Reed College Magazine June 2017

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GAME ON Solving Problems with Play

“Studying stories is the best way to study people.

People tell stories that are meaningful to them, even if—especially if—the stories are fictional. Studying stories is a revealing way to interpret the world.”

—NAIMA KARCZMAR-BRITTON ’17, ENGLISH

In her thesis, Naima is investigating how truth values operate in fictional texts.

Your gift provides the tools for sophisticated, ambitious scholars like Naima to seek out the truth—even in unlikely places.

M A K E YO U R A N N UA L F U N D G I F T TO DAY enclosed

giving.reed.edu

877/865-1469

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FEATURES

President’s Summer Fellows

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june 2017

The latest winners and their eight outstanding projects

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The Flattener

Jenna Routenberg ’18 balances a Reed education on roller skates

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Song of the Nightingale Psychiatric nurse rewires Portland’s approach to mental health

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The Art of Listening

Reed’s first ethnomusicologist on tango, culture, and the politics of music

GAME ON Solving Problems with Play

Our cover features a game designed by Wick Perry ’13 about geologic process.

Players assume the role of one of four gods (Pele, Enki, Gaia, or Anansi) and collaborate to make an island. White chips are rock, red chips are soil, blue chips are rivers, and the green cubes are trees.

Players draw cards and create geologic features. Wick hopes to complete the design after finishing his current project, Crescent Loom. clayton cotterell

cover photo by clayton cotterell

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Inside the Mind of a Microbe

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Disconnecting the Dots

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Play Your Way To Happy

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20 Daniel Cronin

DEPARTMENTS 6

Eliot Circular

12 Advocates of the Griffin

Connecting Reed alumni around the globe

34 Reediana

Books, music, and films by Reedies

38 Class Notes

43

News from our classmates

In Memoriam

Honoring our dead classmates, professors, and friends

52 Object of Study

What we’re looking at in class

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

The Lifelong Value of Hum 110

I’ve been reading Reed Magazine for many years, and I decided you needed some feedback from the past! Really, I cannot list accomplishments inspired by my education at Reed. But I can send my appreciation to the school for the humanities program.

That program has pursued me with a list of suggested reading over all these years: 1940– 2017. My many thanks for that! To be sure, the introduction of that program was too fast-paced, too overwhelming for a naive freshman student!

Since then, however, it has been a boon as a guide for stimulating reading material.

In those days I was a “day-dodger”; studying was the order of the day. However, the highlights of the years were the weekend hikes. The one that stands out in my memory is the climb around Eliot Glacier on Mt. Hood.

Being in the classroom as a teacher was the objective of my education. Thus, in the ’40s I ended up in a small coastal town surviving on a limited budget, and then eventually ending up in a sophisticated environment in the city.

Yes, marriage was part of the picture, as was the rewarding experience of raising two sons. Now I relish the liberty of my retirement years, listening to recorded books here in Utah—where there is too much sunshine and not enough rain (and a dearth of book learning). My thanks to the humanities program at Reed!

Enny Deutschman Schulz ’40 St. George, Utah

Thank you for your fine Hum 11(0) article. I did Hum 11 in ’55–’56. Prof. Rex Arragon [history 1923–62] was the course’s guiding light and inspiration in those days. Over the decades, I have often thought back upon the course. Two themes recur. First, it was the most important and, arguably, the best of all of the in-school 2

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education I have received. This I have always believed, even as early as my last three years at Reed. Second, as my anthropology career took me far afield from the avowed Western Civ orientation of Hum 11, I have come bittersweetly to hope that Hum 11(0) might somehow sample forager cultures and lifeways, how all humans lived for the first 95% of our species’ history because I have come to suppose that forager life ways embodied behavior, knowledge, and experience of unique value to humankind.

Well, one might rejoin, packing another 100,000-plus years of the human career into Hum 11(0) is a pretty big order, isn’t it? Perhaps so, but should anyone be disposed to take a bit of a gander at this, may I suggest three books?

From Reed’s own Prof. Robert Brightman ’73 [anthropology 1988-2016], Grateful Prey, Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships; and from Hugh Brody (Canadian anthropologist, filmmaker, and advocate for native peoples), The Other Side of Eden, Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World; and Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier.

Steve Piker ’59 Yarmouth, Maine Your article on Hum 110 in the March 2017 issue mentioned “the welsh [sic] epic Mabinogion.” It is not the uncapitalized “Welsh” (which I’m sure must be a typo) to which I am objecting. It’s to both “epic” and “Mabinogion,” particularly as a collocation. Please allow me to explain.

“The Mabinogion” is a handy, but incorrect, term coined in the 19th century (based on a single scribal error), used as an overall title for a collection of eleven medieval Welsh prose tales found more or less together in two latemedieval manuscripts. These tales do not all go together in any meaningful way. They are totally separate, distinct texts, written at different times, by different people, on different topics. This does not—of course—constitute an epic. I don’t know whether the Hum 110 team read the whole “Mabinogion” corpus of eleven tales, or only the four which properly bear the name (sort of). Let me explain this too.

Within this collection of eleven is a group of four tales known to Celtic studies scholars as “The Four Branches of the Mabinogi” (note: not “Mabinogion,” a bogus plural) which do go together and were probably written by a single author, although how exactly the discontinuous narratives are supposed to connect is a matter of considerable dispute. The “Four Branches” are also not an epic, in any sense of the term. They

are four medium-length prose tales that have a few overlapping characters: no epic central protagonist, no heroics, no grand sweep of action or history. They are skillfully and beautifully written, with sharply witty dialogue, a serious concern for matters of good kingship and proper conduct, and some tantalizing shadows of pre-Christian myth, but they are scarcely more epic than Jane Austen.

Nevertheless, I’m glad that Hum 110 has featured these tales, even if it was only once. I did my PhD dissertation on “The Four Branches.”

Medieval Welsh literature has been my research area ever since. More students should be exposed to it. But there is no Welsh epic.

Jessica (Hooker) Hemming ’88 Vancouver, BC

Saluting Prof. David Tyack [history 1959–69]

When I applied to Reed from a small semiprivate school in Vermont, I said I definitely wanted an interview; when I learned the interview would be at Phillips Exeter Academy all the way across New Hampshire, and that acting dean of admission Alice Jones (Prof. Richard Jones’s [history 1941–86] wife) would not be conducting interviews that day, I was disappointed. Instead, I was told, a Reed faculty member, David Tyack, would be the interviewer that day. How little imagination I had! The switch in interviewers definitely worked to my advantage: It turned out I was the only female he interviewed (making me memorable at least for that); he also was familiar with my small school (a Harvard classmate of his, scion of a family my parents knew well, came from the town where the school was located). Not only did he apparently recommend I be admitted, but we became close friends at Reed. He sang in the Madrigal Group, as did I. He hired me as a babysitter for his two young sons. His enthusiasm and encouragement was a major factor in my decision to apply to Reed’s Master of Arts in Teaching program when I graduated. Later, when I was indeed teaching and one of my brothers was visiting, Dave took us on a memorable mountain-climbing excursion. (When he moved to the University of Illinois, he wrote he had taken to going into old mine shafts so he would have something to climb!) Later he taught at Stanford; I visited the family there.

At some point I gave Dave a copy of the official history of my high school alma mater, Thetford Academy; he reciprocated with a copy of one of his books on the history of education. What inspired me last fall to take that book off one

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www.reed.edu/reed_magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 96, No.2 MAGAZINE editor

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

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

Prof. Frank Gwilliam in the biology lab.

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

of my bookshelves I do not recall (in the process I was reminded that I had more than one of his many books). Tucked inside the first book were several letters Dave wrote me when I was teaching in Germany, trying to figure out what to do with my life. Rereading those reminded me what an influential and supportive friend he had been, even though I never actually took a course from him. When I learned that he had died exactly a month before this nostalgic excursus of mine, I wished I had stayed in better touch. This letter is the best I can do by way of paying belated tribute to one of the Reed faculty who made a big difference to me.

Constance Putnam ’65, MAT ’66 Concord, Massachusetts

Remembering Frank Gwilliam

Frank Gwilliam was not only my thesis advisor but was also instrumental in my navigating the vicissitudes of my senior year at Reed. I probably never thanked him adequately. A dedicated teacher, Frank reached out to his students. Having spent a sabbatical year teaching at the University of Aberystwyth, Frank brought Wales to Reed through his annual celebration of St David’s Day: students bearing even remotely Welsh names arrived on March 1 to find a bunch of daffodils or leeks pinned to their thesis lab door, commemorating Wales’s patron saint.

Frank’s humor brightened many rainy days.

Complaining that his doctor advised him to grow taller or to lose weight, he noted that being unsuccessful in the former, he begrudgingly was attempting the latter. At the same time, I was struggling with my thesis. A pact was drawn up.

I would finish my thesis, Frank would continue to lose weight; at the end, he would sign my completed thesis on the summit of Mt. Hood.

I wish I could find the photo of Frank, in his orange parka (this was 1973) signing my thesis

on the summit of Hood.

That spring and summer Frank and I hiked in the Columbia Gorge. Watching me shed my jacket and then my hat Frank accused me of being a “lousy poikilotherm” an appellation I never received before or after. Such were the joys of hiking with a dedicated invertebrate zoologist.

I was saddened to read about Frank’s death.

I feel fortunate to have had him as an advisor and friend.

Elly Adelman ’73 Portland, Oregon

Narratives of Certainty

I want to share my reflections upon your recent editorial “The Contest” in the March issue of Reed Magazine. I found it amazing that in the same short piece of writing you could both ask people to “interrogate the authority of sources, weigh the evidence and reach their own conclusion,” and call out folks you disagree with as either lunatics or fanatics.

I want to offer a suggestion to you, and to those that read your editorial and felt a sense of rightness swell up in their bellies. First off, you made it very hard for me to trust that you have spent time trying to understand those you characterize as lunatics and fanatics. Further, you draw no distinction between the institutional power structures that move ideas through society and the very human people all over the U.S. negatively influenced by ideology and what I call “narratives of certainty.”

I am struck that a smart person like you would be so undisciplined as to lump in an unwillingness to accept the dominant narrative of vaccine safety put forth by the CDC with a refusal to accept the data behind climate change.

The vaccine issue is an absolutely perfect space for folks like you to sort through competing

Tom Humphrey 503/459-4632 tom.humphrey@reed.edu REED COLLEGE RELATIONS vice president, college relations

Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs

Mandy Heaton director, development

Jan Kurtz Reed College is a private, independent, non-sectarian four-year college of liberal arts and sciences. Reed Magazine provides news of interest to alumni, parents, and friends. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs.

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

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

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

june 2017 Reed Magazine

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Letters to Reed claims, interrogate the authority of sources, and reach your own conclusions—instead of name calling the thousands upon thousands of families questioning the sanity of a vaccine schedule in the United States that called for 5 total doses in 1962 versus 72 total doses today.

And the vaccine issue is but one of many that deserve the intellectual discipline you demand.

At the end of the day, if we are going to encourage people, as you do at the end of your piece, to go to unfamiliar places, then we better back up that request with demonstration. There is one driving question here—are you actively building and testing viable alternatives, or are you standing in ideology and the cult of rightness?

The requirement today is to see—outside of right or left ideology—your real opponent, to build new structures, and to create the economic ecosystems of the future that are capable of building civic goods at a scale that serves people and planet. That is what we are doing with our company (Exile) and there are many like us around the globe.

Andrew Markell ’94 Portland, Oregon FROM THE EDITOR: What I actually wrote was: “Conspiracy theories that were once the domain of lunatics flourish on the internet like mushrooms in a woodpile.” For examples, just google chemtrails, hollow earth, or (tragically) the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I also referred to “partisan fanatics who insist that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism and that global warming is a liberal fiction.”

I’m sorry for the pejorative terminology, but both assertions fly in the face of scientific evidence. As you probably know, the panic over MMR and autism was set off in 1997 by a study of 12 patients by British surgeon Andrew Wakefield. A subsequent investigation concluded that Wakefield “chiseled” his data, relied on false medical histories, and was paid thousands of dollars by lawyers intending to sue vaccine makers. The journal retracted the article. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license. More important, several major studies have found no link—I repeat, no link— between vaccines and autism. If you have evidence to the contrary, bring it on! I agree that we need to rise above ideology.

Calligraphy

Many thanks to Lawrence Butcher ’75 for his critique of formal handwriting (Letters, March 2017), though I do think deluded self-appreciation and lack of redeeming social value are not unique to calligraphy. What is unique is the economy of effort traditional writing affords to low-tech recorded speech. Audio engineers are the contemporary equivalent. The handwritten letter is a couture response to content, and it ain’t necessarily the ruffles and flourishes writing masters used to

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lure students after Gutenberg automated their game. The pen point is the exact equivalent of the cutting stylus on a master recording device.

Working consciously since 1952, I comprehend a writing tool as a musical instrument that can be played silently under any circumstances and writing itself as a subtly percussive exercise.

Speed is a legitimate variable related to content. Traditional scripts remain legible when they decay under pressure of production. The content of a trained scrawl can be retrieved by repeating the gestures of the writer. The traditional sequence and direction of writing strokes are simple to learn and most valuable when circumstances are most demanding. Consider communicating with lumber crayon on the side of a building after a natural disaster: a decipherable message may be the only connection to one’s personal future. Renaissance italic military orders are far more legible than 19th-century copperplate commands.

Faces and fonts are successive applications of the original written forms that are embedded in each iteration. Roman letters descend from handwritten models that evolved under varying cultural circumstances and are the oldest uninterrupted system of graphic indication available to humanity.

I have enjoyed my share of letters that looked like waltzing pigs, but I have never seen a student who could be described as one. Thanks again for supplying the disdain that has been a crucial element of the calligraphic revival since its inception in the 19th century. Working with letterforms without knowing their history is like practicing medicine without knowing anatomy.

Chris Emerson ’66 Seattle, Washington I read with mounting fury the smarmy, overweening letter from an ignorant Reedie by the name of Butcher. What a shame that he did not avail himself of Lloyd Reynolds’s [English and art

1929–69] legacy of beauty, discipline, and awe!

True, he must have come after Lloyd left, so he was unable to participate directly in or benefit from, his lively, broad-reaching classes, but it hardly qualifies him to judge so fiercely. I came to Reed from the East Coast (and have lived in the Northwest ever since) because I had read Richard Neuberger’s article in the Saturday Evening Post that spoke highly of Lloyd Reynolds and his Graphic Arts Workshop. I wanted to study with him. Lloyd became my mentor and friend. After leaving Reed as a student, I was a photographer for Reed College publications for many years and saw the unifying effect of calligraphed signs all over campus. I also taught at Catlin Gabel and initiated the first italic writing program, grades 1–6, as a curriculum subject. We found that the children wrote with italic when they were proud of their work, and also they retained information better. If you write something, your eyes, mind, and fingers help you to remember. Since then, I have taught history through historic alphabets to students 6 to 66 years old, from short intensives to ongoing classes that sometimes continued for years—on a ship’s deck, in my studio, on kitchen tables, for arts organizations. Few of my students have become skilled calligraphers, it’s true, but all tell me how much it enriched their lives, awakened them to the ordinary, to unexpected beauty. So, keep up the good work, Chris!

Wyn Berry ’57 Vashon, Washington I understand Lawrence Butcher’s frustration with Lloyd Reynolds as a Reed superhero. I too began at Reed after Lloyd’s tenure, which ended in 1969. A while back, curious as to his popularity with Reed Magazine, I googled Lloyd to see what the fuss was all about. I can understand the fuss. Lloyd’s classes, available on YouTube, present a way of engaging with history from a vocational perspective. Writing was a privilege in the old days, and Lloyd’s

classes remind us of that.

As for calligraphy being dead, the artistic value of the script one uses is as current now as it was then. Steve Jobs, in his commencement address to Stanford students, said it was the calligraphy at Reed that was partially responsible for him producing computers: “Throughout the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed.” And while Jobs was at Reed after Reynolds, he probably dropped in on the calligraphy class of Robert Palladino [art 1969–84], Reynolds’s protégé: “I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”

Combine the importance of writing with a wellinformed and gentle approach, and one can see the appeal of Reynolds’s classes. Far from being irrelevant, asking why Lloyd Reynolds is relevant to Reed is as Reed as Reed gets. Good question.

Bill Owen ’84 Beaverton, Oregon Lawrence Butcher complains that calligraphy has “utter lack of value to society.” Lloyd Reynolds’s teaching was not limited to calligraphy but spanned five thousand years of writing as the art and technology on which civilization is based. I studied with Reynolds in 1966–67, and my design partner, Kris Holmes ’72, studied with Robert Palladino, Reynolds’ successor at Reed, in 1970–72, and also with Reynolds.

From what we learned from Lloyd and Bob, Ms. Holmes and I designed the Lucida digital typefaces that were long used in Apple’s OS X system user interface. Every day for 14 years, up to 80 million Mac users read and wrote with those fonts. We also designed Apple Chancery, based on Reynolds’s italic handwriting. Microsoft has distributed Lucida fonts with Windows

and Office since the 1990s, around 2 billion of them over 25 years. Sun Microsystems distributed millions of Lucida fonts with the Solaris operating system and with software for Java Language developers. Lucida Math fonts are used for mathematical and technical publishing with the TeX system. At Reed, I studied with great professors, including David French [anthropology 1947–88], Gail Kelly ’55 [anthropology 1960–2000], and Richard Jones [history 1941–86]. Often I think of what I learned from them, whether reading Native American literature, pondering the anthropology of social media, or browsing the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who wrote so that “things done by man may not be forgotten in time.” Yet, it was Reynolds’s teaching that gave me a fascinating career. If Mr. Butcher ever used Sun Solaris, Mac OS X, or Windows operating systems, he might have had to quit reading and writing had he realized that the fonts he was using came from Lloyd Reynolds’s teaching and calligraphy.

Charles Bigelow ’67 Rochester, New York I was pleasantly surprised to discover Lawrence Butcher’s criticism of Lloyd Reynolds in the March Reed Magazine. I had thought Lloyd’s reputation was so well established that he was beyond criticism. I took an art appreciation class from Lloyd in 1954. His theory was that art appreciation was all about lines, shapes, and balance—left-brain concepts. I thought

I was a bit puzzled by the letter from Mountain View that complained about the abundance of calligraphy. How can that even be offensive? At a recent visit to the newly refurbished Portland Japanese Gardens, I read about the samurai’s respect for the Bunbu-Ryodo, the Twofold Path of the Sword and the Pen. I wanted to share an excerpt here: “To acquire the inner strength needed to succeed, a warrior needed not only skill in the martial arts, but also in the cultured arts of tea ceremony, poetry writing and calligraphy–all influenced by the disciplined practice of Zen Buddhism.”

Suzie Benson MALS 2005 Portland, Oregon

Divestment

Once again, because of the trustees’ decision not to divest from fossil fuels, I am sending my annual contribution to divestfund.org in hopes that it will help persuade Reed of the seriousness with which some of its loyal alumni view this matter.

