Tulanian Winter 2009

Office of University Publications 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1 New Orleans, LA 70118–5624

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Tulanian T H E M AG A Z I N E O F

WINTER 2009

Friends in Deed Alumni give hands-on help in rebuilding New Orleans T H E M AG A Z I N E O F T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y

RAMBLIN’ MAN Nick Spitzer digs American roots music

SPEAKING TREASON Tim Wise talks race, fluently

hiddenTulane Shelf life. Weighted down with the past, bookshelves in Special Collections of the HowardTilton Memorial Library hold New Orleans city directories, encyclopedias of Louisiana history and Tulane Jambalayas .

TULANE UNIVERSITY

VO L . 8 0 , N O . 3

In Jimmy’s Honor E. RAMóN ARANGO NEVER ATTENDED TULANE UNIVERSITY. But he chose giving to Tulane as a way to honor the life of his late partner, Jimmy Rooks. Rooks (L ’58) attended Tulane Law School on scholarship and stayed connected to Tulane for many years.

When he died in 2006, Rooks had willed to Tulane a partial interest in an apartment complex.

Arango helped Tulane convert this bequest into cash, and the Jimmy Taylor Rooks Scholarship Endowed Fund was created, providing scholarship support for law students. What happened next surprised even Arango.

Jimmy Rooks and E. Ramón Arango on a trip to Cuba sponsored by the Tulane School of Architecture.

“I decided that I would leave the major part of my own estate to Tulane, in Jimmy’s honor,” he said. Arango’s gift, which includes naming Tulane beneficiary of an IRA, will create another fund, the J.Taylor Rooks Scholarship Endowed Fund, which will also provide scholarship support for law students.

NAME TULANE BENEFICIARY of part or all of your IRA, employer-sponsored retirement plan, or life insurance policy. It’s simple, and could result in tax savings as well.

THEN LET US KNOW. We’d like to know how you want Tulane to use your gift. And we’d like to recognize you, if you wish, with lifetime membership in the prestigious William Preston Johnston Society.

Contact us for sample beneficiary designation language and read more about Arango’s gift at www.plannedgiving.tulane.edu.

Your Gift. Your Way. Office of Planned Gifts • 504-865-5794 • toll free 800-999-0181 Bequests • Gift Annuities • Charitable Trusts • Retirement Plan Gifts • Securities Gifts • Real Estate Gifts • Insurance Gifts

what’s Inside

Tulanian www.tulanian.edu

20 Friends in Deed by Mary Ann Travis Newcomb “gals,” circa class of ’69, remember Betsy while helping New Orleans rebuild from Katrina.

28 Ramblin’ Man by Ryan Rivet Professor Nick Spitzer is trailing musicians along American routes.

34 Speaking Treason by Nick Marinello Tim Wise (A&S ’90) is a privileged white guy and he’ll tell you what he thinks that status means.

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4 President’s Perspective Keep Tulane on track during the downturn.

5 Inside Track News notes Tiffany windows on view • James Mackin interprets President Obama’s rhetoric • Robotic patients play sick• Warren Buffett offers tips to business students• Reily Student Recreation Center turns 20.

Scholarship Scientists explore molecules as semiconductors • Jeff Stacey represents at State• Students document coastal erosion • Shirin Neshat discusses Women Without Men • James Carville’s class deconstructs the election.

Green wave Matt Forte is quite a guy—and a heck of a football player.

Freret jet WTUL radio keeps its free-form spirit for half a century.

14 Ask the Expert Tulane provost and historian Michael Bernstein compares the Great Depression to today’s recession.

15 Art Space Clarence John Laughlin’s 1950 photo reflects a car dealership.

16 Mixed Media From military bases to databases, the Louisiana coast to the Russian North, books by faculty and alumni look at the world.

18 Photo Riff Students make a snowman in our own backyard.

42 Giving Back If you are a graduate of the last 10 years and you’ve never given back to Tulane, now’s the time because your gift will be doubled by a match from a generous donor.

43 The Classes Read about Tulane alumni—lawyers, composers and occupations in-between—their marriages, births, deaths and other milestones.

56 New Orleans Signs sprout like weeds in abandoned lots.

58 Johnston Society Donors who have provided for Tulane in their wills are recognized.

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Professor of practice James Carville encourages bipartisan dialogue in his class when former U.S.House Speaker Newt Gingrich (G ’71) visits as a guest speaker in March.

On the cover: Newcomb graduates in the 60ish age group roll up their sleeves to build houses in New Orleans. Inside front cover: “Roots” by Jennifer Odem hangs from the ceiling of the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women Library this winter. Photos by Paula Burch-Celentano.

VOL. 80, NO. 3

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Tulanian

between the Lines

Editor Mary Ann Travis mtravis@tulane.edu Features Editor Nick Marinello mr4@tulane.edu “The Classes” Editor Fran Simon fsimon@tulane.edu

Heart and soul

Contributers Alicia Duplessis aduples@tulane.edu

“I was sad because I had no shoes but then I met a man who had no feet.”

Sylvester Johnson told me this simple story. He is the associate vice president of facilities

Ryan Rivet rrivet@tulane.edu

services at Tulane who directed the daunting effort to cleanup and repair the campus after

Keith Brannon kbrannon@tulane.edu

Hurricane Katrina. At the time, he was dealing with damage from 5 feet of floodwater for three weeks in his own house. But he didn’t feel sorry for himself. He’d encountered plenty of other

Catherine Freshley cfreshle@tulane.edu Kathryn Hobgood khobgood@tulane.edu

people whose homes had been completely washed away.

It was common for victims of Katrina to lose their footing after the storm.

But then the volunteers came. Volunteers like the group of Newcomb alumnae featured in

Maureen King mking@tulane.edu Richie Weaver rweaver@tulane.edu

“Friends in Deed” on page 20 gave the citizens of New Orleans a leg up—and hope.

With a generous and caring spirit fortified by outrage over government ineptitude, a million volunteers have built hundreds of houses in New Orleans. Without them, the city would

Art Director Melinda Viles mviles@tulane.edu

not be as rebuilt as it is.

The Newcomb women travel to New Orleans to build houses as “a commitment of the

University Photographer Paula Burch-Celentano pburch@tulane.edu

heart,” says Marilyn Zwick Storch, class of 1969.

Production Coordinator and Graphic Designer Sharon Freeman sfree@tulane.edu

rebuild. “Come down and give back,” says Puddin’ Brown Cox, class of 1971.

Graphic Designer Tracey O’Donnell tbodonn@tulane.edu President of the University Scott S. Cowen Vice President of University Communications Deborah L. Grant (PHTM ’86) Executive Director of Publications Carol Schlueter (B ’99) cjs@tulane.edu

A message that they would like to convey to Tulanian readers is that you, too, can help

“

Our other stories in this Tulanian relate to music

It’s a commitment of the heart.

and race, subjects tied to New Orleans, for sure, but

—Marilyn Swick Storch, Newcomb class of 1969

host of “American Routes,” a syndicated radio show

”

also to the larger American experience. In “Ramblin’ Man” on page 28, Ryan Rivet talks to Nick Spitzer, a Tulane professor of communication and producer and

that he created 10 years ago. Spitzer has interviewed and followed all the great figures in “roots” music of

the past few decades.

So much of your views on the subject of race may depend on your own race. In “Speaking Treason” on page 34, Nick Marinello explores Tim Wise’s take on race. Wise, a 1990

Tulanian (USPS 017-145) is a quarterly magazine published by the Tulane Office of University Publications.

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Send editorial correspondence to: Tulanian, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624, or e-mail tulanian@tulane.edu.

Opinions expressed in Tulanian are not necessarily those of Tulane representatives and do not necessarily reflect university policies. Material may be reprinted only with permission.

Tulane University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution.

POSTMASTER: Send addr ess changes to Tulanian, 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1, New Orleans, LA 70118-5624.

Winter 2009/ Vol. 80, No. 3

College of Arts and Sciences graduate, is not afraid to rush in where angels fear to tread to explore black and white perspectives.

Let us know what you think, and look for us online at http://tulane.edu/tulanian/index.cfm.

Enjoy!

Mary Ann Travis Editor, Tulanian

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Your letters are always welcome.

E-mail is the best way to reach us: tulanian@tulane.edu.

You can also write us by U.S. mail: Tulanian, University Publications, Suite 219, 200 Broadway, New Orleans, LA 70118.

Tulanian is your magazine!

BIKING MEMORIES Although not a student graduate of Tulane, I am a loyal faculty alum. I started as a visiting assistant professor in the Biology Department in 1970, gradually working my way up the faculty hierarchy to Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology. I never expected to leave Tulane. Nevertheless, when my home flooded and all my laboratory cultures died after Hurricane Katrina, I took a good job at an above-sea-level state university. However, I have left much of my heart at Tulane and in New Orleans. I read issues of the Tulanian from cover to cover, enjoying each article and looking for news of my former students in the class notes. Nick Marinello’s feature articles are always well written and provocative but I thought “Balancing Act” in the fall 2008 issue was particularly good.

During my many years as a member of the Tulane faculty, I commuted by bicycle.

Swerving for potholes became automatic.

Only in retrospect do I fully appreciate the built-in exercise and visual pleasures (e.g., eccentric architecture; Mardi Gras beads hanging from foliage; seasonal home decorations on Audubon Blvd., etc) of my daily commute. Thank you for stimulating so many good memories.

Joan W. Bennett Rutgers University New Brunswick, N.J. PHILOSOPHICALLY THINKING In the fall [2008] issue of the Tulanian, you had an article introducing us to the philosophy department. It was very interesting to me to read about the two professors you highlighted,

Dr. Sensen and Dr. Burger. Dr. Sensen’s thoughts regarding the limits of knowledge were challenging. Dr. Burger’s approach to Aristotle was innovative and worthwhile to consider. ... [and] will keep me thinking for some time.

Thanks for your thoughtful article.

Jim Boulet, B ’50 Larose, La. LIFE’S WORK When I read the Fall 2008 article about the Tulane Philosophy Department, I was transported back to one of my first classes, with Ronna Burger under an oak tree facing the trolley tracks on St. Charles. By the time I graduated with a degree in philosophy (and history), having taken many classes with Ronna and Michael Zimmerman, my preferred choice was a life in academic philosophy. The hard work that involves and the employment prospects, however, convinced me to go to law school instead. More than a quarter century later, though, I can affirm that philosophy is a life’s work. There is a discipline and creativity to this way of thinking, always combined with the certainty that one will only arrive at possible answers but never certainty. This frustrates many people, but the process avoids the pitfall of false certainty.

An education in philosophy never gets left behind. … I have recently become involved in litigation over the ethics of human research. The ethics involved are nearly intuitive because of my time at Tulane. Just as importantly, though, my training in philosophy and law teaches me that the legal issues are not a debate in Plato’s cave, but something to be resolved according to a different set of ground rules.

The greatest help of my education in my career, however, is simply the training in how to think creatively and critically. …

This story illustrates the brilliance of philosophical inquiry. Accepting uncertainty creates an opportunity to redefine what is.

Rigorous thought and imagination combine to

find insights that could never be reached with a more accepting frame of thought.

Gardner M. Duvall, A&S ’83 Baltimore JOYHORNS Horns rise to the sky, Bent in bright curves; Notes like sky rockets, Leaving fizzing bottles.

Pop with pleasure!

Done in joy.

Drums pump excited blood, Like fine arches, Like classic columns.

All painted Imaginary colors.

Lincoln J. Schneider, TC ’03 Gainesville, Fla. [Lincoln Schneider wrote this poem while visiting New Orleans. He’s in law school at the University of Florida.]

SCOTT’S E-MAIL First off, the cover [fall 2008] is magnificent, I am holding on to it!

Secondly, as per Scott Cowen’s President’s Perspective, where he invites us to e-mail him, what is his address?

Dara Holzman, NC ’90 Hoboken, N.J. [Tulane President Scott Cowen’s e-mail address is: scowen@tulane.edu. He does, indeed, read his e-mail and welcomes comments, advice and constructive criticism.]

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president’s Perspective On track in tough times The last time I spoke to you from this page my focus was on the declining economy and how Tulane University was responding to it.

I don’t have to tell you that the global economic downturn continues to be problematic on a scale unseen in decades, and you have likely heard the same predictions that I have regarding the downturn’s duration and how its adverse impact will likely continue through this year and into 2010.

No sectors of the economy are immune to this recession, including higher education.

Yet, I remain optimistic that Tulane will weather this chaotic period better than most of our peers. My optimism is rooted in several factors, not the least among them is the success of our post-Katrina academic and administrative strategies that have led to a strong and lean organization.

In addition, we are taking belt-tightening measures to keep us on track in these tough times, including setting our employment base at current levels and limiting salary increases in the coming year to those members of the institution who are at the lower end of the pay scale.

Nevertheless, like other higher education institutions, Tulane is facing the realities of a smaller endowment, lower endowment income, decreases in major fund raising and lower state support, while at the same time projecting an increased need for student financial aid. And hunkering down merely to survive this storm cannot be our goal because this institution plays too large a role in the life of the New Orleans community as well as in developing the hearts and minds of the young people who launch their adult lives at Tulane.

Tulane is one of the state’s largest employers and is an institution that has more than any other led the City of New Orleans back from its utter collapse following the storm. I am very aware of the responsibilities we shoulder.

Through the stories you have read in this

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magazine and elsewhere, you have learned about the critical role Tulane has played in redeveloping the city’s public education and healthcare delivery systems since Katrina. You also know how the efforts of our students, faculty and staff have enabled the revival of several neighborhoods that not very long ago were considered uninhabitable.

At the same time, we have built upon our core academic strengths, and the remarkable synergy between intellectual pursuit and public service has created unprecedented levels of student interest in Tulane.

We want to ensure that we can continue to provide scholarships to our outstanding students and to support our community activities that are so important to the recovery of New Orleans. But we need your help.

Your giving is vitally important to our ability to stay on track for our students and our community.

In fact, that is the inspiration for the name of a special campaign we’ve instituted this spring. The goal of “Tulane on Track” is to raise $15 million from 15,000 people by June 30. You can learn more about it at tulane.edu/ontrack.

When you give to the Tulane Fund, your gift goes to work immediately, providing for student scholarships, as well as faculty support, research and programs essential to the ongoing recovery of our community.

With your help, we will not only survive this economic storm, but continue to advance the remarkable mission of this distinctive, truly unique, institution.

insideTrack Company of angels Matt Traylor, left, and Tom Traylor from Exhibits Unlimited move a Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass panel in preparation for the Newcomb Art Gallery exhibit, “In Company of Angels: Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows.� Works by Tiffany and pieces from the Newcomb Art Gallery collections are on display through June 28.

newsNotes insideTrack Power to the people?

During his successful presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama rallied his supporters around the mantra, “Yes, we can,” an appeal for not only change, but also for involvement. Within minutes of taking the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20, Obama was incorporating the sentiment of that bumper-sticker slogan into the rarefied air of his inaugural address.

“What struck me was that Obama was asking not only for volunteerism among people but something more than that,” says James Mackin, associate professor of communication and an expert in rhetoric and persuasive speech. “What he’s looking at is a change in the nature of democracy.”

In parsing the inaugural address as well speeches delivered by Obama on the campaign trail, Mackin sees evidence that the new president is attempting to frame democracy in a way that differs from how Thomas Jefferson and the nation’s founding fathers viewed it.

“It’s the difference between representative democracy and participative democracy,” says Mackin.

Generally speaking, a participative democracy is one in which a broad base of constituents is involved in decision-making processes.

“In a participative democracy the people are much more active in their own governance,” says Mackin. “You don’t leave it up to your representatives. You get involved. You go to meetings.”

“

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

—President Barak Obama

In his inaugural speech, Obama most directly prescribed public participation when he stated, “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.”

He also couched his call for involvement in more subtle ways. While reading the text of the speech reveals several “good turns of phrase,” Mackin believes Obama deliberately chose simple language and a modest style of delivery to undercut the public mythmaking that paints him as a hero and savior.

“It was important that he communicate in this speech that, ‘I am not the agent of change. I am just a leader. You are the real agents of change,’” says Mackin.

The fact that Obama is able to rely on the people to be the agents of change implies that he has a trust in the people’s ability, says Mackin, who notes ObAssociate professor of communication and expert on persuasive speech James Mackin analyzes President Obama’s message. ama’s activist roots as a

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community organizer in Chicago, as well as the effectiveness of his campaign, which adopted many organizational tactics used in grassroots movements.

“This is someone who really believes in the power of people to get things done at the local level,” says Mackin. “He’s not just talking about regenerating the wheels of the economy by everyone going to work harder, though

”

that is part of it. He is also talking about people organizing and creating change at their own level, something we have become more familiar with here in New Orleans.”

According to Mackin, New Orleanians who became active in neighborhood groups and other civic organizations to expedite and in some cases initiate the recovery process after Hurricane Katrina have already embraced participative democracy.

Mackin also hears the call for participative democracy in Obama’s promise to hold the government accountable for its actions.

Halfway through his inaugural address, Obama stated: “Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account—to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day—because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Participative democracy is not a panacea, says Mackin. It can only be sustained by an energized, informed citizenry and a cooperative government. And there is no guarantee that those who choose to participate will consider the interests of those who do not.

Still, says Mackin, “Participative might be a better way.”

—Nick Marinello Nick Marinello is features editor of Tulanian.

insideTrack newsNotes

In Tulane medical school’s new simulation center, a robotic manikin presents the same symptoms as an actual live patient, giving Dr. James Korndorffer Jr. (left) the opportunity to train surgery medical residents Jonathan Stevens and Marie Unruh to do real-life medical procedures.

Talking robots advance medical training Life-sized robotic manikins mimicking the ailments and symptoms of real-world patients are the stars of the Tulane Center for Advanced Medical Simulation and Team Training, opened in January by Tulane University School of Medicine.

Like pilots-in-training using simulation cockpits to learn to fly, Tulane medical students and other healthcare professionals now participate in caring for robotic patients in a replicated hospital setting. The $3 million, 14,000-square-foot facility is located on the third floor of the Murphy Building at 131 S. Robertson St. in New Orleans’ downtown medical district.

The Center for Advanced Medical Simulation and Team Training offers a fully equipped emergency room, intensive-care unit, operating room, clinical exam rooms, hospital patient rooms, nurses’ station and labor-and-delivery suite.

The robotic patients in the simulated

hospital are adult, toddler and infant sizes.

They breathe, move their eyes, speak and even have a variable pulse and heart rate.

They react to doses of medication, can receive intravenous therapy and, occasionally, go into cardiac arrest and expire.

The center allows students to follow a patient’s journey from an initial diagnosis in a doctor’s office to being rushed into an operating room for treatment. Standardized patients—live actors trained to follow a scripted set of symptoms—also are integrated into the training with the robotic patients.

To maximize the lessons learned in training, the center has a network of 42 cameras and numerous microphones to record all aspects of procedure simulations.

A team of healthcare trainees can spend the morning performing laparoscopic surgeries in one room and afterwards enter a debriefing room where an instructor screens a DVD recording of their work in order to assess their skills. The monitoring system also links the simulation sessions to off-site classrooms and two-way microphones allow classroom facilitators to ask questions of

instructors while sessions are in progress.

“Having the ability to review web-based video of the simulation event is a tremendous asset for participants, who can assess their work and reinforce the techniques they practiced,” says Dr. James Korndorffer Jr., medical director for the center. “This greatly enhances the educational opportunity of the simulation training.”

What sets the Tulane center apart from other medical simulation centers is emphasis on interprofessional team training, says Dr. Benjamin Sachs, senior vice president and dean of Tulane University School of Medicine.

“Despite the fact that most health care today is delivered by teams, healthcare professionals are rarely training together,” says Sachs. “The center, which is one of the few in the country with medical simulators and team training, provides physicians and students the opportunity to learn firsthand the benefits of working together to reduce medical errors in a realistic environment.”

—Keith Brannon Keith Brannon is assistant director of public relations at Tulane.

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newsNotes insideTrack Business students consult the ‘Oracle’ A select group of students from the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane flew to Omaha, Neb., in October to spend an afternoon with billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Dubbed the “Oracle of Omaha” and named the second-richest man in the world

by Forbes magazine, Buffett shared his thoughts on the future of Wall Street and what he looks for in a good investment. Buffett is chair and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate holding company.

Accompanied by Peter Ricchiuti, Freeman School assistant dean, the 27 students participated in a two-hour, question-and-answer session with Buffett. They also had lunch with Buffett and tours of two Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries, Nebraska Furniture Mart and Borsheims, one of the largest independent jewelry stores in the nation.

Although Berkshire Hathaway has since lost almost half its value in the stock market crash and his wealth has taken a nosedive, Buffett’s definition of success would likely remain the same today as it did when he met with the students. He told second-year MBA student Kathleen Murphy that a successful person is someone everyone wants to be around and someone everyone wants to be sure is around.

Master of finance students Yifan Zuo, Yu Huang and Hanhan Chen meet investor “master of the universe” billionaire Warren Buffet in Omaha, Neb., on an A. B. Freeman School of Business field trip.

“My favorite idea that he talked about was that an individual chooses his or her behavior and personality,” Murphy said. “I liked it because it reminded me of something my dad has been telling me for as long as I can remember. My dad says that happiness is an act of will. I liked that Warren Buffett wanted to talk about appreciating and enjoying life as much as he wanted to talk about investing.”

