain Joie de Vivre

By Carol Burns ’62

This year was the mid-point in Reed’s first one hundred years. It was accompanied not only by renewed exploration of the past 50 years, but also by examination of the next 50.

The prospect for the future includes plans for extensive building and additions to present facilities, a sizable increase in the student body, and an anticipated rise in tuition payments of about $100 per year on the average for the next decade. There are mixed reactions to this future. Some look forward to the new developments. Others are uneasy and find themselves filled with a curious nostalgia for the present. This uneasiness about the future has caused a number of Reed students to turn to the past, to claim that the old Reed was better in some way and that the college is losing what was once a truly exciting intellectual climate. That utopian past is probably legendary. Old Quests and Griffins, even members of the early

16 Reed magazine september 2012

graduating classes, cannot convey to us how it really was in those days.

The past cannot be recovered. The future is dim. Even the present eludes us. We are described by our public relations office and by Sunday supplements; we are rated by national surveys. Usually our reaction is amusement or horror. No, we say, that is not how it really is. Most Griffins of the past few years have shown us to be beautiful and zany, now rapt in deep thought, now cavorting—long hair flying—at one with nature. That is not true either. We are somehow closer to normal than that, I think.

How then will we describe to the students of Reed’s centennial year how it was among us in the year 1961–62? There is much that no one p ers on can describe. How can anyone speak for the rather large number of students who have never written a letter to the Quest, never run for student council, never acted in a student play, and never especially cared to see the Doyle Owl? How can I, a politico, attempt to speak for the scientists and sociologists, the literati, and the philosophers? ...

Reed was no place for a person who had some idea of the way things should be. Most Reed students simply took things in their stride. And that had a certain joie de vivre. Not a mad Rivieran joie de vivre or the joie de vivre of poetic transport, but a kind of routine everyday joie de vivre. Lectures and conferences were frequently dull and we agonized over writing papers, but it seemed worth doing. Our

conversations were, for the most part, mundane. We talked about classes, instructors or one another, or we got into perfectly absurd arguments. But we did talk to one another, unlike those others who sat facing television sets, and we enjoyed it. We were content to live and let live. The sins of others made interesting conversation but were otherwise of no concern to us, and Reed students chose to live, dress, and act in a wide range of styles. We had no values. That, the publicists said, was the shortcoming of our generation, but we got along well without values.

The idea of God has little meaning for us, and that vision which inspired the rationalists of the nineteenth century—the future—looked unpromising to us. Even those who stood on the Portland streets with signs asking for peace and disarmament did so less from hope than from a feeling that even if it was hopeless it was somehow worth doing. Those values, which we rejected, were phony values.

Above all, we were remarkably unphony, and when we were phony we were conscious of it, as if going to a costume ball. When a Reed man put on a necktie he did so out of whimsy or expediency, not compulsion. Without ultimate standards or goals, we nonetheless found life interesting.

I hope there is still a Reed College in the year 2011–12. I hope that there are still people on this planet and that they are living good lives. What sort of life you must be leading in the year of Reed’s 100th anniversary is beyond my imagination. Yes, it is to you I am

1962

writing. This manuscript has been, I am sure, of little interest to the students of 1961–62. But you to whom I am writing are a peculiar audience, for I am possessed of a disquieting feeling that you will never exist. I hope I am wrong. Perhaps your Reed belongs to the state and is no longer beset by financial worries. You have lost the joy of sitting on Goodwill mattresses in unfurnished rooms, eating horsemeat, and drinking cheap wine by candlelight. The inauguration of an era of peace and security has brought an end to our frustrated radicalism and you now enjoy a calm, ordered life, rich in things material.

The world changes, and it is well that it changes. But perhaps Reed will not have changed so much as we thought and still exists as an oasis in society. Do people still walk about whistling and singing to themselves so that when three people pass on the paths, there is created a counterpoint of Vivaldi, “Frankie and Johnny,” and “Stars and Stripes Forever”? Is the Honor Principle, according to Quest editorials, still failing? Passing the smoking room of the library, do you still overhear this snatch of conversation? “I have just made the statement that this table (thump) exists. Now what do I mean when I say . . .” Is the Quest still incomprehensible to anyone without firsthand knowledge of the events reported? Has someone just planted the Doyle Owl on the Moon?

If so, then things really haven’t changed very much.

Carol Burns ’62 is an independent documentary filmmaker in Olympia, Washington.

The Big Crunch

By Nisma Elias ’12

Yes, Reed exists. More to the point, I, a member of the class of ’12, exist.

The prospect of being a newly-minted graduate brings with it excitement of the unknown and fear of failure. In reading the manuscript that eerily addresses me, I can say for sure that there have been enormous changes at Reed. There are more of us—about 1,450, compared to 844 in your day. We write theses on subjects like Brownian motion in the stock market and postmodernism and retrieve data from the cloud. We can compile a review of the literature on gender wage differentials across the globe and time with the click of a button.

There is no longer a smoking room in the library and horsemeat, alas, is no longer a part of our diet, although if you dropped into Commons you’d be surprised at the food from which some Reedies abstain—meat, dairy, and eggs, for starters.

However, it is striking how little has changed. There is not one type of Reedie; we still live, dress, and act in an exuberant variety of fashions.

We still read Homer, Herodotus, and

Plato. We question not only the existence of God, but any and all values we carried with us to Reed. Life is still neither calm nor ordered, not with the unemployment rate at 8.6% and the economy recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

We still find inexplicable joy in lying on mattresses (the origin of which is questionable) in Sallyport or on the Great Lawn, drinking cheap beer, and debating the distance of stars or the possibility of the Big Crunch. The Quest may be online, but it is still largely incomprehensible, at least to anyone who’s not a student.

Although the claim that Olde Reed was better will probably always be repeated, I am confident that Reed will continue to nurture outstanding scientists, scholars, and philosophers in the next 100 years.

And the Doyle Owl hasn’t been to the moon . . . yet. Just wait until I get my hands on the latest holographic technology.

2012

Nisma Elias ’12 majored in economics and is now pursuing graduate work in development economics at Yale. She is idealistic about eradicating poverty and inequality and promoting the spirit of inquiry that Reed helped foster within her.

september 2012 Reed magazine 17

A Locavoracious Appetite Amelia Hard ’67 is a driving force behind Portland’s Public Market.

By Raymond Rendleman ’06

Sometime in 2016, Portland will build something it has not had since the 1960s— a rainproof public market. And when the first eager customer pays three dollars for the first box of blueberries, no one will be happier than Amelia Hard ’67.

As a founding member of the Historic Portland Public Market Foundation and president of its board from 2006 through May 2012, Amelia has remained committed to hunger causes, a commitment that goes back at least to her ownership of legendary restaurant Genoa in 1981–92.

When Amelia and her husband, former Reed professor Fred Hard [English, 1962–70], purchased the restaurant from former co-owner Chris Rocca ’73 in 1981, nowhere in the U.S. were there stores that carried ingredients such as real balsamic vinegar, fresh chanterelles, or ParmigianoReggiano. And due to a ridiculous ban on all Italian meat products (because of an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease in Sicily), Amelia had to settle for so-called “American prosciutto” until the late ’80s.

This was not a tolerable situation for Amelia, or for any of Genoa’s so-called “first cook” kitchen compatriots, who included Patricia Hill ’90 and Rosemary Gerould Barrett ’70.

So, they started working with folks like “Roger the Mussel Man,” who gathered wild Oregon mussels off the coast, “Becky the Rabbit Lady,” who grew herbs and rabbits for the Genoa menu, and a colorful fungus guy by the name of Lars Norgren ’84.

After coming by Genoa with huge totes of chanterelles for years, Lars eventually developed the Peak Forest Fruit Company, which has remained successful to this day.

(While you can pick up your smart phone now and get a sackful of local hazelnuts delivered to you by bicycle, back in the ’70s it was all word-of-mouth.)

“That was a responsibility we took very seriously—not only serving our customers

18 Reed magazine september 2012

In Amelia’s case, being a foodie also means being a hunger activist. the best quality food—but there is also the community solidarity and benefit to supporting local agriculture,” Amelia says.

One thing she would bear in mind while prepping, when there was time to reflect, was for whom she was doing all the work.

Amelia liked to concentrate on a young couple who saved up money for months for their anniversary celebration, and she wanted everything to be perfect for them.

“That mindset to do the very best for people who richly deserved it spilled over into the hunger issue,” she says.

Newly homeless people who fell through the safety net during the Reagan era came by Genoa asking for food, and Amelia would always try to find leftovers, but it became a bigger issue. In 1989,

she founded the first Taste of the Nation Portland benefit; since then, the event has earned well over $1 million for the Oregon Food Bank and other hunger-fighting organizations. Amelia also helped to establish an Oregon Food Bank nutrition education program so chefs could interact directly with the people they were helping.

She ’s gone from ser ving Luciano Pavarotti a private feast with duck-breastfilled tortellini to advocating for food stamps at a public market planned for downtown Portland. It’s therefore fitting that Amelia’s market will be named after James Beard ’24. Just as he made fine cooking techniques available to the average layman, Amelia has helped build the groundwork for the locavore movement.

vivian johnson

COME EAT FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE Comrades of the Quest

COMRADES OF THE QUEST An Oral History of Reed College

By John Sheehy ’82 Hardbound. 575 pages.

Oregon State University Press. $34.95.

An Oral History of Reed College John Sheehy

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 In unanimous votes in May 2011 and June 2012, Multnomah County Commissioners agreed to sell the property at the west end of the Morrison Bridge to the Melvin Mark Development Company to build the James Beard Public Market and a 17-story commercial tower. The next steps include a capital campaign, for which Amelia will now work as staff manager.

Amelia is excited about the market’s location close to the Portland Saturday Market, creating a potential “market district” and connecting the downtown core with the waterfront.

“Imagine walking through an arcade lined with flowers and preserves introducing you to what the market has to offer, over a pedestrian bridge, then into two large market halls filled with our finest local foods,” she says.

We’re hungry already.

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.

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.

For more about the James Beard Public Market, see www .jamesbeardpublicmarket.com.

To order, visit centennial.reed.edu/shop/.

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

The Molecular Assassin Researcher Kevan Shokat ’86 pioneers a new technique for fighting cancer.

By William Abernathy ’88 | photos by ariel zambelich

20 Reed magazine september 2012

The cancer was spreading.

It began years ago, when a single kidney cell reproduced improperly. A tiny section of DNA was copied wrong. Cellular fail-safes failed. The immune system didn’t recognize the cell as a threat and, unchecked, it began reproducing. Dividing and pressing on, its daughter cells advanced and reproduced with the brainless, remorseless urgency of the bucket-wielding mops in Fantasia. The patient tried one treatment after another, without success; the cancer cells continued their relentless reproduction, threatening to destroy organs, crowd out healthy tissues, and leech away vital resources until the patient died.

Owing to medical confidentiality laws, we can’t say who the patient is, or where he or she lives. We can say, though, that the patient's cancer cells are in retreat, for now, thanks to an experimental drug devised by Kevan Shokat ’86.

“That’s what I’m hooked on now,” he says of the drug trials. “Seeing [our] drug and seeing every patient on the trial, what cancer they had, how long they had other therapies.” Patients who had been on twomonth trial after two-month trial with other ineffectual drugs, then changed to his new compound. “Then they’re on [our] drug for 15 months! You know it’s doing something. It’s so exciting!”

A pioneer in the new intellectual discipline of chemical biology, Kevan uses sophisticated techniques (many of which he invented) to unlock the secrets of kinases, complex molecules that help cells live, work, and—crucially—die. Armed with this knowledge, he is producing new medicines that attack cancer and other diseases by disrupting the chemical machinery of deviant or invading cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed—molecular arrows, if you will, in a war long dominated by carpet bombing.

On a gray San Francisco day, Kevan sits in his corner office above UC San Francisco’s gleaming new Mission Bay biosciences campus. Chair of UCSF’s department of cellular and molecular pharmacology and tenured at UC Berkeley, Shokat is a Howard Hughes investigator, endowed by the late billionaire’s fortune to advance biomedical science. He runs a lab of 16 graduate

students and postdoctoral researchers who dash about with focused intensity, some working behind computers, others fiddling with chemical-laden beakers behind fume hoods, as chemists have always done.

He shows off the open corridors leading to adjacent laboratories with pride that his team is able to wander freely from lab to lab. As a Hughes investigator, his intellectual property belongs to the university, and there’s no obligation or incentive to keep secrets. “That’s a very big line for me,” he says, “We want the students and everybody to be able to talk anytime, anywhere.”

In his field, Kevan is a rock star: a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Eli Lilly Award winner, Sloane Fellow, and Searle Scholar. He’s come a long way from Albany, California, a quiet, orderly suburb just north of Berkeley, where he grew up working in his parents’ print shop, running presses, printers, folders, and binders in high school and on semester breaks from Reed, which he could never have attended without financial aid.

His work ethic showed up early at Reed.

“Evan Rose ’86 or Deborah Kamali ’85 would come around to the library about midnight, one a.m., to try to get me out.”

(He and Deborah are now married; their son, Kasra Shokat ’14, is a junior at Reed.)

“A lot of people at Reed learned early on,” he remembers, “that you’ve got to focus on the important things, and not try to do everything. I ended up trying to do it all.”

Kevan did not come to Reed expecting to be a scientist. Though he’d taken biology and chemistry in high school, he wasn’t brimming with confidence in his first classes. “I didn’t know it very well from high school, so it was all new to me,” he recounts.

“I remember all the kids from better schools.

They were so far ahead. They got bored and I caught up.”

Professor Phyllis Kosen [chemistry 1981–83] really got him sold on the discipline. “She was just like a New Yorker, chain smoking, fascinated with biochemistry. She didn’t take any bullshit. She wanted top chemistry, and that just got me hooked.” Other lasting influences included his o-chem professor Nick Galakatos ’79 [chemistry 1983–84] and thesis adviser Ron McClard [chemistry 1984–].

Cellular workhorse.

Much of the day-to-day scutwork of a cell—eating, flexing, taking out the garbage, talking to the neighbors, and so on—is governed by special enzymes called kinases. Kinases transfer energy by moving phosphate radicals from molecule to molecule and from kinase to kinase throughout the cell. Break a single link in one of these long, delicate chains and the cell stops dead in its tracks.

september 2012 Reed magazine 21

The Molecular Assassin

Understanding Kevan’s work requires a step back to look at cells and how they’ve been studied. For all the attention DNA has received as the master blueprint of life, it’s not the part of the cell that keeps the lights on. The actual work of a cell—eating glucose, responding to hormonal signals, taking out waste, flexing (if it’s a muscle cell), transmitting signals (if it’s a nerve cell), reproducing, and politely killing itself when its work is done—is carried out in subtle, complex cascades of chemical causation.

The guiding agents of chemical action and energy in a cell are special enzymes called kinases. Kinases transfer energy by moving phosphate radicals from molecule to molecule and from kinase to kinase throughout the cell. Breaking a single link in one of these long, delicate chains can stop a cell dead in its tracks.

When Kevan left Reed, chemically manipulating individual kinases in live cells was something that hadn’t been done. Chemists had little insight into the molecular workings of cells, and biologists were not skilled at chemical approaches to the cell. The two disciplines stood apart from each other, separated by methodology and culture.

“When Kevan started his independent career,” recalls his PhD adviser, Peter Schultz of UC Berkeley, “chemists did mimetic chemistry. They tried to make organic systems that mimicked biological systems. There were very few chemists who would actually dig into the biology itself.” But after earning his PhD in 1991, Kevan did just that, plunging headlong into cell biology with postdoctoral research in immunology at Stanford.

Breaking away from one intense discipline and picking up an apparently unrelated one was a spectacular intellectual leap.

It wasn’t just difficult, though. “It [was] a huge career risk,” Schultz recalls. “When Kevan went to look for positions, people were confused as to what he was... People didn’t understand whether that person should be in the chemistry department or the biology department.”

“It was risky,” Kevan admits, “but that’s the great thing about coming from Reed.

You just go after what’s exciting to you, and you don’t worry about the consequences until later.”

22 Reed magazine september 2012

In the early 1990s, genetic engineering (directly manipulating DNA) was the most powerful technique in the cell biologist’s toolbox. It was at Stanford that Kevan first suggested that rather than modifying the cell’s genetic structure to manipulate kinases, one could design small molecules that would block kinase signal paths directly. “I told my adviser about it,” he recalls, “and he said, ‘That’s a stupid idea! Why would I do that? I can just knock out the gene and see what happens.’”

His adviser was advocating the conventional wisdom of the then-dominant approach, in which researchers turn off (“knock out”) a gene and hope to create a viable new mutant for study. This technique works well for studying simple, fastbreeding life forms like E.coli bacteria and yeast cells, but can become cumbersome,

retroviral chicken cancer that served as their experiment’s control group. The mutant expressed a kinase, v-Src (for “virus-sarcoma” and pronounced “vee-sark”) that would serve as their target. Next, they crafted a series of special molecules to probe the phosphate binding site of the v-Src kinase present in their mutated strain. One of the test molecules, [ɣ 32P]N6-(cyclohexyl) ATP, bound strongly to the mutant cell’s v-Src kinase’s phosphate–binding site, blocking it from receiving or transferring chemical energy. No other kinases found in either cell line showed strong affinity for the test molecule.

While the nominal objective of the paper, advancing the understanding of kinases in Rous sarcoma, was amply satisfied, the dry, scientific language of the article obscured its true significance. In the conclusion, the authors somewhat

“ That’s the great thing about coming from Reed. You just go after what’s exciting to you, and you don’t worry about the consequences until later.”

—Kevan Shokat ’86 expensive, and maddeningly inconclusive with complex, slower-breeding organisms like mice. The “knock out" mouse may never be born, it may die too quickly to study, or its cells may simply reroute its internal chemical signals to circumvent the induced genetic defect. Even if the knock out mouse does develop as hoped, the path from a knock out mutant to a new drug is indirect: you can’t cure a patient by tampering with his or her DNA. Kevan believed passionately that his chemical approach held huge potential.

