Reed College Magazine September 2016

‰ september 2016

WHAT IS A REEDIE?

Mark your calendar and register now for

Parent & Family Weekend November 4 & 5, 2016

You and your family are invited to campus for two days of exciting events: ♦ Speak with President John R. Kroger at the Welcome Reception. ♦ Learn about student research, declaring a major, the junior qual, the thesis process, and life beyond Reed. ♦ Immerse yourself in Reed by touring our canyon, reactor, and other unique features of campus.

Schedule and registration: reed.edu/pfw

‰

september 2016

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FEATURES 10

DEPARTMENTS

The Last Lectures

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Saluting retiring professors Virginia Hancock ’62 and Tom Wieting.

By katie pelletier ’03 & Randall S. Barton 14

Ticket to Ride

Michael Jacobs ’04 helps Reedies find the fabulous.

32 Reediana

By Randall S. Barton

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Engineering the Human Race

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New technology gives us the power to manipulate the human genome.

Should we use it?

Books, music, and films by Reedies

34 Class Notes

News from our classmates

39 In Memoriam

By shelly skolfield ’14 20

Eliot Circular Tackle Climate Change— Go Bird Watching Seniors Win Lankford Award $4.5M for Annual Fund What Is Religion, Exactly?

Reunions ’16: Carnival of Reconnecting

Honoring our fallen classmates, professors, and friends

48 Adventures in

the First Person

What Is a Reedie Anyway?

Strange Encounter in Xi’an

Easy to identify but hard to define: 12 from the class of ’16.

By Randall S. Barton

18 c o v e r p h o t o s b y m at t d ’a n n u n z i o

september 2016 Reed magazine

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Letter from the editor leah nash

‰ september 2016

www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 95, No. 3 MAGAZINE editor

Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu class notes editor

Katie Pelletier ’03 503/517-7727 pelletic@reed.edu In Memoriam editor

Randall S. Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu art director

A Word to the Class of 2020 It’s been thirty years, but my first impressions of Reed remain vivid. The elegant profile of Eliot Hall framed by the towering fir trees. The Great Lawn, cool and green despite the August heat. That first Humanities lecture, when Prof. Wally Englert sang the opening lines of the Iliad.

It all seemed exhilarating and intense and faintly unreal. Today, as the early waves of freshmen appear on campus, hauling unruly rolling bags across the Quad and toting misshapen cardboard boxes to their dorm rooms, I think back to 1983 and wonder what kind of advice would have been useful to me. The honest answer is probably “very little” because I was too full of my own opinions to pay much heed to the bromides of elders. But that’s not going to stop me from offering up some suggestions to the Class of 2020: Chart your course. Reed is like an extraordinary starship designed by an eccentric Victorian watchmaker. It can propel you anywhere in space and time, but it relies on you to dial up the coordinates and wind the mainspring. This sounds easy in theory. It’s harder when you’re wrestling with Plato and you have a history paper due in the morning.

But like anything else, the more you put into Reed, the more you get out of it.

Cast a wide net. You probably think of yourself as a science kid. Or a literature kid.

Or a computer kid. That’s great. But if I had to identify a recurring theme in the lives of Reed alumni, it would be their ability to borrow ideas from one field and apply them to another. This issue of the magazine includes 2

Reed magazine september 2016

Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu

the story of an English major who became a geneticist and a chemist who became a music professor. Make a point of taking classes that push you beyond your comfort zone.

Sign up and show up. College is the ideal time to try your hand at something new.

In fact, it will never be easier to explore an unfamiliar interest. So write for the Quest (an experience that changed my life). Play rugby. Join the philosophy society. Volunteer with SEEDS. Operate a nuclear reactor. Take up the mandolin. Learn to dance.

Keep your door open. Sometimes it’s tempting to hole up in your dorm room.

That’s fine—but prop your door open. Go out of your way to do things with your dormies and your classmates. Connect with your professors—they hold office hours for the sole purpose of providing guidance and answering your questions. And for that matter, connect with the staff. Deans, librarians, the guy in the stockroom all want you to get the most out of Reed.

Head out. Portland is a truly unique community. Hop on a bike, board a bus, and explore the city. And don’t forget the mountain, the river, the forest, and the desert.

Call your family. You won’t always agree with them. You may not always get along with them. But there’s no substitute for them—trust me on this one.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90, EDITOR

REED COLLEGE RELATIONS vice president, college relations

Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs

Mandy Heaton 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 Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may only run half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left. Read more letters and commentary at www.reed.edu/reed_magazine.

Dance of the Pen

Going to Father Robert Palladino’s [1969-84] calligraphy class was like going on retreat. The classroom was a quiet haven. Normally edgy students were calm as milk. Palladino demonstrated letters with a brush on big pieces of paper, and he put them in historical and aesthetic context. Then he would set us a task and wander the room as we toiled. Sometimes he would talk as he walked, waxing philosophical or telling us about some awful lettering he had seen earlier in the day on the side of a truck.

I think a big part of what made it special was that we weren’t expected to talk, or even particularly to listen, but just to focus on plying our pens in a care-taking way. Although I never developed much skill as a calligrapher, I learned enough to forever change my perception of letters in everyday places. I treasure the mediocre little book I made as my class project. And those periods of quiet practice in his classroom helped me through an otherwise stressful time.

So here’s to the memory of Father Palladino, with gratitude.

—Steve Lindsay ’81 Victoria, British Columbia

Remembering Joe Gunterman ’34

Just a year ago in the In Memoriam section I learned of the death of Joseph Gunterman ’34. I was surprised on two counts. I was surprised and pleased to learn that he had had such a long productive life, countering the bromide that the good go young. And I was surprised to learn that he was a graduate from Reed College.

I had worked together with him and Emmy in the late 1960s and early 1970s and as an unpaid lobbyist during California legislative sessions. He was obviously a well-educated, cultured, literate man with a broad base of knowledge and many interests, but our atten-

dance at Reed just never came up.

He headed up a loose informal group of what he termed “The Good Guy Lobbyists,” representatives of nonprofit organizations with social and educational goals. I was a very inexperienced lobbyist for early childhood education.

He and Emmy mentored me, gently guiding, modeling, and informing me about how to be effective. His humanitarian goals for justice with the Friends Committee on Legislation fitted well with my organization’s goals for basic standards for day care and minimum required standards for caregivers. We in the group cooperated by mutually supporting legislative actions that benefited children, farm workers, families, and other social justice concerns and issues. I remember testifying from a child development perspective before a Senate committee about the importance of school nutrition programs for the ability for children to concentrate and learn. Senator Moscone, later to be assassinated with Harvey Milk, joked that maybe the committee members just needed nutrition when they became testy and irritable.

At that time the Guntermans were still living on their acreage in Gridley, and Emmy and I sometimes talked about the benefits and trials of rural life. She gave me her recipe for quiche that I still use today. Her chickens were good producers! It was through Emmy’s connections that I became involved in providing child care at a Sacramento Catholic church for the children of César Chavez’s farm workers after their 1966 march to Sacramento.

Joseph Gunterman and his wife Emmy Gunterman were thoroughly good human beings. They not only had concerns for their fellow beings, they effectively acted on their beliefs. They helped me learn how to advocate for my own beliefs. I am most privileged to have known and worked with them both.

—Marian Posey ’51 Jerome, Idaho

Talking Heads

The piece by Katelyn Best ’13 about Reedies still loving the band Talking Heads and their concert film, Stop Making Sense, brought me back to orientation week of my freshman year, 1983, when the movie had just come out and an official field trip was organized for us to see it.

I remember being struck by the varied fashion sensibilities of the people in the bus. There were kids like me who came of age during punk rock with jagged hairdos and work shirts with name patches that said “Bill.” There were Deadheads

wearing colorful natural fibers. There were gay boys in crisp polos and mod, pegged pants.

There were dykes in dungarees. And, of course, there were those kids who looked, for lack of a better description, like scientists. Everyone got on the bus wearing the uniform of his or her distinct tribe.

Talking Heads were a special band because they had a little something for everyone. They had a DIY, garage-band sensibility that appealed to the punks, a spaced-out lyrical ambiguity that worked for the Deadheads. They were neat and nerdy yet could sound menacing and crazy.

“ Everyone got on the bus wearing the uniform of his or her distinct tribe.”

They laid down upper-middle-class art-student concerns to the rhythms of soul and Afrobeat.

By the end of the first semester we all were borrowing one another’s clothes. The clique identities that we had worked so hard at cultivating while in high school now seemed less compelling. A punk starts listening to Joni Mitchell because some interesting person living in his dorm plays her at just the right moment. A Deadhead gets into Chinese opera and industrial noise music because her friend has a radio show on KRRC and plays those genres back to back. This is what college should be about: realizing how beautiful the other tribe’s music is, and how fun it is to dance to it.

—Michael Goldman (Donally) ’89 White Plains, New York september 2016 Reed magazine

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Eliot Circular news from campus

photo by katie pelletier

Tackle Climate Change— Go Bird Watching Bald Eagles. Great Blue Herons. Mallard ducklings.

Anyone who has taken a study break to walk the trails of the canyon knows that connecting with the natural environment creates a sense of belonging and stewardship. Getting city dwellers into green spaces is an effective way to create a culture of conservation. But environmental studies– history major Esther Forbyn ’16 found that some Portlanders, especially traditionally marginalized groups like low-income residents and recent immigrants, can feel excluded from these spaces. Not only are they missing out on the benefits of communing

with nature, the conversation about solutions to environmental problems is lacking important voices.

For Esther, solving this problem is crucial for tackling huge problems like global warming and loss of biodiversity. She researched Portland ecology for her senior thesis, which she wrote with Prof. Josh Howe [environmental studies & history 2012–], focusing on the history of wild areas in Portland and Portlanders’ relationship with nature. But in addition to her scholarship, she saw an opportunity to take action through a new interest of hers: bird watching.

Esther, a native Oregonian from a working-class background who began birding five years ago, created a simple but elegant solution to the problem of helping traditionally marginalized groups feel welcomed into wild spaces: she designed a deck of bilingual, illustrated flash cards called 30 Birds to Know in Portland/30 Aves Para Conocer en Portland. Then she launched an outreach project to put them in the hands of Portlanders who would benefit from feeling invited and involved.

“Birding has been a way that I connect to a wild place. I slow down, I listen, I look closely, and I start to invest in that space,” she says.

The cards have proven popular. They feature beautiful, hand-illustrated lineand-watercolor images drawn by Esther herself. The deck of 30 includes species common to Portland like Steller’s Jay (Chara Crestada, as it’s known in Spanish) or the House Sparrow (Gorrión Domestico), but also some prize finds like the Western Tanager (Tangara de Capucha Roja) or the Peregrine Falcon (Halcón Peregrino).

Her work has caught the eye of several local groups such as the Audubon Society of Portland, Bark, Friends of Nadaka, Columbia Slough Watershed Council, and the intercultural communication center People-Places-Things.

With each of these organizations she is partnering on similar projects.

“Esther has a big vision for herself and for making the natural world more accessible to people in a very intimate way,” says Jim Labbe ’95, former urban conservationist for the Audubon Society of Portland, who is working with Esther on a set of Russian-language cards.

Next time you’re in the Reed canyon, perhaps you’ll be able to determine whether that bright blue bird sunning itself on the pathway is a Scrub Jay or a Steller’s Jay, or maybe even a Western Bluebird—which has not been seen in Reed’s neighborhood for many years. —KATIE PELLETIER ’03

september 2016 Reed magazine

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Eliot Circular

$4.5M for Annual Fund

Classics major Haley Tilt ’16 dug into Roman ideas about children and childhood.

Seniors Win Lankford Award Chinese major Ian Connelly ’16 and classics major Haley Tilt ’16 have won the William T. Lankford III Humanities Award, which recognizes accomplishment in both history and literature and is given to students with outstanding academic records and strong potential for further achievement.

The award committee praised Ian for his “exceptional” thesis on the Folk Memory Project, a series of documentary films about the Great Chinese Famine of 1959–61 in which young urban filmmakers returned to their native villages to interview old folks there about their experiences during the famine. He showed how the contingent, specific, and performative qualities of memory were purposed to forward an alternative history to the one promoted by the communist state. The films operate in an alternative but not oppositional way vis-à-vis the state and therefore are able to pursue practices of public discourse in China without arousing state censoring mechanisms.

Ian’s advisor, Prof. Jing Jiang [Chinese 2006–], cited his “amazing ability to get conceptual inspiration from a wide range of Western thinkers whose thought he has been exposed to over the course of four years of study here at Reed, while keeping his object of study firmly anchored in the specific traditions of the socialist mode of representation in general and Chinese documentary filmmaking in particular.”

Haley wrote her thesis on ideas about childhood in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, which included bits

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Reed magazine september 2016

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap,” author Robert Louis Stevenson admonished, “but by the seeds that you plant.”

Alumni, parents, and friends of Reed seeded future generations of Reedies when they came together to give a record-breaking $4.545 million in the Annual Fund drive for fiscal year 2016, which ended in June. And no fewer than 4,446 alumni stepped up to make a gift to Reed.

Reasons for giving were as varied as the givers. Scott Beutel ’06 exemplified the motivation of many alumni who made a gift.

“ Even if I can’t give a lot, I want to give something because Reed still influences me every day.”

Chinese major Ian Connelly ’16 focused on a series of documentary films about the Great Famine of 1959.

of modern-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, during a time when a new religion known as Christianity was exploding across the region. She examined archaeological evidence like gravesites and epitaphs as well as literary evidence like poetry and letters.

The committee described Haley’s thesis as “a superb example of independent, interdisciplinary research.”

“Haley wove together an analysis of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for understanding childhood in a specific province of the Roman Empire,” said her adviser, Prof. Thomas Landvatter [classics 2015–].

The Lankford Award honors the memory of Prof. Bill Lankford (1946–1983), a distinguished teacher of English and humanities who served Reed from 1977 until his untimely death in 1983. —FOSTER SCHOLZ

“Reed taught me how to think and how to live,” he said. “Even if I can’t give a lot, I want to give something because Reed still influences me every day.”

Young alumni donors—those who have graduated within the last 10 years—continue to give to Reed in increasing numbers, with 911 giving to Reed this past year.

“Reed was an experience that shaped me into who I am, probably the most influential time of my life thus far,” adds Nik Smirnow ’15.

“I am delighted to give back to that community, to provide the experience for others that others provided for me. It makes me feel connected again, and that’s worth so much.”

It is said that people don’t invest in institutions; they invest in the ideas and people in whom they believe. Thank you so much for believing in the idea of Reed and for your support in seeding future generations of Reedies.

—RANDALL S. BARTON

What Is Religion, Exactly?

What is religion, exactly?

A sacred book? A belief in an invisible force? A system of morality? A way of life?

Religion major Pema McLaughlin ’16 spent many hours wrestling with this question—so simple yet so deep—in a senior thesis on American Buddhism, which won the Class of ’21 award.

While many religions are preoccupied with eternal truths and revolve around unchanging scriptures, they are fundamentally social activities, Pema says, evolving over time and place. Over the last 30 years, for example, a form of Buddhism has gained currency among middle-class Americans, often as part of the self-help movement—which has led some scholars to dismiss it as a “nightstand religion.”

But this characterization is unfair, according to Pema. “Religion is often divided into ‘traditional’ religion—authoritarian, hierarchical, devotional—and ‘modern’ religion— democratic, contemplative, and progressive,” Pema says. “I argued that lived religion can’t be so neatly split along this dichotomy. The ways people actually behave and practice disprove the idea that someone meditating at home is somehow freer and more modern than someone making offerings to monks in a temple.”

Pema examined the dilemmas facing this community through a careful analysis of Tricycle, an American Buddhist magazine.

Prof. Kambiz GhaneaBassiri [religion 2002–] described the thesis as “outstanding” and called Pema “an extraordinary student.”

“Winning the award was, for me, made into a huge honor through the enthusiasm of the faculty who’ve made my Reed experience so amazing,” Pema says. “I’ve been mentored by the religion faculty with such kindness, care, and enthusiasm, and the award reinforced for me that my academic work had really communicated my admiration for them and how they’ve inspired me.”

