june 2022 ‰ WHO GETS TO REMEMBERED?BE Tracy Drake Leads Archivists to Democratize Memory
M. JUKAR ’11
Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Member
“The education I received at Reed fundamentally changed the way I think and shaped who I am as a scientist and a person. I give to Reed in gratitude for that, and to ensure that Reedies, present and future, get the same opportunities to pursue inquiry, research, and discovery—and contribute to the greater good.”–ADVAIT
The Loyal Owl Society recognizes the steadfast support of alumni who give to Reed every year. Membership is conferred when alumni contribute to Reed for three consecutive years. In 2022, 2,454 alumni were Loyal Owl Society members. Join the parliament. Make your gift to Reed today. reed.edu/givenow
FEATURES 12 Marginal Powers and Messages from the Divine Stephanie Guyer-Stevens ’86 documents the unique power of female shamans in Bhutan BY RANDALL BARTON 16 Who Gets to Remembered?Be Tracy Drake leads archivists to democratize memory BY BRANDON ZERO ’11 DEPARTMENTS 2 This Must Be the Place 3 Mailbox 4 Eliot Circular NEWS FROM C AMPUS The Perfect Person for the Job From the Rubble Big Win for Math Students Sustainability Coordinator 8 Advocates of the Griffin ALL THINGS AL UMNI 22 Reediana BOOKS, FILMS, AND MUSIC B Y REEDIES Breaking Ranks, by Colin Diver 24 Class Notes NEWS FROM OUR CLA SSMATES 30 In Memoriam HONORING CLA SSMATES, PROFESSORS, AND FRIENDS WHO HAVE DIED Defender of the Citadel: Prof. Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94] The Colorful “Citizen Mayor” Invigorated Portland: John Elwood (“Bud”) Clark Jr. ’58 40 Object of Study WHA T REED STUDENTS ARE LOOKING AT IN CLASS Restored or Conquered? COVER photo by lauren labarre 6 12 16 1Reed Magazine June 2022
REED COLLEGE RELATIONS
grammatical kapeLlmeister Virginia O. Hancock ’62
Send address changes to Reed Magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202-8138 June 2022
Given that we tend to think that ques tions about inclusion and exclusion have only arisen in recent years, it is important to note that Austen was calling attention to these matters in early 19th-century England, during an era when literacy, rationality, and personhood were being fiercely debated with the highest possible stakes.
The future story of the college is always coming into being. Stay tuned.
Audrey Bilger President of Reed
labarrelauren This Must Be the Place 2 Reed Magazine june 2022
As a lifelong lover of libraries, I well recall my delight in browsing shelves and discov ering hidden treasures and stories. My first encounters with institutional archives were in rare book rooms. Being able to put my hands on books that might be hundreds of years old still seems to me like a form of magical time travel. I also have the privilege of being mar ried to a talented archivist. In talking about preserving music and releasing historical recordings to the public, my wife, Cheryl, often speaks about “throwing music into theOverfuture.”the course of this year, the south wing of the library is undergoing some big changes. Renovations will include seismic upgrades, faculty offices, classroom space, and refurbished thesis desks. In this issue, it is inspiring to pay a visit to the Reed library’s special collections and learn more about what director Tracy Drake is doing to preserve a diverse representation of images, voices, and stories.
In Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, the protagonist Catherine Morland explains why she dislikes reading history: “I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome.”
writer/In Memoriam editor Randall S. bartonr@reed.edu503/517-5544Barton art director Tom tom.humphrey@reed.eduHumphrey class notes editor Joanne Hossack joanne@reed.edu’82
vice collegepresident,relations Hugh Porter INterim communicationsdirector,& public affairs Aimee Sisco Reed College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts and sciences devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity.
What’s Going On
Catherine expresses frustration over who and what are included in the historical record primarily men, with an emphasis on people of stature and high-stakes con flicts. She does not see herself or people like her reflected in the pages of history, and she believes that much has been left out.
Reed Magazine (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Postmaster:Oregon.
Tracy Drake, director of special collections and archives, in Reed’s rare books room.
Reediana editor Robin Tovey reed.magazine@reed.edu’97
Reed Magazine provides news of interest to the Reed community. 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 MAGAZINE editor Katie Pelletier pelletic@reed.edu503/777-7727’03
‰ www.reed.edu/reed V503/777-7591Portland,3203reed.magazine@reed.edumagazineSEWoodstockBoulevard,Oregon97202olume101,No.2
On Research Since I began reading Reed Magazine (rather than simply recycling it unread), I have read letters from alums praising the education they got at Reed, and I have not been able to relate.
Don’t get me wrong, I gained a lot from my Reed experience, I just didn’t see what good the formal education part of it did for me—until this recent issue focused on research. Then I understood. I realized that since the late ’70s, I’ve been engaged in a research project. That’s when I tossed a challenge to the Mystery. The Mystery has responded with a progression of challenges to me. I, in turn, have used my grow ing sense of the Mystery in my response to these challenges. Something like a relationship has developed. At times it feels like a dance. There is a clear-headed integrity to the process that has Reed’s fingerprints all over it. Thank you.
Martha Holden ’68 Montpelier, Vermont That Storied Day in ’62 The account in the September 2021 “In Memoriam” for Jack Scrivens of the halftime entertainment for the 1962 Columbus Day football game was correct. Those of us who experienced the 1962 Columbus Day storm aren’t likely to forget the day: the football game, halftime show, motorcycle, the garbage can lids, the student bearing a cross, and the singing (lamenting?) students. I know because I was on the football team that year (the only year that I attended Reed), and we Reed play ers enjoyed the spectacle from our sideline. There may have been a similar halftime show in 1959, but the 1962 show definitely occurred. B. Giles Alexandria,LarrabeeVirginia Divestment I’m glad to hear that Reed’s trustees decided to end investments in planet-destroying fossil fuel corporations. Heartwarming as the decision is, it stops short of another important target for divestment, namely, the institutions that finance the capital-intensive activities leading to climate change. Every major US bank continues to fund the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, despite the fact that even the International Energy Agency has stated that we must immediately stop invest ing in new fossil fuel operations to avert cata strophic climate change. In Seattle and elsewhere 350.org paigned to stop the big banks and investment houses from funding the climate destroyers. Reed needs to steer clear of the enablers as well as the fossil fuel companies on the front lines.
Roger Lippman ’69 Seattle, Washington
Enjoyed the articles on Hum 211/212. I think you should print the syllabus in your next issue.
Pick up a replacement at the Reed bookstore this summer! bookstore.reed.edu
It’s on the Syllabus
From the Editor: Great idea. The syllabus is so chock-full of readings, works of art, and more that it wouldn’t fit here. But you can see it in its entirety at /syllabus/index.html.reed.edu/humanities/hum211-212
OldeThat’sHat.
Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed Magazine (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may run only half the length of their pre decessors. 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.
Paul Spitzer ’59 Seattle, Washington
Mailbox
Correction A Reediana brief in the March 2022 issue about The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 by Prof. Kate Bredeson, gave incorrect information, including publisher details. Please stay tuned! Corrected information and more are forthcoming.
Eliot Circular news from campus Amrita Sawhney ’22 and Anjali Reddy ’22 turned their tassels in May at the first fully in-person commencement ceremony since 2019.
The Perfect Person for the Job
Stevie’s childhood experiences make her uniquely suited to explore such a com plex issue. “You have to be able to show you’re the perfect person to do your proj ect, and this is the project for me,” she says. “What others may consider personal bag gage becomes my toolkit for working with and for kids.”
The Thomas J. Watson Foundation is in its 54th year awarding travel fellow ships to graduating seniors from a select group of small liberal arts colleges across the country, including Reed. The presti gious program aims, in the foundation’s words, to help students “develop person al, professional, and cultural opportunities that expand their vision, test and devel op their potential, and build their confi dence and perspective to be more humane and effective leaders with a world view.”
—ROMEL HERNANDEZ labarrelaurenbyspreadthisonphotos 5Reed Magazine June 2022
“What people misunderstand about youth involved in criminal activity is that there’s a sense of community that comes out of being involved in things like gangs,” she says. “That’s why only talking about ‘rehabilitating at-risk kids’ is very much displacing the underlying issue that there aren’t enough intervention and support systems to help communities.”
At fifteen Stevie Hoesel ’22 had reached a crossroads in her young life. She grew up shuttling back and forth between liv ing with her single mother in her native Taiwan and staying with family and friends in the United States and Canada. After dropping out of school to support her family, she says, she got mixed up in criminalized activities. That’s when she made a conscious choice to change course, securing a schol arship to attend a private boarding school in California and, after excelling academi cally and earning her high school diploma, going on to study at Reed. This spring, Stevie, now a senior anthro pology major was one of 42 students nationwide selected as a 2022 Watson Fellow, earning an all-expenses-paid year of international travel to pursue a mean ingful personal project. She will investi gate how diverse communities and social institutions around the world make policies and practices related to incarceration and its alternatives, such as restorative justice. As someone who can’t help won dering how her journey might have turned out if she hadn’t gotten serious about school, Stevie hit on the perfect topic for her Watson—studying crim inal intervention systems for youth in New Zealand, Australia, Norway, and the Netherlands. She will spend a year investigating how diverse communities and social institutions around the world make policies and practices related to incarceration and its alternatives, such as restorative justice.
SEEING THE LIGHT: The renovated sports center will be light-filled and devoted to wellness.
As for the gyms, the new iterations of Gym I and Gym II will bring many updates. The basketball court will have run-off space and windows placed in a sawtooth configuration will let in more daylight without the blinding effects of direct lights from outdoors. Gym Among other changes, the remodel to the east wing of the library will replace the mansard roof.
Eliot Circular From the Rubble Sports Center renovation rises on the horizon. In mid-February 2021, Portland was hit by a powerful winter storm that dumped six inch es of snow and ice throughout the metro area. The storm felled trees, caused power loss es, and demolished several buildings in the Portland area—including the roof over Gym I and Gym II in Reed’s Watzek Sports Center. Thanks to the building’s alarm system and quick staff response, no one was hurt, but both gyms were a complete loss. Since then, the area has been closed off. But the gyms will be rebuilt, and the areas that once housed kickboxing, fencing, juggling, the infamous alumni vs. student basketball games, and other activities will be ready for action soon. Plans are close to being finalized, and reconstruction is expected to commence in early spring of next year. The renovation will bring updates to the entire sports center. Built in 1965, the Watzek Sports Center replaced the original Gothic Tudor–style gym that had been constructed in 1913. It has seen several updates including replacement of the squash courts in honor of Jack Scrivens [physical education 1961–99] (with donations by alumni) and a major ren ovation to add an outdoor education center, with support from Reed Trustee Tim Boyle This renovation will bring a modest change in square footage—about 1,000 square feet— but will turn the space into a more welcoming and inclusive community center.
“The concept is that the sports center is not merely a place for fitness, but a wellness cen ter,” says Steve Yeadon, director of facilities operations. Conceptually, the design of the building will take a note from the Performing Arts Building. “It will be more open,” he says. “You’ll be able to see into spaces so that the rooms feel integrated.” A large eastern-facing window in the new multiuse gym will look out onto a courtyard that can be used for outdoor yoga or tai chi classes. The south building entrance adjacent to the courtyard will be more inviting, and the check-in and equipment rental area will move from the Botsford Drive entrance to the remodeled south entrance vestibule. The hall way running through the center of the building will add an area for lounging and table tennis. Many changes will make the sports cen ter more includsive and ADA accessible; one notable improvement is that its square foot age will be dispersed across three floors rath er than four. Locker rooms will be remodeled to create more privacy, and an all-user lock er room will be added that, like the women’s and men’s locker rooms, will have pool access.
6 Reed Magazine june 2022
CoordinatorSustainabilityRachelWillis has been named Reed’s first sustainability coordi nator. Willis will help develop and support sustainability initiatives on campus, including tracking and analyzing energy, water, and car bonTheusage.creation of this new staff position was made possible by a group of Reed trustees and a Reed parent who stepped up to ensure the financial stability of the posi tion by helping endow it.
A team of three Reedies, Robin Hart ’23, Maxwell VanLandSchoot ’22, and Sung Bum “Simon” Ahn ’23 won first place in the national Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition.Theirwinwas announced in the last few months, but the origin of the project goes back a bit farther— starting with Robin’s internship with Christie Hedman ’80, executive director at the Washington Defender Association (WDA), an organization dedicated to public defense reform. Later, when Prof. Jonathan Wells [math] assigned a team proj ect in his fall semester Statistical Learning course, Robin remem bered a data set they’d encountered at the WDA, and these data became the basis of the team’s project. The team quickly identified that the Washington State Office of Public Defense’s funding model had issues. The group analyzed it and then cre ated a new and better model for equitably providing funds for pub lic defense in Washington. They were blown away by their win. They hope it shows that statis tics can be a tool to fight for equity and justice, and that though Reed’s statistics department is small, it’s mighty. —JOSH BYRON COX ’18 II will be outfitted with additional storage space for the many activities hosted in this multipurpose space. Despite a volatile market for construc tion materials, Yeadon is confident that the sports center renovation will be complete by the fall of 2024. The college has devel oped a funding plan for the project. With escalating prices, philanthropic support is welcomed and will allow us to include all aspects of the project’s design.
Big Win forMath Students
Library Renovation Underway
The library renovation, which was post poned due to the pandemic, is underway. Crews began work in December 2021, com pleting some of the loud hammering and sawing over winter break. The renovation will update the south wing of the library, which was added in 1964. A seismic upgrade will reinforce the masonry, windows will be replaced, and the heating and air-conditioning system will be repaired. An important aspect of the project is to augment space support ing growing programs in math, computer science, and statsitics. The plan includes additional classroom and office space for these programs and an innovative connec tion to existing space occupied by these departments.Therewill also be additional disabili ty services, such as listening stations and spaces for students to go for quiet testing areas, and a small increase in the number of thesis desks. The distinctive midcentury architec ture of the south wing will be preserved. Alterations that will be notable from the exterior will be limited to the mansard roof, which will be replaced with a taller struc ture with dormer windows.
The project is expected to wrap up in December 2022.
7Reed Magazine June 2022
EDITED BY KATIE RAMSEY ’04
AND CARRIE SAMUELS Advocates of the Griffin
Around the Globe
Advancing Reed: September 23–25, 2022
We are delighted to let you know that we have landed on a date for this fall’s Forum for Advancing Reed (FAR). FAR is Reed’s official volunteer weekend, and our office works closely with vol unteers who serve Reed in a variety of ways—from creating new and exciting opportunities for alumni to connect, to mobilizing the community around fun draising campaigns. We are planning for an in-person weekend and look forward to seeing you there.
DimiTalen News of the Alumni Association • Connecting
You’re the best, Reedies. Our alumni do it all. From sharing recipes with fellow Reedies, to hosting gatherings with fellow physics professionals (and enthu siasts), to reimagining the Reed campus in Minecraft—we can’t think of a more exciting community to be a part of.
Reedies offer a unique perspective to every conceivable endeavor and thrive every where. Whether it be at Reunions or Reed on the Road, you can count on Reedies for quali ty conversations and an all-around good time. Reed has an inspiring group of commit ted alumni volunteers whose dedication to the college and extraordinary contributions of time, expertise, and passion enable us to provide an unparalleled education. Alumni volunteers spend their valuable time orga nizing events, mentoring current students, and investing in the future through initia tives such as Alumni Fundraising for Reed. Reed alumni are generous with their time and dollars. We rely on our community of philanthropic alumni to make gifts to the college, year after year. We see the impact of your contributions from the library to the canyon, and everywhere in between. The world just wouldn’t be the same with out Reedies. You’re simply the best.
Westwind Weekend: October 14–16, 2022
Alumni Xenia 2022 finishes strong Reedies are renowned for their fierce intellect and tenacity, but also for their commitment to changing the world. The alumni board’s Alumni Xenia 2022 ini tiative proved that once again. Over 400 alumni signed up this year to tell us the hows and whys of the good works they are up to in their communities. From donating blood, to serving as hospice volunteers, to distributing food to local community fridges, Reedies are filling the world with hope. Visit alumni.reed. edu to see and learn more about some of this year’s participants. Westwind Weekend on the Oregon coast is October 14–16. Reed Alumni
8 Reed Magazine june 2022
From the early ’60s through the early ’90s, students at Reed spent a weekend in the fall enjoying surf, sand, a talent show, green eggs and ham, and the unique setting that is Westwind on the Oregon coast. Alumni revived the tradition in 2002 with a familyfriendly approach. Learn more about this annual weekend trip at alumni.reed.edu /westwind. Don’t forget to make your gift again this year! Every year, Reed relies on the generosity of our alumni community to offer a world-class education. June 30, 2022, is the last day to have your gift counted for this fiscal year. Reedies who make a gift three or more fiscal years in a row are eligible to join the Loyal Owl Society. You can specifically ded icate your gift to financial aid, the library, wherever it is most needed, and more. Visit reed.edu/givenow to make your gift today. If you’d like to help encourage other alumni to make their gifts before the fis cal year ends, consider joining the honor able legion of Alumni Fundraising for Reed volunteers. You can also help us spread the word on social media. Email alumni@reed. edu to sign up.