Now more than ever, it is important to take a moral and environmental stand against the continued degradation of the world’s environment in the name of profit.

The way we choose to invest funds is not neutral. It is immoral and counterproductive to profit from coal/oil and gas companies and practices that degrade the environment and contribute to climate change, to the further abrogation of Native American rights, and to the wrecking of the world’s environment for future generations.

The current administration is obviously trying

“ Far from being irrelevant, asking why Lloyd Reynolds is relevant to Reed is as Reed as Reed gets. Good question.

—Bill Owen ’84 then— and still do—that art appreciation is about what feelings the work expresses or what feelings the work intends the audience to feel.

So in the major project to analyze 10 works of art, I discussed feelings. Lloyd gave me a D for the course. Such respect for an alternate point of view!

But Lloyd was simply expressing what is wrong with Reed—the hopeless overemphasis on the left brain. The class of 1957 had 250 freshmen, and 73 of us graduated. Why? Because so many of us were emotional messes, even worse than me, who primarily majored in poker. Where does Reed feed our right brains? I’ve always thought that Reed needs something in the way of emotional support groups or encounter groups required of all students. As for Lawrence Butcher, because of his left-brain-only training, he doesn’t notice that calligraphy is beautiful.

Don Schuman ’57 Bend, Oregon

to do all in its power to roll back environmental and climate progress, and everyone who can should take a stand against it.

It is possible to invest wisely in real green energy and receive good financial returns; divestment from fossil fuels need not be a moneylosing proposition.

Divesting from fossil fuels does not mean divesting from every evil (much as I would like to see that happen); this one is different. This one is about the future of the world and generations to come.

As someone who grew up under the shadow of the threat of nuclear war (still present), I now find myself living under the certainty of present and worsening environmental disasters. It is my fervent wish that none of the world’s children should have to grow up with those threats and realities hanging over them.

Cynthia Brodine Snow ’65 Brookline, Massachusetts june 2017 Reed Magazine

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news from campus

Students Explore Careers

by Shadowing Alumni Reed students are finding new opportunities to explore careers before they graduate, thanks to an initiative at the Center for Life Beyond Reed.

More than 100 Reedies participated in the college’s Winter Shadows program, which pairs students with alumni, parents, and friends of the college who work in their field of interest. The students spent anywhere from 2 to 10 days at the jobsite, getting their hands dirty and learning more about everything from particle physics to photojournalism.

Biology–computer science major Amy Rose Lazarte ’19 spent three days shadowing Arwen Davé ’89, a mechanical/systems engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Amy Rose explored a botany lab, where biologists see how plants will react to zero gravity and low light, and a robotics lab, where Arwen is working on the next Mars rover.

“Three days may not seem like much,” Amy Rose said. “But this experience really had a powerful effect on me. It opened my eyes to all the possibilities and gave me so much more confidence about my future.”

As a biology/CS major, Amy Rose was initially hesitant to visit a NASA station, where the focus is more on physics. But she has a long-standing interest in space exploration—as a kid she wore out a VHS tape of the Hollywood film Apollo 13—and decided to give it a shot. Financially, she made it work with help from CLBR, which paid for an airplane ticket, and Arwen, who put her up.

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She made the most of her experience. She did some troubleshooting with Arwen on the rover’s drill bit, which is engineered to extract samples from the frozen Martian soil. She talked with data scientists who use supercomputers to simulate the impact of meteors on major cities. She had lunch with the center’s chief scientist, Jacob Cohen, and is pursuing an internship at NASA for the summer.

“I didn’t realize all the possibilities that a biology degree might lead to,” she said. “I thought I had to be in a lab for the rest of my life.”

History major Isabel Lyndon ’17 and environmental studies-history major Patrick Stein ’19 got an inside look at a newsroom at the High Country News in Paonia, Colorado, with digital editor Kate Schimel ’13. The students came away with valuable bylines: Isabel wrote a short history of storms in California titled “The Land of Rain,” and Patrick wrote a piece about the trials and tribulations of a misbegotten artificial ocean titled “Why Keep the Salton Sea?” Now in its fourth year, the Winter Shadows program is more successful than ever, according to CLBR director Alice Harra. A total of 109 students took part in the program. With help from the president’s office and a generous donation from Suzanne Bletterman Cassidy ’65 and Christopher Neal Visher ’65, CLBR set up a $10,000 fund to help students offset costs such as airfare, accommodation, or an appropriate wardrobe, so that cash-strapped students could take full advantage of the program.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

nina johnson ’99

Eliot Circular

Renn Fayre 2017 Softball bats were swinging, the meat smoke crew was tending the feast, and Renn Fayre 2K17 revelers were treated to some rare Oregon sunshine.

This year’s theme, Heaven Electric, inspired gauzy draperies, an eco-glitter station, angel wings, and other celestial installations throughout campus.

You could talk to God on a phone near the blue bridge, or answer as God at the other end of the line, located near the chemistry building.

Theatre–Lit Major Stages Spring Crisis Reed History and Culture take Center Stage in a Devised play by Ashlin Hatch ’17.

As every Reedie knows, spring is the season of junior quals, sunshine deprivation, and the inevitable eruption of some campus controversy known as the “spring crisis.”

In the spring of 1972, the crisis was triggered when President Richard Nixon ordered B-52s to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong, escalating the Vietnam War. Waves of outrage rippled through campuses around the nation.

Police confronted demonstrators at Stanford and the University of Michigan and used tear gas and batons at the University of Texas. The governor of Maryland called out the National Guard. Reed students were outraged.

What happened next is the stuff of Reed legend. It is also the subject of an original play play by theater–lit major Ashlin Hatch ’17.

This Must Be the Place is a devised play that examines Reed traditions, stories, and culture through the lens of the spring crisis of 1972.

Ashlin Hatch started thinking about campus crises during her tenure as student body president, as she observed several controversies swell and ebb. She noticed that the campus reaction often played out according to a familiar script. She wondered whether these habituated responses were limiting the community’s ability to have productive conversations. “Why do we do it this way?” she wondered.

Prof. Elliot Leffler [theatre 2014–] encouraged her to think about these community tensions in terms of art. “Is there a show to be made about this?” they discussed.

“There was an idea in the back of my head about the relationship between Reed community governance and collaborative theatre making. I’d seen so many of the same tensions, so many of the same areas of caring, and so much of the same passion in those two areas of campus. They felt so compatible,” Ashlin says.

As she began to work on her thesis proposal, she scoured old copies of the Student

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Body Handbook that were stored in the student body executive office until she came upon the story of the spring crisis of ’72 in a section titled “Anti-History.” Incensed by Nixon’s actions, 400 Reed students gathered in commons to discuss their response. One faction staged a takeover of Eliot Hall (but allowed access to the basement, so that the psych department could take care of their rats). Later a group went to the state capitol and demanded to see Oregon Governor Tom McCall.

To Ashlin this spring crisis seemed like a good subject for exploring her ideas because it was remote in time, so lingering tensions might not be a concern. Further, she says, “The way it’s told is abstracted enough that it read to me as this thing that could have

happened yesterday and could happen tomorrow.” As she researched further and conducted interviews with alumni, she found a number of surprising parallels. “It was really quite eerily similar to what’s going on on campus right now, and in the world right now.” She adds, “The things that students were arguing about, and were passionate about, and that faculty and administration and everyone on campus were trying to sort out and communicate with each other about, I think are incredibly resonant today.”

Ashlin and her crew set to work devising the show. Devising is a process of theatre making in which there is no script before the cast and crew get together, and all are involved in the creating process. “Everyone is invited to bring ideas to the table and

caleb codding ’18

Reed Welcomes New Trustees Reed’s board of trustees has elected two valiant new members to its ranks.

Nick Galakatos ’79 Nick is a cofounder and managing director of Clarus Ventures, a global investment firm focused on health care, with $1.7 billion in assets under management. Nick has more than 27 years of experience in the sector, including the founding of three successful biotech companies: Millennium Predictive Medicine, Millennium Biotherapeutics, and TransForm Pharmaceuticals.

Before becoming an investor and an entrepreneur, he served as head of molecular biology research at Ciba (currently Novartis). He has published over 20 scientific articles and holds several patents. Nick majored in chemistry at Reed and wrote his

help mold the content of the piece,” Ashlin explains. Hierarchies are dismantled and a combination of improvisation, creative exercises, and other collaborative tools are used to build the work. An Opportunity Grant last year gave Ashlin the chance to study devised theatre at the Under the Radar festival, which showcases devised work from all over the world.

When asked about the challenges of devising, Ashlin is effervescent about its success.

“This group in particular has really shown up,” she says. “And for me, I have had moments of sheer joy where [I see that] it works, it really does work! We are sharing the creative power: I’m not fully in charge, and neither is anyone else. We are making this thing together.”

—KATIE PELLETIER ’03

thesis on “Synthesis of Bis(trimethylsilyl) dif luoromethane as an Intermediate in the Preparation of Difluoromethanedisulfonic Acid” with Prof. Marsh Cronyn ’40. He went on to earn a PhD in organic chemistry from MIT under the supervision of Dan Kemp ’58 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

He also taught organic chemistry at Reed in 1983–84. Nick grew up in Greece and came to Reed on the recommendation of Bill McGrew ’56, who was the president of his high school. He is married to Alice Balshaw Galakatos; they have two adult children.

Tom Daniel To m i s t h e fo u n d ing executive director of Catalysis Advisors, offering insight and consultation in the biotech field. He has also ser ved as chairman of Celgene Research, chief scientific officer at Ambrx, vice president of research at Amgen, and senior vice president of research at Immunex. Tom served for 14 years on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, where he was the Hakim Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology and director of

the Vanderbilt Center for Vascular Biology.

He also conducted research for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute through the UC San Francisco. He earned his MD from the University of Texas, Southwestern, and completed medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.

To m a n d h i s fo r m e r s p o u s e , Susan Erickson, are the parents of Lyle Daniel ’18.

june 2017 Reed Magazine

9

chris lydgate ’90

Eliot Circular

Chem major battles malaria parasite For her senior thesis, chemistry major Rose Gonoud ’17 squared off against one of humankind’s most ancient and implacable adversaries: Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria.

Plasmodium is a truly diabolical foe, responsible for the death of more than 400,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization. It also has an extraordinary ability to mutate, developing resistance to many of the drugs currently used to fight it.

One technique for overcoming this resistance is to start with an old drug and fine-tune it to attack the newer strains of the parasite. Rose focused her research on decoquinate (DQ), a drug developed in the 1960s to combat bacterial infections in chickens. Last year, researchers made the surprising discovery that DQ is also effective against malaria, making it an attractive candidate for drug development.

Unfortunately, there’s a problem.

DQ is insoluble—it doesn’t dissolve in the bloodstream, making it impossible to deliver the drug to the organs where the parasite usually hangs out. Rose’s mission was to see if she could find a way to make the drug more soluble without sacrificing its malariakilling power.

Rose grew up in upstate New York and came to Reed intending to major in psychology. “I was bad at chemistry in high school,” she chuckles. “It was my Achilles heel.” But her attitude about the discipline was transformed after taking intro chem with Prof.

Arthur Glasfeld [chemistry 1989–]. Last summer she did a medicinal chemistry internship with Gilead Sciences in Seattle,

10 Reed Magazine june 2017

and she wanted to explore the field for her thesis project.

Prof. Alan Shusterman [chemistry 1989–] suggested she work with Aaron Nilsen [chemistry 2012–13], a former visiting professor at Reed, who now does malaria research at Oregon Health and Science University across the river. “I knew immediately that I wanted to do this,” she says.

DQ operates by latching onto a protein in the parasite’s mitochondria—its microscopic power supply. This interrupts the electron transport chain, a key energy production pathway, and gums up the germ’s ability to synthesize ATP. “The plasmodi-

“ There was a lot of excitement in the lab. I remember thinking I had gotten very lucky” —Rose Gonoud ’17 um just runs out of gas,” she says.

As she dug into her project, Rose realized that there were actually three reasons why DQ is insoluble. The first is something that earlier researchers had noticed: the DQ molecule consists of a quinolone core and a long tail that is hydrophobic, or greasy—and as every dishwasher knows, grease won’t dissolve in water. But there are other reasons, too. The core also contains an open hydrogen bond, which tends to attract other DQ molecules, forming big clumps that don’t mix with water. Finally, the core features central rings that also tend to make DQ molecules cling to each other in an interaction known as “pi stacking.”

Rose began to suspect that the hydrogen bonding and the pi

stacking were even more important to DQ’s insolubility than the greasy tail. And she realized something else—“This was fixable,” she says.

Starting in the fall, she used chemical ingenuity to tinker with the structure of the core. After several months of intensive effort, Rose succeeded in synthesizing three new derivatives of DQ. Then came the showdown: how would they fare against the plasmodium?

Rose injected the derivatives into test tubes filled with blood teeming with parasites, and anxiously waited for the results. The first compound was a dud. But the other two proved both soluble and effective at killing the plasmodium. In fact, DQ-337 actually turned out to be more

lethal to the germ than DQ. “I was elated,” Rose says.

“There was a lot of excitement in the lab, I remember thinking I had gotten very lucky.”

“This is great work,” says her thesis adviser, Dr. Nilsen. “It’s pretty impressive.”

The DQ compounds that Rose developed are not silver bullets; they are probably not effective enough to be used in the field.

But interfering with the plasmodium’s electron transport chain is going to be a key strategy for developing the next generation of antimalarials, Nilsen says.

For her part, Rose says the journey has been exhilarating.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” she says.

Researchers in the lab are now looking at other ways to shut down the plasmodium. In fact, several other Reed grads are working on the project at OHSU, including Alina Krollenbrock ’12, Emma Farley ’13, and Lisa Frueh ’15.

Rose hopes to join them after graduation.

Sociology major wins Truman Scholarship Sociolog y major Elea Denegre ’18 was named a national Truman Scholar in recognition of her potential to be a “change agent” in the field of public service.

A passionate believer in restorative justice, Elea has compiled an impressive track record of service in her time at Reed. During freshman year, she became a SAPR (sexual assault prevention and response) advocate and later became the student program coordinator, managing the support hotline. She joined the Honor Council and developed a proposal to incorporate restorative justice into Title IX violations. She volunteered at the Raphael House, a local nonprofit dedicated to ending domestic violence, and was a counselor at Camp Hope, a summer camp serving kids whose lives have been affected by domestic violence. She also volunteered with Reed’s SEEDS program and studied abroad in Japan.

Elea, who hails from Billings, Montana, said she was “shocked and honored” to learn she had won the prestigious award, which provides $30,000 for scholars to go to graduate school in preparation for a career in public service. “It didn’t feel real until I called my mom,” she said. “Then we both started to tear up.”

“I am delighted that Elea will have this amazing opportunity,” says Rowan Frost, assistant dean of sexual assault prevention & response. “Because of its confidential nature, most people will never see the contributions Elea has made to the SAPR program. As an advocate and a program coordinator, Elea brings out the best from the people she works with. Her ethics, intellect, and inclusive leadership style reflect the best of Reed. She truly has the potential and vision to create positive change in the world.”

“I love the liberal arts, and I love connecting the intellectual side with real people on campus and off campus,” Elea says.

After Reed, she plans to travel abroad, become a lawyer, work in juvenile defense, and then get into policy work. But first— yes—she’ll have a thesis to write.

The

SALAD DAYS DAYS As Asyou youreflect reflecton onyour yourtime timeatatReed, Reed,consider consideraagift gift that honors your milestone reunion and safeguards that honors your milestone reunion and safeguards the thefuture futureof ofReed ReedCollege.

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When Whenyou youestablish establishaacharitable charitablegift giftannuity annuityatatReed, Reed, you youcan can •• receive receiveguaranteed guaranteedpayments paymentsfor forlife; life; •• take takeadvantage advantageof ofattractive attractiverates; rates; •• earn earnaacharitable charitableincome incometax taxdeduction; deduction; •• reduce reducerecognition recognitionof ofcapitals capitalsgains gains by donating stock; by donating stock; •• support supportReed’s Reed’sfuture. future.

To To learn learnmore, more,contact contactAudrey AudreyAnderson Andersonby byphone phoneatat 503/517-7937 503/517-7937or orby byemail emailatatgiftplanning@reed.edu. giftplanning@reed.edu. reed.edu/LifeIncomeGifts reed.edu/LifeIncomeGifts

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

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Advocates of the Griffin News of the Alumni Association • Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

Join The Borg

Dear Fellow Alumni, If you attended Reed College for at least one full year and are not currently attending as an undergrad, you’re considered a member of the Reed College Alumni Association.

(No application required!)

The association, according to its constitution, “exists to foster the continuing welfare of both the college and its alumni by promoting mutually beneficial interaction and a sense of community among alumni and between the college and its alumni.” A worthy purpose, I think you’ll agree. (If not, stop reading here.)

The association is governed by the alumni board, Reed’s national alumni volunteer board of directors whose purpose is to direct the association’s business: setting goals, creating programs and services, planning activities, and representing all alumni in the broader Reed College community. While self-governed, the alumni board works closely with Reed’s alumni office. The board consists of elected officers and at-large directors, representatives from recognized alumni chapters (in regions around the U.S. and now Europe), and alumni trustees.

Clinical descriptions aside, the board is a group of devoted Reedies who believe deeply that our continued and expanding interaction (or, in today’s vernacular, engagement) with other Reedies can be enjoyable and beneficial for ourselves and the college, including current and future students.

Have an opinion or idea you want to share with the alumni board? Let us know.

Email one of us, or if you spot one of us at Reunions or on social media, say hi and let us know what’s on your mind, what you might like to see more (or less) of regarding our initiatives or events. In the meantime, track down your local chapter and come to an event. I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

If you’ve ever gone to Reunions, volunteered with alumni or students, or joined your local alumni chapter for fun activities like Thirsty Third Thursday, then you’ve already enriched the Reed alumni community. But you could do more. You could lend your voice to strengthen alumni ties to the college. You could help with alumni career networking. You could organize a fantastic new initiative. You could jump in with both feet and join the Reed alumni board.

The alumni board (officially the Reed College Alumni Association Board of Directors, but let’s not stand on ceremony) is our national service board. We support the Reed community through volunteer initiatives with the support of Reed’s alumni office. Elected at-large members serve three-year terms, working on committees that match their interests. We want you!

It’s easy to nominate yourself or another Reedie—just email alumni@reed.edu, with your name, the name of the person you are nominating, and a short description of why they should be part of the alumni board.

—RICH ROHER ’79 PRESIDENT, ALUMNI BOARD

12 Reed Magazine june 2017

There are plenty of other ways you can support the alumni community, too, all of which can be found at alumni.reed.edu.

Check out Reed’s newly improved website for a catalogue of volunteer opportunities.

Host a short-term job shadow over winter break and give a current student valuable post-Reed perspectives. Help with alumni fundraising and admissions. Offer

You could jump in with both feet and join the Reed alumni board. career-related coaching to fellow alumni.

