Reed College Magazine June 2020

‰ JUNE 2020

THE QUARANTINE JOURNALS Reed students chronicle life under lockdown and what the pandemic has done to their families, their neighborhoods, and their future.

reed.edu/institutional_diversity

‰ june 2020

This Must Be the Place

www.reed.edu/reed-magazine

The past months have been unbelievably tumultuous, not just for Reed, but for the entire planet. The spread of the novel coronavirus shattered the contours of ordinary life, disrupting schedules, calendars, and replacing plans for the future with question marks and ellipses.

As this magazine went to the press, sustained Black Lives Matter protests demanding an end to longstanding and continuing anti-Black violence and systemic racism were taking place around the nation and the globe over the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. The unspeakable images of Mr. Floyd’s last moments bear stark witness to a reality faced by Black people and people of color every day in this country: racism is a constant threat, where daily activities can pose danger.

This is a time of reckoning. There is a great deal of work to be done to bring about lasting change in this country and at Reed. We need to examine and reform institutional structures, policies, and practices that enable racism to continue. Our focus must be on concrete action. I commit to this work, and my hope is that just as we have united to find ways to offer the academic program during this global pandemic and to look out for one another by wearing face coverings and social distancing, we can come together decisively and without delay to do the necessary work to put an end to structural racism.

Fighting for social justice during a health crisis that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people increases the level of difficulty we face. With so much uncertainty about what lies ahead, it is important to remember that although the clocks are broken—days and months

have been fractured and upended— our compass holds steady. We know that critical thinking, purposeful participation, learning, research, and creativity—the pursuits of a liberal arts education—can contribute to the greater good. What makes Reed College distinct are the relationships we forge as we question, explore, and grow. These relationships are uniquely Reed’s because of how our lives and stories intertwine.

When I was inaugurated as Reed’s 16th president last year, I spoke of the college’s enduring web of connections: Reed is not, nor should it be a static entity. Reed is us right now, in this moment, and it stretches beyond the boundaries of this campus and gathers many lives into its sphere of influence. Reed is a high ideal. It lives in the hearts and minds of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and extended community members. I believe in Reed, and I am mindful of our shared responsibility to sustain this college and to join together in envisioning its future.

I am confident that together we, a community of engaged learners, thinkers, activists, and creators, will rise to the challenges of these times.

We must be guided by our steady compass and insist that Reed live up to its highest ideals. Long after the pandemic passes, an anti-racist Reed will endure.

—AUDREY BILGER, PRESIDENT OF REED

3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 99, No.2 REED MAGAZINE editor

Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu writer/In Memoriam editor

Randall S. Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu writer/reediana editor

Katie Pelletier ’03 503/777-7727 pelletic@reed.edu class notes editor

Joanne Hossack ’82 joanne@reed.edu art director

Tom Humphrey tom.humphrey@reed.edu REED COLLEGE RELATIONS vice president, college relations

Hugh Porter Executive director, communications & public affairs

Mandy Heaton 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.

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 (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College.

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

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

Reed Magazine june 2020

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‰ June 202o

Features 12

Reedies Helping Us Get Through the Pandemic

Departments 4 Eliot Circular Hail to the Class of 2020 Rewiring the Addiction Circuit Defying Coronavirus, With Martians Two Reed Grads Elected to the NAS Reed’s Watson Winners Helping Students Through COVID-19

Teachers. Researchers. Bicycle gear makers. Reed grads are hard at work confronting COVID-19.

By Chris Lydgate ’90

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The Quarantine Journals

Students chronicle life under lockdown as part of an assignment for Anthro 201.

10 Advocates of the Griffin

26 Reediana

Cover photo of Julien Zapata-Minchow ’23 in Eugene, Oregon, by Andy Nelson.

This page, Elena Turner ’22 in Costa Mesa, California, by Kendrick Brinson.

News of the Alumni Association

Books, Films, and Music by Reedies

28 Class Notes

News from our classmates.

36 In Memoriam

Honoring classmates, professors, and friends who have died.

Prof. Tom Dunne, chemistry.

Prof. Bill Wiest, psychology.

Dan Kemp ’58, chemist who expanded knowledge of protein folding.

And too many more

48 Object of Study

What Reed students are looking at in class

Miniature in Ivory

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Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

Mailbox portraits by Carl Van Vechten

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 predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, see page 1.

Three Cheers for the Harlem Renaissance

I’m just now getting around to reading the magazine and am overjoyed to see that the Harlem Renaissance made it into Hum 110. I took the full class sometime around 1998 (I graduated in biochem in 1999 as Clare Stockert). This was my favorite class during my entire Reed experience, and it was probably the most impactful on my life. Learning about this era and being exposed to the ideas of thinkers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin was a transformative experience. And getting to learn from a truly great professor—Pancho Savery—made the experience even better.

The lessons learned have stayed with me and impact how I show up as a leader today. As the director of strategy and development for the Anchorage Public Library, I have been leading a charge to make our library more equitable and inclusive to all members of our community, and confront our institutional biases that lead us to underserved people of color. In my spare time, I volunteer for a youth-led group that advocates for the rights of foster youth. A lot of my foundation for this work comes from my learning in the History of the Harlem Renaissance class.

I hope more and more Reedies will get to experience this class in the future!

Thanks, Pancho, for having such a big impact on my life. Keep up the good work!

Clare Ross ’99 Anchorage, Alaska

Dugan unto Others

Your obituary of Dugan Barr ’64 reminded me of a story. Dugan was my “dorm daddy” at Doyle in 1963–64. One night a friend and fellow Doyle resident and I got into a dispute over whether certain behavior was covered by the honor principle. My friend had a steady girlfriend and was also seeing someone on the side; I made some overtures to the “other woman” and she began

Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are two key figures of the Harlem Renaissance currently featured in Hum 110.

to express some interest in me, which my friend said violated an informal code that all young men were supposed to follow, and was also a possible honor violation.

We stormed into Dugan’s room at 10:30 at night and woke him up to adjudicate the disagreement. He informed us that he was trying to get a good night’s sleep because he had to defend his thesis before a faculty orals board the next morning. However, although he was clearly exasperated, he did make a good faith effort to hear both sides of the argument, and spent a half hour listening to us and proposing a solution before he sent us on our way.

John Cushing ’67 Bend, Oregon

Blood, Sweat, and Ice

It was astonishing to see the article about the 10th Mountain Division in Reed Magazine, reviewing the book by Maurice Isserman ’73, with whom I may have overlapped at Reed. My wife and I live less than 30 minutes from the old Camp Hale. Every time I ski at Vail, I walk past the large statue of a 10th Mountain soldier, and have listened to old soldiers’ accounts of their experiences. The large photo showing the soldiers skinning up a snowfield looks like it was taken on the flanks of Homestake Peak, and I was doing the same this February, after spending a night at the nearby 10th Mountain Division hut!

The Mountain Division has a number of important legacies besides the WWII accomplishments. The article mentions the transformation of Aspen into a ski town. Former soldiers also founded Vail (where there had been no town at all), which then led to the nearby Beaver Creek Resort. An indirect product is the mountain hut system in Colorado, mostly in areas where the 10th trained. There are now over 30 snug, wellbuilt huts in this system, originally for winter use but becoming popular in the summer as well. Strangely enough, the first hut was built by Robert McNamara, near Aspen, and the second was built in memory of his wife, Margy.

The 10th Mountain Division is an everyday memory in our area but I certainly didn’t expect to see it written up in Reed Magazine. Thanks for the nice surprise.

Will Darken ’70 Edwards, Colorado

Way To Go!

This is just a note to say how much I’ve enjoyed Reed Magazine recently. It is so lively, colorful, fun and informative. That goes for all the sections. I’ve very much appreciated Reediana, the in Memoriam and Class notes sections, as well as the features. The article on President Bilger was terrific. Thanks for this transformation.

Jane Burbank ’67 New York City Reed Magazine june 2020

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Eliot Circular news from campus

HAIL TO THE

CLASS OF 2020!

Persevering through worldwide pandemic, economic collapse, social dislocation, and shaky internet connections, the Class of ’20 has overcome obstacles like no other class in Reed’s history. Earning a degree from Reed under these circumstances is truly a stellar accomplishment. Congratulations!

Eliot Circular

Rewiring the Addiction Circuit

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Reed Magazine june 2018

COOL YOUR JETS: Reed researchers show that GLP-1 plays a hitherto unappreciated role in the reward circuitry of thre brain, dialing down the thermostat of need.

chris lydgate ’90

Pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst, desire and craving. These fundamental sensations depend on a neurochemical signalling system of fiendish complexity. For several years, Prof. Paul Currie [psychology] and his students have explored how the neuropeptide ghrelin sharpens the craving for substances like alcohol and cocaine. Now they’ve shown that a complementary neuropeptide has the opposite effect—it blunts the craving and dials down the thermostat of need.

The neuropeptide is known by the unwieldy name of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), and has long been known to play a role in satiety— the sensation of being full and not needing to finish that pancake. Last summer, however, psychology major Max Johnson ’20 discovered that injecting a synthetic version of GLP-1 into a specific region of the brains of alcoholic rats made them drink less booze— a finding that opens the door to a new strategy for treating alcoholism, addiction, and food disorders.

“This is a remarkable finding,” says Prof.

Currie, who supervised the project. “This has the potential to profoundly impact the way we understand the underlying mechanisms of drug-induced euphoria or pleasure.”

GLP-1 is normally produced in the gut and then travels through the bloodstream to the brain. In the last couple of years, Prof. Currie and other researchers have traced the action of GLP-1 to the ventral tegmental area, or VTA, a part of the brain associated with the reward system. But some neurons in the VTA connect to a neighboring region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. What would happen, Max wondered, if you used GLP-1 to stimulate neurons there?

With support from the Esther Hyatt Wender Psychology Fund, Max was able to conduct the experiment over the summer.

He performed stereotaxic surgery on 28 rats, implanting a tiny tube to deliver the medicine into the precise location of the nucleus accumbens. Then the rats began a prolonged regime of heavy drinking. (Like humans, rats show an uneven fondness for alcohol: some can’t stand it, some drink in moderation, and some keep on drinking so long as the bar stays open.) Finally, Max administered synthetic GLP-1 to the rats and monitored their intake. Sure enough, those rats drank

SCOURGES OF URGES: Max Johnson ’20 and Prof. Currie.

less alcohol—and the more GLP-1 they got, the less alcohol they drank.

“For a long time, people thought GLP-1 was just about feeding,” Max says. “Now we’re realizing it plays a role in the reward circuits.

Having a snack, drinking a beer—it turns out those urges are closely related. This research expands our concept of what is going on in alcoholism.”

For several decades, research into the brain’s motivation and reward circuitry spotlighted dopamine as the star performer; there are literally thousands of articles in the psychological literature focusing on dopamine’s

role in alcoholism and addiction. The Reed research suggests that dopamine is only part of the story, however. Ghrelin and GLP-1 constitute an additional reward circuit: ghrelin amps the system up, and GLP-1 cools it down.

“This is not a magic bullet,” says Currie.

“Obviously, treating alcoholism requires a holistic approach that includes cognitive behavior therapy, coping strategies, and so on. But this research suggests that we can take the edge off the craving. And not just for alcohol, but for binge eating, drug addiction, you name it.”

Max was able to pursue this question over the summer thanks to a generous gift from pediatrician Esther Wender ’59 to support student research in the psychology department. A growing body of evidence shows that undergrads who do research get better at overcoming obstacles, thinking independently, and understanding how knowledge is constructed.

In the last decade, Reed has set out to provide students with more opportunities to pursue research in their sophomore and junior years; the skills they gain from these projects often prove invaluable for their thesis and their careers. —CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Two Reed Grads Elected to National Academy of Sciences Two prominent Reed grads have been elected to the nation’s top scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences, in recognition of their groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of genetics and evolutionary biology.

Pamela Ronald ’82 revealed how the Xa21 gene helps rice resist disease. Her work on flood-resistant rice has been credited with improving crop yields in Asia and Africa. She’s a plant pathologist at the University of California-Davis.

Susan Alberts ’83 is an evolutionary biologist at Duke University and an expert on the effects of adversity and belonging on the health and survival of primates. She made her mark researching wild primate behavior, devoting the bulk of her career to the study of baboons in Kenya— work she has pursued since her senior year at Reed when she earned a Watson Fellowship to study in Africa.

Being chosen for the National Academy of Sciences is a prestigious

Reedies Win NSF Fellowships

Evolutionary biologist Susan Alberts ’83

achievement reserved for only the most eminent researchers. Reed ranks No. 12 in the nation when it comes to producing fellows in the NAS and its allied academies in medicine and engineering. Reed also ranks No. 1 in the nation in the proportion of STEM majors who go on to earn PhDs in STEM fields.

Ronald and Alberts both say they were inspired to pursue biology by their experiences as students

Plant pathologist Pamela Ronald ’82

at Reed. “Reed is the reason I am a scientist,” says Alberts, who started at Reed expecting to major in philosophy. “We’re so lucky to have been there during such a remarkable time in the biology department.”

“You don’t pursue a career at this depth for this long if you’re not excited at the outset,” says Ronald, who says her first-year intro bio course at Reed ignited her passion for science.

An impressive number of Reedies have won prestigious graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation, including Maxine Calle ’20, Kim Engeln ’20, Emma Williams-Baron ’15, Nicholas Franzese ’17, Rose Driscoll ’17, Kealyssa Castillo-Martin ’18, and Ella Banyas ’17. Great tîme goes to all our award winners and to the professors and staff who coached them along the way, including Prof. Suzy Renn, who leads the NSF GRFP advising program and the hardworking folks at the Center For Life Beyond Reed.

Defying Coronavirus, With Martians POSTER BY SI ZHENG SONG ’22

Banished from campus by the coronavirus, a Reed theatre class refused to abandon its spring production. Instead, the students switched gears and put on the most notorious radio play of all time—The War of the Worlds.

“It’s a dark and scary time, so hopefully this can bring a little light into people’s lives,” said Eva Licht ’21, a biology and theater major who co-directed and performed in the project.

Theatre 302 is designed to give junior theatre majors a hands-on experience producing a stage play. The spring-term class was in rehearsals to stage a series of mini-plays at the Diver Studio Theater when the pandemic shut down campus, scattering students back home.

But Prof. Peter Ksander and his students were not about to scrap the project. “We needed to reinvent the class,” Prof. Ksander said.

“I wanted the project to be intellectually rigorous but also fun. I think we’re all just grateful to be able to make some art right now.”

Quickly regrouping, the class shifted to producing the 1938 Mercury Theater/Orson

Welles radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel about a Martian invasion—a broadcast so realistic that it set off widespread panic about an alien attack.

The class chose The War of the Worlds because it would provide a bit of sci-fi escapism. “It’s definitely camp,” Ksander said. “The pulpy elements are what make it fun and interesting.”

At the same time, the classic radio drama can be seen as a commentary on today’s world, exploring socially relevant themes such as colonialism, news, and science. And as Ksander notes, the invasion is ultimately thwarted by an unexpected ally that will resonate with today’s audience.

Although the pandemic presented unique challenges to the production, the class stepped up. “Everyone’s been excited to move forward,” Licht said. “Even though the play is about an alien invasion, we hope we can bring joy to the audience—performing live adds to that excitement.”

Performing as the “Reed College Theatre In Exile,” the students broadcast the play on Zoom on May 1. You can check it out at https://ensemble.reed.edu/Watch/j9LEg74Y —ROMEL HERNANDEZ

june 2018 Reed Magazine

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REEDIE WATSON WINNERS

Radiating Confidence Pressing the glowing red console button as a student operator on the Reed Research Reactor, Stephanie Gee ’20 felt a sudden surge of electricity. Figuratively, of course.

She couldn’t know it at the time, but her experience training to work on the college’s nuclear reactor would propel her across the globe one day. Literally.

The neuroscience major is one of two Reed seniors selected for a 2020 Watson Fellowship, a prestigious national program that funds a year of international travel for college graduates to pursue independent research projects. She plans to explore the societal impacts of atomic radiation, combining her interests in science and photography. Her “Living in the Nuclear Age” project will take her on a dizzying journey around the globe to Kazakhstan, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Spain, and Austria.

“Radiation is invisible, but it affects society in so many ways we don’t even realize,” she says. “I want this project to show how much radiation impacts our everyday lives in both good ways and bad ways.”

She wrote her senior thesis on her study of the effects of radiation on the brain development of zebrafish, and has attended national conferences to present her research.

But Stephanie also has a passion for storytelling through photography—not as a separate hobby, but as an artistic pursuit that complements and informs her interest in science.

Stephanie worked with the Center for Life Beyond Reed to refine her ideas before choosing the radiation project because, as she wrote in her application, “I want to explore the globe through the two ways I

know how to best: science and art.”

Everywhere she travels, she will tote her camera to make pictures of people and places she encounters on the way. Once travel restrictions are lifted, she plans to go to Kazakhstan, Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea. After the fellowship, she plans to attend medical school and pursue a career in global medicine and environmental conservation. —ROMEL HERNANDEZ

Money Talks—But Not In The Way You Think Raised by a single, working mother and his elderly grandparents in a small beachtown in Puerto Rico, econ major Giorlando Ramirez ’20 grew up appreciating the value of a dollar. One of the most indelible memories of his youth is of his late grandfather—a champion of Puerto Rican independence—pointing out the portrait of George Washington on a dollar bill.

“Not my president,” his grandfather would say. “This is gringo money.”

“To my grandfather that dollar was a constant reminder of U.S. imperialism,” Gio says. “I realized how so much of how we see ourselves is reflected in the money we use every day.”

Thanks to the Watson Foundation, he’s getting the chance to spend a year studying the connections between national identity and currency in Brazil, Cuba, Spain and

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Reed Magazine june 2018

Zimbabwe. He is one of two Reed seniors to win a Watson Fellowship—a prestigious national program that empowers new college graduates to travel the globe on projects that they have designed themselves.

Gio moved to Florida as a teen with his mother and younger brother. The family struggled to make ends meet; when the time came to go away to college he chose Reed, which offered him a generous financial aid package.

His Watson project owes almost as much to political science and anthropology as it does to economics. “Money is much more than a means of exchange,” he says. “Money is a powerful symbol.”

Gio worked with the Center for Life Beyond Reed to hash out a compelling application. The four countries he will visit—Brazil, Cuba, Spain, and Zimbabwe—represent

vastly different histories and cultures, but they all have seen major changes in their national currencies in recent times.

—ROMEL HERNANDEZ

pa i n t i n g b y a l e x ly d g at g e

Helping Students Through COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown millions of lives into disarray, and Reed students are no exception. In March, the college was forced to overhaul its operations from stem to stern. Dorms closed, classes moved online, and students had to scramble to find new arrangements amid the disruption.

Reed’s leaders realized from the outset that the pandemic would impose enormous stress on students and their families, many of whom are reeling from layoffs and caring for relatives who are critically ill. To that end, the college offered key support: Room+Board Refunds. In March, Reed issued prorated refunds to all families who had paid room and board for the Spring semester; it also did not count the refunds against financial aid. This move provided many families with extra cash to tide them through the crisis.

Campus Housing. Some students did not have a safe and stable situation to go home to. Some, particularly international students, could not book flights home—the flights were all canceled. Reed allowed a small number of students to remain on campus, living in the dorms and eating at Commons.

Grades. Students also had to recreate ways to study effectively—new techniques, new routines, and new spaces free of distraction. Recognizing that this burden would fall unequally, the faculty created a flexible grading policy—which they revised with student input from students—to provide options such as credit/no credit.

Emergency Fund. Many students faced urgent financial hardship. The Emergency Fund helped scores of students meet unanticipated needs, such as medical expenses, food, supplies, emergency travel, and housing security. So far this year, 158 generous donors have contributed $47,960 to the fund.

To help, go to https://bit.ly/ReedEmergency.

From your bubble to Reed’s

This year, in lieu of Reunions, honor your past and provide for Reed’s future by including a gift to Reed in your estate plans.

Contact Kathy Saitas to learn more about including Reed in your legacy planning.

503-777-7573 giftplanning@reed.edu reed.edu/legacyplanning 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.

The Eliot Society 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.

Advocates of the Griffin

News of the Alumni Association • Connecting Reed Alumni Around the Globe

EDITED BY KATIE RAMSEY ’04 AND CARRIE SAMUELS

Introducing Reed Remote!

Alumni Programs is turning lemons into lemonade as we ride out the COVID-19 storm! This unexpected time of physical distancing has spurred us to consider how to better connect our incredible alumni community both to the college and to each other. We are thrilled to share a bevy of happenings, experiences, and opportunities for you to enjoy. Check out the full list at alumni.reed.edu/reed-remote/.

COVID-19 Career Resources If you find that you need help during this time, alumni programs has put together a comprehensive list of career resources and benefits available to all alumni. For more, see alumni.reed.edu/career-resources-covid.html.

Reedie-Owned Businesses From interior design to breweries, and everything in between, the Reed alumni community is rich with small-business owners across the world, and now is the perfect time to get to know them! Check out the entire list at alumni.reed.edu. Many of our Reedie business owners are still operating in some capacity during the pandemic, and would greatly appreciate your support. This list continues to evolve over time, so check back frequently.

If you would like your business to be included, or know of one that should be, please contact us at alumni@reed.edu.

Hum 110 Lectures Curious about the new Hum 110 curriculum?

The lectures are now available online! Thanks to our committed faculty, recorded lectures will now be available from the spring 2020 units for all to view. More lectures will continue to be added, so watch for updates. Visit alumni.reed.edu/reed-remote/ to view them all!