Unfortunately, Schultz’s prediction proved witheringly accurate. When his postdoctoral research was done, Kevan sat in the academic marketplace like damaged goods, while peers with more orthodox interests landed jobs. “That was the hardest time,” he says, “I got no job offers.” Finally, he landed an assistant position at Princeton, which he accepted, uprooting Deborah’s medical practice and taking Kasra, then two years old, in tow to New Jersey.

In 1997, he and three collaborators published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that would become a signature work. Using genetic engineering, the team created a mutant cell line from Rous sarcoma, a well-studied

coyly predicted that if this technique were to work out with other kinases, “it might be possible to systematically begin to dissect the complex proximal signaling cascades controlled by cellular tyrosine kinases.”

Kevan and his colleagues had demonstrated it was possible to craft small molecules to probe the inner workings of living cells, inventing a powerful new technique to study cell biology that also provided a much straighter path from the laboratory to the doctor’s clinic.

“He built really clever tools, multiple tools,” says Schultz, his adviser at Berkeley.

“Elegant solutions that really picked an important biological problem and used chemistry and molecular science in a way that nobody had ever thought about doing.”

The techniques Kevan began inventing at Princeton have been widely adopted by academic and commercial researchers alike because drugs that target kinases offer the promise of extreme specificity. Compared to conventional chemotherapeutic drugs, which mow down healthy and cancerous cells alike in a statistically driven war of attrition, kinase inhibitors attack diseased cells only, leaving healthy cells unscathed.

“Right now,” he says, “this is probably the mainstream approach for cancer. Twenty

Ace of Kinase. Kevan Shokat ’86 uses kinases to jam the internal signaling of cancer cells.

years ago, nobody thought you could make a drug specific and potent enough to inhibit the kinases.” Pharmaceutical companies large and small are using the techniques he devised to bring kinase inhibitors to market. “Now it’s a race,” he says. “Who can make the most selective, best drug that’s orally stable, gets across your bloodstream, inhibits potently, and can get the money, the clinical trials, and the patients? Right now, there are so many potential drugs out there, there are not enough patients! You couldn’t test all the ideas.”

In 2006, he coauthored a paper that demonstrated that the mTOR (for “mammalian Target Of Rapamycin” kinase), implicated in several types of cancer, could be chemically blocked. In 2007, he cofounded a pharmaceutical company, Intellikine, which licensed and built on this idea. The company ’s two marquee compounds, INK128 and INK1117, attack two broad types of cancer by inhibiting kinase signals in the mTOR and PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase) pathways, respectively. These drugs, which have cleared phase I clinical trials (setting safe doses and proving human safety), showed significant results in patients, both blocking cancer growth,

and, in the case of INK128, interrupting metastasis, the devastating spread of cancer cells throughout the body. “We had one patient,” says Intellikine’s cofounder Troy Wilson, “with renal cell carcinoma [whose] tumors shrank dramatically after two cycles of our drug. That doesn’t happen spontaneously.”

In December 2011, Japanese firm Takeda Pharmaceuticals snapped up Intellikine for $190 million. If Intellikine’s drugs make it to market, the deal rises to a total of $310 million.

Not bad for two molecules.

Thirty years after Chemistry 101 and well into his own career, Kevan might be given a pass for mad-genius abrasiveness, but by all accounts he remains a pleasure to work with. “I’ve been in this business for 15 years, started six different companies, with a lot of different people,” Wilson says.

“Kevan, for a lot of reasons, stands head and shoulders above all of them. He’s not only one of the most insightful, thoughtful, brilliant people I’ve ever met, but he’s just a genuinely good human being who always does the right thing... I can think of nobody

I’d rather have as a scientific founder.”

Amid the excitement of new discoveries, he remains an active teacher, running his lab as a workshop where students dedicate themselves to inquiry with few constraints.

“What I like about running the lab is getting to know people, getting to know their strengths, and then helping them direct themselves onto the path that they find most compelling. That, I think is true for Reed. Nobody tells you you can’t do something, or you can’t go in some direction.”

Kevan encourages his students to pursue their ideas, just as he did. “He’s a great scientist,” notes Joe Kliegman ’06, one of his graduate students, “but he’s also a compassionate human. That’s really important.”

The week we went to press, another of Kevan’s papers had been accepted by Nature, describing a new paradigm, attacking multiple kinase receptors simultaneously. No longer content to address single kinases, he’s studying them as a network, touching on information theory to go after the problem. “I think it really is going to be a big paper...” he says, and you can almost hear the wheels turning in his head.

William Abernathy ’88 is a professional wordsmith and unprofessional ukulele player who lives in the Bay Area.

september 2012 Reed magazine 23

The Darkness of Memory Lane Professor Daniel Reisberg’s expertise on perception and memory is having an impact far beyond the classroom.

By Bill Donahue

It was dark outside when she was shot.

Ten at night, roughly. The gunman stood outside her camper in Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest on that August night in 2003 and nailed her in the chest as she reached to close the window. Sherl Hilde, age 45, crumpled, unable to move her legs.

A few moments later, the attacker shot her husband, Noris Hilde, as he called 9-1-1 on her cell phone.

Noris died, but Sherl survived. Bleeding profusely, she was flown by helicopter to the hospital, where she recuperated for a month. Meanwhile, local detectives developed a theory. The killer, they believed, was troubled 28-year-old Samuel Adam Lawson, who had recently stolen a .357 Marlin rifle from his father’s gun case. Lawson had met the Hildes hours before the killing, when the couple drove up to their reserved campsite, only to find it occupied—by Lawson, who gathered his gear and shuffled away.

Two years later, at a pretrial hearing, Sherl Hilde pointed at Samuel Lawson and proclaimed, “I’ll never forget his face as long as I live.”

Lawson was ultimately convicted of aggravated murder and is now serving a life sentence in the Oregon State Penitentiary.

But there is a problem with this case. The most compelling evidence against Lawson lies in the memory of Sherl Hilde, and there is reason to think that her memory may be wrong.

Professor Daniel Reisberg [psychology 1986–] is an authority on cognition and on

24 Reed magazine september 2012

the complex ways in which people remember—and sometimes fail to remember—the details of their lives, including the traumatic moments they have experienced. The author of scores of articles and a dozen books, he is a leading expert on eyewitness IDs. He has testified for the defense in many trials in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, some of them involving murder or sex abuse. At Lawson’s 2005 trial, he held the witness stand for a full day and declared, “I honestly cannot think of a single case I have ever seen or heard about that had this many concerns about one or another factor that could compromise somebody’s capacity to remember.”

The problems in the Lawson case began within minutes of the shooting. As the helicopter flew her to the hospital, Hilde was certain who the killer was. She fingered, of all people, the pilot. Initially, she told police that she never saw the shooter.

Shown a photo throwdown, she did not pick out Lawson. Over time, however, as investigators attempted to reconstruct the shooting, her memory began to evolve.

She recalled that the shooter had shoved a chair cushion over her eyes to prevent her from seeing him, but that she caught a glimpse of him in profile. After she had seen Lawson’s photo on half a dozen occasions, the memory of that glimpse became clearer and clearer, until finally she was certain that Lawson was the killer.

Professor Reisberg’s testimony didn’t persuade the jury, but Lawson’s attorneys [who include Laura Graser ’73, Bronson James ’94, and Bear Wilner-Nugent ’95] appealed his conviction to the Oregon Supreme Court, which will likely rule some time this year. Even if it refuses to grant a retrial, it could update the way Oregon courts handle eyewitness IDs garnered by investigators using suggestive tactics—in other words, by inadvertently leading the witness into fingering the prime suspect.

Oregon’s standard for reconstructed IDs

katherine guillen

september 2012  Reed magazine 25

Reisberg was set in 1979, in State v. Classen, when the Oregon Supreme Court (in an opinion written by Justice Hans Linde ’47) ruled that such IDs could be shared with juries, but only if they stood a reasonable chance of being reliable. The court cited several factors that judges could weigh in allowing such IDs to be admitted as evidence—did the witness get a good view of the alleged criminal? Was he or she certain that the ID was accurate?

The Classen rules (and the federal rules on which they are based) were never perfect, but in recent decades grave doubts have begun to sprout around them. In fact, the New York–based Innocence Project reckons that eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide. Since 1989, nearly 300 U.S. prisoners have been exonerated

by DNA evidence; about 75% of them had been mistakenly sent to prison because of faulty eyewitness evidence.

The 180-page transcript of Reisberg’s testimony explains why an honest eyewitness might make a faulty ID. Exuding at turns both the drama of Stephen King and the explanatory tone of a psychology textbook, Reisberg’s narration dwells, at first, on a white North Carolina woman, Jennifer Thompson, who was raped in 1984. Police suspected a black man, Ronald Cotton. Thompson picked Cotton out of a lineup, and the officer told her she’d done a “good job.” Cotton was duly convicted and imprisoned for 11 years—until DNA evidence conclusively proved him innocent.

Thompson had identified the wrong man.

Still, the effect of the cops’ certainty was so powerful, Reisberg told jurors, “that even after Jennifer was shown irrefutable [DNA] evidence that they had the wrong guy, she has testified that when she plays the videotape in her head of that awful night, the face she still sees is Cotton’s.” [Since then, Jennifer Thompson has become an outspoken advocate for eyewitness reform.

Miraculously, she and Cotton have become friends, and have made several joint appearances. She no longer sees Cotton’s face in her mental video.]

Moving to the particulars of the Lawson case, Reisberg cast doubt on whether Sherl Hilde—shot in the dark, and then bleeding, traumatized, and heavily medicated—ever had the wherewithal to consolidate a vivid memory of the crime. He noted that, inside

26 Reed magazine september 2012

the brains of trauma victims, glucocorticoids work overtime. They manage stress but also, Reisberg noted, shut down memory consolidation. “It’s like never putting the book on the bookshelf,” Reisberg said.

“You’re not going to be able to find it later.”

Reisberg also discussed a study in which researchers successfully planted memories in subjects by showing them a movie of a car driving through a quiet countryside devoid of manmade structures and then asking, “Can you tell me how fast was that car going when it went past the barn?” The subjects then remembered the fictional barn. Reisberg suggests that by repeatedly showing Hilde Lawson’s photograph, the police planted a memory in her mind.

“Eventually,” he said, “you’re going to look at that photo and say, boy, that’s familiar.”

Reisberg was playing to a tough audience (rural, conservative Douglas County is among the most pro–death penalty jurisdictions in Oregon), but he is a nimble and animated performer—bouncy on his feet, his hands a flurry of emphatic gestures, and his voice rises to an excitable trill as he drives home his points. Students at Reed, where he’s been teaching since 1986, gave him an award last year for being the “most likely to jump on his desk.” In court, he explained the most abstruse psychological studies in everyday terms (by, for instance, telling a story about a bickering couple), and in the right moments he was not above humor. Consider this discussion of leading questions seven or so hours into Reisberg’s testimony: Prosecutor: You want to go home pretty quick, right? Leading question?

Reisberg: “Pretty quick” isn’t essential, but I’d love to be in Portland before dark.

Judge: When does it get dark in Portland?

And how fast do you drive?

Reisberg: Legally, Your Honor.

Judge: Of course.

Reisberg: That was a leading question.

When Reisberg matriculated at Swarthmore in the 1970s, he was torn between philosophy and biology. “I learned,” he says, “that philosophy had a lot of interesting questions but very few answers. And biology—I loved the intellectual muscle of hard facts, but biology didn’t ask the questions I wanted to pose.”

Reisberg found a happy medium in psychology. He was especially enchanted with the study of cognition, a close cousin of epistemology, and he fell under the spell of an austere professor, Hans Wallach, a German émigré who pronounced himself (in a daunting one-on-one meeting with Reisberg, who was just 16) “one of the best experimentalists in the world.” Working in a predigital age, Wallach concocted ingenious lever-and-pulley gadgetry to conduct elegant studies of human perception. To test how the right ear and the left ear respectively process a given snippet of sound, he had his subjects wear a gutted welders’ helmet attached to a giant overhead wheel. Subjects dialed the wheel by turning their heads—and thereby directed their ears towards any one of a surrounding bank of stereo speakers.

“Hans never threw his gadgets out,” says Reisberg. “His lab was like a science museum.” Eventually, as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, Reisberg aimed to set up psychology experiments framed by Wallach’s “wonderful intuition and inventive research methods.” Mostly, he studied perception, writing papers with titles such as Looking Where You Listen: Visual Cues and Auditory Attention.

Later, as a young professor at the New School in New York, Reisberg met graduate student Friderike Heuer, now his wife.

She was researching how the mind records memory amid traumatic emotional events, and Reisberg joined her to coauthor several papers. Today, Reisberg still does research, but he always pairs with students. On principle, he gives them first-author credit on papers. He has written several leading psychology textbooks on learning, perception, cognition, and memory.

Teaching is his true calling, however; for two decades, he’s focused on delivering the polysyllabic news contained in psych journals to Reed students, lawyers, jurors, and lay readers worldwide. He has given workshops on eyewitness IDs to police detectives and lawyers. He’s also brought police officers to Psych 350, Psychology and the Courts, to enlighten Reed students on the challenge of obtaining witness IDs. Currently on sabbatical, he is writing a handbook that lawyers can use in cases involving perception and memory.

Reisberg sometimes receives unusual phone calls. In 2003, the Dalai Lama, aiming to forge a link between Buddhist

darryl james

monks and Western scholars, held a twoday conference at MIT, “Investigating the Mind,” to which he invited Reisberg and several other psychologists. Reisberg remembers a somewhat surreal encounter.

“We were instructed to act like this was just a normal conference,” he says, alluding to his colleagues, “but that’s hard to do when one of the people at the table is wearing a bright orange robe and is regarded by millions of people as a deity.”

His Holiness focused part of the discussion on mental visualization, and the monks reported being able to see elaborate images as they meditated—deities in flowing robes and mandalas of intricate detail. “When the image appears,” said one monk, “it’s like a fish jumping out of the water.”

Reisberg and his colleagues were dubious. “Their level of detail,” he says, “was not consistent with our understanding of the brain tissue that makes mental imagery possible.” He found himself in the awkward position of countering the Dalai Lama. As he remembers it, he and his colleagues pointed out that visualization has to be limited by the structure of the brain; they told His Holiness, “You can’t grow a third arm no matter how hard you try.”

The Dalai Lama was resolute, reminding the psychologists of recent findings on neuroplasticity, in which the brain shows a remarkable ability to reorganize itself in light of training and experience.

Reisberg’s work with the court system has been more pragmatic—and also quite varied. In one case, he considered an account of sexual abuse, disclosed for the first time by a small child during her bath. He testified on how the human mind might process auditory data amid the hard, echoey surfaces of a typical bathroom. In another case, he testified on how pretrial publicity might bias jurors against a murder suspect. In a different case, when jurors were presented with a scratchy audio recording of a sting operation, he explained why it was problematic that the recording had been transcribed: the transcriptionist had made interpretive guesses as to the content—and had thereby biased jurors’ ears. In a Fruitland, Idaho, murder case, he spoke about the suggestive tactics used by police investigators seeking to rein in the suspect.

Reisberg is hardly the first psychologist to raise questions about police investigations. Professor Gary Wells, at Iowa State University, launched the inquiry, arguably,

Our memories are not static, according to Professor Dan Reisberg [psychology 1986–]. They can be shaped, squeezed, and molded by subsequent experience.

in 1978, with a journal paper that categorized the factors compromising eyewitness ID. Wells described “estimator variables”— that is, variables that the criminal justice system can’t control: the quality of the witness’s vision, for instance—and also “system variables,” which cops and courts can control, such as the quality of photo lineups. In the years since, the research on eyewitness ID has become deeper and more nuanced. There are now many American psychologists who give expert testimony on eyewitness ID, and courts are increasingly open to learning from them.

Indeed, last year in State v. Henderson the New Jersey Supreme Court recognized the “troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications” and ruled that, before admitting such IDs, courts must consider context, by asking, for instance, if testimony was induced, or if the witness was drunk or emotionally stressed.

As Reisberg waits, hoping that the Oregon Supreme Court grants Samuel Lawson a retrial, he feels that the court would do well to emulate Henderson. But he stresses that the real work on improving eyewitness IDs must happen outside the courtroom. “We need to keep doing research on two tracks,” he says. “In the lab, and also in real life. We need to ask if what we learn in the laboratory—about perception, about memory—plays out in real-world criminal cases. In some cases, it hasn’t.” Laboratory studies have shown that, when confronted with a weapon, subjects have proven less able to process peripheral sensory data and make reliable IDs. In real life, though, people confronted by weapons

have not proven weak at making IDs. “We don’t know why this is,” Reisberg says. “It’s a puzzle we need to untangle.”

Even more important than research, Reisberg says, is dialogue with police. “They have complicated jobs,” he says, “and so much to learn. They have to know how to use firearms, and how to drive at high speeds and write up reports. They get about 10 minutes’ training on how to run an ID, but they really want to do it the right way: they want to keep bad IDs out of court too.”

Once, after a trial involving a Portland gang shooting, Reisberg says he lingered in the hall with a police detective. “We had a conversation about what kind of investigation would make sense to him and me.

His concern was that, in gang killings, witnesses are afraid to pick the guy out of a lineup. They think, ‘If I do that, someone will kill my momma.’ He was asking, ‘How do you coax someone into making an ID?’ My concern was they shouldn’t be coached.”

“We came to an understanding of one another,” Reisberg says, “There was progress, and that conversation has to continue. Because it’s a double tragedy when the bad guy goes free and an innocent man goes to prison.”

GO FURTHER Learning and Memory by Daniel Reisberg and Barry Schwartz, 1991.

Auditory Imagery by Daniel Reisberg, editor, 1992.

Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind by Daniel Reisberg, 2012.

Psychology by H. Gleitman, D. Reisberg, and J. Gross, 2010 Memory and Emotion by Daniel Reisberg and P. Hertel, editors, 2004.