Join our expanding professional networks.

Connect to your local chapter (or start a new chapter in your city!) for regional activities coast to coast and beyond with our Europe / London chapter. We need you!

—WILL SWARTS ’92

Terry Bryll ‘79

From The Big Cheese

Reed travel programs rock! In this case, both literally and figuratively. Led by geologist Jim Jackson ’70, this group trekked through the Columbia River Gorge on a sunny Saturday in April and solidified their visual literacy by observing lava flows, fold belts, and talus slopes, among other features. Learn more about upcoming trips at alumni.reed.edu/.

Your Secret Weapon Reedies make great additions to the workplace, and no one knows this better than other Reedies. The Reed Career Alliance (RCA) is an alumni board initiative created to support alumni and students in the development of meaningful careers postReed. The RCA’s alumni volunteers pick up on the work of the Center for Life Beyond Reed, which focuses its on-campus resources on current students and alumni within their first year of graduation. The RCA advocates for career assistance for all alumni, be they just starting out, changing careers, midcareer, or retiring.

Expanding career resources has been a real focus of the college and alumni community alike in the past few years, and there’s plenty to show for our shared efforts. The RCA recognizes that alumni may have struggled with career assistance, especially non-academic-track assistance.

Working with college staff, we’re highlighting the growing number of career resources for alumni of all class years, and we’re

working to make them more effective.

Reedies may well be other Reedies’ secret weapon in navigating the working world. Reedies’ career paths may feature textbook examples of reaching professional milestones or wonderfully unlikely tales of unconventional routes to professional success. Whatever the career story may be, Reedies can glean lessons, tips and plenty of good advice, thanks to the growing number of volunteers who’ll share their experiences. You can see for yourself when you tap into our professional networks and find other Reedies in fields from tech to teaching, food to finance, lawyers to librarians, nonprofits, the arts, global health, and more.

Visit Reed’s alumni website or sign up with these professional networks on specific Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Job postings, industry news, and prospective contacts are out there, and now they’re easier to find.

Also, check out the Reed Alumni Career

Hey, Young Alumni— Don’t Stay on the Sidelines!

It’s great to stay in touch with your fellow Reedies even after leaving our beloved alma mater. Resources such as IRIS and Switchboard make it super easy, not to mention LinkedIn and Facebook, where you’ll find affinity groups such as Reed Journo, International Reed Alumni, and of course the infamous Reed (unofficial).

Maintaining Reed relationships has not only allowed me to have minireunions and thoughtful discussions (sometimes even on Facebook!), but it has also helped in my career. In fact, a Reed contact was instrumental in my landing my second job. When I first arrived in New Orleans, pretty much straight out of Reed, I used IRIS to reach out

to Reedies in town. It just so happened that one of those alumni was a faculty member whom I would be working with if I got the job, and he also knew the hiring manager. Now, I’m not sure if he directly advocated for me, but he did invite me to a party—which the hiring manager also attended.

I also highly recommend attending your five-year reunion. It’s fascinating to see the faces that you went to Reed with, but with way less stress and a lot more smiles.

Track down your local alumni chapter.

Check out the events. For me, it’s been a pleasure to meet Reedies whom I did not overlap with, and to grow my community.

Resources web page for other Reed networking resources and how to access them.

Post asks and offers on Reed Switchboard (What’s that, you say? Take a look!), stay in the loop with regional alumni chapters on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, locate alumni with the alumni directory in IRIS, and log in to Reed’s newer online job posting system, Griffin Door (alumni.reed.edu/alumni-career-resources .html).

The RCA is currently developing a volunteer alumni pool of career coaches to offer flexible coaching to any alumni who would like help. That could mean providing a welcoming introduction to existing professional networks and career resources that our great Reed community offers, reviewing a resume, or brainstorming a career question.

Want to be an alumni career coach? Or are you looking for some help as you transition into a new job or change career paths entirely? Email alumnicoaches@reed.edu.

—WILL SWARTS ’92

Connect with the alumni community! attend an event

Check out the alumni section on events.reed.edu.

volunteer

See opportunities at alumni.reed.edu.

give to reed

Make a gift at giving.reed.edu.

stay informed

Stay up to date with alumni communications and let Reed know what you’ve been up to by updating your alumni profile on alumni.reed.edu.

—JINYOUNG PARK ’11

june 2017 Reed Magazine 13

President’s Summer Fellows Join Hands for 2017 Reed is proud to announce the latest winners of the President’s Summer Fellowship: eight outstanding projects that combine intellectual pursuit, imagination, adventure, personal transformation, and service to the greater good.

Inaugurated by President John R. Kroger, with generous support from trustee Dan Greenberg ’62 and his wife, Susan Steinhauser, the fellowship attracts scores of creative proposals each year. The winners will be awarded $5,000 each to pursue their projects during summer 2017. Here they describe their projects in their own words.

Writing the Queer Identity: Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group Sophia Ellingson ’18, English How are queer identities constructed and expressed through writing? In their rejection of Victorian heteronormativity and rigid gender roles, Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury contemporaries sought to answer this question for themselves. Their stories are told through the purple ink of Virginia’s love letters to Vita Sackville-West, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington’s photo album, as well as various memoirs, manuscripts, and diary entries. This summer, I will travel to archives in Cambridge, London, and New York City to reconstruct an intimate history of these authors.

From this informed silhouette, I will write short stories: some from the perspective of Woolf’s Sapphist lover, some occupying my own identity as a queer, feminist

14 Reed Magazine june 2017

Luke Maskarinec ’18, President John Kroger, and Siena Fox ’19 talk about service work and summer plans.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 15

writer. Drawing on Woolf’s emphasis on space and locality, I will include the sensory detail of England’s natural, urban, and cultural landscapes in my writing. Through my archival work and storytelling, I seek to shed light on the narratives of one specific queer history and how it has helped to carve space for the construction and expression of those identities today.

Seizures, Intellectual Disability, and Dravet Syndrome Eliotte Garling ’18, biology

Josh Byron-Cox ’18

Sophia Ellingson ’18

This summer I will be doing translational research at The Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at Tel Aviv University Hospital in Israel.

This research will explore the connection between seizures and intellectual disability in severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy, also known as Dravet syndrome. Dravet syndrome is a rare epileptic encephalopathy caused by a mutation that affects the voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav) in the central nervous system. In most cases children develop normally during the first year of life without any early onset symptoms, and then suddenly develop severe and chronic seizures. Following the onset of seizures, children quickly experience marked cognitive decline, which leads to mental retardation, recurrent seizures, and social impairment. Recent research has demonstrated that chronic seizures and mental decline may develop as independent events, leaving doctors at a loss for how to most effectively treat their patients. The overall goal of this research is to tease apart the symptoms of Dravet syndrome so that doctors will be able to develop a better method for caring for Dravet affected infants.

Against Gender-Based Violence

Eliotte Garling ’18

16 Reed Magazine june 2017

disclosure affidavits; assist through research and outreach; prepare motions, exhibits, affidavits, client files, and trial files; directly interview Spanish-speaking clients; and perform other means of Spanish interpreting and translating. My Sister’s Place strives to eliminate intimate partner violence and combat the impacts of domestic violence and human trafficking. I will work under Beth Levy, Senior Associate Counsel of My Sister’s Place, to help fight against genderbased violence.

Salsa and the Formation of Latinx Identity Grace Alarcon ’19, comparative literature Salsa music has been one of the greatest mediums through which Latin American culture and artists have been able to construct their identities in relation to each other and to the United States. I aim to study the development of salsa and how these artists created a sense of Latinidad by way of producing a new sound based on Afro-Cuban rhythms and lyrics about home and migration. By visiting museums and libraries, speaking with scholars studying this music and with people who are a part of these communities, I hope to gain more insight into the Golden Age of Salsa and how these artists shaped Latinidad and fashioned a nostalgic image of a transnational Latin American home. I will visit New York City and various cities throughout Puerto Rico, hoping to learn more about how these physical places influenced the sounds and lyrics of some of my favorite songs. I will compile images, recordings, and quotes from readings and interviews on a blog through which I will explore questions of transnational and local identity, appropriation, assimilation, cultural exchange, intersectionality, and how these two places have both influenced and been influenced by each other through salsa.

Siena Fox ’19, English

Place/Perception/Poetry

This summer, I will intern at My Sister’s Place, a nonprofit domestic violence law firm in Mount Vernon, NY, just outside Manhattan. Over winter break, I had the chance to shadow at this firm and was asked to return this summer, an opportunity usually reserved for law students. I will attend court; support clients in preparing financial

In “How It Feels to be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston writes, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” My project—to write a collection of poems—is inspired by Hurston’s words, which have informed my experience as a black man at Reed. My initial culture

Josh Byron-Cox ’18, English

Moliere Xu ’19

shock revealed the nuances of my blackness and raised questions: What does my blackness mean to me? To others? My project is about how different contexts—majority white, mixed, and majority black—influence how I perceive my blackness and how this affects my overall sense of self. I will travel to and live in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, my mother’s birthplace, for 6-8 weeks. As a first-generation American, the Caribbean has affected me significantly, and with its cultures, people, and environs as a filter, I will explore my relationship to blackness. Then, invoking my Caribbean roots and the unfamiliar experience of being in a black space, I will write a series of poems describing my shifting sense of identity.

These poems will be juxtaposed with older ones to create a collection that chronicles how immersion in blackness differs from my experience at Reed and in New York.

Black Masculinity in Black Comedy Sarah Nixon ’19, environmental studies In every stage of my life, there have been black boys who used their comedy as a superpower against a world that didn’t want to see them in it. Isaiah, Antoine, Zeandae, Josh. They glided by socially, even if they suffered academically for it, and took their cues from a seemingly endless stream of popular black male comedians. Once a centuries-old tool for healing and dissent in the black community, in the past century African American comedy has come to be exercised by black men in distinct ways in the United States across two worlds. On the one hand, black male comedians have

Sarah Nixon ’19

achieved increasing crossover appeal since the days of Bert Williams, but on the other, there remain black comedic forms that are insular to the black American community.

This summer, I will travel to the MoorlandSpingarn Research Center, the Schomburg Center, the Library of Congress, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive to understand the history of black American comedy and its relationship to black masculinity.

After constructing my own understanding of the deep history, I will synthesize my analysis of this ever-evolving story of coming to be a (funny) (black) (man) in an essay.

How to Do Philosophy with Documentary Moliere Xu ’19, philosophy Philosophy could be crafted with humanistic necessity and ethical sensitivity. I propose a summer project that has two major elements to it: one, an intensive Philosophy of Action and Knowledge seminar with College Year in Athens, and two, a philosophy documentary, Documenting Philosophy, which will take place in Athens itself. I will also spend three weeks volunteering in a refugee camp to figure out how practical actions transform theoretical establishment. The study seminar is a valuable asset to both my coming years at Reed, and to my future in the field of philosophy.

The opportunity to undertake documentary project work in the home city of Greek philosophy is a union between academic and creative pursuits that will attempt to bridge what I have learned in the classroom with what I encounter on the streets. My documentary of philosophy is not going

to be another archive used for research materials, philosophical periodicals or academic journals. It is a realist move taken away from the mere abstraction of argumentation and into the light of challenge.

The Contradictions of Water in the Sonoran Desert Luke Maskarinec ’18, history Growing up in the arid Sonoran Desert, I learned a range of meanings for the water I encountered: it was precious, scarce, expensive—and essential. When I moved to Portland, I learned to think about water in new ways. I learned that Oregon, like Arizona, was in the midst of a historic drought; in a class on water history, I learned about the complex politics of water; and I realized that the tap water I had taken for granted as child was in fact a product of great labor, unbelievable faith, and stunning hubris. This summer, I will return to the Sonoran Desert to create a documentary film about the contradictions, contestations, and challenges that surround the use and distribution of water. I hope to examine the complex politics of water allocation, conducting interviews not only with the policymakers who shape and control the flow of this resource, but also with those whose lives and livelihoods depend on its continued existence and distribution.

Along the way, I will explore my own relationship to the desert, and to the increasingly scarce supply of water that brings life to the Southwest.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 17

The Flattener Jenna Routenberg ’18 balances a Reed education on roller skates

BY KATELYN BEST ’13

Around campus, Jenna Routenberg looks like any other mild-mannered, library-dwelling lit major. On the windy January afternoon we met, she was ensconced in Prof. Laura Leibman’s [English 1995–] office, surrounded by piles of readings for her junior seminar on the Southern gothic writer Katherine Anne Porter. But the black Carhartt jacket draped over her chair, bearing a logo of a bloody, winged heart and the words “Heartless Heathers,” served as a clue to her alternate persona—the hard-hitting, fast-skating roller derby terror known as Sui Jennaris.

To some, the words “roller derby” may conjure up images of a midcentury spectacle that was less sport than pageant, revolving around scripted storylines and predetermined outcomes.

Not any more. Following a grassroots revival in the early aughts, the modern sport

18 Reed Magazine june 2017

is real, and its participants—almost exclusively women—are deadly serious. It’s a game of skill, strength, and speed, where two teams score points by getting a designated player, called a jammer, through the scrum formed by the other players. While the jammers juke, hop, and occasionally shove their way around the track, the rest of the team tries to block their opponents by linking arms to form walls, and, if it comes down to it, slamming them to the ground. That’s Jenna’s job.

She has skated for the Heartless Heathers squad for three years, after going to a match her roommate was skating in. “I’d just moved to Portland, so I had nothing better to do,” she remembers. “I had only the vaguest idea of what it might be.”

She was instantly hooked. “I loved how fast-paced it was, but there was still a lot of strategy.” Getting to watch the likes of Scald

Eagle, a six-foot Valkyrie who paints her face for every match, certainly helped. “At the end, my roommate’s girlfriend turned to me and said, ‘You know they have a rec league?’ And that was sort of it.”

Given the rough-and-tumble nature of roller derby, it might come as a surprise that her first athletic obsession was a much more graceful sport—figure skating. “I loved it,” she told me as we reclined in front of the electric wood stove in Prof. Leibman’s office. “I still dream about it.”

There was one facet of figure skating that always rankled her, though. “Despite the creative aspect, I had a hard time hiding the athleticism. I didn’t like the beauty pageant aspect. I loved that I could still skate but really be an athlete with derby.”

daniel cronin

“In the first half of the 19th century,” Leibman says, “non-Anglican religions on the island were commonly blamed for causing civil unrest among the slaves and free people of color.” By poring through early petitions for rights, they showed that those old ideas about who was agitating for civil rights were misguided.

Another result of the research was an online database that greatly expands the genealogical information available for families from the island. Where previous work had focused mostly on wealthy white families, Jenna and Leibman obtained wills, estate inventories, and other records for many free Afro-Barbadian families.

She is measured when she talks about how Reed has changed her. “I’m not sure I’m any smarter,” she says of her experience here.

“What I’m surer of is that my smarts have grown more focused. I’m more okay with letting things go that aren’t the subject of my greatest interest.”

She’s roller-derby blunt on one point, though: “I think the story of Reed is the profs are just f—king amazing.”

Jenna Routenberg ’18 as her roller derby alter ego, Sui Jennaris, skates in the Hangar at Oaks Park.

Jenna is the personification of a Reed archetype—the gifted oddball who nearly fell through the cracks. “It was always my plan to go to a place like this,” she remembers. But when Jenna was in high school, her mother suffered a serious injury in a car accident and never quite recovered. One morning, Jenna woke up to find her mother had died during the night. She put her dreams on hold.

The stress of living with her mother’s health problems, on top of a home life she describes as “toxic and abusive,” triggered a series of physical and mental health issues, which she struggled with for years.

Jenna moved to Portland in 2013 and got a job working the 3 a.m. shift baking at a cafe.

During the day, she took classes at Portland Community College, with the idea of transferring to PSU. But she kept hearing about Reed.

One of her regular customers was a Reed grad

who would often chat about her time at the college. “I had a vague memory of it from high school, so I knew it was a really good school.”

Somewhere along the line, she found out that Reed no longer imposed an application fee.

That got the gears turning—maybe she didn’t have to give up on her dreams. She figured she might as well apply—and crossed her fingers that the college could offer enough financial aid to put a Reed education within her reach.

“Miraculously, I got in,” she says.

Since then she’s developed close relationships with Prof. Gail Sherman [English, 1981–], Prof. Pete Rock [English 2001–], and especially Prof. Leibman. Last summer, she traveled to Barbados with Prof. Leibman to do research for a Ruby-Lankford grant.

She and Leibman sought to examine the impact of religion on the fight for civil rights among freedmen in Barbados.

It’s game night. The season-opening doubleheader will kick off with a showdown between the Heartless Heathers and their archrivals, the Break Neck Betties. I find myself jammed into a bleacher packed with red-and-black-clad Betties fans. A bearded guy in a red bandana sounds like he wants to start a fight with the refs every time a whistle blows.

On the track, it’s a close, back-and-forth bout. The Heathers like to play a defensive game, but they’re struggling to contain Beyond Thunderdame, the Betties’ new jammer. She’s tall and fast, and keeps using her height to elude the Heathers’ blockers.

By putting two top players on Dame, the Heathers keep her in check, and they start to pull away late in the second half. Final score: Heathers 241, Betties 205.

Once the glow of victory fades, it’s time to hit the books. Katherine Anne Porter is calling. It’s probably not what her teammates are reading, but that’s OK. After all, she’s Sui Jennaris—she’s on a track of her own.

Katelyn Best ’13 wrote her thesis on Nicaraguan Sign Language and is now a freelance sports writer in Portland.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 19

Song of the Nightingale Psychiatric nurse rewires Portland’s approach to mental health

BY KIERAN HANRAHAN ’15

Sana Goldberg ’12 is on the front lines of the battle to change the way we treat our mentally ill. As a nurse at Portland’s new $40 million psychiatric emergency hospital, the Unity Center for Behavioral Health, she has made it her mission to address the inequities that pervade the field.

Unity opened in January and combines the psychiatric wards of four Portland hospitals under one roof with specialized staff, care, and facilities. Much of psychiatric care consists of managing patients’ environment, and Unity is designed to eliminate the sense of disarray and foreboding that permeates a standard emergency department.

“If you designed the very worst atmosphere for someone in a mental health crisis,

There are three times as many seriously mentally ill Americans in jails and prisons as in hospitals. Police in the United States are 16 times more likely to shoot the seriously mentally ill than they are other civilians.

The issue rose to prominence in Portland this winter when Karen Batts, a 52-year-old woman suffering from schizophrenia, froze to death in a parking garage after being evicted from her apartment. She had been in and out of the hospital in the months before her death but did not receive coordinated care to support her once she was discharged.

“Unity can be successful in addressing the problem because we really focus on care coordination,” says Goldberg. It’s easy for psychiatric patients to fall through the cracks at typical hospitals, where imminently lifethreatening conditions take priority.

At Unity, before one of Goldberg’s patients is discharged, she meets with their doctor, social worker, and, say, addiction specialist together in one room to discuss the care and support they will receive after they’ve left.