The Class of ’21 Award recognizes “creative work of notable character, involving an unusual degree of initiative and spontaneity.”

—ANNA MANN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT BIG RACE

REED COLLEGE BOOKSTORE Dress the part at the Portland Marathon and the Reed 5k.

Browse the bookstore online for Reed’s latest running gear and workout apparel. bookstore.reed.edu

Eliot Circular

Reunions ’16: Carnival of Reconnecting From far and wide, in their hundreds and thousands, the alumni descended on Reed for an epic Reunions in June. Highlights included: Marketplace, which featured items written, published, cooked, brewed, or otherwise created by Reed alumni.

Carnival, where balloonsmiths and facedaubers delighted classmates’ progeny with feats of physiognomic calligraphy and inflatable shenanigans.

Talent Show, in which classmates revealed hitherto unsuspected hidden powers.

The Parade! Arguably the emotional high point of the entire event.

If that weren’t enough, the FosterScholz Club recognized Martha Darling

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Reed magazine september 2016

Foster-Scholz Club Chair Jim Kahan ’64 bestows the Distinguished Service Award upon Diane Rosenbaum ’71 and her husband Jas Adams ’71.

’66, James “Jas” Adams ’71, and Oregon State Sen. Diane Rosenbaum ’71 with the Distinguished Service Award for their continued commitment to communities within Reed and beyond.

A longtime environmental advocate, Jas recently retired as attorney-in-charge of the Natural Resources Section of the Oregon Department of Justice and remains an adjunct professor of law at Willamette University. He sang this year with the Reed chorus and was nominated jointly for this award along with Diane, his wife.

Described as having the “best part of the mind of a lawyer without ruining it by actually going to law school,” Diane has represented Southeast Portland in the Oregon Legislature for almost two decades. She serves currently as the Oregon Senate President pro tem., works with the Oregon Hunger Task Force and received the Planned Parenthood Pro-Choice Champion

photos by leah nash

Award. She has given back to Reed by volunteering for the career network alongside Jas. Martha Darling majored in American Studies at Reed, earned a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and has pursued a long and varied career of service, including stints at Boeing and as a consultant in Washington D.C. and Paris. Martha serves on boards throughout the country and earned the National Conservationist of the Year Award from the National Wildlife Federation.

Martha has also served on the board of trustees and sponsors the Munk-Darling Lecture in honor of the late great Prof. Frank Munk [poli sci 1939–65].

september 2016  Reed magazine

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The Last Lectures Saluting our retiring professors

The Hancock Variations Prof. Virginia Hancock ’62 [music 1990-2016] In the late 1950s a young woman whose parents hoped she would enroll at Stanford (where her father taught civil engineering) instead had her sights set on Reed, a school that was the perfect fit for her list of requirements: a good academic reputation, small, coed, on the west coast (but not in L.A.), and free of fraternities and sororities. The launch of Sputnik had spurred a push in science education for women, and Virginia Oglesby, who liked science, enrolled in Reed as a chemistry major. She probably didn’t imagine that she would later contribute so profoundly to a different department altogether: Reed’s music department, from which she retired this spring.

For one, tenured women faculty were rare at that time. Recently, in a speech to alumni at reunions, she said, “when I was interviewed for the oral history project, I was struck in hindsight by something that had seemed unremarkable when I was a student.

I never took a class taught by a tenure-track woman. (I had no women faculty at all at Harvard or in my doctoral work in music at the University of Oregon).”

She designed her own unique trajectory, teaching over a period of years in the chemistry department at Reed after earning a master’s at Harvard in ’63, and returning again as a professor of music history and theory in 1991, testament to how a side interest can grow into a vocation. Even while pursuing her master’s degree in chemistry at Harvard, she studied singing and conducting. At Reed she and her husband John Hancock [chemistry 1955-1989], famously founded and directed the Collegium Musicum in 1966 (initially devoted to early music and which included a group of renaissance instruments), and she directed the Reed Choir “in years when no one in the department wanted to do it.” Finally, after years of juggling chemistry teaching, lab work, and choral directing, she decided to return to graduate school for a Doctorate of Musical Arts. She wanted to teach college students, and for her music

10 Reed magazine september 2016

was proving to be “easier and a lot more fun.”

Those who have worked with Prof.

Hancock and have appreciated her analytic mind will not be surprised to hear that it was honed in the hard sciences. She is known for her exacting standards, extensive knowledge, and especially her dedication to and influence on her students. Andrew Wilhite ’14 says, “Plain and simple: Virginia Hancock is responsible for my having become a proper musician.”

Her contributions to the college are numerous and extraordinary. For decades, she has served as student marshal at convocation and commencement, reading (and correctly pronouncing) the names of each and every graduate of Reed College. She has not only directed both Collegium Musicum and the Reed Chorus, she leads the Boar’s Head Ensemble at the annual alumni holiday party, and directed Gilbert & Sullivan events at Reunions. The number of committees she has served on is legion, including the presidential search committee in 2001. She was recognized with a Distinguished Service Award in 2011, and she helped to bring the Performing Arts Building into being. She has been the frequent chair and backbone of the music department, has guided many a

student through rough patches in the thickets of music theory, led dozens of beloved classes in Bach, Brahms and opera; and she has introduced students to music that has stuck with them the rest of their lives, that they have pulled out years later to sing or listen to. A prominent Brahms scholar, Hancock has published important work on Brahms’s choral music and the influence of early music, and she has inspired students to become music scholars themselves. True to her science roots, she served as the fourth reader on many a chemistry student’s orals board. She has also (when we manage to get her a copy before we head to press) regularlyand ruthlessly copyedited Reed magazine.

Hancock says there have been many great moments, memorable classes, and conversations, and that as a conductor, “every concert is a high point.” Because she is prone to turn her famously critical mind to performances she listens to later, she doesn’t revisit these recordings, preferring to savor the experience and the music in her memory.

Whether she was conducting choirs, chemistr y labs, or classes, the Reed Community has been fortunate that long ago, it pulled Virginia Oglesby Hancock into its orbit. —KATIE PELLETIER ’03

THANK YOU

Alumni Fundraising for Reed volunteers We are grateful for your generosity, dedication, and moxie.

AFR Steering Committee 2015–16 Michael B. Stapleton ’10, chair Keith D. Allen ’83 Konrad Stephen Alt ’81 Deborah Kalahan Altschul ’75 David R. Buckler ’85 Terrill H. Burnett ’74 Jacob Samet Canter ’14

Caroll McCall Casbeer ’10 Glenn C. Davis ’68 Maya Claire Edelstein ’12 Jay M. Hubert ’66 Charli Rena Krause ’09 Christine Elisabeth Lewis ’07 Jan R. Liss ’74

Linda Hammill Matthews ’67 Rachel Elizabeth Mossey ’11 Sebastian Pastore ’88 Dylan Rivera ’95 Clara Hart Siegel ’09 Mark Alexander Srere ’81

Carol Higgins Hawkins ’69 Meredith Johanna Horel ’15 Lesley Anne Hyman Hyatt ’88 Danielle Juncal ’15 Robert Jay Kahn ’11 Deborah D. Kamali ’85 Matthew A. Kangas ’71 Lindsay Hilfiker Kanter ’01 Kyndra Joy Kennedy ’04 Agnes Kim ’15 Molly McCarthy King ’09 Katherine Ross Krater ’13 Charli Rena Krause ’09 Keith L. Kutler ’80 Cyd Quetzal La Luz ’10 Arthur D. Levy ’73 Paul Alan Levy ’72 Melissa Dawn Lewis ’13 H. Claudia MacLachlan ’75 Britt Eira May ’08 Jean Marie McMahon ’11 Johanna Meyer-Mitchell ’73 Edward Garvin Sill Miller ’93 Solomon Salim Moore ’11 Celia Hansen Morris ’64 Julianne Myers ’14 William C. Nicholson ’78

Heather Jeanne Rode Niemi ’00 Seth Gabriel Paskin ’90 Sara L. Patton ’71 Hillary Anne Pepper ’07 Molly Kathleen Radany ’11 Maxine H. Paddock Richert ’69 A. Richard Ross ’72 Corrine Marie Savaiano ’11 Joseph P. Schneider ’77 Andrew Mitchell Schpak ’01 Kenneth Edward Schriver ’85 Lindsey Marie Schuette ’12 Freddi Segal-Gidan ’76 Susan Beth Poltun Share ’86 Aaron Michael Smith ’13 Peter C. Stockman ’77 Dedie Uunila Taylor ’69 Michael A. Tippie ’80 James C. Waggoner ’68 Shelby E.R. Wauson ’13 Thomas Gordon Weaver ’06 Ruth Beckhard Werner ’82 Rachel Lynn Wolcott ’93 Marcia Yaross ’73 Michael D. Zambonato ’77

AFR Volunteers 2015–16

To learn more about AFR and other volunteer opportunities, visit

reed.edu/alumni/volunteer or email volunteer@reed.edu.

Illustration: Dylan Rivera ’95 Linda Hammill Matthews ’67 Marge Goldwater ’71 Jason Htet Campbell ’14

David Thomas Adler ’63 Elica Yordanova Angelova Parkes ’09 Susan Elizabeth Arney ’81 Rachel Ruth Arnold ’91 Bennett S. Barsk ’82 Kjell Andrew Benson ’91 Matthew Bernobich ’15 Susan E. Brody ’71 Susan Brophy Spilka ’77 Jason Htet Campbell ’14 Jan Carpenter ’13 Roger G. Carr ’71 Suzanne Bletterman Cassidy ’65 Catherine Julia Connolly ’00 Emily Corso ’10 Caitlin M. Croughan ’67 Bonnie Joann Cuthbert ’10 Jane M. H. Doerflinger ’13 Michelle Dong ’08 Lois Janke Drew ’72 Katherine Rose Duffy ’14 Maren Fichter ’15 Anne E. Schmitt Gendler ’81 Gretchen Alyssa Gibbs ’86 Margaret Goldwater ’71 Hilary Gray ’08 David R. Hardy ’71

The Last Lectures Saluting our retiring professors

The Sum of a Life in Mathematics Prof. Tom Wieting [mathematics 1965-2016] “To think about mathematics with Prof. Tom Wieting is to journey into a realm of crystalline, unabashedly serious, and inevitably mysterious beauty,” says John Lind ’06.

“He does not hound, pamper, showboat, or bore, but rather encourages you to develop your own methods for apprehending truth. I learned from him that a mathematician can be a stylish and graceful sort of being, and can carry a brilliant sense of humor delivered between the lines with a straight face.”

After 51 years, Reed’s sonorously voiced senior mathematician has retired. Tom Wieting was a student at Washington and Lee University, contemplating a future in the legal profession, when his advisor noted his mathematics test scores and said, “You should be taking calculus.” Wieting signed on for calculus, in due course changed majors, and went on to Harvard University for graduate work.

“The transition was difficult for me at first,” he says. “I was surrounded by very able people, most of whom were better prepared than I. But the context was truly inspiring.” Frustrated by insufficient progress on his thesis project in harmonic analysis, he decided to take a break and shift focus.

He accepted a two year appointment at Reed; six years later he accepted tenure. He then returned to Harvard to finish his doctorate on a project in ergodic theory.

After receiving his PhD, Wieting considered appointments elsewhere but decided to return to Reed, because the College provided the context he sought, a place to study broadly without borders.

“I’ve always preferred the wide perspective ,” he says. “And I think it has served my students well, as I have been able to design special courses and advise on widely varied thesis projects, following their interests.”

The central focus of his intellectual life at Reed has been a search to understand the nature of light. (The search began in the mind of a young boy who wondered how shadows form.) Beyond the world that we perceive through our senses, lies a world that we can only observe through instruments

12 Reed magazine september 2016

such as microscopes and telescopes.

“We are a genius species in developing refinements of perception,” says Wieting, “in terms of our ever deeper understanding of light. But these refinements do not carry us to the ground levels of reality, to the basics of particle physics and cosmology.

What recourse do we have? We have a source of metaphors in mathematics — that’s how I like to see it. Mathematics is a language which yields, from the vacuum of our imagination, metaphors of great beauty, complementary to the instrumental, often useful, even explanatory. Currently, the metaphors

are imperfect. But someday.”

For Wieting, mathematics is the purest form of understanding, and its powers of description and explanation are what give it life and light.

Expressing his gratitude to the college for providing the seed and soil for his life, Wieting quotes an Irish folk song: A gardener was standing by.

I asked him to choose for me.

He chose for me a violet, a lily, and a rose, and gave them all to me.

And he gave them all to me.

—RANDALL S. BARTON

Ticket to Ride

Gift helps needy students leap career hurdles

BY RANDALL S. BARTON

A financial aid student is taking a full load of courses and working part time at a couple of jobs. She wants to go to law school after graduating from Reed, but her plans hit a snag when she discovers it will cost $170 to take the Law School Admission Test, and another $30 for every school she sends it to. How will she come up with the cash?

Thanks to a generous gift from Michael Jacobs ’04, vice president at Goldman Sachs, that student can now

ability to go and find the fabulous,” says Brooke Hunter, assistant director for strategic partnerships at CLBR. “There’s a synergy between Reed and the world, and Reedies have always found those little amazing things that are happening. Now we’re more able to build the bridges to help them get there.”

The Career Advancement Fund provides up to $500 for approved expenses of students with a demonstrated financial need who effectively establish the connection with their professional goals.

It cannot be used to subsidize unpaid

“ Things that I really value in my life . . . developed when I was at Reed.” —Michael Jacobs ’04 tap into the Reed Career Advancement Fund. The fund helps needy students offset the cost of travel, registration, and various expenses for career-related tests, conferences, internships, and externships. It will even pay for a new shirt or a decent pair of shoes for that allimportant first interview.

“Nobody should have financial difficulty to advance their careers,” says Alice Harra, associate dean of students and director of the Center for Life Beyond Reed (CLBR), which administers the fund. “This fund helps level the field, with funding that is open and accessible to all. It’s not putting out candy just for a few.”

A biology and studio art major received funding to take a summer course in conservation science at Pacific Biodiversity Institute. Another student had landed a paid internship with the Clinton Foundation in New York City, but couldn’t afford the airfare to get there. A graduating senior was provided with a plane ticket to get to a job interview in Washington, D.C. and got the job. A sophomore was able to attend an astrophysics lab in Lyon, France, and another student went to a green chemistry conference.

“Reedies have always had an amazing

14 Reed magazine september 2016

internships, but is available for standardized test registration or prep fees for the GRE, LSAT, or MCAT. Other categories of expense are considered on a case-by-case basis. Currently enrolled Reed students and graduating seniors are eligible to apply.

In the past students were forced to navigate a variety of resources to explore getting such needs met. They might, for instance, buttonhole President John Kroger and petition him for funds.

But this was not systemically viable, transparent, or competitive. With the establishment of the Career Advancement Fund, the CLBR reached out to students, asking, “Do you have a financial need in order to get someplace you really want to go in your next step in life? Come and talk to us.”

The committee considering applicants meets weekly, and applications are reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis while funds last. Students write two short essays describing their financial need and how funding will help achieve future goals. They include a résumé and an itemized budget detailing how the money will be spent. In the first two weeks of the fund’s existence, no fewer than 11 students applied.

“When I think about giving,” Michael

mark abramson

Jacobs says, “there are a lot of organizations that have lots of money sloshing around. An incremental few thousand dollars wouldn’t make a difference. But Reed is an institution where you can make a huge difference by giving what would be considered a notionally small amount and really change people’s experiences. To provide access to interviews and internship opportunities just felt like a no-brainer.”

Michael himself received a lot of support from Reed during his time as a student, and considers his gift an opportunity to pay it forward. It has also given him a chance to mentor students and help them understand how their Reed education could prepare them for life.

“After Reed, I took a break, went my own way, and did a lot of different things,” he explains. “I came to realize that a lot of my best friends, and the things that I really value in my life, things I spend my time on, developed when I was at Reed.”

Michael majored in philosophy at Reed and wrote his thesis about nonbeing in Plato’s dialogue Sophist—an experience that prepared him well for a financial career.