The alumni board and the Alumni Programs and Annual Fund office invite nominations for service on the board. The nominations committee seeks alum ni who are demonstrated leaders with a capacity for creativity, dedication, and resourcefulness that can help further the goals of one of the board’s three com mittees: Committee for Young Alumni, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and Reed Career Alliance. Reed’s alumni board is a global service board dedicated to the mission of creating the best possible alumni experience through the work of its committees. The alumni board recruits for and oversees its working committees, which carry out programs and initiatives to benefit the alumni community. If you are interested in nominating yourself or someone you know, please scan the QR code to access the nomination
Consider a gift to Reed in your estate plans to honor your past and provide for Reed’s future.
Diversity and Inclusion Committee holds event for BIPOC students
“TREE PLANTING IS ALWAYS A WAGERENTERPRISEUTOPIAN...AONAFUTURETHEPLANTERDOESN'TNECESSARILYEXPECTTOWITNESS.”
Nominate yourself or someone you know for the Alumni Board!
The Diversity and Inclusion Committee held a luncheon and panel discussion for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students in January. The event was a huge success, with 40 attendees enjoying lunch from local BIPOC-owned restaurant Everybody Eats PDX and a dis cussion with BIPOC alumni about how they navigated leaving the “Reed bubble.” Many thanks to alumni board president alea adigweme ’06, who moderated the panel, and to Carmen García Durazo ’11, Evan Hayashi ’02 , and Paapa hMen sa ’15 for serving as panelists. Reed’s Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) was a pivotal partner in helping shape the event and get the word out to stu dents. The DIC looks forward to collaborating with the MRC on more events for students in the future.
If you’ve already made a gift to Reed in your will or trust, please let us know so we may thank you and welcome you into the Eliot Society. Contact Kathy Saitas to learn more about including Reed in your legacy reed.edu/legacyplanninggiftplanning@reed.edu503-777-7573planning:
JulyNominationsform.areduebySaturday,16,2022.
MICHAEL POLLAN, SECOND NATURE: A GARDENER'S EDUCATION
The Eliot Society celebrates donors who make a gift to Reed in their estate or who establish a life income gift to benefit Reed. This tradition of generosity reaches back to Reed's roots—the college itself was established through a bequest from the estates of Simeon and Amanda Reed in 1908. The society is named for Thomas Lamb Eliot, who first suggested to Simeon and Amanda Reed that they use their financial resources to found an institution of learning in Portland.
The class of 2021 has begun to translate their rigorously intellectual Reed education into action, and they are now pursuing their individual and collective purposes in the world. More than 83 percent of the class of 2021* found their first destination in the workforce or continuing education within six months of Thegraduation.scholars who graduate from Reed are formidable thinkers capable of solving the most intellectually difficult problems facing the world today. Reedies are known for their immense capacity to tackle important humanistic, social, scientific, commercial, technical, and civic challenges. And tackle they have, graduating from Reed to start careers as educators, artists, designers, performers, research analysts, lab technicians, software engineers, financial analysts, computer scientists, social scientists, and so much more. Reed alumni contribute to meaningful change in the communities and industries they serve. Reed’s global network of alumni, parents, and friends has been one of the college’s greatest resources, ensuring the success of each graduating class. Members of this extended community host job shadows, hire interns, fund career and research experiences, and share their expertise. These invaluable connections are giving the class of 2021 a strong foothold in their career communities, setting the stage for them to offer similar connections to future generations of PleaseReedies.join me in celebrating and supporting the ongoing success of the class of 2021.
ALICE HARRA Associate Dean of Students and Director of Center for Life Beyond Reed
*Data and outcomes represent 245 members (76 percent) of the class of 2021 by survey and secondary sources and are rounded to the nearest whole percent.
It has been a year since the Reed College class of 2021 graduated, and their persistence, resilience, and initiative in the midst of the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, injustice, and climate change are heartening and inspiring.
GRADUATING BOLD, CLEAR THINKERS SINCE 1915
research University
| computer science Dartmouth | nuclear
| research
Class of 2021—Beyond Reed EDUCATION BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP TECH, ENGINEERING,HEALTHOPERATIONSOTHERRESEARCHCARE NONPROFIT, SOCIAL SERVICES LAW, POLICY, GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS, DESIGN, SUSTAINABILITYMEDIA CULTURE, ARTS, PERFORMANCE 24%14%11%10%9%9%6%6%5%3%3% INDUSTRY GRADUATEEMPLOYMENTOUTCOMESSCHOOLSAND NATIONAL FELLOWSHIPS Amazon | Cloud support Google | software engineer Neoto Robotics | Python engineer PerCapita Group | analyst Parametric | portfolio analyst The Cadmus Group | research Character Lab | research Senator Jeff Merkley | political organizing Portland Water Bureau | lab tech US Department of Defense | nuclear reactor tech
landed
innovative
| biologist technician CreativeX | web engineer Oregon
Portland | researcher
Columbia |
engineering UC
| architecture
| Scandinavian studies Portland
|
University | geography Rutgers | food science Fulbright U.S. Student Program Watson NationalFoundationScienceFoundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
The Veterans Association (VA)
University
Examples
Twenty-three percent of graduates continued their education, starting doctorates and masters programs at elite institutions. Examples include the following: education of Chicago social sciences chemistry and computer Berkeley engineering operations of Oregon UCLA cell biology of Aberdeen State
Wyoming
Six out of ten graduates jobs with companies and institutions. include the following: intelligence Grow Portland garden educator Embassy of France language assistant Game & Fish Social Learning Center
Harvard |
Microsoft | software engineer Intel | artificial
| English
Duke | electrical
| industrial
and
|
University
Bounded on three sides by the Himalayas, the small country of Bhutan—like much of the region—is a place where people can pursue their religious practice in solitude. Vajrayana Buddhism, practiced by more than three quarters of the population of Bhutan, is said to have been brought to the country in the eighth century by Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche). The religion spread with out annihilating the native animism, in which deities or spirits were believed to inhabit everything from rocks and moun tain crags to local streams. It was understood that the myriad local deities recognized the preeminence of Buddhism and were in ser vice to its Operatingtenets.outside the traditional, maledominated power structures of Buddhism, female divine messengers or delog act as intermediaries between the spirit and tem poral worlds. The delog is a woman who dies, visits the hell realm, and returns to life bringing back messages from Yama, the Lord of the Dead. She is able to die many times in her lifetime, each time bringing back new information, messages, and instruc tions, including advice for living ethically and means to help dead relatives and loved ones gain release from the realm of hells.
Stephanie and Françoise teamed up to write a book about these women called Divine Messengers (Shambhala Publications, 2021).
It was at Reed that Stephanie got a taste for research and writing. Although she is well traveled now, when she set off from Massachusetts for Reed, she had never been west of New York State. At the time, she says, the college was made up of “a lot of free think ers who were not necessarily fitting into the box, and that was me. Reed was very liberal socially, very stringent academically, and that was a good combination for me.” Her plan was to major in anthropology, but she was disappointed with her first anthro class and then didn’t find what she was looking for in philosophy, her second choice. She ended up majoring in religion. It seemed to serve as a kind of crossroads between anthropology and philosophy, presenting the things she want ed to think about in the way she wanted to think about them. She wrote her thesis, “All My Relations: Theology of a Natural Order in the Work of Mary Daly and Alfred North Whitehead,” advised by Prof. John Kenney [religion 1980–95].
12 Reed Magazine june 2022
BY RANDALL S. BARTON
Stephanie Guyer-Stevens ’86 documents the unique power of female shamans in Bhutan.
For nearly two decades, Stephanie GuyerStevens ’86 has been telling the stories of women who find their power on the margins of society. In 2003, she began producing a series of radio documentaries called Outer Voices, profiling women leaders from remote parts of the world who innovate unique solu tions to community problems. Near the end of 2010, she traveled to Bhutan scouting for stories and met Françoise Pommaret, who was doing anthropological work and had written her PhD dissertation on a particu lar kind of female spiritual leader in west ern Bhutan known as a delog. She suggested these women—who served their commu nities in a very unique way—might be a subject for Stephanie to pursue because the culture of delog seemed to be dying out.
MARGINAL POWERS AND FROMMESSAGESTHEDIVINE
“By writing my thesis,” she says, “I learned I could write something that was long, not as long as this book, but it was like, ‘I can do that.’ The whole process of how to research I credit to Reed, totally 100%.” After college, she got a job with a magazine in New York City and then became involved in the nonprofit world, continuing to do jour nalism on the side. She helped establish and
DorjiChenchobyphoto 13Reed Magazine June 2022
Some of the women who devote their lives to bringing divine messages to their local com munities do not consider themselves delog. The distinction, Stephanie explains, is that a delog commonly has a shamanic experience. This means that they have some Stephanie Guyer-Stevens ’86 (left) partnered with Françoise Pommaret to document the role of western Bhutan’s female divine messengers in the Buddhist culture.
became executive director of an organization that focused on self-help care for women and children. As a result, she was invited to a con ference of women leaders from around the world, which set her trajectory. She was living in Hawaii after having her first child, working on an organic farm she owned with her husband, when a friend who worked for NPR came for a visit. Stephanie shared her idea that stories about these women leaders would make a great book. “I don’t know anything about writing books,” her friend said, “but I think it would make greatStephanieradio.” put together a team and in 2003 began creating stories for radio under the umbrella Outer Voices. “I’m a documen tary maker,” she says, “For me, it’s always been a crossover between community activ ism and journalism. I’ve always looked at how we can use the media to make change.” After agreeing to partner on a book, Stephanie and Françoise hired a guide and translator to help them connect with divine messengers. Summarizing the mission, Stephanie says, “Our job was to hear them out; to hear about their lives and understand what their world was; see what their roles were in the community; and to see how that was playing out for them. It was very similar to the kind of work I’d been doing previous to that.”
experience where they die to this life and then return to life having learned some thing, seen something, experienced some thing that completely transforms them. Their experience is that they die and they travel through the Tibetan hells, of which there are 18, guided by the Lord of the Dead, who shows them all of the terrible things that befall people in hells and also points out individuals who are suffering—some of whom the delog knows or are relatives of people in her community. When she returns, the delog does two things: she teaches about Buddhism and also provides a side door out for the people who are in the hells. She will tell relatives what they can do on behalf of the people in their lives who are stuck in the world inhabited by these divine messengers may be difficult for Westerners to understand. Stephanie postu lates that it is also likely that as people leave Bhutan’s agrarian society to go to school, they may not retain the capacity to embrace and accept such experiences. In any case, she adds, “the actual delog experience is dimin ishing, but in its place, another version is starting to crop up in spades.”
Does the delog actually die, or is this experience metaphorical? “What I’ve learned from Françoise is that it is up to them to decipher that,” Stephanie answers.
The myriad deities that the divine mes sengers work with tend to be specific to a geographical area. Stephanie describes them as lower deities in the hierarchy of the divine. “It’s like community organizing versus national politics because they’re dial ing into a local area and can be accessed for the specific needs of that area.” The stories the divine messengers tell are frequently connected to the local, nat ural surroundings, which gives the stories resonance and helps people relate to them. In Tantric Buddhism, it is understood that absolutely everything is interconnected.
ARE
Yama, Lord of the Dead, clutching a mandala depicting the Wheel of Life, which symbolizes the recurring cycle of lives.
Divine messengers might bring messages from the Lord of the Dead. But they also work with local deities to address the needs of the community.
45157ino.LibraryWellcomeofcourtesypaintingGouache ’86Guyer-StevensStephaniebyphoto 15Reed Magazine June 2022
“In quantum physics, we know that to be true,” Stephanie says. “Move your finger through space and that pushes atoms in the air; everything is interconnected. The Buddhist philosophy—which I would say more than their religion—is based on this premise that everything you do has a relationship.
Thehells.nonlinear
“She was raised a true-blue Irish Catholic,” Stephanie says, “and over time was betrayed one step at a time by the church until she found herself a complete outlier and real ized that the church didn’t speak at all to a woman’s experience. She felt that this expe rience of the delog was a parallel one and was glad that these women were in this position; that they were able to speak about what it is to be a spiritual person but have to play that spirituality out only in the margins. I think that’s a universal theme.”
“You can express that strictly in the tac tile sense. But you can express it as, ‘If I am a being, so is a rock. It’s just that its mole cules move more slowly.’ How you relate to a rock in such a way as to respect the inter dependence can turn into ‘I honor that rock. I honor what that rock does. I honor the fact that that rock doesn’t move. I honor the fact that in its immobility that rock is kind of a Consideringprotector.’”that Divine Messengers is a niche book, it’s been well received. “There are some larger themes that speak to a lot of people,” Stephanie says. A friend who was raised in a very Irish Catholic family gave the book to her 88-year-old mother.
“ THEY SAY THEY DIE. WE TAKE THEM AT THEIR WORD. THEY REALLY DYING? SOMEONE ELSE FIGURE THAT OUT. NOT OUR JOB TO FIGURE THAT OUT.”
LET
“They say they die. We take them at their word. Are they really dying? Let someone else figure that out. It’s not our job to fig ure that Contrastingout.” the delog with an American New Age channeler or psychic, Stephanie says, “The delog is engaging with the Lord of the Dead and all of his minions. Divine messengers have a full interaction with dei ties and with the Buddhist realm of experi ence and explanation about life. It’s different from oracles, who transmit information by way of divine processes, but basically are transmitters.Stephanie says, “in Bhutan, and other places I’ve been, people are really comfort able moving into various rooms of their real ity. There’s no limitation or special notation when you’re inhabiting what we would see as a myth world. The place we inhabit is strict ly Cartesian—rug, floor, bed, chair. There’s no break really. That is what I was trying to remark on. The limitation we have is so great by not having that.” Stephanie and Françoise witnessed a medium going into a trance state who was speaking in different voices and in obvious physical discomfort. “We could tell this was hard on her. For the shamans I’ve met, this isn’t something where they go, ‘Yay, I get to be a shaman now.’ It’s more like, ‘This sucks. I go through a huge amount of physical pain. I don’t have any real control over this pro cess. It’s just something I have more con trol over now that I understand what it is and can name it.’ It’s often accompanied by a lot of mental anguish.”
IT’S
BY BRANDON ZERO
Tracy Drake leads archivists to democratize
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memory
WHO GETS TO REMEMBERED?BE
Picture a timeline of Reed events in all their chronological sprawl, from the college’s founding to the present. You might imagine both official moments—like papers from the president’s office showing how curricu lar strife among the faculty was resolved— and informal events—like a particularly epic brawl for the Doyle Owl—par for the course, as a visit to Reed’s special collections will corroborate.Nowchange the aperture, focusing on events and narratives of particular import to students of color. Traditional sources of Reed knowledge reveal a few pictures of students from across the years: the 1960s student-led protest for a Black studies pro gram, South African apartheid divestiture occupations and actions. These were sem inal events in the college’s life, no doubt. But what of students, staff, and faculty living through periods without such tumult? What comprises the historical record from the lives of Asian students in the ’70s or Indigenous scholars from Reed’s founding to date?
VOICES FILL THE GAP
That’s why Drake is widening the lens on what contributes to Reed College’s narra tive. An inclusive college history requires his torical vignettes, photos, and observations from more than official documents and from more points of view. A full institutional his tory includes Reed’s unofficial moments and culture alongside the official ones.
Learning from these lessons, as Reed’s archi vist, Drake sees gaps worth filling.
Drake’s own search for democratically sourced narratives has been refined through her work with Chicago-based archival group the Blackivists, where she’s helped bring obscured stories to life. The group collect ed testimonies from members of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to curate an oral history that stands in contrast to stories heretofore told only by police sur veillance reports and government pro nouncements. That work is archival, but in adding a viewpoint left unexpressed, it is alsoHeractivist.eyefor scenes worth adding to the historical montage is key. Her practices are inspired by historian Ashley Farmer, whose work profiling Black reparations activists is complicated by a lack of written records.
WHO GETS TO REMEMBERED?BE
The college’s newest oral history project also promises work that is archival and activ ist. The special collections librarian has depu tized Monique Queen, Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) Black diasporic events coor dinator and archive student staffer, to help interview and compile audio from today’s diverse students about their experiences. The MRC oral history project found fertile ground.
Farmer’s political subjects were prolific, but their class and race helped deem their records not important enough to preserve.
In February, staff and students weighed in on the subjects they wanted to discuss, and in April they began recording audio in groups of five or more people.
Some conversations revolved around cir cumstances that might otherwise escape a grand historical narrative of the college: the feeling of ease students said they felt when entering spaces like the MRC or the
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“Not everything is contentious. I fully believe in documenting joy as well. As insti tutions, we get asked when there’s drama and tragedy, ‘Help us contextualize this,’” Drake says. “But also, people live full lives and experience joy and trauma, and I find it problematic that—this is one thing that I want to change—every time we tell the story of Black students at Reed, we do so via the Black studies program.”