Virtual Book Club Run out of crossword puzzles? Had your fill of Zoom-tinis? Longing for a fresh way to pass the time during this period of physical isolation? Look no further than the Reed Remote

10 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

BLAST FROM THE PAST. Check out the bonanza of old photos at the Reed Remote site, alumni.reed.edu/reed-remote.

Virtual Book Club—an online, private, and moderated discussion forum. We’ll be reviewing books from Hum 411, better known as Senior Symposium. The best part? You can read and contribute your thoughts to the group on your own schedule. Find out more at alumni.reed.edu/reed-remote/.

We Want Your Photos!

Sorting through old boxes of photos in between Zoom calls and gardening? Finding gems from your good ol’ days at Reed? We want to see them! Check out the photo albums at alumni.reed.edu/alumni-class-photos.html, and upload your finds while taking a walk down memory lane.

Appetizers, Casseroles, and Free Love Reedies bring the same passion to the kitchen as they do to their studies. To honor that— and to get more tasty recipes circulating— we are creating a cookbook of Reedie recipes and need your submissions! The cookbooks will be for sale later this summer.

We’re hoping to find recipes that are as diverse and inspiring as the Reedies who make them, and to learn Reed history we didn’t know about before. Did you culture an amazing sourdough starter in biology?

Did your banana bread get rave reviews at

the Paradox? Fall in love with your future spouse after they wowed you with their cooking prowess in the Anna Mann kitchen? Now’s your chance to share your story and your recipes with the Reed community!

Find out more about how to submit a recipe or purchase a cookbook at alumni.reed. edu/cookbook.html.

Virtual Scriptorium Yearning for a way to participate in the Reed calligraphy tradition again? Check out the following opportunities.

Jade Novarino ’16 hosts a weekly, contemplative online scribe-in Mondays from 2 to 4 p.m. Email jadenovarino@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

The Berkeley Scriptorium is meeting Saturdays from 12 to 2 p.m. Email liv.veazey@ gmail.com for the Zoom link.

Watch Lloyd Reynolds’ lectures on the Heritage of Calligraphy website, reed.edu/ calligraphy.

Scriptorium director Greg MacNaughton ’89 has made a generous offer to alumni calligraphers: “If you want me to see your work, critique your work, or just stay in touch, write me a letter. I’ll be the best pen pal you’ve ever had.” Email alumni@reed.edu to begin your Scriptorium correspondence.

REED’S SUMMER INTERNSHIP AWARD PROGRAM RESPONDS TO COVID-19 During a few short weeks, with characteristic Reedie resilience, adaptability, and creativity, students worked with CLBR advisers to design remote summer internships in the arts, sciences, healthcare, public broadcasting, publishing, federal and government programs, policy institutes, social work and justice, education, environmental studies, and more.

Thanks to the generosity of alumni, parents, staff, and friends, Reed’s Summer Internship Award program makes it possible for students to gain valuable summer experience at nonprofit institutions and foundations, whose unpaid internships are typically inaccessible to all but a few students.

Alyse Cronk ’20

Deirdre Baker ’21

Sosie Nixon ’22

Joshua Park ’23

Economics National Crime Victim Law Institute, virtual conference intern

International Policy Studies Alaska Public Defender, legal intern

Environmental Studies Salmon Valley Stewardship, pollinator education intern

Political Science San Francisco Rising, community organization intern

Shir Bach ’21

Art Artists Talk On Art, marketing intern

Rachel Bork ’22

Emily Crook ’20

Sociology/Spanish Growing Gardens, STEM remote education intern

Biology North Star Civic Foundation, public policy intern

Mariana Beyer Chapa ’21

Alisa Chen ’21

Political Science PDX Alliance for Self Care, Hispanic community resource intern

Anthropology Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, special projects intern

Sadie Baker-Wacks ’20

Jane Calderbank ’21

Philosophy Common Cause Oregon, ethics intern

Anthropology Native Fish Society, Native Fish Fellow

Ruby McShane ’22

Lauren Chacon ’20

Art Blue Sky Gallery, exhibition intern

Psychology Marie Watt Studio, art assistant intern

History Gay & Lesbian Archives of Pacific NW, historic transcription intern

Lillyanne Pham ’20 Sociology Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, marketing intern

Apoorva Mangipudi ’21 History The Appellate Project, diversity intern

Emma Bramson ’23 Economics Mercy Corps NW Community Investment Trust, research intern

Samantha Hordyk ’23

Sophia Raccuia ’22 Clarissa Lam ’23 International Policy Studies Reel Stories, online content intern

Shea Seery ’20 Comparative Literature Portland Art & Learning Studios, curatorial intern

Daysha Montgomery ’22 Philosophy Period, donor analysis intern

Noah Wass ’20 History NW Labor Press, editorial intern

Abby Shrader ’20

Physics MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, rapid response team intern

Theater Fuse Theater Ensemble, artistic director intern

Tabia Schmidt ’21

maor Shapiro ’20

Anthropology Stand With Kashmir, campaign and advocacy intern

Anthropology/Art Conduit, art publication intern

August Singer ’22

Ada Sprengelmeyer ’21

Spanish PDX Q Center, nonprofit administration intern

International Policy Studies Saturday Academy, arts administration intern

Anna Maior-Leichtfried ’22 Biology (pre-med) Sanctuary One, animal care intern

Hellie Smith ’22 Religion Grow Portland, executive director intern

Anna Volz ’20 Sociology Oregon Health Authority, public health intern

Follow summer interns’ stories on Instagram @lifebeyondreed.

Adam Eubank ’22 Environmental Studies Mendocino Land Trust, Paul Siegel Salmon Restoration intern

REEDIES HELPING US GET THROUGH THE PANDEMIC By now, you have seen for yourself the devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic—the body count, the food lines, the empty streets, the splintered hopes, and the ruined plans. Without doubt, it is a time of crisis, but it is also a time of resilience. We decided to take this opportunity to share the sweat, tears, and hard-won knowledge of some of the Reedies who are grappling with the various dimensions of the pandemic. This is only a partial list; send us suggestions at reed.magazine@reed.edu.

Defeating the Replicants

Hundreds of the world’s top scientists, including UCSF biochemist Kevan Shokat ’86, dropped everything this spring in a breakneck effort to develop drugs to combat the coronavirus. Facing unprecedented urgency, the team hatched an ingenious strategy. First, they identified and cloned 26 of 29 proteins that form the “arsenal” of the virus—its offensive weaponry. This allowed them to figure out the 332 human proteins that the viral proteins could possibly interact with—these are the potential vulnerabilities that the virus can latch onto. Finally, they hunted for existing pharmaceuticals, already approved for other uses, that target these key human proteins. (The advantage being that we know these drugs are safe for use in humans.) The team found 69 candidate compounds. Researchers around the globe are now investigating to see if any of them can be used to shut down the virus.

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The Other Frontline

The pandemic has struck America’s marginalized communities with savage force, exposing glaring disparities in health care and economic status. As a bilingual educational assistant at Portland public schools, Fedora Copley ’15 has worked to support Portland’s Spanishspeaking immigrant community through the pandemic. She has been distributing food to hungry families, fundraising for those without social security numbers who won’t qualify for a federal relief check, and donating her time and money in other ways to support those families. In addition to all of this, she continues to work with ESL students at Roosevelt High School, helping them stay connected to their teachers and helping them remove obstacles to learning remotely. She has also provided support to a family struggling with domestic violence.

Bring On the Robots

Strange as it may sound, one of the biggest bottlenecks in testing for the coronavirus is pipetting—the deceptively simple act of transferring small quantities of liquid from one container to another. Easy on a small scale, a massive headache when you’re gazing at a forest of test tubes. Research tech Jethary Rader ’18 works at biotech startup Opentrons, which makes pipette robots capable of processing samples by the thousands. The company is now making portable diagnostic systems that can handle up to 2400 Covid-19 tests a day.

David Billstrom ’83 retooled a factory to make masks & shields.

Ahead of the Curve

Based in Seattle, Microsoft was quick to grasp the dire implications of the first Covid-19 cases reported in the US. Senior Microsoft executive (and Reed College trustee) Kurt DelBene led the company’s effort to implement social distancing. On March 4, Microsoft insisted that its 40,000 Seattle employees work from home, becoming one of the first major US employers to do so.

Kurt has some experience with managing crisis: in 2013 he was tapped by President Barack Obama to fix the messy rollout of HealthCare.gov. His wife, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene ’82, is also leading the charge on the nation’s response to the pandemic, calling for an expansion of the child tax credit as the nation grapples with the economic damage inflicted by the disease.

Isolate the Critical Link

One reason the coronavirus makes people so sick is that the immune system sometimes overreacts, triggering inflammation that makes the disease worse. Computational biologist Jason McDermott ’93 co-authored a key paper on the SARS virus, a precursor to Covid-19, using a powerful tool known as network topology to identify critical genes involved in the immune response. While these particular results may not apply to Covid-19, they suggest that network topology could help scientists home in on a treatment. Jason works at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

ariel zambelich

UCSF researchers, led by biochmist Kevan Shokat ’86, hatched a brilliant scheme to foil the coronavirus.

Caring for the Children

For healthcare workers, even in the best of times, childcare is a monumental headache.

As Emily Lane ’15 points out, “in a pandemic, with schools and daycares closed, it’s become a crisis of its own.”

When Oregon Health & Science University announced that classes were suspended, Emily, who is a medical student there, sprang into action. Within an hour, she had formulated a plan to provide childcare for health workers and circulated it on Twitter.

Fellow medical student Chris Graulty ’15 joined her team and they hit the ground running, creating a hotline, raising donations, and establishing community partnerships. More than 200 medical, dental, and nursing students have volunteered with the program to provide childcare to the frontline workers at OHSU.

Fighting the Pandemic With Information At a time when people are craving certainty and grasping at straws, Ali Nouri ’97, president of the Federation of American Scientists, has put together a panel of the most relevant, confident experts to answer the public’s questions about the pandemic on its site, Covid19.fas.org Questions are answered on demand by a team of experts in epidemiology and infectious diseases. Ali says the effort was born from earlier attempts to handle

On the Frontline

misinformation in a time when looser standards in communicating scientific information can lead to false certainty. Though information can be disseminated with lighting speed, he cautions, “There are times when we have definitive answers, but science works in a probabilistic realm.” Nonetheless, this database of reliable information is a boon for folks seeking answers from qualified experts, not just talking heads.

As Covid-19 patients flood into hospitals and clinics, the eyes of the world have turned to healthcare workers—including the scores of Reed grads who work as doctors, nurses, clinicians, EMTs, technicians, and all manner of healers, far too numerous for us to list on these pages. What is a creative way for us to honor their service? Send us suggestions at reed.magazine@reed.edu.

Behind the Mask

Hunting for a Vaccine

What’s the difference between a mask and a bicycle jersey? No, it’s not a joke, it’s a real question. David Billstrom ’83 is the CEO of Kitsbow Cycling Apparel, which designs and manufactures premium bicycle apparel from its factory in North Carolina. When the company’s founder obtained a face-shield design, they realized that they could retool the factory to make shields, masks, and other personal protective equipment (PPE).

“When I saw that face-shield design I connected with local first responders,” he says.

“Those agencies said ‘send as many as you can, as soon as you can.’”

Kitsbow began making face shields the next day. The day after that they designed a face mask and posted a few pictures on Facebook. It went viral. Orders began pouring in from around the country.

“We are humbled at the responsibility of protecting tens of thousands of front-line workers,” David says. “The ‘technology’ in a pandemic is the skill of making do.”

Researchers around the globe have been working night and day on potential vaccines.

Last month, China’s CanSino Biologics published results of a peer-reviewed study of a vaccine that makes use of a genetically engineered adenovirus to prime the body’s immune system. Up to 75% of subjects who received the vaccine developed high levels of neutralizing antibodies. To Gary Rieschel ’79, this represents a ray of hope. He’s the founder and managing director of Qiming Venture Partners in Shanghai, and CanSino is one of the ventures in Qiming’s portfolio.

Living and working in the US and China for 35 years, Gary is an ardent proponent of cooperation between the two superpowers. “The great crises of the 21st Century will require that China and the U.S. work together,” he wrote on Twitter. “This is just an appetizer of the costs to global societies if that doesn’t happen.”

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THE QUARANTINE JOURNALS These Reed students chronicled life under lockdown as part of an assignment for Anthro 201. Their diaries offer a glimpse at what quarantine has done to their families, their neighborhoods, and their future.

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decided to examine the lockdown as a lived, collective experience.

What follows is a selection of excerpts from weekly journals written for the class in the early days of the quarantine. They explore various themes that this new world has called forth, including the re-experiencing of home and neighborhood as sites of welcome intimacy but also anxious imprisonment; the fraught navigation of public spaces like the sidewalk or the grocery store; the simultaneity of connection and disconnection in a socially distanced world; and the various ways a Reed education and the Reed community have become virtually and creatively reconfigured.

These fragments only gesture to the richness, artistry, and thoughtfulness of our classmates’ work. They represent deeply personal experiences, but we believe they will resonate with Reedies more broadly. We are all in this together.

—NICOLE RADLAUER ’23 — PROF. PAUL SILVERSTEIN [ANTHROPOLOGY]

PRELUDE MONA PAN ’22 PORTLAND

January 23. The Drawing Near of a Ruin Called Wuhan A, my roommate, comes from South Korea. She came back to campus on January 20, which is when South Korea announced its first case of COVID-19. We were together the day Wuhan locked down the city. On a morning full of Portland sunshine, she showed me a video taken by a nurse in Wuhan. She turned up the volume so that I could hear the speaker’s voice that survived the white airtight hazmat suit and the hustles and bustles in the back.

In the video, the nurse was breathing heavily; speaking quickly, she gave her firsthand account: 1) nurses and doctors had been working nonstop; 2) the hospital was full of patients and more patients kept coming in; 3) this new virus was deadly. She highlighted the risk of going to hospital: some people, after noticing suspicious symptoms, went to the hospital for treatment, but the problem is that a significant proportion of them got infected in the hospital. She urged people to stay at home and reduce contact with others to the maximum extent.

The customary perception of a hospital is a place of refuge where you go to treat illness, but during the outbreak it has developed into a hotbed for virus transmission. This defamiliarizes the hospital and instigates panic. On a larger scale, the city of Wuhan, through videos (showing streets, apartments, hospitals, etc.), is now inextricably linked to the virus. For many people, Wuhan turned from a “sheer physical terrain” (to borrow Casey’s phrasing) to an “existential space” built on a tabula rasa that carries with it “particularities of culture and history.”

photo by kendrick brinson

The anthropology class Bodies, Spaces, Subjects (Anthro 201) explores what it means to live in the world together as embodied human subjects. Students read works by phenomenologists, critical theorists, and ethnographers to learn how we collaboratively use our bodies to feel, create, imagine, and experience both ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. They discuss the interanimation of people and places, and examine how these places dynamically gather humans and nonhumans, ideas and feelings, presents, pasts, and futures. They conduct ethnographic research into socially dynamic campus sites such as the library, Commons, the Paradox Café, and the pool hall.

At least, that’s how the course began back in January. Then the pandemic hit. Within weeks, the 36 members of the course went from holding class in a circle on the Great Lawn to peering at our computer screens from all over the globe. It became clear that we were living through unprecedented circumstances, forced to reinhabit our worlds in a new form, refeel our bodies in a moment where they seem decidedly at risk. So we

Elena Turner ’22 in Costa Mesa, California.

“We are relearning how to inhabit our house.”

THE QUARANTINE JOURNALS

March 10. Rowing in the Same Boat Meanwhile, my friends were also reacting to emerging anti-Asian assaults, harassment, and hate crimes via social media. Our panic spread, or one can also say that one kind of panic was disrupted by another kind; there was not only panic over the virus and the inadequate response by the institutions, but also panic over our racial identity. For Chinese international students at Reed, the stigma shrouding mask-wearing was highly stressful: “I’m afraid to wear a mask in class, because others might think I am sick.”

“I am the only one who wore a mask to class today.”

“You are so brave to wear a mask on campus.”

“I saw a person who wore a mask on campus!—Are they white?—No, they are a Chinese upperclassman.”

On another side, my friends who are Asian American presented some different views: “I don’t think masks really work. It only prevents you from large droplets.”

“I’m good. If I get the virus, I get the virus.”

“Just remember to wash your hands and keep a distance.”

Cultural differences became more evident under this stigma, and the “we” evolved into carrying the idea that we have similar views on masks in the sense that we recognize and experience that stigma and to some extent believe that the stigma is only visible to some people but not all.

It was awkwardly hilarious that my friends and I, for several days, only wore masks in small groups that consisted of Chinese internationals and not on other occasions. Hence, in a way, the panic about racial and cultural differences triumphed.

As more and more cases were reported in the United States, we started to recognize the possibility of school shutting down or classes switching online. A new topic dominated our group talk: What should we do next? The group was divided by competing opinions: some were certain about staying, some preferred to leave; some remained ambiguous; some were waiting for their parents’ call; and some were constantly changing their inclinations.

March 14. The Scattering B booked a flight back to Shanghai on March 12, the day Reed announced it would put classes online. B said, “If things keep going like this, it’s very possible that a third of the population in America will get infected.” He left on March 14.

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That probably sounded bold and speculative to a lot of ears; nevertheless, it reveals a common anticipation among Asian internationals that the condition of virus infection in America will soon be very serious. B shared his suspicion that flights might soon be canceled, since China will start limiting entry from countries with many confirmed cases. This forced us to confront the decision to stay or leave.

The group reformulated into two sides. Some booked their tickets and some opted to stay. As time moved forward, there was also a small portion of people who initially chose to stay, changed their mind, and booked a flight.

As we relocated to different parts of the globe, the sense of collectivity that we constructed by living together on campus was wrecked, displaced by new modes of life in different physical locations. At the same time, a new sense of collectivity filled in the absence and endowed each of us with a new name: the pandemic generation.

FIRST DAYS NATALIE GOLDSTEIN ’22 PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA

Day One Just recently, I lived alone. I lived in a dormitory. I tended to keep to myself, spending time in my single, a space that had been a blank canvas when I arrived there in the fall. Soon, as many of us might do, I swallowed it up in my beloved clutter. Out of old books, nostalgic knickknacks, and a couple of warm, cozy blankets, I fashioned a place for me, its sole inhabitant. I created a home.

Sure, living there wasn’t perfect. A strange assortment of forgotten objects (including garbage) could be found in almost any common space; a teetering stack of dirty dishes would always be awaiting a washing in the sink; hair made its home in every single shower drain; the doors slammed; people shouted in the hallways, keeping me awake at night. I am grateful for the chance to avoid such annoyances for the remainder of the semester.

However, I couldn’t possibly forget the allenveloping warmth that radiated from within Aspen House. I can still hear the echoes of enthusiastic whoops and infectious laughter that so

often found homes within the walls of common spaces. I can still hear a sizzle as the sweet aromas of home cooking waft over from the kitchen, tickling my nose. I can still feel the intense intimacy held within these spaces, the spirit of community and collaboration, and a sense of familial love. Now, it is but a memory.

Now, I live alone.

Day Two Today, my family celebrated Passover. I don’t have a car, so they came by to pick me up. Everyone had jammed themselves in: my dad, our longtime nanny and family friend Ruthie, her daughter Katherine, her son Emerson, and my brothers, Alex and Nicholas. It seemed that all of them had wanted to pick me up for this special event; most of them hadn’t seen me in person for a few months. They greeted me with joy, smiling and laughing as I got into the car. I smiled back, but they didn’t see it. I was wearing the KN95 mask my dad had given me.

I sat in the back seat next to Katherine. I was thrilled to see her again, given that our relationship had long surpassed friendship and ventured further into sisterhood whenever we got together. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hug all of the people that were in that car with me. I didn’t. I couldn’t. At that time, I could have been a carrier for the virus, having less than two weeks prior passed through a couple of airports.

I knew our seder had the potential to be dangerous, though it was not until we arrived at my family’s home that I completely understood the possible consequences of going through with an in-person, three-hour dinner. My mother had lavished hours of work on the traditional foods I had grown up with, which the rest of us appreciated; this meal, which had been prepared by my paternal grandmother in the same way for as long as we had been a family, never failed to bring us comfort.

Little did I know that she would be allowing the little, frail firecracker referred to by many as “Grandma Leah” to attend the seder in person. I had figured that my mother would do this; the seder was for my grandmother more than anyone else. I stuck to my guns, which kept me from even setting foot in the house before anyone confirmed or denied it.

We argued. We all knew the risks, including my grandmother. She claimed that she would have been so heartbroken if we couldn’t eat together, that would bring her closer to death than contracting the virus.

CARVING OUT A SPACE. Julien Zapata-Minchow ’23 in Eugene, Oregon.

I conceded.

That night, we sat around the dining room table in masks. I sat at one end in an attempt to physically remove myself from my grandmother as much as possible, given the social constraints of sitting at the dinner table. She sat at the other end, but at the same time, she didn’t. She had been given a different chair and a coffee table on which there was a place setting specifically for her, and she stayed there throughout the seder.

My parents instructed the rest of the attendees to take routes to other areas of the house that would prevent them from moving within six feet of her. No one forgot, save Nicholas, nine years old and the youngest of us.

In her chair, which had more cushioning and was lower to the ground than the others, she maintained the slight hunch she had while standing, and wore a different mask than the rest of us. It looked like she was shriveling up, withering away. It was a simultaneously terrifying and devastating sight, but I didn’t cry. It would have ruined the seder for her.