Buffett told the students—19 undergraduate seniors and eight second-year graduate students, randomly chosen from applications from the top 25 percent of each class in the business school—that he looks for simplicity

in investments. He seeks companies that are positioned for growth because of their service or product, not because of their management, which can easily change.

He advised the students to look at companies in which to invest that “an idiot could run, because at some point an idiot is going to run it,” Ricchiuti said. Ricchiuti also is director of research for Tulane’s Burkenroad Reports, a securities research program in which MBA students publish and distribute investment research reports on 40 small-cap companies in six Southern states.

—Keith Brannon

Fun and fitness The Reily Student Recreation Center celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The 156,000-square-foot recreation facility has been a center of exercise, fun and fair play since its construction in 1989.

Every year more than 4,000 students get involved in Reily programs, including intramural and club sports, fitness and wellness, instructional activities, aquatics and outdoor recreation, says Missie McGuire, assistant vice president of campus recreation and student centers.

The Reily Center goes all out to be a good neighbor. It has been the host venue for community events such as the Louisiana Special Olympic Games, the Greater New Orleans Senior Olympic Tournaments and NCAA Youth Education in Sports Programs.

The Reily Center anniversary celebration includes special events for alumni in the fall during homecoming 2009. For more information, go to www.reilycenter.com.

—Alicia Duplessis Alicia Duplessis is a staff writer in the Tulane Office of Publications.

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PHOTO OF WARREN BUFFETT AND FREEMAN STUDENTS BY DEREK LITTLE

insideTrack scholarship Building blocks for perfect machines It’s commonly known that DNA molecules are the building blocks of life, but Tulane University scientists also are learning that DNA molecules are like perfect nanomachines that can be the building blocks of machines, too.

“Many people are looking for the perfect machine, and it literally may be right in the palm of our hands,” says Alex Burin, an assistant professor of chemistry. “The art is how to extract the information that we need to know.”

Burin is exploring the ways in which DNA molecules are capable of functioning as semiconductors. DNA molecules may one day be integral in producing electricity more efficiently and less expensively than current silicon solar panels, he says.

A molecule is the smallest particle of a material that is capable of retaining the material’s physical properties. Among the physical properties of some molecules is the ability to conduct an electronic charge.

The way a charge moves through a DNA sequence may one day be instrumental in identifying genetic disorders, genetic damage and viral infections as well as producing electricity.

Burin’s research findings were published in the January 2009 Journal of the American Chemical Society, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Burin also is the lead author of a paper in the Jan. 21, 2009, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Burin and other Tulane scientists are conducting research into DNA photonics in

collaboration with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University and Boston College. The National Science Foundation sponsors the work.

The scientists are studying electron movement in DNA by putting together structures called DNA hairpins in a laboratory. A DNA hairpin is a single strand of DNA that is bent over like a bobby pin, with several DNA base pairs matched up on each side of the loop.

A small DNA hairpin offers up everything about a DNA molecule’s physics, chemistry and biology, says Burin. By providing optical

energy to a molecule of DNA with a laser, the scientists are observing and analyzing the manner in which an electronic charge is transmitted through these hairpins as well as learning how to interpret the data.

Eventually, they hope to excite the charge through solar energy.

—Kathryn Hobgood and Fran Simon Kathryn Hobgood is assistant director of web communication and public relations at Tulane. Fran Simon is “Classes” editor of Tulanian.

Stacey goes to State Jeff Stacey, assistant professor of political science, is a scholar-in-residence at the U.S. Department of State this year. He is researching U.S. and British military occupations. Stacey is attached to the Office of the Secretary’s Coordinator on Reconstruction and Stabilization.

“I call it the ‘failed-states shop’ for short,” says Stacey. “Its mission is to solve the dilemmas about the current batch of failed states—Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

—Ryan Rivet Ryan Rivet is a staff writer in the Tulane Office of Publications.

ILLUSTRATION BY GETTY IMAGES

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scholarship insideTrack Shifting sands on Grand Isle Students measuring the loss of sand on the barrier island of Grand Isle, La., are seeing coastal erosion happen before their eyes.

Dean Moosavi, a professor of practice in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, takes students in his physical geology course to the spit of land on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico where they are observing rapid land loss in southern Louisiana. The course fulfills part of the public-service graduation requirement.

Grand Isle is an example of the deteriorating barrier islands that have served in the past as part of a natural storm surge protection system for coastal Louisiana.

“We knew the island is incredibly vulnerable,” says Moosavi. “But we didn’t realize how rapidly the erosion was occurring, how quickly the island is disappearing.”

This fall, the students in the class measured the beach after the storm surges of hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit the island to determine the new erosion rate and to compare it to prestorm measurements. They found that the island had been breached in two places, with erosion extending through the beach into the forest.

“Less than half of the island was left in this area,” Moosavi says. “Storms come and go, but rarely do you have data before and after.”

Moosavi’s students began in spring semester

A dolphin greets students who have come to Grand Isle State Park as part of a physical geology course at Tulane.

2008 to measure the height of the beach relative to sea level, transecting the eastern end of Grand Isle every 50 meters. Collaborating with Grand Isle State Park and the New Orleans Geological Society, they gathered baseline data for the eastern two miles of the island.

The students conducted follow-up measurements five weeks after their baseline measurements to determine the rate of erosion. Moosavi says he expected the students’ data to show the loss of beach sand over time. But both he and the students were “shocked” by the dramatic changes they observed.

“For many of these students, this is their one lab science class, and they’re collecting data to help protect a public space,” says

Moosavi. “It’s a taste of science that’s meaningful for them.”

Measurements of this type have not been made on Grand Isle before, which makes the effort particularly valuable as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers attempts to build up the sand dunes on the island. The Corps’ attempt during the summer of 2008 to restore the dunes for the first time in 30 years proved insufficient for storm surges from Gustav and Ike, says Moosavi.

Moosavi wants his students gain an appreciation of the fragility of the Louisiana coastal region, and he’s continuing to take students to Grand Isle every semester.

He also teaches the students that other coastal regions are vulnerable. The world’s physical and ecological system is dependent upon land-use decisions made by humans, and his students learn what steps individuals can take to combat environmental threats.

Eventually, Moosavi anticipates having data to present to the community, which will help inform decisions about how the island’s dune system can be restored. In the meantime, the School of Science and Engineering is seeing an increase in students wanting to major in earth and environmental sciences.

“There never will be enough geologists to monitor everything that needs to be monitored,” Moosavi says. “But what we need are more ‘citizen scientists’ to raise red flags.”

—Fran Simon

overHeard Sometimes I worry that people often look at my work as a sociological study about Iran or the subject of Islamic culture. So then I have to say, I have to insist that, listen, I am not the ambassador to Iran or the Islamic culture at large. In fact, I’m just this one small person, who is not really talking about the truth but a fiction.

“

—Shirin Neshat

”

Iranian American artist Shirin Neshat discussed her work at a presentation in Dixon Hall on Jan.30, 2009.She especially focused on her video/film project Women Without Men.The video installation Women Without Men was exhibited at the Newcomb Art Gallery as part of the international biennial“Prospect1.New Orleans”from Nov.1, 2008, to Feb.7, 2009.Neshat’s provocative exploration of the lives of Iranian women is based on her personal experience as an artist in exile from her own country.

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PHOTO BY SANDREDIN “DEAN” MOOSAVI

insideTrack scholarship on Course

Political strategist turned professor of practice, James Carville challenges students to question conventional wisdom.

Dissection of 2008 presidential election If there’s one thing students can count on in legendary political pundit James Carville’s class on the 2008 presidential election, it’s that things won’t be “business as usual.”

Forty students chatter anxiously in the few minutes before class starts. Tonight, they are handing in their first paper, in which they were asked to support or refute the thesis of a forthcoming book by Carville.

Louisiana-raised Carville, lead strategist for President Bill Clinton’s first campaign and frequent guest commentator on CNN, moved to New Orleans last summer and joined Tulane’s political science department as a professor of practice for the spring 2009 semester. Carville hopes that students will come to love politics as much as he does.

Senior Kramer Schmidt, who plans to pursue a political career, says, “It’s unlike other classes. You prepare for a comedy act and political science lesson at the same time.”

Carville walks in casually, wearing a melon-colored T-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

He opens the class by asking the students,

PHOTO BY DEREK TOTEN

“Who did you vote for?”

The first student to speak up says, “Obama.”

“Well, how’s he doing?” Carville asks. A few hazard an answer. Carville rapidly asks questions of the students, challenging their answers, encouraging critical analysis of ideas. Even though Carville is a well-known Democrat, his aim in the course is to look at politics from Democratic and Republican points of view.

After a quick exchange with one student, Carville brings his voice down several decibels and softens his tone. He says, “Don’t take it personally if I cut you off. I just do it.”

And then Carville’s back at it, raising his voice and pacing back and forth across the room.

The students love him. Half the time, he’s got them in stitches.

“Is there any way we’ll change business as usual in Washington?” Carville asks. Hands go up in the middle row.

There is no frantic note taking, although Carville demands a lot from the students. In addition to a heavy reading load, students can expect to be asked in class at 6 p.m. about what happened in Washington at 4 p.m.

The course is designed to dissect the election—what worked, what didn’t, what happened, and why. The syllabus lists topics such as the Palin effect, Internet fund-raising, blogs and the effect of the economic crisis in the final weeks of the campaign.

Michael G. Sherman, a 2001 Tulane College graduate and adjunct assistant professor in the political science department, helps out with the class. And so does Wilhelmina Emma Stamps, a 2008 Tulane graduate, who’s an assistant in Carville’s office.

The lively discussions continue after class during dinner in Carville’s home. Every week Carville picks three students to join him for a meal, along with the assistants and notable guest lecturers. Among the guest-speaker lineup are Chuck Todd and Betsy Fischer of NBC News, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and Newt Gingrich, the Republican former Speaker of the U.S. House.

For tonight, students were assigned David Paul Kuhn’s The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. Halfway through the class, Kuhn opens the door.

While Kuhn sets up during a short break, Carville walks around the room talking to students.

He is beaming.

“I love it,” he says of the class. “I like the way they are involved. There is a lot of giveand-take.”

—Catherine Freshley Catherine Freshley is a senior majoring in economics and English. She will graduate in May.

Selected Reading List • What’s the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank • How Barack Obama Won: A Stateby-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser • The Road to the White House 2008

by Stephen J. Wayne

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green wave insideTrack Forté makes big splash as NFL rookie

Former Green Wave running back Matt Forté is back on the Tulane campus for the spring semester, finishing his degree in finance after an outstanding rookie season on the Chicago Bears football team. He’ll return to Chicago in the fall, where he’s expected to have more gridiron success.

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When the Chicago Bears invested a secondround pick in the 2008 National Football League draft on Matt Forté, a running back out of Tulane, most people around the country probably did not recognize the name. But five months after Forté was announced as the No. 44 overall selection, he was making headlines.

After wrapping up a senior season in which he set Tulane school records piling up 2,127 collegiate rushing yards, Forté proved that he was more than just a big fish in a small pond.

As a rookie in Chicago in 2008, the Slidell, La., native became the eighth first-year player to lead his team in both rushing yards (1,238) and receptions (63). Forté also set Bears’ rookie records in yards from scrimmage (1,715), rushing yards and catches.

While fans in 32 NFL cities and fantasy football players worldwide scurried to find out more about the Bears’ new featured back, the Tulane faithful took great joy in watching one of their own chew up the gridiron on Sunday afternoons.

Tulane football head coach Bob Toledo says, “Matt’s success in the pros didn’t surprise me one bit because I knew that he had all the physical and mental capabilities of making it big in the NFL. He’s got size; he’s got speed.

He’s got all the tools because he can catch the ball. He can run the ball; he can block. He’s an every-down back is what I told people.

“He’s vocal, he’s in great physical shape and he’s a super person. I had no doubt that he would have a big impact in the National Football League, and I told every scout that came through about that. Fortunately, the Bears took a chance on him and he proved me right.”

Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Ron Turner says that he was not surprised either that Forté spit out yardage like a fan spitting sunflower seeds. Turner says, “Our expectations were for Matt to come in and be an impact player.”

To Forté, it has been just a series of another day at the office.

“Ever since I started playing when I was 7 years old, it had been a goal of mine to play in the NFL,” Forté says. “To be playing in the NFL now is really a dream come true.

“I am confident in what I can do on the field. Going into the season, I knew that if I got an opportunity to get carries and make plays, I was going to go out there and make those plays. I definitely didn’t surprise myself.

I fully expected to do well.”

And while his name is now listed in the NFL record books, Forté’s name also will soon be added to the list of Tulane graduates. This spring, he is back on campus, taking his final five classes to complete his degree in finance.

“It was a no-brainer for me to come back to school and finish my degree,” Forté says.

“Tulane is a great academic school, so to put in three-and-a-half years and not finish wouldn’t be worth it. My dad used to always tell me that a degree lasts forever. Football doesn’t. As I got to thinking about that, I knew I had to come back to satisfy not only myself but also my parents.”

Tulane fans can be proud of their latest favorite son. As Toledo puts it, “He’s a special person. I knew he was going to be successful because the National Football League is not just looking for football players. They’re looking for character football players, and I knew he would be successful doing that.”

—RichieWeaver Richie Weaver is assistant director of communications for Tulane athletics.

insideTrack freret jet Radio niche

to the CD player, pulls the disc out of one drive and pops it into another. He puts on the headphones and pulls the microphone over, apologizing to his listeners.

Station manager Rachel Wenzel, who is graduating in May and plans on attending law school in a couple of years, apprenticed at the station during her first semester at Tulane.

She was in the studio before 8 a.m. this morning to host a three-hour show, and she just finished leading a meeting with the semester’s new apprentices, but she says, “’TUL isn’t a resume booster.

“This isn’t a stepping stone for the big show, because the big show is some automated system,” she says, referring to syndicated radio shows heard on hundreds of stations across the country, which don’t have live DJs and feature playlists designed by corporations.

The WTUL office is a maze of several rooms at the end of Media Alley in the basement of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life.

One room is filled floor-to-ceiling with yellowed cases of vinyl records. Two walls of the broadcast room are lined with CDs. In all, there are approximately 70,000 titles.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Lavin-Bernick Center was undergoing renovation. Student media offices had been relocated to the second floor of another building, and the offices escaped the flooding. Now back in the basement, digitization has become a top priority—just in case.

For the 50th anniversary, the station has set a fund-raising goal of $50,000—a stretch, maybe, but still attainable. The funds are going toward purchasing new CD players, a replacement for the station’s rusty antenna, and digitization of the entire WTUL library.

Part of the anniversary celebration was the annual marathon weekend held March 13–15, during which three DJs stayed on the air for 24-hour shifts.

While Wenzel wasn’t a marathon DJ, being station manager is like a 24/7 gig all the time.

It’s a full-time job, although without pay.

If Wenzel isn’t at the station, she’s thinking about it.

“I have always got my list with me,” she says.

—Catherine Freshley

It’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday. WTUL disc jockey Phil Rollins swivels slightly in his yellow desk chair as he leans into the microphone, listing the night’s concerts and announcing the next track. It’s the weekly “world” show and tonight he is playing music from Ethiopia, Persia and the Western Sahara.

Passion for music and radio is the pulse at Tulane’s student-run radio station at 91.5 FM. It’s not uncommon for alumni such as Rollins, who graduated from Tulane in 2007, to continue in the DJ chair after they graduate.

One of a few free-form radio stations in the country, WTUL is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

While you can turn on almost any radio station in New Orleans, or anywhere for that matter, and hear the distinct voice of rapper Lil’ Wayne, a New Orleans native and multimillionaire who attended nearby McMain Secondary School, you won’t hear him on WTUL. The station is devoted to promoting local musicians—but not Lil’ Wayne or anyone who can be heard anywhere else.

New Orleans has a burgeoning metal scene that is “massively influential among metal aficionados,” says Rollins. “We’re the only station that gives that any coverage.”

Most daytime shows are labeled “progressive,” a label that loosely means anything new and original. WTUL’s evening, night and weekend shows fit into almost 20 other categories, including classical, jazz, hip-hop, electronic, opera and blues. “’TUL fills all the niches that aren’t filled,” Rollins says. “We’re an amalgamation of niche programs. It’s what we do best.”

When the track starts skipVinyl and volunteers sustain WTUL radio. Spinning progressive music is a labor of love for disc jockey Phil Rollins, ping, Rollins doesn’t miss a a 2007 Tulane graduate, and station manager Rachel Wenzel, who’ll graduate in May. The free-form radio station beat. He rolls his chair over is 50 years old.

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ask the Exper t

Q: A:

How will we know if the economy has entered into a depression?

There’s an old, and perhaps not very funny joke that says that a recession is when your neighbor gets laid off and a depression is when you get laid off. Within that dark humor, there is a kernel of truth: whether we call an economic slump a “recession” or a “depression” is largely psychological and a matter of perception. Unlike the term “recession,” which can be defined by quantifiable metrics—a reduction in the nation’s Gross Domestic Product for two consecutive quarters—“depression,” strictly speaking, is not an economic term. In fact, the classic term for such free falls in the economy in the 1800s and early 1900s was “panic.”

Suffice it to say that a depression is a “mega recession,” a period in the economic cycle that is signified by a collapse in the stock market, a marked increase in unemployment, the failure of financial institutions and the myriad effects that economic trauma has on communities, neighborhoods, families and individuals.

In that the “Great Depression” was adopted to label the economic downturn that occurred between 1929 and 1939, it has for perhaps obvious reasons fallen from the American lexicon since the 1930s. No president since has ever used that term to describe any of the nearly 20 periodic downturns of the last 70 years, nor do I expect to hear our current president utter the term.

But that is semantics. Some economists are projecting the unemployment rate will reach 9 percent by 2010. If the nation’s unemployment creeps into even low double digits, you can bet the word “depression” will be on everyone’s lips—especially members of the loyal opposition. Will we see the kind of unemployment that Roosevelt inherited in 1933 when a quarter of the nation’s workforce was unemployed? In a word, no.

We’ve learned important lessons from the

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Great Depression and we need never to go down so steep a path again. Such things as unemployment compensation, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, and public assistance/welfare payments all serve to cushion the blow to incomes occasioned by downturns.

It’s important to keep in mind that economic downturns are a natural, if unfortunate, part of capitalism. Each has its own particular flavor, whether it is the long bank lines of the 1930s or the “stagflation” of the early 1980s. This time around, for instance, we are seeing certain environmental ceilings that are inhibiting growth: disproportionate consumption of resources among the world’s nations, the destruction of rainforests and global warming. These will present both challenges and opportunities for governments and the

business community, and however we respond will to a large extent define who we are as a generation.

—Michael Bernstein Michael Bernstein is provost of Tulane University and a professor of history who has focused his work on political and economic processes in industrialized societies. He has published four volumes: The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929–1939; Understanding American Economic Decline, co-edited with David Adler; The Cold War and Expert Knowledge: New Essays on the History of the National Security State, co-edited with Allen Hunter; and A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in TwentiethCentury America.

“

Will we see the kind of unemployment that Roosevelt inherited in 1933 when a quarter of the nation’s workforce was unemployed? In a word, no.

”

—Michael Bernstein, Tulane provost and history professor

Provost and professor of history Michael Bernstein speaks with authority about the Great Depression and its parallels with today’s economic turmoil.

ar t Space

“

Enormous letters spell out “B-U-I-C-K” as they hover above the undulating cantilevered roof.

”

In Clarence John Laughlin’s photograph Marquee, Stephens Buick Co., the storefront window glimmers, reflecting the street scene while a curvilinear arrow points to the service entrance. Designed by architects Freret & Wolf, the Stephens building, now in disrepair, is at 836 Carondelet in downtown New Orleans. Known for his surrealistic photography, Laughlin (1905–1985) created this black-and-white image in 1950. The photograph is on display at the Southeastern Architectural Archive until May as part of the exhibit “Architext: The Unity of Architecture and Typography.” The exhibit explores the interrelationship of typography and architecture, including the influence of letter shapes on architecture design and the importance of building signage.

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mixed Media

DATA MINING FOR INTELLIGENCE, FRAUD AND CRIMINAL DETECTION: ADVANCE ANALTICS AND INFORMATION SHARING TECHNOLOGIES

By Christopher Westphal (E ’86) CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group GUANTANAMO: A WORKING-CLASS HISTORY BETWEEN EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION

By Jana K. Lipman, assistant professor of history University of California Press OVERVIEW: In the introductory pages of Guantánamo: A

Working-Class History Between Empire and Revolution, author Jana Lipman clarifies that it is the town of Guantánamo and its people who are at the center of her research and analysis. The book is not so much a study of the U.S. Naval base and prison that are familiar to most Americans, but rather, an examination of how the U.S occupation of a spit of land on the southeastern tip of Cuba has affected the lives of the residents of Guatánamo. Lipman tells the story of U.S.-Cuban relations, but from the perspective of the Cuban men and women who worked on the U.S. naval base.

QUOTABLE QUOTE: “For base workers in Guatánamo, the Cuban

revolution would fundamentally reshape the political and economic valence of their employment. The era was rife with binaries: capitalism versus communism, revolutionaries versus counterrevolutionaries, and imperialists versus anti-imperialists.”

MARGINALIA: Historian Lipman frames her book within the time

period between 1939 and 1961. In gathering information she combined archival research with interviews “over coffee” with former base workers, whose ages ranged from mid-70s to 93.