Tracy Drake, Reed’s director of special col lections and archives, and Monique Queen ’22, Reed student and psychology major, were searching through archive after archive with no luck. Posters, official administrative papers, Quest articles, pamphlets. In a building storied for its repositories of knowledge relevant and esoteric, they were inundated with important dates, names, and figures from Reed’s past. But the Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library wouldn’t deliver what Drake and Queen were seeking: pictures of students of color. The elusive photographs raised an impor tant question: How do institutions like Reed record and construct their histories? What material makes the cut? Will our experiences as individuals passing through these insti tutions be “Dependingincluded?upon who facilitates or holds the archives, they have different pur poses,” explains Drake. “If we only let insti tutions tell the story, we only get one side of what happened, and we want to get as many perspectives as possible. It’s up to the researcher to decide what’s true.”
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predecessor theme dorms that allowed stu dents of color to decompress. These were places to escape the nonstop rigors of aca demic expectations and laugh in community.
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“I’ll say this, everyone emphasized how communal and family-like these spaces on campus and the people in these spaces feel,” Queen summarizes. “[They’re] often referred to as a second home or a living room—‘My second kitchen’—which is really nice.”
Monique Queen ’22 passes by shelves that hold student theses and artist books housed in Reed’s special collections in the Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library.
The camaraderie forged in the nowdefunct Equity and Social Change Program and the Students of Color Union were com mon touchstones in the video-recorded group student session. “I think in this instance, we captured these very rich conversations,” Drake says. One person would add a memory, to which another would add a slightly different inter pretation. “We could’ve gone on for anoth er twoHowhours.”hasthe student center’s event programming shaped life for students of color? And how would students reimagine the campus and world they’d like to see? Administrators gave their take in one-onone sessions with Queen following the group student interviews. For the sake of students’ privacy and consent, the full depth of those conver sations is left to future explorers of the archives. Oral history project participants get a final say on which parts of their record ings will survive a final transcription, so the audio remains under wraps until the last consent forms roll in.
Campigli wouldn’t disclose whether their own initial shock and confusion that fate ful O-week day was shared by oral history interviewees, but the recordings will speak for themselves once compiled. And that’s really the point, isn’t it? That the experiences of student, faculty, and staff leaders and observers will live side by side as a sort of aural point and coun terpoint in a people’s history that gives those without institutional bona fides a shot at enduring memory.
From the special collections: A 1969 broadside announcing a picket line and public rally led by Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers.
But the curious and the patient can visit the archives over the next year for answers, or at least fragments of debates, that might have otherwise been consigned to the com mon rooms of yesteryear. Expect the final version to clear a high bar. Students got to workshop their histori cal craft alongside experienced practitioners from the Blackivists, members of which vis ited campus in April to give a panel discus sion and advice to the aspiring collectors. Conversations hinged on the importance of selection, among other topics. “There’s a lot of power in archival work,” says Drake. “I get to choose materials, what gets remembered later, control the narrative about which items get saved in perpetuity. That’s a really important role in our society; I’m not sure everyone understands that role, but I understand that power.”
The work continues. Both the MRC and RAR oral history projects are ongoing. Referrals from students already interviewed continue to turn up new candidates to speak with. “There’s always a group of new stu dents coming in, so always a new collection of stories,” Drake notes.
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A PEOPLE’S HISTORY
Another subject ripe for such kaleidoscopic treatment is the Reedies Against Racism protests that roiled campus from 2016 onward. The class-disrupting demonstra tions, in particular, were well document ed, but Drake noticed that the preserved material only told part of the story. Drake commissioned an oral history project to tackle faculty, staff, and student reactions to get the rest. “It’s about creating counternarratives that may not exist inside the institution,” Drake explains. “RAR documents are based on newspapers, presidential papers from the time, and some official documents, but we didn’t get the stories of students on the ground, what faculty and staff felt. It’s Inimportant.”thisway, the documented oral histo ries give insight into the unofficial culture at Reed, a history that is often only implicit in collected ephemera. Nick Campigli ’21 was a freshman in the second year of the protests, and theirs was one of the last classes to experience the more Western-centric Hum 110 course. Now it’s their job to document the campaign that led to its demise. “[Hum 110] dominated the conversation in the friend groups I was in,” says Campigli, now working as a library staff member on campus. “[My experience] gave me perspec tive on the kinds of questions I wanted to ask when I was giving the interviews.” On Campigli’s questionnaire? Respon dents’ reactions to a speech at the end of orientation week by a student protester in Kaul, who had just met with then president John Kroger about the Western-centric humanities course. For some first-year stu dents still learning the quickest route to their dorm rooms, the testimonials from other stu dents were powerful and confusing. Staff and students, whether they attend ed the demonstrations or not, had voices that are important to include. Contemporaries didn’t just see demonstrators holding plac ards; they saw them compiling research to buttress claims and demands, spending hours studying for class and hours more spent lobbying administrators—things a camera crew’s one-hour tour of campus might“Formiss.us, the protest movement taught us a lot of what to expect from [the] admin istration, what the relationship between it and the student body was like,” Campigli says of his classmates. “It affected our inter ests and the trajectory of how we thought about politics going forward.” Oral history participants include con temporaneous student activists, Quest jour nalists, and student body representatives. At eleven interviews into the project, archi vists anticipate making a few more audio recordings before winding down. The final version will then take time to transcribe.
“Giving the power to the people is one of the most important parts archivists have to combat [one-dimensional] institutional narratives,” Drake explains.
Below: Nick Campigli ’21 with a 16th century Spanish antiphonary.
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Archivist Tracy Drake looks through boxes of archival material that tell the history of Reed College.
Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies
Farview Phyllis Gerstenfeld ’88 is a university pro fessor who enjoys a side gig as an author that consists largely but not entirely of gay romance, under the pen name Kim Fielding. Farview, her most recent book, won the BookLife 2021 Prize for Fiction. Her work has been described as “eclectic, spanning genres such as contempo rary, fantasy, paranormal, and histori cal,” and her tales are set in alternate worlds ranging from 15th-century Bosnia to modern-day Oregon. In Farview, the main character flees the smog-bound city for a quiet village where he makes new friends and dis covers surprising secrets about his family history thanks to some seaside magic. (Tin Box Press, 2021)
An American Singing Heritage: Songs from the British-Irish-American Oral Tradition as Recorded in the Early Twentieth Century Norm Cohen ’58 brings together tran scriptions of folk songs and ballads in the British-Irish-American oral tradition, including folk songs that frequently occurred in Roud’s Folk Song Index and catalogues of commercial early country (or “hillbilly”) recordings. Selections by Cohen and his two coeditors attempt to avoid the biases of previous collections and provide a fresh group of examples sourced from recordings of traditional musicians from the 1920s through the early 1940s. (A-R Editions, 2021)
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Storm Rising Author and screenwriter Chris Hauty ’78 has his name on a new hardcover title, Storm Rising, that made land fall last month. This speculative political thriller, the third in a series, probes a terrifying subculture of white supremacy within the U.S. mili tary and uncovers an expansive con spiracy to bring about the secession of several states. Also, he recently com pleted a novella, Insurrection Day, in which the protagonist in the same fran chise series, Hayley Chill, is caught up in a riot at the U.S. Capitol. This series includes Deep State, his debut novel, which was selected as an editor’s choice by the New York Times Book Review, and Savage Road, published last year. Hauty promises that each of the Hayley Chill thrillers can be read as part of the series or as a standalone. (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
A new book by Shannon Lee Dawdy ’88 , professor of anthropology and social sciences at the University of Chicago, has been called “a mes merizing trip across America to inves tigate the changing face of death in contemporary life.” Her research has long focused on death, disaster, sen suality, and histories of colonialism and capitalism. “Also, pirates,” according to her academic bio. This project takes the form of both a documentary film and a book, featuring images by cin ematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to the ways that Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and con nection across generations. (Princeton University Press, 2021) Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory Colette Brooks ’74 has written her third book of creative nonfiction, described as a “poetic and inventive blend of his tory, memoir, and visual essay.” Through meticulously researched retellings of individual stories of violence, misfortune, chaos, and persistence—from the first mass shooting in America to assasina tions and nuclear bombs—she explores how some of the more forgotten aspects of recent American experiences explain our challenging and often puzzling pres ent. (Counterpoint Press, 2022)
American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century
Germans Defying Hitler: The Many Faces of Resistance In a chilling new book, Peter Clark ’63 high lights everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule. He provides gripping descriptions of their resistance to the Nazi regime and shows that such opposition extended far beyond the well-known examples of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Particular attention is given to the opposition to Hitler by working-class Social Democrats and Communists. (Independently published, 2022)
Reediana Books. Music. Film. Send us your work! EDITED BY ROBIN TOVEY ’97 Email reed.magazine@reed.edu
In his latest book, Grant W. Smith ’64, profes sor emeritus at Eastern Washington University, presents a comprehen sive study of names in Shakespeare’s four teen comedies. He describes the literary use of names as creative choices that show the indebt edness of authors to previous literature, as well as their imaginative descriptions (etymologically and phonologically) of memorable character types and their references to cultural phenomena. “With extensive experience in literary onomas tics, onomastic theory, and semiotics, Smith crowns with this volume his long standing interest in anthroponymic anal ysis and Shakespeare’s plays.” (Vernon Press, 2021)
Para vivir con salud: Leyendo la salud y la literatura Jill Kuhnheim ’79, visit ing professor in Hispanic studies at Brown University, recently developed open-educationalanresourcewithacolleagueforpeople interested in teaching literature and film in Spanish with a health humanities focus. Considered the first textbook to introduce literary and textual analysis of Hispanic literature through the lens of health, illness, and medicine, it pres ents voices and experiences, including European, Creole, Indigenous, mestizo, Afro-Hispanic, Latinx, and Jewish per spectives. This book aims to meet the needs of the fast-growing numbers of Spanish majors and minors who are preparing for careers in health care with a focus on engaging Hispanic com munities. (Pressbooks)
Old Music for New People
Since retiring after 30 years of planningenvironmentalandactivism, David Biddle ’80 has published a number of short stories and essays in literary jour nals and online. His first novel, Old Music for New People, is a coming-of-age story that considers gender identity, baseball, and myster ies of the cosmos. He purports that “it is hilarious that a 1976 freshman would publish their first novel 45 years later.” On the contrary, we think that an anthro pology major would know best how human behavior (and talent) evolves over time! (The Story Plant, 2021)
“Choosing a college should be approached as an exercise of self-discovery.” —Colin S. Diver in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece
The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas Gal Beckerman ’98, senior editor at the Atlantic, has written a new book on the power of historically effective approaches to activism. His unique combination of scholarship and report ing offers a provocative, incisive look at the formation of social movements— from the 1600s to the present day—and how current technology is undermining them. Or, as he says himself, “A bullhorn is a wonderful tool for a movement to use, but it can’t build a movement.” His previous book, When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry , was highly regarded, and Beckerman was inter viewed about it by this magazine in 2011. (Crown, 2022).
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Cultural anthropologist Anita Hannig ’04 examines assisted dying in the U.S. with an intimate, on-theground perspective of what it means to go through an assisted death medically, legally, culturally, and emotionally. Drawing on five years of research on the front lines of assisted dying, including attending some assisted deaths herself, Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives and illumi nates the complexities of a single issue through a range of vivid characters. She is associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, where she teach es classes on medicine, religion, and death and dying. In recent years, she has emerged as a leading voice on death literacy in America, giving inter views to the Washington Post, USA Today , and the Boston Globe (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2022)
In a new book, President Emeritus Colin Diver lays out his provocative argument that the college rank ings industry misleads its consumers, undermines aca demic values, and perpetuates social inequality. “For all those disappointed college applicants whose hopes were pinned on getting into a school highly ranked by U.S. News & World Report or some similar publication,” he says in a recent op-ed, “this is your chance to be lib erated from the tyranny of college rankings.”
The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America
In Breaking Ranks, he decries the methodologies that serve to impose a single formulaic template on hundreds of diverse institutions. He even proposed a warning label for the process: “Caution: These rank ings are based on unaudited, unverified data, selfreported by the schools being ranked. Their use may be hazardous to your academic health.” And then Diver proposes an antidote to the standardized hierarchies that threaten the institutional diversity, intellectu al rigor, and access to American higher education: explaining what is most useful and important in evaluating colleges, he offers both applicants and educators a guide to pursuing their highest academ ic goals, freed from the siren song of the “best-col lege” illusion. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022)
Comeuppance Served Cold Emily Goldman ’13 , assistant editor at Tor. com acquiredPublishing,andedited Comeuppance Served Cold, a historical fan tasy novella by Marion Deeds. The book received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and it has been called “a fierce magical heist tale.” (Tor. com Publishing, 2022)
Breaking Ranks: How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What to Do about It
Orcs in Space
Former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Diver came to Reed during a challenging time for small colleges. During his tenure (2002–12), the country experienced the worst economic down turn since the Great Depression, and a national focus on enhancing vocational training and technology -based learning was contesting the very foundations of a liberal arts education. Diver’s insistence that Reed stay true to its educational mission strengthened the college on many fronts.
Like Other Girls Britta Lundin ’07 has written a young adult novel that Kirkus Reviews called “fiercely charming and achingly relatable.” Fear not, readers need not like (or understand) football to cheer wholeheartedly for the Elkhorn Five, a group of small-town girls who join the gridiron, each for her own rea sons. NPR listed it among end-of-year “Books We Love.” (Disney Books, 2021)
Nick Huntington-Klein ’09, assistant professor of economics at Seattle University, has pub lished an introductory textbook intended to introduce the concepts of research design and causality in the context of observational data. He assures readers that the book, which spent some time in Amazon’s #1 spot for statistics, “is written in an intuitive and approachable way and doesn’t overload on technical detail.” The vol ume can also be read for free on theeffectbook.net. (Chapman & Hall/ CRC Press, 2021)
—ROBIN TOVEY ’97
Illustrator, designer, and cartoonist François Vigneault ’13 drew the images in volume two of Justin Roiland’s series Orcs in Space, a wildly funny and fantasy-adventureabsurdset in deep space. The book chronicles the exploits of orcs as they “face off with an eccentric scrapper bot, a cantankerous cat mechanic, and incur the wwwwrath of a biker gang called the Fuzzballs.” Readers may recall his own sci-fi graphic novel, Titan, which landed in 2020 and imagines a future beset with new forms of oppression on the moons of Saturn. (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality
While a Reed education confers many special powers, omniscience is unfortunately not among them; your classmates rely on you to tell us what’s going on. So share your news! Tell us about births, deaths, weddings, voyages, adventures, transformations, astonishment, woe, delight, fellowship, discovery, and mischief.
EDITED BY JOANNE HOSSACK
left: John Hudson ’52 and Sandra Hudson celebrate 65 years of marriage.
Sharon adds some family news: “My hus band, Hitoshi (Tosh) Toji, and I are still living at home. At 93, he now requires a caregiver, so we have added to our fam ily group and are enjoying cooking and baking for everyone. My sister, Jennifer Chapin Sakurai ’60, and brother-in-law, Ed Sakurai, continue to live in Webster Groves, near St Louis; Ed finally, at 85, retired from teaching math at Webster University there.”
Norm Cohen’s latest publication is a collection of folk songs and ballads in the British-Irish-American oral tradition. (See Reediana.) 1959 Stephanie Tomiyasu has been studying and performing the Japanese traditional The new ’59’58SharonwasInvisiTouch™ADA/fontcreatedfortactilereadersbyChapinTojiandherconsultingcompany.StephanieTomiyasu(left)performsshinnaiatKioiHallinTokyowithshamisenaccompanistsShinnaiKatsu’ichiro(middle)andTsurugaIse’ichiro.
Class Notes
Email us at reed.magazine@reed.edu.
1952 70th reunion
Class Notes are the lifeblood of Reed Magazine.
Congratulations to John Hudson and his wife, Sandra, who celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in March 2022!Locked down by the pandemic, Rob ert Richter transitioned to screenplay writing. His newest: Nobel’s Lost Prize, the little-known true story of Alfred Nobel’s unrequited love for peace activist Bertha von Suttner, which led Nobel—enormously wealthy from his invention of dynamite and its use in war weapons—to transform his emotional pain into a positive legacy for human ity, the Nobel Peace Prize. “Timeless and timely. Now seeking interested producer, director, acting leads.”
These Class Notes reflect information we received by March 15. The Class Notes deadline for the next issue is June 15.
Post a note online at iris.reed.edu. Find us on Facebook via “ReediEnews.” Scribble something in the enclosed return envelope. Or mail us at Reed magazine, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202. Photos are welcome, as are digital images at 300 dpi. And don’t forget the pertinent details: name, class year, and your current address!
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As of September 2019, new class notes are available online in pdf form in our digital magazine. If you have any questions or concerns, let us know.