“In the thesis project, you look at stacks and stacks of books that people have already written on the topic, particularly if you’re talking about ancient philosophy,” he says. “You learn to synthesize tons of information into something that is your own. Reed helped me develop that voice and feel confident that I had something to say.”

The ability to generate ideas and offer interesting and differentiated points of view on markets is valued on Wall Street. Michael found his experience at Reed transformational and is pleased to participate in transforming the lives of other Reedies.

“I’m seeing with my own eyes the transformational work Alice has done since she hit the ground,” Michael says.

“What she’s doing is incredible and she is someone that every student there should be getting to know.”

Find out more about how you can help students launch their careers by joining the Reed Career Network or by giving to the Annual Fund at www. reed.edu/beyond-reed

september 2016 Reed magazine 15

MAJOR LIFE EVENT?

Time to update your estate plans.

To learn how you can make Reed part of your philanthropic legacy, call Kathy Saitas, director of planned giving, at 503/777-7759 or email plannedgiving@reed.edu.

Reed

Start a family

Buy a house

Graduate from

on

Get a promoti

LIFE CHANGES

ess

Retire

Sell your busin

Ensure your legacy plans reflect the changes along the way. reed.edu/giftplanning

Engineering the Human Race anne williams

New technology gives us the power to manipulate the human genome.

Should we use it?

BY SHELLY SKOLFIELD ’14

A young couple sits in a lavish designer office, flipping through catalogues and hemming and hawing over the latest styles and features. She is a radiant young woman with exquisite cheekbones and flashing eyes. He is a tall, muscular fellow with wavy hair and a flawless smile. As they bicker over color choices, they could be picking out a living room set or a new minivan. But in fact they are shopping for the attributes they would like to give their firstborn child—a son or daughter who will join them in the ranks of a new race of designer humans.

This is not a scene from a science-fiction film. It’s a scene from our future, according to stem-cell researcher Paul Knoepfler ’89. His new book, GMO Sapiens: The Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies, explores the history of genetically modified organisms, our capacity to apply this technology to people, and the ethical questions surrounding both.

Knoepfler argues that the clock is ticking when it comes to preparing for genetically modified humans. He speculates that the first attempts could be made as soon as within the next five years, largely due to the success of a new gene editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas9 (often shortened to CRISPR and pronounced “crisper”) ,which he describes as a “genetic Swiss Army knife.”

The CRISPR system was created by cleverly hijacking a part of the immune system found in bacteria that evolved to identify and destroy genes belonging to viruses that attack these bacteria. This process has been understood for decades, but the real innovation came in 2012, when a team of researchers figured out a relatively quick and easy way to reprogram these bacterial molecules to pinpoint, delete, and even rewrite any

18 Reed magazine september 2016

gene in any living thing.

Combined with conventional in vitro fertilization techniques, CRISPR could allow doctors to edit the genes of a human embryo any way they wish. The potential implications are extraordinary: parents could eliminate devastating genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Huntington’s disease. But why stop there? The same technology could allow parents to engineer a healthier child.

For example, the child could be resistant to infections, developing cancer, and becoming obese.

They could be “better” in a lot of ways: height, IQ, muscle tone, and endurance. It seems as the catalog of understood genes grows, the power to control their associated traits is becoming a reality. Perhaps Team Edward fans, nostalgic for the Twilight series, will one day give their children bioluminescence genes for that extra shimmer. (These are not theoretical chimeras—in 2013, researchers in Istanbul created glow-in-the-dark bunnies.)

Knoepfler knows what he’s talking about.

An associate professor at the UC-Davis, he is on the front lines of cancer research. He is also devoted to public outreach. He wrote a

book about stem cell research and maintains an influential blog (ipscell.com) devoted to the field. Despite receiving some pushback from other members of the scientific community, he believes it is urgent that the lay public discuss and debate the issues of how science, medicine, and society should intersect.

CRISPR is a case in point. Although the technology represents a substantial improvement in precision and power over previous genetic editing systems, it still makes mistakes. For instance, CRISPR may go to work at the wrong place in the genome. Even if it finds the gene it was designed to target, it may make the wrong correction. And, yes, you can put your hand down, Dr. Ian Malcolm, there is the fact that the genome is an incredibly complex and intertwined network that remains imperfectly understood. Even if CRISPR does exactly what it was designed to do, the potential for setting off unforeseen genetic consequences is substantial. And any mistakes would be inheritable, making the disaster a transgenerational one.

Knoepfler points out that the negative publicity after an accident could create a backlash that could set back any useful therapies by decades. He cites the tumultuous history of gene therapy, a genetic technique that has been used to treat children with

R e p r i n t e d w i t h p e r m i s s i o n o f T h e S c i e n t i s t. o r i g i n a l a r t i c l e f r o m m a r c h 1 , 2 0 1 4 .

A CRISPR CUT: The guide RNA molecule (gRNA) forms a complex with a Cas enzyme and directs it to cleave the target DNA to which the gRNA binds through complementary sequence. The cell tries to repair the DNA break, which often results in the insertion (as shown) or deletion of nucleotides that changes the reading frame of the gene and creates a premature stop codon.

What will happen to society when a select group of people—presumably privileged and affluent—can design their children to be smarter, healthier, and better looking?

X–linked severe combined immune deficiency (the so-called “bubble babies”). At first, the treatment seemed successful in clinical trials, restoring the immune function of children suffering from this life-threatening disease. But then five of the children later developed leukemia, and one of them died. While gene therapy has come a long way since then, the public remains understandably skeptical.

In addition to worrying about the consequences of failure, however, he worries about the consequences of success. What will happen to society when a select group of people—presumably privileged and affluent—can design their children to be smarter, healthier, faster, more athletic, and better looking? Will this lead to the dystopian nightmare of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?

Such literary preoccupations come naturally to Knoepfler, who majored in English at Reed and wrote his thesis on Dickens and

Melville. One Reed professor he remembers as having particular influence on him was Prof. Lena Lencek [Russian 1977–], whom he saw as a role model for being an author who was “super smart but super creative.”

After Reed, he taught at a school for kids with learning differences for several years before obtaining a PhD in molecular pathology from UC-San Diego. From 2001 to 2006, he was a research fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and he is now assistant professor in the department of cell biology and human anatomy at UC Davis School of Medicine and assistant investigator and member at the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Northern California.

His wife, Anca Anastasescu Knoepfler ’90, is a physician in the UC Davis Medical Group, and their daughter, Aliana Knoepfler ’17, is a psych major at Reed.

Knoepfler got a firsthand look at life on the other side of the microscope in 2009,

when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer—an experience that shaped the roles he’s taken on as a patient advocate and educator. “I was definitely interested in blogging before diagnosis, surgery, and all, but after I’d gone through that I felt more emboldened to go ahead and pull the trigger and start blogging. It felt like a risk, really, professionally because turning back the clock to 2009, it wasn’t quite as accepted.”

His book has attracted praise from other researchers. “Paul Knoepfler manages to convey the excitement and potential of genetic engineering without sounding like Pollyanna, and compassionate concern over its misuse without sounding like Chicken Little—a highwire act that is all the more virtuosic for its seeming effortlessness,” writes medical historian Nathaniel Comfort. “The book takes us on an engaging roller-coaster ride through the new genetics, which could greatly impact many economic, policy, and personal decisions in the next few years,” writes CRISPR pioneer George Church.

But his most significant accomplishment may be to help us understand that these issues are not fundamentally questions of science but questions of ethics—and that the responsibility of facing them belongs to all of us.

september 2016 Reed magazine 19

What Is a Reedie, Anyway?

BY RANDALL S. BARTON | PHOTOS BY MATT D’ANNUNZIO

They're easy to identify but hard to define. To shed light on this fascinating but elusive species, we tracked down a dozen members of the class of ’16 and asked them about their theses, their professors, and their time at Reed. You'll be surprised by what they have to say.

Hannah MacKenzie-Margulies ’16 Hometown: Lexington, Massachusetts Advisers: Prof. Victoria Fortuna [dance 2015–] and Prof. Mark Burford [music 2007–] Thesis: Where’s Leon? or That Extraordinary Drama: Dancing Jazz, Negotiating Historiography, and Performing Americanism on the Cold War Cultural Tours What it’s about: I investigated

vernacular jazz dancers Al Minns and Leon James, who, along with jazz educator Marshall Stearns, unsuccessfully applied to perform abroad on a State Department sponsored cultural tour in 1958. This led me to a huge set of questions about race, class, gender, genre, historiography, and the stakes of claiming national identity both at mid-century and in the present. As part of my research I also devised a solo multimedia performance called Looking for Leon, in which I examined my own relationship to jazz, nostalgia, and American-ness.

What it’s really about: Making

America great again.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

Before I came to Reed I was a professional ballet dancer, but I had become disillusioned with that life. My parents said, “Maybe this is the moment to think about going to school.”

I was impressed by how committed the students at Reed seemed to be; other campuses I visited sort of felt like summer camp. If I was going to go to school, I really wanted it to rip me apart in a certain way.

20 Reed magazine september 2016

DANCE-MUSIC

Obstacles I overcame:

Outside the classroom:

How Reed changed me:

I came in feeling scared all the time, and I still struggle with having a lot of insecurity. But there were people here who said, “You can do this.”

I started a dance collective.

Performed at PICA's TimeBased Art Festival. Got a grant to present a paper about neo-Mozarabic chant at the American Musicological Society.

In a thesis show called “Here Now” (M.J. Kanai '15)I was this weird rabbit voiced by someone else speaking through a microphone. Devising that show was an incredible process.

Reed pulled back the wool from my eyes. I learned to argue and found an expressive voice that I had been afraid to use for a very long time, as well as a fortitude that I truly didn’t know I was capable of. I started dancing again, but in a way that was engaged and integrated with my work in the classroom.

Influential books:

J.L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words and Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s Stripping the Emperor

Financial aid: I received an incredibly generous financial aid package at Reed, including the Alex & Kathy Martinez Scholarship and the Sukey R. Garcetti Scholarship, an Initiative Grant, and a President's Summer Fellowship What’s next: Definitely a

new adventure, but I'm not sure exactly what yet. I'm still dancing and there's a good chance I'll go to graduate school in the next five years.

Right now I'm doing market research for a software company, assisting my thesis advisor with a book project, and helping to edit a documentary film about the history of contemporary dance in Portland.

Cristobal Mancillas ’16 Hometown: Sacramento,

California

Adviser: Prof. Tamara Metz

[political science 2006–]

Thesis: Clientelism and Democratic Theory What it’s about: Clientelism is a quid pro quo exchange of resources for political support.

Most people associate it with corrupt machine politics like Tammany Hall in New York City or the Cook County Democrats in Chicago. But politics isn’t some abstract thing; for some people it’s a means of survival. I try to reunderstand the system and the unintended benefits of what people think of as political corruption.

What it’s really about: How

can certain forms of political corruption contribute positively to democracy?

Who I was when I got to Reed: I was a first-generation,

low-socioeconomic-status Latino—awkward, but outgoing.

To escape a stressful home situation, I focused on debate and similar afterschool activities to make contact with the people and resources I needed to find out about colleges.

Favorite class: Poli Sci 347,

Mobilizing Poor Voters, informed my thesis because it’s on clientelism.

Influential book: All of Junot

Diaz’s works, but particularly The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her.

Obstacles I overcame:

I struggled every day to balance classes, multiple jobs, emergencies at home, and a social life. Though I often felt excluded because of my identities, I was incredibly lucky to find supportive staff members and peers who worked with me to find my own sense of belonging.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Outside the classroom: I was an extern at the Oregon Bar. Tutored Spanish and political science. Spent a great deal of time in the Multicultural Resource Center learning more about social justice and bonding with marginalized students.

Played basketball. Rapped in a Reed band.

How Reed changed me:

It made me more comfortable in my own skin and more confident pursuing my academic and personal interests. One reason I came here was to figure out what I wanted to do and what kind of life I wanted to live. I have a sense of purpose and am more able to authentically communicate my experience.

What’s next: I’m taking a gap

year and studying for the LSAT. I’m passionate about politics and working on issues with people and eventually would like to be involved with community organizing, policy, law, and maybe even running for office.

Financial aid: Reed has been supportive, particularly with financial aid and scholarships.

I received the Fellowship for Winter International Travel, the McGill Lawrence Internship Award, Financial Services Fellowship, and the Bernard Goldhammer Grant for Research on Economics and Natural Resources.

Word to prospies: Professors are a phenomenal resource.

At most institutions you can’t even get to a TA, but at Reed we have access to our professors.

Engaging with them allows you to understand how they think, and what they want you to get out of the class. When they actually know you, it is easier to ask them for a letter of recommendation, and it’s powerful when a professor can say, “I’ve actually seen him do this in class.”

september 2016 Reed magazine 21

Haley Tilt ’16 Hometown: Portland, Oregon Adviser: Prof. Thomas

Landvatter [classics 2015–]

Thesis: Dying Young? Child development in Africa Proconsularis What it’s about: The ancients

didn’t have the same sense of child development that we have in a post-Dr. Spock world.

I investigated perceptions of child development in Roman Africa between the 1st and 6th CE, focusing on the ways adults measured and marked phases in a child's life course.

Relying heavily on mortuary and epigraphic records, I found that ancient Roman North African childhood was thought to consist of semi-distinct developmental stages. I've termed one of those stages the "amphora age." Some of the youngest chidlren were buried in large amphorae, shipping vessels used for fluids—archeologists call this “tot in a pot.” Scholars venture that this is an attempt to mimic the womb, enclosing and protecting children’s bodies.

CLASSICS Outside the classroom:

I tutored middle-school students and low-income adults, helped restore our wetlands on canyon crew, and learned how to write code in the Software Design Studio.

Obstacles I overcame: There is sometimes a lack of awareness here with students who don’t realize what it is to have to work and go to school at the same time. Fortunately I’ve discovered there are plenty of people like me here, and I’m extremely proud that I’ve managed to feel at home in the Reed community.

How Reed changed me: As well

as being an incredibly academic place, Reed has a strong culture of voicing political beliefs, both in the classroom and outside of it. That, combined with my work in low-income communities, got me thinking about how I want to live my life, and has left me feeling empowered to advocate for others.

very academic. In high school I published a literary magazine, did International Baccalaureate, and played clarinet until the sexism in my marching band got to me.

Financial aid: I received Reed scholarships, Pell grants, Federal Work-Study, and was awarded a President’s Summer Fellowship, which allowed me to travel to Rome to complete a digital humanities project of my design.

Some very kind alumni paid for me to be here. But relative to our resources, my mother also paid a lot for me to be here, and in addition to taking a full course load, I worked as many as 20 hours a week.

Influential book: Lucretius’ De

What’s next: Teaching has

What it’s really about:

Dead babies. (And children.)

Who I was when I got to Reed: I was a go-getter and

Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) cured me of my fear of death.

A concept that blew my mind:

Encounters with the ancient world teach you to be surprised and suspend your judgment.

Being able to step inside another person’s perspective, even for a moment, is really valuable, and not a skill many disciplines outside of classics force you to develop quite so intensively.

22 Reed magazine september 2016

been my mission since high school, and I’m interested in the role technology plays in the classroom, especially with regard to empowering students to make their own historical arguments.

This fall I'll be teaching high school social studies through Teach for America in Baltimore Public Schools.

Ahyan Panjwani ’16 Hometown: Karachi, Pakistan Advisers: Prof. Kimberly Clausing [economics 1996–], Prof. David Perkinson [math 1990–] Thesis: Estimating the Impact of Commodity Market Shocks on Real Business Cycles Using Bayesian Methods What it’s about: Not everyone

loves low gas prices. With crude oil at decade lows, the Brazilian economy faces an uphill battle against high inflation and unemployment rates. I created a model of the economy and simulated various monetary policy specifications to see whether the Brazilian Central Bank can ease the strain using inflation targeting; they cannot.