Interested in social and political reform? Go into nursing. it would probably be an emergency department,” she says. “There are staff in uniforms, patients are usually restrained because their behavior can’t be controlled, and there are other emergencies happening around them.”

The architects of Unity’s renovation ushered in sunshine as much as possible to eliminate the fluorescent pallor for which hospitals are infamous. Nurses bring patients to an open social area when they are first admitted rather than isolating them.

Caretakers at Unity also make a point of getting patients outside as much as possible. Elsewhere Goldberg has worked, some patients didn’t make it outdoors for months at a time. “What does that do to a person, physiologically?” she asks. “One of my patients asked one time for someone to bring him a flower.

He just needed to have something natural.”

Little details are part of a larger strategy that Goldberg and her colleagues at Unity have adopted to tackle the societal impacts of mental illness.

20 Reed Magazine june 2017

Logistical interventions like these can have the biggest impact on a patient’s health and well-being in the long term.

But there are basic challenges that never go away. What do you do, for example, when your patient won’t take their medication?

Do you try again later and work with them through their resistance, or resort to delivering medication via injection?

Thousands of nurses who work with the mentally ill have to answer that question every day. Goldberg’s solution? She does what any Reedie would—she sits down with her peers to talk about it.

Goldberg entered Reed planning to major in English, but it was an English professor who inadvertently sent her on a different path. Prof. Ellen Stauder [English 1983– 2013], her adviser, insisted that she take a psychology class to round out her course load. She was hooked.

Her junior year, Goldberg took behavioral neuroscience with Prof. Paul Currie [psychology 2007–]. “Sana is a really good example of a student who truly excelled and hit the ground running,” Prof. Currie says.

In her thesis, Goldberg explored whether the “hunger hormone” ghrelin plays a role in addiction. She discovered not just that ghrelin plays a critical role in the pathways that drive drug addiction, but also that the hormone can drive mice addicted to cocaine to consume alcohol.

Daniel Cronin

between theory and practice, science and clinical care.

When she heard that Unity was going to open a few years down the line, she knew she wanted to work there. She applied to a one-year fast-track nursing program at OHSU, and has been working as a nurse in Portland psychiatric wards since.

When she isn’t caring for patients, Sana Goldberg ’12 advocates for nursing as a means of political and social reform.

“Her thesis was the first report that cocaine could actually potentiate alcohol consumption. No one had demonstrated that before,” Currie says.

They published the results in Neuro​pharmacology, and Goldberg presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

“She stood there, held her own, and truly impressed a lot of my colleagues who thought in fact that she was a graduate student,” says Currie. “When I list the theses I’ve supervised

over the last decade at Reed, this is one that truly, really did change not only her perspective in neuroscience, but my own. It changed the direction of my own research in a much more engaged way.”

Following graduation, Goldberg intended to go to grad school, but cooled on the idea after working in labs at OHSU. Then she did a stint as a social worker for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia, where she got a ringside seat to witness nurses negotiate the tension

When she isn’t caring for patients at Unity, Goldberg spends her time advocating for nursing as a means of political and social reform.

After the presidential election, she teamed up with three of her classmates from Reed— Arianna Rebolini ’12, Mamie Stevenson ’12, and Rebekah Volinsky ’12—to found the non-profit digital magazine Nightingale, which features writing from doctors, nurses, journalists, and artists, many of them Reedies.

Goldberg also writes for the Atlantic and is working on a book to help millennials navigate the healthcare system, tentatively titled How to Be a Patient, to be published by Harper Wave in 2018.

She still returns to Reed to do serious writing. “I’m so focused in the library,” she says. Her love for the Hauser Fun Dome is an apt metaphor for the relationship between nursing and the liberal arts she described in a TED talk at Harvard last year. “The liberal arts can be distilled to this canon of stories that, at their best, offer us renewal,” she said. “They tell us you don’t have to face your shadow side alone because we’ve done it as a species throughout time.”

Goldberg expects tens of thousands of Reedies and other liberal arts graduates to enter the nursing profession in the coming decades as hospitals and universities recognize their strengths and create specialized programs to educate and train them.

Perhaps then we will associate health care not with the chaotic blare of an ambulance siren, but with the call of the nightingale, so called because their song is a sonic beacon in the darkness of the night, when all other birds are silent.

Kieran Hanrahan ’15 works for a Reedie-run small business and is an occasional contributor to the magazine. He lives in Portland with his dog and two pet spiders.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 21

GRADUATING BOLD CLEAR THINKERS SINCE 1915 It has been a year since the Reed College Class of 2016 graduated and plunged into the world, brimming with new knowledge, unquenchable curiosity, and the determination to do bold, great things.

And, great things they have done. They took the intensely intellectual, inspiring, and transformational Reed education and are pursuing their passions.

More than 9 out of 10 members of the Class of 2016* found their first destination within six months of graduation. They have proven themselves capable of tackling important humanistic, scientific, social, business, and technological challenges and are making significant contributions to their communities.

They are clearly Reedies—formidable thinkers leading exceptional lives.

Reed’s wide network of alumni, parents, and friends has been one of Reed’s greatest resources, ensuring the Class of 2016’s success. Relationships between students and Reed’s global network are forged at each stage of students’ career development. Reed’s extended community hosted student shadows at their offices, hired student workers, funded student career experiences, and shared their expertise. These invaluable connections are giving the Class of 2016 a strong foothold in their career communities, setting the stage for them to offer similar connections to future generations of Reedies.

Join me in celebrating the Class of 2016’s ongoing success.

Alice Harra Associate Dean of Students and Director of Center for Life Beyond Reed

*Data and outcomes represent 217 members (73%) of Class of 2016 by survey and secondary sources and is rounded to the nearest whole percent.

CLASS OF 2016 Post-Graduation Sample of Employers NIH • High Noon Pictures • OHSU • Intel • CBS Radio • Apple • Teach for America • IRS • Google Washington Institute for Near East Policy • Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center • AmeriCorps Walt Disney • RTI International • Tesla • OPB • M Science • Kaiser Permanente • Issey Miyake American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) • PGE • Amazon • Analysis Group

Sample of Grad Schools and Fellowships Northwestern University • Harvard University • University of Michigan • University of Texas Austin University of Michigan • Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences • Fulbright • UCLA Cornell University • Columbia University • New York University School of Law • Sperling Fellowship University of Chicago • University of Cambridge • Princeton University • University of Oregon

Industry Outcomes 19%

Research 17%

Technology, Engineering, Operations 16%

Business & Entrepreneurship 15%

Education 11%

Nonprofit, Policy, Government 8%

Culture & Art Communications, Media, & Design 4%

Healthcare 3%

Legal Other

6%

2%

The Center for Life Beyond Reed helps Reedies develop practical skills, connections, and confidence to pursue successful entry into post-bacc fellowships, graduate and pre-professional schools, and careers. reed.edu/beyond-reed

The Art of Listening Reed’s first ethnomusicologist on tango, culture, and the politics of music

BY KATIE PELLETIER ’03

24 Reed Magazine june 2017

nashco

At the mention of Argentine music, chances are you’ll think of tango—the harmonic sigh of a bandoneon with its overblown reeds, the accented pulse of a marcato bass line, embellishments like an arrastre (from arrastrar, meaning “to drag”), a singing chromatic melody in a minor key. For many, tango and Argentine music are synonymous. In 2004, however, when Prof. Morgan Luker [music 2010–], a young music scholar studying at Columbia University, took his first trip to Argentina to begin fieldwork not long after that nation’s devastating economic crisis of late 2001, he was not there to study tango.

He had been emphatic on this point in conversations with his advisor. “No tango.”

Luker was interested in Argentina because it was poised at a critical moment in its history: when its economy collapsed, so did the pillars of Argentine identity, like job security and a strong middle class. The country faced the prospect of remaking itself. Argentinians were asking, “Who are we?” and “What are we doing?” For an ethnomusicologist like Luker—someone who seeks to understand the way that music and culture intersect— this was an enticing case study. He decided to head to Buenos Aires to observe the music that was arising out of this unique historical moment, particularly Argentina’s rock and avant garde. But not tango. That would be too stereotypical. Too expected. Too, well, cheesy.

Luker grew up as a jazz saxophone player in a postindustrial town in northern Minnesota and went to college to study music performance in Wisconsin. Hungry to engage with the world beyond the Midwest, he played in a wide variety of bands: jazz, funk, rock, Ghanaian highlife, and klezmer.

He even performed in a tango ensemble, playing saxophone in an Astor Piazzolla cover band—a difficult feat considering the complexity of the legendary bandoneonista’s tango nuevo compositions, which incorporate jazz and tango elements and had to be hand transcribed by Luker’s band.

Luker was a dedicated musician, but then something changed. An influential professor introduced him to cultural studies and its theoretical underpinnings, and Luker began to think about music as a space where politics, identity, and cultural history are hashed out.

Music was more than just a series of notes: it came from and spoke to larger issues in social

june 2017 Reed Magazine 25

nina johnson ’99

life and history. His friends noticed he was spending less time in the practice room and more time in the library. His five-hours-a-day practice dropped to four hours then three. He was being lured away by his deepening interest in music scholarship. He changed his major to music history. After graduation, he put away his saxophone and went to Columbia to pursue a PhD in ethnomusicology.

In Argentina he was struck by the plight of the people he encountered. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen in terms of human suffering because of economic pain: like packs of homeless children, digging through the garbage every night. It was heartbreaking.” He began to meet people and make connections in the course of his work. And then the music he heard stunned him. “These people were making something from nothing. They were making this whole artistic universe: all this stuff that wasn’t about exposure or moving forward. It was about creating a space, coping with what had happened to them, and also creating other institutional structures in order to survive,” he says. “Musically, it was totally amazing.”

Prof. Morgan Luker discusses tango history at the 2016 Tango for Musicians at Reed College.

Like any music, tango provides a fascinating lens through which to view cultural and political history. Luker researches and writes about what this music with deep national roots can tell us about Argentina today. In his book, The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency, published recently as part of the Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology series at the University of Chicago Press, he explores the paradoxical way that Argentina embraces

“ You can’t just say, Beethoven is the greatest and that’s why we need a professor who does Beethoven.”

The music he was hearing was tango.

Like jazz, tango is a vast and diverse musical complex. There are genres and subgenres, from dance music to concert music and everything in between. It is a sophisticated, robust musical tradition that defies the oversimplified, Rudolph Valentino–inspired Hollywood stereotypes with roses and dance shoes. It has a storied past: from its emergence in the urban immigrant culture of Buenos Aires’s coventillos (tenements) to the Parisian tango craze in the 1910s that spread throughout Western Europe. After the golden age of the 1930s through 1955, tango fell out of favor and ceased to be popular participatory culture in the 60s and 70s, when Argentina was under a series of dictatorships and young people associated tango with reactionary politics.

In recent decades tango has enjoyed a renaissance. To this day in Argentina, to say something is “Gardel” (after legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel) means something is the absolute best of its kind. And yet, despite the fact that tango is a national brand for Argentina, most Argentinians don’t listen to it.

26 Reed Magazine june 2017

tango as a cultural resource, even though it no longer operates as socially popular music among Argentine audiences.

Luker is Reed’s first ethnomusicologist, and in his courses like The Cultural Study of Music, there’s no requirement to learn your circle of fifths. You need only to listen rigorously. On the first day of his Tango: Music, Culture, History class, he plays an early tango piece over the classroom speakers. Beneath the hiss and crackles of an old recording, a large brass band plays an upbeat early-20th-century composition. Luker asks for reactions— nothing is off limits. He tells students that part of their goal is to learn to develop their critical listening skills and audio vocabulary, and they are responsible for regularly turning in four-page listening journals about a single piece. It seems like a lot, but he promises that with practice they will soon find it easy to fill four pages with observation. They will begin to hear how sound is making an argument, to “read” an audio sample like a text, and to make more nuanced observations about things like performance practice. “Don’t be afraid to state

the obvious,” he says. “The surface is important.” Trying it out, students comment about the rhythm, texture, genre, and the quality of the very old recording. Luker suggests they not forget to list the instruments they heard.

Tyler Allen ’17, a history-lit major who is working with Luker on her thesis, notes that he teaches students to listen, not just to music, but to people, their stories, their reactions. She is struck by how he puts into practice this skill when working with students. “Morgan is interested in what you have to say,” she says.

Such support has been transformative for her, a first-generation college student from a working-class background who assumed the music major was only for students whose parents gave them cello lessons. Since taking his Music and Politics course her junior year, however, she has enrolled in as many of his courses as she could, and is applying to PhD programs in ethnomusicology.

Under Luker’s mentorship, students are pursuing an array of subjects from techno music in Greece to the music of a North Portland church and how it has responded to the changing demographic of its neighborhood. A student recently looked into the genres of music at Reed parties: how are culture and politics played out in who is on the dance floor? Students explore how music is not just passively molded by the place it comes from, it changes that world. Luker says, “Music specifically, and culture more broadly, plays a protagonist role in shaping the world that we inhabit.” Take, for instance, the way in which rock music inspired a generation of young people to rebel against postwar morals and politics, or the influence of hip-hop.

Currently the debate about Beyoncé’s album Lemonade, which lost its 2017 Grammy bid to an album by Adele is shaping conversations about race in America. Luker asks, “What are

nina johnson ’99

people are saying when they say Beyoncé’s album Lemonade is the greatest work of art ever made? Why is that intuitively correct to some people and ridiculously wrong to other people, and what is at stake in that discrepancy? What can that discrepancy tell us about the culture and politics of racial ideology in the U.S. today?”

Ethnomusicologists are using tools and rigor previously reserved for studying classical Western art music to unpack what popular music—like tango, rock, or R&B—can tell us about culture, power, and history. Luker notes that the justification for studying music in academic contexts has too often been because “classical music is great.” “I think that music as a field has come into crisis because of that. In an era of tremendous institutional change regarding the value of the humanities, you can’t just say, ‘Beethoven is the greatest and that’s why we need a professor who does Beethoven.’” In recent decades, such thinking has shifted and music scholars are looking far beyond the masters of the classical cannon.

On a chilly November day, late in the semester, Luker’s students shuffle in. They are somber and quiet, which is highly unusual for this group. The class has been talking about the political chaos of 20th-century Argentina and the tango music that developed in this context, but these students are preoccupied

by U.S. national headlines in the wake of the election and student activism on campus.

They share with one another their concerns and fears. Luker asks what would be useful for class that day, and the students agree that they want to “just listen to the music.”

Someone says that for her music is “a way to lose myself and forget what’s happening on the outside.” Someone else jokes, “Music heals all.” They all exchange smiles and the atmosphere relaxes. Luker preps the recording on a computer next to the whiteboard and gives some preliminary information. The recording, “La Llamó Silbando” by Horacio Salgán, is from 1952—just before the abrupt end of tango’s golden age and the beginning of one of Argentina’s several late-20th-century military dictatorships.

The classroom fills with a rising, easygoing whistling sound, produced by a violin played over the lush instrumentation of Salgán’s tango orchestra. When, two and a half minutes later the song concludes with a playful chan-chan (the onomatopoeic term for the ubiquitous two-beat tango ending) a student says, “It will be hard to write just four pages about this.”

Bandoneon players, Kimiaki Watanabe and Bertram Levy, at the 2016 Tango for Musicians workshop.

Tango for Musicians at Reed College Ethnographers often ask how their work can be more reflexive with the people and communities they study.

Many promise to share the products of their research, but Luker seeks to do more for the community of musicians and the music he studies. As part of his effort to give back, Luker started an ambitious program called Tango for Musicians at Reed College—a workshop for musicians interested in delving into tango musicianship. The workshop is in its fifth year and has come to be known as the preeminent place to study tango in North America—for professional musicians and hobby players alike.

Participants, often entire ensembles, come from around the world—Europe, Asia, Australia—to study with artistic faculty who are among the most prominent tango composers, players, and teachers in the world.

“When this popped up there wasn’t anything like it in the U.S.,” says composer, percussionist, and bandoneonista Ben Thomas, DMA, who is head of the music department at Highline College in Washington and has attended Tango for Musicians since its inception. He lauds the program, noting it is comprehensive, well organized, and pedagogically strong. He says it’s having an impact on the broader tango community. Musicians often develop ongoing professional relationships with

other musicians and gather artistic knowledge and pedagogical strategies to take back to their home ensembles, communities, and programs (like his in Washington). “People stay in touch with each other; we work with each other in other projects. Bandleaders and composers send each other music.

Bandoneon players send arrangements to other bandoneon players.”

This year the institute runs June 25–July 2. The faculty include the program’s artistic director, flutist, and composer Paulina Fain; composer Diego Schissi (who recently performed at Reed in a mini residency with his quintet); violinist Ramiro Gallo, and many other well-known tango artists from Argentina. Although many student participants are professional musicians, there is an auditors track, and Reed students who are interested can attend for free. This year, for the first time, there is an entire program for composers. Luker invites the wider community to attend any of the many public events, including the milonga (a tango social dance event).

It’s a significant undertaking, and Luker notes he feels enormously fortunate to have the support of Reed in producing this unique opportunity for cultural and musical exchange. “Reed is a space that allows this kind of thing to happen,” he says.

Learn more at tango/reed.edu.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 27

Solving Problems with Play

Angry Birds. Minecraft. Pokemon Go. Sometimes it seems like we’re surrounded by people playing games. On the bus, in doctors’ waiting rooms, in cafes, we race furiously against the clock to dodge alligators, annihilate castles, hunt for seven-letter words. We build bridges, elude robots, trap queens. We shoot, we score. Has there ever been a period in human history where so many people spend so much time on games?

The truth is that games aren’t just for fun any more. They constitute an entire art form. They can teach us tactics, strategy, deception, teamwork, leadership, and patience.

They also offer a powerful framework for learning new skills.

In this issue, we decided to take a look at some of the ways in which Reed students, professors, and alumni are exploring this vast and exciting field.

Inside the Mind of a Microbe My creature is flailing.

It’s a slapdash concoction of tendon and bone, with floppy appendages and mismatched eyes. Its pathetic brain consists of nine—count ’em—nine neurons. I have armed it with stingers, harpoons, and suckers, but this arsenal has so far proven utterly worthless, because I haven’t yet figured out a much more basic problem— how to get the damn thing to propel itself through this alien ocean. Meanwhile, a sleek six-flippered monster (dubbed “the Kraken”) darts dangerously near, pulsing with menace. Unless I can find a way to rewire its brain, my creature (the “Mikecrobe”) is headed for extinction.

28 Reed Magazine june 2017

Welcome to Crescent Loom, a computer game designed by neuroscientist Wick Perry ’13 to introduce students to the fundamentals of brain circuitry. While the imaginary creatures in Crescent Loom may be primitive, they operate on the same principles that underlie animals in the real world, from worms to elephants to jellyfish. Connect a neuron to a muscle—when the neuron fires, the muscle contracts. Wire neurons to each other in the right way and you can build an elementary circuit that allows your creature to steer clear of obstacles or track down food.

clayton cotterell

GAME ON

Wick works at home on Crescent Loom 12-14 hours a day but recently attended the BetaCon game expo where he won an award and gained valuable insight watching testers play his game.

june 2017  Reed Magazine 29

GAME ON

INSIDE THE MIND OF A MICROBE, continued Although the game is still in beta, it offers an experimental platform for students to peek inside a notoriously elusive subject. But the game offers something else, something that game theorists say is even more important—fun.