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OVERVIEW: In its most general sense, data

mining is the process of analyzing data and summarizing it into useful information. With the boom in information technology that began in the 1990s, many organizations— both public and private—have become awash in data. While databases continue to grow, author Christopher Westphal contends that what is missing from the IT landscape is a way to “connect the dots” to effectively analyze information. Westphal reviews the tangible results produced by existing data-mining systems and evaluates their effectiveness against the backdrop of overarching issues concerning information sharing and interpretation.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Individuals, groups and state-sponsored organizations can formulate and conduct terrorism. Although the majority of their actions will be covert … many terrorist groups exhibit standard business processes, such as acquiring an assortment of materials and supplies for carrying out their missions, performing travel in conjunction with their objectives, obtaining the finances and financial backing to sustain their operations and communicate with other group members using phones, e-mail and text messages. … These ‘public’ operational encounters, where observations can be made and data collected, are when terrorists are most vulnerable, and it is where their weaknesses can be exploited.”

mixed Media

THE LOUISIANA COAST: GUIDE TO AN AMERICAN WETLAND

THE NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN CULTURE, VOL. 12: MUSIC

By Gay Gomez (NC ’78, G ’81) Texas A&M University Press

Edited by Bill Malone, professor emeritus of history University of North Carolina Press

OVERVIEW: “Louisiana’s coast is a special place,”

writes Gay Gomez in opening this informative and pleasant book that paints a vivid picture of coastal Louisiana. Part natural history and part field guide, the book is adorned with numerous photographs illustrating the flora and fauna, as well as the human use of land. Readers will learn the differences between Deltaic and Cheneir plains, white and brown pelicans, inshore and offshore shrimp seasons, marshes and mudflats as the author guides them through nature trails, wildlife refuges, bird sanctuaries and isolated beaches. The Louisiana Coast is a love letter to the region and a cautionary tale of its fragility.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Moving through the

swamp into lower elevations produces another transitional zone, an area where the cypress trees thin and low grasses such as wiregrass produce a soft carpet. … This more open swamp is the result of slightly deeper and more continual inundation of the land, a condition that prevents cypress seeds from germinating. As the old trees die and fall, no new trees replace them; accordingly, a more open appearance characterizes this transitional zone, which eventually opens fully to the grassy wetland of the marsh.”

MARGINALIA: An associate professor of geog-

raphy at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., Gay Gomez is a professional nature guide and a longtime champion for the preservation of the state’s wetlands.

VELIKII USTIUG

By William Brumfield (A&S ’66), professor of Slavic studies Tri Kvadrata OVERVIEW: Velikii Ustiug is an ancient town in

OVERVIEW: Bill Malone first established himself

as an authority on the music of the rural South in 1968 with his groundbreaking work, Country Music U.S.A. In this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Malone has assembled for the first time a stand-alone reference to the music and music makers of the American South. The book comprises 30 essays on topics including ragtime, zydeco, folk music festivals, black gospel and Southern rock, as well as 174 entries on musicians and musical institutions.

the Russian North near the city of Vologda, a reservation of landmarks of Russian architecture and arts and craft treasures of the 17th–18th centuries. The town was founded in the mid-11th century and has been an iconpainting center from the beginning. This photo album of the town’s architectural monuments and their interiors by William Brumfeld documents the beauty of a northern center of Russian culture and the accomplishments of the anonymous builders who worked there.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “In any season of the year

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “We must conclude that

Southern music is now American music.

Southerners have exported their musical treasures to the world and have in turn absorbed much that the larger world has to offer. The resulting syntheses continue to provide enjoyment and enrichment. Southern styles may not be as distinctive as many people would like, and observers might with good reason bemoan their dilution and disappearance, but one can scarcely ignore the fact that the folk cultures that produced them are undergoing similar dissolution.”

Velikii Ustiug and its main river, the Sukhona, create a lyrical symphony of nature and architectural form. The Sukhona not only serves as a base upon which the city’s remarkable churches and mansions arise, but the river also provides the distance to see the town as it merges with the breathtaking space of the northern landscape. The fierce frosts of winter, the cloud banks of summer, the gold light of autumn—all of these elements gain sublime power when viewed over the expanse of the Sukhona.”

MARGINALIA: If you’re planning on spending

MARGINALIA: Journalist H.L. Mencken, a fierce

critic of the South during the early 20th century, once famously noted the region’s lack of musical talent and poets, but only mentioned oboe players as an example.

some time in Velikii Ustiug, Brumfield recommends staying at the Sukhona Hotel, located in the center of town. It has comfortable rooms and a delightful promenade along the river, but no restaurant. There is, however, an excellent restaurant, Na Uspenskoi, just around the corner.

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DATA MINING FOR INTELLIGENCE, FRAUD AND CRIMINAL DETECTION: ADVANCE ANALTICS AND INFORMATION SHARING TECHNOLOGIES

By Christopher Westphal (E ’86) CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group GUANTANAMO: A WORKING-CLASS HISTORY BETWEEN EMPIRE AND REVOLUTION

By Jana K. Lipman, assistant professor of history University of California Press OVERVIEW: In the introductory pages of Guantánamo: A

Working-Class History Between Empire and Revolution, author Jana Lipman clarifies that it is the town of Guantánamo and its people who are at the center of her research and analysis. The book is not so much a study of the U.S. Naval base and prison that are familiar to most Americans, but rather, an examination of how the U.S occupation of a spit of land on the southeastern tip of Cuba has affected the lives of the residents of Guatánamo. Lipman tells the story of U.S.-Cuban relations, but from the perspective of the Cuban men and women who worked on the U.S. naval base.

QUOTABLE QUOTE: “For base workers in Guatánamo, the Cuban

revolution would fundamentally reshape the political and economic valence of their employment. The era was rife with binaries: capitalism versus communism, revolutionaries versus counterrevolutionaries, and imperialists versus anti-imperialists.”

MARGINALIA: Historian Lipman frames her book within the time

period between 1939 and 1961. In gathering information she combined archival research with interviews “over coffee” with former base workers, whose ages ranged from mid-70s to 93.

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OVERVIEW: In its most general sense, data

mining is the process of analyzing data and summarizing it into useful information. With the boom in information technology that began in the 1990s, many organizations— both public and private—have become awash in data. While databases continue to grow, author Christopher Westphal contends that what is missing from the IT landscape is a way to “connect the dots” to effectively analyze information. Westphal reviews the tangible results produced by existing data-mining systems and evaluates their effectiveness against the backdrop of overarching issues concerning information sharing and interpretation.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Individuals, groups and state-sponsored organizations can formulate and conduct terrorism. Although the majority of their actions will be covert … many terrorist groups exhibit standard business processes, such as acquiring an assortment of materials and supplies for carrying out their missions, performing travel in conjunction with their objectives, obtaining the finances and financial backing to sustain their operations and communicate with other group members using phones, e-mail and text messages. … These ‘public’ operational encounters, where observations can be made and data collected, are when terrorists are most vulnerable, and it is where their weaknesses can be exploited.”

mixed Media

THE LOUISIANA COAST: GUIDE TO AN AMERICAN WETLAND

THE NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOUTHERN CULTURE, VOL. 12: MUSIC

By Gay Gomez (NC ’78, G ’81) Texas A&M University Press

Edited by Bill Malone, professor emeritus of history University of North Carolina Press

OVERVIEW: “Louisiana’s coast is a special place,”

writes Gay Gomez in opening this informative and pleasant book that paints a vivid picture of coastal Louisiana. Part natural history and part field guide, the book is adorned with numerous photographs illustrating the flora and fauna, as well as the human use of land. Readers will learn the differences between Deltaic and Cheneir plains, white and brown pelicans, inshore and offshore shrimp seasons, marshes and mudflats as the author guides them through nature trails, wildlife refuges, bird sanctuaries and isolated beaches. The Louisiana Coast is a love letter to the region and a cautionary tale of its fragility.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Moving through the

swamp into lower elevations produces another transitional zone, an area where the cypress trees thin and low grasses such as wiregrass produce a soft carpet. … This more open swamp is the result of slightly deeper and more continual inundation of the land, a condition that prevents cypress seeds from germinating. As the old trees die and fall, no new trees replace them; accordingly, a more open appearance characterizes this transitional zone, which eventually opens fully to the grassy wetland of the marsh.”

MARGINALIA: An associate professor of geog-

raphy at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., Gay Gomez is a professional nature guide and a longtime champion for the preservation of the state’s wetlands.

VELIKII USTIUG

By William Brumfield (A&S ’66), professor of Slavic studies Tri Kvadrata OVERVIEW: Velikii Ustiug is an ancient town in

OVERVIEW: Bill Malone first established himself

as an authority on the music of the rural South in 1968 with his groundbreaking work, Country Music U.S.A. In this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Malone has assembled for the first time a stand-alone reference to the music and music makers of the American South. The book comprises 30 essays on topics including ragtime, zydeco, folk music festivals, black gospel and Southern rock, as well as 174 entries on musicians and musical institutions.

the Russian North near the city of Vologda, a reservation of landmarks of Russian architecture and arts and craft treasures of the 17th–18th centuries. The town was founded in the mid-11th century and has been an iconpainting center from the beginning. This photo album of the town’s architectural monuments and their interiors by William Brumfeld documents the beauty of a northern center of Russian culture and the accomplishments of the anonymous builders who worked there.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “In any season of the year

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “We must conclude that

Southern music is now American music.

Southerners have exported their musical treasures to the world and have in turn absorbed much that the larger world has to offer. The resulting syntheses continue to provide enjoyment and enrichment. Southern styles may not be as distinctive as many people would like, and observers might with good reason bemoan their dilution and disappearance, but one can scarcely ignore the fact that the folk cultures that produced them are undergoing similar dissolution.”

Velikii Ustiug and its main river, the Sukhona, create a lyrical symphony of nature and architectural form. The Sukhona not only serves as a base upon which the city’s remarkable churches and mansions arise, but the river also provides the distance to see the town as it merges with the breathtaking space of the northern landscape. The fierce frosts of winter, the cloud banks of summer, the gold light of autumn—all of these elements gain sublime power when viewed over the expanse of the Sukhona.”

MARGINALIA: If you’re planning on spending

MARGINALIA: Journalist H.L. Mencken, a fierce

critic of the South during the early 20th century, once famously noted the region’s lack of musical talent and poets, but only mentioned oboe players as an example.

some time in Velikii Ustiug, Brumfield recommends staying at the Sukhona Hotel, located in the center of town. It has comfortable rooms and a delightful promenade along the river, but no restaurant. There is, however, an excellent restaurant, Na Uspenskoi, just around the corner.

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photo Riff

Tulane students quickly build an impressive snowman on the Gibson Quad during a rare snowstorm, Dec. 11, 2008.

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photo Riff

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A KATRINA TALE OF SURVIVAL AND REBUILDING

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BY MARY ANN TRAVIS

G.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO

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At night it was pitch black.

The statistics are becoming less familiar over time. One thousand eight hundred and thirtysix people died as a result of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. More than 250,000 homes were damaged, rendered uninhabitable for months or years or demolished altogether.

By now, in winter 2009, the New Orleans population is up to two-thirds its pre-storm strength.

A reality of the recovery is that it could not have occurred to the extent that it has without the aid of volunteers.

Cheryl Josephs Zaccaro is one of the million or million and a half, depending on who’s counting, volunteers who have come repeatedly to the city to help it rebuild.

“Oh, my God, what’s happening down there?” Cheryl thought as the Katrina disaster unfolded on television.

Cheryl, a New Yorker, began e-mailing friends, especially those in her Newcomb class of 1969, immediately after the storm, asking, “What can we do?” Merely sending money and cartons of clothes, which they all did, did not seem like an adequate response.

Disappointed in the government’s actions, Cheryl wasted little time getting to Louisiana.

Everywhere she looked, she saw the need for housing. Cheryl is an occupational therapist, involved in therapeutic horseback riding, helping people with disabilities.

For four nights and five days, Kewanda Baxter and her three children and mother and sister stayed outside on a sidewalk in front of the New Orleans Convention Center.

A policeman with nervous, fearful eyes had directed them to the downtown convention center when the floodwaters rose on Canal Street after the levees broke following Hurricane Katrina. He was standing on the streetcar tracks in front of the hotel where they’d taken refuge from the storm. They had evacuated their apartment in New Orleans East, a neighborhood, they’d later -Cheryl Josephs Zaccaro, learn, that was devastated by the flood.

Newcomb class of 1969 Busses would be coming to take them away, the policeman told them.

Eighty percent of the city was drowned.

But they didn’t know that. At the convention center, the number of people milling about surprised Kewanda. Nobody knew anything.

“Now what?” Kewanda wondered.

The nights were dark and eerily quiet with people saying their prayers if they weren’t going off their rockers. Or sometimes they were doing both—praying and going crazy.

The busses are coming; the Guard is coming. The rumors flew.

Food and water were scarce. Canned ravioli and candy were about all that Kewanda and her family had to eat.

People were frightened.

At one point, Kewanda and her children Stra were ordered at gunpoint by National afte nded at the New O r the stor m, Kewand rleans Convention C Guardsmen to lie face down on the pavement. a Baxte enter at “It was tomato given to her r relishes “Get on the ground,” the guards said, b he best to mato I evey a stranger. apparently scared for their lives, too, with so r ate,” she says. many people moving around. They pulled their guns. Maybe they felt they would be trampled. Then the guards moved on.

“Lord, all we did was lost our house,” says Kewanda.

,,

Oh, my God, , what s happening ,, down there?

Previous pages: Amy Goldberger, Sandy Daum Berman, Janis Dropkin Smythe, Linda Lewis-Moors, Carol Nathan McKegney, Sydney Fleischer Camp, Sharon Graber Purcel, Cheryl Josephs Zaccaro, Marilyn Zwick , Storch, Puddin Brown Cox, Debbie Brown Britt and Rachelle Galanti Parker take a break from the construction of a Habitat for Humanity house on Ferry , Place in December 2008. It was the group s third rebuilding trip to the city.

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The Baxters—Dominique, Rodney, Jeremy and Kewanda move-in day to their new home in —celebrate January 2007.

axter, ays Rodney Be visiting s e! s u o h r th ou Hooray for ith his arms raised as w r, y il te en am f c is e h up with h women catc 2008. The Baxter hous er b in Decem house that the is the first omen helped build.

Newcomb w

Because she’s a volunteer, not working regularly, it was relatively easy for her to take off in February 2006 for the bayou region of Louisiana, hard hit by two hurricanes in 2005— Katrina and Rita.

Cheryl went alone to St. Bernard Parish, La. The destruction along the road astounded her.

She stayed at Camp Hope in dormitory-style accommodations, bunking with people—young and shows Puddin’ Cox Kewanda Baxter (right)her Katrina experience. old—from all across the country. pt of the scrapbook she’s ke Camp Hope is where Habitat for Humanity has put up thousands of volunteers who’ve come to Louisiana to help in the building.

A nonprofit organization, Habitat for Humanity builds through volunteer labor simple, decent houses in partnership with families who purchase the homes with no-interest loans.

Cheryl worked on a Habitat house, on top of a roof, hammering shingles. She used an electric saw. It was a good experience.

Cheryl reported back to “the girls”—her Newcomb classmates. “Is this something that we want to do?”

“Yes,” the answer came back from a dozen or so friends.

“We should do something!” Marilyn Zwick Storch, a retired hospital marketing executive in Illinois, said the friends agreed in their e-mailing back forth around the country.

And that is how Cheryl, Marilyn, Janis Dropkin Smythe, Linda Lewis-Moors, Debbie Brown Britt, Sharon Graber Purcel, Rachelle Galanti Parker, Sydney Fleischer Camp, Susan Lebow and Carolyn Macow Leatherwood— members of the Newcomb class of 1969—and Carol Nathan McKegney, Sandy Daum Berman and Carolyn “Puddin’” Brown Cox from the class of 1971 eventually crossed paths with Kewanda Baxter.

The Newcomb women, all around age 60, have made three trips to New Orleans for oneweek stints to work on building Habitat for Humanity houses. The women—from New York, Illinois, Florida, California, Virginia, Texas, Atlanta and Seattle—usually make the trip the week after Thanksgiving.

The first house the group worked on (in December 2006) is Kewanda’s house today.

The house—smartly landscaped and brightly painted—is in the Musicians’ Village on Alvar Street in the Upper Ninth Ward. Cheerful pottery decorated with flowers, overstuffed sofas, a flat-screen TV and a desktop computer give the front room of the three-bedroom house a comfortable feel.

In the days just after the storm, Kewanda had told her children that they would not stop until they got where they were supposed to be.

After finally being rescued from the convention center by bus, transported to the airport and flown in an Army airplane to Fort Chaffee, Ark., Kewanda and her children—Dominique, now 18; Jeremy, 15; and Rodney, 11—lived for T U L A N I A N

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a time in Texas before they moved back to New Orleans in January 2006.

Theirs is a common saga for displaced New Orleanians: They lived with family on the West Bank; they stayed on a docked cruise ship provided for city workers when Kewanda got her job back with property management at City Hall; they camped in a FEMA trailer situated on the St. Roch Playground.

And this is where they stopped—in their own home, earned through 350 hours of “sweat equity” put in by Kewanda and her family—and a $75,000 mortgage. The family moved into the house a year after their return to New Orleans.

The Newcomb group was one among dozens of volunteer platoons that worked on the Baxter house. Puddin’, a geriatric social worker and part-time actress from Seattle, saw photos of the family on the wall at a Habitat for Humanity office. And through Habitat officials, she got in contact with Kewanda—and has been a friend and mentor ever since.

When hard times come, when things go wrong, Kewanda will call on Puddin’, who has set up through Newcomb friends, including those who work on Habitat homes in New Orleans as well as other classmates, an informal network of support for the Baxter family.

Clockwise, from left: Rachelle Parker, Debbie Britt and Marilyn Storch measure a kitchen cabinet. Debbie and Marilyn celebrate its successful installation.

Piece of cake, Marilyn tells the Habitat site supervisor.

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Included in the support is extra tutoring for the Baxter children, who are now doing well in school.

Kewanda kept a photo album of her family’s Katrina experience. In December 2008, she shows it to the women, who had spent the previous few days working on a Habitat house in another part of town.

The women are a blessing, says Kewanda.

“These ladies are heaven-sent because it’s time for us to break the cycle.” All three of her children are going to graduate from high school, she vows. Something she didn’t do. And then they may go to college.

Sharon Graber Purcel, a former substitute teacher from Macon, Ga., stands by a sawhorse at the noisy worksite on Ferry Place, where the Newcomb group is working on a cold and windy day in December 2008. Ferry Place is in uptown New Orleans, not far

cake! f o e c Pie

from the Mississippi River, near where Oak Street ends at the railroad tracks.

A buzz saw screeches. A radio emits static and loud rock music—the annoying kind often heard at worksites.

“I hammered my fingernails several times,” Sharon says. “So I learned that you handle it like that.” She demonstrates the correct finger position for hammering. “So you don’t kill your nails.”

It’s Sharon’s third trip to rebuild houses in New Orleans. She likes the physical work.

She’s done sub-roofing and raised a truss. She’s been on tall ladders, discovering new things about herself, doing things she’s never had the chance to do before.

Carol Nathan McKegney, a special education teacher in Petaluma, Calif., is up on scaffolding on the side of the house, which is on a block of Habitat houses—a couple of the houses are occupied and others like the bright green house the group is working on today need inside finishing and outside trim. Other lots on the block are empty, ready to be built on soon.

Carol has on a blue overall jumpsuit like furniture movers wear. Embroidered on the front, for some reason, is “Idiot.”

“This is a minor thing, but that radio is turned to an alien frequency,” Carol shouts to the site supervisor, the young man who directs the Habitat crews.

He adjusts the tuning, clearing the static. “You say you’re so special. …” blares Radiohead in the song “Creep.”

“At least it’s now on a station.

That’s all I care,” says Carol.

The women bustle inside and outside the house. In the kitchen, Marilyn; Debbie, a Spanish teacher in Atlanta; and Rachelle, an elementary school principal in New Jersey, are installing kitchen cupboards.

On the exterior steps, Puddin’; Janis, a former music producer in New York City; Sandy, a former stockbroker in Miami; and Amy Goldberger, a friend who’s accompanied the group but is not a Tulane graduate, figure out how to mount

spindles in the railings of the staircase.

The women joke and tease each other. “Mrs. Cox, we have a problem,” Sandy informs Puddin’ when a spindle comes up short.

A do-over is necessary. “I consider this wonderful exercise,” says Sandy. “We’re not fast but we’re accurate.”

The satisfaction of doing for others looms large for the women, who are mostly “empty nesters” and at transitional points in their lives. The pull of Tulane and New Orleans has never gone away for them.

“I love this city,” says Sandy. “I love my sorority sisters. It broke my heart like it did everybody else’s with Katrina and the aftermath. I love this place. We had four wonderful years here. And we’re going to come back and do what we can and give as much as we can for as long as we can, basically.”

“You get to a certain point in your life where you start giving,” says Puddin’. “Whenever you’re doing anything nice for somebody else, you’re on the winning end. It feels good down to your toes. You sleep better. But the more you do, the more you realize there is to do.”

Groups of friends, parents and children, and professional colleagues should all be encouraged to make a trip to New Orleans to help the rebuilding, says Puddin’. It’s meaningful to realize you’re going to build a house that a family will actually move into and own.