What it’s really about:

An excuse for me to play with MATLAB. Who I was when I got to Reed:

I was always second fiddle— never topped any class. Not being a prodigy means I need to work hard. It mattered to me what everybody else thought about me; was I living up to their expectations? I lived by a plan, trained to take the least risky route, and worked as hard as I could to stand up to those expectations.

The professors: My professors

were the best things that happened to me. They picked me up when I was nothing, groomed me, and made something out of me. That would not have happened if I had gone to a big research university, because those professors would never know me; there would be an abyss between us.

M AT H E M AT I C S - E C O N O M I C S

Outside the classroom: I went back to Karachi and started an afternoon school for kids in the slum area near my old high school. Instead of coming all suited up and talking to students for an hour about Reed, it was about getting down and doing what mattered. An admission officer said that fall they saw a huge increase in the number of applications from Pakistan.

How Reed changed me: Reed

gave me the much-needed freedom to figure out what I wanted to do in life, and made me realize that I need not make decisions based on what others would think about it. Now I call myself a global nomad. I have a sense of how things work in the world, and Reed was part of that. It is the best thing I could have done for myself.

Financial aid: Reed’s generosity made my wildest dreams come true. I received the Verne & Elizabeth Dusenbery Memorial Scholarship and the Phillip & Jeanne Wertheimer Scholarship. In providing these scholarships, the Dusenberys and Wertheimers have made a commitment for world peace and harmony by bringing the world closer one kid at a time, one student at a time.

Word to prospies: Have a general idea of what you want to do, but it need not be set in stone. Come with an open mind and expect to be doing top-notch academic work.

What’s next: I’ll be starting my

doctoral studies in economics at Yale in the fall.

september 2016 Reed magazine 23

Alexander Swann ’16 Hometown: McLean, Virginia Advisers: Prof. Catherine Ming

T’ien Duffly [theatre 2012–] and Prof. Peter Ksander [theatre 2011–] Thesis: Sound Design: A Systems Approach What it’s about: Historically there’s been a divide between the technical and the artistic in theatre. I argue that because sound is one of the few media that can touch its audience, the system that creates it needs to perform like another actor, interacting with the audience and other performers.

What it’s really about: Misusing technology to approximate artificial intelligence in theatre sound design.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

Everything in McLean, Virginia, seems carefully arranged to present an image of wealth and power. I hated it. My freshman year in high school, I mixed sound for my first show, a terrible slapstick melodrama called Deadwood Dick. It was so much fun; I had to do this. I began taking things apart and rebuilding them to see if I could make it better, and then do it again.

Favorite class: Theatre 223,

Visual Performance Narratives, was like a fusion of an art history course and a design course that taught me how to look at objects and spaces in the same way that Hum 110 taught me how to look at texts— inquisitively and critically. It has been the most useful thing I ever did in terms of talking about the ideas behind my work, as well as that of others.

Influential book: The Amber

Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I read it at least once a year.

T H E AT R E

A concept that blew my mind:

Everything has a resonant frequency; sound is a wave.

When you play something’s resonant frequency, it vibrates.

The human eye vibrates at 18 Hz, which is totally inaudible to humans. Human hearing drops off around 80 Hz; you feel everything below that, like feeling the bass in your chest at a concert. Sound has a physical effect on the human body. It touches you. It’s the air hitting you. So, in performance, the sound literally touches people.

Outside the classroom: I’ve worked on the sound, video, lights, and sets for almost every theatre show in my time at Reed. The Performing Arts Building was my second home. I helped to create such worlds as a 1950s French parlor, the human mind, and the apocalypse. I also enjoyed Beer Nation, which is just about drinking beer.

How Reed changed me: I’ve

known what I want to do for a long time now, but before coming here the kind of person I wanted to be was a total mystery. Apart from satiating my need for reading, writing, and thinking, Reed helped shape me into a person comfortable in his own skin.

What’s next: I’ll be working as

the production sound engineer at the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park in New York.

Emily Merfeld ’16 Hometown: Belmont, Massachusetts Adviser: Prof. Derek Applewhite

[biology 2014–]

Thesis: Action of Cytoskeletal Crosslinking Proteins in Nuclear Positioning and Movement What it’s about: My thesis seeks to determine whether cytoskeletal crosslinking proteins (proteins that bind actin and microtubules) contribute to the positioning of the nucleus in intracellular space, which may ultimately affect cellular shape and migration.

What it’s really about: How

the nucleus moves, and why it matters.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

I had wanted to go into fashion or graphic design, but the year before I entered college I got more interested in science. I took an incredible neuroscience class that I loved, and found people who really valued learning. Suddenly my nerdy qualities felt more like things to be embraced than hidden.

Influential books: 1Q84 (Haruki

Murakami), the Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling), and The Road (Cormac McCarthy) all taught me about finding beauty in imperfect worlds. I have always tried to live in a way where happiness is not completely dependent on circumstances.

Professors: Relationships with professors really defined my experience at Reed. Without them I don’t think I’d know that I like cell biology or aspects of neuroscience.

B I O LO G Y- P S YC H O LO G Y

Outside the classroom: A good way to get perspective is doing service work off campus. SEEDS (Community Service Office) was a big part of my life. I’ve been an intern, led orientation odysseys, coordinated blood drives, and worked with Books to Prisoners.

I also mentored fifth and sixth graders, learned to rock climb, trained and raced with a dragon boating team, and went to the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego.

How Reed changed me: Reed

fostered my love of science and made me realize how exciting research can be. These past four years have pushed me to question, to seek help from others, to consider many possible answers, and to generally to live with curiosity.

I’ve also learned how to consider other people’s perspectives, and know when to listen versus expressing my own opinion.

What’s next: I will be working

in a neuroscience lab at Harvard University for two years and then going to grad school.

Word to prospies: Until I got here, I thought of science as answering questions. But more than half the battle is coming up with the questions and then figuring out how to address them. There’s always a logical path you’re following based on a huge scope of literature. Each paper is a small step forward.

Most great questions come from reading a paper and thinking, “I wish they had done this test or answered this question.” That allows you to move forward a little bit, instead of waking up in the middle of the night with an aha! moment.

september 2016 Reed magazine 25

Kate Hilts ’16 Hometown: Boston,

Massachusetts

Adviser: Prof. Heather Hodges

[political science 2015–]

Thesis: “Last Best Chance”: The

Significance of Linguistic Frames in (Non-)Passage of Congressional Climate Change Legislation What it’s about: Congressional legislation on climate change doesn’t pass, and the available explanations in political science are often insufficient to fill that gap. I’m advancing the theory that the linguistic frames used to describe bills can affect the fate of those bills.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L S T U D I E S – P O L I T I C A L S C I E N C E What it’s really about: The use of coded words doomed some really important climate legislation.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

A nervous, cynical, aspiring intellectual and newfound vegan, I was eager to escape to Reed, explore Portland, and be surrounded by interesting, intellectual people. (But most of all I was just nervous.)

Influential book: We read Weighing In by Julie Guthman in my political science class on food policy. It changed the way I think about politics, food, and socioeconomic status.

A concept that blew my mind:

It only takes one connection to make things happen. During Working Weekend an alumnus told me that Ali Nouri ’97, legislative director and foreign policy advisor for Senator Al Franken, would be at the reception. Ali left the reception before I got there, but he asked the alum to pass along his business card. We chatted by phone and Ali said, “If you’re thinking about applying for anything on Capitol Hill, send me your résumé and I’ll send it over.”

Outside the classroom:

I won a Fellowship for Winter International Travel and went to Madagascar to photograph endangered species, tutored at a low-income housing project, played one of the leads in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, and allocated more than $100,000 as a student senator.

Obstacles I overcame: I used to worry that I couldn’t finish everything. Reed can feel really overwhelming at times, but no daunting list of tasks or large amount of work could intimidate me now.

How Reed changed me: Two

characteristics I developed at Reed were progressive, activist politics and an ability to work really hard and get things done.

I also enjoyed being part of a community of really progressive students that are radically inclusive. When I speak now, I always think about whether what I’m saying is inclusive or could be alienating to anyone in the room.

What’s next: I’m doing a

summer internship in the United States Senate.

Financial aid: I’m intensely

grateful for the financial aid I received from Reed.

Word to prospies: Being

on student senate not only allowed me to engage with the community and work on things that will shape it for years to come, I can now go into an interview in D.C. and say “I know the Violence Against Women Act like the back of my hand, because I had to write that into our campus sexual assault policy, and not only that, but I also had to work with faculty to get them to vote yes on it, which accesses a lot of skills, like persistence, how to meet people at their level and explain cogently why this thing matters.”

26 Reed magazine september 2016

India Hamilton ’16 Hometown: Pasadena, California Adviser: Prof. Peter Rock

[creative writing 2001–]

Thesis: Sowing Season and Other Short Stories What it’s about: Mine is a creative thesis, a series of short stories that hearken back to my love of fantasy and fairy tales, but with a darker, more adult twist. I started writing at a very young age by listening to fantastic stories and wanting to add to them or create my own world.

What it’s really about: Scary fairy tales, lonely women, and sexual frustration.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

At the age of 14 I went to a poncy boarding school (Phillips Exeter Academy) because I was tired of being the only kid in class raising my hand.

Influential book: When I was

in preschool the kids would ask the teacher to read Bony-Legs

by Joanna Cole, which I hated because it was so scary. I keep coming back to it, thinking if I look at it now that I’m older, it will terrify me less. It never does. That book shaped my appreciation for darker fairy tales.

Favorite class: English 205, The

ENGLISH

Outside the classroom: I played Dr. Faustus in a production of Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights and never felt more powerful. I also played an angel in Marisol. Theatre at Reed has changed how I think about theatre and how I watch a performance now.

How Reed changed me: Reed

definitely humbled me. I’ve learned that I don’t need to flaunt the things I do know—to pull out the big guns all the time—and to value other people’s opinions. If someone thinks different from you it’s not the end of the world. You can still find a way to work together and through that. “I’m right” is what the paper is for; the conversation is a different thing entirely.

Financial aid: In addition to other generous forms of compensation, I received the David Eddings Literature and Language Scholarship.

Sometimes when I was having a bad day I’d think, “At some point someone thought, ‘This girl is doing work that is interesting and valuable and we should take care of her.’”

What’s next: I am interested in

creating consumable media that is valuable and that tells stories that people need to hear.

Victorian Novel After Midnight, with Prof. Jay Dickson [English 1996–]. The Victorians are absolutely fascinating and Dracula, for example, brings together the Freudian fears of the time with the vampire as a manifestation of people’s anxieties.

A concept that blew my mind:

For both Reed and Portland there is a celebration of weirdness or strangeness, but at the same time there is a tension between wanting to celebrate the strange and keep things the way that they are.

september 2016 Reed magazine 27

Zoe Troxell Whitman ’16 Hometown: Arcata, California Adviser: Prof. Kathryn Oleson

[psychology 1995–]

Thesis: Motivated Disclosure Patterns: Disability Identity Management in the Higher Education Environment What it’s about: I looked at a national sample of college students with disabilities to examine the amount of—and motives for—disclosure of a disability status and the relationship to academic outcomes. The way people talk about their disability frames the way they think about themselves and their engagement with the rest of the community. You might disclose a disability to your professor, for instance, to insure you receive academic accommodations. But it appears that disclosing one’s disability in a social way—wanting people to know who you are, where you come from, and why you might be doing something—is important to having greater overall happiness and academic success.

What it’s really about: The way people choose to disclose their disability status and how that affects them.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

I have severe developmental dyslexia; I can’t read. It’s a genetic thing, and not something I’m going to overcome. In high school I was not seen as the person who is going to be super successful because everyone saw the disability first, and “I’m smart and interested in school” second.

Favorite class: Psych 323,

Motivation in Education, with Prof. Jennifer Corpus.

Influential book: Beyond the

Americans with Disabilities Act: Inclusive Policy and Practice for Higher Education and The Odyssey.

28 Reed magazine september 2016

P S YC H O LO G Y

Outside the classroom:

I connected with Portland’s Argentine tango community.

Founded the Learning Disability Student Organization and Reed's Argentine Tango Club. Spoke at the Creating Connections Consortium. Interned for the Multicultural Resource Center.

Triumphing with a disability: It is no

super-power, but I often have to work harder than others because the education system is not particularly conducive to those with disabilities. Thus, between defending my place, gaining accommodations, explaining my disability to professors, and navigating my disability itself, I work extraordinarily hard to receive the same grade and respect in the academic community as my non-disabled peers.

What’s next: I’m looking at

master’s programs that range from the sociology of education to more policy-based programs.

My end goal will probably be to get a law degree, and until then I hope to work for nonprofits doing research on implemented disability policy programs.

Financial aid: I wrote thank you notes to Alberto Gatenio ’84 for one of my scholarships. Reed has treated me really well. I got what I came here for, and more.

Word to prospies: I had a 100% visceral reaction to Reed. It’s like you meet someone for the first time and have a crush on them. That’s how I felt when I read about Reed and then visited it and saw the thesis tower. It felt kindred, and I knew I was supposed to be here. I was really excited, and it hasn’t let me down. My intellectual endeavors were collaborative with the faculty. That’s what conference was about. The professors push, I get to push back a bit, and then they push me even further.

Daniel Kugler ’16 Hometown: East Aurora,

New York

Adviser: Prof. Jacqueline Dirks

[history 1991–]

Thesis: Staffing the Nation: Congressional Secretaries and the Professionalization of American Politics, 1893-1946 What it’s about: There were zero congressional assistants in 1893.

By the midcentury there were 2,500, and more than 13,000 people work as congressional assistants today. These secretaries to U.S. congressmen drafted national legislation, wrote speeches, and foretold vote counts—all without raising journalists’ eyebrows or entering the public light. They professionalized our national politics.

What it’s really about: The unelected and unacknowledged power in American politics.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

At my high school I was class president and on the board of trustees. I made the decision at Reed to pay as close attention to my academics as I possibly could.

I held high expectations of the rigor required and considered work—in whatever form—the thing to do.

HISTORY

Favorite class: Urban

Economics with Prof. Jon Rork [economics 2010–] revealed a new way of seeing everything from the houses and people I passed on a walk, to whole neighborhoods and towns I drove through. It made me question key factors that shape our society, and how those factors could become levers for improvement. The classes in the economics department have been my favorite because they totally rearrange how you see the world.

Influential book: In addition

to being a masterful biography of LBJ, Robert’ Caro’s The Path to Power is a quarry of strategic thought, a source of laughter and awe. It was the inspiration for my thesis.

A concept that blew my mind:

As a subject, history allows you to study almost anything. People say that you study history so that you can learn the mistakes of the past to avoid them in the present. But it’s tricky to draw lessons from history. I study it to know what happened and to be grounded in what I’m talking about. Studying history enables you to form arguments much better than almost anything else.

Outside the classroom: I did internships with New York Senator Chuck Schumer and a state assemblyman from New York. Discovered the joy of opera through a Gray Fund trip to see Don Giovanni. Took an opera class with Prof. Virginia Hancock [music 1991-]. Learned to play squash. Spent a weekend pretending to be the North Korean delegation to the United Nations, scurrying through Vollum and brokering backroom deals with other student-states.

How Reed changed me: Reed

taught me to consider extremes, but ensure a balanced debate.

It showed me that winning an argument isn’t everything.

What’s next: I’m going to law

school at NYU and eventually would like to do something with public policy, politics, advocacy.

Word to prospies: Take little techniques and experiences from each class. My freshman year I was not a huge fan of chemistry, but I came to realize I really enjoyed the lab experience, which was almost meditative.

Even now that experience helps me concentrate for six hours at a time, be precise, and be organized.

september 2016 Reed magazine 29

Naomi Gendler ’16 Hometown: Evanston, Illinois Adviser: Prof. David Griffiths

[physics 1978–]

Thesis: Dark Matter Corrections to

the Anomalous Magnetic Moment of the Muon What it’s about: A muon is almost exactly like an electron, but 200 times heavier. The current theoretical value of the magnetic moment of the muon (a property that dictates how it responds to being placed in a magnetic field) is significantly off from the experimental value.

I’m trying to see if there’s any way I can push that theoretical value up to the experimental value.