1954 Don Green tipped us off about Harry Jacob’s latest honor: the Harry S. Jacob MD and John Kersey MD Scholarship at the University of Minnesota. The mis sion of the scholarship is to support one or more medical students who wish to pursue a career in academic medicine as a physician-scientist. Don noted that Harry was a chemistry major at Reed and that his advisor suggested that rather than go on for a PhD in chem, he apply to med school at Harvard. He did, got a scholarship, and the rest is history. Don notes that he and wife Joan have often traveled over the years with Harry and his wife, Lila Field 1958 Sharon Chapin Toji now has the dis tinction of being the oldest member of the ANSI [American National Stan dards Institute] A117.1 Committee, which writes standards for accessible and usable buildings and sites. The com mittee has begun the cycle for the next revised standard, which they hope to finish in time for 2024 publication. As the voting delegate for the Hearing Loss Association of America, Sharon focuses on improving standards in the field of sensory disabilities, and she’s also try ing to get more attention paid to the dis abilities of aging. She also recently revised her manual Signs and the ADA/ABA as a 30th anniversary edition for the ADA. With her staff at her consulting com pany, Access Communications, Sharon spent the COVID shutdown developing a font made specifically for tactile read ing, ADA/InvisiTouch™, and sent it out to about 100 blind people for review. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
1961 Jon Quitslund continues to enjoy an active retirement. Ending his teaching career in 2000, he and Toby rejoined the extended Quitslund family on Bain bridge Island, near Seattle. He developed an interest in island politics, wrote about community affairs for a newspaper and an online blog, and served on a series of task forces, planning for community development and environmental stew ardship. Nine years of work on the plan ning commission ended in June, and Jon decided to run for a seat on the city council a body that is known for ambitious plans, fractious debate, and small-scale accomplishments. The elec tion created considerable potential for more productive working relationships, moving ahead with a long-range plan ning agenda. A recently hired city man ager has begun assembling a strong exec utive team, including Autumn Salamack ’99, who will direct implementation of the city’s climate action plan. Jon has begun 2022 with high hopes for all that can be achieved, through teamwork, in the four years ahead.
1965 Hey, you class of ’65 guys and gals! Aren’t you one of the most interesting classes to graduate? Or are you going to let the class of ’62 walk away with that distinction? 1966
John Belmont retired in 2006 and immediately bought a house in Broad Cove, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, and became a seasonal resident. “This is a quiet village of about 100 on the south shore of the province. Even though I’m always introduced as a ‘come-from-away,’ I’ve been serving for the last three years on the Broad Cove Community Associ ation Board, which is the only ‘govern ment’ at the village level. So, OK, yes, I have become a politician and cheerfully join in the board discussions about how to keep the beach free of trash and even your occasional human feces (we deni zens of the cove can easily walk home; the tourists can’t), and how to round up $200,000 in construction monies to make the town hall accessible to all. But not wishing or needing to get in a rut now, at age 81, I’m starting a new project for 2022. After 16 years up here I’ve sold my house and am preparing to drive my ’93 Honda Accord (Nova Scotia plates) across the United States, from Houlton, Maine, to Everett, Washington, taking US Route 2 all the way. Think of this as the beginning of a new life, unanchored, yes, but following in the traditions of all the easy riders who have come before.” Ride on, John! “Hey, you class of ’62 guys,” says Barclay Henderson, “we have a prob lem. How can it be that one of the most interesting classes to graduate has [some] of the fewest notes each issue? We are much better than that! What have you been doing for the past 60 years? For me 1962 was a vintage year: Graduated with a BA degree, moved to Tokyo, got a black belt, met and soon married a Japanese girl. Since then I have owned my own restaurant chain and settled down in Cambridge, where I started and where my two boys started. In retirement Mina ko and I mostly travel, play music, and struggle not to embarrass the ever-socool teen grandkids. The pandemic has been a curse but it did get us onto Zoom. There I meet regularly with Luke Rus sell and Marjorie (Allen) Russell, Larry Resting up for his 2038 application:Reedtwo-week-old Wylie, grandson of Lisa Serbin ’68. Fred Mindlin ’66 is back stringing stories in the classroom!
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1967 55th reunion
1962 60th reunion
1963 Peter B. Clark has published a book about Germans who resisted Hitler. (See Reediana.) 1964 Grant Smith retired in January of 2020 and had a book come out this past May. (See Reediana.)
John Cushing played at a concert at Oaks Park as a member of the Portland Megaband. The concert can be seen by doing an internet search for Portland Megaband 2022. 1968 Deborah J. Ross edited an anthology in honor of her friend and colleague, Vonda N. McIntyre, who died in 2019. The two became friends in 1992 when Debo rah lived in Los Angeles and McIntyre received a fellowship to the Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project workshop. McIntyre went on to pen The Moon and the Sun, which won the Nebula Award and was musical storytelling art called shinnai for more than 22 years. Because she is the first non-Japanese to become a shinnai storyteller, her shinnai activities con tinue to interest the media in Japan. Recently, she was interviewed for a magazine called Hiragana Times; its tar get audience is people who are studying Japanese, so the article was published bilingually. Stephanie told the inter viewer: “An important feature of shinnai is expressing the emotions of the char acters in the stories. Shinnai narratorsingers are also voice actors. I especially enjoy performing stories with exciting action, such as a sword fight, a murder, or a sumo match. Performing a humor ous work and having the audience laugh at the jokes is an amazing experience for an American psychologist.” One of those stories with exciting action can be seen and heard at character,thewatch?v=GFHhO9K3FDk.https://www.youtube.com/“Inthisone,mainmalecharacter,whohasbeenpubliclyembarrassedbythemainfemalekillsherwithhisswordrightthereonstage(sotospeak).Thevideoisfine,butthesoundwasrecordedabittoosoftly.Ifyoulistentoit,pleaseturnupthevolume.”
Fred Mindlin is thrilled to be back in the classroom, teaching string game sto ries in person! “I’ve taught my original string figure curriculum to over 5,000 students in Watsonville and given away over 10,000 strings. Far and away the best work I’ve ever done. Please check out my website at https://stringstories.net.”
MacKenzie, Kern Von Hungen, Sue Hanchett, and Jim Haba. It’s a chance to relive the 1960s. You should try it. Bet ter yet, come back to the 60th reunion in late May.” Listen up, class of ’62!
1977 45th reunion
We can’t seem to face up to the facts (because you haven’t sent any) . . . we’re tense and nervous and we can’t relax (because we haven’t heard from you) . . .
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Jeanie Daigle Nygaard Smith is hap pily retired, now living on California’s beautiful central coast, enjoying times with five grandkids (pandemic permit ting), and thoroughly occupied with writ ing, gardening, and painting, among other pursuits. She’s hoping to get involved with local theatres again now that most are beginning to reopen, and looks forward to a much-delayed trip to Scotland later this year with her Glaswegian husband.
Vera Boals is “still running Those Cat Rescue People, my cat rescue in New Hampshire. Currently providing perma nent homes to about 40 feral cats, and another 20 cats who might eventually be adoptable. Realizing that I’m not 20 years old any more. Dealing with living in clockwise from top-left: Along the Lagan riverrun, by Willard McCarty ’70. Steven Orkand ’70 has turned a page. Jeanie NygaardDaigleSmith with her Aaronhusband.GlaswegianRhodes’71 was named a Senior Fellow in the Common Sense Society.
Aaron Rhodes was named a senior fellow in the Common Sense Society, an international educational network. He is also president of the Forum for Religious Freedom–Europe. He lives in Hamburg, Germany, with his family.
1974 Colette Brooks has published her third book of creative nonfiction, Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory. It was reviewed in the Washing ton Post in March! (See Reediana.)
1971 Douglas Fenner writes, “A few months ago I fell and broke my thigh bone. Sur geons here in American Samoa put a stainless steel pin in my leg, making the bone as strong as ever. I had a month in the hospital and a month in a nursing care facility. The treatment was remark ably good for this tiny island in the Pacific. I’m now living at home, walking around without any aids, climbing stairs, plan ning my first snorkel and walk up hills (on sidewalks), and in time scuba diving.”
Class Notes made into the movie The King’s Daugh ter. Deborah titled the anthology Bright Morning: An Anthology of Hopeful Tales. Lisa Serbin has a new grandchild! Wylie Astor Dean Wernet-Wapnick was born December 14. Wylie is living on Cor tes Island in British Columbia with his mothers, Emilie (Serbin) Wapnick and Valerie Wernet. “We wish we lived clos er (my husband and I are in Montreal), but we’re hoping to visit soon. This news counters the stress of the pandemic and the past two years for us . . . we look for ward to Wylie’s possible application to Reed in 2038, class of 2042.” 1969 Portnoy complains. 1970 Katya de Kadt (formerly Karen Smith) is a retired New York State acting supreme court justice, currently an herbalist and antiracism activist and grandmother. “In reciprocity for the occasional news from and about former classmates and for Reed Magazine itself,” writes Willard McCarty , “I can happily report good health and a retirement spent in reading and writing, editing a journal, running an online seminar, and playing the pho tographic flâneur though local neighbor hoods, the paths of Epping Forest, and the towpath of the Lagan River. I contin ue helping out with the Cambridge work shop ‘Science in the Forest, Science in the Past,’ in its third iteration the steepest hill climb yet, at least for me. Proceed ings of the second one, subtitled Further Interdisciplinary Explorations (Routledge), are due out in March.” Steven Orkand writes, “I retired from my rheumatology medical practice at Kai ser in 2009, and I turned a page. For years after that I organized an extensive adult education program for my synagogue— lots of lectures, seminars, deep learning. Most recently I’m organizing a workshop on how to have difficult conversations about racism. I also became involved with the Public Health Advisory Board of Sacramento County. Public health is very broad, and my interests have been varied. Most recently, I’m working on cor rectional health, asking ‘Why are people with mental health issues in jail?’ I also enjoy writing haiku and riding along the American River Bike Trail, one of Cali fornia’s gems. I have two grandchildren, with a third on the way. My wife and I are expert daycare providers when the need arises.”
1975–76 Forget the parachute; what color is your mood ring?
1972 50th reunion Brando makes offer. 1973 President proclaims non-crook status.
1978 Chris Hauty’s book series continues to chug along: a novella was released in Jan uary, and the third full-length book in the series came out in May. (See Reediana.) Mark Kelley has retired from the practice of law, leaving as a named part ner and frequent managing partner of a 50-lawyer education law firm. He and Sheila have resettled in Sisters and look forward to more time outdoors.
1979 Lydia Collins Bailey wrote an essay on homelessness, the deep woods, and wonder, titled “Seeing In the Fog,” that appears in the spring issue of Parabola. Lydia is on staff at the largest shelter in Ohio, the Lutheran Metropolitan Minis try Men’s Shelter, and is a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio.
This past fall, Chris Greacen developed testimony in State of Washington, et al., v. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy, et al. that argued that the navy’s environmental impact statement calculations for greenhouse emissions for expansion of its EA-18G Growler fleet of jet fighter planes were wild underestimates. Chris was very sat isfied to see the December 2021 sum mary ruling by Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Richard Creatura that leveled this scathing rebuke: “The Navy appears to have used certain statistics ‘much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.’” 1992 30th reunion
From salsacatastrophetree-smashedtoMidJapEcoLowmasterwork:thehomeofAlexVeltman‘92.FionaOrtiz’86andherhusband,JulianOrtiz,danceCubanatoneoftheeventsshepromotesthroughhergroup,ChicagoCasineros.
1989–90 C L A S S 1991
1984–85 A L U M S 1986 After 20 years at Reuters, followed by five years at Walgreens Boots Alliance (where she produced the company’s annual Environmental, Social and Gov ernance Report), Fiona Ortiz has joined the public sector for the first time. She’s now heading up communications for the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, working closely with the policy team on criminal justice reform issues. “I have sur vived 8 Chicago winters. I am very active in the Chicago Latin dance scene. I teach casino and rueda (Cuban-style salsa danc ing) and promote dance events through my group, Chicago Casineros.”
Eric Fidler retired from Southern Illi nois University, where he taught journal ism for 16 years, in fall 2020. “Four more years and my parking sticker would have been free, but I have a teenager with a chronic illness and I needed to spend more time caring for her. Before SIU I worked as a reporter and editor in Chica go, Miami, and Atlantic City. I’m not com pletely out of journalism; I’m helping to train the staff of a nonprofit news startup. My wife, our daughter, and I moved to the Atlanta area in the spring.”
1980 David Biddle ended 30 years of envi ronmental planning and activism a few years ago, but has since published a num ber of short stories and essays in literary journals and online. In January 2021 he signed a three-book contract with inde pendent commercial fiction publisher the Story Plant. His first novel, Old Music for New People, came out in December. “Yes, it is hilarious that a 1976 freshman would publish their first novel 45 years later.” (See Reediana.)
1987 35th reunion
Jill Kuhnheim is in her sixth year as a visiting professor in Hispanic studies at Brown University, a move she made accompanied by her partner, who is in the School of Public Health, and her 17-year-old son, who is huge. She recently developed an open educational resource with a colleague for people interested in teaching literature and film in Spanish with a health humanities focus. (See Reediana.)
a state run by a Republican, where people refuse to accept science as fact, but sur viving nonetheless. Looking forward to a Reunion where I can see everyone in person again.”
1981 E M A I L 1982 40th reunion T A L E S 1983 John Neumaier just joined the Seat tle VA as the director of mental health research and continues to be very involved with University of Washington neuroscience, running his lab, etc. He’s also organizing a neuromodulation clinic offering repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, ECT, and ketamine to veter ans with depression.
P L A Y S 1988 Shannon Lee Dawdy somehow man aged to publish her third single-author book and first trade publication, Ameri can Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century. Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental. (See Reediana.) Phyllis Gerstenfeld is a professor by day, but her side gig is author, largely but not entirely of gay romance (under the pen name Kim Fielding). Her recent book Farview won the BookLife 2021 Prize for Fiction. (See Reediana.)
When extreme weather recently destroyed their house, Alex Veltman’s family was afforded the bittersweet opportunity of building character as well as a potential dream home. “With my wife’s background in architecture and a mutual interest in the anese/eco-conservative/low-budgetMCM/Japstyle
(MidJapEcoLow, as no one calls it), we managed to create a work of conscious living that has kept us sane during these many months of isolation.” The process of this creation was described last Decem ber in the Washington Post, in an article titled “A Tree Falls, a Rebuild Begins.” Diana Rosberg reports, “Bengt and I have great news to share. We are mov ing on to our next international adven ture, in Mumbai, India. Bengt will be the deputy head of school at Oberoi Interna tional School, and I will be working to strengthen pedagogy and learning in the Primary School. This is my seventh inter national school since 1992 and offers fan tastic prospects for professional fulfill ment alongside the cultural and culinary excitement of this ancient city.”
1993 In addition to activism, Vijay Shah is col laborating on a historical comic about the civil rights movement. As a history major, he would like to reach a broad audience, including youth. “We are striving to con vey the past in a vivid, dramatic way.”
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Congratulations to Peyton Marshall, one of 35 writers who will receive a 2022 Cre ative Writing Fellowship of $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts! This year’s fellowships are in prose and will enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career development. Fellows are selected through an anonymous process and are judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provide. Peyton’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, A Public Space, Blackbird, Etiqueta Negra, and Best New American Voices; her first novel, Goodhouse, was published by Farrar Straus Giroux in 2014.
Class Notes
After many years based in NYC, Heather Lord made the move to San Francisco a few months before the pandemic kicked in. She’s a senior fellow at Stanford Uni versity’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, with a focus on researching and educating various audiences about best practices in global philanthropy and social impact. “Feel free to find me on LinkedIn if you’d like to chat.”
’09andagainSohaili-Korbonits,Alexmarriedin2020andin2021.NicoleAdelstein’06AlejandroLevanderwelcomenewfamilymemberEliraMeiAdelsteinLevander.JonasMadsenVickery(Reed2043?),WillVickery’10,andLisaMansonVickerycelebrateJonas’sfirstbirthdayontheirfrontporch. 28 Reed Magazine june 2022
Congratulations to Tina KorbonitsSohaili-’07 and husband
2008 Kostadin Kushlev was selected as a Rising Star by the Association for Psy chological Science. The APS Rising Star is awarded to an outstanding Associa tion for Psychological Science member in their early research career whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions. Kosta din’s work in positive psychology got 2002 20th reunion In September, Anne McPherson took over as head of stage management in the theater department at Mason Gross School of the Arts (Rutgers University). Congratulations, Anne! 2003 L A T E R 2004 Anita Hannig ’s new book looks at assisted dying in the United States. (See Reediana.) 2005 N O T E S
right away being together was eudaimonia After getting engaged in Paris on our first anniversary on a Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in January 2020, we planned to get married in October 2020, but the pandemic had other plans. We were finally able to celebrate our wed ding with all of our friends and family, including so many wonderful Reedies, on October 2, 2021, in Los Angeles after get ting legally married in Seattle on October 3, 2020. Since then, we’ve been exploring Gallo-Roman ruins on our honeymoon, enforcing federal civil rights laws/train ing machine learning models at work, and enjoying quality time reading with our cat, Olivia Sohaili-Korbonits, who is 15.5 years young!”
Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater is the found ing rabbi of the Portland Open Beit Midrash. In cooperation with the East side Jewish Commons and TischPDX, the Beit Midrash—Hebrew for “house of learning”—will offer intensive study of Torah and rabbinic texts, grounded in traditional Jewish approaches but affirm ing of people with diverse backgrounds and historically marginalized voices.
Tina Sohaili-Korbonits “just wanted to report that I married a giant, adorable nerd during the pandemic! My husband, Alex Sohaili-Korbonits (U Chicago ’10), and I bonded over Aristotle ’s Nicoma chean Ethics on our first date and knew 1994 Zach Nobel has a book recommenda tion: “Read Guardians of the Trees by Kinari Webb ’95. I just finished read ing it myself. I highly recommend read ing it as it offers me some hope for the future. Amazing work. Well done, Kinari!”