Handbook of Cognitive Psychology by Daniel Reisberg, 2012.

september 2012 Reed magazine 27

Reed’s New President

The Advocate Professor. Scholar. Author. Attorney General. John Kroger brings a wealth of experience—and energy—to Eliot Hall.

By Chris Lydgate ’90

John Kroger is not exactly your gardenvariety academic.

As befits a president of Reed, he boasts a formidable intellectual pedigree—magna cum laude at Yale and Harvard. Scholarly articles on the history of the Supreme Court and the foundations of Roman law.

He taught political science at Yale and legal philosophy at Lewis & Clark.

But his wardrobe contains more than tweed. He also served in the Marines, battled mobsters and narcotics traffickers as a federal prosecutor, argued two cases before the Supreme Court (won both), and served as attorney general of Oregon.

Kroger’s experience as an advocate may come in handy. He takes office at a time when the liberal arts are coming under fire. In the aftermath of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, many Americans view higher education as vocational training. Colleges around the country are cutting back classics, theatre, and foreign languages. Against this backdrop, the trustees want the new president’s top priority to be “articulat[ing] Reed’s message and mission.”

Kroger got the job not just because he has taught the liberal arts, but also because he has been shaped by the liberal arts.

When he speaks about the transformative power of the humanities, he speaks from his own experience.

To understand that transformation, dial your time machine to 1983. Kroger was 16 years old, a teenage rebel in ragged t-shirts and cutoff jeans who patterned himself after Jeff Spicoli, the laidback surfer dude played

by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Kroger and a high-school buddy were cruising through the streets of Austin, Texas, in a beat-up Ford Mustang with a case of

28 Reed magazine september 2012

Bud and a jug of pre-mixed screwdrivers when they spotted another Mustang parked on a sidestreet with an authentic set of hubcaps. They hopped out, pried off three of the hubcaps with a crowbar, and were working on the fourth when the police showed up. It turned out the parked Mustang belonged to a state senator.

Unfortunately, the incident was part of a pattern. By his senior year in high school, he was drinking several times a week and got himself kicked out of AP math.

Kroger’s metamorphosis is vividly retold in his autobiography, Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves, an engaging account of his adventures as an assistant U.S. attorney, for which he won the Oregon Book Award in 2009.

After the hubcap caper, Kroger’s father gave him an ultimatum to clear out of the house within 48 hours of getting his high school diploma. A few months later, on his 17th birthday, with no job and no prospects, he did “what any red-blooded Texas boy would do” and enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Kroger’s three years as a Marine, serving in Recon, the corps’ elite intelligence and special operations unit, taught him the value of discipline, a sense of duty, and how to be a crack shot with an M-16, but it did not provide much of a moral compass.

Hungry for a sense of purpose, he applied to Yale, won a scholarship, and became the only veteran in a freshman class of 1,300.

There he received what he was later to describe as an “immense gift”—an education in philosophy.

One of Kroger’s first assignments at Yale was Plato’s Meno, a Socratic dialogue that explores the nature of arête (virtue), the paradox of learning, and the question of whether knowledge is innate. He fell in love with the discipline, plundering bits

and pieces from various thinkers to apply to his own life: From Aristotle, the importance of forming good habits, of keeping one’s life in balance, of friendship and the life of the mind; from Kant, the value of honesty, a virtue I lacked as a child; from Nietzsche, the importance of rigorous, independent critical thinking; from Aquinas, the value of analytic clarity.

Together with his roommate, future Reed professor Jan Mieszkowski [German 1997–], Kroger also founded a literary magazine, Lovetrain, inspired by the O’Jays soul classic. “We sold it for a buck a copy and gave the money to a homeless shelter,” he says.

leah nash

New president John Kroger (coffee cup glued to hand) and Reed students Torrey Payne ’14, Amzar Faiz ’13, Eugenia Plascencia ’13, and Anna Schneider ’14 amble through the GCC Quad discussing Solzhenitsyn and The Smiths.

Most of all, Kroger was influenced by the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who argued that actions should be judged by their utility—that is, the greatest good for the greatest number.

By the time he graduated from Yale in 1990 with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in philosophy, he was a firm believer in utilitarianism. He quit drinking and traced a rapid trajectory, first as an aide to Representative Chuck Schumer of New York, and then as deputy policy director for presidential candidate Bill Clinton, whom he advised on domestic policy. “My time working with Clinton was priceless because I got to learn about American politics at the side of a master,” he later wrote. “Watching

him work a crowd, I saw firsthand the source of his power, a matchless ability to forge an instant emotional bond with each person in a cheering crowd.”

Nonetheless, after Clinton’s victory, Kroger soured on Washington politics.

“The higher my position, it seemed, the less it had to do with helping real people, the more with manipulating voters and the press,” he wrote. “I found myself hungering to do something more practical, to find a job with positive real-world results.”

Kroger went to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1996. Two years later, he was standing in a Brooklyn courtroom face to face with one of the most notorious mobsters in New York City.

Gregory Scarpa Jr. owned the streets of Brooklyn. His father, Gregory Scarpa Sr., was a capo in the Columbo crime family and died while serving life in prison for several murders. Greg Jr. grew up in “the life” and followed in his father’s footsteps. The infamous Scarpa Crew ran numbers rackets, executed bank heists, and trafficked in marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, pulling off a string of brutal murders along the way. One of the victims, a car thief known as Sal “The Hammerhead” Cardaci, was buried in the basement of Mike’s Candy, a convenience store. Scarpa drove a fancy Mercedes, lived in a mansion, and owned the nightclub On The Rocks.

september 2012 Reed magazine 29

President Kroger By the time Kroger, then a junior prosecutor, was assigned to the case in 1998, a tangle of government agencies, including the NYPD, the DEA, and the FBI, had been tracking Scarpa for a dozen years. The investigation had produced masses of evidence—wiretaps, tax records, transcripts, and even some human bones—stored in a vault known as the “war room.” When Kroger and his coprosecutor, Sung-Hee Suh, first visited the vault, they could barely budge the door because so many file boxes were stacked against it.

I forced the door open with my shoulder, causing a minor avalanche of boxes inside, and quickly learned that we had inherited a total mess. File cabinets and boxes had been packed so deeply against the walls that I could not even locate a light switch. They rose in perilous piles all the way to the ceiling. The room smelled pervasively of old cardboard and ancient, calcified masking tape, the scent of despair. Sung-Hee and I looked at each other and our hearts sank. We quickly retreated to Starbucks for coffee.

Kroger’s account of the trial makes a gripping courtroom drama. But it also provides deep insights into the history of the mafia; how it was in a sense midwived

by Prohibition; how it thrived because of the unwillingness of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to acknowledge its existence; and why the government was unable to score major victories against it for so long.

Woven into Kroger’s analysis is an even more surprising thread. At the start of

his legal career, he believed prosecuting criminals like Scarpa was an unquestionable social good. But as every philosophy student knows, there are two ways to express Bentham’s classic moral principle.

The optimistic version is the greatest good for the greatest number. The other version is less attractive, but more powerful: The ends justify the means.

As the courtroom victories piled up, he began to see the “darker side” of his work.

Most mafia investigations rely on informants whose cooperation is secured through plea bargaining. Typically, investigators nab underlings, flip them, and use their testimony to build a case against a bigger crook. An inevitable byproduct is that witnesses who are guilty of serious crimes sometimes get away with light or even nonexistent sentences.

Most people—certainly most utilitarians—are willing to accept this if it is the price of putting a mafia boss behind bars.

But real life gets more complicated. For many years during his reign as a mafia capo, Scarpa Sr. was actually an FBI informant.

On several occasions, his FBI handler intervened with other government agencies to protect him.

Scarpa Jr. raised this defense at his trial, arguing that he and his father worked for the FBI and that their actions had the tacit approval of the agency. Rather than admit the connection, Kroger made no comment, hoping that the jury would conclude it was simply too far-fetched to be true. In this case, the utilitarian in Kroger was willing to ignore

an indisputable fact (that Scarpa’s father was an informer) in order to secure a conviction.

A minor sin, perhaps. But others followed. Kroger became an expert at flipping suspects, sometimes cajoling them into cooperation even when by doing so they put their own lives at risk. In 2000, for example, he persuaded small time crook Manuel to wear a wire to obtain evidence against a gang of violent drug dealers in Bushwick.

Thanks to Manuel’s bravery, the police were able to arrest several drug traffickers. But the arrests barely dented the flow of narcotics onto the streets. Was it worth risking a man’s life to nab a few mid-level dealers?

Over time, Kroger began to reconsider his Benthamite outlook.

Gradually I saw what Kant had been driving at.

Kant’s demand that we treat people with reverence and that we view them as ends in themselves, not as tools to be used to achieve some preferred social outcome, seemed much more relevant than I thought. Kant’s goal was not just to avoid turning persons into victims. He also wanted to protect persons like me. For when an interrogator deceives and manipulates, it does moral damage not just to his target but to himself.

That summer, Kroger took a few weeks’ vacation, bought a Trek hybrid bicycle for $350, and pedaled solo from Brooklyn to Niagara Falls to Glacier National Park and finally arrived in Oregon, where he saw for the first time the towering Douglas firs. His companions were Hemingway, Trollope, and Slocum. During the trip, his misgivings about his work hardened into resolve.

Concluding that “sometimes it is impossible

The Kroger Conspiracy In the age of social media, rumors flourish with a profusion that would have made Pepys blush. The hiring of a new president has sparked some fascinating conspiracy theories. Here we list some examples and assess their plausibility.—Ed. Theory #1. Kroger was hired by his former Yale roommate, German professor Jan Mieszkowski, in a bid to annex the Russian department.

What we know: Professor Mieszkowski [German 1997–] was indeed Kroger’s roommate at Yale and did indeed serve on the search committee. However, after Kroger was nominated, Mieszkowski recused himself from all deliberation and votes involving Kroger, says committee chair Anna Levin [trustee 2005–].

Rumors that the German department is

30 Reed magazine september 2012

eying the Russian department’s meeting room have proven difficult to verify.

Plausibility: 2 owls out of 10.

Theory #2. Kroger faked a health condition to get out of having to campaign for re-election. Theory #2a.

Kroger is deathly ill and liable to keel over at any moment.

What we know: In October 2011, Kroger announced that he would not seek reelection as attorney general due to an unspecified health condition. The

statement was intended to protect his privacy, but had the opposite effect. Some reporters speculated that Kroger, a recovering alcoholic, had fallen off the wagon. Others suggested that the illness was manufactured to duck a tough reelection campaign. Neither claim holds up. Kroger has not taken a drink since 1991.

Moreover, the condition was anything but imaginary. He underwent extensive treatment, including surgery, and is now back on his feet. Most political observers think he would have easily won reelection.

Anyone who has seen him bounding up

the stairs of Eliot Hall would find it hard to entertain doubts about his vitality.

Plausibility. 1 owl out of 10.

Theory #3. Kroger is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan.

What we know: Marines and Mongols both favor swords. No one has ever seen Kroger and Khan in the same room together. Trustees have a longstanding obsession with landlocked steppes.

Plausibility. 10 owls out of 10.

to be both a great prosecutor and a good human being,” he trained his sights on another kind of public service: teaching.

Kroger taught throughout his career: at Harvard Law School, he served as a teaching assistant to undergrads in philosophy.

As a prosecutor, he led a political science seminar at Yale, taking the Metroliner to New Haven and often not getting home to Brooklyn until two a.m. “Teaching is probably my favorite thing in life besides reading,” he says.

In 2002, Kroger got a job as an associate professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, specializing in criminal law and jurisprudence. (After his first semester, he took a leave of absence to prosecute top Enron executives.) He proved a popular professor at Lewis & Clark, earning the Levenson Award for Excellence in 2004, 2007, and 2008. “He was my favorite professor there,” says Andy McLain ’92. “He loved philosophical inquiry. It was a real delight to be in class with him talking about big ideas.”

In 2008, in keeping with his belief that “politics is a form of civic education,” Kroger ran for Oregon Attorney General on a platform of upholding civil rights, protecting consumers, and cracking down on pollution, mortgage fraud, and white-collar crime. He prevailed in a hard-fought Democratic primary and won the Republican primary as a write-in candidate.

Once in office, he helped create (and later chaired) the state’s Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, which brings a multidisciplinary approach to the alphabet soup of government agencies whose clients are affected by addiction (be they homeless

children, teenage mothers, or hardened felons). As a recovering alcoholic, Kroger has put special emphasis on treatment and prevention. “John has really delved into this,” says the commission’s director, Mary Ellen Glynn. “He is truly dedicated to this issue.”

Meanwhile, the AG’s office took action against multinational corporations like Philip Morris, Pfizer, and Bank of America; tripled the number of women in senior management positions; prosecuted environmental crimes; blocked liquid natural gas projects that threatened the state’s waterways; and cut its budget by $9 million.

Without question, Kroger ruffled some feathers in Salem. Some business interests believed he was too zealous about enforcing environmental regulations. Some agencies resisted what they saw as incursions into their turf. “I’m okay with that,” he says. “I joined government because I wanted to do things. Change is really hard. There are a lot of vested interests who want to fight change.

The biggest fights I had were over civil rights and the environment. If that’s not worth fighting about, I don’t know what is.”

Even in the heat of political battle, Kroger continued to teach night classes at Lewis & Clark. “If you’ve got a job where you’re caught up in a lot of conflict, there’s nothing more restorative than stepping into a classroom and attempting to get at the truth rather than engaging in power struggles,” he says.

Kroger first heard about Reed in 1997, when Mieszkowski sent back glowing reports of undergrads who cared more

about their subjects than their grades and who actually did the reading. “My image of Reed was a place of immense intellectual purpose,” he says.

Since then, his impression has only deepened. “Over the course of my life, I have worked for and been associated with many outstanding organizations and institutions,” he wrote in a campus email on his first day in Eliot Hall. “But I have never been more happy and more proud than today, joining you at Reed. For over 100 years, Reed has pursued an independent and courageous course, carving out a unique place in American higher education as our nation’s most intellectual college.

Reed possesses an unparalleled commitment to the life of the mind. For that reason, today feels like coming home.”

Indeed, if you watch Kroger talking with professors on the Commons breezeway or hanging out with students in the Paradox Café, a cup of coffee seemingly welded to his hand, you can almost sense a philosophical kinship. “John had many attributes the [search] committee admired, but one of the things that really clinched it for us was that he went to Yale on scholarship,” says Professor Gerry Ondrizek [art 1994–]. “He reminded us so much of the brilliant students we get at Reed. His education transformed his life. It made him such a believer in the type of education Reed provides.”

A prosecutor who quotes Aristotle. A politician who takes on Big Tobacco. A president proud of Reed’s independent streak.

Welcome home, John Kroger—sounds like you’re one of us.

Miles Bryan ’13 contributed reporting to this article.

John Kroger: Fast Facts Born in Ohio 1966. Grew up in Houston, Texas. Signed up with the Marines on his 17th birthday. Served with elite Recon unit.

Graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 1990 with both a BA and an MA. Thesis title: “Being as Primordial Temporality in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit.” Harry S Truman Scholar, National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar.

Served as senior policy advisor to Clinton–Gore presidential campaign.

Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1996. Mark DeWolfe Howe Fellow in Anglo-American Legal History. Kaufman Public Interest Law Fellow.

Won first major case as an assistant United States attorney in 1998 against prison guards who had been bribed by the Mafia. Case is nicknamed “Badfellas.”

Cycled across the country from New York City to Portland in 2000.

Joined faculty at Lewis & Clark Law School in 2002. Won Levenson Award for teaching excellence three times.

Called to work as a special prosecutor on the Enron case in 2002.

Elected Oregon’s attorney general in 2008 with 73% of the vote.

Married to Michele Toppe, dean of student life at Portland State University. Their son Isaiah (technically Kroger’s stepson) is 13 years old.

Named a Rodel Fellow of the Aspen Institute in 2010.

Has run the Hood-to-Coast relay seven times.

Author of Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008); Enron and Multi-Jurisdictional Fraud (Cardozo Law Review, 2007); Enron, Fraud and Securities Reform: An Enron Prosecutor’s Perspective (University Of Colorado Law Review, 2005); The Philosophical Foundations of Roman Law: Aristotle, The Stoics, and Roman Theories of Natural Law (Wisconsin Law Review, 2004); Supreme Court Equity, 1789–1835, and the History of American Judging. (Houston Law Review, 1998); The Confrontation Waiver Rule (Boston University Law Review, 1996). The Politics of Crime (coauthored) (Harvard Journal On Legislation, 1996).

september 2012 Reed magazine 31

Twelve for ’12

By Randall S. Barton | photos by matt D’annunzio

What is a Reedie, anyway? We approached twelve proud members of the Class of ’12 and asked them to talk about themselves, their theses, and their Reed experience. Whether they grew hardier trees, investigated quantum dots, or deconstructed rap music, we think they capture the essence of the Reed spirit.

Justin Stewart Hometown: Whittier, California Advisers: Jon Rork [economics 2010–] and Albyn Jones [statistics 1986–] Thesis: Randomness as Fairness What it’s about: A classic model, the ultimatum game, is used in game theory to examine bargaining behavior. I consider the possible mechanisms underlying the discrepancy between how economic theory suggests individuals should behave and how they do behave.

M at h e m at i c s - E c o n o m i c s What it’s really about: Understanding the difference between economic theory and economic reality.

When I got to Reed I was: A commercial model, traveling to New York and Paris for assignments. As a kid you can’t have a more fun lifestyle. But when I got to Reed I realized it wasn’t all that important or significant. In modeling you don’t move ahead based on anything but looks.

Here the scrutiny is how good is your work, how good is your presentation? My interests have shifted. I don’t care if I’m at the best party anymore. What I pay attention to now is am I getting the research grant that’s on the table?

Influential book: E. Roy Weintraub’s How Economics Became a Mathematical Science Favorite spot: The temperature is optimal at the third table in the library basement by the windows facing the ETC. The amount of great work that I have completed at that specific table is incredible.

Random thoughts: One of the most fascinating things about mathematics is its precision. I can say something and there’s no ambiguity whatsoever.

Mathematics opens up a world that is not even possible in reality.