What it’s really about: Doing

a lot of algebra and letting my imagination run wild.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

Tired of the restricting structure of high school, I wanted to go to a school where people were invested in learning the material rather than collecting points for a grade at the end of the semester. In high school there was a lot of talk about extra credit. Make a poster and get five points extra credit. When I was visiting Reed a professor told me, “You will never hear the words ‘extra credit’ here.” I said, “Great. Sign me up.”

Favorite class: Quantum

Mechanics II and General Relativity both left me with my jaw wide open after each class.

Influential book: I always

wanted to go off on my own like Corduroy in the book by Don Freeman. Reed has not been a solitary adventure by any means, but knowing how to have a solitary adventure is one of the most important things I’ve learned.

30 Reed magazine september 2016

PHYSICS

A concept that blew my mind: The goal in high-energy

theoretical physics is to try to get down to the very essence of what is happening. We have this idea that at its very core the way the world works is somehow going to be simple and elegant.

We have no reason to think it should be simple and elegant, but there’s just something deep inside that makes me feel that is the case and makes me really want to figure out what it is.

Outside the classroom:

I learned how to cook, volunteered at OMSI, did an independent study on quantum field theory, and visited NASA. How Reed changed me: I grew

into both the person the high school version of me wanted me to be and the person she never would have expected me to be.

I learned how to be confident when facing people who didn’t believe in me or didn’t take me seriously, and how to be sure of my passions.

What’s next: I will be doing

a one-year master’s degree in applied mathematics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and then head to Cornell to do my Ph.D. focusing in high-energy theoretical physics.

Michael Bernard Jr. ’16

ECONOMICS

Hometown: Louisville,

Kentucky

Adviser: Prof. Noelwah Netusil

[economics 1990–]

Thesis: Property Tax Law Implications on Urban Renewal Outcomes: A Case Study of Portland What it’s about: An economic analysis of urban redevelopment in Portland, and how the city is affected by two distortionary property tax laws: Measure 5 and Measure 50.

What it’s really about:

Urban redevelopment may inadvertently create winners and many, many losers.

Who I was when I got to Reed:

Growing up black and Korean in Kentucky, I was always the outsider, the guy who loved video games, technology, and building computers. I dropped out of college twice, and was a 26-year old father when I was accepted at Reed.

Favorite class: Law and

Economics with Prof. Netusil was an intersection of laws and economic theory that helped me during my thesis. It was fun because I was already working at a legal services firm. The treats on exam days were awesome too!

Influential book: A New Economic

View of American History by Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell.

A compendium of economic analyses in each of the various stages of American history.

Outside the classroom:

The Reed Financial Fellowship gave me the chance to see how New York City’s financial industry works on microscopic levels. If I ever go into finance it won’t be to become the wolf of Wall Street. I was a mentor in the Peer Program, played on the basketball team, saw Maya Angelou through a Gray Fund event, and enjoyed being a part of the Men of Color group.

Obstacles I overcame: When I started at Reed most of my peers were 18 and 19. The Peer Program helped me expand my boundaries and feel fully comfortable at Reed. I had developed this mental block where I would be out of place as a nontraditional student, but I felt at home here. The student body here is awesome.

How Reed changed me: At

previous colleges I attended it was a lot of memorize and regurgitate. Reed helped me to think more critically, understand the very abstract and gain a more holistic approach to thinking. It taught me how to always dig deeper, work harder, think more critically, and never again feel intellectually insecure.

What’s next: Technical project

manager at a legal services firm in Beaverton. Considering an MBA.

Scholarships, awards, or financial aid: Reed Financial

Services Fellowship, Bernard Osher Foundation Reentry Scholarship, Harry and Virginia Wolf Scholarship, and Isabel Rotkin Scholarship. The college is incredibly understanding of individuals from lower socioeconomic positions and I was generously assisted by the financial aid office.

Word to prospies: This is a fantastic terrarium that allows you to learn as much as you want to, whatever your focus may be. You’ll have the best professors to help you. This is the place for a genuine pursuit of knowledge, and not a pursuit of prestige or grades.

september 2016 Reed magazine 31

Reediana

Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!

Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

The Lost Boys of Portlandia Nili Yosha ’07 The stars of Nili Yosha’s 24-minute documentary, The Lost Boys of Portlandia, are introduced as bright spots in a darkened room: faces illuminated by a movie screen’s glow. Joey, Kitty, Jake, Kayla, Alexuis, Malakai, Titus, and Sam are homeless teens served by Outside In, a Portland nonprofit providing social and health services to young people living on the streets.

Narrated by Yosha, founder and executive director of Outside the Frame, an independent nonprofit that teaches storytelling and filmmaking skills to homeless youths, The Lost Boys of Portlandia follows the Outside In group as they decide to make their own Peter Pan film.

To that end, Yosha enlists the aid of mentor and fellow Reedie Vanessa Veselka ’10, a novelist and teacher, who shares her own story of leaving home at age 15.

“I didn’t know a single person my age when I was on the streets,” Veselka says. “I was like a 15-year-old who was dating 30-year-old dudes and living under bridges. It was not a great time in my life. It was not necessarily a free time in my life. But it was better than where

Take us to Neverland: homeless teens film their own version of Peter Pan and discuss the boy who never grew up.

I came from, is how I felt, and so those were the choices I made.”

Veselka helps the the teens craft a narrative and write a script. What ensues is an antic montage—prop shopping, theater exercises, camera-operating class, hair and makeup— including snippets from their cinematic version of J.M. Barrie’s timeless story.

The Lost Boys of Portlandia ends before the teens’ film wraps but not before they

Klickitat By Prof. Peter Rock [creative writing 2001–] In this haunting novel, Vivian and Audra are two teenage sisters growing up in a comfortable, two-parent Portland home. They play a game to remind them of their sibling connection, exchanging the word “Klickitat” when things are unraveling, “to help us feel better, to know that we were always sisters, always together,” Vivian explains.

At first, it might not be obvious what troubles lurk, but the signs are there: their mother spends her free time watching visualizers on the computer screen, their father disappears to the basement to listen in on distant conversations with his ham radio, and Vivian keeps a life jacket in the closet, which she must put on and pull tight when she feels a fit of agitation coming over 32 Reed magazine september 2016

share their stories, dreams, and gratitude for the opportunity, through art, to be seen and understood.

“We create this fantasy for ourselves and these personas—street names, cliques, certain activities that tend to define us,” Kitty says, “and sometimes it just takes someone seeing us as a human being again for us to be able to make those steps [to] change that.”

—MEGAN LABRISE ’04

(Amulet Books 2016)

her—or else hold onto her older sister, Audra.

When 17-year-old Audra, balking at the adult society she is at the precipice of joining, runs away with a young man she has recently met, Vivian must either run away, too, or risk losing her surest connection.

Klickitat is Rock’s first young adult novel, though his 2009 novel, My Abandonment, was nominated for an Alex Award, which recognizes adult books with young adult appeal. The two stories are interconnected in intriguing ways.

Klickitat occupies the same fictional setting, and My Abandonment’s heroine, Caroline, a girl who is discovered to be living with her father in Portland’s Forest Park, fascinates Vivian and Audra, who seek to

find her. The links complicate and add intelligent thematic dimensionality.

Throughout, clean, uncomplicated prose belies an uneasy, portentous atmosphere: craft qualities that are not unlike the scissors that Vivian meditates on when she finds mysterious writing in her notebook. “One single bolt or screw holds the blades of a scissors together, into one tool that can cut paper or leather or steel or meat. If you take that screw or break that bolt, the scissors become two things. Two knives.” Something common and simple becomes suddenly dangerous, as do connections and distances in this story. The nimble slipping of a screw, a chilling twist in the plot, and what happens next are all the more affecting for Rock’s lucid and straightforward approach.

—KATIE PELLETIER ’03

Real Analysis

By Peter Loeb ’59 (Springer-Birkhauser 2016) Peter’s new mathematics textbook explores core concepts and accessible methods, including a novel presentation of differentiation and absolute continuity using a local maximum function, resulting in an exposition that is both simpler and more general than the traditional approach.

A Wizard’s Guide to Study Skills

By Irene Hartzell ’60 (Kids Like Learning 2016) Designed for middle-school-aged students, this guide will help students learn more efficient ways to study, gain time management skills, increase reading speed and comprehension, learn test-taking strategies, and build confidence and a sense of self-worth.

Just a Teacher

By David Tourzan ’95 (Ellaquent Press 2015) David, an Oregon Education Assoc. award-winning teacher with 20 years’ experience teaching math and science, offers a brutally honest account of rural, low-income schools that is both inspiring and entertaining, with a blend of comedy and simmering indignation. He confronts major obstacles to improving education in the U.S. as he takes on underfunded schools, overtested students, union bureaucracy, school lunches, and even student body fluids. The full spectrum of teaching is revealed in unflinching detail. All proceeds go to fund local nonprofits.

A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence

Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste

By Ray Raphael ’65 MAT ’68

Dominique Crenn and Karen Leibowitz ’99

(The New Press 2016, 2002, 2001)

(Houghton Mifflin HarCourt 2015)

A sweeping narrative of the wartime experience, this book views the revolution through the eyes of farmers, laborers, rank-and-file soldiers, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Their stories have long been overlooked in the mythic telling of America’s founding, but are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the fight for independence. Using long-ignored primary sources, Ray creates a gritty account of rebellion, filled with ideals and outrage, loss, sacrifice, and sometimes scurrilous acts . . . but always ringing with truth.

Sky Rivals: Two Men. Two Planes.

An Epic Race around the World

By Adam Penenberg ’86 (Wayzgoose Press 2016) Once, the world was riveted by a pair of adventurous, record-seeking aviators— Wiley Post and Jimmie Mattern—whose names have fallen into obscurity despite their sensational exploits in the 1920s and ’30s in crudely constructed planes.

Adam successfully recreates the excitement and tension of those days, when crowds waited at airports and ticker-tape parades were held to celebrate these heroes. (See class notes.)

Karen, whose San Francisco restaurant The Perennial has been recently called one of the 12 best restaurants in America by GQ, has cowritten a cookbook with Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn. Crenn credits Karen with having “translated the amorphous spirit of Atelier Crenn into words.” This project is equal parts art book, poetry collection, and modernist cuisine cookbook. Recipes range from surprising takes on familiar favorites (fish and chips) to creative and imaginative dishes inspired by nature, like “A Walk in the Forest,” a dish of “earthy scents and flavors,” which “should be plated as a trail, with the burnt pine meringue and pumpernickel soil forming a path from which the mushrooms and herbs spring up.”

The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl Sarah D. Wald ’01

(University of Washington Press 2016)

Drawing on ethnic studies and environmental humanities scholarship, Sarah’s book is an examination of the relationship between American cultural conceptions of farm and farmwork and citizenship. “To look at representations of farm labor is to read the story of the nation, national belonging, and national exclusion.” Sarah says

that “studying agrarian narratives helps identify the cultural logic through which various groups are written into and out of the nation, as well as the roles nature and land ownership play in the way we envision national belonging.”

In the Event of Atomic War

By Devon Pack ’02 (Espresso Press 2012) An anthology of Devon’s poetry, arranged into 15 collections such as “Decade of the Man-Child Comedy Poems,” these poems are smart and raw. Often political and always deeply personal, the anthology displays an assortment of moods and subjects, as well as a restless and evolving poetic sensibility. Devon says the book waspublished by Espresso Press for Powell’s City of Books, who liked “the design and look of the book” and wanted to use it as a showpiece for debuting their publishing machine and small press kiosk.”

Shock and Awe­—The First Edition

Ethan Rafal ’07 (IHA Editions 2016) A 12 year, autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted image, text, and found object journal that blurs the line between author and subject and between personal and authoritative histories. Completed over countless years traveling the U.S., the project pulls from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road. The First Edition reproduces both the look and feel of the original, handmade journal, which was created with transfer prints, found materials, and handwriting, and bound in the remains of an abandoned vehicle. The upcoming Shock and Awe Book Tour returns the journal to the people and places depicted.

Man and Wife

By Katie Chase [Admission 2012–]

(A Strange Object 2016)

An electrifying debut that crackles with humor and insight, this debut collection of award-winning short stories examines the lives of girls and women as they take part in puberty rites, marriage rituals, and deathbed confessions.

september 2016 Reed magazine 33

In Memoriam Alan Borrud/The Oregonian via AP

Writer, Journalist, Master of the SuckerPunch Sentence Katherine Dunn ’69

May 11, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, of lung cancer

Katherine saw broken and twisted things, wrapped them in her words, and made them beautiful. A boxer’s bleeding cuts. A nightclub crawling with slurring drunks. A boy born with flippers for arms and legs, who sweet-talks his cult followers into sawing off their own limbs.

She gained an adoring band of fans with Geek Love, the 1989 novel about a family of willfully mutated circus performers that will endure as her literary feat. The book became a phenomenon, taking her from being a single mother working three jobs to the matriarch of Portland’s authors and poets. Yet her singular talent—for fearlessly probing what others wished to skirt—extended beyond a single book.

“She believed the job of a writer is to tell the truth—not the truth that Aunt Mabel wants to hear, not the truth that will sell books,” says Portland author Renee Denfeld ’88. “She always said she was waiting for a male writer to write a memoir that was not about all the women he’d slept with, but about having a problem with premature ejaculation.”

She could, as the boxing trainers liked to say, write a bit. Essays, reportage, humor squibs, novels, she moved fluidly from one to another.

For a time, she became the nation’s only female sportswriter covering boxing. From 1984 to 1992, she wrote a column in Willamette Week, “The Slice,” that answered reader questions ranging from the size of Forest Park to the shape of an opossum’s penis. She never published another novel after Geek Love, yet never stopped writing its follow-up. She was working on her next book until earlier this year.

Her death at age 70 from lung cancer robbed Portland of one of its finest writers and most inimitable characters. Those she left behind have been wistfully eager to describe her mettle, generosity, and vitality—her ability to make life an adventure and take others along for the trip.

Author Susan Orlean, who worked alongside Katherine at WW in the 1980s, recalls her wrangling the newsroom into attending boxing matches. “She finally convinced me to go,” Orlean says, “and I went imagining I would have my hands over my eyes most of the time and my fingers in my ears.”

Katherine Dunn in 1987. “Write as though nobody has ever written anything before,” Prof. Lloyd Reynolds told her.

Instead, Katherine talked Orlean through each round, explaining the fighters’ jabs and footwork until the other writer grew fascinated.

“It was in real time, what her writing was like,” Orlean says now. “This pure conveyance of a really brilliant take on the world, on emotion, on human frailty, on striving and failure, and she really made it make sense and made it beautiful. She was, I’m sure, punching me in the shoulder saying, ‘See, I told you. I told you

you’d like it.’”

Katherine was born in Garden City, Kansas, in 1945. Her mother, Velma, hailed from Velva, North Dakota, where she later returned to tend cattle until she was 98. Katherine’s father left before she turned two, and Velma married a gentle giant of a car mechanic from Puget Sound. The family moved westward, picking fruit and eventually settling in Tigard.

She showed little nostalgia for her childhood. september 2016 Reed magazine 39

“That post-WWII America was a rough place, as I recall,” she wrote. “Racism and sexism were insistent and institutional. Spousal battery was condoned. The smacking and whipping of children in school and at home was expected. Gangs were common. Brawls boiled up in streets, playgrounds, taverns and workplaces.”

Her youthful memories usually surfaced in jokes. Writer Mark Christensen says Katherine would joke she didn’t have money for booze or drugs as a young person, so she would float in Tigard’s Fanno Creek like Ophelia, hoping to catch a bug that would give her a high. “She had a good sense of humor,” Christensen says, “but I also think maybe she did that.”

As a teenager, Katherine read a magazine article about Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69] and became obsessed with Reed— to the point where she would eat in commons, climb on the roof of Eliot Hall, and sleep under stairs in the dorms. In 1965, her wish came true—she won a full scholarship to Reed.

Her son, Eli Dapolonia, says she was thrilled to attend an elite school after her hardscrabble childhood. “Other kids in college would complain about the cafeteria food,” he says.

“She thought it was the best food she’d ever had.”