“It feels good, and I hope we never stop.

You know, the idea is we’ll be going until we take our walkers to the site,” she says.

The night before, Puddin’ had seen on the local TV news 500 people, on the outskirts of New Orleans, waiting in line for the opportunity to receive one of 120 housing vouchers. The people told the reporters that they just needed a place to stay, a residence. “In these United States, how is that possible?” asks Puddin’.

The members of the class of ’69 blew into New Orleans their freshman year with Hurricane Betsy in September 1965. And they haven’t forgotten that hurricane. Some of them weathered the storm in Josephine Louise

Watch those fingers.

House; others took cover in motel rooms with their parents who had driven them to college.

Author Lawrence Wright, a member of the class of ’69, describes the scene when he arrived on campus in his book In the New World (Knopf, 1988): When we arrived in New Orleans it was as if the Bomb had fallen. Oak trees were ripped up by their roots; automobiles had been tossed about like toys. The cabbie who picked me up at the station was in a state of exhilaration. He pointed out the ironic symbols of deconstruction. We

Top to bottom: , Puddin Cox and Sandy Berman construct a porch railing. Janis Smythe and , Puddin figure out the correct height of the baluster in consultation with a Habitat supervisor. , Puddin and Sandy carefully operate a table saw.

passed a Conoco station with all the consonants blown off the sign, and a Shell station with no S. The health department was in a panic, the cabbie told me excitedly, because Betsy had washed the cadavers out of the raised cemetery vaults, and old bodies mingled in the flood with the freshly dead. On the streets I noticed people picking their way through shards of glass and broken limbs, staring at each other with dazzled smiles.

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Some do clo sets…

others do windows…

were advised to sleep in the closet, which they did. The winds and rain raged. The electricity went out. But then two days later, her parents left, and Janis moved into the residence hall. She and other students removed tree branches from campus sidewalks. It was nothing like Katrina, she says.

“Katrina opened my eyes that we are all so vulnerable,” says Janis.

“How ill-prepared, how complacent we are.” The government’s ineptitude in the aftermath of Katrina, to Janis, is “a crime of epic proportions.”

As she drives around New Orleans today, Sydney, another member of the class of ’69 and head of Jewish Social Services in Richmond, Va., can’t believe how much destruction Hur-ricane Katrina has done to the city—three and a half years later.

“You can’t go to school here without leaving a part of yourself here,” says Janis.

Their hearts are with New Orleans, the women say. Their work on the houses is a tangible and concrete way to rebuild the city. And they reconnect with each other, keeping the bonds of friendship they formed more than 40 years ago.

They come to build houses to thank New Orleans for what it gave to them—and to help because help is needed.

Until someone tells them to stay away, they’ll keep coming back.

and saws … and even ladders.

Top to bottom: Sydney Camp shaves Sheetrock to trim a closet door. Carol McKegney finishes a window. Carol and Linda Lewis-Moors take a skill saw to molding. Linda balances on scaffolding for exterior work.

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In upstate New York in the small town of Norwich, Linda, a hospital community-relations coordinator and member of the class of ’69, watched the unfolding catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina on television. She sat down and cried.

Coming to New Orleans to help rebuild is the right thing to do, Linda says. “Everyone who ever thought of coming to New Orleans, they should come. They’ll have a wonderful time. It isn’t totally rebuilt, but the heart and soul are still here.”

The Habitat worksite supervisor cuts the women no slack, expecting Marilyn, Debbie and Rachelle to lift up and position the kitchen cupboards on the walls like pros. He has learned to take their construction abilities seriously.

Debbie’s daughter, Alexandra, is a Tulane A. B. Freeman Business School graduate of 2005—before the storm. Debbie has visited New Orleans frequently through the years.

Building houses with her friends is the “perfect confluence of work and play.” They’re doing what they did together years ago— working and playing. “How great is that? We get to do it all over again?”

The work they’ve done, learning how to nail, saw, spackle, build chain-link fences and install siding, is not what they do in their regular lives.

And that’s what is so empowering about it.

The women have fun and acquire skills, doing things that they don’t normally do and have no interest in doing at home. “But here it’s cool,” says Rachelle.

The first year they came (2006), it was sad, says Rachelle. In fact, she wrote an article, “Very Sad, Turning Sadness Into Hope,” for her Washington Towns, N.J., school newsletter about her first Habitat building trip. The progress since then is remarkable with more lights and cars and open businesses each year.

Cheryl, Marilyn Storch and Sharon Purcel measure twice and cut once, or maybe twice, the metal soffit to be placed on the roofline of the house they are building.

“I tell my husband I have skills I never thought I’d have,” says Marilyn. “But I don’t do ladders.” Some of the women are the “terra firma” kind and don’t climb ladders. But the physical labor is intense, even on the ground.

And after a hard day’s work, the women go back to their hotel rooms, discounted at the Tulane rate, to relax and get refreshed.

Their work rebuilding is a commitment of the heart, says Marilyn.

But they do not deprive themselves. They dine in the city’s finest restaurants and have a good time. They have specific goals for their New Orleans trips, says Marilyn: work for Habitat, help the Baxter family, have fun, eat and help the economy.

They work hard and play hard.

This Thursday morning, Marilyn, Cheryl and Sharon are re-cutting metal soffit—the underside of the roof overhang—for the house on Ferry Place. Wearing tool belts, they project competence, but someone miscalculated the first cut and the soffit doesn’t fit. So they have to cut it again. This time they are making the measurements by pulling a string taut to make sure the cutting line is straight.

“Don’t pick it up until we have it really tight,” orders Cheryl.

“This is different from what I marked,” says Sharon.

“OK. We need you, Marilyn. Is it tight?” says Cheryl.

“Yes,” says Marilyn.

“That’s a problem. You’re playing it like a cello,” reprimands Cheryl. “You were a music major, weren’t you?”

“I changed my major to English,” says Marilyn.

They all laugh, and eventually get the soffit cut and installed correctly.

When they break for lunch and sit around the table at Station 8801, a restaurant/bar at the corner of Oak and Eagle streets, not far the worksite, they chatter, in high spirits.

The thing about the group, says Marilyn, is while they met when they were young— 17 or 18 years old—they have seen each other through the vicissitudes and joys of life—marriages, births, raising children, divorces, remarriages, the death of a husband, careers and relocations all around the country. At times, it was hard to stay in touch.

Now they are in a new phase of life.

Marilyn recalls when they came together at 10and 20-year reunions, they would tend to scrutinize and judge one another. “It was like, well, what are you doing? Who did you marry?”

They might have checked each other out for status symbols, how they looked and all that.

“As time goes by, none of that stuff matters,” says Marilyn. “We appreciate each other as people. I think that when you get older, wisdom comes—and values. You cherish your friendships.”

And in their good fortune, they give back to Measure the city where twice their friendships and cut once, began. For that, or New Orleanians ybe ma are grateful. ...

twice

Mary Ann Travis is the editor of Tulanian and a senior writer in the Office of University Publications.

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-to-face, Nick Spitzer speaks with the rhythm of a jazz drummer. Sometimes frenetic and staccato, erupting into a crashing wave of laughter, sometimes slow, mellow, even velvety. It depends on what he’s talking about, and since he’s usually talking about music, it may specifically come down to genre.

In any case, it’s a contrast from the measured pace and timbre to which those who know his work have become accustomed.

His day job is professor of American studies and communication. In that capacity he teaches and researches American music and culture, particularly that of the Gulf South. It’s a new position for him and one that echoes an earlier stint on campus as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities in 2004.

Spitzer’s other job is similar, but played out on a larger scale. He produces and hosts “American Routes,” the syndicated radio show he created a decade ago. “American Routes” delves into the nation’s music, be it blues, country, jazz, rock, soul, gospel and anything else you can find from sea to shining sea. It deals in back stories and subplots—coaxed by one-on-one interviews in which he asks musicians the questions most fans wish they could: why the music is made and how it ends up sounding like it does.

“My art is the interview, my comments are the verbal arts,” says Spitzer, who admits to minimal musical ability. “My art is the ability to tie performance to scholarly research, and to help bring artists forward to say what they’re going

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to say [and] provide their interpretation.”

If the music is the meat, the interviews and Spitzer’s commentary are the spices. A resulting gumbo of academic erudition and artistic temperament and soul is served up for the audience each week.

Bespectacled and constantly flirting with a devilish grin, his face is full of character and traversed by lines that suggest a million smiles, and more than a few furrowed brows. He’s as much a talker when he’s being interviewed as he is a listener when the roles are reversed. If you sit down to interview Spitzer, don’t expect to say too much. Just ask a question and enjoy the ride. He knows this as much as anyone.

“I’m a bag of words, and they’re going in a million different directions. In the end the challenge is to reduce them to statements that entertain while they explain,” Spitzer says unapologetically before breaking into a fit of infectious laughter.

The play on words of “roots” versus “routes” is obvious and deliberate. It gets to the heart of what Spitzer is trying to accomplish with his show, and with his field of study: tracking where the music comes from and where it is going.

“To use the verbal arts like a sculptor chipping away at the block, or a painter putting a brush to the canvas, or a guitarist playing a riff—the verbal arts are purposefully there to be a mix of tragedy and comedy, one kind of meaning shading into another. One is the metaphor of continuity, r-o-o-t-s, you know, as in grass roots, roots directly from France or

directly from Africa. The other way we use it— r-o-u-t-e-s—is about migration, passage, travel, about personal agency in some cases. There’s also the idea of the traveler as artist—‘like a rolling stone’ or the fated denizen of the ‘Lost Highway,’ by Hank Williams, or like Jack Kerouac, On The Road just for the pleasure of the trip—all of those things to me move you to the other side of the homonym, “routes,” the potential of the road for the traveler. The new and the different.”

Case in point. The ride is long and winding, but enjoyable.

Spitzer is an academic and his bona fides are legit: degrees in anthropology and folklore from Penn and the University of Texas. He served as senior folklife specialist at the Smithsonian Institution, co-edited the book Public Folklore and was named Louisiana Humanist of the Year for his role in cultural recovery post-Katrina. However, he has an affinity for artists and artisans, some of whom have spent little time in classrooms. The commingling of real-world and academic experience is to be expected, says Spitzer.

“My field is public folklore. It has an academic base in ethnography, theory of cultural representation, performance studies, but I am here as much for the vernacular humanities— what I’ve learned in homes and bars, rituals and festivals,” Spitzer says, winding his way toward an explanation of what he brings to

Tulane’s table. “I’m not here because I was a star professor from an Ivy League school. I’m here because I’ve been walking in the vernacular streets and byways for a long time.”

He is passionate about music, passionate about culture and passionate about the city where it all comes together for him. Just as far culturally as it is geographically from the “white-picket-fence” reality of Spitzer’s New England hometown, New Orleans, he says, satisfies his soul.

“Only in New Orleans and in southern Louisiana did I find so many creative people that would not have registered on the charts of my upbringing up north,” Spitzer says, using the pronunciation favored on the bayous: Loosiana. “They are generally transcendent individuals who don’t have any of the credentials I was told were the important ones— that evaluation from the very region where transcendental philosophies and literature historically abounded. I feel that I had to come here to grow up first as a scholar, then as an artist. It made me a whole person.”

Spitzer made the decision to return to Louisiana in 1996, after completing a fellowship at an anthropological think tank in Santa Fe, N.M. He chose New Orleans for the music and culture.

“For me this was the most powerful of all the music scenes, more so than Austin, more so than New York City. I think it was because of all these historic traditions mixing and mingling, continuing … and the intimacy of local

performances at second-lines, rituals, festival, clubs. … I won’t ever be a native, but I have become a local. I am a prodigal neonative. That question of how we relate to local culture of universal significance is one I always pose to my students … being serious about these things and enjoying them.”

Not all of the music he plays comes from New Orleans, at least not geographically.

“I’m not sure, but I think all music came from New Orleans,” Spitzer says quoting the deceased New Orleans musician and local character Ernie K-Doe. “His comment is even in the tradition of bragging we have here, which is its own art,” he adds with a wide grin.

It’s this kind of musical minutia that has made American Routes so popular and enduring.

Spitzer and his staff just celebrated 10 years on the air, with a party and the release of some of his favorite interviews on a double CD, Songs and Stories From the Road. Conversations with jazz icons like Dave Brubeck and Nina Simone, country artist Dolly Parton and hipster Tom Waits, Latin percussionist Tito Puente and the late and grateful rocker Jerry Garcia display the breadth and depth of Spitzer’s tastes and musical inclinations.

Walking in to the American Routes studio, the first thing that strikes you is the sheer volume of music there. A wall of compact discs, a shrine to music grouped and sorted by genre and artist is the kind of collection that would

Wall of sound-—at the disposal of “American Routes” staffers are thousands of compact discs, grouped and sorted by genre, and comprising a veritable shrine to American music.

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A dry erase board crammed with programming possibilities and the edited opening lines of a script tell the tale of the ongoing work-in-progress that is “American Routes.” Serving as inspiration are a cadre of musical tchotchkes, including an Elvis votive candle, a ceramic Jerry Lee Lewis kneeling at the juke box altar, a cigarette smoking Robert Johnson, a grinning caricature of Hank Williams and a nearly unidentifi-able Louis Armstrong carved out of a block of wood. Opposite page: Pencil in hand, Nick Spitzer seems poised to revise his script even has he records a segment for the show. send a music junkie into a full-body jones. One look at those walls, one listen to his show, and it’s pretty clear that music has a spiritual quality in Spitzer’s life. It has real power that he tries to convey to his audience. If listeners are receptive, he says, the music can “take them places beyond where they’re used to going.”

Spitzer recognizes that part of his job as host is to lead people down a certain path, to gain their trust as a musical tour guide. While it’s not in his nature to sell people something they don’t want, he figures when skeptics hear what he’s selling, they’ll end up liking it.

“There is a bit of a come hither, P.T. Barnum side to it. You have to engage people and use the linear sequence of these segues to make sonic and semantic sense. They have to flow musically, but they also have to mean something consistent or mean something creatively and purposefully different, so as to contrast and complement the message.”

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to reality. Spitzer uses art as a window in pedagogy, too.

“Part of the thrill and challenge of teaching New Orleans, French Louisiana, Gulf Coast cultural vernaculars—the song, the music, the Mardi Gras or the handmade wooden boat— is to try and ask students who mostly did not grow up or live in those type of communities to better understand what they mean, their aesthetics and, if appropriate, go out and participate,” Spitzer says, ramping up for another inspired monologue.

More and more, he feels these types of cultural connections will help students participate in the renaissance of New Orleans following

the devastation—physical and cultural—from Hurricane Katrina.

Spitzer, who was displaced from the city for six months after Katrina’s impact sent him and his radio team into exile in Lafayette, La., recognizes that rough times often produce some of the most important art.

“So much great art has been created in the margins—New Orleans is no different. The beginnings of jazz occurred in one of the most socially problematic times in our history.

At the same time there was a collision of cultures and an emergence of a freedom, music and statement that’s still playing in the world.

Saxophone elder Sonny Rollins recently said to me: ‘No jazz, no Obama.’”

He believes the things that make the city distinctive also are the best bet for developing lasting solutions to problems that over the years have piled up like so much rubble outside the gutted homes in the flood zone.

“It might just be that rhythm and blues, jazz, Mardi Gras Indians, Creole food, vernacular architecture, not in a ‘cliche-ic’ way, but in deep and enduring ways, help rebuild this place by defining what we value as community-based

culture in a place where tradition has in large part been based in creativity and improvisation,” he says.

He’s bringing that sensibility to Tulane, happy to be part of an institution that he calls a “model for institutional recovery in the city,” and is hopeful that the emerging signs of the city’s enduring culture are the bellwethers of good things to come. He uses the Mardi Gras Indians as an example, calling them, collectively, “the reverse canary in the coal mine” that is New Orleans.

“There must be more than enough oxygen because the Indian culture seems to have become more vibrant since the storm.”

He wants his students to experience what the city and region’s cultures have to offer. To not just listen to music but to realize that it can tickle other senses and the intellect as well—to realize it is something that should not be merely relegated to an iPod, but can be shared. He says all of his students have been “assigned” to walk in a second-line in order to understand that collective musical experiences don’t only have to occur at a concert.

“It could be in motion, and it could have an

element of danger, and it could be a chance to drink a beer—if you’re of age of course— walking down the street, which you don’t get to do in a lot of Northern locales. It’s a total engagement of the senses—it smells, it tastes, it hears, it looks.”

With that in mind, Spitzer is teaching a class in the fall that will send the students out into the community to be an active part of the city’s conversation. The class is tied to a community research project with students called “Talking to New Orleans,” a riff on Fats Domino’s early rock ’n’ roll classic “Walking to New Orleans,” and an homage to a genre that Spitzer calls his favorite.

Officially titled “The Interview: Cultural Conversation as Cultural Conservation,” the course’s service-learning component will have students doing the kinds of things that started Spitzer on his path years ago: getting out and talking to people. Working with local nonprofit organizations, students will conduct and record in-depth interviews with members of the community to learn more about their lives, cultures and traditions. The interviews will be archived as a record of the city’s recovery.

Both in the classroom, and in his own life,

Spitzer is combining the academic with the experiential, propagating the hybrid learning experience that inspired him years ago and continues to do so today.

Moving, talking, thinking in straight lines are not Spitzer’s approach. Long and winding routes are the rule, not the exception. He eschews a linear, “101-approach” to teaching and instead he preaches what he practices, encouraging his students to synthesize experience and information and come to their own conclusions, walking the vernacular streets, hearing the music, embracing the rituals and the festivals, and seeing how they come to life when we engage in those intimate, face-to-face settings.

Ryan Rivet is a writer in the Office of University Publications.

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If you are white, what Tim Wise has to say may blow your mind.

If you are black, he’s no t saying anything you likely don’t already know.

by nick m arinello

llo thomas peti y b y h p a r g photo P A G E

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spea

treason

king

I’m sitting in a brew pub in Nashville, Tenn., contemplating what ale would most appropriately pair with my selection of chipotle-baked

“Being white means never having to think about it.”

—James Baldwin pork loin, when it occurs to me how very “white” it is to be sitting in a brew pub. If this is a racist thought, I don’t question it but rather push on to pondering the apparent disconnect it implies.

Across the table from me is Tim Wise, A&S ’90, who at the age of 40 has developed into one of the most provocative and, some say, profound voices of the social justice movement. For nearly 15 years Wise (who is white, by the way) has written and lectured extensively on race, slogging through the perilous no-man’s land of racial discourse by challenging not only the internalized and institutionalized racist beliefs he finds hardwired into America’s circuitry but also what it means to be anti-racist. Some of his most provocative ideas orbit around the concept of T U L A N I A N

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ns of o s r e p f i It’s as g to n i v a h e r color a ry day— e v e x a t pay a a psychologi cal, emotional an d sometimes m ateria

” l tax.

Increasingly in demand as a lecturer, Tim Wise spends nearly a third of the year on the road. Downtime in hotel rooms affords the opportunity to check e-mails and plunge into his next essay.

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white privilege, a toxic cultural conditioning that he says underpins white supremacy even as it undermines the authentic identity of those it benefits.

“This Is Your Nation on White Privilege,” a polemic essay on the double standards of the presidential campaign, went viral on the Internet late last summer, appearing on some 13,000 sites and inspiring passionate kickback from both supporters and detractors. In his latest book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama (City Lights, 2009), Wise argues that President Barack Obama’s political ascendancy is no shiny signpost to “post-racial” America but, rather, that it “confirmed white privilege with a vengeance,” because Obama was forced essentially to ignore racial inequity as an issue in order to make enough whites comfortable with his candidacy. Wise has been described, alternately, as the nation’s leading anti-racist, a left-wing extremist, a national treasure, a guiltridden apologist, a modern-day John Brown and the Uncle Tom of the white race.

Hence the aforementioned disconnect. The

brew pub was Wise’s idea and as the tall mugs of amber-colored ale arrive at the table, I see it is a good one. But it’s not where I would expect to be meeting a hip, radical, self-flagellating race traitor like Wise.

I look around to see if there are any black folks at a nearby table. Nope.

Hmmm…. It’s damn annoying to have your expectations and assumptions challenged before they can fossilize into beliefs. …

zero sum Where to begin? Wise may be based out of his hometown of Nashville, where he lives with his wife and two young daughters, but the locus of his work is divided between the suitcase out of which he lives for the 100 days a year that he’s on the lecture circuit and the rough-and-tumble world of the Internet. In cyberspace, his essays and video clips of his talks circulate the datasphere like comets, and rhetorical skirmishes between Wise and his detractors are scattered like chunks of cosmic debris.

Acquiring a true sense of who someone is by sifting through bits and pieces of his online presence is a bit like trying to retrieve your phone messages during a rock concert. It’s my hope that after a little face time in Music City, I’ll have acquired a fuller appreciation of Wise.

One thing seems certain—as a writer Wise appears little interested in taking prisoners, but rather approaches each piece as if it were Omaha Beach, deploying facts and figures, conclusion and conjecture in a breathless assault that speaks to the joy of combat. (He has nearly 200 essays online, at www.timwise.org.)

Behind the lectern, he has an oddly commanding presence that prevails over a tendency to look much younger than he is. Wise’s cadence, phraseology and ability to load bits and pieces of his personal experience into what might otherwise be operatic-scale messages make him an engaging, even mesmerizing speaker.