2007 15th reunion
Britta Lundin’s second young adult novel, Like Other Girls, has received many well-deserved accolades. (See Reediana.)
1998 Gal Beckerman’s new book looks at the formation of social movements—and how current technology is undermin ing them. (See Reediana.)
2006 Labors of love: In May 2021, Nicole Adelstein became associate professor of chemistry at San Francisco State Univer sity. In August 2021, Alejandro Levander and Nicole welcomed Elira Mei Adelstein Levander into their family.
1997 25th reunion
After 14 years at the University of Queensland, Margie Mayfield has moved to the University of Melbourne, where she is professor of ecology and head of the School of BioSciences. 1999–2001 S L E E P
1995 W R I T E 1996
Last summer Robin Tovey quit her job at Reed as part of #TheGreatResignation and has been getting back in touch with her @English_major side. She looks forward to seeing everyone at Reunions and not being on the clock for the festivities!
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The eyes of Hannah Love and Kasra Shokat ’14 met across the crowded SU at Stop Making Sense in spring 2012. They thought they’d never speak again, but two years later they went on a first date, and six and a half years later they eloped in November 2020. On New Year’s Eve this year, they finally celebrated their love and marriage with a party at Yale Union in Southeast Portland (with a 100% vacci nation and negative Covid test rate—and Christopher Cahill as DJ).
2018 Savannah Kaufman got her dream job as a social media marketer at a Europe an spa! 2019–21 Have you got your dream job? Let us know! 2012 10th reunion
The class notes editor wonders if the class of 2011, or any other class, picked up the “hint” on the preceding pages. Or are you all too busy playing Wordle? Sigh. Reed was representedwellat the post-COVID wedding celebration of Hannah Love ’12 and Kasra Shokat ’14.
2014–16
Of the classes of 2014, 2015, and 2016, which can submit the largest number and/or volume of class notes for the December issue? Game on! 2017 5th reunion Sure, class of ‘17, you can play too!
The second volume of François Vigneault’s Orcs in Space hit bookshops on April 27, 2022. (See Reediana.)
2013 Two years ago Emily Goldman acquired and edited her first book for Tordotcom Publishing, a historical fantasy novella by Marion Deeds titled Comeuppance Served Cold. It was published in March. (See Reediana.) a shout-out from happiness researcher Laurie Santos in the New York Times in February. 2009 Nick Huntington-Klein’s latest book was released in December. (See Reediana.)
Left to right: Tamara Metz science;[politicalthesisadvisortoboth bride and groom], Chris Cahill ’12, ’13,’12,SilverMcManusMichael’09,Jake’12,JuliusMonello’13,EricaIannitti’14,Kasra,Hannah,SanaGoldberg’12,MamieMoragoStevensonJessGoldstein’12,MitraShokat’18,DeborahKamali’85,LeilaShokat’21,KevanShokat’86,EvianOosthuizen’21,NimaShokat’99,GrantTrenary’11,andAlexJohnson’11.Notpicturedbutinattendance:FarrenCurtis’12,MattMilton’11,MarieGluesenkampPerezBekahVolinsky’12,SaraNatale’12,andGabrielZinn’15.ReediescelebratetheweddingofKatherineWalker’10andDylanGafner.Toprow,lefttoright:LawrenceShah’11,SherryTiao’09,brideKatherine,MartinSouza’09,BenEdwards’07,andAbiKallushi.Bottomrow:IanFlower’13andRachaelOtto’15.
Lisa Manson Vickery and Will Vick ery ’10 welcomed Jonas Madsen Vickery (class of 2043?) on February 21, 2021. Jonas lives in South Portland with his parents, Good Dog Harry, and cat room mate Jo, and attends the Nest Playschool, owned and operated by Savannah Turner ’08. Lisa and Will moved back to Portland from the DC metro area in 2017. Will works in accounting policy at Ampere. Lisa was a partner at Fisher Phil lips’s Portland office and recently accept ed a position at Amazon. 2010 Katherine Walker married her partner Dylan Gafner in Seattle in September 2021. They met working at Bungie, an “indie” game studio making the video game Destiny 2, where they are a pro duction lead and a community manag er, respectively. Reedies in attendance included Sherry Tiao ’09, Lawrence Shah ’11 , Martin Souza ’09 , Ben Edwards ’07 , Ian Flower ’13 , and Rachael Otto ’15 2011
bartonr@reed.edu
By the late 1960s, however, higher education in the United States was in crisis. Campuses around the nation were imploding over Vietnam, racism, police brutality, and the power of the military-industrial complex. California governor Ronald Reagan called out the national guard to put down unrest at UC Berkeley. LSD guru Timothy Leary was exhorting students to turn on, tune in, and drop out. Students demanded classes that were relevant to contem porary issues such as civil rights,Vietnam, and the environment. “There really was a question about whether colleges in any recognizable form could continue,” Levich said. The situation at Reed was particularly dire. The college was running a deficit of $400,000 a year. Attrition stood at 50%. The Old Guard saw this as a badge of honor—it meant the college had held fast to its standards. The Young Turks saw it as evidence that the college was failing its students. The Young Turks called for Reed to make its curriculum more relevant, both by
30 Reed Magazine june 2022
In Memoriam
Prof. Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94] February 7, 2022, in Portland, following a period of illness. Contributed by Chris Lydgate ’90 Prof. Marvin Levich was an iconic philosopher who left an indelible mark on Reed’s curricu lum and culture. His perspective on intellectual rigor, academic freedom, and the nature of edu cation itself—a perspective forged in the cru cible of the McCarthy era—exerted profound influence on Reed in the decades that followed. During tumultuous debates on the faculty floor, he was the champion of the Old Guard, a cadre of senior professors who saw their mission as defending an educational tradition stretching back to Socrates against the Young Turks who wanted to make Reed more relevant—an idea theyLegendaryscorned. for his relentless logic, fearsome syntax, and piercing blue gaze, Levich was a devastating adversary; he once demolished the conservative pundit William F. Buckley in a 1964 debate on civil liberties. But it was always Reed that stirred his deepest convic tions: an insistence on academic rigor; a belief that the faculty should run the college; a refusal to “coddle” students in any way. Most of all, he was convinced that Reed could not be all things to all people. Its mission was to ground students in the fundamental disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences; everything else was a distraction. In one form or another, these ideas became mixed into the intellectual mortar of Reed, both to its benefit and to its cost. Levich was born in 1925 and grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, in an impoverished family of RussianLithuanian Jewish immigrants. His first language was Yiddish. During World War II, he spent three years as a mortarman in the 36th Infantry Divi sion of the U.S. Army and saw action in the Battle of Anzio, contracting a severe case of malaria when the German defenders released swarms of mosquitoes onto the Allied beachhead. After the war, he went to Morningside College in Sioux City on the G.I. Bill, where he met his wife, Laurie, and graduated in just two and a half years with four degrees—in psychology, history, sociology, and philosophy. To support his family, he got a job in a meat-packing plant, then won a scholarship to study philosophy at Columbia University. “It was in graduate school that I learned how to find a point, to defend a point, to work your way into an argument,” he later said. Levich came to Reed in 1953, at the height of the anti-Communist “Red Scare” hysteria, and found himself in the middle of an epic struggle. Prof. Stanley Moore [philosophy 1948–54], a tenured philosophy professor, had been accused of being a Communist. Under immense public pressure, Reed’s board of trustees demanded that Moore tell them his political views. When he refused, the board fired him, over horrified objections of the faculty and students. Levich was chagrined to discover that he had been selected to be Moore’s replacement and at first decided to refuse the appointment. But Moore called him and urged him to stay at Reed and fight for the principle of academic freedom.
The Moore affair devastated Reed. It convinced the faculty that neither the trustees nor the presi dent nor the city of Portland could be trusted with the future of the institution. They engineered a vote of no confidence in the president, Duncan Ballantine [1952–54]. They asserted their control over campus life, forming committees to oversee functions such as admissions, fundraising, and student discipline. They doubled down on their commitment to academic rigor. And they vowed that Reed would henceforth adhere to a policy of strict political neutrality. No professor was more passionate in these convictions than Levich, who championed the idea that the faculty were the true guardians of the college. Administrators—particularly presi dents—were to be viewed with suspicion. In the classroom, Levich earned a repu tation for high standards. “I had more than a few outstanding teachers at Reed,” wrote Tom Shapiro ’63. “None is more memorable or had a more lasting influence on my ability to think logically, analyze an argument, and reason to a justifiable conclusion than Mr. Levich. After 50 years, the Humanities 11 course . . . and Mr. Levich remained in my memory the definition of my freshman year at Reed.” In 1969, Levich won an award from the Danforth Foundation as one of the 10 best teacher-scholars in the nation. “It’s amazing how, if you expect the best from the students, how many of them will, in one way or another, fulfill your expectation,” he said. In his essays and lectures, he focused on logical positivism, aesthetics, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of computer science; generations of students were inspired by his insistence on treating them as intellectual peers. Levich identified strongly with Reed and believed that the true role of a professor was not only to teach but to protect the institution.
EDITED BY RANDALL BARTON Email
Defender of the Citadel
“The things that went on at Reed were part and parcel of what I thought about as a person,” he said later. “They were the things that mattered most to me in my life.”
“Reed made me realize that if you don’t have this exchange of information and different points of view, you can’t have progress,” he said. “When I started the tavern, I was told, ‘You shouldn’t talk about religion. You shouldn’t talk about politics.’ And I said, ‘Listen. That’s what this is all about. To talk about religion and to talk about politics.’” His friend Joel Coffey said that before coming to Reed, Bud looked like Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, and afterwards like “someone you might guess went to Reed.” Bud became less inhibited after Reed and said whatever he wanted to say, Coffey remembered.
Many years later, after announcing he would not seek a third term as Portland’s mayor, Bud was asked if he was worried that would make him a lame-duck mayor. “I can’t be a duck,” he replied. “I went to Reed.” After Reed, he worked for a pest control company and decided to open his own busi ness, Aardvark Pest Control, raising the capital by tending bar. Then, at the age of 28, he began what he called his beatnik period, hitchhiking, walking the tracks, and sleeping out-of-doors.
Bud went to Vanport College for a year and Oregon State College for a quarter before enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. Wanting to see the world, he volunteered three times for combat in Korea, but remained stuck at Camp Pendleton. After being discharged, he considered studying science or engineering. But his coun selor at the VA suggested that with his people skills, Bud would be best served studying psychology.Withtuition paid for by the G.I. Bill, Bud started at Reed as a psychology major. To pay for the rest of his life, he took a job driving a hearse for a mortuary and working as a ship chandler, calling in ships. This required him to leave class, drive out to St. Johns to call in a ship, and then return to class.
In Big Sur, he found work as a laborer, waiter, andHecook.returned to Portland, married Joanne Walker, and, realizing that the tavern busi ness was his true calling, became the propri etor of Spatenhaus Tavern, opposite Civic (now Keller) Auditorium. Less than two years after his marriage to Joanne, she was killed by a drunk driver in an automobile accident. He married Sigrid Fehrenbacher in 1964 and adopted her son from a previous marriage, and eventually they had three more children. After 36 years of marriage, Sigrid died in 2000 of menin gitis at age 59.
John Elwood “Bud” Clark Jr. was born in Nampa, Idaho, on December 19, 1931. He liked to say he was conceived in La Grande, Oregon, which made him a native Oregonian. His early years were spent in La Grande and in Fruit land, Idaho. His parents divorced when he was two, and a few years later, Bud and his mother, Mildred, moved to Portland, where she worked as a stenographer. A self-described “latchkey kid,” Bud worked too—selling lemonade and working for his mother’s secretarial service setting type for the multigraph machine. Through high school, he stoked the wood boiler in an apartment house. He and Mildred moved frequently around town, but he remembered his childhood fondly. At Lincoln High School, as one of three male cheerleaders, Bud was known as the Yell King. He was more athletic than the other two, whom he somersaulted over. Adept at rallying the crowd, he was also president of his sophomore class and assistant treasurer of the student body. “Somebody would suggest a dance, and Bud would go out and rent a band and reserve the Pythian Hall,” a classmate remembered. “He just went out and got things done.”
breathing new life into Hum 110, encumbered (as they saw it) by musty medieval tomes, and by creating a Black studies program. Levich believed both ideas were misguided. The purpose of education, he argued in a 1969 paper titled “The Ideology of Relevance,” was not to chase fads but to produce people who could think. “If [education] is successful, the students who pursue it learn what is true and what is not, and how to find it out, and learn further that there are different ways of finding it out according to subject-matter, and different degrees of certainty which, depending on the subject-matter, they can attach to their findings. If we think that society is the better for having in it people who have learned these things, then education is rele vant to society.” He had no objection to Black studies or Buddhist philosophy. The problem, he argued, was that Reed did not have the resources or the expertise to offer coherent programs in these areas. For once, his arguments did not prevail. In 1969, the faculty voted in favor of the Black studies program by a slender margin, 57–55. But the college never provided the program with the institutional support—or funding—that it needed; it was disbanded in 1975. Moreover, the advent of President Paul Bragdon [1977–88] heralded a new era at Reed. Bragdon was able to stabilize Reed’s finances and hire professional administra tors to take care of areas such as admissions, fundraising, and student life. For several years, Levich served as provost under Bragdon but resented what he saw as the shrinking of the faculty’s role and eventually returned to fulltime teaching; his wife Laurie worked as a graphic designer in public affairs.
Levich retired in 1998 but continued to pursue ideas in the philosophy of history and the philosophy of computer science. He was associated with Reed’s Center for Advanced Computation. (For many years the center featured a sign reading “Parking for Prof. Levich only. All others will be towed.”) He published A Network Orange: Logic and Responsibility in the Computer Age, together with Prof. Richard Cran dall, in 1998, and Defending the Citadel in 2012. Laurie developed dementia in the late 2010s; Marvin took care of her at home. After she died in 2018, he lived alone in their house on South east 41st Avenue, where he became a familiar figure in the neighborhood, walking to and fro with his distinctive slouch. He is survived by his children, Jacob Levich and Jenny Westberg. His daughter, Naomi, also preceded him in death.
John Elwood (“Bud”) Clark Jr. ’58 February 1, 2022, in Portland, from congestive heart failure. Before “Keep Portland Weird” was a bumper sticker, Portland was a somewhat self-con scious metropolis with an image problem. In the early ’80s, New West magazine character ized West Coast cities by the type of woman they brought to mind. San Francisco was the dowager, Seattle was the tart, and Portland was the spin ster. As much as anyone, Bud Clark ’58, who served two terms as Portland’s mayor from 1985 to 1992, changed that image of the city, brand ing it as anything but buttoned-up and boring. He died in the city he did so much to champion.
The Colorful “Citizen-Mayor” Invigorated Portland
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“I would say it ruined my education,” he said. But participating in international trade and gaining an overview of the city was its own kind of education. He eventually lost interest in psychology, his grades dropped, and he with drew with junior standing. But he credited Reed’s broad-based liberal arts curriculum with giving him a foundation he would continue to build on.
Marianne Shipley Buchwalter ’45 February 17, 2022, in Portland. Marianne was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1924. Four days after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), a pogrom against Jews in November 1938, she left Nazi Germany with her parents and younger brother. Through a series of highly improbable circum stances, the family ended up in Portland. Years before, her uncle had exchanged his property in Germany for property in Portland owned by an Oregonian smitten by Hitler. Marianne’s father purchased a business that manufactured uniforms and she began a remarkably rich and fruitful new life. Many years later, she recalled her first 14 years of life in a memoir, Memories of a Berlin Childhood, that described how every day life eroded in Berlin as the Nazis tightened theirForevernet.
“I think that we ought to have our sights on not just putting our nose to the grindstone, accu mulating wealth,” Bud said. “I think there is too much emphasis on accumulation of things and stuff and objects. I’ve got one of everything, I am sure. I just can’t find it at home, but I know it is there. I have enough of everything now.” He is survived by his children, David, Rachel, Jason, and Nicolas.
Bud purchased Ann’s Tavern in Goose Hollow, which he remodeled and renamed the Goose Hollow Inn. Close to both downtown and the West Hills professional crowd, it was an ambient blend of bohemian Gothic and the old Algonquin bar. There was no television, just classical music and conversation. It was a success. “Bud found that pre-yuppie audience that rejects both the McDonald’s-like homogeneity in their lives and the Cadillac-like show,” said Don Younger, proprietor of the Horse Brass Pub. “He found them, cultivated them, kept them coming. He appealed to that post-’60s group that looked up and saw that its beer was bland, its bread was bland . . . and finally that its mayor was bland.”
“I don’t think people ought to make a career out of being a politician,” he said. “We ought to have citizen politicians. Why people don’t have different phases in their lives has never made sense to Duringme.”asnowstorm in December of 1992, he rode his bicycle away from City Hall and entered the next phase of his life. In his retirement, he hiked, rafted Oregon rivers, played with his grandchildren, and got involved with causes and fundraisers. He hunted with friends, shooting with his camera.