It allows your mind to participate in an alternative reality that is beyond our senses.

Cool stuff I did: Studied abroad in England, created an econometric model to forecast national consumer behavior using Twitter, really got into yoga and the philosophy of computation as taught by Mark Bedau ’76 [philosophy 1991–].

32 Reed magazine september 2012

How Reed changed me: The exposure to Reed’s brilliant professors, inspiring and intelligent classmates, and fascinating questions and problems developed within me an incredible desire to learn. Finding and developing this new passion over the last four years made my decision to attend Reed one of the best in my life.

What’s next: Summer research with Professor Bedau, then I’m off to the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a PhD in economics.

Justin Stewart reclines with his favorite books on game theory, including John Von Neumann’s and Oskar Morgenstern’s 1944 classic, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.

Lauren Carley Hometown: Closter, New Jersey Adviser: David Dalton [biology 1987–] Thesis: Enhancing Stress Tolerance: Ascorbate Peroxidase Overexpression in Poplar What it’s about: Determining the role of ascorbate peroxidase (APX), an antioxidant-associated enzyme, in the ability of poplars to tolerate environmental stress.

What it’s really about: Figuring out how to improve plants of ecological and agricultural importance.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I was a shy and awkward suburban girl interested in biology.

Influential book: In a way the Presocratics in Hum 110 are the beginning of science because all these different philosophers were the foundation of different scientific fields of thought.

Poplars have immense potential for removing contamination from soil, says Lauren Carley.

Plus you can sing to them when no one’s looking.

B i ol o g y Favorite spot: The greenhouse is a little oasis for me. There is rarely anyone else up there so I can sing to my plants without embarrassment, and it’s bright and warm when Portland is raining.

Random thoughts: One of the great skills that students at Reed acquire is coming up with a hypothesis. Being given the liberty to ask your own questions is scary; you don’t really know where to start. But we’re required to take a wide breadth of courses and, depending on what your own interests are, you start to put pieces together from all these different fields, and questions and hypotheses emerge.

Cool stuff I did: Studied ecology in Costa Rica for a semester. Worked as a house adviser. Tutored intro bio. Gave admission tours. Was a TA for a genetics class. Getting to work closely with students, faculty, and staff was extremely rewarding and added much-needed balance to my academic life.

How Reed changed me: I have a million more questions than I came in with and feel more confident in my identity and more directed in my goals.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: Pearl Konttas Memorial Biology Scholarship.

What’s next: I plan to hike the Appalachian Trail, get a PhD in plant biology or ecology, and have my own lab someday.

Thesis expanded:

Studying the role of antioxidants and associated enzymes in conferring stress tolerance to plants has been an ongoing project in David’s lab. The same properties that antioxidants have in humans to prevent aging and disease also help prevent stress in plants. Poplars are often used for phytoremediation, to clean up environmental pollution like toxic waste spills and industrial runoff that make the environment inhospitable for other plants.

Removing contaminated soil or treating it chemically is resource, time, and economically intensive.

But some plants, including poplars, naturally remove toxic chemicals.

One of the things that would be cool about creating stress tolerance in poplars is the ability to expand the range of remediation sites as well as being able to increase the agricultural performance for things like making paper pulp.

Adrien Schless-Meier Hometown: Denver, Colorado

Adviser: Kjersten Whittington [sociology 2007–] Thesis: Open and Accessible to All?: Organizational Color-Blindness in the Portland Farmers Market What it’s about: How does the Portland Farmers Market tackle issues of race and class inequity, both in regard to the organization’s vendor pool and consumer base?

What it’s really about: The problems with giving a white face to a “progressive” institution.

When I got to Reed I was: Brimming with excitement and overwhelmed by such a strange and magical place.

Influential book: I read Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) in Spanish and loved it so much that I immediately read it again in English. I wanted to be in that world as long as I could.

S o c i ol o g y

Random thoughts: My high school guidance counselor told me about Reed and it became the light at the end of my tunnel. The first time I visited Reed with my parents, we drove into Eliot Circle, the cherry trees were in bloom, and I started sobbing. My mother said, “Is everything okay?” and I said, “It’s perfect. It’s beautiful here. It’s everything I thought college should look like.” She’s like: “Okay, I guess we know where you’re going.” I spent so much time thinking about what Reed would be like. When it materialized in front of me, it was more magical than I ever thought it could be.

Cool stuff I did: Learned to make cheese and roast my own coffee.

Hung out with people like Billy Collins, Common, Parvez Sharma, Hari Kondabolu, Shira Tarrant, and Inga Muscio. Joined my first athletic team, the Reed crew.

How Reed changed me: As someone with strong opinions and a great desire to share them, I have often gained the most insight here when I chose to be silent.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: Having worked for the Gray Fund and received the Betty Gray Scholarship, the late Betty Gray is akin to my Reed guardian angel.

What’s next: I will be working with AmeriCorps to promote farm-to-school education for K-12. Eventually I plan to get my master’s in public health.

Thesis expanded:

I was working at a farmers market in northeast Portland and a black man approached and asked, “Were any black people invited to this event?”

While no one was specifically invited to the event, that didn’t uncover the whole picture. Regardless of the neighborhood demographics of any market, the clientele is mostly white.

I did a case study of the Portland Farmers Market Organization, which runs 7 of the 42 Portland markets, and found reluctance to own up to any complicity in preventing people of color or with low incomes from coming to the markets. Adopting a colorblind stance, they left it to abstract, outside forces to ensure that people of color would come. A lot of dynamic processes shape who ends up participating in a market, but you need to address unequal access as it pertains to race and class.

Favorite spot: On the back of the physics building is a ledge with a couch and a gorgeous view of the Canyon.

Fruits of her labor.

Adrien Schless-Meier examined the role of race and class in shaping Portland’s farmers markets.

34 Reed magazine september 2012

Kritish Rajbhandari Hometown: Kathmandu, Nepal Adviser: Nathalia King [English 1987–] Thesis: Materiality to Abstraction in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound What it’s about: I analyze Stevens’s “Comedian as the Letter C” and Pound’s canto 85 and argue that both poems exploit the materiality of language with sounds and typography as fundamental means of expression to break into abstractions that project their own visions of the world.

What it’s really about: Words always say more than what they mean.

English

Influential book: Heidegger’s Being and Time changed the way I look at the world and how I conceive of myself. It attempts to answer the questions, “What does it mean to be human in a community where everything is interrelated to each other? Where does that line between you and others appear?” It helped me make sense of everyday life and what the theme of my life should be.

Favorite spot: The front lawn on a sunny day feels like a festival.

Cool stuff I did: Learned Chinese, wrote and translated poetry, climbed Mount St. Helens, organized Reed’s first international festival, and tutored Hum, physics, and Chinese.

How Reed changed me: Reed taught me to push the boundaries in whatever I do and helped me recognize my passion and my abilities. To have a satisfying life I need to be challenged and learn a new thing every day.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: I’m very thankful for the financial aid I got from Reed, without which it would have been impossible to attend.

Eddings Opportunity Grant, Reed grants, Kaspar T. Locher Creative Scholarship, McGill Lawrence Internship Award to work for Namaste Kathmandu.

What’s next: Freelance writing for a year while translating Nepali poetry.

Random thoughts: I really loved the professors here. Their commitment, dedication, and love for the students are very important and made my Reed experience even better.

Who I was when I got to Reed: I thought the world was a turnip, which is my way of saying I had a naïve and simplistic view of the world. Adapting to America and to Reed was the biggest challenge I faced. Now I think of Reed as my second home.

Kritish Rajbhandari studied Chinese, climbed Mount St. Helens, tutored Hum, and wrote his thesis on Stevens and Pound.

september 2012 Reed magazine 35

Gabrielle Quintana

Hometown: Seattle, Washington Adviser: Sonia Sabnis [classics 2006–] Thesis: Paideia through Choreia: An Analysis of Athenian Ritual Dance as Education

What it’s about: In Plato’s tripartite view of the soul, the lowest aspect, which is the hardest to control, craves drink, sex, food, and all the earthly pleasures. It’s the Dionysian side of who you are. By the end of his life, Plato thought that instead of rejecting it or stifling it, we should embrace that part of ourselves and train it through dance.

Cl a ssics Random thoughts: In our scientific world, we hear the word “myth” and think, “Not proven, not true.” For the ancient minds, myths were the way they constructed and lived their lives, and in that way they became real.

Cool stuff I did: I learned ancient Greek, Latin, and Labanotation, the language of symbols choreographers use to record movement. With this language I worked with Professor Hannah Kosstrin [dance 2010–] to stage a piece by Anna Sokolow.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: My financial aid included a work-study component. I worked as a tutor for about 10 hours a week, teaching first grade and helping second, third, and fourth graders with their literacy. It got me into the classroom, and now I know it’s what I’m meant to do. I also worked as a barista at Starbucks about 15 hours a week for all four years. The generosity of the Reed community is unbelievable, and I cannot wait to give back and help to provide this experience for someone else.

What it’s really about: Even Plato likes to dance.

When I got to Reed I was: The nerdy cheerleader excited to study her butt off.

Influential book: Plato’s Republic emphasizes the importance of a ruthless pursuit for knowledge.

Without consciously seeking the truth, people just sort of bumble through life.

What’s next: I’m going to Hawaii as part of Teach for America.

Favorite spot: There is a stunningly beautiful cherry tree on the front lawn with a low-hanging branch to prop up my head while I study.

Gabrielle Quintana supported her studies in Latin, Greek, and dance by working at Starbucks and teaching Portland kids to read.

The mask was a gift from Ellen Millender [classics 2002–] who brought it back from Sparta.

36 Reed magazine september 2012

How Reed changed me: Coming from a single-parent household, I had no idea that Reed could be a possibility. Once here, I realized that my life before Reed had been very different from most of the student body and though I felt it was the perfect institution for me, at times I wondered if I deserved this education. After working hard and seeing myself grow so much, I’ve realized I did truly deserve this experience because I will use my education to actively give back to our society.

Neal Reynolds Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland Advisers: John Essick [physics 1993–] and Maggie Geselbracht [chemistry 1993–] Thesis: The Spectroelectrochemistry Study of Copper Doped Zinc Selenide Quantum Dots What it’s about: Quantum dots are tiny crystals with the property that the color they glow can be tuned by changing their size.

I’m looking at doped quantums, where you put in a small amount of another atom that isn’t the semiconductor. Dopens like manganese and copper change the color of the quantum dots, and I’m looking at copper because it’s less toxic and manganese dopens have been studied to death.

Physics/Chemistry Favorite spot: Sitting at the picnic table in the canyon just west of the blue bridge reminded me that the beauty of nature, which science tries to describe, can sometimes get lost in symbols.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: National Science Foundation STEM scholarship; Betty Gray Memorial Scholarship; commendation for excellence in scholarship 2009, 2010, 2011.

Cool stuff I did: I stalked through Hum, physics, and chemistry lectures dressed like a ninja. It’s something I did every couple of months and the response was largely positive—a few second glances but no looks of disdain. I also taught a Paideia class on Tesla coils, learned to operate a nuclear reactor, and participated in fullcontact human chess.

What’s next: Work on a PhD at Cornell in experimental condensed matter physics.

How Reed changed me: Reed forced me to question the ideals to which I aspired and not just follow them blindly based on the assertions of others.

What it’s really about: Making rainbows with less poison.

Who I was when I got to Reed: In high school I lamented that so many people would do ill for the sake of destroying things or to fight the system. I was in love with Reed’s Honor Principle, that there were enough people of high moral quality that you could have this principle and a functioning society.

Influential book: Spin Dynamics: Basics of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance by Malcolm Levitt

Ninja warrior Neal Reynolds ran a nuclear reactor and taught a Paideia class on Tesla coils.

september 2012 Reed magazine 37

Alex Walker

Hometown: Sebastopol, California Advisers: Tamara Venit-Shelton [environmental studies 2008–] and Michael Breen [history 2000–] Thesis: Suburban Paradise or “Sprawlville, Washington”?: The Growth of the Vancouver, Washington Area, 1970–1994 What it’s about: How local residents and their governments reacted to and managed the explosive population growth and sprawling development in Vancouver, Washington, in the 1970s and 1980s, while Portland and its Oregon suburbs were cracking down on sprawl.

What it’s really about: Local-scale environmental activism, and why it does and doesn’t happen.

Who I was when I got to Reed: A homeschooler who had just gone to high school for a year in France.

Influential book: Richard Walker’s The Country in the City is a fantastic history of how environmental activism shaped the San Francisco Bay Area.

Favorite spot: For study breaks I took my iPod to the front lawn and listened to music while swinging on the swing set.

Random thoughts: I’ve learned a ton in terms of pure information, but also how to find and organize new information.

Cool stuff I did: I learned to direct crazy performances with lots of hum jokes in the Hum Play. Edited the Quest. Enjoyed living in the French house.

Alex Walker edited the Quest, directed Hum Play, and investigated development patterns in Vancouver, Washington, Portland’s unglamorous neighbor to the north, for his thesis.

38 Reed magazine september 2012

How Reed changed me: I’ve become more self-confident in some ways and more self-critical in others. Fortunately the selfconfidence is mostly limited to social situations (where it is more important), while the self-criticism is mostly in academics (where it is very valuable).

H i s t or y Scholarships, awards, financial aid: I received the Mary Barnard scholarship for two years, which makes me feel very honored.

Mary Barnard ’32 was a famous poet, known for her translation of Sappho.

What’s next: Working for a nonprofit in the energy industry.

Eventually law school. I’m interested in land use because it’s a really important area of environmental law.

Thesis expanded:

Portland is considered a great mecca of urban planning while Vancouver, Washington, is often viewed as an example of the failure of land-use planning. But not many people have actually studied Clark County.

With regard to land-use planning, they actually had the basics earlier than Portland. They were having problems with subdivisions on septic tanks, which caused a bunch of water pollution. They realized they needed sewers, but they couldn’t just build them everywhere. So they drew this line around Vancouver and said, “In this area you’re going to have to build and prepare for sewers and not have septic tanks. Outside of the line you can’t build on lots smaller than one acre.” That was in 1971, before Portland had really done anything comparable. In 1979, Clark County reinforced that line, which is basically what Portland was doing with the urban growth boundary. They used sewers and roads efficiently to promote compact growth and preserve green areas.

Nora Jones

Music

Hometown: Columbus, Indiana Advisor: Mark Burford [music 2007–]

Influential book: I loved Zadie Smith’s writing in On Beauty, which reminded me of the beauty in our obstacles.

Thesis: Men’s Space and Women’s Place: Sampling African American Female Singing Voices in Rap Music

Favorite spot: Probably because I shouldn’t know about it, I love being on the roof of MacNaughton.

What it’s about: The cultural and political implications of sampling African American female singing voices in rap music.

Random thoughts: Three things can save the world: love, education, and rock ‘n’ roll. At Reed I’ve made some of the best friends ever and I really love my professors.

Education is immersing yourself in something you love. Music makes people happy and perpetuates culture. You can’t listen to a rock band you love and feel sad.

What it’s really about: The patriarchy.

Who I was when I got to Reed: Growing up in Columbus, Indiana (population 35,000), I was surrounded by nothing but white people. When I came to Reed it felt like the most diverse place I’d ever been. When you get to know people, you realize there’s such a variance in life experiences.

It’s not just about ethnicity, but also about sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or just the places you’ve traveled.

Cool stuff I did: I fell in love with dance, hula hooping, and yoga.

Nothing relieves stress faster than kicking up your heels to some loud music.

How Reed changed me: I hated confrontation and didn’t really feel comfortable expressing an opposing opinion. I would think, “I’m not going to change anyone’s mind, so I’ll just shut up.” But people at Reed are willing to listen to the reasoning behind the way I think about things, and are able to do so respectfully. It encouraged me to speak out and engage a little more fully. Now, if I’m talking politics with someone, I go at it, but I’ll leave them space. And if we disagree about something, both of us can take it as a learning opportunity.

Thesis expanded:

Growing up, I listened to a lot of rap music and noticed that male rappers tend to really objectify women, even when female singers are sampled in the background beats. Sampling is isolating individual parts of an existing recording, lifting it out, and putting it into the context of your own rap. The way these women’s voices are used perpetuates the patriarchy in hip-hop culture. It’s an interesting gender dynamic having to do with the long historical process of the subjugation of the female.

Scholarships, awards, or financial aid: National Achievement Scholarship.

What’s next: Music journalism.

Nora Jones balances a disk by Seiji, a prominent exponent of West London’s broken beat scene. For her thesis, she investigated the cultural implications of sampling.

september 2012 Reed magazine 39

Tyler Blakeney Hometown: Smyrna, Georgia

Advisers: Bill Ray [French 1972–] and Hugh Hochman [French 1999–] Thesis: Toward a Critical Queer Literature What it’s about: I explored different ways of thinking about queer literature and how these models functioned politically. I then proposed my own model.

What it’s really about: How queer people read books, and how the act of reading can be political.

When I got to Reed I was: A coffee shop kid interested in literature. Few classes were offered here in queer theory, but because my professors were accommodating and open-minded, it was easy for me to study my area of interest through existing classes, independent study, and thesis work.

Ty Blakeney holds a reproduction of Emmanuel Lansyer’s La Cour de la Vieille Sorbonne, 1886. He studied the politics of queer literature and taught English and math to middleschoolers.

40 Reed magazine september 2012

French Influential book: Eve Sedgwick’s book Touching Feeling talks about how we construct our identities and live day to day, especially as a gay person. It’s important to have a critical engagement with how you identify.

Favorite spot: The third floor of Vollum where the French department is.

Cool stuff I did: I got to live in France for a year through Reed’s study abroad program and do an independent study with Luc Monnin [French 2004–] on queer 19th-century literature. I really enjoyed doing educational service work through SEEDS, reading with first graders, and helping teach English and math to middle school students.

How Reed changed me: Reed improved my critical thinking skills. In conference I realized that the way you communicate your thoughts is almost as important as the thoughts themselves, especially if you want people to actually listen to you.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: I received an Opportunity Grant to present a paper at a conference in Istanbul, a grant to do research for Ann Delehanty [French 2000–], and a Ruby Grant to study 17th-century imaginative travel fiction in French with Ann this summer.