“I only have two natural abilities and those are writing and speaking, and that’s it,” says Wise, who seems to balance a healthy ego with a genuine sense of humility. He pokes fun at his middling academic performance, lackluster SAT and GRE scores and tendency to be disorganized and pathological in meeting deadlines, but even as he is laying down,

brick by brick, the evidence of these flaws, you know he is taking delight in doing it so convincingly. He likes being smart.

But Wise isn’t just smart, literate and well-spoken. He also is white, a characteristic that he’ll tell you reverberates down every thread of his life as it does for every other white person, whether they admit to it or not.

White privilege is to whites as water is to fish. It can be invisible because it’s everywhere, not to mention damn helpful in swimming.

“White privilege is the flip side of discrimination against persons of color,” says Wise.

“If there is an apartment that won’t rent to a person of color, then that’s another apartment I can live in. And if there are two or three million cases of housing discrimination a year—as the research shows—then there are a lot more [apartments and houses] available to whites.”

It’s a zero-sum game that is played with no time-outs and on myriad fields.

“It’s as if persons of color are having to pay a tax every day—a psychological, emotional and sometimes material tax,” he says. “And white folks have a subsidy as a result of that. If a person of color has less opportunity, that opportunity doesn’t just get buried in the backyard. Somebody picks it up.”

Wise notes that he was able to attend Tulane because his grandmother put up her home as collateral in order to secure a bank loan for his first year of college. She was able to do that because her husband, Wise’s grandfather, acquired the home in a neighborhood where black families could not likely have lived, thanks to discrimination. Grandad had enjoyed a career in the military at a time when America’s armed forces were segregated, and then worked as a civil servant during a time

1988: Tim Wise presents Tulane President Eamon Kelly with a student petition calling for the divestment of university stock in companies doing business with South Africa.

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when few people of color could land good government jobs. Wise pushes this line of thought in his book, White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), where he argues that privilege plays into most experiences whites have.

Yet while most whites recognize the kind of megawatt racism that results in slurs, off-color jokes and exclusionary practices, the low-voltage sizzle of privilege can go undetected by many whites, particularly those who are themselves struggling to make a living.

It’s important, Wise says, to make the distinction between privilege based on race and that based on class. In an essay that appeared on his site this past September, Wise wrote: “Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere monetary issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich black and brown folks, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often don’t know they’re rich and so view them as decidedly not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools. … “… As for poor whites, though they certainly are suffering economically, this doesn’t mean they lack racial privilege.”

While his family was able to convert generations of acquisition into a loan for college, Wise’s parents were far from wealthy and the apartment in which he was raised was a modest one. “I didn’t have the same level of opportunity as the rich white folks,” he says, “but our white privilege wasn’t all that different.”

Meaning he received better treatment in school, by law-enforcement officers, and in the job market because of connections he was able to take advantage of that were less available to blacks he grew up with.

“The point is privilege is as much a psychological matter as a material one,” says Wise.

“Whites have the luxury of not having to worry that our race is going to mark us negatively when looking for work, going to school, shopping, looking for a place to live, or driving for that matter: things that folks of color can’t take for granted.”

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you w h i t e g un g y Back in 2005, a politically conservative website posted a profile of Wise that made a reference to his “meager academic credentials,” calling attention to the fact that Wise, who has taught a master’s-level class in the Smith College School of Social Work, and has guest lectured in hundreds of colleges and universities, had attained no degree higher than the BA he received from Tulane. (Wise sent a brief and polite, if waggish, message to the authors, challenging them to reveal their own academic credentials.)

Wise may have “only” received a bachelor of arts degree (in political science) but he did make good use of his time at the university, distinguishing himself not so much through academic achievement as he did through activism.

Central to Wise’s Tulane experience was his role as one of the student leaders of the Tulane Alliance Against Apartheid, a coalition that called for the university to divest its holdings in U.S. companies doing business in South Africa.

The students twice staged sit-ins at Tulane Board of Administrators’ meetings and camped out in symbolic, ramshackle shanties in front of the student center, and later, Gibson Hall.

Alliance members also sent letters to Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Prize–winning Archbishop of Cape Town, who was scheduled to receive an honorary degree at the university’s 1988 commencement ceremony. Upon learning that Tulane had not fully divested its South African interests, Tutu announced—only a week before commencement—that he could not in good conscience accept the degree.

In an article published in the summer 1988 issue of Tulanian, Wise is quoted as saying, “People say these shanties are embarrassing.

It’s going to be more embarrassing when I leave here with a degree from a university with policies that favor apartheid.”

By the time he received that degree in 1990, the controversy had been largely rendered moot by the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and the pending demise of South Africa’s white regime. Rather than returning to Nashville, Wise opted to stay in New Orleans for another six years, signing on with the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and

Nazism, an organization founded for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke, when Duke ran for U.S. Senate and governor of Louisiana in 1990 and 1991, respectively.

A key part of that job was writing position papers challenging candidate Duke’s revisionist account of his white supremacist past and neo-Nazi views.

“Tim was bright, articulate and politically passionate,” recalls Lance Hill, who in the early ’90s served as the coalition’s executive director.

Today he is the director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. “It wasn’t hard to imagine Tim was going to devote his life to social justice. He had an extraordinary intelligence and, most importantly, very critical thinking skills.”

After Duke’s second and ultimately final defeat in Louisiana statewide elections, Wise remained in New Orleans for several years working as a community organizer in public housing for Agenda for Children. In 1995, he was invited by a left-leaning speakers bureau to deliver anti-racism talks to university students.

“They told me not to count on getting a whole lot of gigs because nobody knows who you are,” he recalls. What happened next, Wise says, confirms the argument of white privilege.

In his mid-to-late 20s, with no recognition outside the circle of social justice activists in Louisiana, Wise began snagging around 40 engagements a year. “When they put my white face in the catalog, it was, ‘here’s this young white guy who looks just like your students and he’s going to talk about racism.’ And so it takes off.”

Wise says he bears the obligation of acknowledging that privilege to his audience.

“The fact is that people of color say all the same stuff and have said it for years and they don’t get nearly the same level of attention or recognition that I get. And part of being accountable is for me to own that, acknowledge that and make sure the people in the audience get it. Not so that I am ‘good’ and ‘pure,’ but so that we understand that a lot of the insights we gain come from places we never credit.”

True, white mentors such as Hill and Tulane history professor Larry Powell (who worked with the Louisiana Coalition) played

an important role in his life, but “the real wisdom—to the extent it can be called that—that I possess around race was transferred to me by people of color in the city of New Orleans.”

If he could call upon other white people to do one thing more than anything else, it would be to listen and believe what people of color have to say about their lives and their experience. “Whether it was the 1890s, 1960s or now, white people in the moment have never believed racism was that bad. We need to believe that people know what their lives are like. We need to be able to hear a story of our history, a version of our history that is not as rosy as the one we think is true.”

it isn’t about gu ilt

The morning after the chipotle pork and fancy brew, as I’m driving to Wise’s house, which is located in an older neighborhood in Nashville’s central city area, I recall something I read on the Net about Wise’s high school days. After penning a rant in the student underground newspaper blasting the school’s dress code, Wise was confronted by the assistant principal, who told

“

him, “I don’t think you recognize your power.

I think you could stand on a table in the lunchroom and tell the students to burn the building down—and they would.”

It was only a couple of years later that Wise was leading anti-apartheid protests at Tulane.

I’m picturing him calling for a hunger strike from the steps of the University Center and am trying to reconcile the image of this fiery young subversive with the genial, funny, modest fellow of the night before, when I make a wrong turn and wind up at the McCabe Golf Course a couple blocks from the Wise residence. Golf course?

What kind of subversive lives next to a golf course? All right, it’s a public course, but still. …

It’s not that I expected Wise to be wearing a dashiki or raising his fist in a salute at the end of the evening or anything but, honestly, there are a lot of white folks who slap “Eracism” stickers onto their bumpers, hang out with their black brothers and sisters listening to the Rebirth Brass Band at the Maple Leaf on Tuesday nights, and who never miss a chance to second-line at jazz funerals, digging the feelgood kumbaya of it all thinking the world is humming along just fine.

that s i t c a f e Th r say o l o c f o e peopl ff and u t s e m a all the s years r o f t i d i have sa and they don ’t get nearly the same rec ognition that I get.

”

Wise lives unapologetically in a middle class, mostly white neighborhood and has a signed and framed Blue Dog print on his dining room wall, for crying out loud. He’s probably a rotten dancer.

And yet, in the introduction to his book, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male (Soft Skull Press, 2008), Wise writes this: “Although race treason may not be a concept [that is] immediately recognizable to many, it is simply undeniable that over the course of USAmerican history, whites have been expected to fall in line, to accept the contours of racism, to remain quiet in the face of Indian genocide, the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of half of Mexico and any number of racist depravities meted out against peoples of color. We were supposed to put allegiance to race, to whiteness, above our allegiance to humanity. So, to speak against the prerogatives of whiteness, or merely to break the silence about white racism is, at some level, to engage in ‘race treason.’ It is to break with the expected loyalties, to cast one’s lot with a larger purpose. It is to refuse to be limited by the definitions placed upon oneself by the guardians of the status quo.”

It’s the kind of passage that you will find throughout Wise’s work—simply stated and, if you are open to it, filled with the pathos and urgency of being startlingly true. Most whites who embrace the cause of social justice have an “almost charity-based” mentality that Wise says not only limits their effectiveness in helping the cause but also constrains their own experience. In its essence, Wise’s message to other whites goes beyond tolerance, appreciation of diversity, or even the duty to serve others. Note the entreaty in the above passage to “refuse to be limited by the definitions placed upon oneself.” Wise is telling other whites to embrace social justice because it is good for them, too.

“I want white folks to know that it isn’t about beating ourselves up and it isn’t about guilt,” he says. “If you are doing the work out of guilt you need to stop. You need to do the work because it makes you angry to live in a T U L A N I A N

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Media response to current events such as school shootings, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy and candidate Barack Obama’s much-lauded speech on race typically projects the prevailing white perspective.

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compromised society and you are angry because your kids are getting poisoned by this stuff they are picking up.”

In March 2001, Wise happened to tune into “Larry King Live” during an interview of the mayor of Santee, Calif. Earlier in the day, a white student at a local high school went on a rampage, killing two and injuring 13. The mayor seemed perplexed by the slaughter, saying “We’re a solid town, a good town, with good kids, a good church-going town…an AllAmerican town.”

The comments enraged Wise, who had been posting essays onto the Internet for a couple of years, among them several pieces about school shootings involving white kids. He says he didn’t really want to revisit the topic, but was so angered that he “banged out something in 35 minutes” and sent it to Alternet, a progressive, online news magazine.

Says Wise, “It was a rant saying basically I’m tired of white people acting like we don’t have any pathologies in our community, and as a result we actually let down our guard and make ourselves less safe.”

In the piece, Wise wrote: “What went wrong is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by media representations of crime and violence that portray both as the province of those who are anything but white like us. We ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don’t live in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our car doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there. That false sense of security—the result of racist and classist stereotypes— then gets people killed. And still we act amazed.”

Six hours after the piece was uploaded to the Alternet site, Wise says he had received 400 e-mails responding to it and eventually received about 8,000 messages.

“The piece blew up huge,” says Wise, his words for the first time busting loose like shrapnel across the national map and loosening the country’s conversation about race so that it could begin to include a little white introspection.

kumbaya Although Wise had existed on my radar screen as an intermittent blip for several years, it wasn’t until last spring that I was riveted by a piece he wrote for Counterpunch, and then distributed through dozens of listservs. The essay, “Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia,” staked out Wise’s unblinking take on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy that had descended upon presidential candidate Barack Obama like a cloud of locusts. It was March 2008 when ABC News first “broke” the story about the “repeated denunciations of the United States” by Obama’s pastor, igniting a conflagration of opinion from pundits and politicians weighing in on whether or not and to what extent the suddenly beleaguered candidate should distance himself from Wright and his unpatriotic positions.

Amid this raucous chorus, Wise stepped in and challenged nearly everyone in the mainstream media. But hadn’t the angry Wright told his flock that America “got what it deserved”

on 9/11? And didn’t he say that the longrepressed community of black folks should be singing “God Damn America?”

“Well actually, no he didn’t,” wrote Wise.

In the column, Wise notes that rather than justifying 9/11, Wright had merely noted the predictability of terrorist attacks, given the long record of U.S. intervention and militarism around the globe, which has resulted in millions of civilian deaths. And, he notes, given the historic “intergenerational hate crime” that has been white America’s treatment of blacks, one can hardly expect the targets of oppression to sing the praises of the nation in the same uncritical, flag-waving key as that raised by the majority. (But don’t take my word for it. Read the piece yourself in the essay section of www.timwise.org.)

Ultimately, the Wright controversy would lead to Obama’s almost universally wellreceived “A More Perfect Union” speech, delivered March 18 in Philadelphia. Wise joins most observers in saying that it was the best political speech on race ever given to the nation. “He was the first major American politician I’ve heard to say black folks have a reason to be angry—and it is not just crazy or irrational but comes from a very real source of pain.”

As a discourse on race, however, the speech “was problematic,” says Wise. Though Obama validates black anger, the discussion is cast in the past tense and focuses on old grievances.

Even when the speech veers from the history lesson, Obama treads carefully before again turning to the past: “But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

Wise contends that this “implies that it is all past injury and that what we are dealing with is the legacy of all the horrible stuff, but that now it is really not a problem.”

In fact, the only present-day injury mentioned in the speech is the experience of whites who ostensibly lose jobs to people of color because of preference given to minorities through affirmative action.

“First of all,” says Wise, “it’s as if [Obama] seems to be trying to balance black pain with

You can find an archive of Wise’s essays on his Internet site, but it may be more fun to Google his name and trek the network of sites that host his work. white pain, as if the two were historically equal, as if affirmative action had done to white people what white supremacy has done to black people, which is preposterous. But also there’s the fact that [according to Obama] it seems that whites are the ones being injured today, which is just untrue.”

Wise goes on to say that whenever Obama validates black anger or perception he feels the need to balance it with white anger or perception—but doesn’t always feel the need to do the opposite.

That’s what white privilege is all about, I guess. Maybe Obama had to repudiate Jeremiah Wright in no uncertain terms in order to get elected. Maybe he had to narrowly tailor his message in the Philadelphia speech so that white folks like me walked away feeling disburdened, uplifted and unthreatened.

Maybe, as Wise points out in Between Barack and a Hard Place, that’s why Obama downplayed race whenever he could. Still, he did get elected and, maybe, if you’re a person of color in America, that’s all that counts.

I’ll admit that all that stuff about black and

white anger in Obama’s speech didn’t faze me the way it did Wise. Maybe I was too caught up in the kumbaya moment to listen critically, or maybe Wise is simply reading too much into it.

Race, racism, white, black, brown, privileged or not. … It’s tricky stuff to sort through in one’s own mind and harder still to trot out in front of others. Which for me is one of the most interesting things about Tim Wise, who seems to inhabit a zone from which he can write about race without flinching.

As I leave Nashville, I think about something Wise said regarding white people who have told him they are reluctant to talk to blacks about race because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Amen to that. And it isn’t any easier writing about race, when “the wrong thing” is duplicated in 100,000 copies.

I flinch as I hit the save key and send the story on its way.

Nick Marinello is the features editor for the Tulanian and a senior editor in the Office of Publications.

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giving Back Young graduate promises to double gifts A certain Tulane graduate of the last decade has promised to match 100 percent of first-time gifts to the Tulane Fund by other young graduates up to a total of $150,000 for his own gift.

He instituted the giving challenge to other GOLD alumni until June 30. GOLD is an acronym for “Graduates of the Last Decade.”

The graduate, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that his promise of matching gifts grew out of a desire to inspire other young graduates to keep Tulane and New Orleans thriving despite the current economic crisis.

Tulane is the largest employer in New Orleans, and support for the Tulane Fund definitely stimulates the region’s recovery, says the donor. Also, ongoing university initiatives like the Cowen Institute for Public Education, the Center for Public Service, URBANbuild and neighborhood health centers improve city schools, build community, make available affordable housing and provide health care in the area.

Tulane’s ranking and the ongoing value of a Tulane diploma are in part based on the number of alumni who give back to the university.

In fact, the number of alumni who give is actually more important than the dollar amount of each individual gift in the determination of a university’s place in the national rankings.

That’s why each gift to the Tulane Fund goes a long way toward maintaining Tulane’s prestige and increasing the value of a Tulane diploma.

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Each gift to the Tulane Fund goes a long way toward maintaining Tulane’s prestige and increasing the value of a Tulane diploma.

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Routine giving giving Routine adds up up adds Giving back to Tulane can become part of a routine. Take, for example, Elene Beerman Miller and her husband, Leonard Martin Miller.

They began giving back to Tulane as soon as they could, after graduating. Every year they wrote a check to Tulane, designating their support for University College, Tulane College and the Jewish studies program.

Elene is a 1964 graduate of University College. She attended Tulane on a full scholarship, earning a degree in medical technology. Leonard earned a bachelor of science from Tulane’s College of Arts and Sciences

GOLD alumni (Graduates of the Last Decade) have the opportunity to have their first-time gifts matched by a generous donor.

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in 1958. Later, he received a PhD from the University of Tennessee and built a thriving practice as a clinical psychologist in Knoxville, Tenn., with Elene assisting him and managing the office.

In 2002 the Millers informed the university that they had provided in their wills for a gift to Tulane, making them eligible for inclusion in the William Preston Johnston Society. (See the list on page 58). When Leonard died in 2004, Elene contacted the university about Leonard’s bequest designated for the same programs he had supported throughout his life.

“Imagine,” says Elene, “what a difference it would make if every alumnus participated in supporting the university in some way.”

Creative giving Creative giving in in time of turmoil time of turmoil Here are tax-smart ideas for Tulane supporters to consider while interest rates and stock values are down: • Lend us your depreciated stock for a few years through a grantor lead trust paying Tulane income for the trust’s term. When the trust ends, whatever remains goes back to you, hopefully after the assets have had time to recover.

• Create your own stimulus package with a charitable remainder trust paying you 9.3 percent for five years and the remainder going to Tulane.

• Save gift and estate taxes with a nongrantor lead trust that will pay Tulane income before going to your children, grandchildren or other beneficiaries. There’s never been a better time, because low interest rates and depressed market values make it possible to transfer more wealth to your heirs while reducing or eliminating transfer taxes.

• Name Tulane beneficiary of your will, retirement plan, insurance policy or IRA. Loyal Tulane alumni and friends concerned about needing assets in the future can support the university’s work in this way.

• Visit www.plannedgiving.tulane.edu or call 800-999-0181 for other creative ways to support Tulane.

—Maureen King

theClasses Back to the Future Medical students Cliff Selsky (M ’88), Wes Ely (A&S ’85, M ’89, PHTM ’89), Peter Lund (A&S ’86, M ’90) and the late Vanessa Tatum (M ’89) gaze into a crystal ball, posing for the cover photograph of the spring/summer 1988 issue of Tulane Medicine. The students were featured in a story about the future of medical education. Tulane Medicine debuted in 1969 and continues today.

classNotes theClasses

Alumni board 1 Gathering at homecoming are members of the Tulane Alumni Association board. Back row, from left: Robert Freeland (A&S ’76); Carol Squarcy Showley (NC ’74, A ’77); Phil Scheps (A&S ’63); Hollie Larsen Cummings (NC ’88); Thomas M. Lee (E ’76); Dale Robinson-Rogers (SW ’98); Rob Tessaro (UC ’98); Rod Russell (G ’00); Asher McInerney (TC ’04); Dan O’Connor (TC ’97); St. Paul Bourgeois IV (A&S ’69, L ’72), president; Scott Bordenave (B ’04); Alex Hernandez (TC ’98, B ’03); Rusty Pickering (E ’91) and Tobias Smith (TC ’98).

Middle row, from left: Theresa Schieber (NC ’95); Samantha P. Rodier (NC ’01); Suzanne Valtierra (NC ’96); Lara Geller (NC ’93); Sharon Kozlowski Bourgeois (NC ’69); Joe Davenport (UC ’66) and Lori Hoepner (PHTM ’95). Front row, from left: Robert Riccardi (A ’91); Jim Ezell (A&S ’88); Alan Bern (B ’01) and Rick Powell (A ’77).

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Honorary alumni 2 The Tulane Alumni Association recognizes as honorary alumni, from left, Oliver Houck, Lawrence Powell, Beverly Trask and Wynona Witkovski at a reception in the Lavin-Bernick Center on Feb. 13, 2009.

Wave of green 3 From left, Dale

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Robinson-Rogers (SW ’98), community outreach task force chair on the Tulane Alumni Association board, Robert Freeland (A&S ’76) and Chloe Wicks (NC ’96) select trees for planting at the association’s inaugural national day of service, “Wave of Green,” on March 28, 2009.

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Powerful women 4 Florence Wiland Schornstein (NC ’56), left, chats with political strategist Donna Brazile, a keynote speaker at the Newcomb College Institute summit, “Power Lines: Women Transform the Grid” Feb. 5–7, 2009, in the Lavin-Bernick Center.

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Gathering at the summit are, from left, Yvette Jones (UC ’92, B ’95), political consultant Mary Matalin and Anne McDonald Milling (NC ’62).