In Memoriam Spatenhaus Tavern was razed in 1967 to build the Forecourt Fountain (now Keller Fountain).
In 1978, he had gained a kind of celebrity by being photographed from behind with bare calves and an open raincoat, appearing to flash a bronze sculpture titled Kvinneakt (Norwegian for “female nude”) on the Portland Mall. The resulting “Expose Yourself to Art” poster, photographed by Mike Ryerson, raised money for “Zap the Clap,” a campaign against venereal disease, and sold more than a quarter million copies. He may have looked like a flasher from behind, but head on he looked more like Santa Claus; silver whiskers wreathed a face featuring a mustache with upturned ends. Suspenders were affixed to his corduroy pants or lederhosen, and he habitually wore a signature red bouton niere rose. The 14-carat twinkle in his blue eyes imbued him with the spirit of St. Nick. “I am Santa Claus,” he said when he announced his candidacy for mayor of Portland. “I’m a Christmas gift to Portland.” For years, Bud had been active in commu nity projects and neighborhood associations. He founded a community newspaper, The Neighborhood; delivered Meals on Wheels for 11 years; and served on the boards of Planned Parenthood, the Waterway Advisory Committee, and the United Way’s Policy Development Committee. Incensed that the voters were not being offered options, Bud felt that not only was Portland becoming staid and boring under Mayor Frank Ivancie, it was losing the momentum it had gained under Mayor Neil Goldschmidt.“Thething about Bud is that he’s fear less,” said his friend Easton Cross. “I’ve never seen him intimidated. He has no awe for the rich and powerful, and gets a kick out of the downtrodden and dirty. When he decided to spend his own money on the campaign, I told him he was crazy; everybody did. But he has a will of steel.” On Christmas Day in 1983, Bud decided to run for mayor. Three days later, he was eating at Keong Kee Kitchen and broke open a fortune cookie to read: “You will be awarded some great honor.” A relatively unknown candidate, he pulled off the impossible and beat the incumbent mayor in the primary with 54.7% of the vote. Shortly after the election, he dined at Lu Yen and opened another fortune cookie. It contained the identical message. The economy was mired in a recession. People were leaving the state to find work elsewhere. As mayor, he was able to convince business people, local governments, and metro-area voters that an $85 million investment in the regional economy was both doable and necessary. He wanted friendlier police, a friendlier city hall, a finan cially stable city government, and to advance Portland as a Pacific Rim trade center. In his two terms, the city built the Oregon Conven tion Center, developed a nationally recognized plan for people experiencing homelessness, extended the downtown transit mall, shifted toward community policing, completed the Pioneer Place shopping center, and negotiated the purchase of historic Union Station and 32 acres of developable land around it. After taking office facing a budget shortfall, Bud left with substantial reserves. In 1988, he was named the winner of the. U.S. Conference of Mayors’ ninth annual City Livability Award in recognition of “outstanding mayoral leadership in the development and support of the urban arts.” His role model was Cincinnatus, the farmer who left his plow to lead Rome and then returned to his fields. Bud felt that the most important function of Portland’s mayor was to sell the city and its livability.
grateful for having been able to come to the United States, she graduated from Grant High School and attended Reed, but finished her undergraduate studies at Stan ford University. She earned a master’s degree in psychiatric social work from Columbia Univer sity and subsequently studied at the London Tavistock Clinic. While attending Columbia, she was intro duced to an attorney, the Swiss-born Fred Buch walter, then a military attaché with the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C. They married in 1948 and embarked on a 40-year journey of spontaneity and adventure. Eventually they settled in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where they raised four children. The couple also maintained a home in Aix-en-Provence, France. Marianne established a private practice as a psychothera pist, working with adolescents and adults, and was instrumental in establishing the Oregon Psychoanalytic Society and Foundation. She was passionate about spearheading, promoting, and working with others on causes important to her in both the world of the arts and politics. Marianne and Fred participated in Portland’s cultural life and were active in the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Opera, and the Portland Art Museum. She was an enthu siastic supporter of Reed College, Chamber Music Northwest, Friends of Chamber Music, and the Portland Institute for Contempo rary Art. Marianne was a founding member of the Oregon chapter of Young Audiences, the Oswego Cooperative Play School, and the Woodstock Community Center (now known as the Community Music Center). Fred Buchwalter died in 1988. Marianne is survived by her four children, Andy, Charlie, Julie, and Nicki.
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Bud acquired two other buildings in Goose Hollow: one housed his canoe and duck-hunting accessories shop, and the other housed Mother Goose Antiques, run by Sigrid. He credited her with supplying the affection, support, and confi dence that not only could he be mayor, but that it might actually be fun to be so.
Beatrice Louise Vincent Dick ’46 December 4, 2021, in The Dalles, Oregon. Bea grew up in Portland with her sister, Marjorie, and brother, Frank. She attended Multnomah Grade School and Lincoln High School, and, as a Camp Fire Girl, spent summers with the many friends she made at Camp Namanu on the Sandy River. She worked for Camp Fire for a year following graduation and then attended Reed for two years before transferring to the University of Oregon. At the U of O, she joined camp friends in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and met her future husband, Edgar Dick. They wed following Ed’s graduation from the Oregon Law School and moved to The Dalles, where he practiced law. Bea raised four children, was a homeroom mother and Camp Fire leader, and, as chairman of the Library Board, was a driving force in building the new public library. She worked hard to get money allocated for the library and with the architect to save the sycamore trees on the site. In 1969, The Dalles named her their “Woman of the Year.” After her children left for college, Bea became a travel agent for Hazel Phillips Travel, visiting many countries and leading tours all over the world. She was a lifelong Christian Scientist, a reader in her church, and a member of P.E.O. and the American Association of University Women. A cross-country skier and tennis player, she was also an avid reader and crossword puzzle solver, and later in life loved playing Words with Friends on her tablet with her grandchildren. Bea was a stickler for good grammar and didn’t hesitate to correct anyone who was unfortunate enough to say the wrong thing in front of her. Her chil dren knew it was correct to say “Is that he?” even though they refused to actually say it. Bea is survived by her children James Dick, Johanna Wermers, Mary Lonergan, and Andrew Dick.
HONOR
giving.reed.edu
Following a year as a researcher for the Ency clopedia Britannica in Chicago, Lois earned an MA from Radcliffe College and then worked as a reference librarian in the history depart ment at the Boston Public Library. While taking classes at Harvard, she met Lawrence Markus on a blind date, and they married in Paris on the first anniversary of their acquaintance. Laurence completed his fellowship, and they returned to the U.S. a year later when their daughter, Sylvia, was born. Their son, Andrew, was born while they were living on the East Coast. The family moved to the Midwest when Lawrence accepted a position in the math depart ment at the University of Minnesota. Eventu ally he added a long-term visiting professorship at the University of Warwick in England, which allowed Lois to immerse herself in her love of English culture. With the children away in college, Lois traveled with Lawrence to conferences in the U.S. and abroad, including Switzerland, Iran, Japan, and China, forming lifelong friendships around the Throughworld.theyears, she took classes in art, needlework, piano, and organ. Later in life, she mastered the craft of bobbin lace making. She enjoyed visiting English village markets to rescue and preserve pieces of fine lace, and eventually donated her extensive collection to a museum. A lifelong supporter of Reed, Lois created the Lois Shoemaker Markus Library Fund, which provides an annual grant to the library for scholarly acquisitions in the areas of music, art, and humanistic studies. She is survived by her daughter, Sylvia Mohn.
Mary Lou Stearns Williams ’51 December 21, 2021, in Windsor, California.
Mary Louise was born in Pasadena, California, with an abiding love of animals. Her childhood was filled with cats, springer spaniels, a goose named Caesar Agoosetus, and a rotation of Arabian horses. She graduated from Chadwick School in Palos Verdes before coming to Reed, the alma mater of her sister, Ann Whitehead ’44, and later her brother, John Steaxrns ’53 She studied Russian literature and enjoyed ski ing, square dancing, standing up for her ideals, breaking the rules, and singing. While at Reed, Mary Lou met and fell in love with Bill Williams, who was visiting from the University of Colorado.
Honor your professors and classmates with a gift to Reed in their name. You can make Reed possible for the next generation. THEIR Memory IN THE SPIRIT OF REED
Lois Shoemaker Markus ’45 December 11, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Lois began her life in North Dakota as the daugh ter of a Presbyterian minister. From early child hood she demonstrated exceptional visual and musical memory and taught herself to read music from church hymnals. A curious, obser vant, and resourceful child, she loved using her hands to draw, paint, sew, and embroider. She enjoyed school and spent hours reading library books. In high school, she played flute in the band and orchestra and delighted in art classes. At Reed, she found herself among kindred spirits. Her reading strengths allowed her to study broadly, focusing on early modern Euro pean history, and upon graduation she was awarded a prize for her senior thesis, “The Puritan Movement and the Problem of Authority in the Tudor State, 1570–1603,” advised by Prof. Reginald Arragon [history 1923–74].
An inveterate reader who completed crossword puzzles in ink, she loved every animal that ever had the good fortune to cross her path. She is survived by her six children, Robin, Leslie, Carrie, Melinda, Thomas, and Robert.
Contributed by John Sheehy ’82 Ardie came to Reed as a nontraditional stu dent, enrolling for her junior year after taking a break from college to marry and give birth to two children. Born in Spokane, Washington, she relocated with her parents during World War II to Maine, where her father was assigned com mand of an army base. For high school, Ardie was sent to Buckingham, Brown and Nichols in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following graduation, she enrolled at Pomona College, where she met and married her first husband, James Steere, at the end of her sophomore year. The couple moved to Sacramento, where James completed his veterinarian degree at University of California, Davis, while Ardie gave birth to the first two of their six children. In 1953, while James took his residency in Oregon City, Ardie enrolled at Reed to complete her degree. She thrived amidst the intellectual chal lenges Reed provided. At the time, both faculty and students were being targeted by McCarthy witch hunts. After FBI informants identified an Easter event held at a student house off campus as a communist gathering, Ardie was among a group of students who submitted a letter to the board of trustees and alumni calling for the reas sertion of academic freedom on campus. In summer of 1954, Ardie’s husband was presented with an opportunity to assume a veterinarian practice in Grants Pass, putting an end to Ardie’s plans to return to Reed for her seniorOveryear.the next decade, the family lived in Copenhagen, Southern California, and Massa chusetts, before settling in Petaluma, California. Along the way Ardie gave birth to four more chil dren. In the mid-1960s, she filed for divorce and started a new chapter in her life, returning to college to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in psychology at Sonoma State University.
In Memoriam Mary Lou moved to San Francisco, and then her mother lured her back to Pasadena with the promise of horses. Bill had moved to Los Angeles to work as an engineer in the aerospace industry, and, capitalizing on Mary Lou’s move south, he began courting her in earnest. They married in 1956, spent 40 years together in Palos Verdes, and raised four children. In addition to being a wife, mother, and grandmother, Mary Lou nurtured a series of reptiles, two turtles, a handful of skinks, taran tulas, king snakes, a scorpion, a baby rattlesnake named Cuddles, dozens of alligator lizards, a rosy boa, and a six-foot-long Burmese python. She once brought home a pony, procured at an auction, in a VW bus. Her hobbies were dog grooming, whelping, stud service, competing in dog and horse events, carriage driving, Schutz hund, and rescuing. Hardly a day went by when she wasn’t involved in saving some kind of animal or houseplant that someone had placed on the curb. When her children left home, she turned to birds. One whole room of the house was occupied by finches. She didn’t suffer fools, and a favorite refer ence was to someone’s “room temperature IQ.” Mary Lou was a skilled pianist, guitar player, and soprano. She worked as a Thumb Taxi driver and was an early adopter of organic food delivery and yoga. When her husband died, she moved to Norco, California, and amassed a menagerie of dogs, cats, chickens, burros, donkeys, horses, geese, ducks, goats, llamas, and one steer. For her 70th birthday and recently widowed, she gifted herself with riding a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. When she was in her 80s, Mary Lou visited Reed with her daughter, Susie, and reminisced about canoeing on the Willamette, late night talks with Gary Snyder ’51 , and her close friendship with Prof. Stanley Moore [philosophy 1948–54]. At the age of 88, she took her first trip to Europe with Corona’s Circle City Chorale to sing in their Eastern European performance tour. One day in her 90s, she peered at the giant rock on the hill behind her house, known as Pumpkin Rock, and decided to hike to it the next day. She made the 1.7-mile trek up the mountain with her grandchildren carrying a chair on which she could rest. Mary Lou loved sitting on the front porch watching the world go by. She leaves behind four children: Laurie Smith, Sandra Phen ning, Russell Williams, and Susie Hoffman.
Christopher Ray ’57 December 5, 2021, in Norwood, Pennsylvania.
When Christopher died just short of his 87th birthday, a friend noted, “it was like a great tree in the forest has fallen, or a column in the Parthenon.” For 49 years, he had been tucked away in an old house near Crum Creek Woods.
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With her second husband, psychology professor Joseph Fortier, she moved to Europe for five years, living and working in Kilrush, Ireland, and Munich, Germany. Following Joseph’s death, Ardie returned to school for a degree in nursing. At the age of 60, she joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to Costa Rica as a nurse. Upon returning to the States, she settled near her children in San Francisco, where she continued her nursing career until retiring at ageArdie’s75.
There, he and his wife raised three daughters in a tree-filled oasis where pets roamed free amidst
Richard S. Sakurai ’53 January 29, 2022, in Gresham, Oregon. Not long after he was born in Portland, Richard’s parents, Chiyoko and Masaru Sakurai, acquired some farm acreage in Troutdale, Oregon, that had a beautiful view of Mt. Hood. Dick spent the first 15 years of his life on the farm and attended public school in Corbett. When the U.S. entered World War II, persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were interned in U.S. internment camps scattered throughout the West. Dick and his family were interned in the camp at Minidoka, Idaho, where they spent the next three and a half years. He graduated from high school while in Minidoka, and when the war ended in September 1945, the family moved to the Vanport area of Portland. For the next five years, Dick was in and out of a tuberculosis sanitarium, starting and dropping out of college. Finally, in 1950, he was able to restart college; he graduated from Reed having written his thesis, “Evaluation of the Error in Counting Experiments,” advised by Prof. Jean Delord [physics 1950–88]. His brother, Edward Sakurai ’58, and sister, Judith Michie Yamauchi ’60, followed in his footsteps. Dick started his professional career at a research and development laboratory in Penn sylvania and worked for a time at the Burroughs Corporation, where he worked on the early devel opment of the original dot matrix printer. In 1960, he returned to graduate school at Bryn Mawr and then began a career as a college professor, teaching sciences and mathematics at small, unorthodox liberal arts colleges in the Midwest and East Coast. He observed, “The name Reed College opens many doors in higher education.” While working at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, he met and married Sandra Still, the assistant dean of students. When Dick and Sandra retired, they returned to Oregon. Sandra died in 2016. Dick became a strong advocate for the advancement of progressive causes, including a long run as a docent at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon. His sons, Saren Sakurai and Korien Sakurai, survive him.
Ardeth Owen Steere Fortier ’55 October 25, 2021 in San Francisco, California.
glorious smile and contagious laughter drew people from all walks of life into her orbit.
During his residency, he did research on the spread of contagious diseases in prisons. Because of that, he was sent to Fort Ord, where there was a potential meningitis outbreak.
After LaVelle died from lymphoma in 2004, Bill met Julie Antelman ’56 through Sally Rochlin Osman ’56, who was married to his old Reed roommate, James Osman ’57. Though they had never met before, Julie and Bill had a lot in common: Both were graduates of Reed (where her roommate had married his roommate); both had lived in Hyde Park and had professional ties to the University of Chicago; and both had been raised in Minneapolis, growing up on opposite ends of Thomas Avenue. Sally thought her two friends would hit it off, and, on a road trip to California with Julie, introduced the couple. Bill had begun to recover from the loss of LaVelle; Julie’s husband had died 11 years before. The three dined in Santa Barbara and the next morning Julie woke up early.
Sally was still sleeping, so Julie gave Bill a call. They had breakfast at the beach and walked along the shore, and he gave her a gamba lesson. After she returned home to Chicago, they began emailing each other. She came to L.A. so they could attend operas together.
He went on to earn his MD at Baylor College of Medicine, where he met his future wife, LaVelle Richburg, then secretary to the mayor of Houston. After marrying, they moved for Bill’s University of Chicago residency in internal medi cine and grew their family with the births of Eliz abeth and Patricia. Faced with whether to volunteer for the army with his service deferred until he had completed his residency or risk being drafted and sent to Vietnam as an emergency medic, Bill opted to volunteer. It proved to be the right decision.
“It’s great to let Reed do the choosing for you,” Bill said, “separating the wheat from the chaff.” Eventually Julie moved to California, and they
Bill’s childhood in Michigan was filled with nat uralist pursuits, including pets, the outdoors, and riding his bike around Minneapolis. His fam ily moved to Forest Grove, Oregon, in 1947, where he graduated from high school. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “An Attempt to Produce Sensory Preconditioning in Rats,” advised by Prof. Raymond Boyle [psychology 1956–61].