Wick grew up in Corbett, Oregon, a rural community in the Columbia Gorge. There were 50 students in his high school class.

One day in middle school, he bought a sec-

[biology 2012–] on the neural mechanism by which frogs croak. He also wrote Starship Rubicon, an update of the classic arcade game Asteroids but with an underwater motif (you fight space cuttlefish and orbiting anemones).

All the while, he was dissatisfied with the way textbooks treated the mechanics of neurons. “A lot of textbooks struggle to convey the dynamics of the system,” he says. “The diagrams are static. But dynamic systems is what games are all about.”

clayton cotterell

Wick’s Crescent Loom lets you connect neurons, muscles, and sensors to build a rudimentary creature.

ondhand book at Goodwill titled Game Programming for Teenz. He taught himself to do some coding and produced a game about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1899. At Reed he took a course in animal physiology with the late legendary Prof. Steve Arch [biology 1972–2012], where he learned about neurons. “There are so many elegant ways that neurons compute information,” he says. “It was like getting the keys to how our own brains work.”

He went on to take courses in computer science and major in biology, writing his thesis with Prof. Erik Zornik

30 Reed Magazine june 2017

From his work in computer science, Wick was familiar with programs that allowed students to connect logic gates to build a calculator. Why not write a program that lets you connect neurons, muscles, and sensors to build a rudimentary creature?

Crescent Loom employs an unusual “fabric” metaphor for the nervous system—players stitch muscles, weave connections, and create a network of cells.

“I wanted a way to explore what happens when you poke the system,” he says. “I wanted people to see how you only need

four neurons to create a creature that can flap its appendages.”

At first, Wick was focused on having players build a single creature. But he soon discovered that players wanted ways to have their creatures compete with other creatures. “The first thing they do, once they’ve built a creature, is to find a more advanced creature and see what happens when they fight,” he says. “And they usually lose. But it’s OK, because it’s fun. And they learn. ‘Right, that didn’t work, let’s try this.’”

Prof. Zornik has high praise for Crescent Loom. “Wick’s project is awesome!” he says. “It holds a lot of potential for education, both for nonscientists and for early-stage neuroscientists. . . . Rather than thinking of the nervous system as a ‘black box,’ it can help anyone understand that individual units (i.e., neurons) with unique properties can combine into circuits that generate behavior.” In fact, Prof.

Zornik may use the game in class next year to introduce the concepts underlying the brain’s role in generating movements.

Crescent Loom is all the more remarkable because an awful lot of so-called “educational” games are neither fun nor educational, according to game theorist Mark Chen ’95, a professor at University of Washington–Bothell. “A lot of them are designed with a worksheet model in mind,” he says. “You do an arithmetic drill, then you get to blast some aliens.

But you don’t really use math to solve the problem in the game.”

Truly successful educational games, Chen thinks, help players get inside a world and work with the constraints of a particular field, whether it be urban planning or bridge construction. “We know that problem-based learning is really effective,” he says. “You learn better if you learn in a context.”

Meanwhile, Wick is working on Crescent Loom 12–14 hours a day. “I’ve learned so much,” he says over coffee at a cafe on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.

“I just want to create something so that people can see what a neuron does. This is how we work. This is how we think.”

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Disconnecting the Dots Florin Feier ’17 Finds an Unbeatable Strategy tom humphrey

In 1913, the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo posed a radical question about games like chess. Was it possible, he asked, to devise a perfect strategy that would guarantee victory—or at least prevent defeat— before the first move was ever played?

His answer, surprisingly, was yes— at least in theory. And while no one has come remotely close to finding an unbeatable strategy for chess, researchers have “solved” several simpler games—including nine men’s morris, baghchal, and even checkers, which was cracked in 2007 after 18 years of intensive computation.

Math–econ major Florin Feier ’17 has now joined the ranks of the game crackers with his thesis on Disconnect Three, which is basically a reverse variant of the popular game Connect Four. (You try not to play three dots in a row.)

Florin invented Disconnect Three as an exercise last summer while he was leading a summer camp on game theory for high school students. He quickly realized that Zermelo’s theorem should apply to the game. But could he actually find the foolproof strategy?

When playing a game, most people start with the opening position and work forwards—that’s how you win, after all.

Florin did the opposite. Using the technique of backward induction, he looked at final positions and made inferences about the moves that must have led up to them. Armed with this retrograde reasoning, he worked backwards to figure out how the first player can always win.

And although the game is usually played on a 4 x 4 board, his strategy works for a board of any dimensions.

Clad in T-shirt, black pants, and a fiveo’clock shadow, Florin spills a dozen red and yellow plastic disks onto the table at the Paradox Cafe and invites me to make the first move. In theory, this means I can force a win. But theory only goes so far, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. I launch a bold central attack—surely a good idea!

Growing up in Romania, Florin came to Reed intending to major in math. Then

Florin Feier ’17 contemplates his strategy against Alicia Toshima ’17 in a game of Disconnect Three.

he took intro econ from Prof. Jeff Parker [econ 1988–]. “That opened my eyes,” he says. “People tend to associate economics with finance. But I think of economics as the science of decision-making. And game theory is the branch that analyzes decision-making in an imaginary scenario.”

After Reed, Florin wants to teach math to middle-school kids. “Math is the most hated subject in middle school,” he says. “Too many teachers make it about memorization. But it really is

about logical thinking, which is something everyone can develop—that’s what I want to pass on!”

As we talk, Florin challenges my premature foray with a diabolical pin. After a few more moves, my position has become precarious. I risk a flanking maneuver, but Florin counters with a devastating forking movement. My position is toast. But I’ve learned something valuable: sometimes it makes sense to think backward as well as forward. —CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

june 2017 Reed Magazine 31

GAME ON

Play Your Way To Happy Can a smartphone app help you find happiness? Psychologist Acacia Parks ’03 has a pretty good idea.

One March evening, at the end of a long workday, I found myself feeling down and needing to recharge. Normally in moments like these I plop down on the couch and watch a Netflix show until bedtime rolls near. But on this particular day, I brewed some herbal tea and logged onto Happify.

Happify is an unlikely application with an extraordinary aim. It’s a gaming system that trains you to overcome your emotional distress. The idea runs like this: If you spend a bit of time every day “exercising” well-being, little by little you will build the skills you need to become happier.

Even I, a believer in all things convenient, raised a skeptical eyebrow at first.

Play your way to happy? Please. But Happify now boasts more than three million registered users, and the company claims that 86% of frequent users report feeling more positive after eight weeks of play. And the science undergirding all of this? Believe it or not, it was provided by a Reedie.

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Acacia Parks ’03, chief scientist at Happify, is responsible for making sure that each activity is scientifically sound.

Based in Ohio, where she is also an associate professor of psychology at Hiram College, Parks has built her career on using science to help people help themselves.

And it all started with her senior thesis.

Entering Reed, Parks was a free-thinking singer from California in search of a school that wouldn’t box her in. It took time to discover her focus. “Originally I wanted to do psychiatry, but Prof. Arthur Glasfeld [chemistry 1989–] kicked my ass so hard in chemistry,” Parks said with a laugh. “Part of why I loved Reed was because I could get my ass kicked in a class and earn a C and be like, ‘I’m still glad I took that class.’” She majored in psychology and took a class from Prof. Keith Herman [psychology 2000–02], where she experienced a moment of inspiration that would define her career.

Prof. Herman introduced the class to the idea of bibliotherapy, where people learn coping techniques through a book rather than with a therapist. But it was the supporting evidence that really got her attention. Bibliotherapy can be just as effective as traditional psychotherapy “That made my head explode,” said Parks.

Her thoughts immediately turned to a statistic she learned from Herman: twothirds of people living with a mental illness in the U.S. do not receive treatment.

“I was like, ‘Wow, people can’t get therapy.

People don’t necessarily pursue therapy.

And that’s just the people with a mental illness.” Parks wrote her thesis on how to use books to train college freshmen to fight emotional distress and foster resilience. After graduating from Reed in 2003, she earned her PhD in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and continued exploring how to make therapeutic

interventions accessible to the masses.

While pursuing her doctorate, Parks conducted research with Martin Seligman, a pioneer of positive psychology, on strategies for preventing depression among college students. She believed that positive psychology has enormous potential, but grew increasingly frustrated with the limited reach of face-to-face therapy. “I went back to the technology piece,” said Parks. “I kept finding myself pulled back towards that accessibility question. How are people going to get this, how are people going to afford it?”

For her next project, Parks developed a computer-based resilience course. It worked, but only for the tiny number of subjects who were motivated enough to stick with the whole eight-week course—98% of the users quit early. Was there a way, she wondered, to make the therapeutic activities fun?

In 2010, Parks presented her research at a conference, where she met two gaming entrepreneurs with a crazy idea. Inspired

by Seligman’s 2011 book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, Ofer Leidner and Tomer Ben-Kiki sought to create a game that could make people happier. They enlisted

photos by mark abramson

Acacia Parks ’03 at Happify’s office in New York City.

Parks to help develop their nascent idea.

And though she was hesitant at first, she was impressed by their dedication to putting the science first. Together, Parks, Leidner, and Ben-Kiki developed Happify.

The app exercises your skills in savoring, thanking, aspiring, giving, and empathizing. These skills—collectively known as STAGE—form the basic tenets of positive psychology. It begins with a quiz posing a number of questions about your general outlook on and satisfaction with life. From my answers, the program assessed my baseline happiness level and recommended activities for me, such as “Motivation Tricks to Get Fit” and “Stop the Worry Cycle.” Feeling tender, I chose “Overcome Your Insecurities & Build Confidence.” And over the next couple of weeks, I dedicated about 20 minutes each day to short activities training me to recognize my negative thoughts and my accomplishments.

As I kept playing, I found myself picking up coping strategies. Things like setting small goals, naming and confronting distressing emotions, and meditation and mindfulness became games—something fun. Even better, I could see my progress.

Leading up to the app’s launch in 2013, Parks developed the well-being

measurement tool Happify depends on.

She also compiled the best, proven strategies from various psychological traditions.

“Some of it’s positive psychology, some of it’s cognitive therapy, some of it’s mindfulness—but everything that we put on there has a scientific basis, and we wanted everybody to know,” she says. “We wanted people to be able to make informed decisions about what they’re choosing to do and to see that there’s research behind it.”

The key to happiness, Parks argues, lies in understanding the idea of happiness itself. Happiness doesn’t mean moving through life without any emotional challenges. It is a combination, rather, of good mood and satisfaction with one’s life. “People have this idea that it’s dependent on your environment or your circumstances or your achievements—that if you just lived your life right you would be happy naturally,” Parks says. But viewing changing your environment as the way of changing emotional well-being may be misguided. “The clear way to change something is often to work on it on a daily basis, and that’s what we do at Happify. We give people very specific skills, very specific instructions for how to do them, and the impetus to do them every day.”

Today, Happify boasts over 3 million registered users and is shifting towards a business-facing model. It currently serves a number of clients, including two national health plans and a large national retailer, who license Happify for their employees.

And now that the company’s reach is growing, the possible impact of her work is only motivating Parks further. “When Ofer told me that we had a million users and just the enormity of the responsibility of creating something that several, now several million, people have used, to me that was so moving and also something that I don’t know that I ever dreamed was ever going to happen,” said Parks.

Now, as chief scientist, one of Parks’s main focuses is the upcoming launch of Happify Labs, a platform made for Parks to conduct controlled research, bring in outside collaborators, and explore how Happify can be used to improve well-being in conjunction with medical interventions such as diabetes management. Parks is happy her work has been able to help so many already.

But her dream is to make it even bigger.

“With a user base that big, we really can start to think about having an impact,” says Parks, recalling the statistic that struck her years ago. “That’s scale-​able. This is something that could really make a difference.”

With a few weeks of Happify under my belt, I can confidently say I have a few more emotional coping tools in my modest but growing wellness arsenal. Have I overcome all of my insecurities forever?

No. Have I reached a level of unwavering confidence and self-assuredness? No. But I’ve practiced tools to help me do both through a type of fun-based training I had never experienced. And I’m optimistic that Happify can make a dent in the unhappiness and emotional distress that is so widespread in American society.

But, on the other hand, maybe that’s just my savoring and aspiring skills getting stronger. —ANN-DERRICK GAILLOT ’12 Ann-Derrick Gaillot is a writer and aspiring game show contestant. She lives somewhere in North America with her partner, Miles, and their young plants.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 33

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Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

The Lucky Ones By Julianne Pachico ’08 (Spiegel & Grau, 2017) Julianne Pachico’s The Lucky Ones is an incandescent exploration of Colombia’s legacy of violence. The critically acclaimed literary fiction debut spans two decades in the lives of a group of girls who attend a prestigious international private school in Cali, Colombia, and grows to encompass the narratives of attendant personnel: their parents, their teachers, their maids, their pets.

In 1993, the girls are elementary schoolers catching colorful candies that rain down at an especially wealthy classmate’s country party. These bright girls are in many ways insulated from the war waging between the government and guerrillas (FARC, ELN), paramilitaries, and crime syndicates. Yet they’re old enough to retain some brutal facts.

“Later, filling her tray with french fries, Mariela says that she doesn’t care that Katrina’s father was killed by the Americans,” Pachico writes in “Siberian Tiger Park.” “No, she isn’t sorry one bit. Men like him deserve it.

Wait, you didn’t know about him? Oh, everybody knew. Are you saying you didn’t know?

He got gunned down by the CIA, just like

Escobar, running for his life on the rooftop.”

Pachico was raised in Cali by agricultural social scientist parents working in international development—one British, one American.

This rarefied upbringing became the basis for The Lucky Ones, a book with a dual identity: In the United States, it’s being marketed as a novel (Spiegel & Grau). In the United Kingdom, it’s sold as a short story collection (Faber & Faber).

Regardless of your side of the divide, each of the book’s 11 chapters ably functions as a stand-alone story—as did “Honey Bunny,” the fiction pick in the November 9, 2015, issue of The New Yorker.

By 2008, Pachico’s girls are college age— including the one they called “La Flaca,” who left Cali for the U.S. in third grade on account of rich relations. In “Honey Bunny,” she is a farremoved fashion student with a cocaine addiction, mistaken for a gringo girl from Columbia (University) in social settings. She seeks the salve of validation from her drug dealer: “Paco is Guatemalan,” Pachico writes, “so every once in a while when speaking to him she’ll slyly throw in the odd Spanish word or

two, a curse word or even a dicho, just to show that, yeah, okay, she’s lived in New York for what, fifteen years now, but she still knows how to conjugate verbs, knows which nouns are feminine versus masculine.”

She may know nouns, but she doesn’t know what happened to her classmates, she doesn’t remember their names; nor does she remember the name of the street she used to live on.

She searches for answers in artifacts from her former life (an orange suitcase, a geography puzzle, stuffed animals) and on the internet.

“The statistic for forced disappearances is estimated at over fifty thousand—no, sixty thousand—some articles say over seventy thousand,” Pachico writes. “It makes her think of fables the maids used to tell her: the paisa farmer who went to heaven, la patasola and la llorona. Ghosts who would come knocking on your door, ringing on your bell, long dead souls with scarred faces, wandering the country with no name and no past.”

While menace and mystery refract through its characters’ parallel lives, The Lucky Ones ultimately proves hopeful—in addition to haunting.

Megan Labrise ’04 is a freelance journalist and member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy

By Benjamin Eldon Stevens ’98 and Brett M. Rogers ’99 (Oxford University Press, 2017) What does Harry Potter owe to Aeschylus?

Or Game of Thrones draw from Aristotle?

In this first collection (in English) in an exciting new field, 15 essays cover topics such as classical allusions in the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft; the Game of Thrones series and Aristotle; filthy harpies in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series; and more. Ben’s own chapter is on ancient trips to the underworld (especially that in Virgil’s Aeneid) and Tolkien’s The Hobbit, while Brett writes about how J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter novels draws on Aeschylus’s Oresteia for ideas about tyranny.

34 Reed Magazine june 2017

Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy follows on the success of Ben and Brett’s 2015 book, Classical Traditions in Science Fiction (featured in Reed Magazine, March 2015), and also some exciting projects they have organized: conferences and lectures from Reed to around the U.S. and Patras, Greece. The studies raise fascinating questions about genre, literary and artistic histories, and the suspension of disbelief required not only of readers of fantasy but also of students of antiquity. Ranging from harpies to hobbits, from Cyclopes to Cthulhu, and all manner of

monster and myth in between, this comparative study of classics and fantasy reveals deep similarities between ancient and modern ways of imagining the world.

Brett and Ben met in 1997 when Ben, a senior, and Brett, a junior, co-directed Reed’s first Classics Dorm, a Greek and Latin house organized on the model of Reed’s houses for modern languages. The house occupied the eastern part of the top floor of Old Dorm Block, and the dorm parents greeted their dormies (including some first-years) wearing togas and laurel garlands, the traditional sign of victory in ancient contests.

These many years later, Brett and Ben are still collaborating.

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up

By Laura Atkins ’92 and Stan Yogi; illustrations by Yutaka Houlette (Heyday 2017)

Fred Korematsu was a citizen born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrants. Growing up, he felt thoroughly American, but faced growing bias and anti-Japanese sentiment in pre-WWII Oakland, California. When the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor, Fred and his community were forced to abandon their homes, businesses, and lives and report to internment camps. Fred Korematsu resisted the order and was later arrested and convicted of the crime of disobedience, a conviction he fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Although he lost this historic court battle, 40 years later, armed with evidence that federal prosecutors had lied during his court hearing, Fred Korematsu took up the fight again.

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up is an illustrated middle-grade biography that sold out its first printing in just two weeks. The biography is told in compact verse and interspersed with metanarrative sections that gloss terms, add biographical detail, elaborate concepts, and provide additional historical context. The authors extend the themes of the book by inviting young people to apply what happened in the past to their own lives, including tips that give young people pointers about how to speak out.

The book is the first in a series called Fighting for Justice. Laura says, “Now, as Heyday goes to reprint, my coauthor Stan Yogi and I are visiting schools around California, talking to children about how Korematsu’s life and work resonate today.

We’ve already spoken to over 1,200 children, and it’s inspiring to see how engaged they are with Fred’s life and the idea of speaking up when you see injustice.”