Katherine later told the Oregonian that Prof.

Reynolds gave her two pieces of advice. “I’m sure that somewhere in your heart is music,” he said as she struggled with her letter forms. The second was more profound: “Write as though nobody has ever written anything before.”

In 1967, she dropped out of Reed to travel the world with a man named Dante Dapolonia, whom she had met on Thanksgiving break in San Francisco. She wrote a novel, Truck, in Spain and a second, Attic, on the Greek island of Karpathos, and gave birth to Eli in Dublin in 1970.

She returned to Portland as a single mother in 1975, found a walk-up apartment in the Alphabet District, and began a typical day at 6 am, serving breakfast at Stepping Stone Cafe, where her customers included Trail Blazers center Bill Walton. She finished it at a dive bar named the Earth, working until last call. She later recalled having a female patron punch her in the face, and a biker nearly slashed her throat.

“You can’t be a girl behind the bar,” she said in 1983, “you gotta be a woman. When the guys come in there to get sloshed, you must— just by your demeanor—remind them that they are now a guest in your home. That’s one of the advantages, though, of being a woman in a situation like the Earth’s. Even most of the wildest roughnecks in town are inclined to behave themselves if a female is in charge.”

Her other gigs included house painting, topless dancing, and hosting a radio show on KBOO-FM, where she read short stories aloud.

Somehow, she still found time to write.

In 1981, her first byline appeared in Willamette Week, a publication she would later describe as “a small alternative newspaper operating on 40 Reed magazine september 2016

tale of diabolical son Arty the Aquaboy and his one wing and a lot of elbow grease in a mediummessianic brother Chick, a softhearted kid born sized town in the mildew zone.” Her first article with both telekinesis and a fateful temper. was a review of Stephen King’s Cujo.

The book seems uniquely suited to the She soon turned to boxing, persuading WW ramshackle, almost deranged Portland of the to send her to Las Vegas to cover the world ’80s. But its exuberantly lyric swirl of beauty middleweight championship match between and disgust, sadness and uncommon wisdom “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler and Thomas resonated far beyond. The book was published “Hitman” Hearns in 1985. Her coverage began: in 13 languages, including Finnish and Hebrew, “The high-voltage zing of a big fight is legendary. and has never been out of print. It has always No Hollywood premiere, no Broadway opening, inspired extreme reactions. The New York Times no ticker-tape parade draws so widely and groused over the book’s “spectacle,” and the deeply from the glitter heart of America. Stars Orlando Sentinel refused to review it, declaring and pimps rub satin shoulders. Tycoons and that “the subject matter is too disturbing, the bricklayers, high-priced hookers and righteous imagery too grotesque.” But the Seattle Times socialites, all flaunt their glad rags in identical pronounced it “probably one of the most excitement.” extraordinary novels of this decade.” It was a In 1984, she started her Willamette Week finalist for the 1989 National Book Award. column, “The Slice.” She answered questions Geek Love changed Katherine’s life. The book on such pressing topics as why men have sold more than 400,000 copies, but it wasn’t nipples, who was scrawling “Jesus Saves” grafthe acclaim, the awards, or the sales that made fiti across Portland, and whether George H.W. a practical difference. It was the movie Bush claimed to have had sex with rights—sold over and over again, to Ronald Reagan. such disparate figures as Tim Burton In the WW newsroom, she was and Night Court star Harry Anderson. a fixture and den mother. A former “All of a sudden, Mom had money,” staffer recalls her carefully weighing Dapolonia says. “More money than how to approach the fallout of a politshe’d ever seen before.” ical scandal, suggesting how to angle She bought a six-bedroom house the story sensitively. in the Alphabet District and offered “Or,” she concluded, “you could From the Griffin spare rooms to her son’s friends. bury the bastard.”

She loaned money to colleagues She often sported a button reading and mentored a slew of Portland writers. The “Sluts From Hell” and another pin that read “The newfound celebrity did not tame her. Portland Meek Shall Inherit Shit.” She announced herself writer Angie Jabine ’79 organized a benefit with a loud, throaty laugh and a cloud of cigareading in 1992 featuring Katherine, Jean Auel, rette smoke. She rolled each cigarette herself. and Ken Kesey. Katherine canceled at the last “She wore oversize glasses that seemed to minute—a casualty of her interest in sideshows. magnify her gaze—you really felt like she “Supposedly, the fire marshal objected when could see through you,” says former WW she said she didn’t want to read but to demonreporter Chris Lydgate ’90. “She smoked like strate fire breathing, which she’d been learning a chimney and swore like a sailor. In print, she for several years from an expert,” Angie says. was devastating—the undisputed master of the sucker-punch sentence. I had never met anyone “That’s one explanation. The other is that she’d burned herself, and was in no condition to read.” remotely like her, and never will again.”

For many years, Katherine worked on a Christensen recalls walking in Washington follow-up novel to Geek Love, a boxing saga Park with her sometime in the 1980s, talking called The Cut Man. The only portion that’s ever about her son. “Could you deal with kids the been seen is a short excerpt that ran in The Paris same way people at Washington Park deal with Review in 2010. “She made a lot of revisions,” the roses?” she asked. That idea became the Dapolonia says. “And when she died, as far as biologically engineered Binewski children of we know, she wasn’t finished.”

Geek Love, whose parents breed circus freaks In 2013, she married her second husband, by ingesting cocaine and insecticides.

Paul Pomerantz ’67—an old boyfriend from Geek Love came into the world like many of her days at Reed. In April, the cigarettes caught the characters it describes—as a willful freak up to her. The bout with lung cancer lasted just of a book. When it was published in 1989, it five weeks. She told almost no one—even close was like no other book that existed, with a stark friends—that she was dying. design whose font and logo were marred by On May 13, Portland poet Walt Curtis “mutations.” Its plot was equally odd, centering mailed WW a letter, composed on a typewriter. on the rise and fall of the Binewskis, who bred their own children to become their circus’s “My Gawd, I just heard that Katherine Dunn died,” he wrote. “I am saddened, stunned. I deformed human attractions. always felt that she was indestructible.”

But a quarter century after its publication, Geek Love has evolved into a sort of Catcher in the

By Aaron Mesh, Matthew Korfhage and Beth Slovic.

Adapted from Willamette Week with permission.

Rye for much weirder kids—a morbidly funny

Pioneering Educator, Reed’s First Black Professor

Prof. William Couch Jr. [English 1953–55] May 5, 2016, in Weston, Florida.

Prof. William Couch was a prominent African American educator who lived an extraordinary life that touched many people around the globe.

Prof. Couch was born one of five children in Morganville, Kentucky, in 1914. His father was an orphan adopted by a white dentist in Indiana shortly before the turn of the 19th century.

When Couch was about three years old, his father lost his business and the family moved to Chicago. Couch was a musical prodigy whose conspicuous intellect attracted the attention of Inez Cunningham Stark, a wealthy Chicagoan

who discovered the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

Cunningham created a stir in Couch’s South Chicago neighborhood when she picked him up at his home in her private limousine to introduce him to her poetry circles.

He became a professional jazz musician in his teens and was befriended by Louis Armstrong, who invited him to play trumpet at leading Chicago jazz clubs.He studied music at Roosevelt College, but took a break to pursue music professionally when Nat King Cole hired him to play in his band. He played with many famous performers, including Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Dorothy Donegan, and his first wife, Lillian Cowan.

After they were married, Couch completed his bachelor’s degree at Roosevelt. Their marriage ended when he joined the army on December 7, 1941. He became one of the first black combat infantry officers in the nation’s history, eventually commanding a military police battalion on Iwo Jima.

After the war, he lived in New York, where he participated in its literary circles and became a best friend of novelist and scholar Ralph Ellison.

He was offered a teaching position at a prestigious white northern college, but its president rescinded the offer because he suspected Couch was dating a white woman. From 1948–51, he taught English at Jackson State Teachers College in Mississippi, and soon after, he entered the University of Chicago’s doctoral program in English literature on a Rockefeller fellowship.

After earning his PhD in 1953, he was appointed to the literature and languages department at Reed, where he became the school’s first African American professor. Reed recruited him only because he insisted that the University of Chicago send his resume to other than black

colleges. That resume, evidently, did not identify him as African American, which may explain the surprise of some of his new colleagues when he arrived for his first faculty meeting.

Couch taught at Reed for two years, until a recruiter from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, convinced him that he could make a more important contribution to society teaching black kids in the South than white kids at an elite college in the North. When he left Reed, President Frank Griffin [math 1911-56] presented him with his own University of Chicago PhD hood.

Couch spent the rest of his pioneering career at historically black colleges and universities, including West Virginia State College, Jackson State University, Bennett College, Southern University, North Carolina Central University, Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia), Howard University, and Bowie State. He was a senior administrator at Federal City College, where he cofounded the Lorton Prison College Program with his distinguished colleague Dr. Andress Taylor.

He published scholarly articles and an important book, New Black Playwrights, An Anthology, which he dedicated to W.E.B. DuBois.

He married Ola Criss, DEd., who worked for the State Department, and accompanied her on assignments to Lagos, Nigeria; Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador; Accra, Ghana; and Georgetown, Guyana. In those countries, he became a major contributor to their art and education communities and benefactor to numerous students seeking higher education.

When Ola retired in 2010, the couple and the son they adopted in Ghana moved to Weston, Florida. He is survived by Ola and his sons, Kenny Criss-Couch and William Noel Edlin.

Martin Luther King, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Malcolm X, and President Lyndon Johnson.

She later became one of the founders of the Mid-City Community Congress, a grassroots community action group that fought police abuses and discrimination in housing. She spearheaded a campaign to save the apartment building she lived in, reported to have been home to Tennessee Williams when he wrote The Glass Menagerie. The building is now listed on the St. Louis historic registry.

She was also one of two founding directors of the New Life Center, a five-church coalition to support pregnant teenagers, and a frequent interviewer on public affairs programs, including her own radio show, where she interviewed professionals about their work with the goal of getting dropouts back in school.

Her community activity earned her a

fellowship from the Danforth Foundation, which offered to pay for four years of study in a program of her choice. Oz was 30 years old and decided, “If I was going to get the chance to go to college full time, I wanted to get the best damn liberal arts education possible.” She chose Reed, where she majored in American studies and wrote her thesis, “Black Life in Oregon, 1899– 1907: A Study of the Portland New Age.” On file at both Reed and the Oregon Historical Society, it is an illuminating account of black lives in early 20th century Oregon. She also developed an interest in psychology. Governor Tom McCall appointed her one of the first public members of the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners, and she was a founding board member of the Oregon School of Professional Psychology.

After graduating from Reed, she returned to journalism and worked as a reporter for the

Witness to History Oznathylee Howell Koglin ’74

April 22, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, of congestive heart failure.

Civil rights activist, journalist, and poet, Oz lived a remarkable life and bore witness to some of the nation’s momentous events, from the civil rights movement to the AIDS epidemic.

Born in 1939 to the Rev. Cajus Howell and Leatha Johnson Howell in Morvin, North Carolina, Oz grew up in St. Louis with a strong interest in journalism. But in the early 1960s, most newspapers wouldn’t hire reporters of color, so she got a job at the St. Louis Argus, one of the nation’s oldest African American newspapers, starting out as a clerk and rising to become its editor.

As a reporter in St. Louis, she covered some of the most important events of African American life, and interviewed prominent figures including

september 2016 Reed magazine 41

In Memoriam

Civil rights activist, journalist, and poet, Oz Koglin ’74.

Oregon Journal, which merged with the Oregonian in 1982, making her the first black woman to work as a full-time reporter for the state’s biggest newspaper.

Oz covered religion, medicine, and medical research. Many of the health subjects she wrote about were considered taboo at the time. But her articles about subjects such as urinary incontinence and irritable bowel syndrome caused the newspaper’s telephone lines to be jammed with callers wanting more information.

Oz was also one of the first reporters in the country to write about the mysterious disease that came to be known as AIDS. She was known was a meticulous, hardnosed reporter with a devilish sense of humor.

For years, she kept a collection of PR pitches that failed to spell her first name correctly.

In 2002, she retired from journalism and turned to writing poetry. Her 2008 chapbook, Gardens for Everyone, was a collection of poetry written from her perspective as a great-granddaughter of slaves growing up in the Jim Crow era.

It was a finalist in the 2009 Portlandia Chapbook Contest, and the Oregon State Library selected it as one of 150 outstanding Oregon poetry books.

“Oz usually was the wisest person in the room,” said former Oregonian reporter Don Colburn.

“She had street smarts and intuition, plus her own diligent reporting on the world. And her circle of friends—interlocking circles, like those Olympic rings—was the widest and deepest in town. Oz had that rare, uncanny knack for speaking her mind on any subject and still staying friends.

Her writing—both in the newspaper and later in brief but large and original poems—grew out of her power of witnessing.”

Oz is survived by her husband, Robert A. Koglin, whom she married in 1988; her son, Bryan Howell Hopkins; and her daughter, Belacane Hopkins.

42 Reed magazine september 2016

The Spirit of Reed READ about departed classmates and professors at www.reed.edu/reed_ magazine/in-memoriam/.

HONOR them with a gift in their name at www.reed.edu/givingtoreed/.

SHARE your memories on our website or via email at reed.magazine@reed.edu.

Louise Root Godfrey ’35

April 04, 2016, in Portland, Oregon.

In the last years of her life, Louise would use her walker to trek up the hall of the residential care facility to gaze at the mountain framed in the picture window of the library. It was good exercise and brought to mind the many times the centenarian had hiked Mt. Hood. The granddaughter of an Oregon pioneer, Louise had a college-educated mother and a father who hadn’t gotten past the sixth grade. Because her father was widely read, he considered himself well educated and espoused the belief that if there was something in this world more important than education, he didn’t know what it was.

In her own schooling, Louise was always on a fast track. “I was brought up to learn and not fool around,” she said. By the time she started grammar school in Hermiston, Oregon, she already knew how to read, write, and do additions. She was placed in the third grade. After the family moved to Portland, she was skipped from the fourth grade to the fifth and graduated from high school at the age of 15.

Louise started Reed in 1931, during the depths of the Depression, paying her tuition with a $100 gold piece she had won in a state

chemistry contest. Perhaps owing to the fact she had been editor of her high school annual, registrar Margaret Scott ’19 asked the 15-year-old girl if she’d like to be the campus correspondent for The Oregonian and she accepted the job. Over the next two years she turned Reed events into column inches. As a day dodger she could earn a PE credit by walking from campus to her family home on Mount Tabor. Later in life, when she’d see children with backpacks she’d think, “Gee, I wish they had invented those in 1931!”

She was an English literature major, but found that Prof. Monte Griffith’s [psychology 1926–54] psychology courses limbered up her mind. “That general psych course does wonders for making you more thoughtful about what people are like and more prone to pay attention to what you are becoming yourself,” she reflected. “The mirror is my psychiatrist and I’ve had many occasions to walk up to it and say, ‘Louise, you’re making a fool of yourself.

Now stop.’”

After two years, she ran out of money and left Reed. But Reed never left her. “There’s nothing like being immersed in a community of learning, which is what Reed amounts to,” she said. She recalled Prof. Victor Chittick [English 1921–48] saying, “Not everyone is entitled to an opinion. If you’re informed, you may have an opinion. If you’re totally ignorant on a subject, you’re not entitled to bleat about it.” “I murmur that to myself, every once in a while,” Louise said. “I’m very free with my opinions and I catch myself thinking, ‘I don’t know enough about this to say what I think.’ Now isn’t that a useful thing to know?”

In 1933, she took a secretarial job and saved up enough money to attend Stanford for a year.

She took a job with the Portland Symphony Orchestra until it collapsed for lack of funds in 1937 and then began working for the Multnomah Athletic Club (MAC). She left to join the WAVES in World War II, taking officer training at Smith College before being stationed at a communications job at Seattle Naval Station. After the war, she returned to the MAC, and met Dick Godfrey, a reporter for the Oregonian, who had two young girls from a first marriage. They married in 1948 and “we had an absolutely fine time of it,” Louise said of their 50-year marriage. Louise worked at the MAC until 1970, and edited its magazine for 14 years. She was an avid mountain hiker, tended a unique garden filled with native Oregon plants, and volunteered with many organizations. Her daughter, Martha Godfrey Dixon, and five grandchildren survive her.