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Felicia Schornstein Kahn (NC ’48), right, converses with J. Celeste Lay, assistant professor of political science, at the Newcomb College Institute summit.

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From Argentina 7 Charlotte Travieso (NC ’64), left, alumni affairs

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director, greets Aldo Spicacci (L ’01), Tulane Alumni Club–Buenos Aires president, on a visit to New Orleans.

PHOTOS 3, 7 BY SALLY ASHER, PHOTOS 4–6 BY CHERYL GERBER

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’53

Best Lawyers in America 2009 lists THOMAS B. LEMANN (L ’53) in the practice areas of nonprofit and charities law, tax law and trusts and estate law. Lemann has been selected for the list for at least 25 years. He is in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

ELINOR DEVEREUX FINLEY (NC ’55) married FERDINAND DIETZE (M ’62), who survived his wife, HENRYETTA GREENSLIT DIETZE (NC ’55). She left Newcomb College to marry THOMAS H. LEACH (A&S ’53, L ’56). She later returned to Tulane to earn a bachelor of fine arts in 1982. Her three children attended Tulane Law School—LISA D. LEACH (NC ’76, L ’78), THOMAS H. LEACH III (A&S ’79, L ’83) and the late JOHN K. LEACH (A&S ’81, L ’85).

She also was married to ROBERT KING (A&S ’54), who died in 1999. She has homes in Breckenridge, Colo., and Point Clear, Ala.

’55

PETER LINDEN GREEN SR. (E ’56) retired in 1988 from the U.S. government after 30 years—four years in the Navy and 26 with the Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. Green and his wife, Shirley Pettigrew Green, plan to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary on May 30. They have five children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Green writes to say that he would “love to hear from those in the class of ’56.” His e-mail address is pgreensr@comcast.net.

’56

The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif., honored ARTHUR HASTINGS (A&S ’57) in May 2008 for 50 years of college teaching. Hastings is a professor of psychology at the institute and director of the William James Center for Consciousness Studies. He began teaching at Northwestern University in 1957–58 and has taught at the University of Nevada and Stanford University. His research interests include bereavement, hypnosis and creative problem-solving. Hastings lives in Mountain View, Calif.

’57

The World Piano Pedagogy Conference honored EUGENIE RICAU ROCHEROLLE (NC ’58) in October 2008 for 30 years of publishing piano repertoire. A song for baritone solo from her Civil War musical, Yankee Stranger, was performed Jan. 17, 2009, on a program sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women in honor of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial. The song, “Walkin’ Freedom’s Road” is included in the organization’s new anthology, Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln: A Commemorative Collage.

A commissioned work for piano, violin and cello, “Piano Trio No. 3: Century Music,” from Chamber Music Central of Westport, Conn., premiered on March 8, 2009, in Southport, Conn. Another trio, “An American Rhapsody,” written for the 2002 bicentennial of Wilton, Conn., also was on the program.

Rocherolle wrote her first piano trio for her Newcomb senior recital in 1958.

’58

The University of Zagreb has invited JACK KUSHNER (A&S ’60) to speak at a conference in Croatia in May. One of the university’s professors attended a speech Kushner gave at Oxford University in August 2008 and invited Kushner to give an update on Tulane and speak on any subject he chooses.

Kushner plans to speak on “Surviving the Economic Downturn.”

’60

Early History of Oxford, Mississippi by ANNE D. PERCY (NC ’61) was published in December 2008 and is available at Square Books in Oxford, Miss.

’61

JOANNE OMANG (NC ’64) is a former reporter, editor and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Now an independent consulting writer and editor, Omang has one published novel, Incident at Akabal, and is working on others. She served as editor for all of the tools available in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s “Family to Family” child welfare series.

’64

RON MARTINETTI (A&S ’66) started a website—www. americanlegends.com— with VAGN HANSEN (A&S ’66) and MARTY PITTS (A&S ’66). They have interviewed many interesting people including Budd Schulberg on writing On the Waterfront, former New York Mayor Edward Koch and many people who knew James Dean and Jim Morrison. He also has two published books, one on Dean and the other on Willa Cather.

’66

Beckett at Greystones Bay, a play by ROSARY HARTEL O’NEILL (NC ’66, G ’67), was named a finalist in the 2008 New York Pen and Brush International Play Competition. Samuel French, the play publisher and authors’ representative, has licensed O’Neill’s plays in two anthologies: A Louisiana Gentleman and Other New Orleans Comedies and Ghosts of New Orleans. O’Neill received a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellowship to represent American writers in Au Villar, France, with her play Degas in New Orleans.

O’Neill, the founding artistic director of Southern Repertory Theatre in New Orleans, is resident playwright at the National Arts Club and a member of the Abingdon Theatre Playwrights Group in New York, where she has lived since 2005. For more information, visit www. rosaryoneill.com.

Louisiana Super Lawyers 2009 has named JOHN D. WOGAN (L ’66) to its list of outstanding lawyers who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Louisiana Super Lawyers’ selection process includes statewide nominations, a peer-review survey by practice area and independent research on candidates. Best Lawyers in America 2009 also lists Wogan in the practice areas of banking and corporate law. He practices in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

MARTHA CRENSHAW (NC ’67) is a senior fellow at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for

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International Studies, an interdisciplinary research and training center addressing some of the world’s security problems with policyrelevant solutions. She is a professor of political science by courtesy at Stanford. Crenshaw was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought and professor of government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., from 1974 to 2007. Her current research focuses on innovation in terrorist campaigns, the distinction between “old” and “new” terrorism, why the United States is the target of terrorism, and the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies. She was a senior fellow at the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City in 2006–2007.

JOHN GRIMM (B ’67, ’69) is treasurer of the Great American Gardens Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit organization with the mission of finding, identifying and preserving ancient and historic camellias and azaleas. In less than one year, the organization rescued more than 300 varieties of camellias from extinction and has more leads on the location of hundreds of other endangered plants.

Many of the oldest varieties have been threatened by hurricanes on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, careless cleanup after storms and urban sprawl, Grimm says. The alliance is made up of gardens, cities and individuals in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Grimm also is president of Multi-Quest, a market research and polling firm.

The Tennessee Emergency Medical Services for Children Foundation presented its Pioneer Award to ROBERT WIEBE (M ’67) in December 2008. The award recognizes Wiebe’s long-standing service to the lifesaving needs of children. Wiebe is a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

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group and weight classification in the 100,000-meter indoor row with a time of 9 hours, 11 minutes and 5.2 seconds. He set the record on Dec. 20, 2008, in Irvine, Calif.

special legislative act. Mandelkern is an attorney with Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor and Reed, central Florida’s largest law firm.

Best Lawyers in America 2009 lists ARTHUR J. WRIGHT (A&S ’68) in the practice area of resources law and oil and gas law. Wright is an attorney with Thompson and Knight in Dallas.

MARLENE ESKIND MOSES (NC ’72, SW ’73) is president-elect of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, an organization comprised of more than 1,600 of the country’s top divorce and family law attorneys.

DONALD R. ABAUNZA (L ’69) is on the Louisiana Super Lawyers 2009 list in general litigation and the Best Lawyers in America 2009 list in the practice area of maritime law. He is in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

’69

JEROME S. BLACKMAN (M ’71) serves on the board of the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance. Since September 2008, Blackman has been teaching a weekly course on developmental conflicts via videoconferencing to the faculty of the Shanghai Mental Health Center. In March, he’ll be a visiting lecturer at Beijing University, East China Normal University and Shanghai Medical School.

This spring, Routledge will publish Blackman’s book, Get the Diagnosis Right: How to Assess Emotional Disturbances and Select the Correct Treatment. His first book, 101 Defenses: How the Mind Shields Itself, has been in print since 2004.

Blackman is professor of clinical psychiatry at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., and he trains and supervises analysts with the New York Freudian Society Psychoanalytic Training Center in Washington, D.C. He also is secretary-general of the American College of Psychoanalysts. Blackman is presenting a paper on “Multimodal Psychoanalytic Diagnosis” at the World Psychiatric Association meeting in Florence, Italy, in April.

’71

In the Florida Medical Business newspaper, PAUL MANDELKERN (A&S ’71) commented on a case argued before the Florida Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of a

’72

RANDOLPH C. READ (A&S ’72) is president of Greenspun Corp. in Las Vegas, with interests in real estate, gaming, publishing, Internet applications and investments. Read led the corporation as the only co-investor with Sam Zell in purchasing the Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, six other daily newspapers, 23 television stations, the Chicago Cubs baseball team, WGN America and other operations.

Best Lawyers in America 2009 included on its list LAWRENCE P. SIMON JR. (L ’72) in the practice areas of natural resources law and oil and gas law. Simon practices in the Lafayette, La., office of Liskow and Lewis.

JOE B. NORMAN (A&S ’73, L ’78) is on the Louisiana Super Lawyers 2009 list and is on the Best Lawyers in America 2009 list in the practice areas of commercial litigation and oil and gas law. Norman is an attorney in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

’73

ABHAYA ASTHANA (E ’74) received a Bell Labs Fellows Award at a ceremony in Paris on Dec. 5, 2008. The award, the highest honor bestowed on individuals by the Bell Labs president, recognizes members of the Alcatel-Lucent technical community for outstanding, sustained research and development contributions to the company. During his 28-year career, Asthana has developed and applied technologies with implications in a broad range of communications systems.

’74

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Based in Westford, Mass., Asthana holds nine patents and has written more than 100 published articles.

SUSAN ALLPORT HOWELL (G ’76) has launched a business baking and marketing omega-3-rich cookies with the help of her daughter, Cecil. A science writer, Allport is the author of The Queen of Fats. She was featured in the fall 2007 issue of Tulanian. For information about Susie’s Smart Cookie go to www.susiessmartcookie.com.

’76

GENARO J. PÉREZ (G ’76) is a professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University, specializing in 20th-century novels. He has written more than 100 articles and papers, two published volumes of poetry (Prosapoemas, 1980, and Spanish Quarter Notes, 2006) and two works of fiction (The Memoirs of John Conde, 2000, and French Quarter Tales, 2006). Pérez serves as co-editor of Monographic Review and is on the Executive Council of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

BOB HALE (A ’77), principal of the Los Angeles-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios, worked on the design of the studio building of Woodbury University’s architecture facilities in Burbank, Calif.

’77

LISA JEFF (E ’77), founder and president of

L’Acquis Consulting Engineers, is a singer who performed on www.indyjz.com in a live performance on Jan. 17, 2009, in Indianapolis.

A CD of the performance may be purchased at www.evelaurnmusic.com.

Grand Central Publishing plans to publish the debut novel written by CHARLES M. McCAIN (A&S ’78) in May. An Honorable German is a suspense-filled saga of World War II. McCain lives in Washington, D.C.

’78

’79

MIKE HAAS (E ’79), president of CryoPen, announces that the company accepted a

MARK TILLMAN Air Force One commander Tulane cadets in the Air Force ROTC often dream of flying high. And one ROTC graduate, MARK TILLMAN (E ’79), has fulfilled that dream in a big way. During the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration, Col. Tillman commanded an elite group of 235 crewmembers in the Presidential Air Group. Tillman himself piloted Air Force One on more than 200 flights each year.

After the terrorist attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001, Tillman was in the cockpit flying the president to undisclosed locations—including over the Gulf of Mexico— on his primary mission to keep the president safe. He also flew President Bush on a stealth visit to Baghdad for Thanksgiving 2003.

A poignant personal moment came when Tillman flew over New Orleans at the end of August 2005, with President Bush beside him in the cockpit. They surveyed Hurricane Katrina damage together, with Tillman pointing out to the president landmarks such as the French Quarter, the Louisiana Superdome and Tulane University.

Bush was criticized for not landing that day, but Tillman defends the president’s decision to forgo setting foot in the disaster zone because of security concerns.

“We would have had to land at New Orleans International Airport and President Bush would have had to helicopter into the city,” Tillman says. “He didn’t want to steal any helicopters that were needed for the relief effort.”

After flying President Bush all across the United States and on 49 foreign trips to 75 countries, Tillman retired on March 1, 2009, from his 30-year Air Force career. He and his wife, Teresa, have moved to Scottsdale, Ariz.

Tillman says he plans to fly a corporate jet two or three times each month until his three children finish college. He has a son, Patrick, a sophomore in aeronautical engineering at the University of Florida, and two daughters, Erin, 16, and Reilly, 12.

Free of the “no-fail mission” to keep the president safe, Tillman is looking forward to playing golf in his new desert home.

—Fran Simon

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$2 million award from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to embark on a cooperative gynecologic research project with the University of Texas–Houston Medical School.

CryoPen is a developer and manufacturer of cryosurgery technology.

GEORGE DENEGRE JR. (A&S ’80, L ’83) is listed in Best Lawyers in America 2009 in the practice area of commercial litigation. Denegre practices in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

’80

BEHR CHAMPANA (A ’81), an Atlanta-based architect, was interviewed about his Dubai Towers project for a documentary about Dubai on the Discovery Channel.

Dubai Towers won the top award at the 2008 Cityscape/Middle East Architect magazine convention for the best super-tall building in the world. Champana’s Dubai Towers project was featured in the fall 2007 issue of Tulanian.

’81 PATRICK IBERT A concrete solution Build safer, stronger and smarter. That is the mantra heard in south Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

PATRICK IBERT (E ’98, ’03) sees an opportunity and he has returned home to his native New Orleans from New York to attempt a new way to build. He is the owner of Green Door Construction, a company that uses engineered material as an alternative to traditional wood-frame construction.

The company was born of a family tragedy. In the days following Katrina, a fire consumed his parents’ home in the Lower Garden District. Taking on the role of general contractor, he decided to use 21st-century technology to rebuild the 19th-century Greek Revival house.

The material Ibert chose for the exterior walls was Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, a precast concrete block that is sustainable, efficient and virtually impervious to fire and termites. It’s a technology Ibert believes is well-suited to New Orleans.

“I think homeowners want something new and something better because they’ve seen what happens,” Ibert says. “They’ve seen their stick-frame homes blow away or get mold.”

While aerated concrete is considered a “new” building material on this side of the Atlantic, Ibert says it has been in use in Europe for decades where the high cost of wood has motivated builders to try new technologies. Ibert expects that high-energy costs and increasingly strong storms in the United States will result in Americans embracing the innovative building material even though it costs 10 to 15 percent more than traditional construction. He says that the initial higher expense can be recouped throughout the life of a home through savings in heating and cooling.

“I want to see the best for the people of New Orleans,” says Ibert. “I want people to be educated about all of the options they have when building. As long as the consumer doesn’t demand a product, the industry is never going to change.”

—Ryan Rivet

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PEDRO PIERLUISI (A&S ’81) won the election on Nov. 4, 2008, becoming Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner for the New Progressive (Statehood) Party. He represents Puerto Rico in the U.S. Congress as a nonvoting delegate. Pierluisi endorsed Barack Obama for U.S. president and served as cochair of Obama’s campaign in Puerto Rico.

JOHN THOMAS (B ’83) is a senior vice president at the international commercial real estate advisory firm of Jones Lang LaSalle in McLean, Va.

’83

Best Lawyers in America 2009 lists ROBERT B. McNEAL (L ’84, ’93) in the practice areas of oil and gas law. He practices in the New Orleans office of Liskow and Lewis.

’84

ANDY TAGGART (L ’84) has published Mississippi Fried Politics: Tall Tales From the Back Rooms (Red/Blue Publications, 2008)

PHOTO BY GEORGE LONG

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with co-author Jere Nash. The book about Mississippi’s colorful politics is a collection of anecdotes, editorials, speeches and photographs. Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976–2006 (University Press of Mississippi, 2006), also by Taggart and Nash, will be released in a second edition with updated material in fall 2009.

The ninth Southern women’s fiction novel, The Lost Hours,

by KAREN SCONIERS WHITE (B ’86) will be released in April 2009 by Penguin Publishing Group. White has contracts for two more books to be published in 2010 and 2011. White’s last three novels garnered her nominations as Georgia Author of the Year and her 2007 release, Learning to Breathe, won the National Readers Choice Award.

’86

MARK J. CHARNEY (G ’87) received an Excellence in Directing Award this past year from the Kennedy Center for his skills in directing Jane Eyre at Clemson University in fall 2007. The award was Charney’s third directing award; he also received an award for directing Urinetown in 2006 and The Decameron Project in 2005. His production of The Decameron Project advanced to the Kennedy Center’s regional festival and played for two weeks at the C Venue at the Fringe Festival in Scotland. Charney is director of theater and a professor of playwriting at Clemson University, where for three years he chaired the Department of English, his home base since 1987. He also directs plays for the community.

’87

Chronicle. JENNIFER HUGHES (B ’87) and Sternberg’s brother, TOM STERNBERG (A&S ’81), have joined forces with Sternberg and 15 other employees in the business.

GWEN THOMPKINS (NC ’87), East Africa correspondent for National Public Radio, presented the 2009 Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University on Feb. 5, 2009. The lecture honors the Los Angeles Times foreign correspondent who was killed in 1979 while covering the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran. See the profile of Thompkins on page 51.

KERRI McCAFFETY (NC ’89) celebrated the 10th anniversary of the release of her book, Obituary Cocktail: The Great Saloons of New Orleans, at a party at the Napoleon House in the French Quarter. To commemorate the occasion, master distiller Ted Breaux created a new cocktail, “Obituary Decade,” featuring his Lucid absinthe, which debuted at the event. A group of the book’s fans has established a social club known as the Grande and Secret Order of Obituary Cocktail Drinkers.

’89

ELYCE WARZESKI PICCIOTTI (B ’87) returned to New Orleans in April 2008. She is a financial adviser with Wachovia Securities.

MURRAY P. NELSON (UC ’89, B ’96) is district director for Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, the first Vietnamese American member of the U.S. Congress. In a surprising victory, Cao, a Republican, was elected in December to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Louisiana, including most of New Orleans. He ousted longtime Democratic Rep. William Jefferson. Nelson owns DMC New Orleans, which produces conventions for Fortune 500 companies and associations. Nelson and his wife, Ashley, have two children, Julia, 9, and Pearce, 6.

PAUL STERNBERG (B ’87) launched Choice Corporate Housing about five years ago. The corporate housing company now has nearly $10 million in revenue, a growing list of Fortune 500 customers and approximately 700 occupied units across the country, according to an article in the Houston

SCOTT PODVIN (A&S ’89) graduated from the advanced development management program in real estate at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Podvin reports that a 276-unit apartment community in East Orlando, Fla., converted to condominium ownership, is completely sold out as a result

of his sales and marketing efforts, generating more than $100 million in sales in less than two years.

This spring, Information Management Network has invited Podvin to speak at its Distressed Hotel Symposium in Hollywood, Fla., and the inaugural European Distressed Real Estate Summit in London.

Podvin and his wife, Meredith, have two children, Allison Leigh, 2, and Brad Thomas, 1; the couple is expecting a third child in September.

DAVID CLAYTON CRUMRINE (B ’90) and JOSEPH TAMLIN LAKE III (A&S ’91) were married Nov. 3, 2008, under the dome in San Francisco’s City Hall in a ceremony that coincided with the 18th anniversary of their first meeting in New Orleans. JAMIE BUSH (A ’90) was among those attending the wedding.

Crumrine has been active in online marketing for more than 15 years and is an executive with Macys.com. Lake is human resources manager for EDAW landscape design and architecture firm in San Francisco. Crumrine and Lake enjoy their friends, fine wine, good food and two dogs.

’90

Washington CEO magazine featured SCOTT C. G. BLANKENSHIP (L ’91) in June 2008 as one of the top 10 employment/labor lawyers in Washington state. Blankenship settled the largest reported employment discrimination case for a single plaintiff in the history of the Northwest in September 2008, according to Jury Verdicts Northwest. He was honored by Law and Politics magazine as a “Washington State Super Lawyer” in 2008, and was named by the American Trial Lawyers Association as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in Washington for 2007. Blankenship continues to practice in Seattle where he lives with his wife, Julie, and their children, Sophia and Victor.

’91

PATRICK MENASCO (A&S ’91, L ’94), a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Steptoe and Johnson, is a member of the firm’s tax group and litigation department. He represents clients

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in the investment of employee benefit capital and the management of single and multiemployer plans. Menasco also is an adjunct professor at George Washington University School of Law. BENJAMIN M. BURSON (A&S ’92, L ’95) founded the Myra Bordelon Burson Foundation in Eunice, La., in honor of his mother.

The nonprofit organization’s mission is to empower elderly and adult disabled people, raising awareness about issues such as difficult financial choices between buying food or medicine. Burson also promotes the Five Wishes program, an end-of-life planning tool. For more information, visit www.myraburson.com.

CHARLES S. BLATTEIS (L ’93), a partner in the law firm of Burch, Porter and Johnson in Memphis, Tenn., is chairman of the board of directors of the Memphis branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Blatteis also is a member of the board of directors of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, for which he serves as chairman of the International Business Council.

’93

’92

JAWARIA “JIA” GILANI (NC ’95) and her husband, Marc Minsker, announce the birth of their son, Faaris, on Feb. 15, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

’95

MARGARET FENTON (NC ’92, SW ’93) plans to celebrate the publication of her debut novel, Little Lamb Lost, by Oceanview Publishing on June 1, 2009. The mystery will be available nationwide. A lifelong mystery fan, Fenton lives with her husband in Birmingham, Ala. SHEA MURDOCK (A ’92) and ROBERT YOUNG (A ’92) of Murdock Young Architects won two Archi Awards from the Long Island chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In the residential category, the jury honored a modern house designed by Murdock Young in the woods of East Hampton, N.Y. In the small projects category, the jury recognized a modern bathroom the firm inserted into a 1912 manor house. The awards

REBECCA HELENE HELLER (NC ’96) married Thomas Benton Gallagher on Aug. 17, 2008, in Baja, Mexico. The couple resides in Los Angeles.