GIFTS FOR COFFEE LOVERS

REED COLLEGE BOOKSTORE Visit the Reed College Bookstore for a great selection of drinkware, including these hand-thrown mugs from Deneen Pottery—available in the store and online.

bookstore.reed.edu

Reediana Wolfie and the Silver Suit

By Dr. Michael Buettner ’60 (Ebook, available on Amazon)

Wolfie Hebert’s parents vanish into the chaos of a war, leaving him behind, injured, terrified, and alone. In the final months of WWII, with Hitler’s empire collapsing around them, Wolfie, an 11-year-old German boy, teams up with Yoska, a teenage Romani (gypsy), on a long, dangerous journey to find their lost families.

Danger greets them at every turn: former concentration camp guards, enemy soldiers, fire, and a devious farmer. But Wolfie has a suit, a gift from his scientist father, that contains powers he is only just beginning to understand. But perhaps it’s what he learned from his streetwise mother that will prove to be the greatest gift of all.

Return to Lesbos

By Lin Sten ’67 (CreateSpace, 2017) Lin Sten’s new work of historical fiction is set during the Peloponnesian War in classical Greece, just after Athens (the city-state) quells the revolt of Lesbos in 427 BC. Athens’s initial impulse is to put to death every male in Mytilene, on Lesbos, and to sell all the women and children into slavery. At this very time, Arion must return to Mytilene to retrieve the family estate from his treacherous uncle, find his mate and free her, and then return to Athens to make an enormous payment against the (illicit) enslavementcollateral contract held by his longtime nemesis, the banker/pirate Smerdis, or face a return to the mines in Laurion. He has eight days.

Gifted: A Novel

By John Daniel ’70 (Counterpoint Press, 2017) John, two-time Oregon Book Award Winner (most recently for his essay collection, The Far Corner, 2011), has a new novel set in the Pacific Northwest. Henry Fielder runs into an old lover and finds himself ready to tell the story he has harbored for two decades that begins when he is 15, in rural western Oregon, enduring a year of sorrows. His mother dies, his father is physically abusive, and his extraordinary spiritual affinity for wildlife deserts him. An older couple offer solace and expanded cultural horizons but set him

36 Reed Magazine june 2017

further at odds with his millworker father. The abuse escalates, and ultimately a natural disaster catalyzes a crisis in which father and son betray each other and Henry sets out on a trek through the backcountry of the Oregon Coast Range, seeking to understand what has happened and to forge a new sense of self.

From Tool to Partner: The Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction

By Jonathan Grudin ’72 (Morgan & Claypool 2017)

In this first comprehensive history of human-computer interaction (HCI), Jonathan describes the different fields that have participated in improving our digital tools and how the tools we have built for ourselves are now increasingly influencing how we use them—in ways that are planned and sometimes unplanned. Organized chronologically, it describes major developments across fields in each period. Technology has changed rapidly, human nature very little. The exponential rate of technological change gives us little time to react before technology moves on. Patterns and trajectories described in this book provide your best chance to anticipate what could come next.

Whether you are a user-experience professional or an academic researcher, whether you identify with computer science, human factors, information systems, information science, design, or communication, you can discover how your experiences fit into the expanding field of HCI. You can determine where to look for relevant information in other fields, and where you won’t find it. The book ends with issues worthy of consideration as we explore the new world that we and our digital partners are shaping. (See Class Notes.)

The Book of Knots and Their Untying Karen Greenbaum-Maya ’73 (Kelsay Books, 2016) Karen, a retired clinical psychologist and two-time Pushcart nominee, has published her third collection of poetry. The poems range through metaphorical knots that can and cannot or should not be untied. Richard Garcia, king of the prose poem, said, “Open the Book of Knots and their Untying, and you will find yourself pleasantly tangled in the complicated worlds of Karen Greenbaum-Maya. You’ll find yourself within concentric circles of past and present, countries, languages and foods, exotic and ordinary. You’ll meet the eccentric and sad, the rich and famous, and strange strangers. The poems in Book of Knots are crafty and intelligent, and the same poem can be at once heartbreaking and hilarious, wacky and profound—enjoy!” (See Class Notes.)

Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History (3rd ed.)

By David Fastovsky ’77 (Cambridge University Press 2016)

A textbook for nonscience majors, the third edition of Dinosaurs has been reorganized and extensively rewritten in response to instructor and student feedback. Now in full color, with a suite of new images, and updated to reflect recent fossil discoveries, it continues to make science accessible and relevant through its clear explanations and extensive illustrations.

Advocacy and Policy Change Evaluation: Theory and Practice

By Annette L. Gardner ’83 and Claire Brindis (Stanford University Press 2017)

This is the first book-length treatment of the concepts, designs, methods, and tools needed to conduct effective advocacy and policy change evaluations. In addition to describing actual designs and measures, the chapters include suggestions for addressing the specific challenges of working in a policy setting, such as a long time horizon for achieving meaningful change. To illuminate and advance this area of evaluation practice, the authors draw on over 30 years of evaluation experience; collective wisdom based on a new, large-scale survey of evaluators in the field; and in-depth case studies on diverse issues—from the environment to public health to human rights. Ideal for evaluators, change makers, and funders, this book is the definitive guide to advocacy and policy change evaluation.

Schizophrenia and Its Treatment: Where Is the Progress?

By Matthew Kurtz ’89 (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Mattew’s new book aims to explain why, despite profound advances in psychological science and neuroscientific analyses of schizophrenia, outcomes for the disorder have changed little over the past 100 years. More specifically, the book provides a critical analysis of the limiting role on treatment development of diagnostic classifications and views of the disorder as caused by a

core pathology, and instead promotes the idea of individually tailored, multimodal treatment for distinct disorder features (e.g., positive symptoms, cognitive deficits). Each of these features of schizophrenia may or may not be present in different individuals with the same diagnosis. These features may also bear little functional relationship to one another. This aim is achieved through a critical integration of contemporary psychological, scientific, and neuroscientific analyses of schizophrenia, as well as research on psychological and somatic treatments. Historical perspectives on diagnosis and treatment are considered as well.

Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai

By Nikhil Anand ’98 (Duke Universtiy Press, 2017)

Nikhil explores the politics of Mumbai’s water infrastructure to demonstrate how citizenship emerges through the continuous efforts to control, maintain, and manage the city’s water. Through extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai’s settlements, he found that Mumbai’s water flows, not through a static collection of pipes and valves, but through a dynamic infrastructure built on the relations among residents, plumbers, politicians, engineers, and the 3,000 miles of pipe that bind them. In addition to distributing water, the public water network often reinforces social identities and the exclusion of marginalized groups, as only those actively recognized by city agencies receive legitimate water services. Tying the ways Mumbai’s poorer residents are seen by the state to their historic, political, and material relations with water pipes, the book highlights the critical role infrastructures play in consolidating civic and social belonging in the city.

The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast

By Jessica Yirush Stern ’03 (UNC Press, 2017) Jessica presents a thoroughly researched and engaging study of the deerskin trade in the colonial Southeast, upending the long-standing assertion that Native Americans were solely

gift givers and the British were modern commercial capitalists. This traditional interpretation casts Native Americans as victims drawn into and made dependent on a transatlantic marketplace. Jessica complicates that picture by showing how both the Southeastern Indian and British American actors mixed gift giving and commodity exchange in the deerskin trade, such that Southeastern Indians retained much greater agency as producers and consumers than the standard narrative allows.

By tracking the debates about Indian trade regulation, she also reveals that the British were often not willing to embrace modern free market values. While she sheds new light on broader issues in native and colonial history, Jessica also demonstrates that concepts of labor, commerce, and material culture were inextricably intertwined to present a fresh perspective on trade in the colonial Southeast.

Inside Trump’s Era of Guns: The NRA, Silencers and Deregulation

By Joel Stonington ’03 (AJ+, 2017) After four years in Berlin writing for Der Spiegel, reporting for NPR Berlin, and creating television for Deutsche Welle, Joel moved to San Francisco to produce short documentaries for AJ+. His first pieces are the first two segments of a six-part series called Guns in America. AJ+’s documentary series explores how fear and power define Americans’ relationship with guns. The six-part series examines the controversy over assault rifles, guns in schools, the rise of concealed carry, the NRA’s new agenda, smart guns, and record shooting rates in Chicago.

Lowly

By Alan Felsenthal ’03

(Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017)

Alan’s debut poetry collection Lowly is part invocation, part invitation. The poems consider death, rebirth, and love, while exploring the symbols that make life bearable. “I invent stories. Out of other stories. I can only repeat what I have heard.”

Lowly is a restorative work with rhythmic lines that will resonate with the reader long after the book is closed. Poet Susan

Howe remarked that this collection is “quietly oracular. With feeling and purpose, these poems move through precise intensities of thought to lay bare an integrated sense of a possible world.

With such paradoxes and subtleties, we might call Felsenthal a new Metaphysical Poet.” Alan Felsenthal cofounded The Song Cave, a small press. With Ben Estes, he edited A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.

His writing has appeared in BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Critical Quarterly, Fence, jubilat, and Harper’s.

Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital

By Anita Hannig ’04 (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

Anita Hannig, who is now teaching at Brandeis University in the Department of Anthropology, published her first book in April, about maternal childbirth injuries and Western biomedical intervention in Africa. This is an in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers in Ethiopia. Anita takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

The Dig: Discussing the Politics of American Class Warfare

By Dan Denvir ’05 (jacobin magazine, 2017) Dan has a new podcast, hosted by Jacobin magazine.

The Dig discusses politics, criminal justice, immigration, and class conflict with smart people.

Some recent episodes have featured guests like Dave Weigel, a reporter at the Washington Post, talking about “what the media doesn’t get about the left,” and Charlene Carruthers in an episode called “Fighting for Black Lives Under Trump.” Other guests include Glenn Greenwald and a plethora of academics discussing mass incarceration, political economy, and the rise of Trump. Dan is a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project and is writing a book on immigration politics for Verso.

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In Memoriam Philosopher of the Air Michael E. Levine ’62

February 3, 2017, in Woodbridge, Connecticut.

When he was eight years old, Michael’s family moved a mile and a half from Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport in New York City. He would stand beneath the flight path of the planes and, as each aircraft took off, thrill to the liveries of the world painted on their wings and tails. It was the first blush of the romance he would have with aviation.

Michael went on to become an authority on aviation and a key player in the momentous decision to deregulate the airline industry in 1978. He devised many of the mechanisms and practices that underpinned deregulation, serving as general director of international and domestic aviation at the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board during the transition. Later he served as executive vice president at Continental Airlines, executive vice president of marketing at Northwest Airlines— where he forged pioneering alliances with other airlines—and president and CEO of New York Air, guiding that postderegulation airline to its first profit. He served as a member of the Aviation Safety Commission, established by Congress in 1986 to evaluate airline safety following deregu-

hated turning into a suburban businessman and told himself he was doing it for his wife’s sake— establishing a family myth of the caged intellectual and his wife, the beloved jailer. Having given birth to four children, Michael’s mother returned to school for a master’s degree, was active in local and school board politics, and loved her work.

Michael’s youthful takeaway was: don’t work at what you don’t want to do, and don’t allow ideology to close your mind, preventing you from processing what is going on around you.

“A lot of people think of me as a vigorous and in some ways overbearing person because I have pushed things pretty hard, whether it was airline deregulation, or turning around a company or even during my time as dean at Yale,” Michael said. “From those family dynamics I became aware of the importance of thought, but also of its limits. I tried to avoid going down a self-defeating pathway by unexamined commitments to value propositions.”

From an early age Michael learned to think for himself by reading the newspaper and engaging in political arguments with his father. He discovered that sometimes people work late not just to keep their jobs, but because they care about

“ I spent my life running away from being the little kid watching airplanes, and somehow got deeper and deeper into the world of airlines.” lation, and received the Civil Aeronautics Board’s Distinguished Service award. Airfinance Journal named him among the most influential pioneers in the history of commercial aviation.

He also established innovative programs in law and social sciences at Caltech and USC while holding professorships at both institutions, served as dean of the Yale School of Management, and held professorial chairs at Caltech, Yale, and USC. Michael was a faculty member at Harvard and Yale and an academic visitor at MIT, the London School of Economics, the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya Israel, the University of Virginia, and Duke University.

Michael’s father had been a student agitator and labor organizer who met his wife at a Communist Party meeting in New York City. He

what they are doing. He started college at the University of Rochester, but after experiencing freshman hazing, fraternities, beanies, and not being able to walk on the grass until Thanksgiving unless they won the Hobart game, he realized this was high school all over again.

“I actually pledged a fraternity, because I didn’t want to die a virgin,” he recalled. “But within a month or two, I started looking to see whether there was some place where you could try out being yourself, where ‘yourself’ was a person interested in intellectual things and not terribly socially adept, which I certainly wasn’t.”

He transferred to Reed, where they didn’t care if you walked on the grass.

“Reed,” he recalled, “was small without being oppressive in a small-town way. It was not a

place where everyone wanted to mind your business or wanted you to behave like them.

In fact, you couldn’t identify an in-group, so there was no question of whether you were in or out. You might, as most young people do, belong to a group or even to a couple of groups.

But there was no consensus that this was the group to belong to on campus.”

Entering Reed as a sophomore, he majored briefly in English and psychology, and then dropped out. He returned in January as a philosophy major, and then went to Berkeley in the summer of 1961 to make up credits. There he took a course taught by American philosopher John Searle, which was influential in his decision to study philosophy. Realizing he missed Portland, he returned to Reed.

“At Reed there were a lot of people who had the sense that I did, that they didn’t quite fit into the world as they saw it, and were trying to figure out their place in it, and going through a sort of existential pain about it,” he said. “In retrospect, it was an enormously valuable experience.”

Changing his major to philosophy, he wrote a thesis on proximate cause under Prof. Marvin Levich [philosophy 1953–94], which basically posed the question, “If a whole bunch of things had something to do with making something happen, which one of them, if any, should bear june 2017 Reed Magazine 43

In Memoriam responsibility?” Michael favored the position that the answer was arbitrary and showed his chapter to Prof. Levich, who said, “This is no good. You need to completely rewrite this. You haven’t understood Hart and Honoré’s Causation in the Law.” Michael reread the source material and then rewrote the chapter so it came out the other way—not because Levich had told him to, but because due to his professor’s intervention, he had learned to see both sides of the story and make a judgment about which one makes sense.

“It was another demonstration that buying in too quickly to something that seems to explain it all is really a trip into intellectual quicksand,” Michael said.

He went on to study law at Yale. “It allows you to explore all sorts of disciplines and all sorts of intellectual problems,” he explained.

At Yale, he socialized with other Reedies; one of them, Lenny Ross ’63, told him that he should work at the Office of Management and Budget, the most powerful agency in Washington, because every agency reports to it to get budgets financed. Michael got a job as

a management intern at the OMB and met his future wife, Carol, a clerical worker at the bureau, at a Director’s Tea in 1964.

After conducting postgraduate research at Yale and the University of Chicago, he began working as an analyst for the Civil Aeronautics Board. Fourteen years later he would be director of the CAB. Because he understood the ins and outs of airline deregulation, he was wooed by airlines to help them maneuver through and build profits. It was a clear case of “follow your passion.”

As a student at Reed, Michael had spent time in the Portland public library poring over Aviation Week. At Yale, he wrote several papers on airline regulation. “I really liked airlines,” he explained, “but it wasn’t what I was going to do. I spent my life running away from being the little kid watching airplanes, and somehow got deeper and deeper into the world of airlines.”

His 1965 article for the Yale Law Journal, which cited the superior performance of the California intrastate airline system to advocate deregulation of the federal system, was a key source for the 1975 congressional hearings on deregulation and was extensively cited by Alfred Kahn

The Wizard of the Strings Philip L. Williams ’58

February 16, 2017, in Seattle, Washington, of cancer.

He was a pillar of the Northwest folk-music scene and cofounded the Northwest Folklife Festival—the nation’s largest communitypowered arts festival, which for more than 40 years has celebrated music and artistic traditions.

After discovering as a boy that his father— an attorney with building skills—didn’t know how to fix a radio, Phil proceeded to learn how. He built a laboratory in the basement and became a self-taught science-fair wizard, building and exhibiting a Tesla coil, a Van de Graaff generator, a modulated light beam transmitter, and much more. By the time he was in Olympia High School, he was known as “The Brain.”

While deciding what college to attend, he visited Reed, and, after observing professors and students eating lunch together and discussing scholarly matters, he became convinced it was the right place. He intended to major in physics, but became fascinated with the humanities and graduated with a degree in philosophy. Phil’s thesis was on the meaning of right, consistent with the dedication to honesty inherited from his parents.

After attending a Pete Seeger concert at Reed, Phil bought a banjo and learned to play it. He met his wife, Vivian Tomlinson ’59, the day she arrived on campus; they married four years 44 Reed Magazine june 2017

Phil and Vivian Williams

in his treatise on the economics of regulation.

When Kahn became CAB chairman in 1977 with a mandate to deregulate to the maximum extent possible, he named Levine his senior staff person.

After becoming one of the principal architects of deregulation, Levine served as general director, international and domestic aviation, at the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board and received its award for excellence and distinguished public service.

He once jokingly described himself as the Saint Jude (patron saint of lost causes) of organizations. “I only get hired for desperate cases because I’m a little difficult personally, and you have to really want whatever it is fixed,” he said. “Fortunately, I found a lifetime of those opportunities.”

Michael became a trustee at Reed in 1984 and served for 18 years. He introduced President Steve Koblik [1992–2001] to the Reed community and was on the search committee for President Colin Diver [2002–12­].

Michael and Carol established the Levine Family Fund to support research by Reed faculty.

Carol Stover Levine, Michael’s wife of nearly 40 years, and his two daughters, Sarah Levine and Anna Levine ’99, survive him.

later and settled in Seattle. Phil found his joy in Northwest Pioneer music, and their home accommodated an untold number of visiting musicians. He played guitar, banjo, mandolin, and bass. Vivian, a classically trained violinist, took up fiddle playing “in self-defense” to go with Phil’s banjo. The couple formed a series of bluegrass/traditional string bands that performed regionally. With their first foray to the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho, in 1966, Vivian won fiddle contests and Phil played accompaniment and taught guitar workshops.

A meticulous craftsman who could make anything, Phil built a number of custom banjo necks, an excellent guitar, and an F-style mandolin. For a day job he earned a University of Washington law degree, became the third attorney in the Williams & Williams “law factory,” and later became half of Butcher & Williams. But music was his love, and he used his law practice to help music organizations and subsidize his work as a festival organizer.

Whereas Reed and Portland had hosted “rediscovered” Mississippi Delta blues and other roots musicians, Seattle had not. To rectify this, Phil and others (in particular John Ullman ’65 and Irene Namkung ’65) founded the nonprofit Seattle Folklore Society in 1966, with Phil drafting the incorporation papers. His passion for traditional music led him to conceive of a free festival where any musician or band could perform on stage or demonstrate a traditional craft, sharing their heritage without pay. He made this vision manifest as the principal founder of the Northwest Folklife Festival in 1972. Later he became instrumental in incorporating other organizations dedicated to traditional music, including the Washington State Old Time Fiddlers’ Association, the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association, and the Darrington Bluegrass Festival.