Margaret Berger Wallace ’41

March 4, 2016, in San Francisco, of California, natural causes.

Born in Denver, Colorado, Margaret moved to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, during the Great Depression, and then studied English at Reed. She went on to graduate from UC Berkeley

Phi Beta Kappa in 1941 and later did graduate work there in English literature. Continuing her love of the English language, she taught English in Salinas, California, and was a high school teacher in Contra Costa County in the 1960s. She worked as a secretary at several Bay Area colleges, including UC-Berkeley, and raised three children with John Wallace ’41, to whom she was married from 1942–1978.

She loved the opera, and well into her 80s continued to attend regularly in San Francisco.

Throughout her life, she continued to learn, deepening her knowledge of Shakespeare, Greek and Roman mythology, opera, history, France and the French language, and the arts—both independently and as a member of the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. She leaves three children: Jane Ellis ’67 of Berkeley, Kevin Wallace of San Francisco, and Laura Ma of Honolulu.

Vivienne Bonnin ’44

Mildred Schneider ’44. “Plant where you are and you’ll never be hungry.”

March 5, 2016, in Seattle, Washington.

Born Miriam Rivka Goldberg to Henry and Sophie Goldberg, Vivienne grew up in the heart of Portland’s Jewish community on Southwest Jackson Street. She attended Shattuck Elementary School (now Shattuck Hall at Portland State University), and the original Lincoln High School (also a building on the PSU campus). After attending Reed, she graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in social work and went to work for the State of Oregon. She met her husband, John Bonnin, through mutual friends and they married in 1952. They settled in Longview, Washington, and for more than 30 years she contributed her talents as a social worker and supervisor to the State of Washington. They raised their daughters, the late Lyn Smith and Dr. Marni Bonnin, in Longview, but remained active in the Portland Jewish community.

The family was members at Neveh Shalom and Shaarie Torah. Vivienne was active in Hadassah, the American Business Women’s Association, Altrusa, the American Association of University Women, and the National Council of Jewish Women. She served as the unofficial rebbetzin for Cowlitz County and the surrounding counties for decades. After the death of her beloved husband in 1984, she moved back to downtown Portland, where she stayed active, volunteering as a mediator with the Better Business Bureau, and serving on the boards of the Robison Jewish Home and the Oregon Jewish Museum. An avid patron of the arts, she was also a docent at the Portland Art Museum. In April 2015, she moved to Seattle, Washington, to be closer to her daughter, Marni, who survives her.

Lyle Vincent Jones ’44

April 13, 2016, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Lyle was born in Grandview, Washington, and was admitted to Reed in 1941, but deferred for a year to earn money to supplement his scholarship. In 1942, he enrolled at Reed, but left after one year to join the Army Air Corps.

The Air Corps put him into the Army Pre-Meteorology Program (AMP) and assigned him to Reed for a year! Mustered out after the war, he obtained a PhD from Stanford in psychology and statistics in 1950. After brief stints at the Universities of Chicago and Texas, he arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1957, where he was an alumni distinguished professor, director of the psychometric laboratory, and for 10 years vice chancellor and dean of the graduate school.

Lyle became a psychologist in an era when reputation in that field was gained by concocting a theory of human behavior; most such theories were some combination of arcane and minuscule, and of little if any applicability.

He rejected that path and instead was one of the pioneers in using a combination of scientific psychology and sophisticated statistical analysis to guide and assess social progress. In his presidential address to the Psychometric Society in 1963, titled “Beyond Babbage,” he foresaw the coming impact of computers on both science and society; his laboratory was an early user of then-small computers in highly innovative ways. He anticipated the work of Nate Silver in applying statistical models to polling data to have a better idea of how elections would turn out, and served as a consultant to television networks on election nights over a span of many elections. He was an early and frequent contributor to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and was

a main author of the NAEP’s work in the 1980s demonstrating the positive effects of Project Head Start; he regarded this extended effort as his professional legacy.

Lyle was an avid reader, Carolina basketball fan; tennis, bridge, and poker player; traveler; author; editor; collaborator; and political adviser. He was a lifelong supporter of Reed, where he endowed the Lyle Vincent Jones scholarship, and of Doctors without Borders.

His daughter, Susan Edison Jones Hartley; son, Tad Jones; and granddaughter Shawna Hartley of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, survive him.

—JIM KAHAN ’64

Mildred Voth Schneider ’44 March 7, 2016, in Gresham, Oregon.

Born in Salt Creek, Oregon, Mildred graduated valedictorian from Dallas High School in 1938, and after earning a degree as a registered nurse from Emanuel Hospital School of Nursing in Portland, attended Linfield College. She then transferred to Reed College, where she was the school nurse living in the infirmary and taking classes. During this time the 69th Army Air Force Tech Training Detachment were taking pre-meteorology courses, and Mildred enjoyed working with the group of more than 200 men. A sociology/psychology major, she wrote her thesis on prepaid medical care in the Portland area.

In 1944, she married Gilbert Schneider, her high school sweetheart, and two years later the North American Baptist Convention commissioned the couple as missionaries to Cameroon, West Africa. Her new home with its volcanic mountains, rich soil, and crater lakes reminded her of Oregon. They built churches, clinics, schools, and a hospital inspired by one Mildred studied while at Reed, in the town of Vanport, Oregon. In 1948, the Vanport Hospital was swept away with the rest of the town in a flood while september 2016 Reed magazine 43

In Memoriam she was in Cameroon. Mel’s hospital design, realized at Mbingo, Cameroon, in 1952, has grown to be a major health care facility today. She worked for 10 years at a self-sufficient leprosy control settlement that she helped build.

In Cameroon she had three children, Linda, Evan, and Mary Alice, who died of pneumonia when she was six months old and was buried at sea on the family’s return trip from Africa. One of Mildred’s favorite Cameroon proverbs was, “Plant where you are and you’ll never be hungry.”

In 1963, when their children were ready to start secondary school, the family returned to the United States. Gilbert taught linguistics at Ohio University in Athens, and Mil worked as a psychiatric nurse in the Ohio State Mental Hospital. Upon retiring, they moved first to Lincoln City in 1985, and then to Portland, Oregon. She edited My Favorite African Recipes for the opening of the African Rainforest exhibit at Portland’s Washington Park Zoo. Mil’s son, Evan, notes that his mother was a faithful Reedie and loved to wear anything with “Reed College” written on it. Evan and his sister, Linda Smalley, survive Mildred.

Oren Richards ’45

March 23, 2016, in Beaverton, Oregon.

Born in Portland, Oren lost his mother when he was four years old. After graduating from Washington High School, he a t te n d e d b u s i n e s s school, where he met the love of his life, Patricia Milne, and the two married in 1945.

Oren’s father convinced him to abandon ideas of pursuing a basketball scholarship and he entered Reed in 1940, where he excelled.

The following year he joined the U.S. Navy Reserve as an apprentice seaman, continuing his studies at Reed, where he earned his degree in biology. He went on to medical school at the University of Oregon, and obtained his MD while continuing to serve in the Navy.

After completing his residency at Providence Hospital, he served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force, commanding the hospital at Mather Air Force Base. Returning to Portland, he practiced internal medicine at Providence Hospital, retiring at the age of 80. He loved medicine, and knowing that he could make a difference in the lives of his patients made him the doctor people wanted at their sides in times of need. He was instrumental in setting up teaching programs for new doctors at Providence, and taught at the medical school for 20 years as a volunteer.

Oren served his country a third time as head of the Selective Service Board for the State of Oregon, and was awarded the Distinguished 44 Reed magazine september 2016

Service Medal for bringing compassion and empathy to the selective service office during the troubled times of the Vietnam War. He loved the coast and abandoned the city on weekends for his home in Ocean Park, Washington, where he fished for salmon, boated, dug clams, and enjoyed the serenity of the ocean shore. Patricia predeceased Oren, who is survived by his sons, Wayne, Jeffrey, Brian, and Guy. In his own words, he “lived the perfect life, no regrets.”

Richard Havel ’46

April 9, 2016, in Greenbrae, California.

Richard’s groundbreaking research on lipid metabolism and lipoprotein biology profoundly impacted the understanding of human disease. Considered a founding father in the field, he refined and opt imiz e d the methodology for separating good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein, [HDL]) from bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein [LDL]), and for recognizing the role that the different fractions of lipoproteins play in heart disease. Lipoproteins are tiny, sac-like complexes of lipid and protein that carry fats, such as cholesterol and triglycerides, in the blood. LDL is rich in cholesterol and is believed to deposit cholesterol in the arteries, while HDL seems to prevent fat deposits.

In 1955, Dick developed a method for separating lipoproteins from human plasma, a technique that is the basis for all separation methods in use today. His paper of that year on the lipoproteins in human serum, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, remains among the most cited publications in the field of lipid biology. He also conducted some of the first studies demonstrating that lowering LDL cholesterol in the blood led to a reduction of atherosclerosis.

Dick went on to find the cause of a rare inherited disorder called familial type 1 hyperlipidemia, in which triglycerides build to high levels in the blood. In a classic series of studies, he worked out the pathway by which droplets of dietary fat, called chylomicrons, enter the bloodstream from the intestine and are delivered to various tissues to be metabolized. In 1973, he helped unravel the cause of another genetic disorder, type 3 hyperlipidemia, which produces elevated blood lipid levels and can lead to premature atherosclerosis.

Born in Seattle, Dick attended Chief Sealth High School, where he excelled in mathematics and science. At Reed he earned a bachelor’s in chemistry and met his wife, Virginia Johnson ’47. They fell in love on their first date and married in 1945. Richard went on to earn a medical degree along with a master’s in chemistry at the

University of Oregon Medical School in 1949.

He taught at the University of Oregon Medical School and at Cornell University Medical College, and in 1956 joined the medical faculty at the UC San Francisco. Becoming one of the founding members of its Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI), he served as its director from 1973 until his retirement in 1992. Throughout his career he continued to make major contributions to understanding plasma lipoprotein metabolism, its regulation, and its importance in human disease.

“Havel’s work was truly seminal, and his endless enthusiasm for science and medicine made him a terrific role model,” said Shaun Coughlin, current CVRI director.

Throughout his life, Dick was very generous in giving to Reed, including a large contribution to the National Academy of Sciences Research Fund. Asked how the college had affected his life, he listed, “Number one: met my wife.

Number two: helped decide my career and my attitude toward education.”

His wife and children, Timothy ’75, Christopher, Peter, and Julianne survive him.

Margaret Joy Spalding ’48

April 18, 2016, in Portland, Oregon.

Born in Princeton, Massachusetts, to Willard and Margaret Spalding, Joy attended Reed, but graduated from American University with a degree in anthropology. She obtained both a master’s and a PhD in social work at Bryn Mawr College, and taught at the University of Virginia Medical School, Portland State University, and Oregon Health & Science University.

She married Kenneth Rabin ’47, and the couple had three daughters, Margaret, Katherine, and Deborah Rabin Haupt ’85. As the wife of a foreign-service officer, Joy lived in Australia, the Philippines, Belgium, and West Africa. After divorcing Kenneth, she continued to travel extensively, visiting friends and acquaintances all over the world. She later married Prof. Harold Goodhue Vatter, who taught at PSU for years.

Joy worked as a clinical social worker, psychotherapist, teacher, and clinical gerontologist. She was interested in nursing home reform, and was a member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Gray Panthers. She also reviewed manuscripts about mental health and aging for publication, and wrote book reviews in these fields.

Her daughters survive her.

Florence Boyrie Williams ’49 March 24, 2016, in Yakima, Washington, at home.

Reed College figured prominently in the life of Florence, whose mother (Levandeur Boyrie ’18), father (Edward Boyrie ’17) and aunt (Florence Boyrie ’21) all attended the school, as did three of her five children. It was also at Reed that

Lois Baker Janzer ’50

April 14, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, of natural causes.

Florence Boyrie Williams ’49

Florence met David Williams ’48, and the two married after he graduated. She worked while David attended medical school and completed residencies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the Veterans Hospital in Portland. In 1949, she completed her bachelor of science at the University of Washington.

In 1959, they moved to Yakima, Washington, where David opened a practice in internal medicine. The couple shared a love of the outdoors and the arts, and inspired in their children a sense of honor and an appreciation for excellence. As the children grew and became more independent, Florence cultivated her skills as a horsewoman and was awarded Washington State’s over-40 Champion Amateur-Owner Hunter for multiple years. The couple also traveled the world, visiting all seven continents, and was committed to supporting their community as longtime supporters of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, the Capitol Theatre and the Yakima Valley Museum. Florence is survived by her children, Susan ’72, David ’75, Joan, Robert, and Tom.

Poet, translator, and teacher, Lois was born in Oakland, California, and grew up in Seattle.

Her interest in the world’s languages and cultures was cultivated in her working-class neighborhood, home to many immigrant families. As a teenager she worked as a cook and counselor at a Girl Scout summer camp near Hood Canal, and as a secretary for Alaska Steamship in San Francisco.

Majoring in literature at Reed, she worked on the campus literary magazine, and was particularly influenced by professors Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69] and Natalie Balakohin Dodge [Russian 1943–67]. She excelled in her coursework and made lifelong friends, with whom she shared madrigal and folk singing as well as ski trips in blue jeans and Army surplus skis. She wrote her thesis on the moral theme in the novels of Ivan Turgenev. She was briefly married to Bruce Cartozian ’50, and they lived for a few years in New York after graduation.

In 1954, she returned to Portland, where she met and married sculptor Manuel Izquierdo [art 1953-56], then an artist in residence at Reed. The couple hosted many artists and writers in their Southwest Portland home, including poets Philip Whalen ’51, Gary Snyder ’51, and Allen Ginsberg. Some years after divorcing Izquierdo, she married Dr. Norman Janzer, with whom she lived happily in Portland for more than 30 years until his death in 2003. They shared an enjoyment of travel, gardening, and music. Lois returned

to Reed for her MAT, completing her practice teaching with an adult literacy program in Old Town before she began teaching at Portland Community College in 1969.

Over the course of her career she taught every course in the English department, from composition to Shakespeare. Lois worked hard to establish the teachers union at PCC, and collaborated with faculty in the skilled trades on a successful cross-disciplinary program, the Meaning of Work. After retiring from PCC in 1992, she taught ESL and technical writing classes for Tektronix. She became deeply interested in China, and taught English at universities in Harbin and Suzhou. She had an unusual facility for languages, having previously studied Latin, Welsh, Russian, German, and Italian. At the age of 59, she undertook Chinese, mastering it to the extent that in 1999 she was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship to translate the poems of 12thcentury poet Fan Chengda.

Throughout her life she worked on her writing, publishing under her maiden name, Lois Baker. She was nominated for Oregon Book Awards for Man Covered with Bees and Tracers, and was awarded first prize in the Oregonian’s Ben Hur Lampman poetry contest. Her work appeared in many publications, including Calyx, Folio, Penthouse, Poetry, and the Seattle Review.

TriMet’s Poetry in Motion program put two of her poems on the road, and she wrote a play for a Portland Dada show and contributed a parody sketch to an anthology, the Best of Bad Hemingway. She enjoyed tai chi, graphoanalysis, folklore, etymologies, and scouring garage sales for oriental rugs, books, and other treasures.

With her friend Marvin Witt, she designed a small house in Manzanita, where she lived from 2004 to 2009. She will be remembered as a

REED COLLEGE MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES

“The Reed MALS program offers me many of the same opportunities as an undergraduate—an interdisciplinary approach, intimate class setting, and a rigorous education at the hands of brilliant professors—but I also have the opportunity to work with adult students who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, each bringing a unique perspective and experience to the table.”

— MAGGIE GROVE NELSON ’09, MALS ’18 DATA ENTRY EMPLOYEE FOR A MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FIRM

Learn more at reed.edu/MALS

In Memoriam wholly original writer, imaginative teacher and independent scholar committed to the rights of labor, women, and minorities.