“Reed saved me from small Oregon farmschool mediocrity,” Bill said. “It gave me the impetus for independent learning and was the most important experience in my life.”
William Ure ’57 February 1, 2022, in Santa Barbara, California, from metastases of skin cancer.
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an ever-growing sculpture garden. Within the walls of his vast studio—equipped with over head pulleys, tools, and heavy machinery—Chris fashioned exhibitions on prehistoric life, aero space technology, economics, physics, electric ity, ethnology, and Egyptian and Chinese cul ture as strains of classical music played in the background.Chrisenjoyed a Huck Finn childhood in West port, Connecticut. As the son of landscape archi tects Jo and Eloise Ray, he went sailing with his father, collected hermit crabs, and got up to mischief with friends. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “The Paper Chro matographic Analysis of the Retinal Reflecting Pigment Layer in the Crayfish Astacus trowbridgii,” advised by Prof. Lewis Kleinholz [biology 1946–80]. After graduating, Chris curated natural science at a small museum in Scranton, Penn sylvania, where just for fun he founded a rocket society that still exists. He then fulfilled a child hood dream by working as a preparator at the famed American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Learning from the great muralists and diorama makers of the time, he created exhi bitions that are still on display. He also ground lenses for the Hayden Planetarium (making the front page of the New York Times when he set up a telescope in front of the museum to view an eclipse), and worked with crabs in his own biology lab. In his free time, he took sculpture classes at the Art Students League. The New York days concluded when Chris accepted a museum job in San Antonio, Texas; he went on to work for museums in Vancouver, Canada, and St. Paul, Minnesota. He returned east as director of exhibits at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Eventually he formed his own firm, Ray Museum Studios, where he researched, designed, and built schol arly models for the Penn Museum of Arche ology and Anthropology, including models of the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala; the Temple of the Sun in Pachacamac, Peru; an interpretive model of a Pompeiian house; and the Gordion citadel of ancient Turkey. He worked as a free lancer for a variety of clients, including the Dela ware Museum of Natural History, Winterthur Museum, the United Nations building in New York, and the Philadelphia Flower Show, for which he created an exhibition of live bees in a hive.Through it all, he never stopped sculpting, and his work was shown throughout the country. Among his dozens of indoor sculptures, many of them abstract, is a remarkably realistic horse head commissioned by the Assateague National Refuge visitor center; it was, he claimed, always looking at him. Some of his sculptures can be seen on Chriscray-sculpture.blogspot.com.neverlosthisboyhoodfascination with astronomy, and after joining the Antique Tele scope Society, he developed a sideline of restoring large telescopes in various observatories around the country. He maintained Swarthmore College’s 24-inch telescope and did the resto ration of its Calder mobile. On windy days, he could be seen ascending the grassy mound on which the mobile stands to free its tangled parts.
Bill loved working with wood and converted a bedroom into a woodworking shop. Adhering to the belief that “everything is better if you do it yourself,” he built cabinets for the kitchen, book cases for the hall, and two homemade kayaks. He plumbed his entire house for solar panels, which he installed himself, and designed and poured cement for a reflecting pond. After appren ticing himself to a local instrument maker, Bill researched early instruments and built violins, violas da gamba, lutes, and trombas marina. He was active in the early music community, taught himself to play all five registers of gambas and recorders, organized annual Christmas concerts, and hosted a madrigal group in his house every Sunday for nearly 30 years. A lifelong ornithologist, Bill was a member of the Audubon Society and an avid birder, memo rizing bird calls from tapes, helping rehabilitate seabirds coated with oil during a spill, and partic ipating in the annual national Christmas count. He created a pond in his front yard for a pair of mallard ducks, and a collection of bantam chickens freely roamed his property. He believed in the importance of philan thropy and devoted many hours to Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic, Doctors without Borders, and the Viola da Gamba Society. His house was open for musicians needing a place to stay; he hosted international exchange students, and he often chauffeured people with mobility issues to doctor appointments and around town.
As a contribution to the town of Swarthmore, he fashioned a quaint kiosk for the posting of announcements.Chriswrotepoems resplendent with cosmo logical images and witty concepts and was an incorrigible prankster. He loved solving puzzles and reading books from the golden age of mystery writers. A compelling storyteller, he regaled people with adventures of being robbed by bandits on the coastal desert of Peru, climbing Mount Hood, and leaping into his car to escape a charging rhino. His cat, Pumpkin, regularly escorted him up Elm Avenue, and neighborhood dogs knew he always had a pocketful of doggie bones. He is survived by his wife, Brit, and their daughters, Waverly, Wendelin, and Vanessa.
Bill and LaVelle moved to the Santa Barbara area, where he established a small private practice as an internist. He cared deeply for his patients, treating them regardless of their insurance status, and enjoyed the challenges of geriatric care.
In the 1950s, Jon’s parents, who were true believers in the Soviet Union and active members of multiple left-wing organizations including the Communist Party, were black listed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and lost their jobs. As a teenager, Jon also identified as a communist/socialist and appeared before both the Los Angeles City Council and the board of supervisors to protest various causes such as smog, violent comics, and racial segregation. His future life would be shaped by Reed. “As far as my educational growth, the four years I spent at Reed were the most important in my life,” he said. He composed for his fellow students, who then performed his composi tions. Jon decided to become a college professor and, in 1959, married Georganna Towne ’61 Jon wrote his thesis, “A Study of the Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano,” advised by Prof. Herbert Gladstone [music 1946–80].
Jon and Georganna moved to San Francisco, where their first child, Jennifer, was born. He studied composition at UC Berkeley, collabo rated on musical comedies with Willard Bain ’60, and worked as an assistant buyer at Macy’s. Hired as the music teacher at Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, he conducted the choir and orchestra and taught music theory, history, and piano lessons. In 1963, he began his graduate studies at the University of Oregon, where he assembled an electronic music studio and composed his first works in the genre. His thesis was an orchestral work, “After ‘Nude Descending a Staircase,’” and upon completing his PhD, he was invited to study in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where he became an advocate for elec tronic music. He began working at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where his son, Jon Jason, was born. Jon joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1967; he taught there for 43 years and developed one of the first programs in elec troacoustic music. He and Georganna divorced in 1974.Hismusic fell into two categories: instru mental/choral and electronic (or electroacoustic) music. He was part of a team that developed the Synclavier, the first commercial digital synthe sizer. Through its memory, the instrument, which was connected to a 16-bit minicomputer, could produce many sounds at once, enabling a single musician to sound like an orchestra. If a trumpet solo had been played on the keyboard, for example, and the musician wanted the notes repeated as a bell, the musician pressed a button. The computer remembered the sounds and played them back instantly in the form of any instrument in its memory.
A pioneer in electroacoustic music, Jon was a cel ebrated composer and educator who taught both music and humanities at Dartmouth College. He and his older brother, Michael, were raised in Hollywood, California, where their father worked for 20th Century Fox and their mother was employed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The year Jon was born, his father left the family, and Jon’s first years were spent in Mrs. Bell’s orphanage until he joined his brother at Palomar MilitaryWhenAcademy.hewas six years old, his mother married Alexander “Sasha” Walden (born in Ufa, Russia), a double bass player in the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra. Sasha became a great musical influence in Jon’s young life, encour aging him to study piano and compose music, and frequently taking him to concerts. Jon studied piano with Jacob Gimpel and Theodore Saidenberg, but preferred composing his own music to playing works assigned to him such as Chopin, Scarlatti, and Prokofiev. Nonethe less, he developed a deep, lifelong affection for Russian music. As a composer, he was largely self-taught. He attended John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, where he was elected student body president.
January 1, 2022, in McKinleyville, California, from Alzheimer’s disease. Jean was an only child raised in Bellingham, Washington. Her father died when she was young, and her mother, who had only completed the fourth grade, believed strongly in a liberal education. She suggested that her daughter go to Reed. “It was the greatest gift my mother ever gave me,” Jean said. “It developed my self-image as a smart person. No one can take that away.” She also enjoyed the ratio of three men on campus for every woman. She wrote her thesis, “The Accuracy of Judgements Concerning Partic ipation in Group Discussion,” advised by Prof. Leslie Squier [psychology 1953–88]. She went on to earn a master’s of social work from Boston’s Simmons School of Social Work, which she found easy after attending Reed. She worked as a psychotherapist in Monterey and had an office in Eureka for 28 years. Joan was one of the original teaching members of the Interna tional Transactional Analysis Association, and her career as a psychotherapist spanned 59 years, 51 of those years in Humboldt County. She was a longtime member and former president of the American Association of University Women.
In Memoriam were together until 2020, when Bill’s short-term memory failed and he moved into a dementia ward, where he resided until his death. He is survived by his daughters, Elizabeth Saul and Patricia McGuire ’85, and by Julie, his devoted life partner for the past 18 years.
Jon toured the United States and Europe performing compositions he composed for this instrument. He became a founding member of the International Confederation of
Nonny Frances Burack ’60 November 25, 2021, in Springfield, Massachusetts. A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Nonny attended Reed, the Columbia University School of General Studies, and Johns Hopkins University before earning a bachelor’s degree from Goddard College. She also earned a mas ter’s degree in education at the University of Massachusetts. But her burning desire was to dance with Martha Graham, with whom she had trained. On November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, Nonny was hit by a car in New York City, ending all hopes of a professional dancing career. Still, she taught dance for more than 20 years; worked at The Massachusetts Review, a literary magazine; and was the coordinator of the Valley Peace Center, which for five and a half years opposed the Vietnam War and worked to reduce the power of the “military-industrial complex.” Nonny worked at the Mark Meadow Library, at all branches of the Jones Library, in the Town of Amherst’s clerk’s office, and as an election worker. For more than 30 years she was a guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum. She did freelance typing, proofreading, editing, and calligraphy, and had a keen appreciation for a fineSheampersand.servedon the North Amherst Study Committee, the Town Meeting Study Committee, the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee, and the Amherst Public Shade Tree Committee, and as a trustee for the Jones Library. In her early 50s, she discovered classical Greek and Latin with the Amherst College classics department, and this became a great and sustaining joy. She loved music and was a student of baseball, taking pleasure in watching and analyzing major league games.
36 Reed Magazine june 2022
Jean Ruth Arndt Fowler ’58
Jon Howard Appleton ’61 January 30, 2022, at The Village in White River Junction, Vermont.
Nonny is survived by her brother, Daniel Burack.
“My career is based on my relatability to all people—exposure to the humanities started me on that,” Jean said. “Reed gave me a wonderful education that I carry with me daily. My educa tion never stops.” In Monterey, she met her husband Jerry, who had studied law at Harvard and also became a psychotherapist. They had two sons, Brett and Scott. Jerry and Scott survive her.
January 15, 2018, in San Francisco, California.
In 1972, he became an organization specialist with the National Education Association (NEA) in Washington, D.C. After 20 years at the NEA, he retired and began his own consulting firm, Productive People, working with organizations in the D.C. area.
A proud fourth-generation Oregonian, Bruce once entertained notions of being a profes sional bowler. He fell in love with Germany after being stationed there in the army. When he returned to the U.S., he discovered his true passion was teaching. He earned a master’s in teaching from Reed and went on to earn a PhD from Washington State University, studying the impacts of the Bonneville Dam.
GrowingPennsylvania,Williamsport,MarkmovedwithhisfamilytotheLosAngelesareawhenhewasseven.upintheSanFernandoValley,hemadelifelongfriends,amongthemReedclassmate
Electroacoustic Music, and stimulating inter action with composers from many nations convinced him a similar organization in the U.S. might raise the profile of electroacoustic music in America. He helped establish the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and helped found the Theremin Center for Elec tronic Music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he also taught. He received Guggenheim, honorary Fulbright, and Dartmouth Faculty fellow ships and special awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Discussing audience reactions to his composi tions, Jon said, “Most people are surprised that my music is very traditional. It’s tonal music. It’s rhythmically conventional in many ways. The sounds are unusual, that’s for sure, but the structure is rather traditional. People who don’t know my work come to a concert curious and a little apprehensive. Usually they discover that they like it.” He was a prolific composer, and his collected works (music manuscripts, writings, publica tions, correspondence, recordings, videos, etc.) are housed in the Rauner Library and the Jones Media Center at Dartmouth College. Jon was featured in a 2004 Apple docu mentary about the Macintosh computer that focused on his work in electronic music and his establishment of one of the first digital music studios in the world at Dartmouth. He also developed Appletones software to teach the principles of composition to his students. He was devoted to his students at Dartmouth College, the Verde Valley School, Oakland University, the Moscow Conservatory of Music, Keio University, UC at Santa Cruz, Loyola University, the University of Hawaii, and many visiting appointments. He was an avid world traveler, often jetting off to perform or teach, and loved immersing himself in other cultures. Jon spoke five languages, was always plotting his next adventure, and was happiest when traveling, composing, teaching, or spending time with friends and family. At the time of his death, he was at work on his autobiography, Out of Hollywood: A Composer’s Life. He is survived by his children, Jennifer and Jon Jason, and by his nephew, Jeremy Appleton ’88. Mark (Peter) Shaffer ’61 January 8, 2022, in Eureka, California. Born in
Bob Ross ’61
Bruce was a political science professor at Humboldt State University from 1969 to 1986, inspiring thousands of young people with his no-nonsense teaching style and a commitment to making the world a better place. He was dedi cated to his students and proud to see them succeed. He was frequently invited on televi sion news shows to discuss election results and explain the U.S. political system.
Charles O. Kuzminski MAT ’65 November 11, 2021, in Tigard, Oregon. A dedicated educator, Charles passed up the ministry to pursue the dream of imparting learning to young peo ple. He was born in Cle Elum, Washington, and spent his early years in Yakima. He spent two years at a community college before entering Multnomah Biblical Seminary, where he earned a degree in theol ogy. When he decided he was not cut out for the ministry, he continued his education at Portland State University, where he got a bach elor’s degree in history, and then earned a mas ter’s in education from Reed. After teaching at Cleveland High School in Portland for six years, he moved to the admin istrative side of education, joining the staff of the Portland Teachers Association. By the age of 35, Chuck had become executive director for the 7,500-member Houston Teachers Associ ation, where he was a leading spokesman for teachers’ rights. There he became the nemesis of school administrators, who felt teachers should teach and leave running the schools to others. He stood in opposition to the idea that teachers should perform what amounted to a maintenance role, eschewing the belief that “the teacher is the pro in the classroom.”
“In Houston the type of teaching that’s been rewarded is the type that amounts to main taining the status quo,” he said. “Down here the general role seems to be to stay away from controversy. I don’t know how you can teach social studies, for instance, without dealing with controversial issues.”
An avid outdoorsman and fisherman, he built a house in Big Lagoon, where he spent nearly 50 years watching the Gray whales he loved. He was a Giants fan and enjoyed watching a well-pitched ball game while drinking a beer. He traveled extensively and loved wandering the streets of the great cities of the world. He is survived by his children, Laura and Roger.
In high school he worked in theatre produc tions as stage manager and in set construction, discovered Eastern European and Israeli folk dancing, and developed a left-leaning interest in politics. He found ample scope for all these inclinations at Reed. His interest in the German language, travel, and world affairs was greatly expanded during a summer abroad, where he experienced the Soviet-sponsored World Youth Festival in Vienna and visited Eastern European countries.Prof.Kaspar Locher [German 1950–88] advised Mark’s thesis on Robert Musil’s novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and recom mended that he pursue German studies rather than English literature in graduate school. Mark received his MA in German from the Univer sity of Chicago. In 1966, he began his life work, teaching German language and literature at Humboldt State College (soon to be Humboldt State Univer sity, and now Cal Poly Humboldt) in Arcata, California. He organized international student exchanges, started a tradition of language retreats in a youth hostel, went with a colleague to guide student groups in Germany, and taught or helped his colleagues teach innovative courses on European literature and culture. After retiring in 1998, Mark pursued life long interests with renewed energy. He became a member of Humboldt Folk Dancers and bicy cled with a group of friends, exploring Humboldt highways and back roads. With his wife, Maggie, he traveled widely, notably to Mexico, Greece, and Vietnam, where the two taught English under the auspices of Global Volunteers. He was married for 59 years to his Reed classmate, Margaret Oake Shaffer ’61, who survives him, as do his daughter, Erika, and son, Andrew.
Bruce Haston ’64
Chuck was an outdoorsman who was an avid skier, bicyclist, hiker, and fisherman. He married his second wife, Anne, in 1999 and moved to Sisters, Oregon, where he joined the coffee group at Ray’s and went to church at St. Edward the Martyr. He was a member of Kiwanis and the Sisters Corvette Club. After their move to Tigard, Chuck’s activities slowed, but his twice-daily walks with Sam, his beloved dog and best friend, made him many friends in the community. Anne survives him, as do his daughters, Beth and Jan Kuzminski, and his sister, Linda Kuzminski.
37Reed Magazine June 2022
Robert B. Hutchinson ’74 December 10, 2021, in Hanover, Illinois, from cancer.