Phil and Vivian played with several old-time dance bands and performed traditional music as a twosome. In their travels around the Northwest, they came across several 19th-century music manuscripts from an Idaho mining town and from pioneer communities in the Willamette Valley. Phil photographed each manuscript page, and Vivian reset the music in readable notation; researched the origins of the tunes, the dances done to them, and their social context; and published books about these manuscripts. They presented the early musical heritage of this region in story and music performances throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In 1967, Phil and Vivian launched Voyager Recordings and Publications to issue recordings, tune books, and instructional materials of traditional acoustic fiddle and string band music from the Pacific Northwest and throughout North America. The label started as a kind of accident after they went to fiddle contests

in Montana and Idaho. “There were all these amazing jam sessions,” Vivian said. “Phil was just running around, carrying his tape recorder and recording everything.” When the couple got back to Seattle and listened to the tapes, they realized they had a trove of music that wasn’t being recorded anywhere else—most of the traditional music labels had gone to Appalachia. Their label emphasized the Pacific Northwest and Far West of North America. The couple also recorded with the Tall Timber Boys and as a duo performing as Vivian and Phil Williams.

Phil installed a high-quality recording studio and became expert in microphone selection and placement and digital mastering. Though temperamentally introverted, he didn’t hesitate to offer opinions on issues he felt strongly about. At the age of 80, he succumbed to complications arising from cancer. Phil maintained that he was most blessed by being able to make music with the woman he loved for more than 60 years.

Prof. Frederick Tabbutt [chemistry 1957–71]

November 11, 2016, in Olympia, Washington.

Professor Tabbutt was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.

After graduating from Haverford College, he earned his doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University and came to Reed in 1957. “A hell of a nice guy,” says Bill Gilbreath ’58. After Reed, Tabbutt went on to Evergreen State College, where he was a strong proponent of collaborative interdisciplinary teaching and learning. He authored various articles for chemistry journals and also filled temporary teaching and research positions in England and at Carleton College. His wife, Betty, and children, Sarah, Ken, Mark, and Joanna, survive him.

Prof. David V. Wend [math 1949–51]

January 23, 2017, in Bozeman, Montana, at home in his sleep.

Prof. Wend lived his long life in his own way, and along the way enjoyed the bounties of the American West to their fullest. Born in Poughkeepsie, he grew up in Albany, New York, and as a child barely survived meningitis and severe secondary infections that subsequently deprived him of much of his eyesight. He graduated from the Albany Boys Academy and Hoosac School and matriculated at the University of Michigan.

During World War II, he volunteered at the Lake Placid Club, running the canoe and boat dock for convalescing veterans. Wend was a student of American pianist Stanley Hummel

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and a lifelong student of classical music. He found his true home in the mountains, especially after his career led him West. During his time as a visiting math professor at Reed, he hiked and skied his way across the Cascades and the Rockies, including a portion of Mount St. Helens that no longer remains. Returning to Michigan, he completed his dissertation, “Branched Regular Curve Families and Finite Asymptotic Paths of Analytic Functions,” in 1955. During this sojourn he met and married his partner for the next 63 years, Alice Virginia Burke. They moved to Ames, Iowa, where he took up a mathematics post at Iowa State University.

Wend left Iowa State and the flatlands in 1955 and moved his family to Salt Lake City, where he stayed for 11 years. Among his memories of his time at the University of Utah was his ability to teach morning classes and then go up to ski in the afternoon. “I got in more runs in two hours than I could during an entire weekend,” he recalled. He also loved to regale his family and friends with stories of camping in the mountains in Utah and viewing meteor showers in the crystalline night sky. After visiting Montana State University in Bozeman in 1966, he returned home and announced that he had found paradise, a place that had more cattle than people.

Wend taught at Montana State University from 1966 until his retirement in 1991. He was promoted to full professor and authored or coauthored numerous academic papers, particularly on linear and nonlinear differential equations. For decades the Wends were parishioners in Livingston’s tiny St. Andrew’s Episcopal parish, where they delighted in the company of many a true Montana original.

In the 1990s, the Wends split their time between Alice’s family home in Nor th Manchester, Indiana, and Bozeman. However, Wend always made sure to leave Indiana, as he put it, “when it stopped being human weather and started becoming corn weather.”

They maintained their residency in Montana and moved back permanently to the family abode on Harrison Street in 2006. Supremely uninterested in accumulating material wealth, june 2017 Reed Magazine 45

In Memoriam David Wend was a humane, compassionate, and brilliant man, whose inexhaustible store of patience, good humor, and even temper helped him successfully raise his children in the generational maelstrom of the 1960s and ’70s. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Alice, and his children, Chris, Eleanor, and Henry.

Attellia Vause Berg ’41

November 15, 2016, in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Attellia was born in Klickitat, Washington, to Vera Child and Francis Vause. She finished her freshman year at Reed, which both her sister, Clare Vause ’34, and brother, Colonel R. Vause ’43, also attended. That summer she met and married Gordon Berg, an Army Air Corps pilot training in Pendleton, where the Vause family lived.

After marrying in 1942, the couple moved to the East Coast, where Gordon underwent further preparation for the war. When he began flying bombing missions out of India, Attellia returned west and attended Stanford University for a year.

She painted, and her love of art and literature flourished during the couple’s extensive travels afforded by Gordon’s Air Force career.

Preceded in death by her daughter, Sydney, her husband, Gordon, and her second husband, Victor Doherty, Attellia is survived by her sons, Robert Berg, Steven Berg, and Gordon Berg, and her daughter, Janet Richards.

Margot Trumpler Howe ’41

December 4, 2016, in Ashland, Oregon, of osteoporosis.

Born in San Jose, California, to Robert and Au g u s t a Tr u m p l e r, Margot grew up on top of Mount Hamilton, where her father was an astronomer at Lick Observatory. At Reed, she majored in psychology and wrote a thesis on A Method and Treatment of Neurosis with Prof.

Monte Griffith [psych 1926–54]. The year after she graduated from Reed, she married Ralph Keeney ’42, who had also majored in psychology at Reed. Ralph was a cadet in the Army Air Corps. He died in an airplane crash in 1943. In October of that year, Margot gave birth to their son, Roger. While raising Roger, Margot continued her studies in psychology at UC Berkeley, where she met Prof. Horace Albert (Bert) Howe [physics 1952–55] in 1947. The couple had two more children, Gregg and Neil. The family moved to West Los Angeles, where Bert pursued graduate studies in nuclear physics. In 1952, the family moved to Portland, where Bert taught at Reed and worked at Tektronix. In 1955, he gained a faculty appointment at UCLA and the family returned to Los Angeles.

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In 1961, Bert and Margot divorced. By this time, she was pursuing studies in occupational therapy at San Jose State University, where she received her master’s in 1968. In 1970, she moved to Boston; she received an EdD from Boston University, followed by a faculty appointment at Tufts University, where she received tenure as a professor of occupational therapy in 1984. She married Morris Soodak, a biochemistry professor at Brandeis University, who died in 1979.

In 1989, Margot moved to Mount Shasta, California, to be closer to her son, Roger. In Mount Shasta, she met Albert Germann, a retired professor of criminology. The couple traveled extensively, and moved to Ashland, Oregon, where they were married in 2002. Al died in 2009. Margo continued to be active in the Unitarian Universalist Church for many years. She is survived by her three sons.

Helen Sundell Thompson ’44 November 9, 2016, in Anaheim Hills, California.

Born in Portland to Erland and Helmi Sundell, Helen attended Reed but graduated from the University of Washington in 1945 and taught high school math. S he mar r ied Milus “Mike” Thompson in 1952. She spent many years as a volunteer responsible for the offering count at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Beaverton and loved spending time at the Oregon coast. Helen enjoyed tole painting, creating many art pieces for family and friends.

Her husband predeceased her, and Helen is survived by her sister, Marion Thompson, and children, Earl Thompson and Sunny Freed.

Edward Douglas Kuhns ’45

December 13, 2016, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Douglas overcame great odds to lead a life of education and achievement.

When he endowed t h e K u h n s Fa m i l y Scholarship Fund at Reed, Douglas explained: “I have a permanently disabled left arm as a result of a childhood accident.

But my experience at Reed neutralized that disability, effectively making my disability disappear. As I gained confidence in myself as a scholar, I gained great confidence in myself as a person. Reed College had a profound impact on the way I carried myself out into the world.

I adopted that new persona and never looked back.”

Douglas was adopted by loving parents, Edith Youngkrantz and John Kuhns. John had been appointed by President Teddy Roosevelt as one of the first foresters under the Department of Agriculture in the Walla Walla District, near Baker, Oregon. The Kuhnses assumed that Douglas would follow in John’s footsteps as an outdoorsman. But, as Douglas noted: “The most critical and important event in my life was the accident to my left arm before I was eight years old.”

He had climbed a poplar tree and was coming back down when his foot got caught in the crotch of the tree. Falling headfirst, he put out his hand to break the fall and broke his elbow. A bone splinter blocking the proper joining at the elbow prevented him from lowering his arm beyond a 90-degree angle.

Treatment to alleviate the paralysis proved unsuccessful. His parents, not knowing what more to do, left Douglas to fend for himself.

He spent days in the local city park or at the library, reading books about world history. His few friends were also outcasts. Over time, he learned that he was athletic and smart. Two years after the accident, the family moved to Seattle, where he taught himself to play tennis. Perfecting a blistering serve, he held the ball in his racquet hand and released it at just the right time, high over his head. In high school, he and a friend won the citywide doubles competition.

The second most important event in his life, Douglas maintained, was getting into Reed. The family had moved to Portland, and Douglas took the bus to get to high school. As it drove down Woodstock Boulevard, he mused that he’d heard only geniuses went to Reed, which seemed to leave him out—his grades were not exemplary. After graduating from high school, one day he went to Reed to play tennis with a friend. Gathering up his nerve, he walked into the admission office, filled out an application, and was told to return the following Saturday to take an entrance exam.

Accepted in the freshman class a week later, he managed to save $75 and his father gave him another $50 for tuition Douglas later wrote: “I owe my life to that place.” He discovered he could accumulate knowledge and was interested in everything.

A first-year course in physiology liberated him from the residual guilt he’d felt about his childhood accident. He decided to major in political science and joined the Quest. During the summers, he worked jobs with a construction gang and at the Portland shipyards, where he met working stiffs and began attending union meetings. In the shipyards, he went to welding school and into the boilermakers union before starting the job. Deciding to write his senior thesis about the boilermakers, he stayed with them for two years, attending meetings and paying dues.

At Reed, he was elected to the student council and met his college sweetheart, Eileen Pease ’45, while working together at the Quest.

Eileen was the editor and he was the sports editor. They were married in the Reed chapel following commencement on graduation day in 1945. They went on to Syracuse University to earn their PhDs, his in economics and hers in sociology and anthropology.

Douglas had a brief career as a professor of economics and political science, and taught at Colgate University and Lake Forest College.

After an assistant professorship at Union College in Schenectady, New York, he bid farewell to the academic life and became a labor economist. Having been one himself, he became an avid protector of all underdogs, serving as the chief negotiator of pension plans between Fortune 100 companies’ management and various labor unions.

When Eileen died, Douglas established a scholarship for Reed students with financial need who have physical disabilities and disabled veterans. He is survived by his sons, John D. Kuhns, D.C. Kuhns, and Paul G. Kuhns, and his daughter, Anne Kuhns Gude. The Kuhns family asks those wanting to express condolences to donate to the Kuhns Family Scholarship Fund at Reed.

dedicated to the rescue, care, and placement of cats to loving homes through the Animal Rescue and Care Fund. She had a passion for books, and her extensive library was a source of pride. She was an accomplished pianist who loved opera and symphony, and, like her father, was an inveterate record keeper, making entries every day. Her neighbors in Northeast Portland’s Sabin neighborhood admired her quiet dignity and impeccable propriety, because Lorraine was a creative woman with a unique way of expressing herself.

Patricia Eames ’50 February 7, 2017, in Haverford, Pennsylvania, of heart failure.

Elaine Tanner Van Bruggen ’47 December 7, 2016, in Los Gatos, California.

Born in Utah, Elaine moved to Portland as a child. She went to Reed, which both her sister, Wilma Kennell ’51, and brother, K. Nolen Tanner ’43, attended. While earning her bachelor’s degree in history, Elaine met Robert Van Bruggen ’43, whom she married in 1950. She went on to earn a master’s degree in economics from UC Berkeley.

Following Robert’s graduation from medical school, the couple and their three small children settled in Los Gatos, California, where he started his practice in psychiatry. In 1966, at the age of 40, Elaine was admitted to Stanford Law School, where she graduated with a juris doctorate degree. She was one of only three women in her class of 1970. Elaine worked a general practice in law, from which she retired in 1990, the same year that Bob died. She was passionate about education and the importance of contributing to a progressive and democratic society. Her three children, Nick, Kathi, and Conrad, survive her.

Lena Lorraine Jones ’49 December 31, 2016, in Portland.

The youngest of three sisters, Lorraine spent her early years on the Oregon coast. The family relocated to Portland, where Lorraine graduated from Jefferson High School. After attending Reed, she had a long career with Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, retiring in 1982.

Lorraine’s love of animals led to a lifetime

In a newspaper story headlined “A Counsel’s Wrath,” a journalist wrote: “The first woman to be named general counsel for a major labor union, Patricia Eames, is full of fight or she wouldn’t have gotten the job.”

She grew up in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of a British merchant seaman who married an American woman and went into the floor-covering business. When it came time to choose a college, she selected Reed because “it encouraged students to make significant decisions about their education.”

She majored in history and wrote her thesis on the Communist Party of the USA with Prof.

Rex Arragon. She went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia, emphasizing social and labor history. “Some historians are interested in battles,” she said, “but that is not my bag.”

After Columbia, she took a training course in labor organizing given by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and she volunteered to go to the South in 1952.

Although she was repeatedly arrested and jailed, she successfully organized a garment plant in Walterboro, South Carolina.

“I’m persuaded that many Americans live lives that are sadly limited in ways they don’t have to be,” she said, “and that the better life that comes through a union—partly through

money but also the industrial democracy—is an important addition.”

She entered Yale Law School in 1955, one of 10 women in a class of 150. After earning her law degree, she worked as an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board, and then accepted a post as assistant general counsel for the Textile Workers Union of America, a 140,000-member organization that subsequently merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers. Pat was an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, where she was named the law school’s Professor of the Year in 1977–78, and a professor at Antioch School of Law. In 1980, she was appointed general counsel at Wayne State University in Detroit, the first woman to ever serve as general counsel at a Michigan college or university.

A lifelong supporter of Reed, Pat said, “To the extent that I have been socialized or civilized, I think that Reed had a major role in effecting that. My perception, then and now, was and is that we really did work together, did each build on shared learning, whether in conference discussion, in organization activities, or in simple sociability. And we really, really, knew how good that was. Lew Welch ’50 said, a year or so after we had been graduated, that we had been “‘so happy that we knew then that we were happy.’”

For the last 37 years of her life, Pat was partnered with Connie Campbell Hart ‘51.

The couple traveled the world and saw North America from the comfort of their motor home. In 2005, they moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania, where Connie survives her.

Eva Lowen ’50

February 8, 2017, in Portland, of natural causes on her 88th birthday.

Following the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, Eva and her parents, Charles and Hedwig Reinhold, endured numerous challenges in their native Vienna. They f le d to the Unite d States in 1940, and after a brief residence in New York City—where Eva learned and mastered the English language—the Reinholds moved to Portland.

In 1946, Eva enrolled in Reed, and through social acquaintances there, met and in 1950 married Gerald Lowen, a German native.

In 1962, the couple and their three children, Jeffrey, Shari, and Audrey, moved to Stockton, California, where Jerry worked for Tillie Lewis Foods. The family resided in the Central and Santa Clara valleys for the next 20 years. After retiring, Eva and Jerry returned to Portland june 2017 Reed Magazine 47

In Memoriam to enjoy life with a close circle of family and friends. Jerry died unexpectedly in 1993. In the following years, Eva traveled extensively throughout the world. She volunteered as a docent at the Portland Art Museum and at a local branch of the Multnomah County Library.

Throughout her adult life, she continued to cultivate her interests in foreign cultures and values, was an avid reader, and kept her mind sharp with the New York Times crossword puzzle, mahjongg, and a passion for current events. Among her many acquaintances she was acknowledged as a warm and enthusiastic hostess, enjoying lively banter. Eva embraced a passion for social justice and supported many worthy causes. Her children, Jeffrey Lowen, Shari Lowen, and Audrey Lowen Cortez, survive her.

William Montgomery ’51 December 29, 2016, in Portland.

A major force in the Portland advertising community, William joine d his father ’s a genc y, R ich ard G .

Montgomery and Associates Adver tising Agency, in 1950, working with his late father and his brother, Richard Jr., for two decades. He continued in the advertising business as agency principal and owner until his retirement in 1989. During his career, he was an instructor at the school of journalism, University of Oregon; business school at Portland State University; and Bassist College, of which he was a board member and past chairman Born in Portland, William graduated from Lincoln High School, served in the Army Air Force during the closing months of World War II, and then attended Reed. His father was a noted Northwest author and book reviewer, and during his father’s last days and following his death, William continued his father’s “book chats” radio program for several years. His grandfather was for 50 years the president of the J.K. Gill Company, founded by his greatgrandfather Joseph Kaye Gill.

William graduated from the University of Oregon in 1950 and served in the U.S. Marine Corps for years as an instructor at Quantico, Virginia. He remained active in the Marine Reserve as commanding officer of a marksmanship training unit.

For more than half of his life, he lived near the Willamette River—the last 44 years in a houseboat at the Portland Rowing Club. He was an original member of the Wilsonville City Council, a scuba diver, a parachutist, and a pilot. A member of the National Rifle Association, William was active in firearms 48 Reed Magazine june 2017

safety instruction, instructor training, and competition.

Preceded in death by his son, Michael Montgomery, William is survived by his daughters, Susan Montgomery and Barbara Kreher, and his son, Dennis Montgomery.

Beatrice Cohen Koch ’56

January 19, 2017, in Boulder, Colorado, from advanced stages of COPD and a series of falls.

Born two months premature to Joseph Cohen, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, and Beatrice Burrus Cohen, the assistant dean of women at the s a m e u n i v e r s i t y, Beatrice was Boulder’s first incubator baby.

“Little Bea” and her sister, Josephine, grew up in the shadow of the university and in the company of many students who boarded in their large house on the corner of 11th and Euclid. She received a four-year, full scholarship to Reed, where she majored in philosophy, writing her thesis, The Continuity of Means-Ends in John Dewey’s Reconstruction of Philosophy with advisor Prof. Walter Weir [philosophy 1952– 56]. At Reed, she discovered a love of biking, and after returning to Boulder, she claimed to have the town’s first 10-speed bicycle. She was also one of the few women on the Reed men’s racing team. Unfortunately, in college she started smoking—a habit that would lead, later in life, to an oxygen tube.