What’s next: I plan to teach English in France next year and eventually get a PhD in French literature.

Thesis expanded:

Queer people read books in two dominant ways, by identifying with the text and author or seeing the book as something that totally destabilizes identity. In addition to studying queer authors, I read case studies of hypnotists trying to “heal” gay people in the late 19th century.

Hypnosis actually contributed to modern gay identity because the same doctors doing the hypnosis were writing seminal texts classifying gay people as a species. Through the lens of hypnosis some parts of male gay identity were solidified, including the idea of effeminacy. Originally supposed to cure hysterical women, hypnosis worked best on people with weaker constitutions. There was a jump from hysterical women to gay men. The basic conception was that a woman’s soul was trapped in a man’s body. In the 1890s we started getting some more sympathetic accounts arguing that it was a natural identity and gay people couldn’t actually change it.

Molly Case

Economics

Hometown: Sudbury, Massachusetts

Adviser: Noelwah Netusil [economics 1990–] Thesis: The Benefits of Implementing Sustainable Financial Models in Small Nonprofit Organizations What it’s about: I constructed a sustainable financial model for SOIL, a small nonprofit based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that focuses on ecological sanitation toilets and hygiene education.

What it’s really about: How poop is going to save the world.

Molly Case spent a semester in Florence, learned curling (yes, the sport with ice and brooms), and traveled to Haiti for her thesis on the economics of ecological sanitation.

When I got to Reed I was: A bright-eyed bushy-tailed idealist who would have followed you to the moon and back and never asked you why.

Influential book: Poor Economics

by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo suggests that if you combine goals with legitimate and efficient economically based solutions, you get more done.

Favorite spot: There’s a nook on the top floor of the Student Center overlooking the canyon where I love to nap or grab a few minutes to myself.

Random thoughts: Truth is relative and we don’t live in a world of absolutes. All you can really do is find something you’re passionate about, find a niche somewhere or lots of somewheres, and live a life that is satisfying intellectually and psychologically. It’s important to me to do something productive, but I don’t want to save the world anymore, because I don’t think that’s possible. I want to know I’m working towards a goal that’s meaningful to me.

Cool stuff I did: Admission intern, tour guide, and dorm host.

Orientation coordinator. SEEDS orientation odyssey leader. Spent a semester in Florence. Traveled to Haiti for my thesis. Was a member of Reed’s Curling Team, the Drum Korps Dancers, and the peer mentor program.

How Reed changed me: Over the past four years I’ve shed a lot of insecurities and anxieties about being kind of a weirdo and really learned to embrace exactly who I am.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: I received funding from the economics department and the president’s discretionary fund to travel to Haiti, and I was recently awarded the Mellon Environmental Studies Summer Experience Fellowship for my internship with SOIL. What’s next: I’m going back to Port-au-Prince this summer to work with SOIL. After that, who knows? It’s okay not to have everything figured out all the time.

Thesis expanded:

I look at the role of nonprofit organizations in today’s economy and evaluate the benefits of achieving independent financial operation. In Haiti, only 17% of people have access to improved sanitation, which means they have access to a pit dug in the ground.

Everybody else goes on the street, in lakes, in streams. It’s really bad and both a privacy issue and a human rights issue. People are supposed to have access to a safe, private, dignified sanitation facility, and that’s a need that’s not being met.

september 2012 Reed magazine 41

Daniel Carranza Hometown: Chicago, Illinois Adviser: Jan Mieszkowski [German 1997–] Thesis: The Damaged Particular: Textures of Ethical Life in Adorno’s Minima Moralia What it’s about: Minima Moralia is a collection of aphorisms written during Theodor Adorno’s exile from Nazi Germany, in which he discusses everything from the nature of concepts to his émigré experience, from poetic meter and modern art to the sociology of mass entertainment.

What it’s really about: How a collection claiming to be a work of ethics situates itself between autobiography and philosophy.

When I got to Reed I was: A dogmatic atheist obsessed with a molecule known as autoinducer-2.

G e rm a n

Cool stuff I did: On the J-Board I learned that the Honor Principle implies that the collective cultivation of virtue, not some body of inalienable rights, should define every aspect of social life. I also tutored writing at the DoJo. Reading papers about Herodotus year after year never stopped being fun.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: Without the financial aid granted by Reed it would not have been possible for me to attend.

I also received the Beinecke Scholarship and the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship.

In a way, the most private and wealthy institutions in the U.S. also happen to be the most egalitarian.

What’s next: I’ll teach English in Germany for a year and contemplate a few important German poems.

Influential book: King Lear Favorite spot: Walter Benjamin says an aura is the appearance of a distance no matter how near it might seem. Even when it’s empty, the library radiates a spirit of student community. It has an aura.

Random thoughts: It may sound paradoxical, but ultimately literature is useful in a broader sense because it’s useless in a narrow sense. If you read a novel

by Henry James, you’re not able to go build something or open a new enterprise. But if you read enough novels by Henry James, you learn a certain way of interrogating yourself and your experience and can become a different kind of person. When one reads, one is in the company of others, and it becomes a question of what company one keeps. It’s not just a question of friends and family, but also a question of authors.

42 Reed magazine september 2012

Daniel Carranza explored King Lear, Walter Benjamin, Henry James, and the city of Berlin.

Lucy Bellwood Hometown: Ojai, California

Adviser: Pato Hebert [art 2010–] Thesis: True Believer: An Exploration on the Practice and Practicality of Art What it’s about: Facing the challenges of making art that speaks to you, particularly in cases where you’d like to make a living from it. There’s a tendency to think that art isn’t real work, that it isn’t a viable career path. Where do those preconceptions come from?

What it’s really about: Having the guts to do what you love.

Who I was when I got to Reed: An impassioned theater rat with a penchant for sailing tall ships.

Ar t Random Thoughts: My high school English teacher, Dylan RiceLeary ’02, graduated from Reed and taught in a way that blew my mind. He could bring Macbeth, ramen noodles, game theory, and David Sedaris all together. At the end of the year I said to him, “What is going on here? How did you learn to teach like this?” and he said, “Oh, I went to this place called Reed College. You should check it out.”

Cool stuff I did: I ran a student group called DrawHard, dedicated to stimulating artistic production and connecting students with Portland artists. Got involved in bookbinding and self-publishing.

Acted in the Hum Play. Directed a collection of Tennessee Williams one-act plays.

Influential book: The Gift and Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde.

How Reed changed me: I cast my intellectual net as wide as I could, drawing on the things that interested me in all sorts of disciplines, but the real miracle was finally recognizing how I could best combine all those passions and interests into a single identity.

Scholarships, awards, financial aid: Reed would have been a pipe dream had it not been for the generous financial aid. I was a Presidential Scholar, received commendations for academic excellence all four years, and began working on a graphic novel with the help of the Locher Summer Creative Scholarship in 2011, founded by Kaspar Locher [German 1950–88].

Thesis expanded:

We have a cultural obsession about genius that either you’re creative or you’re not. If you’re creative, the hand of God has touched you and things flow effortlessly from your pen. Since there’s no effort, you don’t really deserve to be paid for your work.

But nobody talks about the fact that creating things, getting your butt in the chair and making things day after day, is really hard, just as hard as going into the lab. It’s all hard work, but if you love it, if it inspires you, it doesn’t feel that way.

What’s next: I’m heading back out to sea aboard the tall ship Exy Johnson and then back to Portland to carve out a spot for myself in the city’s vibrant comics community.

Favorite Spot: The Pierce room in the Hauser Library, which houses the college’s collection of art books, is furnished with big mahogany tables, busts of past college presidents, and other objects of interest.

Artist Lucy Bellwood wrote and drew a comic book (True Believer) as part of her thesis. She also acted in Hum Play, directed some one-act plays by Tennessee Williams, and tracked coyotes through the Canyon.

september 2012 Reed magazine 43

Reediana Books by Reedies

Katherine Sharpe ’01 Coming of Age on Zoloft Young adulthood has never been easy, but today’s college students repor t an alar ming incidence of mental illness—particularly depression.

Roughly 11% of all college students are currently being treated for depression, according to the American College Health Association, and Katherine Sharpe ’01 was one of them.

Her new book, Coming of Age on Zoloft, tracks the explosion of antidepressants using her own medicated adolescence at Reed as an axis. Applying historical research, memoir, and interviews with over 40 medicated people, she ultimately questions our drive to “ask your doctor whether Wellbutrin may be right for you.”

Several of the interviewees show a disturbing insecurity about their own personal identity, constantly questioning reality

Harper Perennial, 2012

as distorted or even constructed by the dr ugs they have come to rely on. Katherine’s central motif is the medicated person’s obsessive quest for evidence; neither the patients nor the pharmaceutical industry seems be certain about a drug’s effect on psychic agency.

As the population of medicated children and adolescents continues to swell, identity crises grow along with it, as young adults fret over whether growing up medicated has prevented them from developing into their “true” selves. Katherine interviews young people who obsess about “going off” meds, worried that years of antidepressant use may have altered them in unacceptable ways. But others, such as a subject named Josh, whose father died from suicide, accept the potential risk of a clouded

Ottomar Rudolf [German 1963–98] I Remember: A Boy’s Years in Nazi Germany Ottomar Rudolf, emeritus professor of German and a tireless ambassador for the humanistic traditions of Germany, wrote this brief memoir to explain for posterity how it could be that he once belonged to the Hitler Youth and fought for the Nazis.

He began the book in 1983, the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power, but notes that a new generation of fanatics, this time the radical jihadists, has given fresh urgency to his account of a boyhood “sacrificed to an evil philosophy.”

Rudolf briskly sets the historical stage, tracing the rise of Nazism to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, “which we schoolchildren were taught to call Versailles Diktat, the Dictate of Versailles.” With an economy in tatters, conditions were ripe for extremism, and the generals of Germany’s standing army soon swore their allegiance not to 44 Reed magazine september 2012

identity: “The question of personal authenticity ‘becomes kind of moot.’ At this point, Josh is pretty sure that antidepressants are what keep him alive.”

The book has already generated controversy: the Atlantic ran a review in June titled “Hey, Let’s Not Get Carried Away.”

Using terms like “cosmetic psychopharmacology,” the book draws a complex picture of antidepressant use as a huge social experiment. There’s real tension between our limited understanding of how antidepressants really work, and the desperate need of millions of people to find a way to function normally without the weight of exhausting malaise. In the meantime, as 10% of the U.S. population dutifully pops “head meds” in the morning, we can’t help but ask: What does it really mean to be happy? And how far are we willing to go to get there?

—Mary Emily O’Hara ’12

Inkwater Press, 2012

the constitution but to Adolf Hitler. By 1935, when the Nuremburg laws codified antiSemitism, Rudolf was six. By the time he was nine, membership in the Hitler Youth would be mandatory.

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated every aspect of German Kultur. Songs and movies extolling Nazi “martyrs” such as Horst Wessel “were the cultural icons of our lives.”

Rudolf and his friends were enthralled by Hitlerjunge Quex, the story of a workingclass Berlin teenager who joins the Hitler Youth but is murdered by Communists.

“The film appealed to us because the boys belonging to the Hitler Youth were cleancut boys, living a healthy life, camping, talking about the future of Germany, while the Communists smoked, listened to hit songs, had girls, were rowdies . . . We were all influ-

enced by it.” (Watch Hitlerjunge Quex with English subtitles on YouTube.)

As Rudolf relates his exploits as a 16-year-old tank gunner, it’s easy to picture the young extravert who looked just like the boys in the German war posters, and who idolized Field Marshal Rommel, the Desert Fox. In 148 pages, the narrative whipsaws between the starry-eyed teenager and the cultural historian who recoils at his own memories. He is so sparing with personal details that we never even learn his family members’ names— not the eldest brother who went down with his Messerschmitt 109, not the aunt who was killed in the firebombing of his beloved Ulm. The names he chooses to share are those of the few brave Germans who risked everything to defy the Nazis.

—ANGIE JABINE ’79

Further reading

“Ottomar’s Odyssey” in Reed, Autumn 2009

Simon Finger [history 2011–]has written The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia (Cornell University Press, 2012). The book details how early Americans struggled to preserve their health against both the perils of the colonial environment and the dangers of the traditional city, through a period of profound transformation in both politics and medicine. “The Contagious City offers an insightful analysis of how the collective struggles to prevent disease helped create the political and cultural history of Philadelphia, in particular, and early America, in general.”

Lois Leveen [English 2000–04] is the author of The Secrets of Mary Bowser (William Morrow, 2012). Based on a true story, Mary Bowser is an inspiring tale of one woman’s willingness to sacrifice her own freedom to change the course of history.

Sent away from her family and her life as a slave in Richmond, Virginia, Mary goes to Philadelphia to be educated.

The education unforseeably leads her into the abolition movement. With the nation edging toward war, she defies Virginia law by returning to Richmond to care for her ailing father—and to fight for emancipation. Posing as a slave in the Confederate White House in order to spy on President Jefferson Davis, Mary deceives even those who are closest to her to aid the Union command.

Richard Stafford ’54 has a new novel, The Mystery Call Girls Riot: And Other Sad Events Relating to the Incarnation of Mystery Call.

The story takes place in heaven, with narration of curious events that take place on earth, including at Reed, done by Pistol, a thuggish handyman. Richard would like classmates to know that though he previously published a number of books using his own name, recent publications by other similarly named writers have forced him to adopt a pseudonym, Aka Lockord. “This does not mean I am hiding. I am not.”

A review of recent Korean war books by Michael Munk ’56 appears in the March 2012 issue of Critical Asian Studies. See www.michaelmunk.com.

The novelette Marie Eau-Claire, by Caroline Miller ’59, MAT ’65, is available as an e-publication online at thecoloredlens.com. The story is set in modernday France and describes the relationship that

grows between a former prima ballerina, who is now in her 70s, and her great-nephew, a troubled young artist who arrives from Boston for a visit.

Peter Nash ’60 is the author of Coyote Bush: Poems from the Lost Coast (Off the Grid Press, 2012) and the recipient of the first annual Off the Grid Poetry Prize.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Carl Dennis selected Peter’s work for the award: “Nash’s poems of rural life are deeply moving, whether as elegy or celebration. They develop their themes through inspired description that is both true to the immediate occasion and deeply resonant. This is a rich, wise, and delightful book.” Peter is semiretired from his 40-year career in family medicine. He writes most mornings, occasionally helps his wife in the garden, boards two old mares, and wanders along the Mattole River with his dog Henry. He lives in northern California on the Lost Coast, one of the longest stretches of undeveloped coastline in the continental US. [Thanks to Thomas Rosin ’60 for this news about his old Reed roommate.]

Murray Leaf ’61 and Dwight Read ’64 are coauthors of Human Thought and Social Organization: Anthropology on a New Plane (Lexington Books, 2012). Human beings have two outstanding characteristics compared to other species: the apparently enormous elaboration of our thought through language and symbolism and the elaboration of our forms of social organization. The view taken in this book is that these are intimately interconnected. To understand this connection, the book compares the structure of the systems of thought that organizations are built upon with the organizational basis of human thinking. An experimental method is used, leading to a new science of the structure of human social organizations. Murray is professor of anthropology and political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dwight is distinguished professor of anthropology at UCLA. Stephen Herold ’63 has published a new book about the Early Writing Collection in the Hauser Library special collections, The Origins, Glory & Decline of the Humanistic Cursive in Italy 1400–1650 (Serif & Pixel Press, 2012).

The book is illustrated with wonderful historical examples and also reprints a difficult-to-find article by Stanley Morison, “Early Humanist Script and the First Roman Typeface.” Typography and design for the book were done by Stephen, with a cover photo by Gay Walker ’69. The book is available through the Reed bookstore.

Ann Parker Littlewood ’68 brings zookeeper Iris Oakley back to the crime scene in Endangered, the third book in her zoo mysteries series, which was published by Poisoned Pen Press in July. Called in to rescue exotic animals from a remote farm in Washington state after a drug bust, Iris finds herself thrust into unusual circumstances. She finds smuggled parrots and tortoises in deplorable conditions and determines to break the criminal pipeline that moves rare animals from their native settings into those of neglect. In the process, she uncovers much more and is forced to run for her life.

Karen Kahn ’69 is the author of Flight Guide for Success: Tips and Tactics for the Aspiring Airline Pilot, now in a third edition by Cheltenham Publishing Company. Flight Guide covers a wide range of topics, from getting started and finding a first job to creating successful personal marketing and preparing for interviews.

Karen guides readers through the complex business of becoming a pilot and answers tough pilotcareer questions. Karen dedicated a copy of the book destined for the Hauser Library to “Reedies, who are setting off on their own adventure of life.

Just substitute your ‘passion’ for ‘flying’ and learn some tips on making it happen.” Learn more at www.aviationcareercounseling.com.

Of Earth: New and Selected Poems,

by John Daniel ’70, is his first book of poetry in 18 years.

Reflecting his deep affinity for the land and lives of the given world, Of Earth offers poems of praise that do not deny suffering and death but find them essential to the vast, intricate, and mysterious territory of being. John writes, “Like all true literature, nature poetry belongs to the ongoing conversation the human community is conducting through time about who we are and where we have come from, about where we are and who our kinfolk are, about how we live and how we might live, about how our lives should matter.” Copies of the book may be ordered directly from the publisher, Lost Horse Press (www.losthorsepress.org).

Steven Raichlen ’75 has written his first novel, Island Apart (Forge, 2012), which he describes as “a story of love, loss, redemption, and really good food.” The characters include a New York book editor who is recovering from cancer; a mysterious local hermit; a disaffected teenager and her biker boyfriend; and the real-life, iconoclastic psychotherapist Wilhelm september 2012 Reed magazine 45

Ethan Rafal ’07 has produced a limited edition of his original, handmade journal, Shock and Awe.

Reediana Reich. “I dreamed of writing fiction from the day I came to Reed. It just took me 35 years to get around to it!” Forge calls it a provocative, beautifully written, and wildly entertaining smart love story. Steve has also written 29 cookbooks.