’96

MICHAEL MININSKY (TC ’97) and his wife, Allison, had their first child, Sean Perry, on Oct. 13, 2008.

’97

DANIEL O’CONNOR (TC ’97) married Michele Ingalls on Nov. 8, 2008, in St. Petersburg, Fla. O’Connor is a senior managing director for sales at Hedgeharbor, the investment placement division of Asset Alliance.

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 1959!

Make plans to attend your 50th Reunion Emeritus Club Induction Luncheon Audubon Tea Room Friday, May 16, 2009 Watch your mail for more information or contact Ashley Perkins at 504-314-2972 or aperkin@tulane.edu

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DEIRDRE BROWN (L ’98) joined McGinnis, Lochridge and Kilgore as an associate in its Houston office. Brown is in the bankruptcy, financial services and construction litigation practice, representing creditors and bankruptcy trustees. She handles a range of construction litigation matters for owners, sureties, contractors and subcontractors.

Before entering private practice in 2000, Brown served as a law clerk to Elizabeth A. Pickett of the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Brown is a graduate of the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School.

’98

ZIAD HAMODI (B ’98) is a partner in the New York office of Reed Smith. His expertise is real estate law, including representing lenders in loan transactions, local and national developers, and a major financial institution in managing its real estate needs.

DAVID M. STEIN (E ’98) joined the law firm of Adams and Reese in New Orleans as an attorney. He and his wife, ERIN BERGER STEIN (NC ’99), announce the birth of their first child, Amelia Therese, on Jan. 16, 2008.

Texas A&M University Press released a volume co-edited

by MARY LYNE GASAWAY HILL (G ’99) in February. The Uncompromising Diary of Sallie McNeill, 1858–1867 chronicles the life of a student at Baylor College during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

’99

KRISTOPHER KEST (TC ’99) is a member of the board of the Orlando, Fla., County Bar Association Young Lawyers Section. For the second year, he chaired “Afternoon at the Courthouse,” an annual event for attorneys, law students, paralegals and other members of the legal community. Kest is an attorney with Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor and Reed.

AARON DETER-WOLF (G ’00) and FRANCESCA O’KEEFE WOLF (NC ’99) announce the birth of Elias Isaac on Dec. 17, 2008, in Nashville, Tenn.

’00

theClasses classNotes MALOREE HOOD (NC ’00) and MICHAEL BARRETT (B ’00) were married on April 12, 2008, in New Orleans. Among those attending the wedding were JENNIFER KAYE (NC ’00), LOVE RUTLEDGE (NC ’00), JODY CIMBALO LENG (E ’00), JILL SHULMAN BEAR (NC ’00), HAZEL BOGAN NICHOLS (NC ’00) and GEORGE NICHOLS (TC ’99).

AMAYA LAMBERT (E ’00) announces the birth of her daughter, Ava Grace, on Nov. 8, 2008.

FRANK RELLE (TC ’00) exhibited a show of new photographs, “Inside ELEVEN Homes,” at GSL Art Projects on Julia Street in New Orleans in December 2008. The more than 100 images in the show documented the interiors of the homes of Relle’s immediate family, showing everyday household objects and furniture. Says Relle: “I started to ask myself what it really means to build a life that can be washed away. It becomes a question of why the objects in our daily lives are important and why they are glorified.” Relle’s photographs were featured in the spring 2007 issue of Tulanian. His website is www.frankrelle.com.

DANIEL SELTZER (TC ’00) and BETH BARON SELTZER (NC ’96) announce the birth of Edie Hannah on Oct. 18, 2008. Grandparents are John H. Baron, the Schawe Professor of Musicology at Tulane, and Doris Baron, president of the Tulane University Women’s Assocation; and Benjamin Seltzer, professor of neurology at Tulane, and Natalie Seltzer.

Aunts and uncles are MIRIAM BARON (UC ’03), JEFFREY BARON (B ’00), CLAIR SOLOMON BERRY (NC ’63), and JENNIFER SELTZER (NC ’02, SW ’03).

MARCUS BERG (B ’01, L ’05) accepted an associate attorney position at Henness and Haight in Las Vegas, working in workers’ compensation and personal injury.

’01

NANCI L. MURPHY (UC ’01) is in her third year of business in Baton Rouge, La., with Esopi Galleries, an art gallery and jewelry

GWEN THOMPKINS Bearing witness East Africa correspondent for National Public Radio, GWEN THOMPKINS (NC ’87) is the eyes and ears for radio listeners around the world.

From a barbershop in Nairobi, Kenya, to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Thompkins covers Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, Uganda and Tanzania.

She says that her role as a reporter is to “bear witness.”

“All I can do for someone is to tell that person what it’s like to be in a particular place at a particular time, what’s it’s like to meet these people, what connections you can make between what you’re seeing from so far away and what you already know from your own experience at home.”

Thompkins spent 10 years in Washington, D.C., as senior editor for NPR’s “Saturday Weekend Edition With Scott Simon” but kept strong ties with New Orleans, her hometown.

In 2005, her mother died and then Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees swept 9 feet of water into her New Orleans house.

“Suddenly, I was untethered to the things I’d been tethered to,” says Tompkins.

“The universe was telling me something.”

She decided to pursue becoming a foreign correspondent. “It’s the only thing that I had actually wanted to do and didn’t think I could or didn’t know if I could do. I like to travel and I thought, ‘what could get me out of the country and writing again?’ ” Based in Nairobi since October 2006, Thompkins says that she relies on her own wits in her adventures abroad. “I’m far more confident than I was before.”

If there’s one misperception about Africa that she’d like to dispel it’s that Africa is all about suffering. Some people in Africa do suffer, she says, just as some people suffer in America. “But most people live ordinary lives.”

—Mary Ann Travis

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class Notes the Classes

Don’t you wish that the Tulanian were online so you could share it with your friends and family?

Well, wishes do come true!

store. For more information, visit www. esopigalleries.com.

ELIA NICHOLS (NC ’01), who lives in Florence, Italy, completed a film on Siena’s Palio, documenting the city’s biannual bareback horse race around the town square in honor of the Virgin Mary. Nichols is under contract to shoot “Follow Me” segments for the tuscanytube.com travel website. In July, she will play Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Bargello Theater in a production by Florence English Speaking Theatre Artists, her theater company. In August, she will star as Alice in FESTA’s production of Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass at the Pitti Palace.

NANCY STRASFELD (NC ’01) married Jack Gold in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 26, 2008.

MEGAN BERNSTEIN (NC ’02), MADELINE LOWENSTEIN (NC ’02) and SHERI GOLDBERG (NC ’03) were bridesmaids. Among those attending the wedding were MAGGIE WEINBERG (NC ’02), ASHLEY SCHARF (NC ’01) and STEVE SCHARF (TC ’92).

TRAN CASSANDRA HUYNH (NC ’02) will complete her internal medicine residency this summer with plans to stay on at the University of Texas Medical Branch as chief resident and assistant professor for one year before moving to Boston for a geriatrics fellowship at Harvard University.

’02

Now, you can check out the Tulanian wherever you are. In an effort to make our magazine more accessible to alumni near and far, we’ve gone digital!

———————— Visit http://tulane.edu/news/tulanian/

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ANNA MONHARTOVA (NC ’02, L ’08), a former Tulane tennis star, received the United States Tennis Association’s Southern Section Educational Merit Award. She was honored for developing A’s & Aces, an organization that offers tennis lessons and tutoring to children in New Orleans public schools. Monhartova, a faculty member in the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane, founded A’s & Aces with David Schumacher, a former coach of the Tulane women’s tennis team.

CLARA PERRY (NC ’02) and MICHAEL SCHWARTZ (TC ’02) were married in St. Louis on Oct. 11, 2008. The following alumni joined

theClasses classNotes them in celebrating their wedding: BRIAN COBLITZ (TC ’02), SHOSHANA COHEN (NC ’02), JAMIE CORNBLATT (TC ’02), ADRIENNE ENDRES DERAN (NC ’02), MAUREEN DEVERY (NC ’02), RACHEL FRIEDMANN (NC ’03), MARISSA HERSHON (NC ’03), STEPHEN JENKINS (L ’05), CHARLOTTE EVANS KYLE (UC ’02), LAUREN MEDWAY (NC ’02), JASON MURPHY (E ’02), LLOYD PALANS (A&S ’68), SCOTT ROSENBAUM (TC ’02), MICHAEL SATZ (TC ’02), JOHN THOMPSON (TC ’98) and TRAVIS TORRENCE (TC ’02). The couple resides in St. Louis.

JORDAN WEINREICH (TC ’02) married Kathryn Klein in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Jan. 24, 2009.

Groomsmen included ALEXANDER CHICCO (B ’02), GERMAN COPPOLA (B ’02) and PAUL MEHRER (TC ’02). In attendance were ANDY LEVEY (B ’01) and GABRIEL ESPINOSA (TC ’02). Jordan Winreich is a litigation associate at Morgan, Lewis and Bockius and Kathryn Weinreich is a supervisor in the national broadcast department of Zenith Media. The couple honeymooned in Antigua.

DONALD P. WRIGHT (A&S ’02) is the co-author with Timothy R. Reese of vol. 2 of the U.S. Army’s official history of the Iraq War, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign, The U.S. Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003 to January 2005. Wright is chief of the Contemporary Operations Study Team of the Combat Studies Institute of the U.S. Army.

KAREN DYER-SMITH GABAY (NC ’03) and her husband, Roy, announce the birth of Lila Isabelle on Oct. 18, 2008.

’03

DEENA GOLDMAN (NC ’03) married Robert Siegelbaum in June 2008 on the shores of Lake Michigan in Door County, Wis. Bridesmaids included TORY ERVIN (NC ’03), AMANDA GITLIN (B ’03) and LINDSAY BODACK (NC ’03).

In attendance were SARAH VALENZIANO (NC ’03), MISSY FRAZIN (NC ’01) and DANIELLE KELLER (B ’03). The couple resides with their puppy in New York, where Goldman is a program manager for Slow Food USA and

Siegelbaum is beginning a one-year fellowship in interventional radiology.

TIMOTHY SYKES (TC ’03) writes to say, “My blog earned $83,358 in December 2008. Oh yes, this is an all-time high for me, blowing away my previous record of $70,000 in August 2008. Trend followers can see my business is growingggggg.” In late 2007, after suffering a roughly 35 percent loss over two years, Sykes closed the hedge fund he launched in 2003 and created a publishing company, BullShip Press, to promote “freedom of finance,” the concept of the right of hedge fund managers to discuss their business freely without risk of penalty or censorship. Following this thinking, he introduced TIM (Transparent Investment Management) with the goal of repeating his original feat of turning $12,415 into $1.65 million, this time detailing the step-by-step process on his website, TimothySykes.com.

The Tomatoes, featuring WILL BURDETTE (L ’04) on guitar and lead vocals, George Ortolano on bass and backup vocals and Woody Vantagnan on drums, released their latest record, “Divisionism,” in fall 2008. Formed in New Orleans in 2004, The Tomatoes established a base within the city’s music scene and also have toured the club circuit from the East Coast to the West Coast. Their first full-length album was “The Rise and Fall of the Tomatoes” in 2005, and their second, “Trendy,” was released in 2006.

’04

RYAN PORCELLI (TC ’05) is director of operations of Phoenix of New Orleans, a nonprofit neighborhood recovery association founded after Hurricane Katrina. He oversees public programs, such as one that manages homeowners’ budgets and tracks the timely completion of rebuilding projects.

’05

JUSTIN ALBERT (E ’06, G ’06) and LAURA GAIGE (NC ’06) were married on June 14, 2008, in Youngstown, Ohio. DEREK LINTERN (E ’05), MITCHELL VANDENBOOM (B ’05) and

’06

PAUL GAIGE (TC ’04) were groomsmen.

CLARE HARPHAM (NC ’06) and CHRYSTAL DIELEMAN (NC ’06) were bridesmaids. Also in attendance were CHANCEY CHRISTENSON (TC ’05), CURTIS LAUB (A ’06), CHRISSY HORWEDELL FISCHER (NC ’04), DANNY REEVES (TC ’04), KARIE MELTZER (NC ’05), TIANA CHRISTOPHER (NC ’05), KATIE BROWN (NC ’04), SARAH KANE (B ’06) and LARRY HALL (TC ’06).

ANDRA AITKEN (A ’07) continues her New Orleans Dog business, designing and marketing T-shirts for dogs and their companions.

To give back to the global community, Aitken donates a portion of the business’ proceeds to worthy causes. In January 2009, she gave 10 percent of New Orleans Dog’s profits to Marriage Forward, a group committed to equal rights for all. Aitken’s T-shirt designs are available at www.cafepress.com/nodog.

’07

ADIA LUNDY-EGBLOMASSE (’08) opened Masse Media Consulting, providing publicity and promotional services to writers, artists, aspiring models and musicians, in January 2007. The company’s website is www.massemedia.net. In August 2008, she started the Lundy Initiative Pro-gram, a nonprofit career mentorship organization for high school juniors and seniors in the New Orleans area. For more information, go to www.thelundyinitative.org. She plans to re-lease a clothing line called Adia Lundy, The Collection, in April 2009. For more information, go to www.adialundy.com.

’08

The New York Times featured DAVE CAHILL (’08) on Dec. 10, 2008, in a story about his public-service work in the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina. After gutting destroyed homes as part of Student Advocacy for Equitable Recovery (SAFER), Cahill joined AmeriCorps and, with other SAFER volunteers, established Phoenix of New Orleans, a nonprofit neighborhood recovery association.

Cahill, whose hometown is Brightwaters, N.Y., has helped organize several successful fundraisers for Phoenix of New Orleans.

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deaths theClasses Frank E. Durham, professor emeritus of physics, of New Orleans on Dec. 15, 2008.

Louise Meyer (NC ’28, G ’30) of Augusta, Ga., on Dec. 14, 2008.

Theone Hausmann Klein (NC ’33) of Columbus, Ga., on Dec. 24, 2008.

Henry B. Dunn (E ’34) of New Orleans on Nov. 12, 2008.

Annie Goldenberg Welsch (NC ’34) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 20, 2008.

Edna LaNasa White (NC ’34) of Tulsa, Okla., on Sept. 27, 2008.

Ralph P. Heber t (B ’36) of Madisonville, La., on Nov. 10, 2008.

Gilda M. Larre (UC ’36, G ’50) of Albuquerque, N.M., on Jan. 6, 2009.

Glendy Culligan Pabst (NC ’36) of Mitchellville, Md., on Nov. 14, 2007.

Rebecca Raulins (NC ’36, G ’38) of Laramie, Wyo., on Dec. 4, 2008.

Bernadette Rogan (UC ’36, G ’39) of New Orleans on Nov. 6, 2008.

Joseph M. Brocato Sr. (A ’37) of Alexandria, La., on Dec. 1, 2008.

Viola Allee Hinds (NC ’37) of Houston on April 10, 2008.

Alma Zbinden Zimmerman (UC ’37) of Thibodaux, La., on Jan. 12, 2007.

William M. Payne (A&S ’38) of Greenville, Miss., on Jan. 13, 2009.

William T. Hogg Jr. (B ’39) of Jackson, Miss., on Dec. 4, 2008.

Lorene Berry (SW ’40) of Los Angeles on Feb. 6, 2008.

Eugene D. Broussard Sr. (L ’40) of New Iberia, La., on Nov. 21, 2008.

Gloria Grehan Ellis (NC ’40) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 24, 2008.

Maurice H. Hellman (E ’40) of Villa Park, Calif., on Oct. 3, 2008.

Harold J. Lagroue Jr. (A ’40) of Lafayette, La., on Nov. 22, 2008.

Edward P. Munson Jr. (A&S ’40, L ’42) of Fort Worth, Texas, on Dec. 8, 2008.

Martha Powers Murphy (NC ’40) of New Orleans on Dec. 10, 2008.

Sarah E. Gillespie (NC ’41) of

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Hattiesburg, Miss., on Sept. 1, 2008.

James V. Le Laurin (B ’41) of St. Louis on Aug. 12, 2008.

Mildred Hiller Cohn (NC ’42) of Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 5, 2008.

Walter E. Douglas Jr. (E ’42) of Fort Belvoir, Va., on Oct. 16, 2008.

Louis L. Pourciau (E ’42) of Foster City, Calif., on Oct. 25, 2008.

Hazel Kennedy Ramos (UC ’42) of Lexington Park, Md., on Nov. 22, 2008.

Charles P. Wimberly (A&S ’42) of Miami on Nov. 4, 2008.

Walter H. Brent Jr. (A&S ’43, M ’50) of Gretna, La., on Nov. 30, 2008.

Joseph D. Calhoun (A&S ’43, M ’45) of Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 13, 2008.

Wilkes Allen Knolle (A&S ’43) of San Francisco on Aug. 17, 2007.

Henry K. Miller (A&S ’43) of Baton Rouge, La., on Oct. 28, 2008.

Willard P. Schneible (B ’43) of Windemere, N.Y., on Nov. 30, 2008.

Norinne Vincent Winter (NC ’43) of Lake Charles, La., on Oct. 4, 2008.

Samuel D. Austin (M ’44) of Little Rock, Ark., on Nov. 3, 2008.

Carol Smith Barclay (NC ’44) of Chase, Md., on Feb. 16, 2008.

Rupert Crebbin Cheshire (NC ’44) of Winchester, Tenn., on Oct. 16, 2008.

Edward L. Schneider (E ’44) of Hammond, La., on Jan. 6, 2009.

Edward P. Randolph III (A&S ’45) of Pass Christian, Miss., on Oct. 18, 2008.

Walter D. Draughon Jr. (B ’46) of Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 3, 2008.

Mary Brash Griffin (NC ’46) of Pearl River, La., on Oct. 18, 2008.

Stephen L. Guice Jr. (B ’46) of Covington, La., on Jan. 26, 2009.

Daniel H. Hoffman Jr. (B ’46) of Baton Rouge, La., on Nov. 3, 2008.

Rowena Cowan Minor (NC ’46) of Shreveport, La., on Aug. 4, 2007.

Benjamin H. Sweet (A&S ’46) of Boynton Beach, Fla., on Dec. 31, 2008.

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Calvin G. Thomas (B ’46) of

Richard D. Wood (E ’50) of

Russellville, Ark., on Aug. 27, 2008.

Springfield, Mo., on May 17, 2008.

Elsie E. Hassler (A&S ’47) of

Upton W. Giles Jr. (M ’51) of

Colorado Springs, Colo., on Oct. 11, 2008.

Kenneth L. Jorns (M ’47) of Fort Worth, Texas, on Dec. 4, 2008.

Millard E. Matthew (A&S ’47) of Denham Springs, La., on Nov. 18, 2008.

William Gilbert Spargo (E ’47) of St. Louis on June 28, 2007.

Fred N. Estopinal Jr. (E ’48) of New Orleans on July 18, 2007.

Maurice D. Fogel (B ’48) of Mahanoy City, Pa., on Aug. 29, 2008.

Francis E. McDonald (A&S ’48) of Oceanside, Calif., on Dec. 16, 2008.

Richard C. Meaux (L ’48) of Lafayette, La., on Oct. 20, 2008.

Charles E. Richards (L ’48) of Covington, La., on Aug. 30, 2008.

Kathryn Moody Favrot (NC ’49) of New Orleans on Nov. 19, 2008.

William E. Hiller (A&S ’49) of Chelsea, Ala., on Jan. 15, 2009.

Charles G. Stokes Jr. (B ’49) of Saraland, Ala., on Aug. 20, 2008.

Donald E. Bone (A&S ’50) of Long Beach, Miss., on Nov. 21, 2008.

Rober t P. Foster (M ’50) of Shreveport, La., on Nov. 6, 2008.

Anne E. Hollis (SW ’50) of Houston on Nov. 24, 2008.

Warren R. Klees (UC ’50) of Arabi, La., on Jan. 21, 2009.

Philip R. Loria (A&S ’50, M ’53) of New Orleans on Nov. 29, 2008.

Martin J. Maier (E ’50) of New Orleans on Jan. 19, 2009.

Alvin W. Meibohm (G ’50) of Greenville, Ala., on Jan. 28, 2008.

Charles L. O’Brien (A&S ’50) of New Orleans on Dec. 13, 2008.

Henry A. Schnittker Jr. (B ’50) of Tyrone, Ga., on Sept. 2, 2008.

Wayne Shepard (M ’50) of Mooringsport, La., on Oct. 16, 2008.

Benjamin H. Troemel (A&S ’50) of St. Augustine, Fla., on Sept. 29, 2008.

Minocqua, Wis., on Aug. 14, 2008.

James D. Hebert (UC ’51) of Mandeville, La., on Jan. 9, 2009.

James W. Latham (A&S ’51, G ’65) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 22, 2008.

Henry I. Montgomery (B ’51) of Bloomington, Minn., on Sept.

28, 2008.

Charles E. Selah (M ’51) of Huntsville, Ala., on Dec. 7, 2008.