Her children, Katy Smith ’75, Markrid Izquierdo, Pablo Izquierdo, and Sara Izquierdo survive.

Sibyl Halling Belliss ’50

January 30, 2016, in California.

Sibyl was born in China in 1928, and lived there happily until the Japanese invaded in 1941. She was held under house arrest with her mother and two sisters until the following year when they were repatriated with their father. Both parents, Frank Halling ’23 and Sibyl Lindell ’22, had graduated from Reed, and Sib followed their lead, studying political science and playing on basketball and softball teams. She wrote her thesis on the program and policies of the Chinese Communists. At Reed she met and married Don Belliss ’51, her husband of 65 years.

Upon graduating, the couple moved to Martinez, California, where Don accepted a job with Shell Oil Company. Four years later, he was transferred to the head office in New York City, and the family, which now included three sons, Frank, Steve, and Greg, moved to a home on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. They built a boat, which the family sailed and raced extensively. Sib loved the ocean and enjoyed sailing, especially cruising in the Virgin Islands.

Their next assignment took them to Alton, Illinois, where they lived for 24 years. Sib was active in the Christian Science church and served on the Madison County Board of Supervisors. She also worked diligently, but unsuccessfully, to promote the Equal Rights Amendment.

After Don’s retirement, the couple moved to Nevada City, California, where they built a house over looking Scotts Flat Lake and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sib continued with her church work and gardening. They traveled extensively, ranging from China to Russia, and Alaska to Antarctica. Eventually, dementia took over, and it became necessary to move from their seven wooded acres to Atria Senior Living.

Sib will be remembered for her beaming smile, red cap (Hot Shot), and outstretched handshake. She enjoyed a full and happy life, and was much loved by all who knew her.

Thorsten Stromberg ’58

March 29, 2016, in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

A first generation American, Thor was born in Aberdeen, Washington, to Carla and Beda Stromberg, Swedes who immigrated to America through Ellis Island in the late 1920s. Growing up in Port Angeles, he loved fishing salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest with his uncles and friends.

At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “A Pentane Bubble Chamber for Cosmic Ray Studies,” with 46 Reed magazine september 2016

Kathleen Flannigan ’62. “I envision my work as refuge, sanctuary, as holy and healing.”

Prof. Byron Youtz [physics 1956–68], and went on to get a doctorate in physics from Iowa State University. He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory until 1967, when he was hired as an associate professor of physics at New Mexico State University, and retired as associate department head after 33 years of service.

He was devoted to Elizabeth, his wife of 40 years, who survives him in addition to his daughter, Emily Montoya.

Donald W. Graham ’61

May 5, 2016, in Mountainside, New Jersey.

Born in Berkeley and raised in Los Angeles, Don served his country in the U.S. Army and the reserves before beginning at Reed. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, writing his thesis, “A Synthesis of Diozocyclopropane,” with Prof.

John Hancock [chemistry 1955–89]. He went on to earn a PhD at UC Berkeley, and conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University. He was a medicinal chemist with Merck in Rahway, New Jersey for 36 years and made his home in Mountainside. An avid soccer fan, he enjoyed gardening, cooking, and reading. He was married for 48 years to his wife, Patricia, who survives him along with his sons Christopher and Colin.

Kathleen Flannigan ’62

February 8, 2016, in Berkeley, California, of pneumonia.

Born with cerebral palsy, Kathleen became a celebrated artist who exploited her disability instead of fighting it. “My work is unique because I am unique,” she said. “I envision my work as refuge, sanctuary, as holy and healing.”

Her work was shown at the Smithsonian; in Brussels, Belgium; and in Rio de Janeiro.

She was an artist in residence at the California Academy of Sciences, and won numerous prestigious awards, including a Pollock-Krasner grant.

She also held a part-time job at Disability Rights California, a law firm where she consulted and

liaised with the disabled community.

Socially isolated throughout her childhood, she sought refuge in animals and plants, caring for them and drawing them incessantly. At an early age she staked her claim on the territory of nature, drawing inspiration from the imagery, detail, patterns, and color of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings. She felt his power as a master and mentor and felt an affinity with his isolation and creativity.

Cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that can affect movement as well as the senses, first appeared when she was a girl. “I had a strange gait,” she recalled, “and my mother wanted a perfect child, so I had all these operations.”

The operations were unsuccessful and left crisscrossing scars on the backs of her legs, permanent reminders of her “childhood terrors.”

She walked on her toes, lurching along on rigid legs and swinging her arms vigorously to propel herself forward and to maintain her balance. Cerebral palsy affects each person differently, but it did not impair Kathleen’s intellect— she excelled in her Catholic high school.

At Reed she flouted convention and lived with three male students in a beatnik group house on Southeast Long Street. It was a primitive domicile, without heat.

“We’d sleep in the attic on sleeping bags, wore Levi’s and cowboy hats, Navy watch-caps and black turtlenecks,” she remembered. Because it was unusual in those days for a single woman to live with men, she gained something of a wild reputation. At the end of her sophomore year Kathleen married Richard Morgan ’60 on campus. They were given the Doyle Owl as a wedding present and had to hide it. Kathleen left school and followed her husband to his sociology graduate program at the UC Berkeley.

Within four years they had two sons. Within five, she was in crisis. Marriage and motherhood had bestowed upon her a conventional social

status and the approval of her parents. But she felt deprived of the opportunity to establish an authentic and fulfilling life. In the milieu of Berkeley in the ’60s, she yearned to explore the world as a free spirit.

Instead, she turned to alcohol and powerful prescription drugs, and became depressed, suicidal, and out of control. In 1971, Richard divorced her and assumed custody of their sons.

Left to a renewed dependence on her parents, by the mid-’70s she was found, nearly lifeless, on a California beach at dawn.

But by the ’80s, she was back in Berkeley and beginning to thrive. In 1981, she returned to school at the California College of the Arts and for the next quarter of a century embraced life as a person and as an artist.

Living with a disability was part of what brought Kathleen’s art to life. She was a studio artist at the National Institute of Art and Disabilities in Richmond, California, and later founded the Artists with Disabilities Empowerment Project (ADEPT), opening a gallery space for artists with disabilities in Berkeley.

She became knowledgeable in laws and policies affecting the disabled and served an advisor to various groups and organizations with respect to the rights and experiences of the disabled.

Richard, her former husband, noted that Kathy was uninhibited, could be unpredictable, and was apt to ignore personal boundaries. She tapped a stream of energy that allowed her to recklessly focus on any encounter, project, or artistic endeavor.

“In her presence there was a palpable sense of exposure to an occult power, of being engaged with someone who was living partly in another world,” Richard said. “One could not help but wonder what she felt and what she saw, and her art only reinforced that wonder.”

The last decade of her life was again filled with hardship. She underwent major surgery for cancer and made do on Social Security benefits in subsidized housing, dependent on her caregiver for daily assistance and an electric wheelchair for mobility. Her care manager declared that she was the most medically challenged person on his caseload, and also the bravest. Nothing daunted her. She lived in a studio apartment that also functioned as her artist’s workshop.

In the last six months of her life she was afflicted by chronic coughing and was repeatedly hospitalized for pneumonia, aggravated by a congenital disorder that prevented her from adequately clearing her lungs. On her final day she declined medial interventions and gathered around her some of her closest friends, her sons, and her former husband. When a priest performed final rites, she was visibly comforted, and passed away serenely that evening.

Kathleen will be remembered as a person who exerted a powerful influence on everyone who was close to her, and as an extraordinary artist, producing thousands of exquisite artworks.

Ellen Burtner Dixon ’63

Paul James Clare MAT ’70

Born in California, Ellen lived in Colorado, Texas, and Oregon, and then moved to Vancouver, BC, with her first husband. Her impressive formal education included obtaining a bachelor’s in history from Reed, where she wrote a thesis on historian Walter Prescott Webb. She went on to get a master’s of library science at UC Berkeley, and a certificate in pottery from the Vancouver Art School, where she met her second husband, Reg Dixon, who shared her love of pottery, sculpture, gardening, and farming. Their daughter, Valerie, was born in 1977.

Ellen worked as a freelance potter and as a learning assistant and access advisor at University College of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia “Learning to learn is the first step to academic involvement,” she once said.

A longtime supporter of social justice, environmental and other causes, she gave generously of her time and resources to the Fronya Women’s Centre, the Mission Transition House, and the Mission for Peace.

Ellen shared many happy years cycling, hiking, and camping with her partner, Jean Baycroft, and loved good food, animals, meaningful conversations and digging in her vegetable garden wearing her favorite Tilley hat. She died in a British Columbia nursing home after struggles with Parkinson disease and spinal stenosis.

Paul grew up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, moved with his parents to Los Angeles, and in 1946 was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving as a U.S. Army lab tech in Germany.

Returning home, Paul enrolled at the University of Southern California, and married Louise Clark. In 1952, he graduated from USC with both a bachelor’s and a master’s in microbiology, and then pursued a PhD at Oregon State University. He landed a job at the King County Health Department and then the Washington State Health Department. His son, Jeff, was born in 1957. Lucky Lager (General Brewing Corp.) hired Paul, and for the next 13 years he worked as a brew master. He returned to school, graduating from Reed with a Master in Arts in Teaching in 1970. He appreciated that Reed’s small classes taught him the value of small-group interaction, allowing him to question and challenge more.

He began teaching biology, interdisciplinary studies, and a variety of environmentally related classes at Portland’s Adams High School, and completed graduate work for a counseling certificate in 1974, after which he served as a counseler at Adams High School, Ockley Green Middle School, and Jefferson High School until 1988.

Paul loved the outdoors and helped found three outdoor groups: the Ptarmigans, the Loo Wit chapter of the Sierra Club, and the Chinook Trail Association. With his family he spent many days hiking, backpacking, and camping around the Northwest. He was also active in the Clark County Master Gardeners program, and took classes at Clark Community College, where he was on the advisory board of Mature Learning and taught environmental classes.

Paul was a cofounder of Recovery North West alcohol and drug treatment, and served for 10 years on the Columbia River Mental Health Services board. He was both a trustee and member of Michael Servetus Unitarian Fellowship, and delighted in sharing his experiences and the knowledge he had gained with others. Volunteering was a part of his life, and he gave time for everything from trail building and testifying before a House committee for the North Cascades National Park to serving the hungry and homeless through Share House.

He stayed active until the last six months of his life, when Parkinson’s slowed him down.

He is survived by Louise, his wife of 66 years, and son, Jeff.

March 9, 2016, in Mission, British Columbia.

Jean Anne Swift Daly MAT ’66 April 9, 2016, in Portland, Oregon.

Jean was nearly 40 years old when she enrolled at Reed for her MAT and had fond memories of her time there, especially in being able to do calligraphy with Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [art, English 1929–69] and Prof. Robert Palladino [art 1969–84].

Born in Boise, Idaho, she attended the University of Washington before coming to Reed. She began her teaching career in 1966 at the new Jackson High School in Portland, where she taught calligraphy, art, and art history. She wrote the Portland Public Schools eco aesthetics course, and served on the advanced placement in art committee in New York. During those years she also taught calligraphy at Portland Community College, and classes in calligraphy and environment art at PPS in-service classes.

In 1947, she married Lawrence Gillen; they had six children together. She married Francis “Pete” Daly in 1973, and they resided for 31 years in Beavercreek, Oregon. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega, Lambda Rho, Italic Handwriting Society, St. Philip Benizi Altar Society, the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women, and the Young Ladies Institute.

At the age of 60 she began taking piano lessons and absolutely loved it. She and her husband kept two and a half acres in flower and vegetable gardens, and she did volunteer work for the elderly, the illiterate, and the poor.

March 6, 2016, in Vancouver, Washington.

PENDING

Sylvia Breed Gates, Mitchell Heinemann Jr. ’41, Robert Clark ’44, Marjorie Foster Saltzman ’44, David Williams ’45, Warren Brune ’47, Max Bettman ’48, Joyce Holen Nelson ’50, Frank Wesley ’50, John M. Carlson ’53, Pat Livingston’55, David Digby ’57, Henry B. Lamb ’58, Marvin Gerst ’62, Carol Sawyer ’62, Lionel Livermore ’64, Sid W. Parker ’64, James Dee Logan ’70, Ann Marie Veninga ’75, Ellen Lacayo Bilodeau ’76, Elizabeth Spencer ’76, Thomas Jones ’79, Jolene Kay Benedict Broyles ’88, Yitzchak Dumiel (born Isaac Sterling) ’91

september 2016 Reed magazine 47

Emperor Qin’s terra-cotta warriors in northwest China’s Shaanxi province

Adventures in the First Person

Strange Encounter in Xi’an A dusty light filters through bamboo slats into the burial chamber. Rows of ancient figures stand guard down the length of the pit, shoulder to shoulder and back to front, perfect posture after 2,000 years of practice.

The uncovered tomb sends cool air swirling up from the greenish clay bodies, mingling with the mutterings of the crowd. This is an eerie place to feel kinship. But as my dilated pupils scan the grave, a face separates itself from the soldiers and moves towards me.

The dreamlike question precipitates out of the air between us—Reed?

Amy Egerton-Wiley ’13 was in my year at Reed. As we traced our paths from Reed to Xi’an, I laughed at the Seussian twists and turns we had taken. Like me, she studied Mandarin with Prof. Hyong Rhew [1988–], inspired by his passion for the language and culture. Like me, she was drawn to China after graduation, searching for a new and invigorating intellectual adventure.

Excited to have found an equally curious travel buddy, we pressed forward along the rails, peering down intently at the terra-cotta faces, searching for recognition.

The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses were built piecemeal over the course of 28 years,

48 Reed magazine september 2016

a legion of faithful soldiers ordered to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife.

Qin was wise to be wary of enemies even in death: although he brilliantly created a uniform system of weights and measures and united China under a standardized script, he was a bloody and ruthless leader. He modeled his massive underground city after his real-world kingdom, complete with mountains and valleys and rivers of mercury. With the necropolis complete, Qin had the builders killed and buried in mass graves.

The intervening decades crushed the subterranean kingdom with layers of villages and earth, and the warriors slept until the 1970s.

Since then, over 8,000 figures have been resurrected, shards and fragments snatched from the dirt and painstakingly glued back together.

Foot soldiers and archers and cavalrymen blur into a phalanx of topknots. I find myself straining towards the pit, counting them over and over in a hapless attempt at comprehension.

I imagine mercury swirling up with the air, droplets from a hundred shimmering rivers coating the warriors in eternal death. Each warrior’s face is distinct. Their youthful eyes and determined expressions are uncannily accurate, and I rack my memory for the face I am sure was the inspiration for a kneeling archer.

Standing still against the press of visitors

around us, we laughed at the overly poetic nature of our meeting. But when you’re in a massive necropolis designed by an egomaniac emperor, face-to-face with frozen soldiers, with mercury flowing underfoot, you can forgive an overdose of metaphor. We parted with the comfort of old friends. And I, at least, left with renewed courage and curiosity.

Running into Reedies abroad creates cognitive dissonance, an unexpected space where we can examine what it is that drives and connects us. Meeting Amy in that tomb—one year into what was proving for me a difficult relocation—reminded me of all the people at Reed who challenged me to push my limits, to use curiosity as fuel for a lifelong journey. Reed taught me to relish debate and diversity of opinion, to find common ground in unlikely places, and to have the courage to ask tough questions.

Reed creates a culture of boldness. The boldness to define the ideas and values you hold, and the integrity to pursue your truest self. So when you head out on adventures beyond Reed, be bold. Sometimes you find your truest self when you are face-to-face with a thousand unknown soldiers.

Haley Jacobson ’13 is exploring the wonders of Southeast Asia, leading experiential travel for high school students and spending hours staring open-mouthed at beautiful mountains and fields.

Imaginechina via AP Images

BY HALEY JACOBSON ’13

5K FUNd RUN/WALK

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2016 | START TIME: 9 A.M.

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HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID. Prof. Virginia Hancock ’62 [music] leads the procession at Commencement ’16, her last before retirement.