Jonathan Boyarin ’77 is the author of Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side (Fordham, 2011). The Stanton Street Shul is one of the last remaining Jewish congregations on New York’s historic Lower East Side—a gathering of vibrant, imperfect, indisputably down-to-earth individuals coming together to make a community. Jonathan, who is both a member of the congregation and an anthropologist, follows the congregation of “year-round Jews” through the course of a summer when its future must be decided.

Prayer Chain, a novel by Scott Lazenby ’77, was published by CreateSpace in 2011. Strange things are happening in the small town of Cedar Creek.

A patient barely escapes having the wrong surgery performed, happily married couples split up,

46 Reed magazine september 2012

unusual illnesses strike, and through it all the weather is terrible, even by the standards of the Oregon Cascades. Nancy McKay owns a café in the town, and through conversations with her customers, she starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together. She discovers that—in a game of real-life telephone—prayer requests from a local church’s congregation are becoming garbled as they pass from one person to the next, and the people at the end of the chain are praying for the wrong things. See www.scottlazenbybooks.com.

Diane LevKoy Morgan ’77, who has written more than 15 cookbooks, created a comprehensive guide and collection of recipes using root vegetables in Roots (Chronicle Books, 2012). Discover the fascinating history and lore of 29 major roots from the familiar (beets, carrots, potatoes) to the unfamiliar (jicama, salsify, malanga) to the practically unheard of (cassava, galangal, crosnes). The best part? More than 225 recipes—salads, soups, side dishes, main courses, drinks, and desserts—that bring out the earthy goodness of these intriguing vegetables. From Andean tubers and burdock to yams and yuca, this culinary encyclopedia will help home cooks reach a new level of taste and sophistication.

Cathy Altman Nocquet ’78 has published the e-book Write Outside The Lines: A Creativity Catapult. The book provides more than 300 offbeat, original writing exercises that develop creative thinking; valuable insights into the writing process; and a close encounter with Nardo, the “snake within,” who is out to discourage everyone’s productivity. The book leads readers through every phase of the writing experience with humor and understanding, and serves as a creative guide for aspiring writers of any age. Learn more at www.goodreads.com.

The chapbook 40 Weeks, by Brittney Corrigan (McElroy) ’94, was published by Finishing Line Press in July. 40 Weeks is a collection of 36 short poems, one for each week of pregnancy from week 4 to week 40. See brittneycorrigan.com.

Graham Leuschke ’95 is coauthor of the textbook Cohen-Macaulay Representations (American Mathematical Society, 2012). Graham has been teaching mathematics at Syracuse for nearly a decade. His wife, Moira McDermott, is also a mathematician, and they have a five-year-old son, Conor.

Daniel Freund ’98, assistant professor of social sciences at Bard High School Early College, is the author of American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light (University of Chicago, 2012). In the second half of the 19th century, American cities began to go dark.

Buildings, pollution, glass, and smog screened out the sun, and medical professionals claimed that a rising tide of diseases stemmed from darkness, including rickets and tuberculosis. In American Sunshine, Daniel follows the sunshine obsession into the 20th century, looking at the remedies proffered by social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement, shedding light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and making an original contribution to the histories of cities, the environment, and medicine.

Amy Reading ’98 has just published The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con (Knopf 2012). The book tells the true story of J. Frank Norfleet, a Texas rancher who was swindled out of his fortune in 1919 and then went undercover to try to catch the five men who deceived him. He posed as a mark, getting himself swept up into the big con so many times he learned it better than his enemies. Amy uses Norfleet’s story as a kind of X-ray of American economic development, showing the centrality of gambling and speculation, not to mention fraud and deception, to the growth of the nation. David Mamet said, “Most scholarship reads like a trip to the dentist. The Mark Inside reads like a trip to the track.”

The Little Woods, a first novel by McCormick Templeman ’98, was published this year by Schwartz & Wade. The history of St. Bede’s Academy is one of excellence and rigor, tarnished only by a single event: the night that Clare Wood disappeared from her bed, vanishing without a trace. Ten years later, Clare’s disappearance is still unsolved, and for many people it is nearly forgotten, but when her sister, Cally, arrives at St. Bede’s, everything begins to change. While Cally struggles to navigate social etiquette and burgeoning romance, her presence is awakening old

True Believer, by Lucy Bellwood ’12 (2012), is a 36-page autobiographical comic about having the guts to do what you believe in. “It’s got art, religion, love, death, and all those other Big, Juicy Things, but thankfully also features a healthy amount of sneezing, slapstick, and swear words— just so we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” says Lucy, an intrepid former Reed magazine intern, who is also an accomplished artist, writer, dancer, and sailor.

(See lucybellwood.com and Twelve from ’12.)

ghosts, and soon Cally finds that St. Bede’s is not what she expected, and that the woods behind it whisper of another night, of another girl gone missing, and of a horrifying secret that festers deep within the heart of the school.

Stuart Bousel ’00 served as editor for Songs of Hestia: Five Plays from the 2010 San Francisco Olympians Festival (EXIT Press, 2012). Five playwrights adapt some of Western culture’s oldest stories to illuminate our present-day concerns with imagination, creativity, curiosity, and passion. These are plays that ask the hard questions and that explore our humanity through exploring the myths that make us who we are. Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, is variously an ex-nun who runs a Hollywood hot dog cart (Aphrodite: A Romance in Infomercials by Nirmala Nataraj); a barista who serves as the play’s moral conscience (Hermes by Bennett Fisher); a sharp-tongued spinster (Juno en Victoria by Stuart); a crazed, childlike wraith (Demeter’s Daughter by Claire Rice); and a nurturing but ultimately ineffectual goddess (Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots by Evelyn Jean Pine).

Ethan Rafal ’07 has produced a limited edition of his original, handmade journal, Shock and Awe. A 10-year autobiographical project examining the

relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted journal of image, text, and found-object that blurs the line between author and subject, and personal and authoritative histories. For this edition of 1,000 books, Ethan has produced something between the artist’s book and the photographer’s monograph, maintaining the look and feel of the original journal—canvas cover meets leather corners and strap, with archival printing on heavyweight paper.

See ethanrafal.com. (See Class Notes.)

Numbers & Notes: An Introduction to Musical Signal Processing, by Gina Collecchia ’09 (Perfectly Scientific Press, 2012). This engaging look at the mathematics of music explores a dazzling array of topics, from the physics of waves to tuning and temperament, the acoustics of musical instruments, musical synesthesia, perfect pitch, and digital analysis. It is of special value to readers seeking deep understanding of the legendary Fourier transform, the mathematical concept at the heart of signal processing.

Gina lives in San Francisco, works for Sennheiser Innovation and Technology, and attends the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford. See ginacollecchia.com.

september 2012 Reed magazine 47

In Memoriam think we did have a good family.” After her sons were grown, she taught part time in a nursery school and volunteered with the League of Women Voters and the Women’s Democratic Club of Washington. She was inspired to find ways to keep individuals intellectually motivated beyond the years of traditional schooling. “A group of us at the Women’s Democratic Club met every week to study subjects of political and general social interest, and to concoct a series of morning meetings on these subjects with the most knowledgeable speakers we could get.” Margo and Is moved to a retirement home in 1988. Through the years, Margo maintained connections to Reedites, including George Wheeler ’29 and Eleanor Mitchell Wheeler ’30, and traveled to Egypt with Dorothy Gill Wikelund ’29. Her cousin, John R. Churchill ’49, also attended Reed. Survivors include sons David, Peter, and John; four grandchildren; and two-great grandchildren. Is died in 1992.

Helen Betsy Abbott ’32 May 29, 2012, in Lincoln City, Oregon.

Alice Margaret Churchill Labovitz ’30 April 30, 2012, in Mitchellville, Maryland, two weeks shy of her 105th birthday.

Margo hailed from Marinette, Michigan, and came to Reed through the support of an uncle who lived in Portland. She earned her degree at Reed in general literature, writing her thesis on Montaigne. After Reed, she married Israel M. Labovitz; they moved to Chicago, where she worked in advertising and took courses at the University of Chicago in support of her position as a psychiatric social worker with the Cook County Psychopathic Hospital in Chicago. In 1936, Margo and Is left Chicago for Washington, D.C., where Is was a government economist at the budget bureau. They made their home in Maryland and raised three sons. In an interview in 2004, Margo talked about the loss of her mother at an early age, the positive influence of her grandparents, who lived nearby, and the importance of family. Margo believed, as did her grandparents, that a mother should raise her children, rather than find a career outside the home. “I was further propelled in that direction because I missed very much having a normal family, and my real desire all my life was to establish a family I didn’t have. So, I didn’t have any great wish to do anything else, and I 56 Reed magazine september 2012

Betsy attended Reed for three years. She joined the naval reserve, serving in World War II and the Korean War and retiring in 1969. She also worked for the Portland Opera Association and the Portland Art Museum and settled on the Oregon coast. She was a life member of the Oregon Historical Society and a member of the Nature Conservancy and the New England Historic and Genealogical Society.

Helen Clifford Peters Sloss ’36 February 27, 2012, in Yorba Linda, California.

Helen hailed from Galveston, Texas, and earned a BA from Reed in sociology. She was an executive with Pacific Telephone for 37 years, pioneering positions for women that traditionally had been held by men.

She also served in key leadership positions in the Presbyterian Church, including as interim executive of the Los Angeles Presbytery. In 2006, at the age of 94, Helen sent in news for class notes in Reed: “I really don’t need to be reminded that it has been 70 years since I was on campus,” she quipped. She was still driving her Volvo station wagon and reflected on the contribution that her classmates had made to the world. She is survived by a son and daughter, seven grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. Her brother Warren Peters also went to Reed.

Howard Vincent Morgan ’40

April 14, 2012, in McMinnville, Oregon.

A descendant of pioneers who came to Oregon in the 1860s, Howard was born in Tillamook, Oregon, in 1914 and graduated from Jefferson High School in Portland. He financed his academic endeavors by working construction jobs and spent a year at the University of Oregon before enrolling at Reed, where he served as student body president and met Rosina Corbett ’41; they married in 1940 and had four children. “No part of my life has been more interesting and enjoyable than my years at Reed,” he wrote. “The Reed experience has given me a sense of independence and at least latent competence—a respect for facts, and the knowledge of how to find and organize them— that has never left me.” Mike Munk ’56 shared a story that took place when Mike was six and Howard was a senior at Reed. Mike was riding his bike along the Canyon with a friend, Johnny Carney. Johnny’s bike tire jammed in a rut, propelling him deep into the lake, where he began to drown. Mike ran to the old SU and shouted for help. Howard bounded down to the canyon, jumped in the lake, and pulled Johnny to shore, where friends performed CPR. Johnny recovered fully. After earning a BA in economics at Reed, Howard began an MA program at UC Berkeley. He was called to active duty during World War II and served in the Office of Defense Transportation before being assigned to the Naval Air Transport Services for the duration of the war. From 1948 to 1959 Howard and Rosina operated a sheep farm near Monmouth, Oregon, and during the ’60s they raised cattle at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon. Howard was a member of the Oregon legislature and was the Oregon Democratic Party chairman in 1952–56. There, he changed Oregon politics, getting Democrats elected to office for the first time in Oregon history, including Senators Wayne Morse and Maurine Neuberger. As public utility commissioner under Bob Holmes, he made several populist decisions that were upheld by the Oregon

Supreme Court. In the early ’60s he was appointed to the Federal Power Commission, and in 1966 he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate on an anti–Vietnam War platform. He also ran a construction company until he sold his holdings in 1967. After his retirement, Howard and Rosina sailed by private sailboat for 15 years in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. They lived in Spain and on Bainbridge Island, Washington, before settling in McMinnville. Survivors include Rosina, son Peter, daughters Kate and Sarah, seven grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren. Another son, Thomas, died in 1967.

Dorothy Marion Dewey Greer ’41 March 24, 2012, in Evanston, Illinois.

A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Dodie earned a BA from Reed and an MFA in printmaking from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

She was a sculptress and ceramicist, “the dear friend of many” at the Evanston Art Center, and beloved as a mother.

Harriet Phyllis Goodman Bodner ’42

April 13, 2012, in Portland.

Harriet grew up in Portland, attending Couch Grade School and Lincoln High School. She studied at Reed two years and also at the Museum Art School before enrolling at the Yale University School of Art. In 1943, she married Portlander George H. Bodner. He served as a dental officer in the naval reserve during World War II, while she worked in the Portland shipyards. Harriet volunteered for many organizations, including the PTA and scouting, and political causes, and was a member of Congregation Beth Israel and the Council of Jewish Women. She was a board member of Neighborhood House and was an art consultant for a number of years at Gallery West in southwest Portland before working in the rental sales gallery at the Portland Art Museum.

For 13 years, she volunteered with the Oregon Jewish Museum, and was honored for her work in 2006 with the Song of Miriam award. Her family also honored her in Portland’s Walk of the Heroines in 2008. Harriet and George enjoyed their home at the Oregon coast and attending local symphony, theatre, and art events. Her artistic creativity found expression in her daily life and home and in the practice of calligraphy she learned at Reed with Lloyd Reynolds [English & art, 1929–69]. Survivors include her husband, children, a granddaughter, and a great-grandson.

Nedra Belle Gray Firestone ’42 March 11, 2011, in Monmouth, Oregon.

Nedra grew up in Portland’s Irvington neighborhood, guided by a caring older sister, Frances Gray Cannell ’29. She attended Grant High School, and, at 15, with Frances as chaperone, she toured California and Mexico, playing violin in an allgirl band. At Reed, she participated in theatre and dance and earned a BA in general literature.

She made lifelong friends and treasured her Reed experience to the end of her life. “Reed fostered my abilities to analyze, organize, understand others and myself, and to communicate, all of which are basic to success in any endeavor.” In 1943, she and childhood friend Evan R. Feuerstein married. He served in the army during World War II; following the war, he changed his surname to Firestone. Nedra and Evan lived in Detroit and Dallas, Oregon, and raised a son and daughter. During the ’60s, Nedra worked in public housing with Polk County Housing Authority; she was a life member of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. In retirement, she served as founding president of Polk County Development Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to creating affordable housing. She was board president of the corporation for nearly 20 years, taking a “less active role” at the age of 90, and was chair of the Children’s Fund Committee. Nedra enjoyed reading and cooking, boating with Evan, and traveling with her daughter and granddaughter. Throughout their lives, Nedra and Evan contributed generously to a multitude of causes for the underprivileged. Survivors include a son, daughter, and granddaughter.

Evan died in 2009.

Spencer John Gill ’42

March 15, 2012, in Portland.

Spencer earned a BA in general literature, writing the thesis “William Blake as Revolutionary” with his academic adviser, Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69].

In 1943, with Lloyd’s assistance, he eloped with Josephine Bestul, his lifelong partner, with whom he raised three daughters, Susan Gill Farber ’65, Christine Gill Jeibmann MAT ’70, and Gretchen Sperling. (Three decades later, Spencer led the effort to have Lloyd recognized as Calligrapher Laureate of Oregon, assisted by Jean McCall Babson ’42, sister of Oregon governor Tom McCall.) During World War II, Spencer served in the military. In 1954, he was called to testify before the House Un-American

Activities Committee. Mike Munk ’56 reports that although Spencer admitted to having attended Reed, along with David Gregg ’54 and David Lapham ’60, he refused political interrogation. Spencer made his career as a writer and editor and lived with his family in Switzerland for six years, where he worked as director of publications for Investors Overseas Services in Geneva. He wrote and published numerous books, including Turquoise Treasures, Pottery Treasures, Portland: Image of A City, Washington Shores, and Vegetable Gardening the Chinese Way. He also served as a writer for the design team that created Portland’s Pioneer Square. Survivors include his daughters, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Mary Jean Nelson Murray ’42 March 24, 2012, in Portland.

Mary was raised by her mother, grandmother, and aunt, as the only child in a Scottish household with plenty of tea and baked goods.

He r fat h e r w a s a Canadian wheat farmer.

Mary earned a BA in psychology from Reed. During World War II, she joined the navy as an officer in the personnel department at Port Hueneme, California.

There she met Harold (Max) Murray, who was also doing military service. They married in Portland in 1946 and moved to Eugene so that Max could complete his education at the University of Oregon. Three children were born before they returned to Portland, and a set of twins followed.Mary kept busy with family, household responsibilities, and work as a partner in an employment office. Mary and Max were deacons in the Presbyterian church and enjoyed cultivating roses, square dancing, and taking walks with their dogs. The couple was “virtually inseparable”—giving space to one another to enjoy personal pleasures like classical music (Mary) and sports (Max)—until Max’s death in 2011. Survivors include their daughter and four sons, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Frederic Claiborne Shorter ’44 February 21, 2012, in Olympia, Washington.

Fred grew up in Seattle, the son of a Congregational clergyman. “My father was usually quite poor, and was a pacifist and a socialist, and quite outspoken,” he said in an interview in 2005. His father strongly approved of Fred’s choice to attend Reed, and Fred’s sisters, Mary Alice Shorter Holmes ’45 and Ruth Shorter, also studied at Reed. Fred managed the bookstore and the student union and did kitchen and janitorial work to finance his undergraduate years; he also sold women’s shoes. He lived in a room in the SU with Jerry L. Kelley ’44 and september 2012 Reed magazine 57

In Memoriam participated in hijinks to ferry the Doyle owl off and on campus. Fred earned a BA in economics and got a job in a public accounting office in Seattle before enrolling at Haverford, where he earned an MA in international administration. At Haverford, he met Bani Knight Shorter.

They were married for 30 years and adopted a daughter and son. After Haverford, he worked for the American Friends Service Committee, spent a year in India analyzing the jute industry on a Ford Foundation fellowship, and earned a PhD from Stanford in economics. Fred taught at UCLA and at Harvard, where he was part of an advisory group in Dacca [then, East Pakistan]. Four years later, he went to teach at Princeton and to work in Turkey. “I began to branch towards demography and population studies—more about the demographic context.”