JULIEN ZAPATA-MINCHOW ’23 EUGENE, OREGON

photo by Andy nelson

March 25 Today I have been in a much better mood than in the past few days. I had a long conversation with my parents last night about moving forward with me living in the house and how it was necessary not only for the sake of my family but also for my own mental health that I take steps to be less outwardly negative and down as I have been until now.

I was awake a long time last night and into this morning thinking about how I need—it’s true, I do honestly feel it is a necessity—to change my mindset from one of pure negativity to something even a little more positive, or at least neutral. So today I have been trying to do things that make me feel good—and more importantly, trying to pull as much joy from these things as I can. I spent about two hours drawing in my room while listening to music right after I got out of bed this morning.

I started on the project of reorganizing my room. I hadn’t realized the importance of particularly defining my space until living in a dorm room at Reed. When I was still living at home full time, I took my room for granted, as I spent lots of my time in more communal areas of the house and didn’t feel such a strong need to tailor the

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room to myself so specifically. However, coming back I realized quickly just how much I needed to carve a space out of the house that was distinctly mine and reflected who I am now, instead of who I was before leaving home.

I started by pulling all the clothes out of my drawers and closet, reorganizing all of it, which opened up lots of space and made everything much more accessible. Then I moved to an indepth review of all the material possessions in my room and whether or not I wanted to keep anything. I replaced the tall bookshelf I’ve had for the last six years with two colorful shelving units I used in my dorm and reoriented them to open up more space in the room. Then I cleared my desk and its drawers to allow for more work space. When I finished I felt a lot better about simply being in my room. It felt much more like my space. It felt like somewhere I could go in a house shared by the rest of my family and be just a little bit removed and alone if I wanted to do so. I was very happy with it.

EMMA DILLON ’23 BOULDER, COLORADO

March 24 My suitcases and boxes sit in the hallway outside my room, unpacked, though I’ve been home for five days now. I don’t expect them to be there, and trip over them every time I leave to eat or visit my family. I haven’t unpacked yet because if I do, I’m worried it will really feel like I live here.

My memories of Reed, not long enough to take deep root in my body, will recede and feel like some kind of dream. The boxes are becoming an anchor, something I need to see every day to remind me that this is impermanent.

March 31 I spent today eclipsed by a total exhaustion. I logged into classes in a fog, feeling like some cog in my brain was missing. My veins felt full of lead, like I couldn’t lift myself from my chair. I did my readings and absorbed nothing. Deciding that I needed a break, I went to sit outside.

Spring is so much different here than it is in Portland. The persistent green of moss is completely absent. Harsh sunlight filters through stark white clouds, giving everything a grayish tinge. Bare trees don’t have buds yet, skeleton beige limbs framing my yard. The few flowers that dared to bloom this early are wiped out by the

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frost each morning. The grass is brittle and easily trampled, and though the air is warm, it bites with a bitter white wind only present in winter.

I wonder if this is the way things are, or if the colors change based on my emotional state. My mind is bland, cold, crawling through each minute, so this is the way I see things. A fenced-in trap of decayed nature, refusing to grow, to progress into spring. Minutes drag by like months, and at the same time each day is gone in the blink of an eye. . . .

Thinking about the passage of time sent my mind into a spin. It’s currently 4 a.m. and there is nothing I can do to quiet my mind. I feel trapped and at the same time there’s too much space. My thoughts branch exponentially, until the noise of each thought-train overwhelms my senses.

I tried to force some color into the room by turning on a string of purple Christmas lights. I placed them under my bed so that the light spread through my room. This did nothing to slow the chatter, so I decided to take a walk around the house. The isolation from both friends and even the family I live with digs away at my ability to process everything that’s happening. I think of my dad, and of Reed, and of Eleazar, and I wonder how long any of them will be with me. It’s a caravan of disaster. If this lasts much longer my dad could lose his job or Reed could stay online next year—if my dad loses his job then I won’t have the money to go back to Reed—if I don’t go back to Reed I won’t see Eleazar or my friends again—if I lose this section of my life I will have to start over. This branches into others—my dad could die—if my dad dies I will be destroyed—this grief will cause me to fail out of college.

On and on and on with no definite end to the wondering. In the dark, I completed a puzzle my dad had set out on the table. Without my sight, the tactile sensation of the pieces forms a map. This simple exercise gives me purpose. I didn’t want it to end, so I left the lights off. It would take longer that way. When it was done, I began to think again. I couldn’t bear it, so I took it apart and completed it again.

VERONICA HUA ’23 JINING, CHINA

April 4 In my absence at college my mom has cultivated plants. Roses, carnations, lilies, daisies, peonies,

and even a strawberry plant now clutter the spaces of our small apartment where sunlight used to just fall. Now, it nourishes. Three days out of quarantine, and I am again reminded of how important the presence of the sun is for reminding me that life does, in fact, go on, even as we are all stalled in this surreal state of affairs where “normal” life has paused and no one is sure when it will pick back up again.

REALITY SINKS IN CHLOE LAMONT-DOBBIN ’23 NEW YORK CITY

April 5 We walk through Grand Central Station on a Sunday morning, gloves and masks on. My mom says what a great time it is to explore New York architecture. The entire length of Park Avenue, or Madison. It seems like you can see all of it now. Seems much longer somehow, like the bare street makes the skyscrapers at its end scrape higher. A parade of empty buses. My dad wears a red bandana around his mouth as a DIY mask, since the ones we bought ($10 apiece) smell carcinogenic. The death rate in the Bronx is three times that of Manhattan. This is one of my mom’s talking points on Zoom calls with unrecognizable relatives. My dad gives money to a drunk outside the station—he now always fills his pockets with wads of ones when we go out.

I live on the 20th floor of a 40-floor building on the corner of 64th and 3rd. At 7 p.m., in the mists of my listening to COVID stories on NPR, ingesting an indigestible quantity of tragic events, the neighborhood wedges out of itself and fellow city-dwellers step out onto their balconies. They bang their pots and holler and whoop. A man with an average voice does a full rendition of “Amazing Grace.” It makes me cry and I’m not a crier. I feel patriotic for the first time in my life.

photo by chloe lamont-Dobbin ’23

SOMBER SILHOUETTE. Chloe Lamont-Dobbin ’23 sees a darkened skyline from her home in New York City.

April 6 My brother and I fight in our one-bedroom apartment, a floor below my parents. The foldout couch I sleep on is in the living room, therefore the living room is my room (To my brother: Keep your shit out of my room. Him to me: I’m doing a lab, put your goddamn headphones in).

I go on a run; people move around me to keep six feet between us. I make faces at a baby in a stroller. I hear toddlers and dogs fussing in the apartment next door. I’m starting to feel an itching kind of alone. I call my friend Julia. Pierre and I get a little drunk and stay up late talking like we used to in middle school, when we lived together and were never out at night. We surprise each other with a humble candidness. My understanding of the life I’ve lived continues to shift, even as life seems to condense.

April 7 It’s sunny in the apartment. I clean for the first time since I’ve gotten here. Later, Pierre and I get in a fight over who will vacuum. He says he wishes it was the Middle Ages so he could legally kill me. I call him the biggest asshole I’ve ever

met. Twenty minutes later he takes a video of me taking notes on the toilet: it cracks us up.

Most of my time is lost. It takes 45 minutes for me to eat a popsicle on the balcony after my run. I sit down to do my work and all of a sudden it’s evening. A daily occurrence. We’re out of beer and my big plan for the night is to go out for some. My gut nerves go crazy as I’m getting ready to head out. Nighttime doesn’t spook me but tonight it does, maybe because everything a little too still.

April 9, 2020 Today in the city everyone carried with them a burdening awareness, of every changing form, every moving figure their eyes crossed.

Every sidewalk spit splat helds the possibility of death via shoe, carpet, hand, itchy eye.

Death in a high rise, 200 ambulance calls ahead of yours. That’s how it felt at least.

There’s a brief storm in the city. Reminds me of open blue hills, fat skies, handsome cars, the things I miss about Portland. A strong gust knocks the chairs on the balcony over, slams a window open, which knocks over a potted plant.

I spend six minutes sweeping and vacuuming

up the dirt and glass. Put the trash down the garbage chute. Never used one before.

April 11, 2020 Last night Pierre used our make-seltzer-athome machine as a water gun. My mom still has the energy to crack up with us, my dad is flat-faced—exhausted by paying constant attention to the placement of his body and every other, the recent history of every space he encounters, and the possibility of death embedded in an elevator button’s unknown past.

ELENA TURNER ’22

COSTA MESA, CA

April 11 In the blue house on the corner, you’ll find people each with their own schedule, sometimes each in a separate room of the house, working away, other times all together in the kitchen cooking, eating. One of us leaves the house to get lentils, beans, bananas, avocados, eggs, hummus—a whole slew of groceries. One of us walks out to the nature preserve behind my

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neighborhood to walk for an hour, to smell the ladybugs walking on shaded green leaves and hear the bees resting their heavy bodies on mustard flowers. Essential activities.

One of us bakes bread and another learns to brew her own kombucha. Two of us meditate daily, practicing breathing deeply and holding our breaths for prolonged periods of time. New activities; now that we have the time we take the time to do them. One of us sets up a portable barre in the living room to practice ballet for hours. Recordings of piano music waft through the house. One tendu front, three little ronds; to the side, en croix; then plié, rond de jambe to the back. Practiced movements in a foreign space, although the foreign is slowly becoming familiar. The cold marble yearns to scuff the smooth satin of pointe shoes.

We are all relearning how to inhabit our house, not only as a place of comfort, shelter, warmth, but of frustration, strain, and uneasiness as we bring our outside worlds within one house.

April 13 The uncertainty of this time has worn off. I used to feel unstable, like the tablecloth had been ripped out from underneath me and I was tumbling downward, grasping at anything, and there was no solid table to catch me. Now I feel pretty certain about this reality, about my routine, understanding that this. . . is just the way things are.

Bachelard wrote of thresholds, of liminal spaces or nonplaces we inhabit. These thresholds are between worlds, between being and nonbeing. Shock accompanies each crossing of a threshold, moving from the uncertainty of possibility to the certainty of a reality. I feel like I have crossed a threshold, that I now recognize this as normal. I’m no longer in a state of liminality.

Sometimes, though, something will stick out.

A weed pushing its way through the cracks in the smooth pavement. How quiet it is in the streets at night! How lively it is on the sidewalks in the daytime! How strange it is, standing firmly in place before the threshold of my friend’s house, when all I want to do is rush inside and hug him! How strange it is, feeling the sense that objects are contaminated, that I should push the crosswalk button with the sole of my shoe! How long ago it seems, that I walked under the cherry blossoms in Eliot

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The contagion of anxiety.

Psych major Tulia Fargis ’23 ponders fear and friendliness in New Paltz, New York.

Circle and the gold light filtering through the leaves took my breath away! How far away it seems, to go back to what used to be “normal!”

How I long for the normal.

April 14 I feel a new sense of solidarity, and pride, almost, when I see others wearing a mask. That we’re all in this together. At the same time, it removes us from each other. The small smiles I make to passersby go unnoticed, my expression is concealed. I try my best to say hello with my eyes, tilt my head. The neighborhood is both intimate and impersonal. It is at once the place we all call home, yet we are mostly strangers to one another. I feel known in my home, and as soon as I step out of my driveway I become unknown, everyone around me is unknown.

When we wear masks, everyone becomes blank.

Unreadable.

April 17 There’s a clear distinction between inside and outside. Safety; danger. Family; strangers. Comfort; discomfort. All our time spent indoors, broken only by the one excursion we make to take a walk or get food. Everything else is brought inside.

Inside the blue house, we can say what we like and wear what we please. Outside the blue house, we put on armor. A mask. Gloves. Shoes, too. Sunglasses, or a hardened gaze. People appear more like figures, shapes without faces.

TULIA FARGIS ’23 NEW PALTZ, NEW YORK

photo by mark abramson

Friday When I come to America, always the most shocking thing is seeing how friendly people are to each other, how random people in the grocery store help you out, how cashiers ask how you are doing. But that is no more. Now in America everyone is anxious, unfriendly with fear of contamination. This unfriendliness is familiar to me, I found peace in it, yet I wonder how other Americans feel about this. I wonder if they normally find happiness in speaking to others, and how the coronavirus has taken this away from them. The most painful thing to hear about in the news is how people are not able to see their dying parents, because of contamination. Imagine not being able to

see your dying mother, never being able to say your last goodbye.

I used to appreciate the outdoors, but hated actually going into it. But recently the outdoors is all I can think about. I used to love staying in my room and watching shows, but now I grab at any chance to leave the house. Sitting outside and having lunch was very soothing. Even at this terrible time, nature stays the same, the birds still chirp, squirrels still scavenge for food and cows still graze the grass. It’s so weird to watch nature keep going completely unaffected as humans descend into chaos. There’s a certain beauty to how the world functions without or without us.

CLARISSA MADAR ’23 SAN FRANCISCO

April 12 My friend and I went to the mailbox to mail some letters, a short walk across the street. We tied bandanas around our faces and brought a towel to open the mailbox with. Although bandanas aren’t really a form of protection, it was a performance for the rest of the neighborhood. About half of the few people we came across were wearing masks, and half were not.

Cars zoomed by on the major streets, leaving the rest deserted. The city was empty. We walked a few blocks in this quiet, noticing the architecture of the houses because there wasn’t anything polluting the street distraction-wise.

Coming back inside is jarring. My body feels contaminated, despite not having touched anything. The outside itself feels contaminated, and I wash my hands twice while taking the bandana off of my face. It occurs to me that I’ll need to wash it before I can feel comfortable going outside again, a restriction placed on my mobility and peace of mind. The outside is empty regardless, devoid of commerce and the things that normally make up city life.

Monday, April 13, 2020 I had a dream that I was walking around and even in the dream I was conscious of contamination—I tried not to touch my face after touching any other surfaces. The habitus of quarantine has made its way into the deeper parts of my subconscious.

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THE QUARANTINE JOURNALS

April 16 I’ve become incredibly aware of every siren I hear from out of my window. It’s as if all other ailments have melted away. Somehow, I know it’s the virus. This knowledge is implicit. Even if the fire department is going to extinguish a fire or help someone having a heart attack, to me it is the presence of the virus again, inescapable. . . .

ZOE MARCHAND ’23 SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA

April 2 I woke up at 2 a.m. last week to the sound of gunshots and found that my house had been shot multiple times, one of the bullets landing in my living room downstairs, and one hitting the wall in my room, then landing in the pillow that I was sleeping on, about two inches from my head. Even now, weeks later, the shock of this event hasn’t hit me.

After the “shooting,” as we now call it in my family, my life has certainly changed. My neighborhood, the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota, is somewhat colloquially considered “the hood,” or a place of more frequent criminal activity than the rest of the city. After living here for 18 years, that seemed like somewhat of an overstatement to me; I’ve never felt unsafe, never scared to walk my dog at night or go to the park alone. Now, even the sound of a car door at night keeps me awake. What used to be a joke, “Was that a firework or a gunshot?” is now a reality, and it has completely altered the way that my family and I view our home.

It is no longer a comfortable, danger-free place, one with unstained childhood memories. Now, it is a place where cops take photos, we clean up plaster, and I cover a bullet hole with a Post-it note so I can sleep at night.

April 4 This house doesn’t feel like my home anymore.

I felt at home at Reed, in my dorm and on the campus itself, so coming home, even for breaks, this house has felt somewhat foreign. It is not the center of my life anymore; it is a container for memories, something stuck in the past and not the present, so when I’ve visited, it’s felt wrong to be here. As my dad said, it felt like I was already at the airport, ready to leave, even when I had just got home.

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But now, there’s an added sense of contention towards this house. I didn’t want to return here so soon, and especially, I didn’t want to be forced to be here constantly, without an escape. I’m almost mad at the house itself, for forcing me back here and keeping me trapped. And, in combination with feeling trapped, I also have lost a sense of safety and comfort here. Not only am I angry with the house, but I’m unsettled, uncomfortable being here in the dark. Not only was a sense of home taken away from this house when I found a new home in Portland, but now comfort and safety, two aspects which I find to be integral to the concept of home, are missing.

Despite all of this, I am stuck here with no foreseeable escape. I am trapped in a home that is not a home anymore, and I can feel that in the way I interact with it. I never used to turn on lights to get a midnight snack; I didn’t feel the need to lock doors and windows when I was home alone with earbuds in; I didn’t squint at the walls of the house when I walked by it to look for dents. I trusted the house, and now I find that I don’t, which makes me think about how a home is defined. Is it as simple as trust?

Is that all I’m missing at this point? As of yet, I haven’t come to a conclusion on this, but as I look at the half-finished patch on my bedroom wall, I keep thinking.

SARAH BROWNLEE ’23 CINCINNATI, OHIO

April 8 I go on a walk. It’s hot today. A man stands on his porch, Ohio flags on either side. Governor DeWine told us to hang our American and Ohio flags to show unity against the virus.

Gee whiz.

I eat lunch. The dishwasher is running.

I call a classmate with whom I’m working on a project. As with every virtual meeting, we check in with each other first. She has just moved into a house near campus with seven others. She’s doing alright, but is dealing with a lot.

I watch the Hum lecture. I try to pay attention (it’s an interesting lecture), but I can’t focus. I keep it playing in the background as I write.

I bake a Passover pavlova as Dad makes salmon and Jack finishes up the matzo ball

soup. David unloads the dishwasher.

And now, for something completely different: Zoom Seder. I had been looking forward to being home for Seder, but every silver lining has its cloud. All five branches of the family have printed out the same Haggadot, and Mom has sent everyone funny Pesach videos (“Matzo Man,” a parody of the Village People’s “Macho Man,” is my personal favorite). We prop Dad’s phone up on a music stand, and I choose a seat that will keep me off camera. Then, a curveball. Mom asks Jack, David, and me to get our phones and prop them up on the (beautifully set) dinner table so that “people can see when we’re reading,” thoroughly breaking the “no phones at the dinner table” rule. We protest, David loudest of all. Mom takes David into the other room to yell, so that the others on the Zoom call don’t see it.

Normal Seders, in my house, are filled with bad jokes and quick asides. This time, whenever any of us talks, we get The Look from Mom. Jack and I have to make do with glances.

We leave the meeting, and the fog lifts. We eat until we’re bursting (two soup courses!!) and then we have dessert. We sing songs and drink wine. We all clean up together. It’s kind of lovely, and kind of normal.

The family begins to settle down. Rain starts to fall. Everyone’s in bed, despite the crazy lightning. I’m in the shower when I hear the hail. Then Jack knocks on my bathroom door.

“Tornado warning.” We gather in the basement, turn on the TV. Brightly colored diagrams flash on every channel. The weatherman is barely pausing to breathe. 4,000 without power in the tristate area. Then 28,000. If there’s no power, there’s no Wi-Fi, and no way to charge our laptops. If there’s no power, there’s no way for us to attend class. There’s no way for my mom to see clients, or for my dad to go to meetings. Power’s out in Kenwood, 15 minutes away. Funnel clouds spotted in northern Kentucky. The storm passes over, and our warning ends at 11 p.m., half an hour later.

We go upstairs to somewhat lighter rain. Dad shows David the hailstones in the backyard. We all express worry, but, as Mom says, “There’s nothing we can do about it.” Seems to be that way with a lot of things.

The dishwasher is running.

FINDING WAYS KYLE PETERSEN ’23 VISTA, CALIFORNIA

My friends and I recently watched a broadcast of the Met Opera production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten together via text message. What surprised me most about this experience was how similar it felt to having them in the room. I think that this is so, in part, because when you are with one another watching some sort of media you don’t really talk to one another. That made communicating via text feel natural. The only thing that was really missing was the physical presence of them being in the room with me. We could still know that we were experiencing something together at the same time, just not in the same place. It made me think about why movie theaters are social spaces. Why would you take a group of friends somewhere where, by nature of the space, you can only be social nonverbally?

The most natural answer to me is that it gives a common ground for future discussion, and it brings everyone “to speed” on popular culture.

This is just one example of the variety of rituals that we perform in our everyday lives that do not necessarily need to be done in the manner that we normally perform them. It will be interesting to see what returns to normal, and what does not. In essence, we will see which activities must remain physically social, and which we can identify as the more superfluous physical gatherings.

LYDIA MEAD ’22

Which she did, smiling. And as she approached, she asked: “Can I hug you?” The question was laden with our shared understanding of the implications of physical contact, of even physical proximity, under this “New Normal.” But in this moment, we both needed physical comfort more than we needed our space. “Yes,” I said, sinking into the word with such relief. And we hugged, tightly, and I remember grasping the top of her shirt, near her neck. And I remember the warmth of the embrace, and how we shifted, but didn’t let go. And then I woke up.

April 11. Self-at-home At Reed, I was coming to know myself within the roles of person-in-the-world, college student, friend, peer, etc. I was coming to know myself as an independent person; the circumstances granted me a sense of freedom. In this freedom, I was developing a stronger sense of self, and a way of being that felt truer to me. I was coming to know myself through my daily interactions, and through the way I spoke. These interactions, and this language, were continuously created through the common context that I shared with the people around me. I was coming to know myself, in a way that felt right, as myself-at-Reed.

When this situation shook me up and sent me home, I felt lost inside myself. Living at home feels like it diminishes my role of person-in-the world. Taking virtual classes twists my role as a college student into a strange version of its former iteration. I communicate regularly and deeply with my friends, but I am no longer surrounded by them. My peers are squares on a screen, scattered across the world. I am dropped— disoriented—back into the role of daughter, a role that I barely know how to perform. I am dropped—disoriented—back into the role of sister. I am dropped—disoriented—back into the role of member-of-a-family-unit, and memberof-a-household. The first time I looked in the mirror upon arriving home, I felt such confusion.

DARTMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS

April 5. Dreams Just before I woke up today, I hugged an old friend. In my dream, I entered a sparsely populated auditorium, where a lecture about the virus was just ending. She was sitting alone, and taking notes, and I felt such happiness and comfort upon seeing her. I stood in the back, waiting for her to get up, see me, and walk towards me.

ELEAZAR BIRKE ’23 PORTLAND

March 25 My dad touched on something interesting at dinner. While he wants me to collaborate with the rest of the family to do chores around the house, he wants to make sure that the family

dynamic doesn’t regress to a pre-college state.

This made me realize in an odd way that I’m in an in-between point, and I’m not sure how to fall into either extreme. I’m somewhere between home and college, because my house doesn’t exactly feel like home. I’ve gotten rid of all my possessions from the past, and nearly have nothing I didn’t acquire in college. Because of this, my room doesn’t feel like it used to be, but my belongings don’t feel like they’re from my dorm room either.

My school friends are away, but because of quarantine I can’t see my friends from before college.

In all aspects of life, I feel segregated between two sections of my life: the “adult” one, as it were, where I answer to and am responsible for myself, and a childlike one, where I do what I’m told, have meals made for me that I eat with my family.

March 30 The house has gotten complicated, as my sister has been taking after my sleep schedule but with a bit of a twist: she’s going to bed at 2 a.m. like I am, but instead of waking up at 9 a.m., she’s waking up at 2 p.m. Needless to say my parents don’t love that, and have been fighting with her on the topic of getting to sleep earlier and waking up at a normal time. Because of that, tensions have been a little high in the household, which is a minefield to work with.

VEDA GUJRAL ’23 SAN FRANCISCO

April 14 Today I met with a friend of mine who is the only person outside of my household I have been seeing regularly. In theory, we implement the rules of six feet of distance and no passing back and forth of objects such as our phones. However, in practice, these guidelines are not enough to remove us from our habitual dynamic of walking close by each other and sharing things, as is common behavior for most people when they are interacting with one another.

Whenever the severity of the current public climate slips our mind and I hand her my phone to show her a photo or veer towards her as our conversation deepens when strolling down the sidewalk, we both realize that we have committed an atrocity and vow to be more careful.

This new mode of engagement exemplifies an idea that Michel Foucault delineated in Discipline and Punish. Foucault describes how we exist in a

Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 23

THE QUARANTINE JOURNALS

world where each member of it, through consistent social conditioning from a higher-authority figurehead or larger power, becomes set to one uniform standard of being and acting. Eventually, this social structure replicates itself through those members, as they, once subjects of a disciplinary superior, begin to police one another.

The way that we negotiate our interactions with one another during this pandemic suggests a real manifestation of this system of being. As people of the worldwide social sphere, we receive compelling commands and instructions from those deemed as “leaders” and “in control,” so that we begin to compulsively maneuver our interhuman behaviors in a way that adheres to that higher power; we monitor and regulate one another.

UNA LYNCH ’23 SAN FRANCISCO

April 20 Today I signed up for my first-choice classes for next year. It was hard to be motivated with all the uncertainty we are facing. I don’t know if school will be online in the fall or not. If it is online I don’t think that I will continue with Reed— instead I will take some time off. But what can I do? If all colleges are online I likely won’t have job opportunities either. It is hard to know what is to come in the following months. Never before have I not been in control of my life and been unable to plan ahead. All we can do as a society is to speculate and prepare for what may come next, but there is no way to know.

Today I found out the first person I knew with COVID-19 had died. He is in New York and I don’t know him well, but everything is starting to feel more personal. I am worried about my grandparents. Talking on the phone with my grandmother today, she does not seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation. I am worried she is not taking the right precautions. It is hard because she lives alone, she wants to go out and be with the world.

I don’t know what it would be like to live alone during a time like this. The people around me have helped me keep going in this hard time and bring some joy and laughter. My family and I sat around the kitchen table after dinner until late into the night, listening to music and talking with one another. Our parents told my brother and I about their lives together before we were born.

It was a bonding moment that I truly appreciate.

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ROOM WITH A VIEW. ES-Econ major Amrita Sawhney ’22 looks from her window in Reed’s Sullivan Hall.

EMMA JANE HAAS ’22 LOS OSOS, CALIFORNIA

April 9 I washed the windows this weekend, Sprayed them down and wiped away grime I danced along the bench, balanced as if on a stool, Reaching for uppermost corners of dirty glass I hopped along wooden floor, swept up crumbs from Yesterday’s breakfast, last night’s dinner All the while, Rumours blasting—“Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom” Smiling faces help me mop, each one A notch on our collective totem, This house has been cleared and cleaned.

AMRITA SAWHNEY ’22 SULLIVAN HALL, REED COLLEGE

photo by daniel cronin

Think of yourself as a painting. Think about when you paint. Acrylic on canvas. There is never a point in time where the painting is definitively complete. There are only paintings that you have chosen to stop working on.

There are however, many points in time where the painting appeared beautiful in one area or another but you kept putting more paint on the canvas to change any areas that were less than. And with those changes, the parts that you thought beautiful before appear different afterwards, sometimes requiring their adjustment. So you are not allowed to get too attached to any part of the painting, no matter how much you like it.

Some things have to change regardless of whether you want them to, but most of the time, the change can only take place with your permission. Then there’s Leonardo da Vinci, who rarely “finished” a project. After he died, the Mona Lisa was stolen several times and altered, specifically, in dimension and therefore content.

So even when you are the only one putting paint to canvas, you are never the only one creating. Every perception changes your decisions and the way you view the painting because everyone views the painting in their own different way. So maybe what is on the canvas matters less than what isn’t on the canvas. What is there will be appreciated (or loathed) by someone, but what isn’t there yet cannot be recognized at all.

Enjoy the process of painting.

Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 25

Reediana Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!

EDITED BY KATIE PELLETIER Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

A Spirit in Flight In the spirit of C. G. Jung, this volume contains a large collection of the poems, essays and short stories that Alan Mussell ’68 has written over the past 60 years. Here every reader will easily find many items to suit their taste. (Independently published, 2020)

A Heat Wave in the Hellers, and Other Tales of Darkover Deborah J. Ross ’68 published a new collection of stories through Book View Cafe, an author-owned cooperative. In the title story, she sends Marion Zimmer Bradley herself to Darkover to solve a crisis. She also penned a novelette, “Many Teeth,” for Sword and Sorceress 34 and edited Lace and Blade 5.

Grid Talk The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado asked Marty Rosenberg ’71 to launch a podcast series to explore dramatic changes in the national energy grid to accommodate surging renewables and more distributed energy sources. Listen in at https://smartgrid.gov/gridtalk/, or subscribe as Marty talks to thought leaders about offshore wind in Virginia, Tesla batteries in Vermont, innovations in Australia, and the wild proliferation of EV charging spots in Kansas City.

A diorama from Maggie Rudy’s Sootypaws: A Cinderella Story

Once a Girl, Always A Boy: A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey A new memoir by Jo Ivester ’77 is Jeremy’s journey from childhood through coming out as transgender and eventually emerging as an advocate for the transgender community. This is not only Jeremy’s story but also that of his family, told from multiple perspectives.

This is a story of acceptance in a world not quite ready to accept. (She Writes Press, 2020)

The Read Through It Strategy: Building Confidence First Then Comprehension for Secondary Struggling Readers A struggling reader at the secondary level avoids reading because it challenges their sense of self-worth and confidence. Teachers of these students work hard to make assigned readings interesting and captivating, but there are few tools available to inspire the student to get past the emotional barrier of lack of belief in improving their skills. In his first published book, Wade McJacobs ’80 provides teachers with a tool to give students confidence that they can tackle a text. They can read. They can learn. (She Writes Press, 2020)

26 Reed Magazine june 2020

Rave The fourth monograph by Paul D’Amato ’80 brings together previously unpublished photographs made in the early 1990s of the underground music and dance scenes in Chicago and New Orleans and across New England. These gatherings, staged, often illegally, in warehouses and abandoned buildings, cut across the common social divisions of age, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. D’Amato’s vivid color photographs convey the transcendent joy that exploded from the tightly packed rooms pulsing with electronic music. (Skylark Editions, 2020)

Sootypaws: A Cinderella Story The latest illustrated book by Maggie Rudy ’80 is a retelling of the classic tale, with a modern twist.

Sootypaws features stunning, hand-built diorama art, including hand-sewn outfits and an environment that is beautifully constructed and filled with charming details. Posed and photographed, the characters come to life. (Macmillan Henry Holt and Co., 2020)

Gorilla The manuscript for this poetry collection by Christine Hamm ’87 was awarded the Tenth Gate Prize and will be published by Word Works Publishing. Publisher Nancy White notes, “As a most unusual investigation of gender, family, and community, this collection disorders and disturbs, knowing that upending the status quo ultimately makes the best manners of all.”

Staging Art and Chineseness: The Politics of Trans/Nationalism and Global Expositions Jane Chin Davidson ’01 addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition.

Focusing on video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist’s residency, homeland, or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style, or practice (University of Manchester Press, 2020). Jane also coedited a special issue, “Restaging Exhibitions,” for the Journal of Curatorial Studies, vol. 8, no. 2.

The Found Dog Ribbon Dance Dominic Finocchiaro ’11 recently published a comedic play about a professional cuddler named Norma.

Her quest to return a lost dog to its rightful owner leads her to encounter a slew of oddballs and maybe even discover a second chance at love. After a slew of nationwide productions, the play is now in print.

(Broadway Play Publishing Inc., 2019)

Hidden Falls In a novel by Kevin Myers (Director of Communications), Michael Quinn’s journey home to Boston after his father dies forces him into conflict with unresolved family issues, denial, and the revelation that his father had ties to organized crime. Michael inherits some unfinished business that places him as the unwitting linchpin in a major criminal conspiracy, and brings danger, betrayal, but also self-discovery and the possibility of a windfall of cash. (Beaufort Books, 2020)

13e Avenue vol. 1

The Art of the Jewish Family

Written by Geneviève Petterson and illustrated by François Vigneault ’13, this YA novel is about a young boy living in Montréal who is dealing with the effects of a family tragedy. The book has racked up a slate of awards and nominations, including nods from the prestigious Prix des libraires du Québec and the Prix des collèges (Éditions de la Pastèque, 2018). François also published his first translation The Immersion Program

by Léo Quievreux. (Floating World Comics, 2019)

Prof. Laura Arnold Leibman [English] examines five objects owned by a diverse group of Jewish women who all lived in New York in the years between 1750 and 1850: a letter from Hannah Louzada; silver cups owned by Reyna Levy Moses; an ivory miniature owned

by Sarah Brandon Moses); a book created by Sarah Ann Hays Mordecai; and a family silhouette owned by Rebbetzin Jane Symons Isaacs. These objects offer intimate and tangible views into the lives of Jewish American women from a range of statuses, beliefs, and lifestyles—both rich and poor, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, slaves and slaveowners. (Bard Graduate Center, 2020)

Reed Magazine june 2020 27

Class Notes These Class Notes reflect information we received by March 15.

The Class Notes deadline for the next issue is June 15.

Class Notes are the lifeblood of Reed Magazine.

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.

Email us at reed.magazine@reed.edu. 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!

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.

EDITED BY JOANNE HOSSACK ’82

1950 1951

Oliver (Olly) Williams went on the Reed alumni trip to Morocco last June. “This is my third such Reed tour since turning 90. Again greatly enjoyed being with fellow Reedies, but this one may well be the last, maybe.”

1952

John Hudson is close to completing a book-length memoir of summers on his grandparents’ farm during the 1930s, before rural electrification, when everything was done by hand and with horses. An excerpt appears in an anthology he helped publish: Kaleidoscope, by the Guild Writers. You can find it on Amazon. John and his wife Sandra celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2017 with a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, and spent a month in Prague, Czech Republic (Sandra is half Czech). They returned by way of Vienna and Venice, and crossed again—this time westbound—on the Queen Mary 2.

28 Reed Magazine june 2020

1956

Michael Munk reports that Prof. Ed Segel [history 1973–2011] has moved to the Rose Villa “old folks’ home,” joining Reedies Barbara Adams ’58 and Peggy Allen Fujita ’60 as well as Judith Reynolds, widow of Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [English and art 1929–69]). Rose Villa is down McLoughlin a few miles from campus at the Milwaukie border. Late residents included Prof. Dorothy Johansen ’33 [history 1934–84] and Prof. Art Leigh [economics 1945–88]. Barbara, Michael, and Prof. Segel attended Reed on the Road at Home on campus in March.

1960

The second edition of William Bernhardt’s book, Just Writing: Exercises to Improve Your Writing, was published last year. Bill reports that the first edition, originally published in 1977 by Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York, remained in print for over 25 years and acquired something of a cult reputation, as its approach was unlike most other books on the subject. “Copies of both editions are available on Amazon, although I would hope that readers would choose

the new edition, updated for the age of computer-mediated text.”

In Bob Erickson’s recent paper in Developmental Biology titled “A Mentor’s Perspective: It’s Not All About Academic Research—Other Careers for PhDs in Developmental Biology and Biological Sciences,” he had this to say about Reed and places like it: “Smaller liberal arts colleges frequently have active research faculty and heavy student involvement. . . .

Students are more likely to be treated as equals, just individuals less far along the road towards it. In contrast, the major research universities have become very corporate with highly paid administrators focused on finances. My liberal arts college alma mater, Reed College in Portland, Oregon, required a bachelor’s thesis. This experience provided one fourth of the credit for the senior year and was preceded by an end-of-the-junior-year qualifying examination. Laboratories of about 400 square feet were shared by two students and there was adequate money for materials. In my case, my thesis resulted in a sole-authored publication, my mentor feeling that he had contributed little more than pointing to the problem. Many of the faculty at Reed College, despite the lack of graduate students, had then, and have now, NSF or NIH grants.” Thanks, Bob!

Together again at Wakulla Springs State Park in Florida!

Left to right: Ruth Bowers ’71, Ronald Levy ’70, Mark Seidenfeld ’75, and Colleen Kelley ’75.

John Hudson ’52 helped publish the anthology Kaleidoscope, in which you can read an excerpt of his memoir.

1961–64

We choose to go to the moon!

1965

Astronaut John Young smuggles corned beef sandwich into space. Congress is not amused.

1966–67

Class notes lost in space again.

1968

Alan Mussell MAT published a volume of poetry in February. (See Reediana.)

Last year, Deborah J. Ross published a new collection of stories, sold a novelette, and edited an anthology. (See Reediana.)

1969

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, and (to our knowledge) no corned beef sandwiches.

1970

Four Reed alumni—Ron Levy, Ruth Bowers ’71, Mark Seidenfeld ’75, and Colleen Kelley ’75—had a reunion at Wakulla Springs State Park, near Tallahassee, Florida, last November. “Wakulla Springs is a beautiful location that contains the world’s largest and deepest freshwater spring,” Ron told us. Ruth is married to Ron and Mark is married to Colleen; Ron and Mark are cousins.

“The late Lloyd Reynolds opened me to so many paths of the heart and life: translating the fine motor skills and attention to detail of calligraphy seamlessly led to my mastery of eye surgery; sustaining an open heart and mind let to integrating my love of dharma and my Jewish roots, and founding the Tibet Vision Project,” writes Dr. Marc Lieberman. Marc is organizer of the first Jewish-Buddhist Dialogues, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and rabbis (basis of Rodger Kamenetz’s book The Jew in the Lotus); founder of the Tibet Vision Project, with annual teaching visits and eye camps in Lhasa and central Tibet, from 1993 to 2012; clinical professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University Medical Center and California Pacific Medical Center; and founder of Glaucoma Consultants Bay Area.

Steven Moskowitz recently returned to Portland after serving for 15 years as a rabbi in Long Beach, California. He’s started a nonprofit, shulchan.pdx, dedicated to exploring the spiritual and ethical lessons of Judaism.

As an amateur cartographer, David Toliver created and contributed four

hand-drawn historic maps for William Penn’s ‘Holy Experiment’: Quaker Truth in Pennsylvania, 1692–1781, by James Proud, published in 2019 by Inner Light Books. To build his street cred, David offers his amateur cartographic services gratis (upwardly negotiable) for similar worthy endeavors.

1971

In November, Jan DeWeese recruited new Reed music instructor Nat Hulskamp (joined by his wife, Lamiae Naki, and Ghanaians Okaidja Afroso and Boinor Nartey) to play a fundraiser for Rafiki Village Project, a local NGO helping a Tanzanian community improve its school’s health clinic.

Liz Dally recently sold her business, Hawthorne Auto Clinic, and retired January 1, 2020. “I was a member of the class of 1971, attending Reed for 2 years, and transferring to Portland State College after my sophomore year because of family financial considerations. In 1971 I graduated with a BA in political science.

After a couple years of odd jobs and three years in integrated circuit manufacturing at Tektronix, I settled on my side interest in auto mechanics as a career, joining a co-operative auto repair business, Mom’s Garage. After 43 years in the auto repair industry, 36 of those fixing cars and seeing that they got fixed at Hawthorne Auto Clinic, I have forsaken the internal combustion engine. Restitution for enabling the emission of greenhouse gases will consist of spending my remaining years, in several volunteer capacities, furthering the interests and spread of our region’s native plants.”

Renewable energy guru Marty Rosenberg has launched a podcast, Grid Talk, to explore dramatic changes in the national energy grid. Listen in at smartgrid.gov/gridtalk. (See Reediana.)

Tim Rowan and Patti MacRae both celebrated their 70th birthdays this year

and their 40th wedding anniversary by spending a goodly portion of October and November in Australia and New Zealand. Both look forward to the 50th year from their Reed graduation next year and encourage all of their classmates to come to campus to jointly celebrate the event.

1972

Marty Rosenberg ’71 launched Grid Talk, a new podcast about impending changes to the nation’s energy infrastructure.

David Toliver ’70 and his lovely wife, Ginny: going strong for 46 years!

Dan Feller is Professor of History, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and editor/director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee. He and his team just published volume XI of the Papers, covering the year 1833. The series has been awarded the Thomas Jefferson Prize of the Society for History in the Federal Government, and Dan was recently honored with the Distinguished Service Award of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic for his “outstanding contributions to the work of the organization and to the study of early American history.”

1973

It’s people! Class notes are written by people!

1974

Mary Ondrechen reported on her transition to online teaching this spring: “I can manage my 14-person research group remotely most of the time, but it is a struggle to teach a hands-on chemistry course online. Molecular modeling is taught in a computer lab and troubleshooting even minor individual problems, generally swift and easy in person, is so difficult over telecon. Will persist and prevail while keeping spirits up.”

1975

Peter Child composed a new work, Branches, for the opening of Lina Viste Grønli’s exhibition Nye skulpturer at Entrée, Bergen (Norway) in June 2019. Branches is a solo suite for Reed Magazine june 2020 29

Class Notes recorders—tenor, alto, soprano, and sopranino—that responds to the assemblages of small branches and chewing gum, resembling wooden flutes, that were featured in the show. Peter’s most recent work, titled Six Dances of Death, was commissioned by the Boston Musica Viva. The new piece is based upon Images from Holbein the Younger’s Dance of Death, completed in 1525, and music by Holbein’s contemporary (and employer) Henry VIII of England.

Paul Shaw has been honored with the 2019 SOTA [Society of Typographic Aficionados] Typography Award. The society reports that Paul “is a fixture of the typographic community—an authority on design history, a talented designer and calligrapher, and spirited educator.” For over three decades, Paul has researched and practiced the typographic arts: as a graphic designer, calligrapher, and letterer at his firm Paul Shaw Letter Design; as a contributing editor for Print; and as author of numerous articles and books, including The Calligraphic Tradition in Blackletter Type and Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. He has designed or codesigned 18 typefaces, among them Kolo, Donatello, Bermuda, Old Claude, and Stockholm. Since 1980, Paul has taught at various New York-area universities and design schools, including the School of Visual Arts, Parsons, and Type@ Cooper, and has led numerous lettering walks in cities across the world, as part of the Legacy of Letters.

1976

Sharon Ranals was promoted to assistant city manager for the City of South San Francisco.

1977

Jo Ivester has published a family memoir, Once a Girl, Always A Boy. (See Reediana.)

After 35+ years in the field of worker health and safety, Michael Sprinker is retiring from his latest (and last?) job with the US Department of Labor— Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Michael worked at the OSHA Training Institute near Chicago for the last 13 years, teaching process safety management and combustible dust hazard recognition and enforcement, or (as he told his daughter when she was young) how to inspect chemical plants and other workplaces to help employers and workers prevent them from blowing up or releasing nasty stuff. Before that, he worked for the International Chemical

30 Reed Magazine june 2020

Workers Union Council/UFCW as health and safety director and for Oregon OSHA as an industrial hygienist, with 18 months off in Zagreb, Croatia (then Yugoslavia), on a Fulbright studying occupational health and safety.

“I owe a lot to a great education in chemistry at Reed as well as the wonderful range of humanities classes I loved taking. I plan to continue with my union activities (45 years and counting!) and other related troublemaking, particularly with the November election looming, as well as volunteering in the field of occupational and environmental health and safety.”

1978

Jaci (Berdahl) Cuddy reported to us early in the pandemic: “Checked in with fellow Reedies Susan (S.) Brophy-Spilka ’77, Jill Kuhnheim ’79, Martin Land ’77, and Mark Aronson ’79. All indicated that they are fine except for Mark, who I’m still hoping to hear from. S. assures me that Mark is fine based on a podcast (?) or something like that.” Hey Mark, check in with Jaci! Hey everyone, check in!