Contributed by Bill Trost ’90 Growing up in the Sweet Home, Oregon, area, Kent worked summers in the fields. He came to Reed because his English teacher, who had been going through colleges one by one at the end of class, summarized Reed with “Kent, you’d do well there.” He majored in philosophy, paying his way by working at Albertsons and later for Gary Schlickeiser in Reed’s academic computing department. It was there he met his lifelong love, Karen Miller ’84. After graduating, he worked as the system administrator for academic computing for a few months (succeeded by Bill Trost ’90) before going to Tektronix and then a small local computer contracting firm, EASE Software. There, he and Mark Mason ’89 founded their own computing company that was later bought out by Wind River. He was able to retire early and continue or expand on his various passions: cooking, especially bread baking, photography, travel, and, of course, all things computer.
38 Reed Magazine june 2022
William lost several close friends to AIDS in the early years of the epidemic. He volunteered with Shanti Project, one of the world’s first community-based organizations to help support people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. He partici pated in the formation of the Radical Faeries, an association of queer-identified individuals founded in 1979 whose shared beliefs include free expression, an appreciation for nature, and a wryFollowingcampiness.hismother’s death in 1991, William moved to Martha’s Vineyard and lived in the camp on the pond. He created beautiful gardens around his house and an intricate web of trails featuring found art and installations at every turn. He was the quintessential host and creative cook, and stimulating conversation was assured at his formal meals and high teas. William involved himself in many activities and causes, serving on the board of the Vineyard Conservation Society, assisting at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and celebrating with the Unitarian Universalist Pagans. His writing prowess, editing skills, and generosity served those organizations well.
William grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where his father was a math professor at Brown University. The family spent summers at a camp on Seth’s Pond, and, as a child, William lived in London for several years while his father was a visiting lecturer at Imperial College. He wrote his thesis, “Miles of Earth, Rivers of Heaven,” advised by Prof. Ieva Vitins [Russian 1970–77]. He moved to San Francisco in the late ’70s and worked as a professional calligrapher whose works included a logo for the long-running NPR series Music from the Hearts of Space and calligraphy for books by the poet James Broughton. William was particularly proud of his mail art that featured calligraphy and chromatically complementary antique stamps. His art appears in the San Francisco Public Library’s Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy and Lettering.
Robert was born in Los Angeles. His family moved to New Zealand for several years before returning to live first in New Jersey and then in New York City. He graduated from high school in Manhattan, attended Reed, and then graduated from Columbia University with a master’s in geology.
Kenton Black ’81 December 10, 2021, in Portland, from a heart attack.
William T. Stewart ’73 October 20, 2021, in Edgartown, Massachusetts, from thyroid cancer.
In Memoriam Jorge M. López ’67 December 30, 2021, in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. Contributed by Peter Greenfield ’67 Jorge came to Reed from Puerto Rico, where he was born. He returned to Puerto Rico after receiving his PhD in mathematics from the University of Oregon. At Reed, he focused on both mathematics and physics, but ultimately wrote a mathematics thesis, “Integration over Locally Compact Spaces and Haar Measure,” advised by Prof. Larry Edison [math 1964–70]. He was active in student opposition to the Vietnam War. And he was an encouraging class mate and supportive friend to many who had the good fortune to know him. After returning to Puerto Rico, Jorge played a key role in the mathematics program at the University of Puerto Rico from 1975 to 2016. He was instrumental in the creation of a doctoral program in mathematics, and he chaired the department for eight years. He was also a visiting professor or scholar at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Utrecht University in the Neth erlands, and the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría in Cuba. Jorge was passionate about mathematics and also about mathematics education, responding in part to challenges faced by students who arrived at UPR with less than excellent prepa ration. In collaboration with UPR colleagues and others, he published widely about curriculum development and pedagogy, applying a “math in context” or “realistic mathematics” approach, and he conducted workshops for teachers in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, and elsewhere. In Puerto Rico, he founded and directed the Centros Regionales de Adiestramiento en Instrucción Matemática (Regional Centers for Training in Mathematics Instruction), an ongoing program that provides in-service training for teachers of all grade levels, and that develops instructional materials for local use and enrichment activities for talented students. Colleagues who had been involved in the program and many others who knew him as a mentor and a friend gathered at the University of Puerto Rico in March to pay tribute to his inspirational leadership. Jorge is survived by his wife, Aileen Velazquez, and his sons, Jorge F. López, Carlos Lezama, Victor M. López, and Leonardo L. López.
Robert’s true passion was the outdoors, and he was never without hiking boots, running shoes, kayaking paddles, and his beloved bicycles. He participated in several triathlons in New York State and Illinois. While working for BrownTrout Publishers in California, he wrote several books, including a children’s book and a geological guide through the Grand Canyon. In Connecticut, he worked as an acquisitions editor for Praeger Publishing until his retirement in 2016.
After his father’s death in 2012, William relo cated to California, where he cofounded Ground swell, a queer retreat center and intentional community located on 184 acres in Mendocino County. He laid plans for Groundswell’s long-term survival, intending the forested refuge to remain a place of ecological stewardship, social justice, and service to queer and other marginalized peoples. True to form, William chronicled his final journey in recent months with intensity and humor, writing: “A lifetime of spiritual malprac tice is fairly paying off. If I can avoid the medical conveyor belt, I get to have an amazing experi ence. I feel blessed to have both the opportunity and the psychic resources to be able to model a good end-of-life process; it’s something I hadn’t foreseen being able to offer, but it’s an honor and I accept it unhesitatingly.” He is survived by a close circle of dear friends and fellow travelers.
Robert and his wife, Ruth, moved to Hanover, Illinois, from Newton, Connecticut, in 2014. Ruth survives him, as do his son, Blaed; mother, Joyce; and sister, Pam.
Pending Sally Watson ’50, Alita Cavender Roberts ’51, Richard S. Waritz ’51, James B. Wade ’53, Morgan Martha (Clapp) Sanders ’55, Allan Blackman ’58, Thomas W. Casstevens ’59, Dan Persyko ’60, Charles E. Marks ’62, Suzan Butler Mayer ’62, Seanna Holtz ’63, David C. Scott ’63, Sean Thackrey ’63, Robert Royhl Smith ’71, Jerene Kirkman Merritt ’72, Francis W. Martin ’73, John Hidden Van Buren ’74, Rockwell Lanville (Chip) Brown III ’77, Lafcadio Cortesi ’84, Diana Miller Sauerhaft ’84, Robert Walter Avery ’89, Sylvia Celestine Cook ’89, John David Coulter ’92, Tyler Madison Thompson ’16. 39Reed Magazine June 2022
After retiring, Berkvam returned to France to spend time with her children, David Michael Berkvam ’94 and Stephanie Berkvam ’88 and her“Dorisgrandchildren.cametothe U.S. as a young woman and became a highly praised professor at Reed College,” her daughter-in-law Rachael Short ’94 said. “At the same time, she raised two children on her own in a culture that was not her own. She was usually the smartest person in the room. As she got older, she did not dive into intellectual argu ments with quite as much vigor, but the last time I visited, someone made an asinine assertion in her presence and she rose up to skewer them. She was a loving and remarkably wise mother, grand mother, and mother-in-law. I was very lucky to have her in my life.”
Marcus Emmett Smith MALS ’00 December 1, 2021, in Portland. As a child, Marcus loved to tinker. He made things out of wood and took things apart to see how they worked. It was something he did throughout life, and in addition to taking com puters, bikes, or cars apart, he mostly put them back together again. Original, quick-witted, and self-effacing, Marcus was a relentless warrior against cancer, kidney disease, moronic hypocrisy, unconsid ered conformity, and pretentiousness. After graduating from Gonzaga University, he earned a master’s degree in Russian history at Reed, where he wrote his thesis, “Red Machine 4.0: Dziga Vertov and the Kino-Eye,” advised by Prof. Scott Smith [Russian 1997–2002]. To support himself through Reed, he worked as an IT specialist in Portland. Marcus loved Russian history and traveled to Moscow as a student. Later, when he worked for the U.S. Department of State, he lived in Moscow for three years. Marcus left the State Department to study film preservation for a year at the prestigious L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Jobs in film preservation were hard to come by, so he returned to Portland, where he continued his IT work and started his own company, Red Star Machine Works. When he became too ill to continue running the company, he sold it, continuing, as he was able, to do IT work for select businesses and friends. He was an avid chef who loved to research and then make breads, cheeses, sauces, and other creations from scratch and share them with friends. His house was filled with cooking gadgets, Russian art posters, vintage cameras, various electronic projects, computers, cats, and Polaroid pictures documenting his life. He secretly loved disco music and hated kombucha and squash of all kinds. At the time of his death, Marcus was being cared for by his devoted sister, a loving friend, and wonderful caretakers. He had multiple visi tors, often connecting friends and family whom he had often talked about separately but who had not yet met each other. He died mostly on his own terms, never having to leave his house or his cats. Marcus was a road bike racer until a skydiving accident in 1998, when his leg was broken in multiple places. Although the leg eventually healed, he never was able to race bikes again, but at least had an impressive story! His love of road bikes turned into love for his vintage restored BMW motorcycle. Even while ill, he loved to putter around in his vegetable garden in the last summer of his life. He loved animals of all kinds, but cats were his spirit animal, and he was devoted to many cats over his lifetime. He is survived by his sister, Melissa Ryon; and his brothers, Mike, Matt, and Mitch Smith. Sophia Gabriel Carson ’24 December 24, 2021, in Austin, Texas. After spending her earliest years in Pearland, Texas, Sophia grew up in Richland, Washington, and Austin, Texas. She attended Richland’s Sacajawea Elementary and Enterprise Middle schools and was a member of All Saints Episcopal Church. She developed a love for the Pacific Northwest, a love of the outdoors, and had a deep curiosity and appreciation of nature and life. She learned to play the guitar and enjoyed running, hiking, swimming, ski ing, golfing, volunteering with her church fam ily and in the community, and laughing with friends and family. When she was 12, the family moved to Austin, where she began playing classical guitar and became a gifted artist and photographer. Sophia thrived in the close-knit community of faculty, staff, and students at NYOS Charter School, took on leadership roles in Science Olym piad and Youth in Government, and edited the yearbook. Naturally inquisitive, she founded the philosophy club and practiced her reasoning and debate skills on her parents. Upon graduation, Sophia returned to the part of the country she most loved to attend Reed, where she majored in economics. During the pandemic, she began working at a Thai restau rant, and when the public health situation finally allowed for travel, she cooked a delicious feast for her family in Austin. True to her name, Sophia was a wise and bright light to the world. Her compassion for others was apparent in her drive to help those most in need. She expressed a passion for active engagement in the struggle for equality and justice. A talented baker, she enjoyed creating deli cious food for friends and family. Her love for animals influenced her volunteer work with cats. She fostered many litters of kittens, eventually adopting one she named Orange Julius. Sophia also claimed one of the family chickens as her own, naming the hen Untitled Document. She loved the outdoors; enjoyed running, hiking, swimming, and golf, and was a fierce debater, usually winning the arguments. Fiercely indepen dent, she was constantly on the move, exploring new ideas and places. Sophia is survived by her parents, James and Elena Carson; sister, Isabela Carson; and brother, Nicolas Carson. Prof. Doris Desclais Berkvam [French 1975–2001] January 27, 2022, in Paris, France. Professor Berkvam taught French at Reed for 26 years, from 1975 to 2001. A native of Paris, France, she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and at C.E.L.G. She got her master’s in French from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington. A specialist in medieval French literature and society, she was the author of Enfance et maternité dans la littérature française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles ( Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981). Prior to coming to Reed, Berkvam taught at École St. Marcel, in Paris and at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. She had come to the United States after marrying an American, but when the couple divorced in 1979, she had to decide whether to stay in the U.S. or return to France. Everything seemed to indicate she should return home, and she tendered her resignation. But Reed President Paul Bragdon [1971–88] urged her to remain, and she agreed to stay because teaching was deeply important to her and she had a strong commitment to her students. Graham Jones ’98 said she was “a pillar of one of the most extraordinary departments Reed has assembled,” and fondly recalled Berkvam’s wisdom. “Her indomitable, irreverent laugh endeared her to countless students,” he said. Berkvam spent her summers and sabbaticals in France, which afforded her two completely different lives. But when she was at Reed, she was passionate about giving all of herself to her students.“Reedis exceptional,” she said. “I’ve taught in other places, where you have to pull, carry, and prod students to get them to think. With Reed students, all you have to do is say something that awakens their curiosity. Reed students are more open-minded, more curious, more tolerant.”
What we’re looking at in class
This medal was commissioned by Catherine the Great in 1793, commemorating the Russian Empire’s annexation of lands from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Second Partition. One side features a portrait of the Empress; the other, a double-headed eagle brandishing maps of the conquered territories, which fall within the present-day borders of Belarus and Ukraine. In an inscription across the top of the medal, the Empress declares her triumph: “I have restored what had been tornThisaway.”18th-century propaganda message likely rings familiar to anyone following news from this part of the world today, as the Russian Federation’s invasion and attempted territorial conquests of Ukraine are once again presented by the Kremlin in terms of restoration, return, and reunion. In fact, replicas of this medal were made by a Russian ultra-nationalist group following the Russian Federation’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Studying the 18th-century original alongside the 21st-century replica, we are prompted to think critically about how ideological messages are encoded all around us, and how cultural heritage and history can be weaponized in this process. This medal also prompts us to think about the power of poetic language and symbolic images, leading us to examine their role in building and welding—yet also in resisting —the power of the state. My students and I will be studying Catherine the Great’s commemorative medals, as well as a variety of other ceremonial and decorative objects, in the course “Russian 371 - Russian Literature and Culture from Medieval to Romantic,” offered in Spring 2023.
—NAOMI CAFFEE [RUSSIAN]
Object of Study 40 Reed Magazine june 2022
Restored or Conquered?
Alumni Volunteer Leaders. Reed is grateful to our committed alumni volunteer leaders who continue to give their time and vast talents in service to the college and alumni community. Thank you. It is an honor and a joy to work with you. Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Cori Savaiano ’11 CO-CHAIR Kyndra Homuth Kennedy ’04 CO-CHAIR Keith Allen ’83 David Buckler ’85 Caroll Casbeer ’10 Jay Hubert ’66 Advait Jukar ’11 Charli Krause ’09 Katherine Lefever ’07 Christine Lewis ’07 Jan Liss ’ 74 Heather Rode Niemi ’00 Dylan Rivera ’95 Andrew Schpak ’01 Lara Simonetti ’20 Michael Stapleton ’10 Anne Steele ’ 70 Andrei Stephens ’08 Carlie Stolz ’13 Marcia Yaross ’ 73 Janet Youngblood ’68 Chapter Leadership Council Johanna Colgrove ’92 CLC CHAIR AND EUROPE CHAPTER CHAIR Andrei Stephens ’08 PAST CLC CHAIR AND REPRESENTATIVE TO THE ALUMNI BOARD Carlie Stolz ’13 AUSTIN CHAPTER Dieter Dehlinger ’01 BAY AREA CHAPTER Eve Lyons ’95 BOSTON CHAPTER AND REPRESENTATIVE TO THE ALUMNI BOARD Justin Corban ’04 CHICAGO CHAPTER Andrew Korson ’04 DENVER CHAPTER Peter Miller ’06 NEW YORK CHAPTER Jim Quinn ’83 PORTLAND CHAPTER Emily Allen ’19 PUGET SOUND CHAPTER Wayne Clayton ’82 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CHAPTER Lee De Cola ’66 WASHINGTON, D.C., CHAPTER Bennett Barsk ’82 FORMER WASHINGTON, D.C., CHAIR
Many Thanks to Reed’s
Alumni
Alumni Board alea adigweme ’06 PRESIDENT Dave Baxter ’87 VICE PRESIDENT Dylan Rivera ’95 SECRETARY Melissa Osborne ’13 PAST PRESIDENT Michael Axley ’89 ALUMNI TRUSTEE Christine Lewis ’07 ALUMNI TRUSTEE Darlene Pasieczny ’01 ALUMNI TRUSTEE Lisa Saldana ’94 ALUMNI TRUSTEE Jon Bates ’67 AT-LARGE MEMBER Sirius Bonner ’05 AT-LARGE MEMBER Ian Fisher ’07 AT-LARGE MEMBER Carmen García Durazo ’11 AT-LARGE MEMBER Liz Gilkey ’01 AT-LARGE MEMBER
Katie Halloran ’15 AT-LARGE MEMBER Ashlin Hatch ’17 AT-LARGE MEMBER Andy McLain ’92 AT-LARGE MEMBER David Messner ’90 AT-LARGE MEMBER Rennie Meyers ’15 AT-LARGE MEMBER Peter Miller ’06 AT-LARGE MEMBER Govind Nair ’83 AT-LARGE MEMBER Laramie Silber ’13 AT-LARGE MEMBER Marjorie Skinner ’01 AT-LARGE MEMBER Jac Nelson ’13 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENT Alix Sanchez ’08 PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENT Eve Lyons ’95 CHAPTER LEADERSHIP COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE Andrei Stephens ’08 CHAPTER LEADERSHIP COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE
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REED COLLEGE 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard Portland, Oregon 97202 -8199 Periodicals Postage Paid Portland, Oregon dazzling array: Alumni enjoyed a spellbinding laser light show outside of Old Dorm Block during Reunions 2022.