He later worked for the Population Council in New York. In that capacity, he was in Egypt for many years and married Belgin Tekçe. They were together for 19 years and also lived in Turkey and in British Columbia. In 2004, he married Zeynep Angin and found his way to Idaho and Washington, where he was a visiting scholar at the University of Washington. Fred said that at Reed he learned to read and criticize, to work with other people, and to participate in discussion groups—“all extremely helpful as experience and optimism that enabled me to do the work I did in Cairo and Turkey all those years.

As an outsider in those countries, one must have something to give and be considerate of the people you work with. Now, perhaps, I had some of those qualities already from my family, but they were certainly reinforced at Reed.”

Ersel Arthur Evans ’47

November 9, 2011, in Seattle, Washington.

Ersel came to Reed after serving in the Naval Air Corps during World War II and earned a BA in chemistry. He completed a PhD in chemistry with a minor in metallurgical engineering at Oregon State University.

In 1951, he went to work for General Electric at Hanford, Washington. He was technical director of the Hanford Engineering Development Laboratories for over a decade and was an authority on ceramic and materials research and the development of nuclear reactor fuels. He directed major research and engineering programs, projects involving uranium, thorium, and plutonium fuels research and production, and developed materials for applications in aerospace, alternative energy, and medicine. During his career, he received the Westinghouse Order of Merit, the American Nuclear Society Exceptional Service 58 Reed magazine september 2012

Award, and the Walker Cister Medal. He was a fellow in the American Nuclear Society, the American Institute of Chemists, the American Society of Metals, and the American Ceramic Society. “I have been blessed with remarkably inspiring, helpful coworkers in graduate school and my professional career,” Ersel wrote. “But most of my fondest memories and greatest respect go back to Reed. Dr. [Arthur] Scott [chemistry and acting president 1923–79] and many others, staff and students, had a profound effect on me in an amazing variety of ways, inspiring from the front, rather than prodding from the rear.” He is survived by his son and predeceased by his daughter.

Kenneth Ivory Evans ’47

April 9, 2012, in Portland, from complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Ken was a chemistry major at Reed and earned an MA in science education from the University of Oregon.

“Reed taught me how to think and evaluate ideas and situations, and to keep open to ideas of all people,” he wrote. He taught science and math primarily in high schools in Milwaukie, Oregon, and also served as a vice principal at one of the schools. During summers, he worked as a chemist at National Lead, sold real estate, and directed summer school. He enjoyed golf, fishing, chess, and crossword puzzles. He and Phyllis Mickels married in 1942 and raised a son. He later married Grace Magnuson; they were together for 55 years. Ken and Grace were involved in their church, Hinson Baptist, where they taught classes. Ken left “a legacy of honor and humility” and demonstrated a love of learning. Survivors include Grace, his son, three grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, two sisters, and two brothers.

Anna Lou Melson Dehavenon ’48 February 28, 2012, in Greenport, New York.

A national authority on poverty, hunger, and homelessness, Anna Lou was born in Bellingham, Washington, and demonstrated a gift for piano early in life. After studying at Reed for two years, she transferred to the school of music at DePaul University, where she worked with Sergei Turnovsky. In Chicago, she met William Kapell, a brilliant pianist; they married in 1948. His career became her focus, along with raising their two children, and she was devastated when William was killed in a plane crash in 1953. (For the remainder of her life, she was attentive to

his memory, publishing new recordings and even his diaries.) The loss was tremendous both emotionally and financially; William’s friends came to her aid, providing stability for her and the children. Without this generosity, she noted later, she and her children might have been homeless. In 1955, she married Gaston de Havenon, who had a perfume manufacturing business in New York. They had two children, and she also became mother to two sons from his previous marriage. “I told myself, here I am, a woman who supposedly has everything: a comfortable home, wonderful children, a difficult but interesting husband, but still I was bored,” she said in an interview. Seeking an intellectual challenge, she enrolled at Columbia University at the age of 40, where she earned successive degrees in anthropology with honors.

It was in a physics class, she said, that she learned the scientific method, which “opened up a whole new way of looking at the world, a whole new way of getting at the truth.” While conducting research for her dissertation, she became critically aware of the plight of homeless families in New York City. She developed a systematic and comprehensive method of documenting families in poverty—research that became the basis of annual reports documenting hunger and homelessness. In 1973, she cofounded the East Harlem Interfaith Welfare Committee, a coalition of religious voluntary agencies that did welfare advocacy, and the New York Coalition Against Hunger. She looked at New York, she said, “as a vision of the future of our wider country if we don’t address housing, income, and health care issues.” In a yearlong survey done for the East Harlem Interfaith Welfare Committee in 1985, she documented the worsening of hunger conditions in New York City. The report created a sensation and led to stories in the New York Times, the Daily News, the Christian Science Monitor, and the New Yorker. From her data on the number of children forced to sleep on chairs in offices came a court order that homeless families be offered decent emergency shelter nightly. Anna Lou was project director for the Action Research Project on Hunger, Homelessness, and Family Health. She was an adjunct professor of anthropology in community medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, visiting assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, research associate in the department of anthropology at City College (CUNY), and visiting professor of anthropology at the Center for the Study of the Administration of Relief in New Delhi, India. She cofounded the Task Force on Poverty and Homelessness of the American Anthropological Association and was a project director for United Neighborhood Houses.

Among many honors, she received the first Reverend Jenny Clark Award of the East Harlem Interfaith Welfare Council, the Josephine Shaw Lowell Award of the Community Service Society,

and the Foster-Scholz Distinguished Service Award. Reed’s graduating class of 1994 also selected her to speak at commencement. “If you directly observe and speak to people, you begin to know what their experiences really are,” she said in her address. “The class and racial segregation in our culture separates most of us from the experiences of poor people. I would like many more of us to contemplate what it is like to sleep three or more to a bedroom or on the floor and what it would be like to raise one’s own children in these circumstances, in the world’s wealthiest, most advanced nation.” Survivors include two sons, two daughters, one stepson, 10 grandchildren, and her sister, Posie Melson Conklin ’51.

Notifying us of her death, Ernie Bonyhadi ’48 wrote, “Anna Lou was a beautiful human being, a dear friend to us and to many more.”

Wesley Charles Henwood ’53

April 17, 2012, in La Ceiba, Honduras, from a heart attack.

Philip Dean Janney ’49

April 14, 2012, in Portland.

Dean was a B-24 pilot during World War II and a member of the Oregon Air National Guard. He came to Reed on the GI Bill and studied at the college for more than three years with a focus on economics. He became an accountant and a partner at the Portland firm of Janney, Wathen & Company. Dean had an inquisitive mind and enjoyed sharing a quip and a song. Survivors include his wife of 55 years, JoAnne (Garber); three sons; four grandchildren; and two brothers.

John Hugh Noland ’51 May 6, 2012, in Chico, California.

John was a radio operator in the navy during World War II. He earned a BA from Reed in mathematics and an MS in applied mathematics from Montana State at Bozeman. In 1959, he moved to Chico and was a mathematics instructor at Chico State for 28 years. Chess was a great passion for John, and he entered national competitions, earning the title of national master from the U.S. Chess Federation in 1988. Survivors include two sons, a grandson, and two sisters.

Edward James Cole ’52

April 15, 2012, in Mesa, Arizona.

Edward served with the coast guard during World War II—his extensive travel during the war qualified him as a Shellback and as a member of the order of the Golden Dragon. He studied at Reed three years and completed a BS in electrical engineering in the combined program with MIT. He made a career as an engineer in electronic systems design at Hughes Aircraft Company in Fullerton, California. Edward and Virginia Fraser had three children and were married for 33 years until her death. In retirement, Edward and his wife, Gloria, moved to Mesa. His interests included archery, fishing, travel, and membership in the Arizona Amateur Radio Club.

Survivors include Gloria, his son and two daughters, two stepchildren, five grandchildren, and a brother, George Cole ’52.

Wesley Henwood ’53 with his wife, Nadene, and son, Stephen Henwood ’75, in 1953.

Wes grew up with an older sister in Lakewood, Washington, where his English parents built some lovely homes. He earned a BA from Reed in biology and an MD at the University of Washington, and did an internship in radiology at the University of Chicago. He was certified as a roentgenographic interpreting physician by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and had a radiology practice in Minnesota for over 20 years. In Minnesota and in Mexico and Central America he hunted and fished—flying to destinations in his small aircraft. In the early ’80s, he went to Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras, for an early retirement and to complete the development of a 40-acre parcel of land he owned there. When tourism slowed, he returned to radiology, serving with the U.S. Army and achieving the rank of colonel. Following this portion of his medical career, he practiced in Virginia before taking a second retirement in Washington and in La Ceiba, Honduras. Nadene Goldfoot, who provided the details for this memorial piece, wrote, “Wes was a bundle of energy, always experimenting with businesses beyond his medical practice.

He was an ardent reader, a great dancer and true adventurer, always admiring Ernest Hemingway.”

Survivors include two daughters and three sons, including Stephen Henwood ’75; three grandchildren; and his sister.

she married John R. MacKenzie ’50; they had two children. From Mike Munk ’56, we learned that John was one of the “Portland Four,” who lost their jobs and were sentenced to jail as a result of their refusal to cooperate with HUAC’s political interrogation in 1954 (see “McCarthyism Laid to Rest?” in Reed, spring 2006). Mary told Mike that John dealt with government harassment for decades and the family felt isolated and lived in an “atmosphere of crisis.” Mary was an artist, a homemaker, and a freelance writer. She wrote regularly for American Astrology magazine for over 40 years. “I love astrology,” she said in a note to the college. “I consider astrology to be an important proto-science, which has both contributed importantly to the academically recognized sciences of mathematics and astronomy and has changed with the times, updating primary tenets in line with contemporary scientific discoveries as well as making its own original contributions to science.” Survivors include her son and daughter, three grandchildren, and a brother. John died in 1999.

Carla Wolff Perez ’54

February 17, 2012, in San Francisco, California.

Carla grew up in San Francisco, the daughter of prominent physicians. Don Green ’54 knew her first in childhood as a family friend and then as a classmate at Lowell High School. “She went to Reed... with fellow Lowellites Harry Jacob ’54, Forrest Bailey ’54, and Charles Hedtke ’54, and was joined later by longtime San Francisco friend Galen Howard Hilgard ’56.” Carla attended Reed for three years, majoring in biology with a focus on premedicine, and completed a degree through a combined program with Western Reserve Medical School. “I still have memories of the fine launching given to me by Reed,” she wrote decades later. After earning an MD in 1960 from Western Reserve, she moved to Italy and served as a consultant in a mental health clinic at the University of Rome. Back in San Francisco, she did a residency in psychiatry

Mary J. Mathisson MacKenzie ’53 May 30, 2012, in Portland.

Mary earned a BA from Reed in general literature, writing the creative thesis “Three Leaves, and other poems.” Her interest in art led to a secondary teaching credential from California College of Arts & Craft in 1958. One year later, september 2012 Reed magazine 59

In Memoriam at Mt. Zion Hospital. Following that, she managed part-time private and clinical practices in psychiatry and did teaching and consulting until her retirement in 2008. Carla dedicated 14 years of Saturday evenings to work as a radio talk show host. “Psychiatrists were not accessible to the average person,” she said in an interview.

“They were the stuffy group. I thought I could do preventive work and not do it in psychobabble jargon.” Said Don, “She gave cautious counsel to persons who called for advice.” Drawing on her wealth of knowledge, she published two books: Getting off the Merry-Go-Round of Compulsive Behavior and Without Clothes We’re All Naked: Reflections on Life in the Real Lane. She also published a children’s book, Your Turn, Doctor, and wrote poetry. Carla and Virgil Perez, a mathematician and artist, were married for 40 years until his death in 2010. They raised four children— three daughters and a son, who were a great joy.

Survivors include her children and three grandchildren. A celebration in her honor was held in her favorite San Francisco neighborhood Italian restaurant. Attendees included Don, Galen, and Ayame Ogimi Flint ’54.

Thomas Shigeru Fujita ’56 February 11, 2012, in Portland.

In 1942, when Tom was 11 years old, the federal government ordered him and his family— including brother Donald J. Fujita ’65— to leave their home in Milwaukie, Oregon, and move to the relocation center established for nikkei (Americans with Japanese ancestry) in Minidoka, Idaho. After the war, Tom returned to Portland, graduated from Lincoln High School, and earned a BA in chemistry from Reed.

He went on to study at the University of Washington, earning an MS in organic chemistry. In 1959, he began his 40-year career at Oregon Health & Science University, where he taught advanced organic chemistry and worked primarily with J.H. Fellman as a research chemist in neurochemistry, studying acetylcholine esterase, the chief enzyme destroying acetylcholine (the primary neurotransmitter in the human nervous system). He also worked with R.T. Jones in molecular biochemistry. In addition, he did quality control and research and development for Cooper Laboratories. Ron McClard, Arthur F. Scott Professor of Chemistry at Reed [1984–], wrote, “Tom worked in my lab at Reed College back in the ’80s and he was the most persistently cheerful person I’ve ever known, and a very fine chemist as well. He also taught me to appreciate the superb pine mushroom [matsutake] with which he supplied me 60 Reed magazine september 2012

Karl Leabo ’56 at the drawing table while convalescing in Hawaii during the Korean War.

regularly. Tom seemed to be friends with virtually everybody.” Tom was married to Kay (Kuntz), a piano teacher and calligrapher; they had four sons. Says Kay, “Tom was an amazing person, so intelligent, and always learning and studying, up to the end.” Outside of his work as a chemist, Tom enjoyed fishing. He was a member of the Portland Darts Club and Portland Chess Club and was skilled in social card games and track racing. He also collected original prints by world-class artists and supported the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the Portland Opera Association, the American Chemical Society, and the American Civil Liberties Union. He had a passion for jazz and wrote of “one of the great moments in jazz history” that occurred when Dizzy Gillespie stepped on his toe at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1966. “Embodying compassion and generosity, Tom shared his love and wisdom with all he encountered.” Survivors include Kay, their sons, five grandchildren, his brother, and four sisters.

Karl B. Leabo Jr. ’56

September 19, 2011, in Middletown, Connecticut.

Karl was born in Portland and served in the Korean War before coming to Reed. While he focused his studies on history, he was an avid artist and cartoonist. In the late ’50s, he moved to Manhattan, where he became art director of Dance Perspectives and SHOW magazine. He married choreographer and dancer Loi Leabo and worked with the New York City Ballet. Karl’s graphic style was widely emulated; he was an award-winning editor and art director of several books, including Martha Graham and Kabuki. He

also was cofounder and art director of Stagebill magazine. Survivors include three sons, six grandchildren, two sisters, and his companion and friend, Nancy Walsh.

Winifred Alice Lockwood Marsh MAT ’57 February 4, 2012, in Groton, Massachusetts.

Winnie was born in Karuizawa, Japan, the daughter of missionaries for the Congregational church in Japan, the Marshall Islands, and Hawaii. She met Howard (Clif) Marsh ’58 in Hawaii, where he was stationed with the air force during the Korean War. They married and lived on Oahu and Maui, and began raising their four children before moving back to the mainland. Winnie earned an AS from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and a BA in psychology and a BEd at the University of Hawaii.

Her studies at Reed centered in behavioral science and gave her “confidence and the willingness to try new things, and to explore many possibilities, theories, and ideas,” she wrote. Clif’s work with the Smithsonian Institution took the family to Hawaii, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, and Maryland, before they made a home in his hometown of Groton in 1975. Winnie worked with special-needs students and was a substitute teacher in Shirley and Pepperell, Massachusetts.

She was also a library assistant for the Groton Public Library. Some years after Clif ’s death in 1986, she began dividing her time between Groton and Maui. She enjoyed travel in the Hawaiian Island, visits with her children on the East Coast and in Portland, and trips to New Zealand, Italy, Germany, England, and back to Japan. She sang in church choirs, both

pregnant women, than any other in the world, even more than the plague,” Michael told Reed in the August 1998 article, “The New, Improved 10-Minute Malaria Test.” His family reported, “In keeping with the ethic of science instilled by his mentors, he shared his expertise in malaria and laboratory science with young researchers from four continents who came to Portland to work with him.” Survivors include his wife, Andra MAT ’78; two daughters and a son; four grandchildren; and two brothers, including Harry M. Makler ’58.

Huguette Lucienne Bach MAT ’64 February 13, 2012, in Woodland, California.

in Groton and Maui, and did volunteer work for each of the parishes. She also performed in the annual community Christmas concert with the Nashoba Valley [Massachusetts] Chorale.

Survivors include three sons, including Ronald S. Marsh ’83; a daughter; two grandchildren; and a sister.

Michael Thomas Makler ’58 May 13, 2012, in Portland, from a rare form of thyroid cancer.

A malaria researcher and pathologist, Michael studied at Reed for two years, but left after the birth of his second brother in South Africa to pursue medicine at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In his public obituary, we read: “During those years, he saw first hand the viciousness of the apartheid system as he toured the townships with his physician stepfather. These experiences were the impetus for his lifelong effort to work for access to affordable quality medical care for all.” Michael studied biochemistry at Brandeis, earned an MD from Northwestern University, worked at the Biochemical Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and did a residency in pathology at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs. Certified in anatomic and clinical pathology and nuclear medicine, he returned to Portland in 1976 to direct the clinical laboratory at the VA hospital. His interest in malaria, and, in particular, in finding an effective and economical means of diagnosing it, led to his discovery of novel malaria enzyme markers and to the invention of a portable, inexpensive microscopy instrumentation. He retired from the VA in 1997 and founded the company Flow with partner Robert Piper ’85, professor in molecular physiology and biophysics at the University of Iowa. Together they developed OptiMAL, the first simple and low-cost rapid test for the diagnosis of drug-resistant malaria. OptiMAL was field tested through the work of Sam Martin ’72, top malaria investigator at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Kenya. “This disease has killed more people, mainly kids and

Huguette was a native of France. She and her husband, Max Bach, lived in the U.S. and settled in Davis in 1952. Starting out as an owner of a hair salon, Huguette became interested in advancing her education and subsequently earned a BA in French, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Davis.