1979

“I have been in touch with a few former Reedies since Jaci Cuddy recently started an email chain. Thanks Jaci!” says Jill Kuhnheim. Jill continues in her ongoing position as a visiting professor at Brown, and is currently teaching and writing about health humanities with a

Spanish American perspective; she had a book published last fall.

Christopher Webb recently returned to the United States after living 22 years in Europe.

1980

Rave, the fourth monograph by Paul D’Amato, brings together previously unpublished photographs made in the early 1990s of the underground music and dance scenes in Chicago and New Orleans and across New England. (See Reediana.)

After a 14-year career as an RN, and

Jaci (Berdahl) Cuddy ’78 stops in Lima on her way to Machu Picchu.

Peter Child ’75 celebrates after the performance of Branches with (left to right) gallery director Randi Grov Berger, artist Lina Viste Grønli, and recorder player Patricia Michlits.

“ I see that Reed women make up 5% of the women elected to the National Academy of Science this year. Not bad for a small little college!” —Pam Ronald ’82 an 18-year career teaching in a public high school, Steve Forrest is now ungainfully retired and relishing every last unstructured moment. Steve is an avid woodturner, and has been writing and editing for American Woodturner magazine as well. Steve’s sons started a successful escape room in Sebastopol, California (The Spacetime Travel Agency), and Steve hopes to turn the wood turning into something more than a hobby. “Still happily married to the smartest, funniest

woman I know. If you’re in the SF Bay area and you have a hardwood tree laying around sometime, let me know! Steveforrestwoodturning.com.”

Wade McJacobs has retired from teaching and published his first book, The Read Through It Strategy, for teachers who are trying to reinspire secondary struggling readers to read. Wade has started a business, Student Empowerment Group (studentempowermentgroup.com) and did a virtual speaking tour this spring with the Bureau of Educational Resources. He is now working on his second book, describing how adults who are frustrated with their reading skills can rediscover the magic of reading. Wade lives in an empty nest in Beaverton with his wife, Martha, who owns a business, Life by Design. Their son Devon is studying at the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Tokyo University, and their daughter Annie works for Horizon Media in Los Angeles. (See Reediana.)

Maggie Rudy has published another delightful picture book! (See Reediana.)

1981

Visual artist Melinda Hunt’s Hart Island Project has resulted in the creation of 101 acres of new parkland in New York City.

On December 4, 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed bills transferring jurisdiction of the island from the Department of Correction to the Department of Parks and Recreation, ending the use of prison labor to bury low-income people in mass graves. Burials on Hart Island began during the Civil War; New York City has buried unclaimed or unidentified persons there since 1869. Parks will assume full control by July 2021.

Beverly Maliner recently concluded 38 years of service to her country as an army physician. She trained as an osteopath through the (then) Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she gained admission on the strength of the

rigor of her Reed education. Both foundations served her well as a soldier-officerphysician-educator. She is now continuing her personal growth and service as a yoga teacher and Department of Veterans Affairs physician volunteer.

1982

Reedie phone home!

1983

Susan Alberts and Pam Ronald ’82, who were together in Helen Stafford’s class in 1980, are together again as 2019 inductees to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019! (See Eliot Circular.)

Pam comments, “My husband figured out that the election of the two of us has doubled the number of Reed women elected to NAS (only 2 Reed women until this year according to his count). Also, I see that Reed women make up 5% of the women elected to the NAS this year. Not bad for a small little college!”

Susan adds, “I’m still doing research in the same study system that I began working in the year after I left Reed, when I had my Watson Foundation Fellowship— the baboon population in the Amboseli ecosystem in southern Kenya. As of next year we’ll have 50 years of continuous data on known individuals; I’ve been involved for 37 of those 50 years and I’m grateful for every year of that time. My two daughters spent a lot of time there as they were growing up, and while they don’t love it as much as I do, it’s been an important part of all of our lives.”

After teaching elementary and middle school for the last 28 years, Matthew Bigongiari was lucky enough to have been granted a sabbatical year. So last year he, wife Donica, and nine-year-old son Adrian moved to Padova (Padua), Italy, for a year of adventure and renewal.

Adrian attended third grade at an Italian Waldorf school while Donica and Matthew hiked most every day in the nearby

Colli Euganei or weekends in the Dolomites. “We also were able to travel around Italy and reconnect with my father’s friends and family in Tuscany. In Padova we lived in an amazing palazzo that dates from 1441; shopped in outdoor markets daily; visited numerous churches, castles, museums, and wineries; and I even had a part-time job teaching English in two local middle schools. Now I am back in Eugene, Oregon, returning to a job-share teaching position at the Village School, a public K–8 Waldorf-inspired charter school which I helped to found in 2000.

For any and all who have the opportunity for a sabbatical year, I say emphatically: don’t hesitate!”

Steven Falk had a big week in February. He was featured in a New York Times article (“Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build

Retired teacher and RN Steve Forrest ’80 turns (to) wood!

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio signs legislation ending penal control of Hart Island, a result of Melinda Hunt ’81’s Hart Island Project.

(Melinda is in the red dress.)

Matthew Bigongiari ’83 and son Adrian hiked three hours in the Dolomites to get to this spot near Lago Coldai, a small lake at the base of Monte Civetta.

Behind them is the valley where the town and lake of Alleghe lie.

Reed Magazine june 2020 31

Class Notes Build Build Build”) describing his journey of conscience as a California city manager taking steps, in the face of intense public opposition, to address climate change and the affordable housing crisis. The piece resonated with President Barack Obama, who commended it to 110 million Twitter followers, saying the story “demonstrate(s) how policy solutions along with civic engagement can make a real difference in people’s lives.”

The article was excerpted from Conor Dougherty’s excellent new book, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America.

Later that week, in the spirit of when it rains, it pours, Falk was appointed as the interim city administrator for the City of Oakland; he will serve as that city’s top appointed official. He continues to live in Lafayette, walking his Labrador retriever and making paintings (www.stevenbradleyfalk.com) in his spare time.

Margarete Myers Feinstein teaches in the Jewish Studies Program at Loyola Marymount University. She recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support her research on retribution after the Holocaust. In 2019 Margarete and her husband, Rabbi Morley Feinstein, welcomed two grandchildren. And for the ninth consecutive year, she is the leader for their twin daughters’ Girl Scout Troop.

“Life is full!”

Cinephile Karl Hester got to check a major item off of his bucket list in Park City, Utah!

1988

Susan Butcher wins third consecutive Iditarod with lead dogs Granite and Tolstoy.

1989

Nadine Fiedler won third prize in the Oregon Poetry Association’s 2019 contest for her poem “The Bull.” She will also have a poem published this spring in Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place.

She pledges to get more of those damned poems out into the world!

1990

Oh, the things that you say!

Bruce Bennett’s latest composition, “the art of disappearing” (2020) for viola and harp, received its world premiere at Herbst Theater in San Francisco on February 10th. It was performed by (and dedicated to) violist Ellen Ruth Rose and harpist Meredith Clark on the first concert of Earplay’s 35th season (Earplay is a San Francisco–based ensemble dedicated to performing new chamber music—visit www.earplay.org). Also, an older work, “Stretch” (2000), was presented at the Victoria Theater as part of the annual San Francisco Tape Music Festival on January 11. Bruce operated the mixing desk to diffuse the piece from stereo playback to a marvelous multichannel speaker system in real time—it was a truly immersive sound environment.

Bruce reports that both pieces seemed to be well received by the public.

1985

1991

1984

Is it life?

1986

Or just to play our worries away?

1987

Christine Hamm was awarded the Tenth Gate Prize by Word Works publishing for her manuscript, Gorilla. A prize of $1,000 and publication by the Word Works is given annually for a poetry collection by a poet who has published at least two full-length books of poetry. According to Nancy White, the publisher of Word Works: “This surreal collection of prosepoems, harmonic and jarring, yanks the reader into a world where the animal is a danger-suit we might all don, or is the cruelty that breaks families from within, or America’s unconscious hatred of women—perhaps it is our own world, perhaps more real than surreal.” (See Reediana.)

32 Reed Magazine june 2020

Lisa Gardiner is currently working as the chief of staff to California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson in the California legislature in Sacramento. Over the past few years, she has worked on legislation to strengthen family leave and equal pay laws. She’s lived in Sacramento for two decades with her husband, Jason Montiel, and their two kids, Adam (17) and Caroline (12).

After 17 years as a professor of astronomy and physics, Tyler Nordgren has “retired” (“more like quit”) to devote himselfself full time to drawing and selling art to national parks and other science/ environmental organizations. “Maybe you’ve seen my ‘See the Milky Way’ and ‘Half the Park Is After Dark’ posters in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Shenandoah, and other national parks? I briefly had my poster for President Obama’s 2015 White House Astronomy Night hanging in the White House Office of Science and

Bryce Canyon National Park “See the Milky Way” poster, by Tyler Nordgren ’91.

Karl Hester ’87 represents Reed at Sundance.

Technology Policy. My series of 31 posters for the 2017 ‘Great American Eclipse’ was recently acquired by the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. And no, they’re not on display there (yet); they just went from being in my closet to now being in theirs. When folks act surprised that I’ve been both an astronomer and artist, I just say I am a product of a liberal arts education. Thanks, Reed.”

1992

First confirmed detection of exoplanets.

1993

Congratulations to Rachael Carnes, winner of the Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship in

drama, one of the 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowships. We also heard from Professor Emerita Patricia Wong [dance 1975–2009] in March, “I’m so proud of Reed alum Rachael Carnes who is teaching dance for children and creative writing for teens via Zoom!” Keep doing that good work, Rachael!

1994

“During 2019, I bought a home and moved to the east ‘slopes’ of Mt. Tabor here in Portland,” writes Esteban Gutierrez. “I continue to work in a very amazing job where I get to lead and build an information security team for a great company, New Relic, where I am currently the director of information security. They seem to like my ideas of not doing things in a typical dogmatic, overbearing, and rigid fashion and instead building a security program based on transparency, empathy, compassion, empowerment, and accountability.

“This year, I also dealt with a terrible autoimmune disease called microscopic polyangiitis. I spent much of the first half of 2019 in great pain and discomfort. The disease resulted in nerve, kidney, muscle fiber, and other kinds of damage.

I’m grateful to have had a good team of doctors. Thankfully, immunosuppression therapy has me mostly in remission. While I have recovered immensely, I will be spending the next few years recovering. Lastly, my daughter just got her learner’s permit so now I get to enjoy the world of teaching her how to drive.

Honestly, I’m pretty excited to be able to do that.”

1995

“It was so great to meet Francisca Garfia ’17, anthropology, when I reported to the City of Portland’s Emergency Coordination Center today!” Dylan Rivera, who works for the Portland Bureau of

Transportation, wrote in March. “We worked on communication for the city’s response to COVID-19, including daily all-staff email notices and media responses. Today we got a delivery of hand sanitizer from a local distillery. Lots of Reedies work at the city, in a variety of fields!”

Dylan Rivera ’95 and Francisca Garfia ’17 demonstrate social distancing at the City of Portland’s Emergency Coordination Center.

1996–97

RIP The Notorious B.I.G.

1998

B. Carter Edwards reports, “Haven’t updated this in a decade (or two). Sorry for the lapse. I’ve published two books (poetry/short stories); midway through three more. Got married a few years back to a very lovely fellow. Have been working as the programming director for various nonprofit literature and arts organizations in and around NYC. Also teaching creative writing in New Hampshire and NYC. Splitting my time between the city and the Catskills.”

1999

Zero Foodprint, the nonprofit organization founded by Karen Leibowitz and husband Anthony Myint, has received the 2020 James Beard Humanitarian of the Year award, “given to an individual or organization working in the realm of food who has given selflessly and worked tirelessly to better the lives of others and society at large.” Zero Foodprint works with restaurateurs and farmers toward building a renewable food system rooted in healthy soil. See zerofoodprint.org.

2000

How about some green ketchup?

2001

David Gregory Clark writes, “Been out of touch for a while. In the past 15 years I’ve earned my MFA in poetry, moved

to France, started a PhD, gotten married, had two children, stopped the PhD, gotten separated, cofounded an online writing community and a small press to support emerging writers (TL;DR Press, www. tldrpress.org), and just recently, finalized my divorce. Who knows what the next decade will bring?” Who knows, indeed?

Rachel Szumel ’02 brushes Mamacita’s teeth in an effort to stave off the otherwise inevitable nasty breath and periodontal disease.

Trevor Schanafelt, son of Dawn (Mann) Schanafelt ’01, looks surprisingly good in pistachio green, yes he does!

“ W hen folks act surprised that I’ve been both an astronomer and artist, I just say I am a product of a liberal arts education.” —Tyler Nordgren ’91 Todd W. Curtis is aloof, brow furrowed, in Vermont . . .

Jane Chin Davidson’s monograph Staging Art and Chineseness: Politics of Trans/Nationalism and Global Expositions was just released by the University of Manchester Press. (See Reediana.)

Darlene Pasieczny is still living and practicing law in Portland.She was recently elected to the office of treasurer for the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, an international bar association for securities litigation attorneys. “Proof that art history majors can do anything.”

Dawn (Mann) Schanafelt gave birth to her second kiddo, Trevor William, in January—with a little help from Dr. Reed Magazine june 2020 33

Class Notes Melanie Konradi ’95. Trevor is following in his mother’s footsteps by respecting deadlines: he was born on his exact due date. (Only about 3% of babies are that punctual, so he’s already exceptional!) He spends his days sheltering in place with his mom, dad, and big sister.

Katherine Sharpe’s story “Noise” was published in the Winter 2019–20 issue of Ploughshares. In 2018, Katherine earned her MFA in fiction from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Baltimore with her partner, Jesse Kraai, and two children, Hattie (3) and Robert (1).

2002

The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) has announced that Laura Alexander has joined the organization as Vice President of Policy. “We are delighted to bring Laura Alexander onto the AAI team. She brings valuable skills to our strong base of staff expertise in competition law, economics, and policy,” said AAI President Diana Moss. “Laura’s experience and perspective will be critical in supporting and expanding AAI’s leading role in invigorating antitrust and proposing tractable reforms.”

Athena Aktipis has written a book with a new take on cancer. (See Reediana.)

Rachel Szumel is still living in South Lake Tahoe with family (husband Leo and kids Tenaya, 7, and Banner, 4), finally getting to be a decent skier, thoroughly enjoying longer-than-short distance trail running with her SuperChi(TM) (aka badass Chihuahua) Mamacita, and practicing small animal veterinary medicine.

“I keep trying to convince my clients to brush their pets’ teeth so I don’t have to pull them all out later. Trouble is, most pets aren’t so keen on a weird pokey thing in their mouth. After trying to describe an incremental training plan, how to implement it, and how to use proper reinforcement and timing, all in the last two minutes of a wellness appointment for the five-millionth time, I decided there had to be a better way. There is! I made an online course to guide clients through it all. My friend Lori Nanan helped me produce it and hosts it at her site, lorinanan.com (“Pearly Whites: A Course in Pet Dental Care”). I think Allen Neuringer would approve of appropriate use of operant and classical conditioning in the plan. I hope.”

2003

Latvia launches Anti-Absurdity Bureau.

34 Reed Magazine june 2020

Cameron Brick left Cambridge and joined the social psychology faculty of the Univ. of Amsterdam. This is his fifth country and he feels lucky but also tired.

He mostly researches how individuals think about and respond to social dilemmas like climate change. In 2019, he wrote some oddball papers, e.g., an adaptation of the satirical piece “A Modest Proposal” for Restoration Ecology” and a piece in Nature on gender and race outcomes in STEM. Damir Kouliev was inaugurated president of the Maui County Bar Association on January 24. “My general goal is to improve the morale and camaraderie of attorneys, and generally nurture a healthier legal community with more of a collaborative approach to solving legal issues.”

2005

First video uploaded to YouTube.

2006

Tracy (Steindel) Ickes and Andrew Ickes welcomed Eliana Ruth in October 2018, and all are enjoying life in the tiny town of Kensington, near Berkeley. Tracy joined Nixon Peabody LLP’s San Francisco office as a commercial litigator in March 2019.

Back in 2007, recent Reed grad Mariah McKay attempted to establish a Reed alumni chapter in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. At the time there wasn’t enough density of alumni to make it work. These days Spokane is topping the “best of” city charts and Reedies are running into each other spontaneously on the streets! At a February First Friday urban art walk, Jason Scully ’93, Sam Mace ’89, and Mariah ran into each other at the Terrain Gallery, a nonprofit arts organization cofounded by Mariah back in 2008. “For those missing Portland circa year 2000, Spokane has grown into its own mecca of creative class affordability and gritty charm. Contact your fellow alumni when visiting this lovely northwestern town and we’d be happy to show you around the Lilac City!”

2007

I can haz corn beef sammich?

2008

Eddie Lauer is over halfway through his PhD with a focus in statistical and quantitative genetics, and he works in conifer breeding. He’s also a full-time employee at North Carolina State University, serving as the data analyst/database manager

for the North Carolina State University Tree Improvement Program.

“We are breeding Pinus taeda L. for increased growth, wood quality, and disease resistance. One of the main aspects of my research is trait dissection. I’m mapping genes which confer broad-spectrum disease resistance against fusiform rust, caused by a fungus in the Cronar-

Cameron Brick ’04 and his boss at Cambridge, Sir David Spiegelhalter.

Spokane is full of Reedies! From left to right: Jason Scully ’93, Sam Mace ’89, and Mariah McKay ’06.

“ These days Spokane is topping the ‘best of’ city charts and Reedies are running into each other spontaneously on the streets!” —Mariah McKay ’06 tium genus. Using very large full-sib populations, a high-density Affymetrix genotyping chip, and a controlled-inoculation chamber, I’ve mapped two large-effect alleles at subcentimorgan resolution to a single chromosome in the Pinus taeda L. genome. Each allele reduces the odds of

infection by around 20-fold under a highdensity disease challenge. I’m combining the within-family QTL mapping with an analysis of the expressed gene content, using PacBio IsoSeq RNA sequencing as well as the Illumina NovaSeq6000 instrument, which will hopefully give me sequence-level confirmation of the genes of interest. Using the marker-trait associations discovered here, we can perform predictive breeding to engineer disease resistant varieties of pine.”

Congratulations to Matt Zimo and his wife Judit (Spanish scholar 2006– 07), who welcomed their son Tristan in January!

2009

Fossils of world’s biggest snake discovered in Colombia. Titanoboa cerrejonensis, which flourished 60 million years ago, was about 40 feet long.

2010

Another fossil discovered in Columbia: Cerrejonisuchus improcerus, an extinct relative of the crocodile, four to seven feet long and considered by T. cerrejonensis to be tastier than a corned beef sandwich.

2011

Dominic Finocchiaro’s play The Found Dog Ribbon Dance is now available in book format from Broadway Play Publishing.

(See Reediana.)

Several Reedies and several more future Reedies gathered in December to celebrate the first birthday of Opal Anne Hallahan, born to Laura (Bradley) Hallahan ’09. Those in attendance included Kassandra Reuss-Schmidt and her two-year-old son, Inyo Fairgrieve ReussSchmidt, Alison Saunders and her fourmonth-old son, Louis Arthur Saunders Oehlerking, and Ryan Loney ’09, who had a little lamb. All the babies had just woken up from naps and weren’t very happy to be photographed!

2012

Mathilde Mouw-Rao spent the back half of 2019 attending the School for Poetic Computation in New York City. There, she had pizza, caught up with Mark Hintz, and saw Knives Out with Allison Flamberg ’13. She also honed her art practice while building mechanisms, handmade computers, and Arduino-based sensors in an area of the Westbeth Artists Housing building complex that was once home to Bell Labs. She collaborated with a community of fellow artists who work with technology and interrogate its place in our lives.

Clockwise from top left One of these things is not like the others!

Four Reedies and three future Reedies gathered for a first birthday party. Left to right: Ryan Loney ’09 and lamb; Laura (Bradley) Hallahan ’09 and Opal Anne Hallahan; Alison Saunders ’11 and Louis Arthur Saunders Oehlerking; and Kassandra Reuss-Schmidt ’10 and Inyo Fairgrieve Reuss-Schmidt.

Tristan, son of Matt Zimo ’08, is having sweet dreams.

Illustrator François Vigneault ’13 and writer Geneviève Pettersen receive the Prix des Libraires du Québec for their graphic novel Titan.

Mathilde Mouw-Rao ’12 holds one leg of her kinetic sculpture, Trash Island Real Estate DevelopmentBot, her final project for the School for Poetic Computation, fall 2019 term.

2013

Dorothy Howard was awarded an NSF Science and Technology Studies grant to complete her doctoral dissertation in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego.

Congratulations to the very busy François Vigneault, whose second graphic novel, 13e Avenue vol. 1, won in the inaugural BD Jeunesse (Comic for Youth) category in the prestigious Prix des Libraires du Quebec. The book, written by novelist Geneviève Pettersen and illustrated by François, has racked up an impressive slate of other awards and nominations. His first graphic novel, Titan, will be getting an

English-language release in September from Portland-based publisher Oni Press. (See Reediana.)

2014

Two golf balls surgically removed from snake in Georgia.

2015

One pair of salad tongs surgically removed from snake in Australia.

2016–2020

Social distancing doesn’t apply to class notes! Keep us posted!

Reed Magazine june 2020 35

In Memoriam EDITED BY RANDALL BARTON Email bartonr@reed.edu

Fascinated with Orbitals and the People Around Him Prof. Thomas Dunne [chemistry 1963–95]

April 5, 2020, in Tualatin, Oregon, from natural causes.

Prof. Thomas Dunne was a legendary professor who mentored generations of Reed students.