At Reed she met Christopher Koch ’58 and fell in love. Sharing a passion for the outdoors and hiking, they married and had two daughters, Rachel and Galen. After eight years, the marriage ended in divorce, and Bea continued to raise her girls in in New York City, working as a legal secretary.

A friend noted, “She was always dedicated to the well-being of others.” Perhaps this, and her determination for justice, began during the McCarthy era, when her father was accused of being a communist. Bea took an active role in the women’s and the equal rights movements.

She worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and for the Legal Action Center in New York. In New York, she became very involved with the Art Students League and took many classes to develop her talents in drawing.

She became intrigued with ancient Mayan culture in the 1990s and plunged into it with characteristic enthusiasm—reading incessantly, attending conferences, and traveling to Guatemala and Mexico with professional linguists who were seeking to understand the mysteries of Mayan hieroglyphic writing and iconography. Some of her closest friendships took root in this passionate group of

“Mayanistas,” where her compassionate nature, intellect, and artistic talents found expression.

Bea’s beautiful hieroglyphic drawings illustrated one internationally published paper on the site of the Dos Caobas Stelae. She was a founding member and continuing supporter of Mayas for Ancient Mayan, which helps indigenous Maya people rediscover their ancient heritage.

In large groups, her unabashed, ringing laughter was a beacon because “one could assume that all one’s friends were in the general area of that laugh.”

In 2004, she moved back to Boulder to be closer to her two daughters and to the mountains she loved. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with emphysema. Her sister, Josephine Cohen, survives her, as do her two daughters, Rachel and Galen.

Mary Jeanne Adamson Carrera ’58

November 21, 2016, in Urbana, Maryland.

Born in Ft. Riley, Kansas, Mary Jeanne moved with her mother to Mar yland after her parents’ divorce. She attended Reed and graduated from American University. In 1963, she married Nicholas Carrera and they moved to Urbana, Illinois. Mary Jeanne worked as a secretary, school teacher, and conference planner. After moving to Falls Church, Virginia, she was a substitute teacher and teacher’s aide, working with autistic children. She developed the career center at Falls Church High School, and was its first full-time director. After retiring, she and her husband moved to her childhood home in Maryland. She is survived by Nicholas, and their children, Alexandra and John.

Nancy Jones Butterfield ’60 January 6, 2017, in Chinook, Washington.

Nancy attended Reed and Portland State and spent most of her life in Astoria, Oregon. For 33 years she was an editor and feature writer at the Daily Astorian and the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, Washington. Nancy raised three boys single-handedly and loved socializing with people to discover unique things about them. A voracious reader, she enjoyed traveling, genealogy, and British TV dramas. She was a lifelong newshound, even in retirement; in 2005, when the oil barge Millicoma ran aground near Cape Disappointment, she rushed to the scene with a camera to snap dramatic photos. Preceded in death by her husband, Michael Rush, she is survived by her three sons, Mark, Tod, and Jason Butterfield.

Justin Simpson ’62

December 9, 2016, at the Mayo Clinic in Mankato, Minnesota.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Justin graduated from Jefferson High School in Portland. After attending Reed and Por tland State University, he received his master’s from the Fletcher School of L aw and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and then an MAT from Minnesota State University.

Justin served as a specialist in the U.S. Army Chemical Center and School in Fort McClellan, Alabama. He married Barbara Summerville in Nooksack, Washington, in 1970. For nearly 30 years, he taught special education at KassonMantorville High School in Minnesota and Mankato East High School. As coach of the Mankato East Academic Decathlon Teams, he led the teams to state championships at the national competitions. He served as coordinator of the Sunday school and chairman of the council for Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Peter, and with Barbara spent most summers in Oxford, England, and Portland.

The couple were active in the Saintly City Cat Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Justin served on St. Peter’s planning and zoning commission, volunteered for the Arts Center of St. Peter, and was an avid card player and a student of the history of the British monarchy. He is survived by his wife, Barbara.

Joseph Michael Freeman ’72 December 24, 2016, in Vancouver, Washington, from a cardiac event.

Mike was born prematurely, and because eyes are among the last organs to develop—and partly due to the medical measures taken to keep him alive—his retinas detached due to abnormal blood vessel growth, causing blindness.

As a child, he attended the Washington State School for the Blind, in Vancouver, Washington, where he would later serve on several committees. After graduating from Columbia River High School he came to Reed, where he wrote his thesis, Canonical Transformations Relative to a Specified Hamiltonian, with Prof. Nicholas Wheeler ’55 [physics 1963–2010]. Mike’s mother brought him to campus nearly every day the summer before he enrolled so he could practice walking with a cane to each class, to commons, and to the dorm. By fall he had the route memorized.

He went on to get a master’s in physics from New Mexico State University and worked as an information technology specialist for the Bonneville Power Administration under the U.S. Department of Energy.

Nancy Butterfield ’60 was an editor and feature writer for the Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer.

Dedicated to public works, Mike spent many years in service to the National Federation of the Blind. He was president of the Washington State chapter for several years and also served as a member of the national board. As an adult, he acquired latent autoimmune diabetes of adults.

There was never a question that he would learn to handle the disease without assistance.

“One does not fight or conquer diabetes,” he wrote in Voice of the Diabetic magazine.

“One lives with diabetes. Yes, it can be quite a nuisance at times. But, like blindness, that’s all it is for me—a nuisance. Neither blindness nor diabetes has stopped me from enjoying life.”

He held his ham radio license for more than 50 years and was an active member of the Clark County Amateur Radio Club. Remembered for a great sense of humor and a love of lively conversation, Mike was an accomplished musician and played numerous instruments.

With his wife, Connie, he enjoyed many travel adventures with their trailer. He is survived

by his wife, Connie Utterback, and daughter, Shanthi Freeman.

Marielle Canning ’84

September 6, 2016, in Costa Rica.

Born in Lima, Peru, to Patrick and Angelica Canning, Marielle and her brother, Desmond, were raised in Peru, Chile, Spain, and Mill Valley, California. She attended Reed for two years, 1982–84, and also attended Dominican College in San Rafael, California. After getting a degree in computer science from Golden Gate University, she become a database architect and instructor at Oracle Corporation. As a young girl in Spain, Marielle learned flamenco, and she retained her love of the art form, dancing in concerts around Marin County and at special occasions for family and friends. She saw the best in everyone and made close friends everywhere she lived, including her dear friends in Orosi, California, where she made her home for eight years.

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In Memoriam Kurt Peterson Shanfield ’86 January 15, 2017, in Potomac, Maryland.

Kurt cut a wide swath through Reed with her fierce intelligence and resounding laugh. Following the trajectory of her mother’s academic career, she grew up all over the world, from Dallas and Puerto Rico to Chicago and Australia, ultimately landing in Portland in 1982 as a freshman wise beyond her years. That made her instantly a “mom” figure for many of her friends: smart and centered, ready to clear the table, tackle your problem, and send you back out stronger than before.

Not that she was all seriousness. That laugh—more like an explosive cackle—was her calling card, punctuating everything that had her stamp of approval. It echoed around the Quad from the passenger seat of a “borrowed” golf cart careening around Renn Fayre, or while she made divots in the turf as she taught “Australian rules rugby” to the Reed team for PE credit. It resounded off the stained glass ceiling of Huber’s, adding backbone to a(nother) sweet Spanish coffee, and syncopated a Michael Jackson song driving one of the many Whirlpool parties over which she reigned. Brightening a heart-to-heart talk drawn into the early morning, you had her full attention, the full scope of her considerable mind, and there was no place or time that could ever matter more.

After completing her BA in psychology at Reed (An Examination of the Possible Effects of Prenatal Learning on Kin Recognition in the Rat, or, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother), Kurt found an entry-level job as a receptionist at Oregon Bank. Within a couple of years, the bank recognized her brilliance with numbers and strategy, and rocketed her up to associate vice president, where she anchored teams financing major commercial loans.

On the strength of that work, she easily gained entry to the University of Virginia’s innovative Darden School of Business, nabbing an MBA in 1992. After graduation, she quickly became a sought-after consultant specializing in economic modeling and quantitative analysis for clients as diverse as the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the gaming industry.

At Darden, she also met her future husband, Jon Shanfield, ultimately settling in Potomac, Maryland, and raising two sons, Charlie and William. There, she threw herself into her kids’ school activities and the local PTA, gaining a new legion of friends and admirers.

Reading the comments many of them wrote on her memorial page, I hear the same voice they did, coaxing, nudging, prodding the people around her to relax and be kinder, wiser, more broad-minded. At Reed, when you fell short of this ideal, she wasn’t always shy about pointing it out, but her directness was 50 Reed Magazine june 2017

Kurt Peterson Shanfield ’86: fierce intelligence, resounding laughter.

always in service of something more important than the two of you: a world where everyone feels at home. The insight could be bracing; it was always true. With legendary humility, she made us her life’s work. Now it’s up to us. —CONTRIBUTED BY MATT GIRAUD ’85

Margalit “Mara” Gibbs ’19

February 7, 2017, in Portland, from injuries sustained in a fire.

Susan Tuz ’88

November 19, 2016, in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, from cancer.

For nearly two decades, Susan did what she loved best: write about the area she called home.

She died at the age of 67, just months after retiring from her position with the News-Times and the Greater New Milford Spectrum.

S he was bor n in New Milford, Connecticut, and graduated from New Milford High School. Susan attended Reed as an Eliot Scholar in 1984–85 and enrolled as a matriculated student in 1985, but quit after the spring semester in 1988. After earning her master’s degree from West Connecticut State University, she worked as a reporter for the New Milford Times, News-Times, and the Spectrum for more than 20 years.She loved literature and the arts, belonged to a poetry group, and wrote a book, The Presence of Loss, which was a collection of short stories and poetry. She was also an advocate for the mental health community.

Her mother, Helen Tuz, brother, Michael, and sister, Patricia Monaco, survive Susan.

Mara’s life was tragically cut short by a catastrophic nighttime fire in her off-campus apartment. Awakened by the fire, she managed to dial 911, but passed out from the smoke and the heat before she could finish the call. Two other people survived by jumping from the second-floor window.

The day after Mara died, hundreds of Reedies came together to celebrate her life in the student union. As the occasion drew to a close, one of Mara’s uncles rose to thank the students for sharing their stories about his niece.

“Mara was willed into this world,” he said, referring to the determination of her mother and father to parent a child. “She was created to make lives meaningful. What I heard tonight was a glorious celebration and reflection of who she was. The seeds had been planted—this community helped her flower.”

Lauren Gibbs, Mara’s mother, said her daughter hated ceremony and even avoided

her own high school graduation. “She would not have wanted a ceremony to celebrate her,” Lauren said. “But we are going to because she loved Reed, she loved the friends she made here, she loved her classes and her professors, her internships with the Software Design Studio, and she loved Portland.”

Born to Lauren Gibbs and Steven Flax, she was named Margalit after Steven’s mother, Pearl. Margalit is the modern Hebrew form of Margaret, which means pearl. She grew up in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended high school at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where she won a prestigious Boston Globe Scholastic Art & Writing Award, graduating in 2015.

A creative child, Mara began composing songs at age four, and by the time she was five identified as a math girl, taking every math class offered. She danced and won awards for her photographs.

Her favorite courses at Reed included philosophy and computer science. She was accepted to the internship program at the Reed Software Design Studio, which pairs students with experienced professionals in the technology industry.

At the life celebration, friends shared memories and anecdotes of the whip-smart sophomore, relating her propensity for dispensing hugs and humor. Her father related that while she had friends in high school, Mara felt like a fish out of water until she came to Reed.

“As a student, Mara had focus,” Steven said.

“She wasn’t one to take an introductory survey of anything. One teacher said, ‘She would follow a problem to the end, even if it led her down a rabbit hole.’ Another said, ‘Mara is so concentrated in her attention, sometimes she doesn’t see the forest for the bark.’ At Reed, she blossomed, had friends, and met the most intellectual challenges. She loved it here.”

Early in the morning of February 5, the apartment Mara shared with other Reedies in Southeast Portland caught fire. Two other women leapt to safety from a second-story window. Firefighters found Mara inside the flaming apartment and pulled her to the hallway to begin resuscitation, but she never regained consciousness and died two days later. She donated her organs to other people through the Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank.

At the memorial, Steven said he drew two lessons from Mara’s death. “If you’re in a building and the alarm goes off and you see fire . . . Don’t be a hero, don’t try to put out the fire, don’t call 911. Get the hell out of the building as fast as you can. Call 911 from the sidewalk.

The other lesson, if I have anything to teach, is to remind you for the rest of your lives that there are people you love. Remember at every opportunity to tell them that you love them.”

From the stories Reedies shared at her memorial, it’s clear that Mara knew she was loved. The family has established a scholarship in her honor to benefit a woman studying computer science at Reed. To make a gift in her memory, please visit www.reed.edu/givingtoreed and indicate the Mara Gibbs Scholarship in the notes section.

friends of the college

Sue Cooley

February 18, 2017, in Bainbridge Island, Washington.

A generous benefactor who enriched Reed both academically and artistically, Sue Cooley was the last of the Fantastic Four, two dynamic couples—Ed and Sue Cooley and John and Betty Gray—who stepped in to provide leadership and direction in the 1970s when Reed was struggling, and instead of just treading water, imagined something great.

Sue was born in 1923 in Brazil, where her father worked for the YMCA. The family moved back to the U.S. when she was six, settling in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Sue graduated from Swarthmore College in 1944 with a degree in psychology. That year, she married Edward Cooley, also from Swarthmore, whom she’d known since high school.

At Harvard Business School Ed met John Gray, who suggested that he come to Portland and help with his chainsaw company, Omark Industries. The Cooleys moved to Portland in 1950, where they raised three children, Susan, Douglas, and Caroline. Ed started Precision Castparts, which originally provided cast parts for Omark. It grew into a giant casting company that provided parts for the aerospace industry.

Many of Sue’s ancestors were artisans who valued working with their hands, and she developed a lifelong passion for painting as a child. As a young woman, she worked for a ceramic artist, and later volunteered at the Ceramic Studio in Portland. That interest in the arts and painting informed her service on the board of the Portland Art Museum, and on Bainbridge Island, where she helped fund the Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network (BARN).

She also supported many artists in the Northwest and Maui.

In the 1960s, President Richard Sullivan [president 1956–67] began recruiting board members who could help secure Reed’s future.

One of those people was Ed Cooley, whose long association with Reed began in 1966, when he was named to the Reed nuclear reactor committee and donated funds for the facility. He joined the board in 1968 and was an active and generous trustee. “ W hen Ed came to Reed, so did Sue,” explained Hugh Porter, vice president for college relations. “We were really fortunate to have Ed and Sue and John and his wife Betty

so closely involved with Reed. They made a dynamic foursome.”

In 1988, the Cooleys and the Grays gave a gift of $4.7 million to Reed, part of which established the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery in honor of the Cooleys’ son Douglas, who died in 1982. The mission of the gallery is to enhance the academic offerings of Reed with a diverse range of scholarly exhibitions, lectures, and colloquia in its role as a teaching gallery. The Cooley/Gray art fund also provided funding for the Joshua C. Taylor Chair in Art History and Humanities (currently held by Prof. Dana Katz [art 2005–]) and the Jane Neuberger Goodsell Professorship in Art History and Humanities (currently held by Prof. William Diebold [art 1987–]). In addition, the gift created the Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors Program in the Visual Arts. Through the Cooley Gallery, the fund also supports a free educational outreach initiative serving the K–12 community, which engages young students in sustained and rigorous dialogue about the works of art in the gallery, coordinated by Gregory MacNaughton ’89.

Following her husband’s death, Sue established the Edward H. Cooley Scholarship Fund to provide financial aid to students with need.

As one recipient wrote to her: “Whatever beauty will surround me will be because of you and this scholarship. I will not say thank you but instead I will make my life into a piece of art and dedicate it to you and all this generosity in the world.”

A year later Sue established the Elizabeth N. Gray Scholarship in memory of her friend, Betty Gray.

“Sue was a presence,” said Porter. “She wanted to understand the impact of her gift and to stay on top of the spending to understand how students were helped. She never lost interest.”

In later years, Sue and Ed established a second home on Maui. She grieved the untimely loss of two adult children with grace, and following the death of Ed in 2000, moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, where her daughter Caroline lived, spending winters on Maui.

Her daughter, Caroline Browne, survives Sue, as do three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

pending Harold Carlson ’39, Elizabeth Brown ’40, Owen Cramer ’40, Betty Brockman Martin ’41, Dwayne Feeken ’44, David Johnson ’44, Marietta Bunzel Spencer ’44, Arthur Wilson ’45, Kurt Nelson ’48, Arnold Westerman ’48, Thomas Williams ’50, Roger Newhall ’51, James Robertson ’51, Israel Feuer ’53, Richard Schultz ’55, H. Jean Tibbets Thiebaux ’57, Toby Gersten Quitslund ’61, Alan Arey ’65, Guy Tarnstrom ’65, Russell Dubisch ’67, Robert Dritz ’67, Joann Osterud ’68, Steven Brown ’73, Susan Hagmeier ’75, James Horan ’80, Niloufar Mobasser ’81, Paul Ward ’02.

june 2017 Reed Magazine 51

What we’re looking at in class

SHADOW PUPPETS Traditions of shadow puppetry were the focus of the second half of Prof. Peter Ksander’s [theatre 2011–] Puppetry and the Performing Object class this spring. Students studied both traditional Indonesian shadow play and contemporary forms inspired by it. They began the course by exploring what defines a puppet, where the line between a puppet and a mask lies, and what it means to animate objects.

For their final project, the students developed and performed a shadow theatre adaptation of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

52 Reed Magazine june 2017

Pictured here are shadow masks of Klaatu and Helen (created by Aziza Afzal ’17, working with Ry Burke ’17, Jake Gonnella ’17, and Ashlin Hatch ’17). The figure on the left is the puppet; on the far right is the puppet’s shadow on the screen. The students innovated on a technique that allows the shadow masks to show both a forward-facing and a profile image, and so also visible in this image is the shadow cast by one of the alternate faces onto the puppet itself.

For Ksander, the class is an exciting opportunity to complicate and blur the roles of designers and performers in the theatre.

PHOTO BY CLATYON COTTERELL

Object of Study

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 9 A.M. RACE START REED COLLEGE QUAD, 3203 SE WOODSTOCK BLVD, PORTLAND, OR 97202 FREE PANCAKE BREAKFAST AND OTHER FUN ACTIVITIES FROM 9:30 TO 11:30 A.M. 100% of registration fees and sponsorship dollars go to Portland Public Schools.

This community event is open to people of all ages and skill levels. Not a runner? You can volunteer, cheer on your loved ones, enjoy free pancakes, and take in Reed’s beautiful campus.

Learn more and sign up to run, sponsor, or volunteer at: reed.edu/5k.

Support education, and promote your business, by joining our team of generous sponsors.

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Julien Howells ’17 at an undisclosed off-campus location with the captive Doyle Owl.