She studied mathematics at Reed, leading to a career as a teacher in Sacramento schools and to tenure at California State University at Sacramento, from which she retired as professor emerita in 1992. “I thank Reed for my success,” she wrote for a class note in Reed in 2011.

Huguette lived in Hawaii for several years before moving to Carmichael, California. She loved music and travel, and she made beautiful gardens, meals, and artwork. “She simply loved and enjoyed life.” A daughter and son survive her.

Resource Center at the Burnett Library in Long Beach in 1998. “Indira was a visionary who sought to inspire and educate our youth through reading of their past,” said Doris. “Her legacy was to initiate and archive the history of African Americans in Long Beach to make a better place for all. For this, we will be eternally grateful.” Indira was a founding member of the Long Beach Public Library Foundation and served on many other nonprofit boards in Long Beach and Santa Monica. She served as a consultant for California State University at Long Beach in the area of parent education and community enrichment—she found it to be fascinating work. Said Marcus, “She was very passionate about books and reading and developing that love in young people.” (Indira also established the Marcus O. Tucker Black Men of Courage Collection at the Santa Monica library in honor of her husband.) Indira received the Soroptimist Woman of Distinction Award, the Celebrate Literacy Award from the California Reading Association, the NAACP’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Community Super Hero Award from the Long Beach Community Partnership.

Marston Michael Moffatt ’66 November 26, 2011, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from advanced Parkinsonism.

Indira Hale Tucker ’65

April 8, 2012, in Long Beach, California.

Named for Indira Gandhi, Indira grew up in Hawaii. Her mother was a pioneer in her career as a public official and a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives. (To preserve her mother’s legacy, Indira later organized the Helene Hale Collection on International Women of Courage at the Hilo Public Library.) Indira attended Reed for three years. She married Marcus Tucker in 1965 and completed a BA from UCLA in political science. Marcus became a superior court judge in Los Angeles, and they raised one daughter, moving to Long Beach in 1977. While reading the official history of Long Beach in the late ’80s, Indira said she was “flabbergasted” to find the city’s African American community represented only by the statement: “11 percent African American.” Working with Doris Topsy-Elvord, a Long Beach City Council member and Indira’s longtime friend, and Aaron Day, a genealogist, Indira gathered personal accounts, newspaper stories, and family photographs from African American Long Beach residents, and produced the book The Heritage of African Americans in Long Beach: Over 100 Years in 2007. Indira and Doris also cofounded the African American Heritage Society of Long Beach. Indira took great pride in her work, which led to the creation of the African American

An internationally recognized anthropologist, Michael was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in a household “filled with love, industry, a firm belief in eccentricity, wonder, and the value of art in its myriad forms,” writes Pamela ClaxtonMoffatt, Michael’s widow. “From 4 a.m. newspaper deliveries, to archeological digs and a thousand-mile-plus bicycle ride through the New England countryside with high school chums, Michael vigorously engaged in the world around him, and reveled in its most mysterious inhabitants: human beings.” Michael attended Dartmouth before transferring to Reed, where he received a BA in anthropology. He earned a BLitt in social anthropology at Oxford, studying with social anthropologist Rodney Needham, and an MA and PhD at the University of Chicago, where he trained with anthropologist McKim Marriot. In 1973, Michael joined the faculty at Rutgers, where he served as department chair for anthropology and graduate and undergraduate september 2012 Reed magazine 61

A memorial for Darrell Jenks ’80, who was a brilliant linguist and a diplomat.

In Memoriam director. Colleagues Sue Gal and Dorothy Hodgson note in an Anthropology News memorial that he mentored junior colleagues about the politics and practices of the profession. “Clever and nonconforming, Michael challenged postmodern theorists with satire and classical theorists by turning the tables on them,” says Pamela.

“His prose in casual conversation was ever erudite, full of plums plucked and coddled from his voracious reading. Whatever he read took on a literary spin with an anthropological twist coupled with humor.” Michael’s early research on the lives of rural and urban Harijans in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu grew out of his grandfather’s work as a missionary in the country, report Gal and Hodgson. His first book, An Untouchable Community in South India: Structure and Consensus, is widely respected as a controversial contribution to the field of anthropology. His next book, Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture, based on observations made when he posed as an undergrad living in the Rutgers dorms, became even better known. Years later, it continues to be popular with professors and students alike. Michael’s historical research from colonial days through the ’80s, The Rutgers Picture Book: An Illustrated History of Student Life in the Changing College and University, remains popular with alumni as well. He assessed ethnographic studies of U.S. life for the Annual Review and wrote articles such as “Do We Really Need ‘Postmodernism’ to Explain Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?” But he was perhaps most proud of a small piece he wrote for the New York Times on birding with friends in a New Jersey garbage dump.

“Michael was a mensch,” says Pamela. “He never backed off from what he thought was right, even if it was unpopular.” After September 11, 2001, he took his anthropology of religion students on field trips to different religious centers in New Jersey to give them firsthand experience with the multiplicity of Indic faiths and cultures: Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim. “He probably would 62 Reed magazine september 2012

Robin Ruppel-Kerr ’79 (left) and Paula vanHaagen ’79, on the eastern edge of Tarangire National Park in September 2007, when the two summited Mount Kilimanjaro.

not have called himself a religious man. Yet he lived as a godly man. He was brutally honest and concretely gave of himself to serve others, regularly feeding friends with Indian cuisine, barbecue, or homey casseroles.” Pamela adds that Reed alumni might remember Michael’s enjoyment of cooking, especially the spicy Indian dishes he prepared. “Michael was a natural parent and connected all the children he helped raise with the rugged and real beauty of nature. As a spouse, there was none more devoted (or dour before his morning coffee). He took on the household, child care, and bravely bore nuits blanches of Rolodex worries as I finished my dissertation.

Michael and I sang our way through stress, not only with the Reformed Church choir, but at home on the piano with songs like ‘After the Ball’ and ‘Silver Threads among the Gold.’” The Moffatt family made yearly pilgrimages to family camp in Pennsylvania, where parents and children enjoyed fellowship in a natural, faithbased community. Michael is remembered for his insatiable intellect and masterful skill as a writer, his warmth and generosity to his colleagues, and his wicked sense of humor. Moffatt asked to be buried “so paleontologists [would] have something to find one day.” Michael Moffatt Moments may be found at michaelmoffatt. blogspot.com. Survivors include Pamela, sons Alex and Jacob, and Michael’s sister.

Fred V. Edera ’67

May 15, 2012, in Portland, from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Fred was an economics major at Reed and studied economics at SUNY Buffalo and at Purdue.

Returning to Portland, he went into woodworking, designing and building furniture for his business, Endgrain Designs in Wood, and for many local businesses, including the Oregon College of Art & Craft. He also taught and tutored students at Maplewood School, Catlin Gabel School, and the Arbor School, in subjects ranging from precalculus to woodshop. He and his wife, Margaret (Peg), operated Generic Parts Service, and they raised a daughter, Mia. Fred is

remembered for his sense of humor, his enthusiasm, his love of music, and his unique sense of style. Survivors include his wife and daughter and his sister and brother.

Mary Delaney McConaghy MAT ’68

May 15, 2012, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Mary received a BA from Bryn Mawr College in medieval history and a master’s from Reed. She taught in Philadelphia’s inner-city schools for several years and, in 1970, married Richard W. McConaghy. She was drawn back to the world of academia—“I’m happiest in classrooms, museums, and libraries,” she wrote to Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84] in 1978. Mary earned a PhD in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania and served as web coordinator of the university archives until retirement in 2011. Survivors include her husband and two sons and her sister.

John G. Lake III MALS ’71 April 17, 2012, Petaluma, California.

John completed his undergraduate studies at Portland State University and then earned a master’s degree from Reed. He taught special needs children in remote Alaskan villages and in San Francisco, helped establish a program for deaf students in Guam, worked on his family genealogy, did home remodeling, and traveled the world. Survivors include his wife, Jean; a son and two daughters; a granddaughter; and two sisters.

Roslyn Dupler Fitch ’79

April 9, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Roslyn studied at Scripps College before coming to Reed, where she earned a BA in English literature. In 1982, she married Edward Fitch.

Roslyn was a gifted tutor in English and mathematics and a financial adviser. She was a docent for the Hogle Zoo and had many family pets.

Most recently, she traveled with Ed to Costa Rica

to fulfill a dream of seeing monkeys in the rain forest. She enjoyed many other travels throughout the world, as well as scuba diving, reading, playing mahjong, and performing on the flute.

Survivors include her husband, son, sister, and brother.

Robin Ruppel-Kerr ’79

April 20, 2012, at her home in Seattle, Washington, after a lengthy battle with breast cancer.

Robin spent her early years in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where she developed a lasting love for mountains and the outdoors. She graduated from Reed with a BA in biology. Her sister, Wendy Ruppel ’82, wrote, “Robin loved Reed and brought away from her time there a thirst for learning, a love of biology, folk dance and calligraphy, and lifelong friendships.” After graduation, Robin enlarged on her passion for folk dance and music in a master’s program in folk arts at Duquesne University. She also conducted research on hypertension at Montefiore Hospital in New York City, where she met Timothy G. Kerr, whom she later married. This work led her back to school and to a master’s degree in environmental toxicology from the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Robin worked in product safety for Bayer MaterialScience in Pittsburgh for 17 years, before her health forced her to return to the Pacific Northwest, where she could be cared for by family and friends. During remission from cancer, Robin climbed and reached the summits of Mount Rainier and Mount Kilimanjaro. She died with her sisters by her side. Robin is survived by her daughter, Kelsey; her parents; and her sisters, Wendy and Joanna, along with their spouses and children. She is remembered as a beautiful, strong, and courageous woman, who possessed a passion for life and a radiant smile.

was fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin), Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese, and had a working knowledge, largely self-taught, of Arabic. He was fascinated by people and cultures, and formed lasting friendships everywhere he went. He also was an avid drummer, joining bands wherever he was posted and even playing a concert in Mongolia in 1990.

Darrell spent 30 years in the Foreign Service and was director of the Foreign Service Institute’s Japanese Language and Area Training Center in Yokohama until his diagnosis. “His colleagues admired him for his warm, lively, and outgoing personality, as well as his conscientious leadership in the workplace.” Survivors include Thelma; daughter Desiree; son Christopher; and his parents, two brothers, and an uncle. “Darrell always praised Reed, encouraged students to apply to attend Reed, and told of his formative years and what Reed offered him. He was really an intellectual.”

Scott Jiro Hirozawa ’83 February 12, 2012, in Decatur, Georgia.

Darrell Allan Jenks ’80

May 14, 2012, in Baltimore, Maryland, from cancer.

Darrell came to Reed from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and earned a BA in French. He went on to earn an MA in political science from the Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela, an MA in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and a PhD from Salve Regina University in Newport. He joined the Foreign Service and served as an officer in the Diplomatic Corps in Belize, Japan, Taiwan, China, Venezuela, Brazil, Korea, Iraq, and the United States. He received the Secretary of State’s award for excellence in public diplomacy; a Superior Honor Award in recognition of extraordinary dedication to duty and creative, disciplined leadership for work in Maysan, Iraq; and a meritorious award for extraordinary contributions to U.S. interests in China—along with honorary citizenship in places he served. “Darrell, a brilliant linguist, served the American people well,” wrote his widow, Thelma Coyoc. He

Horn of Plenty: (right to left) Scott Hirozawa ’83, Benn Lewis ’82, Dale Shields ’85, and Matt Giraud ’85 on the steps of a Reed house named Findhorn circa 1982.

Scott came to Reed for a year in 1979 to study physics. Matt Giraud ’85 remembers Scott as a dormmate freshman year and as a housemate in Reed houses thereafter. “Scott had a great sense of humor. He lived in a pantry in one of our Reed houses for $55 per month, as I recall. Rigged up a series of pulleys to turn lights off and on and even start some kind of breakfast.” Scott went on to earn a BS from Oregon State University and an MS from the University of Oregon in computer science. He worked as a software engineer and was a bicyclist, outdoorsman, and photographer, focusing his lens on landscapes in California, Oregon, and elsewhere. Survivors include his parents, brother, and two sisters.

Byron William Massey ’89 October 11, 2010, in Coos Bay, Oregon, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.

Byron studied at Reed for a year and received a BS in physics from Oregon State University and an MEd from the University of Oregon. He taught high school mathematics and science at North Bend High School and Marshfield High School and at Southwestern Oregon Community College. He also ran a small business in North Bend and studied clock and watch repair. Byron was a writer and a gifted musician and thespian. He enjoyed fine cigars and vintage clothing and was a founding member of the North Bend Chess Club. He was also skilled at online and collectible card games and was a published game designer. Survivors include his mother; his sister; and his brother, Bart Massey ’87.

John Peara Baba ’90

March 10, 2012, in San Francisco, California.

John earned a BA in philosophy from Reed and a JD from Golden Gate University, where he was awarded a Witkin Award in trial advocacy. John was a legal extern in the San Francisco Superior Court law and motion department during his third year of law school. His 12-year law practice with Wiegel & Fried included writ practice, civil appeals, commercial and residential lease disputes, and pretrial motion pleading. Attorney Andrew Wiegel remarked that John was a great attorney and a greathearted man. “He leaves us all better for having known him.” John advanced the laws protecting the right of people to have access to the court and public process without fear of countersuit, Wiegel stated. “He also preserved the right to negotiate with tenants and advanced other legal rights of property owners in meaningful ways.” John distinguished himself admirably.

“I will miss him dearly as a member of the firm and even more as a friend.” John, who suffered from apnea, died in his sleep. Several Reedies, including William Abernathy ’88, Ian Atlas ’91, Bruce Bennett ’90, Andromeda Dunker ’94, Kip Guy ’90, Sharma Hendel ’92, Alice Meek Landess ’92, and Bennett Steinmuller ’93, gathered to honor John in May. Though he was an Assyrian, John was given an Irish nod at Durty Nelly’s in San Francisco, and at Ocean Beach his alumni friends set a tiny Viking longboat on fire and launched it into the surf.

Pending:

As Reed went to press, we learned of the deaths of the following individuals: Virginia Richards Corrigall ’38, Robert Isensee ’41, Margaret Bailey Pancoast ’41, Margaret Winslow Fisher ’43, Jacqueline Jump Kolb ’45, Christoph Heinicke ’48, Montana Sands Bryant ’49, Alan Gittelsohn ’50, Peter Jacobsohn ’50, Lester Lindberg ’60, John Helmick ’62, Casper Paulson MA ’62, Herbert Smith ’62, Joseph Rosenbaum ’66, Gregory Pierce ’70, Run Vzel ’82, Brian Hanna ’83, and Carol Creedon [psychology 1957–91].

Share your memories of classmates via email: reed.magazine@reed.edu or via the post: Reed magazine, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202-8199.

september 2012 Reed magazine 63

Apocrypha

tradition • myth • legend

Griffin Infiltrates Rose Parade dan schafer ’92

The griffin is small and soft. Six inches high and stuffed with cotton, it sits atop a few worn books stacked on the cluttered desk of Mike Teskey, director of alumni & parent relations. For years this figurine—a plush model of the mythical half lion, half eagle— had fixed its glassy eye on Mike, and it must have made an impression, because when he met representatives of the Portland Rose Festival to discuss Reed’s float in the upcoming parade, Mike pointed to the griffin.

The last time Reed entered a float in the Grand Floral Parade was in 1936.

From time to time, alumni would broach the dream of returning to the parade, but like a lot of great ideas, it never got past the broaching stage. Then, at a centennial apple-pressing party in the canyon orchard, Mike struck up a conversation with Jon-Paul Davis ’93 and mechanical wizard Rob Mack ’93. Rob was the natural choice to spearhead the project; during his Reed days he turned an old Nissan into the infamous Mobile Outdoor Plush Super Upholstered Den (MOSPUD), a mobile beverage-distribution system that graced several Renn Fayres. Rob signed on

64 Reed magazine september 2012

for the parade with just one demand: Reed would build the float.

Rob’s request may seem strange, but most floats are put together by SCi 3.2, the parade company that oversees the Grand Floral Parade. However, Rob was fully confident that Reedies could construct a float worthy of the ages. In April, Rob and his core team, Mike Teskey, Ben Lund ’93, Dan Schafer ’92, Martha Richards ’92, and Lars Fjelstad ’92, began to build in earnest.

On a sunny June afternoon, Rob and his team were laboring in a dust-filled warehouse in northwest Portland, fighting through the heavy scent of peat and flowers to put the final touches on the float.

The griffin stuck out of the sea of floats— all of which were receiving the Grand Floral Parade’s requisite botanical covering—like a pallid postthesis Reedie on the beach. Rob’s paint-spattered overalls and booming voice were in stark contrast to the quiet efficiency of the blue-and-white uniforms of the professional float builders as he haggled with administrators over the volume of his stereo.

Mechanically, the griffin is quite complex: mounted on the chassis of an old Ford Pinto, it was welded out of iron bars and boasts a system of motors in the wings and the head that allow each to rotate independently. There is also a speaker system, wired to play the Muppets’ song “Cluck You” on repeat. Covering the float in flowers was grueling work, but the mood in the warehouse was joyous. Like a senior editing a thesis after passing orals, the griffin team would only be done when continuing was no longer an option.

The sky was gray and ominous on the morning of the parade, but the mood was sunny among the Portlanders who thronged the sidewalks along the route.

At one point, after the sudden failure of an engine coil, the Reed float suffered the ignominy of being towed by a golf cart. But when it crested the rise of the Burnside Bridge, its eyes bright and its outspread wings glowing in their fresh coat of flowers, the griffin looked positively regal—a stunning metamorphosis of dream to reality.

—Miles Bryan ’13 For more photos of the mighty Griffin, see bit.ly/QlqIkF

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

Reed College

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon

Schematic plan for the epic Griffin Float, which heralded Reed’s triumphant return to the Portland Rose Festival after an absence of 76 years (see page 64). Here’s to you, Rob Mack ’93!