“Tom Dunne was one of my favorite people because of his deep kindness and his unwavering focus on improving and enhancing the lives of his students, friends, and family,” said Kristopher McNeill ’92. “He was an incredibly kind person, always upbeat, generous with his time, and always quick to make a clever joke (at his expense). He was a great Reed College professor, who fully appreciated liberal arts education and the importance of independent research. Tom took the job at Reed sight unseen, and it’s hard to believe how well he and Reed fit together.”

Dunne was born in 1930 and grew up in the Searles Valley, a desolate part of California’s Mojave Desert that is rich in minerals, such as borax, soda ash, potash, and some compounds of lithium. Despite the Great Depression, the valley sustained a number of chemical companies, including the one his father worked for.

In later years, Tom speculated that his interest in chemistry was seeded in that valley.

Because Westend, the tiny town he lived in, was too small to support a school, Tom traveled on a steam-driven locomotive to nearby Trona for kindergarten. During the summer, he ran around the desert barefoot and swam in the reservoir that fed the chemical plant.

In the first grade, he was sent off to Saint Catherine’s, a Catholic boarding school in Anaheim. “It was not a good year,” he recalled.

“All the things that a kid should learn in first grade, none of those did I learn. If you weren’t learning, then the way to get learning was to beat you more. That may work with some students, but it had the opposite effect with me.”

He convinced his parents to let him begin second grade in Trona, where he continued through high school. He went to UCLA at the suggestion of one of his teachers; as a freshman on campus, he noted that one of his chemistry textbooks had a picture of Searles Lake on it. “There it was,” he said, “my home territory right in the textbook.”

At UCLA, Dunne excelled in Saul Winstein’s physical organic chemistry course. After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 36 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

1952, he went on to graduate school at the University of Washington, where he got his PhD in physical chemistry doing x-ray crystallography on inorganic salts. In Seattle, he lived at the All People’s Student Center, where he encountered his first Reedie, Charles Leong ’53, who had transferred from Reed to UW. “Everything he told me about Reed seemed pretty impressive, pretty favorable,” Dunne said. “I sort of placed in my mind that maybe somehow I might get back here.”

After earning his PhD, Dunne took a job at IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York. This put him in touch with such renowned geniuses as John Cocke of supercomputing fame and Peter Sorokin, coinventor of the dye laser. Four years later, Dunne moved on to MIT, where he did a postdoc in the laboratory of F. Albert Cotton, the leading inorganic chemist of his generation. “This was a big jump right into a new theoretical, experimental vision of inorganic chemistry, where Cotton was doing the best work,” Dunne said.

He worked with Cotton for two years with the understanding that he would be looking

for a permanent job. “My mind was pretty much made up that I would like to go to Reed College,” he said. “Without really knowing at the time that I would be leaving IBM, I actually had sent donations to Reed College. My interest was all based on what I’d heard from Charlie.”

Cotton put in a good word for him at Reed, and—having never visited the campus— Dunne accepted a position in the chemistry department in 1963. In those days, the college could not afford to offer trips to their candidates. It was decided that for his first course, he would teach a course with Prof. Marsh Cronyn ’40 [chemistry 1952–89] that integrated inorganic and organic chemistry.

“I went to Marsh and said, ‘What do you suggest I teach?’” Dunne remembered. Cronyn replied, “Teach what you want to teach.”

Dunne decided he would teach inorganic chemistry. “It was kind of scary,” he said. “I kind of overshot. I prepared with great effort very, very sophisticated lectures, stuff that was so sophisticated that in some cases even I didn’t understand what I was talking about.

Some of the students realized I was digging a big hole for myself. They came to me and said, ‘You know, you really don’t have to work this hard. It’s okay. Just relax. You’re fine.’”

Dunne went on to become one of Reed’s most influential professors. He taught a wide variety of courses in chemistry and environmental science, advised dozens of thesis students, and chaired the chemistry department for nine years. He also pursued research in inorganic chemistry, with particular emphasis on the spectroscopic and magnetic properties of the transition metal compounds. One of his former students (an anonymous donor) endowed an annual lecture at Reed in his honor.

“Tom is one of my heroes in life, and I don’t have many,” said Prof. Arthur Glasfeld [chemistry 1989–], who started at Reed with an office adjoining Dunne’s. “We saw a lot of each other. His semiferal dog Mercy actually even began to accept me as part of her pack. During those first couple of years, Tom pretty much set my Reed career in motion. His enthusiasm for all knowledge was contagious, and since roughly half the library’s chemistry collection was on loan in his office, he was a great source of material for any lecture at any time.”

Reed’s General Chemistry course that Glasfeld and Prof. Margret Geselbracht [chemistr y 1993–2014] generated still connects to Dunne and his classroom, dabbling in nucleosynthesis, environmental chemistry, and even geology.

“Tom showed legendary energy in working with students,” Glasfeld said. “He modeled being a Reed professor in a way that was absolutely compelling to me and set my way forward.”

Amit Basu ’92 took his first foray into research in chemistry under Dunne’s aegis.

“I was so excited when he agreed to advise my independent study in spring ’91,” said Basu, now an associate professor in chemistry at Brown University. “I’d never done research before and wasn’t quite sure what I was in for, but had always admired and looked up to students ahead of me who did this magic thing they called ‘research.’ Tom gave me lots of independence and room to explore, but he was always available to guide, answer questions, boost my confidence, and reaffirm my curiosity. I got my start in this business because Tom opened the door and welcomed me in.”

Prof. Jay Dickson [English 1996–] taught Senior Symposium with Dunne and was impressed with his colleague’s easygoing manner, generosity, and friendliness towards students, and his respect for the materials they were teaching together.

“One thing that stood out about Tom Dunne was how greatly he cherished the Reed ideal of the life of the mind,” Dickson said. “Even though we did not read any books that semester in his subject of specialty (chemistry), you could easily see his appetite for learning, and his great enjoyment in working through ideas from texts with colleagues and Reed students. It was a joy to teach alongside him.”

“Tom was one of my senior humanities professors at Reed,” said Amanda Waldroupe ’07. “I will always remember him as kind, erudite, deeply thoughtful. We were walking in the east parking lot together and he said, ‘Human beings are problem solvers. If we didn’t have a problem to solve, there would be no

reason for our existence.’ It stopped me in my tracks, considering the evolutionary function of our species.”

Dickson recalled the figure that Dunne cut on campus: “At 6'5", with his full shock of gray-and-white hair, and usually accompanied by his dog at the time, Henny, whom he put in hilariously oversized floppy plastic sunglasses attached to his face (which Henny always sported proudly), Tom would be a hard figure to miss.”

“Tom was so special,” says Kevan Shokat ’86, professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UC San Francisco. “It was his class in my fall semester at Reed that set me on my path of majoring in chemistry. He was such a genuine person who was both immersed in orbitals and in the people around him.”

Dunne was an active member of the American Chemical Society and former chair of its Portland section, where he served on the committee to select the Linus Pauling Medal Award and was a member of its Northwest Regional Board of Directors. A number of Reedies have had part of their college education funded by local ACS members, thanks to Dunne’s dedication and advocacy. He was a longtime member of the Sierra Club; was active in environmental issues, the City Club of Portland, and the Searles Valley Historical Society; and was an enthusiastic participant in the Reed Emeritus Book Club.

Prof. Dunne is survived by his brother, C. Patrick Dunne; his sister-in-law Maureen; his nieces Kerry, Eileen, and Erin, and his dear friend, Tricia Azzone.

Leading Chemist Expanded Our Knowledge of Protein Folding Dan Kemp ’58

May 2, 2020, in Concord, Massachusetts, from COVID-19.

In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dan Kemp ’58, emeritus professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made seminal contributions to several fields of chemistry—including a couple that he invented.

Initially focusing on organic chemistry, he made a series of significant discoveries, which were named Kemp’s triacid, Kemp elimination,

Kemp decarboxylation, and so on. In the second half of his career, he switched his interests to protein biochemistry and rewrote the rules governing protein folding and stability. He was credited with founding the fields of templated peptide ligation and nucleated helices and sheets.

He also authored more than 150 scientific papers, wrote an influential textbook on organic chemistry, and inspired generations of researchers.

Daniel Schaeffer Kemp was born in Portland,

Oregon and grew up in Missoula, Montana, where he graduated with honors from Missoula County High School. Having discovered his love for chemistry (and the performing arts) early on, he enrolled at Reed, majoring in chemistry.

He wrote his thesis, “A Preliminary Investigation of Two Reactions of Divalent Chromium,” with Prof. Arthur Scott [chemistry 1923–79].

Awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship, Dan enrolled for his doctoral Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 37

In Memoriam studies at Harvard University with Nobel Prize– chemist Robert Burns Woodward, one of the preeminent synthetic organic chemists of the 20th century. Upon earning his PhD, Dan was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows and then began his career at MIT. For more than thre e de cades , Dan researched the synthesis and structure of polypeptides, and was among the first to use small organic molecules as “scaffolds” to simplify and emulate the bioactive forms of peptides. In 1975, he advanced an orthogonal protecting strategy, in which protecting groups in peptide synthesis could be chemoselectively removed by light, oxidation, reduction, and solvolysis under neutral conditions.

He contributed greatly to the field of peptide chemistry through numerous innovative experiments that led to understanding fundamental aspects of protein folding.

A passionate teacher and mentor, Dan influenced the lives of thousands of students and mentored many who have gone on to become leaders in academia and industry. He always considered that he was working with associates and students, rather than that they were working for him. He twice won the MIT award for undergraduate teaching, the E. M. Baker Award, and also received the MIT School of Science teaching award.

One of his former students was Reed trustee Nick Galakatos ’79. As a chemistry student at Reed, Nick asked Professors John Hancock [chemistry 1955–89] and Marsh Cronyn ’40 [chemistry 1952–89] for names of well-known chemistry professors with a connection to Reed and did a summer internship with Dan while he was working on his Organic Chemistry textbook—a book Nick used when he taught organic chemistry at Reed in 1984.

“Dan laid down the foundation for my love of research that summer before my senior year at Reed and mentored me throughout my PhD and beyond,” Nick said. “Nothing like having a Reedie mentor another Reedie! He had a deep intellectual curiosity and took great joy in being a de novo thinker, coming up with a principle from scratch.”

Professor Murray Biggs was at MIT for 10 years; there, he founded and was the first director of the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble.

Dan sat on and finally chaired the faculty steering committee for the ensemble. Biggs remembered that in addition to his dedication to the spirit of the ensemble and its need for institute recognition, Dan was thrilled to be cast in a production of The Winter’s Tale.

In a scene that ends with Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear,” Dan played the bear, and 30 years later 38 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

recalled the experience as one of the highlights of his MIT career.

An accomplished gem cutter, Dan fashioned a crown for a production of King Lear. “He kept it under lock and key, except when he needed to transport it, which he did in an anonymous brown bag on the principle that if you’re transporting gold bullion you’d better make it look like the week’s groceries,” Biggs said. “Was Dan a character? If ever there were a rhetorical question, that’s it. And one of the things that made him so was the very width of his interests and enthusiasms. If you got into conversation with him, you’d better have time for it, because the slightest hint of a spin-off topic would have him careening down that path of reminiscence, anecdote, or eager inquiry.

Acutely perceptive of human character, Dan was fundamentally very generous toward his fellow creatures.”

Nick recalled that Dan had taken opera lessons and would sing arias in the lab in the middle of the night. After learning how to knit, he knit sweaters for his pet parrot. An avid reader and student of human nature, philosophy, and culture, he traveled the world extensively and spent sabbaticals at the University of Oxford and the Technical University of Munich, Germany, as an awardee of the prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship. He loved to cook—particularly baking and French cuisine—and built an impressive collection of self-cut gemstones.

In addition to his love for research, teaching, and mentorship, Dan was fulfilled by a deep emotional intelligence and altruism. He

contributed to such causes as the abolishment of capital punishment, biomedical research for exceptional scientists (he was a prostate cancer survivor), and his love for learning. His generous donation to Reed helped establish the Center for Teaching and Learning, a resource to support faculty and staff in strengthening teaching at Reed.

“He spoke of the center in glowing terms, proud that his contribution had done much to make it possible,” said Jo Ivester ’77. “My guess is that he influenced Reed as much as the college influenced him. It was a perfect match. His thirst for knowledge, his willingness to engage in deep conversations about an extraordinarily wide range of topics, his support for fellow students—and eventually for his own students—all are attributes I associate with both Reed and MIT.” Having battled dementia in his final years, Dan passed away peacefully and comfortably— and not alone—from respiratory complications due to COVID-19 near Concord, Massachusetts. He is survived by his legacy as a giant of chemistry and teaching, revered by the countless students and a close group of associates he trained, mentored, and inspired during his unique and celebrated life. His close companion over the last 35+ years, a cockatoo named Octavian (“Tavvy”), has been placed in loving care.

Donations in his name may be made to ​ Foster Parrots​, ​Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center​, or t​ he Center for Teaching and Learning​ at Reed College.

Explored the Mechanisms of the Mind

Prof. William Wiest [psychology 1961–95] December 19, 2019, in Portland.

Bill Wiest was an influential professor and notable authority in the fields of social psychology, behavior, learning, and human sexuality. During his long and illustrious career he studied the behavior of fish and the psychological dimensions of vasectomy; worked with the World Health Organization on family planning programs; and once designed an interactive pigeon exhibit at OMSI where museumgoers pushed buttons to change patterns on a screen, to which the pigeons would respond by executing a little dance. He also inspired generations of Reed students and participated in one of the sharpest intellectual debates of the 20th century.

Bill’s parents came to the United States as Germans from Russia where, for generations, their families had tilled the soils of the Volga and Black Sea regions, eventually settling in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. His father had a dairy and later grew peaches. During the years these operations overlapped, the family liked to call it the “Peaches and Cream” farm.

He began his academic career in a tworoom country schoolhouse, near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, often riding

his horse, Parade, to school. Later he went to Immanuel Academy, a Mennonite-supported high school, where he was senior class president, editor of the annual, captain of the football team, and senior class valedictorian.

While driving the school bus as a 17-yearold senior, he caught the attention of 14-yearold Thelma, who was especially taken by his lustrous, wavy black hair. They had their first date on December 19, 1950, and it seemed clear to them from the beginning that they were intended to spend their lives together.

The first person in his family to continue his education beyond high school, Bill attended Tabor College, in Hillsboro, Kansas. During the summer, he drove a truck to earn tuition, transporting fruit from the farm to Los Angeles. The summer after he graduated from Tabor, he married Thelma. Having excelled at Tabor, he was rewarded with a scholarship to the University of Kansas, where he earned his master’s degree in psychology. He then earned a PhD at UC Berkeley and came to Reed in 1961.

Bill soon made a mark as an inspiring teacher. “My teaching philosophy, right from the start, was that I was not the font of wisdom,” he once said. “I didn’t expect students to simply sit there and soak up what I poured out to them. Rather, I see teaching and

learning as a sort of joint enterprise where the students and I were working on this together.”

He also weighed in on one of the most significant intellectual debates of the century, the theory of behaviorism as propounded by BF Skinner, who argued that complex behaviors such as language were learned by experience (or to use Skinner’s terms, shaped by reinforcement). In 1959, linguist Noam Chomsky issued a blistering critique of this idea, arguing that Skinner’s claims were either trivial or nonsensical and that human languages shared a deep structure that could not be the result of behavioral reinforcement.

Bill was one of the first psychologists to come to Skinner’s defense. In 1967 he published an influential paper in Psychological Bulletin rebutting Chomsky’s analysis. Bill argued that Chomsky’s position was based on a fundamental misreading—or misunderstanding—of behaviorism. His paper was cited in hundreds of subsequent articles and became required reading for psychologists around the globe.

Bill loved music and loved to sing. He had a fine tenor voice which he lent to the Tabor College Choir, the Reed College Collegium Musicum choir, the choir of the First Unitarian Church in Portland, a quartet of friends, and the Joyful Noise.

In retirement, his interest in genealogy led to multiple trips to Russia, including ones he led for fellow Americans with “Germans from Russia” heritage. He greatly enjoyed “Putting the World to Rights,” attending monthly lunches with a small group of other Reed Professors Emeritus who call themselves The Geezers.

In 2015, after a Mediterranean cruise celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, Bill was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor situated at the base of his tongue. The cancer was treated with radiation, and never came back.

Unfortunately, he suffered severe side effects from the radiation.

Despite his ailments, Bill was up and about, and clear in his mind until the very end of his life. He died peacefully, in his own home, surrounded by his family, on Dec 19th, 2019— sixty-nine years to the day after his first date with Thelma.

On January 4, 2020, a memorial service held in the Reed College chapel was attended by hundreds of mourners, including some of his siblings, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, from Arizona, California, Canada, Maine, and the Netherlands.

He is survived by Thelma and their children William Albert, Suzanne Kay, and Cynthia.

—CHRIS LYDGATE

Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 39

In Memoriam Janice Robinson Stevens ’44 November 27, 2019, at her home near Butteville, Oregon, of natural causes.

Born in Portland, Jan grew up in Portland’s Irvington neighborhood, attended Grant High School, and spent her freshman year at Willamette University. She transferred to Reed, following in the footsteps of her mother, Edna Shainwald ’18, and as a lifelong freethinker and iconoclast, Reed was the better fit. Jan wrote her thesis, “A Critical and Historical Analysis of Biological Thought,” with Professors Ralph W. Macy [biology 1942–55] and Charles A. Reed [biology 1943–46] advising.

During orientation, she met her future husband, Carl M. Stevens ’42, and they married after he returned from service as a naval officer in the Pacific during WWII. They moved to Boston, where Jan graduated from medical school at Boston University; she then completed residency training in neurology and neuropathology at Yale. She gave birth to two children, Catherine (Cassie) and Carl D. Carl M. completed a PhD in economics at Harvard, then a postdoc at Yale. The family returned to Portland, which would serve as their home base for the remainder of their peripatetic lives. Carl joined the Reed College faculty as professor of economics from 1955 until his retirement in 1990. Jan was recruited to the faculty of the newly formed neurology division at the University of Oregon Medical School, where she directed the epilepsy clinic and the electroencephalography laboratory, treating patients with epilepsy from all parts of Oregon.

Jan’s passions lay in clinical neuroscience, direct hands-on health, and education philanthropy in India and sub-Saharan Africa. In the clinic and lab, she devoted the first decades of her career to studying epilepsy and became interested in the interface between certain types of seizures and psychosis. After a sabbatical year in Geneva, Switzerland, she pivoted to neural causes of schizophrenia as her principal research focus. She passed the psychiatry board examination, earning the unusual distinction of full board certification in both 40 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

disciplines, thereafter holding dual academic appointments as professor of neurology and psychiatry.

Ultimately, Jan served as senior scientist and staff physician at the National Institute of Mental Health clinical research division at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D.C., a post she held for 11 years. Her many professional society appointments included being president of the American Electroencephalographic Society and a board member of the International Brain Research Organization.

She published more than 140 papers in professional journals and enjoyed a global reputation as a researcher and visiting lecturer. In 1997, she received the Foster-Scholz Distinguished Service Award.

Her academic career well established, Jan began devoting more attention to hands-on philanthropic work in the developing world.

For many years, she and Carl commuted twice yearly to India, where they established family planning clinics in Tamil Nadu and Bihar States, funded in part by the Buffett Foundation. Jan next extended her efforts to Africa, where she established the Zambia Open Community Schools for girls too poor to afford the uniforms needed to attend government schools. The schools eventually became coeducational, and solicited financial support in hopes of expanding the open education model to other areas in the developing world.

While at Reed, Jan became an avid skier and mountaineer, spending many days on Mt. Hood and nights in the Reed cabin in Government Camp. Her early love for mountains evolved into a lifelong passion for high and remote places. She tirelessly explored the world, mostly alone, on foot. She reached an Everest base camp, forbidden areas of South Asia such as Kullu in India and Mustang in Nepal, and the upper reaches of the Nile, and served as the staff psychiatrist on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. These travels are captured in her memoir GO!, still available on Amazon.

Often the first or only woman to undertake her professional, philanthropic, or trekking exploits, Jan simply mooted gender bias by consistently outperforming male colleagues in academic productivity and extramural funding. More fundamentally, she simply and genuinely recognized no differences in human potential, capabilities, rights, or freedoms among people of different genders, religions, or ethnic backgrounds. Perhaps at Reed, she seized freedom for herself, and devoted her life to sharing and spreading it as far and wide as her sturdy legs would carry her. In addition to an impressive body of neuroscience research, Jan’s lifelong devotion to boldly traveling the world, promoting freedom for all, and rendering service to those in need will live on in her family and in the many students,

colleagues, and fellow travelers she encountered in a life astonishing in so many ways.

Predeceased by her husband and her daughter, Catherine Stevens-Simon ’74, Jan is survived by sister Dorothy R. Freedman ’49; former sister-in-law Esther Robinson Wender ’59; sister-in-law Lilien Robinson; her son, Carl D. Stevens, and his wife, Stephanie; son-in-law Jacob Simon; five grandsons, Steven, Aaron, and Joshua D. Simon ’05, and Daniel and Eric Stevens; and six great grandchildren. At presstime, we learned of the death of Jan’s brother, David Robinson Jr. ’50, whose obituary will run in the next issue.

Robert E. Grant ’43

December 27, 2019, in Sun City West, Arizona.

Bob was an international banker who spent his early years on his grandparents’ farm in Kansas and his school years in Portland, where he graduated from Lincoln High School. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “The 100 Per Cent Reserve Plan,” with Prof. Clement Akerman [economics 1920–43] advising. At Reed, he also met his wife Marion Josselyn ’43, and they married in 1945.

With a 40-year career in international banking—including posts in China, Japan, India, the Middle East, and Africa—Bob was a vice president of Citibank. He enjoyed living overseas, and after he and Marion retired to Arizona in 1986, they had many adventures in their Lazy Daze camper touring the Southwest.

She died in 2014, and Bob is survived by his three children, Jennifer Busam, David Grant, and Kevin Grant. Bob and Marilyn made a gift to Reed establishing a scholarship in the name of their friend John A. Schulz ’39.

Elizabeth Tarr Schneider ’44 December 27, 2019, in Palo Alto, California.

Betty was an active artist her entire life. She was fascinated with shadows and stripes as a child in Portland and won an elementary school art contest. At the insistence of her brother Bob Tarr ’43, she came to Reed. She and Jane Gevurtz ’44 were welcomed to Abington by having their beds short-sheeted, alarm clocks hidden throughout their room, and their clothes hung from the roof turrets. They retaliated by turning on the fire hoses to flush the giggling residents from their rooms and were each fined $50.

“To raise the funds,” she remembered, “we set up a cut-rate doughnut stand in front of the coffee shop. After eviction, we created an impromptu hair-cutting chair outside our dorm, with one of us cutting and the other praising the work. There were no mirrors, naturally.”

Daunted by the thought of junior quals and the specter of the senior thesis, Betty left Reed after two impressionable years. “I’m sure those two initial years at Reed fueled my energy and future, and for that I’m forever grateful!” she

Alice Goon Lowe ’48

March 2, 2020, in Daly City, California.

Jean McCall, Betty Tarr Schneider ’44, unknown

said. “Once a Reedie, its mark is always on you!”

She planned to complete her degree at UCLA, where she had been told such onerous requirements did not exist. To earn money in Los Angeles, she took a job as a stenographer at Lockheed, where she met Jack Schneider.

They married six weeks later. He assured her she could still get her degree, and though she also harbored a dream of seeing the world as an airline stewardess, Jack countered with, “Marry me and you can fly without serving coffee, tea, or milk.” It would take 44 years before she completed her PhD, but in the meantime she and Jack traveled, loved, and had many adventures.

They had two children, Karen and Jonathan, and while Jack taught at UCLA, Betty took classes, working slowly towards her BA. When they moved to Northern California, she took art courses at San Jose State. Jack became a Fulbright lecturer in applied statistics and they lived and worked in five different countries in 24 years: Mexico, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, and Brazil. Betty took courses in drawing and painting, teaching at the University of Sonora in Mexico where Jack was teaching. She had several exhibits, including a one-woman exhibit at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Her large images of athletes in action—painted in association with the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico— toured the country. Her works are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.

Betty completed a BA and an MA in art at San Jose State University and then changed her focus to photography. In the late ’70s, she and Jack moved to Mozambique and then to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he took a Fulbright faculty position with the University of the Witwatersrand, and Betty became a graduate student.

This enabled her unusual access to tribal lands,

where she gathered data for her dissertation, “Paint, Pride, and Politic, Analyzing the Distinctive Wall Paintings by Ndebele Tribal Women.” At the age of 64, Betty completed a PhD in African art.

During her years in Africa, she photographed tribal people and sold many photos to Rosen Publishing in New York and African Arts magazine at UCLA. Rosen commissioned her to write her first book, Ndebele (1997), which won a prize from the New York Public Library.

When she and Jack returned to Palo Alto in 1996, Betty turned to writing, joining a writing group at Avenidas Senior Center. Using journal entries she had carefully compiled in Africa, she wrote her next two books, Forbidden Friends: Living Under Apartheid (2013) and Academic Gypsies (2016). In the last three years of life, she completed the first draft of a fourth book, which analyzed her artistic perspective and offered more than a hundred photos of her paintings and her published photos.

On December 25, 2019, Betty happily shared a holiday celebration and meal with her family, including her daughter, Karen Paff, and her son, Jonathan Longcore ’67. Two days later, she quietly passed away.

Virginia (Jeanne) Bloom Bachman ’46 June 25, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Born in Portland, Jeanne attended Reed for a year before transferring to the University of Washington, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She worked as a preschool teacher until her marriage to Stanley Bachman, whom she had met when she was 10. They were married for 69 years. Jeanne was a member of Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women and enjoyed reading, traveling, and gardening. She is survived by her daughter, Ellen Bachman.

The CEO and driving force behind a major San Francisco advertising agency during the Mad Men era, Alice also played a major role in the establishment and development of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

Alice grew up in Portland, the youngest of four children born to an American-Chinese mother and a father who emigrated from China. Her father died when she was threeand-a-half years old and her mother applied her skills as a seamstress to raise four children through the depths of the Great Depression.

Encouraged to integrate with the Western mainstream, Alice attended an American school during the day and in the evenings was taught Chinese language by young college students from China. She was immersed in typical American life, but wanted to know more about the culture of her ancestors.

After graduating from high school, the norm was for a Chinese girl to marry into her ethnic community. But Alice was hungry for intellectual stimulation; she wanted to learn more about the world.

“This quest for knowledge has always been part of what’s interested me,” she said. “I decided I would go to Reed because Reed is an intellectual challenge.” She worked a couple of years to earn money for her tuition and then began as an English literature major, writing her thesis, “William Butler Yeats’ A Vision: An Interpretation,” with Prof. Victor Chittick [literature 1921–48] advising.

She joked with other lit majors about what breadline they should stand in upon graduation, but she came to value the choice she had made. “In retrospect,” she said, “that was very good for me because I had a more open mind towards a lot of subjects.” This would be the ace up her sleeve when she began working in the world of advertising, where everything was going on at once.

In 1949, she headed for San Francisco, arriving in Chinatown—which in those days was a closed enclave within the city whose inhabitants rarely ventured beyond its confines. Alice’s mother had made her promise Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 41

In Memoriam to eat at least one full meal each day, to always carry taxi money so she could leave a place if she didn’t like what was going on, and never to marry a Chinese cook, because they are known to be very hot-tempered and given to profanity.

“That’s no environment for a young lady,” her mother counseled.

Alice said she never had a chip on her shoulder about her origins and never felt aware of any racial differences. To help the community, she joined the Square and Circle Club, one of the oldest Chinese/Asian women’s service organizations in the United States, eventually serving as president for several terms.

By 1953, she was working as assistant to the PR director at an advertising agency, J.J. Wiener and Associates. There she met Howard Gossage, a struggling copywriter who’d come to the agency for a job interview. Joe Weiner had been impressed but did not need another writer. When Alice left work that day, she encountered a forlorn Gossage and accompanied him down Montgomery Street trying to lift his spirits. “He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do,” she remembered. “He knew he was very bright in a general sort of a way, but how do you apply that to everyday life?”

Having found his reason for being, Gossage returned to Joe Weiner’s agency as a partner in 1957 and began producing some of the most innovative, influential, and irreverent advertising ever. A contemporary, Jeff Goodby of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, said, “The best of Gossage is the best advertising ever done.

What’s really amazing is that the work he did foretold what’s happening on the internet and social media right now.”

Orchestrating all this revolutionary activity was Alice, whose role, she explained, “was that of the modern-day CEO—which means in charge of everything but the art direction and copy: parties, running the business, finance, hiring, firing, hitting deadlines, media buying.” She was also Gossage’s confidante. Brilliant but difficult, he was prone to depression and would stay away from work for days on end. The only person who could coax him back to his desk was Alice, who understood the pressures he was under and how the artistic temperament responds to those pressures. She dispensed tough love and when it came to judging his work, obliged, warts and all. “Tell it like it is, Big Al,” he’d say.

Gossage threw the best parties in San Francisco, with guests such as film director John Huston, Nobel Prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck, Buckminster Fuller, a young Tom Wolfe, Herb Caen, David Brower, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Marshall McLuhan, whose media career was launched by Gossage in 1966.

Much to Alice’s consternation, Gossage 42 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

often gave her only a few hours’ notice. Under such pressures, she invented “The Instant Party Plan,” which enabled her to transform a working office into a bar, buffet, restaurant, and dance floor within 15 minutes.

She was the driving force behind the agency.

Jerry Mander, who joined as a partner in the early ’60s, said she was “a remarkable upbeat energetic brilliant person—a true brilliant wonder of efficiency, collaborativeness, competence, creativity, cheerfulness, and kindness.”

All of which was duly acknowledged when Alice was made president of the business. At a time when the advertising world was a male preserve, having a female running the show was highly unusual. The fact that she was of an Asian ethnic background made Alice’s achievement even more remarkable. Somehow, while running Howard Gossage and his agency, Alice found time for an extracurricular activity that was to become the focal point of her life when she left advertising after Gossage died in 1969.

She had always been fascinated by her Chinese heritage, and when she saw an advertisement recruiting docents for San Francisco’s Brundage Collection of Asian art, she asked Gossage if she could have time out each week to study. He agreed, saying, “You shall be my contribution to culture.”

In 1966, Alice became one of the first docents at what was to be the Asian Art Museum and then began using her professional experience to transform the collection’s PR and fundraising.

One of her key initiatives was using the museum as the venue for the fundraising events upon which the institution survived.

This met with much resistance, but Alice got her way. She then transformed these events by organizing the spectacular Marco Polo Ball, an extravaganza for which influential people would be chosen to sell raffle tickets, which ultimately brought in $100,000, which, as Alice said, was “a lot of money in those days.”

The museum soon became synonymous with sensational balls, galas, and other creative commercial events.

She brought the same maverick approach to raising the museum’s public profile. With Alice in charge of PR, close working relations were established with the San Francisco Chronicle and other mainstream media outlets. As chair of the Committee on Communities, Alice worked hard to involve the Bay Area’s Asian and other communities who had, up until then, felt ignored by the museum’s leaders.

Alice’s urge to change and make things better led to her being appointed by San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein as a commissioner on the San Francisco Asian Art Commission from 1985 to 1999. She chaired the commission from 1989 to 1993 and was president of the Society for Asian Art for more than 10 years. During her tenure, the city of

San Francisco offered the downtown library to the museum, with the provision that a bond measure be successfully passed to renovate and upgrade the facility suitable for the collection.

Alice made sure that this provision was met, and the museum moved to its new home in 2003. Despite the prestige and pressures that came with these positions, Alice continued to work every week as an Asian Art Museum docent. She did so for more than 50 years and even as her health was failing would study the background of new exhibits so that she could maintain the high standards that she had set as one of the first docents.

When Alice moved from her home in San Francisco’s Sunset District to a retirement community in Daly City, her rooms were decorated with replicas of some of her favorite pieces from the museum, which she continued to visit, and with paintings by her late husband, the artist Lewis Lowe. Alice left a bequest to Reed, and donations in her memory may be made to the college.

Frederick A. Healey ’49

October 25, 2019, in Bethesda, Maryland.

At Reed, Frederick wrote his thesis, “A Cavendish Balance,” with Prof. Theodore Lashof [physics 1946–50] advising. He worked in the field of aerospace engineers and was the station director for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Bermuda. He is survived by his wife, Ruth, and his children, Susan, Bruce, Mark, and Sarah. His widow, Ruth, noted, “He always looked back with fondness at his year at Reed.”

Jacqueline King Shank ’50 November 13, 2019, in Lincoln City, Oregon.

Born to Myrtle Hoff, Jackie was adopted by her stepfather, Yank King, and as a child spent time at the Waverly Baby Home in Portland. A literature major at Reed, she wrote her thesis, “Shakespearean Comedy from Jonson to Johnson: A Study of Changing Critical Attitudes Toward Shakespearean Comedy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” with Prof. William Alderson [English 1943–64] .

She enjoyed the Gilbert and Sullivan productions at Reed as well as the Hum classes, and remembered the calm Prof. Alderson exuded during the 1948 earthquake. In addition to an MA teaching degree from Reed, she earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Portland and took classes at Portland State University, which she said seemed easy after her time at Reed.

Jackie was active in Portland’s Civic Theatre, where she met her husband, Stanley Shank.

She taught at Portland elementary schools for 30 years, including Gregory Heights and Ainsworth. After retiring, Stan and Jackie moved to Pacific City, where Jackie began a second career as a writer.

“You’re never too old to start,” she said. She began attending a writing workshop and to her surprise, her first attempt was published.

Fenceposts, a “funny gossip column” about her hometown, appeared weekly in the Tillamook Headlight Herald from 1986 to 1991. Following this success, she enrolled in writing classes at the community college and joined a writing group with other students from the class. A number of her short stories were published in the Oregonian and in Fantasy Magazine, and she wrote a book, Once Upon a Time and All That, which was a collection of retold fairy tales. Jackie maintained that writing kept her brain operating, and, because she had a pension and Social Security, she wasn’t reliant on it for a living.

Jackie was a board member of the South Tillamook County Library Club and volunteered as a greeter and columnist at the Kiawanda Community Center. Ten years after the death of her husband she moved to the Lakeview Senior Living retirement community in Lincoln City, extolling its many advantages.

Being retired, she crowed, was the best career she ever had.

Marvin J. Weinstein ’51 December 25, 2019, in Portland.

Born in Portland, Marvin attended Lincoln High School before starting at Reed. He wrote his thes i s , “A P r o p o s e d Synthesis and Tracer Study of P-Aminobenzoic Acid,” with Prof. Frank Hungate [biology 1946– 52] and went on to get his medical degree from the University of Oregon Medical School.

Marvin served in the Army Quartermaster Corps during World War II. He met his wife, the former Nancy Marx, in high school and they married in 1941. He led a life of medical service in private practice, as medical director for the 15 Raleigh Hills alcoholic rehabilitation hospitals located in the West and Midwest, and as chief of medicine at Portland’s Good Samaritan Hospital.

With a sparkle in his eye and a sharp wit, Marvin enjoyed telling stories and jokes, many from his patients. He is survived by his daughters, Joyce Osborn and Judy Cappleman.

Joan Kulgren Martin ’53

January 16, 2020, in Stony Brook, New York, from a stroke.

Joan grew up in Tacoma, Washington, where she graduated from Lincoln High School. At Reed, she wrote her thesis, “Curse and Expiation in the Novels of William Faulkner,” with Prof.

Donald MacRae [English 1944–73] advising.

After earning a master’s degree in literature from the University of Chicago, she became an English professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, she moved to New York City, where she worked briefly in advertising and the following year married Roger Martin. When he was drafted into the army, they moved first to Carmel, California, near Fort Ord, and then to Wiesbaden, Germany.

During that time, she taught college courses to noncommissioned officers.

Upon returning to New York, Joan worked in insurance. In 1960, she began a 13-year career as a professor at Queens College. She then taught at Lincoln Hall Boys’ Haven, a school in Westchester County for troubled youth, and became its principal.

Joan and Roger divorced in 1978. A few years later, at the age of 53 and while working at Lincoln Hall, Joan began taking night classes at St. John’s University School of Law alongside her daughter, who was also studying for a law degree.

“I was very apprehensive about starting law school at my age,” she said, “but I found out that the students didn’t care.”

She graduated with honors and got a job in the litigation department of the Manhattan law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom.

Having spent summers and weekends in East Hampton, she retired there in 1997. Joan served on the board of the Windmill Village housing complex, and was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party. As an activist, she protested the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee while at Reed and attended the 1963 March on Washington, at which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

She enjoyed musical theatre, the New York Yankees, travel, and playing tennis. She is survived by her son, John G. Martin, and her daughter, Stacey P. Martin.

Jill McLean ’56

October 13, 2019, in Vancouver, Washington.

The death of her sibling when Jill was 19 shaped her outlook. “From then on,” she said, “I learned to value today, and not take the future for granted.” She transferred to Reed as a biology major and wrote her thesis, “An

Investigation of the Response of the Proximal Retinal Pigment in Crustaceans to Direct Stimulation and to Drugs,” advised by Prof.

Lewis H. Kleinholz [biology 1946–80]. “Reed is stretching, learning,” she said, “people doing something for the first time in a nonjudgmental atmosphere.”

Believing her liberal arts education gave her more options in life, Jill sent a thankyou letter to the college 39 years after graduating: “I am grateful for Reed’s requirements of a broad background in math and sciences. I have used it all. I began working at the University of Oregon Medical School in Portland as an assistant to A.R. Tunturi, who was doing research on the auditory cortex of dogs. For this job, I used my biology major, expanded my math, and branched into statistics. Botany and statistics were used when I worked at the Pacific Northwest Experiment Station in Portland. I ended my working career in 1994, using statistics and physics in system operations at Bonneville Power Administration. Biology and physics came together in my favorite pastimes of photography and scuba diving.

Thanks to Reed’s preparation, I have led a life of fulfillment.”

Jill married and later divorced John Hoopes. After retiring, she moved from Portland to Vancouver, Washington. Her love of computers was seeded when she first learned of them in 1959. An adventurer, she pursued natural history and underwater photography.

She enjoyed bringing out the best in other people, and her formula was simple: “Provide fertile soil that all may flower.”

Ethel Eva Bisbicos ’57

July 20, 2019, in State College, Pennsylvania, after a decades-long battle with Alzheimer’s.

Born in Groton, Massachusetts, Ethel majored in biology at Reed but completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Connecticut, where she also earned a master’s degree. She went on to receive a PhD in psychology from Penn State University.

“Of all the institutions in my background, Reed has had the most significant influence on my academic career,” Ethel said. “My experience at Reed influenced my teaching in Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 43

In Memoriam fundamental and significant ways.”

Sharp wit, a wicked brilliance, and a gentle soul were hallmarks of Ethel’s personality; she was a trailblazer who was often the only woman in her science classes. This was also the case in a career that included doing technical drafting for Pratt & Whitney aircraft and working with computer engineers at Bell Labs.

Her last position, before Alzheimer’s took over her brilliant mind, was teaching humanities and social science at Penn State. Passionate about criminal justice and human rights, she taught at Pennsylvania’s Rockview State Prison, and volunteered for the Democratic party, the ACLU, and dog rescues.

“The Reed experience gave both direction and focus toward the kind of person I wanted to become and became,” she said. “It reinforced my beliefs and helped immeasurably in my attempts and successes in living up to my own beliefs. Reed gave a poverty stricken person a chance to realize her potential in an era of rampant social, political, economic, and educational discrimination against females. At Reed, females were people.”

Preceded in death by ex-husband Henry Albinski, Ethel is survived by her daughters, Allison Albinski and Gillian Albinski, and her stepson Lawrence Albinski.

Edwin Emerick Jr. ’58 October 28, 2018, in Seattle, Washington, following a stroke.

B o r n i n Ya k i m a , Washington, Ed was proud to have come to Reed as a George F. B a k e r Fo u n d a t i o n Scholar. The scholarship, established by one of the richest men in the United States, paid for Ed’s full tuition, his books, fees, and living expenses. Ed had wondrous tales of his life at “Reed’s Rainy Institute,” which included the lifelong friends he made, the Doyle Owl, and his 20 dormmates in the Doyle residence hall, two of whom—Dale Middleton ’57 and Greg Smith ’56—were groomsmen at his wedding. He remembered Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s visit to campus, when the great poet, painter, and social activist slept on a daybed in the common room and surreptitiously autographed a copy of his latest publication found on Ed’s bookshelf.

Ed received a JD from the University of Chicago Law School and was a teaching fellow at New York University School of Law while earning an LLM degree. While studying for the bar exam at the University of Washington law library, he met Patricia Haney, who was working her way through college as a library assistant.

44 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

The couple married in 1967 and five years later purchased a home in the Bryant neighborhood of Seattle, where they raised a family and established the deep roots of community.

Ed joined the law firm that became McCune Godfrey & Emerick in Seattle’s University District. (Cal McCune was the father of Reed alumnus Leslie McCune Grace ’59.) His clients included both the state and Seattle chapters of the AIA, the Washington State Health Facilities Association, and countless developers, corporations, banks, and private individuals. He was considered a pioneer in the field of condominium law and was involved with early efforts to protect Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market, fending off forces that would have replaced the “outdated” market with a parking garage.

He was instrumental in the fight to retain and renovate the neighborhood school.

Most of all, Ed was the quintessential family attorney, known for his intellect, integrity, kindness, generosity, sense of humor, and steady spirit. With gentle expertise, he guided numerous families through the finer points of real estate purchases and sales, estate planning and probate, and the legal system generally. He mentored women breaking into the business world and kids breaking into the adult world.

“A prince,” one of his colleagues called him. A “gentleman attorney,” said another. “A man with a moral compass,” remarked a third.

Ed very reluctantly retired from practice at the end of 2016, maintaining his credentials until his death. His practice is continued in the University District by Marisa Broggel, a high school classmate of his daughter Elizabeth whom Ed had known since she was 14.

In large and small ways Ed’s life showed his great love of home, family, friends, and community, as well as his love for Reed College.

Throughout his life, he counted Reedies among his most treasured friends. A lifelong, enthusiastic learner, he exemplified Chaucer’s clerk: “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.”

Ed is survived by Pat, his wife of 52 years, and by his children Ned (Edwin III) and Elizabeth.

Katherine Kibler Digby ’60 June 29, 2012, in Gresham, Oregon.

Katherine married David Digby ’57, whom she later divorced. She was an alumna of Gresham High School, where she taught for 10 years, and is survived by her son, Michael Digby, her daughters, Carolyn Conahan and Barbara McKinney, and her sister, Anne Fleming.

Robert Woods Mann ’60

October 22, 2019, at his home in Oneida New York.

After attending Reed and the University of San Francisco, Robert worked as science editor for W.H. Freeman and Company, the book-publishing affiliate of Scientific American. While working as a technical editor and publications manager

at Insurnet Inc. in the early ’80s, he wrote, “Until now, the software industry has paid little attention to the careful preparation of written documents. I believe that as we move into the era of the automation of everyday tasks, writing skills will become increasingly important. It is up to those developing computer application systems to find ways to make those systems as simple, clear, and even as friendly as possible.”

He spent three years designing a humancomputer interface for universal form and document drafting systems.

A book Robert cowrote with Christopher McCullough, Managing Your Anxiety, won the 1986 National Psychology Excellence in the Media honorable mention award from the American Psychological Association. His play, The Wheel of Fortune, was read at the San Francisco Playwrights’ Center, and he also published several e-books, including The Candy Butcher: A Gothic Detective Story and Managing Your Anxiety: Regaining Control When You Feel Stressed, Helpless, and Alone.

He moved to New York when his friend Joan Westcott was injured in a car accident and in a coma for three months. Privately, he produced, filmed, and exhibited several short films, and became active in Green Party politics in New York State, including a run for Congress.

A partisan of the Bob and Ray radio comedy show, Bob could always be relied on for his dry wit and his compassion. He is survived by his companion Joan Westcott.

James Borders ’63

January 27, 2020, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Jim was born in Akron, Ohio. At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “Cer tain Aspects of the Photoconductivity of Pure Single Zinc Oxide Cr ystals” with Prof.

Kenneth Davis [physics 1948–80] advising, and he continued his education at the University of Illinois, where he earned a doctorate in physics.

Jim began his career at Sandia National Laboratory and was a pioneer in developing energetic ion analysis of materials and in the application of ion implantation to non-semiconductor materials. His research group developed a noninvasive blood glucose monitor of diabetes using technology originally developed to measure the aging of explosives used in nuclear weapons. He was in charge of one of three teams investigating the explosion in a gun room of the U.S.S. Iowa in April 1989. The U.S.

Congress asked Sandia to examine evidence the U.S. Navy used to conclude that the explosion, which killed 47 sailors, was intentionally initiated by a member of the crew. Jim and three other scientists from Sandia presented preliminary results to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee and a House subcommittee. This investigation resulted in an apology from the navy to the family of the sailor accused of intentionally setting off the blast. Jim retired from Sandia National Laboratories after 27 years of research supporting U.S. nuclear weapons development programs. He presented research findings at international physics conferences and had many friends throughout the world.

Jim enjoyed playing bridge, growing orchids, gardening, and skiing. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Deborah, and his sister, Elizabeth Putjenter.

A loyal and engaged supporter of Reed, Jim generously supported the physics department through the establishment of the James Borders Physics Student Fellowship. Donations to this fund can be made in his name.

Thomas Robert Forstenzer ’65 November 25, 2019, in Paris, France.

Tom was born in Washington Heights in New York City, where his father, Harold, was an attorney and politician and his mother, Ida, worked as a civil servant. He was senior class president at Stuyvesant High School.

At Reed he majored in history. Years later he would recall, with a joyful lowbrow reference to the movie Field of Dreams, “My official major was history, but really it was the ’60s.”

Tom wrote his thesis, “German Preparation and Planning for Territorial Revision: the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia,” with Prof. Charles Bagg [history 1946–74] advising.

As student body president for 1962–63, he engaged in a series of struggles with the administration of Richard Sullivan [president 1956– 67] aimed at overthrowing in loco parentis.

Tom cherished the faculty supporters of the cause of students in those days, including Professors Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953– 94], Gail Kelly [anthropology 1960–2000],

Howard Jolly [sociology 1949–70], and Jack Dudman [mathematics and dean’s office 1953– 85]. Above all, he took pride in participating in the authoring of a constitution of community government, which ensured that student voice would play a significant role in the college’s disciplinary procedures.

Tom began postgraduate studies in history at Stanford University, where he served as temporary president and speaker of the Legislature of the Associated Students and sat on the Committee of Fifteen. He led and was involved in student protests against the war in Vietnam and for civil rights, and actively campaigned for Pete McCloskey, Robert Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy in their respective presidential runs.

By the time he finished his PhD in modern European history, he had already begun teaching at Rutgers University where he became an assistant professor and won an award for teaching.

In 1981, his book French Provincial Police and the Fall of the Second Republic: Social Fear and Counterrevolution was published by Princeton University Press, and he edited Youth in the 1980s, published by UNESCO Press.

In 1980, Tom began working for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. He did fieldwork in Zimbabwe and Indonesia before being stationed in New York and then at the headquarters in Paris. Taking on progressively more responsibilities within the organization, he rose through the ranks, eventually joining the cabinet of the director-general. As the principal English-language writer for the directorgeneral, he was tasked with bringing the U.S. and the U.K. back into the organization, a task completed in 1997 through the sustained lobbying of legislators in each country.

With Director General Federico Mayor, Tom coauthored The New Page (1995, UNESCO Press), which set out a bold vision for international cooperation focusing on a “culture of peace.” At its heart were the two notions that (a) governments of wealthy nations ought to allocate a small portion of their defense budgets towards education, science, and culture in less developed countries, and (b) peacebuilding ought to be understood as a professional activity.

This second notion led Tom to work with Larry Seaquist, former captain of the U.S. Navy, in developing a model of peacebuilding based on scaffolded interactions between enemy groups playing a specially designed real time community game—in short, a war game where the goal is not victory but peace.

“Working directly with UNESCO DirectorGeneral Federico Mayor, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and other world leaders, Tom helped author a bold new strategy for international peace in the post-Cold War

era,” Seaquist said. “Working with leaders in conflict regions and civil wars, he helped design and demonstrate innovative approaches to peacebuilding and conflict prevention.”

Eventually Tom gained diplomatic status, becoming the director and chief executive officer in the UNESCO Director-General’s Secretariat.

When he retired, Tom returned to his passions for history and politics. He read widely and campaigned—as part of Democrats Abroad—for Wesley Clark in the primary and John Kerry in the general election in 2004, and for Barack Obama in 2008.

“Occasionally, Tom would try to explain to his children that his efforts—academic and political—came from a desire to extend his understanding of Reed’s Honor Principle to the world,” said his son Joshua. “By doing so, I think he hoped to make the world a little more like Reed College. At 75, he remained a Reedie through and through.”

Tom is survived by his daughter, Nicole Forstenzer; his sons, Harold and Joshua Forstenzer; and his brother, Steve Forstenzer.

Felix Prael ’66

September 18, 2019, in San Diego, California.

Felix took a semester off from his studies at Reed to be a deckhand on a Standard Oil tanker.

He came back, wrote his thesis, “Eggs in a Blind Gut,” with Prof. William Baker [English 1964– 69], graduated, and then went back to sea for eight months. He rode motorcycles and worked for Sonoma State Hospital, where he met his first wife, Frances.

In 1971, he returned to Reed to earn a master of arts in teaching. “I consider Reed to have been a powerful experience in my life,” he said. “It provided me, not only with the intellectual apparatus, but the moral direction that has guided what I’ve made of my life—this in a home adopted fortuitously.”

Reed Magazine JUNE 2020 45

In Memoriam Felix taught English at a foreign language school in Kochi, Japan, for a year and a half and then took a job at a high school in Gosford, Australia, where he taught for 20 years. During this time, he contracted lung cancer and his left lung was completely removed. Given a 30% chance of living five more years, he began bushwalking from one to two hours a day to keep his single emphysemic lung working. He lived another 19 years. After 34 years in New South Wales as a teacher, union activist, and father to his two daughters, Felix returned to California to be with a woman with whom he had been corresponding for years. When he was a sophomore at Reed, Felix shared a flat with a Portland State student whom Carol Pantomura came to visit. Felix and Carol began corresponding.

“We’d enjoyed a relationship grounded in correspondence, suspended in the drift of elsewhere, for 40 years,” Felix wrote. Then they met again, resumed their correspondence, married, and spent 15 years together. Carol survives him, as do his two daughters, Laura and Grace, and their mother, Frances.

Eric Schoenfeld ’66

September 14, 2019, at his home in Haines, Oregon.

Eric grew up in Portland and attended Grant High School. He worked for the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol during the winter and as a smoke jumper with the U.S. Forest Service through the summer.

Jim Ronzio ’68 was his off-campus roommate during Eric’s two years at Reed.

“Eric was a great roommate,” Jim remembered. “He was never home on weekends. He was hiking, rock climbing, or skiing at Mt. Hood. He skied in ‘bear-trap’ bindings and supplied a weekend beer keg for his ski-patrol group, who skied at night with headlamps on unlighted slopes.”

Eric transferred to Portland State College from Reed because it would allow him an extra day each week to ski. Then he decided that he should really graduate from Reed and returned.

In the end, skiing won out and he graduated from Portland State.

Faced with either being drafted into military service or emigrating to Canada, Eric joined the U.S. Air Force, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. His first posting was to Blaine, Washington. Still the skier, whenever possible he would drive from Blaine to Mt. Hood. After finally trying out Whistler in British Columbia, he began skiing there.

Eric received orders for Vietnam, and was sent to Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City, Florida, for six weeks of refresher training.

While at Tyndall, Eric received new orders to report to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Senneterre, Quebec, where he was posted as an air battle manager, working early warning radars to direct coalition aircraft towards hostile 46 Reed Magazine JUNE 2020

aircraft. After being mustered out, he returned to smoke jumping in Cave Junction, Oregon, in the summers and working at Anthony Lakes ski resort in the winters.

He and his wife, Jennifer, led sort of a nomadic life moving between ski patrol and smoke jumping assignments. They finally settled in Haines, Oregon. Eric switched from smoke jumping for the Forest Service to smoke jumping for the Bureau of Land Management out of Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska. He continued to work ski patrol.

Though Eric and Jennifer had no children of their own, he was generous with his time and resources, helped other smoke jumper’s children with college tuition, and fully funded the college savings accounts of his great-nieces and great-nephews. He helped raise his niece, Amanda Ward, in whom he instilled a love of hiking, camping, fishing and self-sustainment.

B. Giles Larrabee ’66, who first met Eric at Reed, reconnected with him and the two visited each other in Cave Junction and Portland. They did one cross-country trip together from Portland to Panama City and corresponded for 50 years.

After years of medical problems, Jennifer died in the summer of 2019. She and Eric were both active in local Haines activities.

Martha Bair Steinbock ’71

December 8, 2019, in Olney, Maryland, of neuroendocrine cancer.

Martha was born in Eureka, California, and grew up on a ranch near Arcata. She completed high school in Rio Linda, near Sacramento, and attended Reed, where she met and married Joseph Steinbock ’69.

“Meeting Martha was without question my most valuable and longlasting reward for attending Reed,” John said.

“Martha was a far better student than I, so it was in one sense unfortunate that she dropped out to marry me and depart Portland.”

After the birth of her two eldest daughters, Sophia and Lillian, Martha returned to school and received a BA in history from Portland State University. Following the birth of her third daughter, Rose, Martha earned an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She went on to a distinguished career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rising to deputy chief of Technology Transfer Programs. Her career included work at the Agricultural Research Service office in Albany, California, and with United Nations agencies such as the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. For 15 years, she served as executive secretary of the United States/European

Union Working Group on Biotechnology. After retiring in 2009, Martha devoted herself to her seven grandchildren and politics, particularly the 2012 reelection of President Barack Obama.

She is survived by her husband; her daughters, Sophia Steinbock, Lillian Steinbock, and Rose Alvarez; and her sisters, Mary Paita and Rebecca Kurwitz.

James S. Martin ’75

August 25, 2019, in Ashland, Oregon, from acute myeloid leukemia.

Jim was born in Seattle, Washington and got his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University. He earned a master’s degree in theatre from the University of Washington and a master’s in teaching from Reed. His favorite Reed memory was discussing contemporary European fiction at the home of Prof. Kaspar Locher [German 1950–88]. Jim taught for years at Crater High School in Central Point, Oregon. He is survived by his wife, Rebecca; his sons, Phillip and Simon; and his sisters, Judy and Nancy.

Katherine Izquierdo Smith ’75 January 8, 2020, in Silver City, New Mexico.

Katy was born in New York City and at the age of three moved with her family to Portland. Her mother, Lois Baker Janzer ’50, was a Reedie, and her father, Manuel Izquierdo, was a sculptor and woodcut artist who taught at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Katy completed a bachelor’s degree in art at Reed and earned a BA in fine arts at the Portland Museum Arts School.

Although Katy continued to make art for the rest of her life, she never liked the idea of living as a “starving artist.” She earned an MBA from Portland State University and began working as a certified public accountant. She was controller at Georgia-Pacific Corp., financial director at Omolon Gold Mining Company, and CPA for the State of Alaska. With her adventurous spirit, she found jobs around the world, including in the Russian Far East, Norway, Europe, and Central and South America.

Katy was working for the Native Kluckwan tribe in Juneau, Alaska, when she met and married her husband, Phill Smith, in 1990.

They continued to live in Alaska, enjoying its outdoors, until Phill retired, when they moved to Silver City, New Mexico. In New Mexico, Katy worked as an accountant at Engineers Incorporated, but never gave up her love for art, continuing to create and fill her home with beautiful works of art. She also had an incredible love for animals, frequently coming home with an abandoned cat or dog and ensuring they received proper care and a loving home. As well as riding, Katy enjoyed spending time with horses, and the horse corrals were always full.

She is survived by her husband, Phill Smith; her sisters, Markrid Izquierdo and Sara Izquierdo; and her brother, Pablo Izquierdo.

HONOR THEIR

Brenda Faye Daum ’04

September 20, 2019, in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Memory

Brenda attended Reed for a year and is survived by her parents, Roslyn and Frederick Daum, and her sister, Valerie.

Rebecca Richman ’14

IN THE SPIRIT OF REED

November 29, 2019, in Seattle, Washington, after being struck by a car.

Rebecca roared into this world in the late hours of February 11, 1991, in Santa Monica, California. She arrived 31 minutes after the doctor left the hospital, predicting that it would be eight more hours before she would be born, and was delivered by her father and two nurses.

Rebecca’s bold entry into the world symbolized her attitude toward life. The daughter of two lawyers, she uttered her first word at 13 months, started speaking quickly thereafter and was a voracious reader. She attended the Mirman School and Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles before graduating from Reed.

She wrote her thesis, “That’s Crazy Talk: Trajectories of Schizophrenia and Political Psychiatry in China,” advised by Professors Charlene Makley [anthropology] and Courtney Handman ’98 [anthropology].

“Rebecca was an extraordinarily kind and gentle person who wanted to make a difference in the world,” Prof. Makley said. “She had remarkable persistence and self-confidence.”

Prof. Handman remembered Rebecca as “a very earnest student with a biting sense of humor. She was often quiet in classes but would occasionally speak up with a really challenging comment that would get the whole class talking, her way of making some in-class mischief. She worked hard to finish her thesis, and I was glad to work with her on it.”

After college, Rebecca attended Lewis and Clark Law School, where she graduated with a Juris Doctor in May 2019. Just before Rebecca’s life ended, she passed the bar exam and became a lawyer. At the time of her passing, Rebecca was practicing law in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she was a deputy attorney for the City of Fairbanks and also worked for the Alaska Legal Services Corporation (Partnering for Native Health Medical-Legal Partnership Project), where she assisted Native Americans.

Rebecca was not the most athletic person in the world. She did achieve two brown belts in the martial arts, however. Rather, her passions were cooking and baking. After graduating from Reed and before admitting that she was destined to become a lawyer, Rebecca became a professional chef and loved to bake for family and friends.

She was preceded in death by her mother, Linda. Rebecca left this world at the same time as her brother Michael, in a tragic incident in Seattle, Washington. She is survived by her father, Steve, who was also injured in the incident in Seattle.

Rebecca enjoyed her years at Reed. It is hoped that her friends will remember her as they travel the road of life.

Charles Farmer

January 28, 2019, in Portland.

Charles was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and the family moved to Los A n g e l e s , w h e re h e showed an early talent for music. He studied piano with Aube Tzerko of Los Angeles and e a r n e d a m a s t e r ’s degree in music history from the UC Berkeley. In 1965, Charles moved to Oregon, where he served on the music faculties of the University of Oregon, Lewis & Clark College, and Reed, teaching piano, music history, theory, composition and aesthetics. He served as director of the applied music program at Reed from 1978 to 1982.

Charles had a love for the finer things in life, and while remembered for his positive attitude and kindness, had a cantankerous stubborn streak. He performed extensively as a concert pianist and accompanist, principally on the West Coast and Japan. He became executive director of Portland’s Community Music Center, and served on the board of trustees of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts; he was its vice president and chaired for the West Coast and Northwest regional chapters. He also served on grants review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and local and state arts commissions.

Pending: E. Louise Flechtner Brierton ’44, Patricia Prindiville Bostwick ’45, Adrienne Jacobson ’46, Phiz Mezey ’48, Frits Brevet ’50, David Robinson ’50, David Robinson ’50, Joan Colby Rutsala ’55, Bonnie Garlan ’57, Rodney A. Shaw ’58, Abigail Mann Thernstrom ’58, Chana Berniker Cox ’63, Millard (Pete) Petersky ’63, Keith Tracy ’64, Philip H. Schwartz ’66, Matthew E. Smith ’66, Pat Ingham ’69, Margaret A. Kitchell ’70, Fred Rigby ’70, Walter Satterthwait ’70 Walter Satterthwait ’70, Lawrence Witt ’70, Stephen Nugent ’72, Judith Nan Lidovitch Emerson ‘73, Richard Hanna ’76, David Frederick Coury ’78, Lisa Klevit-Ziegler ’79, Susan Danley Ruecker ’82, Michaella Mintcheff ’87, Hannah Mead ’20

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Object of Study

What Reed students are looking at in class

Miniature in Ivory

Sarah Rodrigues Brandon began her life poor, Christian, and enslaved in late 18th century Barbados. Within 30 years, she had reached the pinnacle of New York’s wealthy Jewish elite. Like the Sephardic finishing school Sarah attended in London, this small watercolor on ivory miniature prepared Sarah to become the wife of a wealthy Atlantic-world Jew. Ivory miniatures were frequently commissioned for engagements and weddings, but they also functioned as a portable tool in marriage negotiations. The portrait on ivory is the first— and only—glimpse we have of Sarah, and perhaps the most crucial evidence of how she wanted to be seen. The pearly color of Sarah’s skin is no accident. The “translucent, whitish tone of the ivory” was used to create light flesh tones. Sometimes a sheet of silver leaf was even placed behind ivory in order to enhance the glow of whiteness.

Contemporary miniatures of women for whom the artists wanted to foreground African ancestry often used hatching (short lines of paint) to apply enough pigment to give the skin a dark tone. This left the sitter with a scratchy, rough appearance.

In contrast, the painter of Sarah’s portrait uses the ivory to depict Sarah Brandon’s skin as pearly and smooth. In Jews Across the Americas, a class that will be taught in spring 2021, students look at how portraits such as Sarah’s contributed to debates about Jews and race in the early Atlantic world.

—PROF. LAURA LEIBMAN [ENGLISH 1995-]

Thank you, alumni volunteer leaders Reed is grateful for the leadership of our alumni, who have continued to demonstrate their devotion to the college and its well-being even as their own daily lives have been radically altered. Thank you for your hard work this year—we are so lucky to have you.

Alumni Fundraising for Reed Steering Committee Christine Lewis ’07, Chair Keith Allen ’83 David Buckler ’85 Jacob Canter ’14

Caroll Casbeer ’10 Jay Hubert ’66 Advait Jukar ’11 Kyndra Kennedy ’04 Charli Krause ’09

Jan Liss ’74 Heather Niemi ’00 Dylan Rivera ’95 Cori Savaiano ’11 Andrew Schpak ’01

Michael Stapleton ’10 Carlie Stolz ’13 Marcia Yaross ’73

Alumni Board Jinyoung Park ’11, President Melissa Osborne ’13, Vice President alea adigweme ’06, Secretary Lisa Saldana ’94, Past President Mo Copeland ’82, Trustee Christine Lewis ’07, Trustee Darlene Pasieczny ’01, Trustee Dylan Rivera ’95, Trustee Jon Bates ’67, At-Large Member Dave Baxter ’87, At-Large Member Sirius Bonner ’05, At-Large Member Austin Campbell ’11, At-Large Member Molly Case ’12, At-Large Member Eira May ’08, At-Large Member David Messner ’90, At-Large Member

Rennie Meyers ’15, At-Large Member Michael McGreevey ’03, At-Large Member Shabab Mirza ’13, At-Large Member Salim Moore ’11, At-Large Member Govind Nair ’83, At-Large Member Ben Rankin ’87, At-Large Member Kelly Reed ’13, At-Large Member Nick Silverman ’09, At-Large Member Andrei Stephens ’08, At-Large Member Patrick Sullivan ’00, At-Large Member Eve Lyons ’95, Chapter Leadership Council Member Amanda Waldroupe ’07, Chapter Leadership Council Member

Chapter Leadership Council Dave Baxter ’87, Chapter Leadership Council Chair & Washington, DC, Vice-chair Carlie Stolz ’13, Austin Chair Dieter Dehlinger ’01, Bay Area Chair Eve Lyons ’95, Boston Chair Justin Corban ’04, Chicago Chair Andrew Korson ’04, Denver Cochair

Erica Weaver ’05, Denver Cochair Johanna Colgrove ’92, Europe Chair Peter Miller ’06, New York Cochair Andrei Stephens ’08, New York Cochair Amanda Waldroupe ’07, Portland Chair Wayne Clayton ’82, Southern California Chair Margaret Anderson ’05, Washington, DC, Chair

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STROKE OF GENIUS. Refusing to let the coronavirus freeze their letters, Reed calligraphers hold a virtual Scriptorium.

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