Walter S. Strode (M ’51) of Honolulu on Nov. 12, 2008.

Robert E. Zetzmann Sr. (A&S ’51) of New Orleans on Dec. 16, 2008.

James A. Conover Jr. (A&S ’52) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 4, 2008.

Wesley J. Fernandez (A&S ’52) of Mandeville, La., on Oct. 24, 2008.

Claude L. Garaudy (B ’52) of Kenner, La., on April 29, 2007.

Robert V. Garcia (B ’52) of Garden Grove, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2007.

Jere M. Pound III (A&S ’52) of Columbus, Ga., on Aug. 21, 2008.

Ernest E. Sandlin (A&S ’52) of Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Oct. 12, 2008.

Stanley C. Stockton Jr. (A&S ’52) of Bay St. Louis, Miss., on Jan. 4, 2009.

Cerre B. Diboll Jr. (A&S ’53) of Pass Christian, Miss., on Nov. 28, 2008.

Floy Polk Jones (UC ’53) of Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 16, 2008.

Irving A. Kurinsky (A&S ’53) of Toms River, N.J., on Oct. 20, 2008.

William G. Moench Jr. (L ’53) of Skaneateles, N.J., on July 22, 2008.

Mildred Oliver DiSanti (UC ’54) of Pascagoula, Miss., on Nov. 1, 2008.

Betsy B. Kramer (SW ’54) of Altoona, Fla., on Nov. 13, 2008.

Fred M. Southerland (SW ’54, PHTM ’68) of Silver Spring, Md., on Jan. 1, 2009.

Jerome Schneier (SW ’55) of Morrisville, Pa., on Jan. 11, 2009.

theClasses deaths Charles A. Wolford (G ’55) of

Peter Von Der Heydt (B ’61) of

Ulrich P. Kalkofen (G ’69) of

Brian J. Buendia (A&S ’77) of Covington, La., on Dec. 5, 2008.

John W. Spotts (B ’77) of Kingman, Ariz., on June 25, 2008.

David A. Buffington (E ’78) of McLean, Va., on Oct. 15, 2008.

Clara Hermes Dokos (G ’78, ’83) of La Grange, Texas, on Jan. 13, 2008.

Gina Ann Ello (UC ’79, G ’80) of Harahan, La., on Nov. 25, 2008.

William H. Mecom Jr. (UC ’79) of Pearland, Texas, on Oct. 8, 2008.

Janet White Brantley (G ’80) of New Orleans on Dec. 26, 2008.

Frank Neelis Roberts (L ’80) of New Orleans on Jan. 22, 2009.

Eleanor Cain Stutler (NC ’84) of Charleston, S.C., on Dec. 23, 2008.

Janice Oakes Schafer (L ’85) of Seattle on July 8, 2008.

James W. Lancaster Jr. (L ’87) of San Diego on Dec. 10, 2008.

Merrilee G. Albright (L ’88) of Shreveport, La., on Dec. 29, 2008.

Walter J. Clement (UC ’88) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 2, 2008.

Lindsley Brennan Tricot (NC ’88) of New York on Jan. 14, 2008.

Rene Rudolph Aguilar (UC ’89) of Arabi, La., on Jan. 16, 2009.

Dwight H. Short II (B ’90) of Pass Christian, Miss., on Oct. 31, 2008.

J. Richard Williams (SW ’91) of Chatsworth, Ga., on May 26, 2007.

Karen Rothman-Fried (NC ’93) of Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 16, 2008.

Russell A. Loftis (TC ’94) of New York on Aug. 4, 2007.

Anne M. McPherson (NC ’06) of Mandeville, La., on Oct. 25, 2008.

Mark B. O’Bannon (UC ’06) of New Orleans on Nov. 16, 2008.

Monroe, La., on Oct. 2, 2008.

Cologne, Germany, on Dec. 29, 2008.

Powhatan, Va., on Jan. 2, 2009.

Henr y Philip Radecker Sr.

Cedric J. Beckjord (A&S ’62) of

Gerald M. Baur (M ’70) of Boise,

(UC ’56) of Metairie, La., on Aug. 10, 2008.

William F. Zuber Sr. (M ’56) of Ventura, Calif., on Sept. 28, 2008.

P. Carey Becker (E ’57) of Metairie, La., on Nov. 4, 2008.

James J. Mathes Jr. (B ’57) of Metairie, La., on Dec. 13, 2008.

Barbara Dillinger Parrish (B ’57) of Pensacola, Fla., on Oct. 13, 2008.

Leon C. Weiss Jr. (E ’57) of Heath, Texas, on Jan. 24, 2009.

Katherine Settle Wright (L ’57) of Salem, Va., on Dec. 21, 2008.

Sydney S. Schochet Jr. (A&S ’58, M ’61, G ’65) of Gainesville, Fla., on Sept. 18, 2008.

Samuel B. Magids (B ’59) of Houston on Jan. 7, 2009.

Albert J. Otto Jr. (B ’59) of Shreveport, La., on Jan. 7, 2009.

James P. Redman (E ’59) of Portland, Ore., on Dec. 13, 2008.

Christopher D. Burda (M ’60) of Shreveport, La., on Dec. 2, 2008.

Patricia Bryan Clarke (NC ’60) of Bellevue, Wash., on Dec. 9, 2008.

John M. Filippone Jr. (A&S ’60, M ’67) of Lubbock, Texas, on Jan. 18, 2009.

Joel J. Flick (A&S ’60) of White Plains, N.Y., on Aug. 19, 2008.

Sherrell Hoffman Grean (NC ’60) of Weston, Conn., on Oct. 18, 2008.

Lynn Dumas Russin (NC ’60) of Miami on Oct. 4, 2008.

Roberto Stambulie (M ’60) of Houston on June 24, 2008.

Edmon L. Green (A&S ’61) of Morristown, Tenn., on Dec. 3, 2008.

William R. Healy (A&S ’61, M ’64) of Mobile, Ala., on Oct. 24, 2008.

Birch P. McDonough (A&S ’61, L ’62) of New Orleans on Dec. 24, 2008.

Ernest H. O. Nillen (UC ’61) of New Orleans on Jan. 10, 2009.

Berkeley, Calif., on June 22, 2008.

Idaho, on Oct. 3, 2008.

Eleanor Williams Cooper (NC ’62)

Kenneth S. Berry (G ’70) of

of New York on Dec. 6, 2008.

Gayle A. Houston (B ’62) of Atlanta on Dec. 26, 2008.

Joyce M. Hetzel (SW ’63) of Highlands, N.C., on Oct. 23, 2008.

Frederick, Md., on May 7, 2007.

Andrew P. Hrivnak (UC ’70) of New Orleans on Dec. 25, 2008.

Fannie Reddix Adams (G ’71) of New Orleans on Nov. 12, 2008.

Tracy Crail (G ’71) of Renton, Wash., on Oct. 18, 2007.

Jackson F. Ferguson (G ’71) of Blacksburg, Va., on June 11, 2007.

Mar tha Blackburn Shipley (SW ’63) of Carlinville, Ill., on Nov. 16, 2008.

Harry V. Singreen (A&S ’63, L ’67) of New Orleans on Jan. 26, 2009.

David Licciardi (UC ’64) of New Orleans on Oct. 17, 2008.

Judith A. Harris (M ’65) of New Orleans on Dec. 17, 2008.

Heinz K. Melchior (L ’65) of Duesseldorf, Germany, on Dec. 23, 2008.

Howard C. Rainey III (A&S ’65, L ’68) of Tuscaloosa, Ala., Sept. 9, 2008.

Lee B. Bloom (M ’66) of Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 2008.

Alfred J. Cohn (B ’66) of Birmingham, Ala., on Jan. 5, 2009.

Donald C. Middleton (UC ’66) of Houston on Oct. 30, 2008.

Sylvia Perrin Brown (UC ’67) of Little Rock, Ark., on Nov. 9, 2008.

Mary Stewart Christy (NC ’67) of River Ridge, La., on Dec. 5, 2008.

Louis O. Jeansonne III (E ’67, G ’70, M ’72) of Baton Rouge, La., on Jan. 18, 2009.

Daniel B. Terry Jr. (M ’67) of Gainesville, Ga., on Dec. 24, 2008.

Alvaro B. O’Byrne (PHTM ’68) of New Orleans on Nov. 24, 2008.

James D. Range (A&S ’68) of Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2009.

Martha Ann Crouch Taylor (G ’68) of Port Arthur, Texas, on Nov. 14, 2008.

Thomas A. Cullinan (G ’69) of New Orleans on Dec. 15, 2008.

Arnold Green Jr. (SW ’69) of Highland, Calif., on Jan. 5, 2009.

Geoffrey H. Longenecker Sr. (L ’71) of Versailles, Ky., on Jan. 13, 2009.

Ada H. Young (SW ’71) of Owensboro, Ky., on Dec. 26, 2008.

James L. Bergeron Jr. (UC ’72) of Athens, Ga., on Dec. 2, 2008.

Leon M. Rudloff (L ’72) of New Orleans on Nov. 11, 2008.

Clyde J. Barrois Sr. (UC ’73) of Belle Chasse, La., on Oct. 24, 2008.

John R. Curran (E ’73) of Santa Barbara, Calif., on Nov. 29, 2008.

John J. Foltz (UC ’73) of Signal Mountain, Tenn., on Jan. 3, 2009.

Steven E. Lundstrom (L ’73) of Lakewood, Wash., on March 23, 2007.

JoAnn Marinello Sellers (NC ’73) of Hammond, La., on Oct. 29, 2008.

Annie L. Thompson (G ’73) of New Orleans on Nov. 1, 2008.

Timothy C. Frech (A ’74) of Longwood, Fla., on June 26, 2008.

Andrew J. Holko (A&S ’74) of Hartsdale, N.Y., on Jan. 5, 2009.

Louis John Tomaino (SW ’74) of San Antonio on Dec. 30, 2008.

John M. Sartin Jr. (L ’75) of New Orleans on Oct. 17, 2008.

Roger J. Ferland (A&S ’76, M ’80) of Providence, R.I., on Dec. 1, 2008.

Odessa Bell Johnson (SW ’76) of Baton Rouge, La., on Nov. 15, 2008.

Zoila Rosalba Ruiz (G ’76) of New Orleans on March 29, 2007.

T U L A N I A N

Correction Barbara Murphy Brooks (SW ’59) was incorrectly listed in “Deaths” in the fall 2008 Tulanian. She lives in East Point, Ga.

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n meiw xe Orleans d Media Decisions, decisions

By Nick Marinello The Japanese magnolias have already bloomed and the azaleas are beginning to think about it.

High above, the sun is a bit taller in its arc across the southern sky. Soon, this year’s vintage of cat’s claw will advance on the city’s vast brigade of derelict houses, crawling up splintered sideboards and crowning ramshackle roofs in delirious yellow. And everywhere the ground nearly trembles in anticipation of spring.

The green, growing world is once again poised to overtake the city, and we should not forget that we live on a leased space, a rental unit upgraded with levees and a tenuous grid of asphalt and electrical lines, but still not quite up-to-code and vulnerable to the elements.

Whereas humans have generally been fairly successful in subjugating the natural world, shaping or obliterating it to suit this or that purpose, New Orleanians have been forced to settle for mere coexistence, but even that should be considered an achievement.

In his book Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historic Geography of New Orleans, Tulane research professor Richard Campanella ponders the myriad implications of the decision by the city’s founder to locate New Orleans on what may generously be termed a questionable site. It was a decision that would beget the need for countless other decisions over time.

Writes Campanella: “Colossal decisions— involving evacuating, relocating, hunkering down, giving up, resisting, conceding, fighting, accepting—confront citizens of New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana, oftentimes to the exasperated and impatient disbelief of Americans elsewhere. Should we remain in eroding marshes and continue centuries of tradition, or end our way of life and move inland so that aggressive coastal restoration

may commence? Should we maintain all lowlying, far-flung neighborhoods and trust that levees will protect us? Or should we concede these areas to nature and build only on higher ground? Should we try to save everyone, at the risk of losing everyone? Or should we ask some to sacrifice everything so that others may maintain something? Shall we strive toward the probable survival of half the society, or the possible survival of the entire society?”

These questions could fuel the kind of nagging, circular debate that over a couple of centuries would drive an entire population mad, but before you wag your finger and say, “Aha, so that explains it,” consider the following.

Where is the dispute? Haven’t we already pretty much agreed to continue the traditions of remaining in the eroding marshes and hanging on to our low-lying, far-flung neighborhoods?

There are a multitude of reasons for this inertia. Hubris, imprudence and bullheadedness are among them, but there are other considerations, including the pocketbook of the

family who can afford no other option than to rebuild their low-lying house, the lack of employment opportunities for the fourth-generation shrimper who might otherwise choose to move further inland, and the cold gut fear that haunts the choice to leave behind everything you know.

Yet, in deciding not to confront the questions that confront us, we open ourselves to the scrutiny of those elsewhere-living, finger-wagging Americans who observe the Gulf Coast with exasperated disbelief. And there are a multitude of reasons for their impatience. Hubris, ignorance and short attention spans are among them, but there is also pragmatism and a legitimate concern for accountability.

All of which is taking place in concurrence with the curious appearance of a spate of signs that are popping up all over New Orleans. The signs are handmade and consist entirely of a single sentence: “Think that you might be wrong.” People began noticing them a few months back, fastened to telephone poles Uptown, in the Seventh Ward, the Ninth Ward and Faubourg St. John.

Folks have started to speculate on the who’s and why’s behind it. Are the signs politically, racially or spiritually motivated? Are they offensive and, if so, who should be offended? Do they call the citizenry to action or damn them in judgment?

Suffice it to say that the signs are, at least as of this writing, mysterious in both origin and intent.

And as spring continues to deepen, with the grass growing high on lots left in limbo and cat’s claw continuing its merry shout-out to the sun, we have yet something else to consider. We can distract ourselves with a circular debate concerning the mystery of the signs, piecing together the pattern of their placement and questioning the motive of the person or persons who installed them.

Or, we can think—all of us—that we might be wrong.

The notice on the following page is being published pursuant to order of the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans.

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ILLUSTRATION: MARK ANDRESEN

IF A CLOSE FAMILY MEMBER DONATED THEIR BODY TO THE TULANE UNIVERSITY WILLED BODY PROGRAM AT ANY TIME FROM JANUARY 1, 1994 TO MARCH 31, 2004 AND YOU ALLEGE YOU HAVE SUFFERED DAMAGES FROM THE ACTS OR OMISSIONS OF DEFENDANTS IN THIS CASE A CLASS ACTION MAY AFFECT YOUR RIGHTS There is pending class action lawsuit involving certain close family members of individuals who donated their body to the Tulane University Willed Body Program. The name of the lawsuit is Rose Goudeau, et al. vs. The Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund, et al., No. 2004-04758. The case is pending in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans, State of Louisiana.

This Notice is only a summary. For complete information, you should read the complete Notice form available by visiting the website www.tulanewilledbodyprogramclassaction.com, or call, toll free, 1-866-467-1400 to obtain a Notice form.

What is the Lawsuit About?

The defendants in this lawsuit are The Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund, d/b/a The Tulane University of Louisiana, d/b/a The Tulane University School of Medicine, Mary Bitner Anderson, individually and in her capacity as Director of the Tulane Willed Body Program, and National Anatomical Service, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that Tulane University falsely claimed that it had an urgent need for donated bodies and thereby obtained, on a yearly basis, many more donated bodies than it needed to train medical students.

The lawsuit further alleges that Tulane ignored and/or exceeded the authorizations granted to Tulane by the donors by selling the bodies (and/or body parts) that were not needed to train medical students at Tulane to third parties, such as Defendant, National Anatomical Service, Inc., which in turn, sold the bodies (and/or body parts) to other entities, including, but not limited to, the United States Army.

The lawsuit further alleges that Tulane ignored and/or exceeded the authorizations granted to Tulane by the donors in numerous respects, including, but not limited to failing to contemporaneously track and approve the entities that ultimately received and actually used the bodies as well as failing to contemporaneously track and approve the actual uses to which the bodies were put.

The lawsuit further alleges that Tulane and National Anatomical Service, Inc.’s various acts and omissions in handling the bodies that had been donated to Tulane constitute an unauthorized mutilation, desecration, and/or mishandling of those bodies, causing emotional distress to the surviving family members of the donors for which the Plaintiffs seek to recover monetary damages against the Defendants.

Each and every defendant denies all the allegations.

The Court has not made a decision about the allegations. The Court has only decided that the case can move forward as a class action.

Who is affected?

The Class is those individuals whose close family members donated their body to Tulane Willed Body Program, and the succession representatives or executors or administrators of the estates of persons who donated their body to the Tulane Willed Body Program at any time since January 1, 1994 to March 31, 2004 and who allege that they have been damaged by the acts or omissions of the defendants in this case. The class specifically includes those persons whose deceased mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, son, daughter, and/or grandchild, including steprelatives, donated their body to the Tulane Willed Body Program.

What Are My Legal Rights?

You have a choice of whether to stay in the Class or not, and you must decide this now.

Remain in the Class You do not have to do anything to remain the Class. However, if you stay in the Class, you will be bound by any decision in this lawsuit. You won’t be able to bring your own separate lawsuit against the defendants in this lawsuit for the same claims that are the subject of this lawsuit now or in the future. If benefits become available in the future, you will be notified about how to participate in any benefits that may be obtained. You may be required to take further action to participate in any class recovery.

Exclude Yourself from the Class If you do not want to remain in the Class, you must exclude yourself from the Class in a writing that is postmarked on or before June 1, 2009. An Opt-Out Election Form may be found on the web site identified below. If you exclude yourself, you cannot get any money or benefits from this lawsuit if they are awarded. However, you will keep the right to bring your own separate lawsuit against the defendants in this case for these claims, and you will not be bound by any orders or judgments of the Court.

Who Represents the Class?

The Court has appointed attorneys to represent the Class. These lawyers are called Class Counsel. You will not be charged personally for these lawyers, but they will ask the Court to award them a fee that will be paid from any award or recovery that may be established in the lawsuit. You may hire your own attorney, if you wish. However, you will be responsible for that attorney’s fees and expenses.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COPY OF THE COMPLETE NOTICE, VISIT WWW.TULANEWILLEDBODYPROGRAMCLASSACTION.COM OR CALL 1-866-467-1400

William Preston Johnston Society

Thank You to the members of the William Preston Johnston Society

The William Preston Johnston Society recognizes those donors who have supported Tulane University with a planned gift. We honor their generosity with lifetime membership in this prestigious society.

Their promise is Tulane’s future.

Your Gift. Your Way.

Mrs. Shuree Abrams Dr. Stephen G. Abshire Jennifer L. Achilles Kay Nelson Acomb Samuel T. Alcus III Lawrence J. Aldrich Dr. & Mrs. Ivan S. Altman Mrs. Jay P. Altmayer Mary E. Andrus-Overley Elsa Freiman Angrist E. RamĂłn Arango Merryl Israel Aron Lee Askew III Harry E. Asmussen, CLU, ChFC, AEP, CLTC Sarah Dianna Atkinson, MD Richard L. Bagnetto, MD William & Kathie Bailey, MD Cedric Roland Bainton, MD Dorothy Ford Bainton, MD Earl E. Bakken, MD Durham Barnes, MD Mrs. Doris Berthelot Barnett Lewis Barnum III Mrs. Robertson L. Belden Adelaide Wisdom Benjamin Eric J. Benzer Michael A. Berenson Marian Mayer Berkett Stephen M. Berman

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Dr. B. Eugene Berry Mrs. Charles A. Beskin Mrs. Elizabeth A. Beskin James M. Besselman Delia R. Bethell, PhD Joel H. Beyer Charles A. Binford, MD Les Blank Jon B. Blehar Neil D. Blue Jr. N.A. Bologna, MD Edward J. Bondurant & wife, Louise Marc A. Bonifacic Martin B. Boorstein Stephen R. Bornemeier Joseph F. Boston, PhD Mary Brett Dr. C. Plowden Bridges Harold T. Brinson, PhD & Gene Brinson James M. Brock, MD John S. & Carol W. Brown Martha B. Brown Thomas C. Brutting Mrs. Dennis Bryant Bill Bubrig Paula R. Buchanan Robert F. Buesinger Robert H. Bullington, MD E. Philip Bultman Jr.

J. Robert Burnett, MD Susan M. Buzick Rev. Alan Dean Calcote Dr. George E. Carl Laura Junge Carman Lucianne & Joe Carmichael David B. Carnes Pamela Carnot Michael M. Carter Richard D. Carter, MD Dr. Thomas H. Charlton Victor P. Chisesi, MD Elinor Moreland Christian Mary Louise Mossy Christovich Christopher C. Clabaugh John R. Clifford, MD Stanley J. Cohen William J. Cone, MD Ellen L. Conlon Michael Cosgrove Sol I. Courtman, MD James Keith Cox Dr. James S. Cox John A. Crowley James L. Culpepper Clive S. Cummis, Esq. Arthur Q. Davis Sr. Richard & Doris Davis Robert Paul Dean Gerald L. DeBlois Erna Louise Deiglmayr Frank M. Denton Dr. J. Lincoln DeVillier Robert S. Devins Arthur E. Diamond, MD Wallace B. Diboll Michael A. DiCarlo Mrs. E. Earle Dilworth Dr. Gerald J. Domingue Dr. Marlon J. Doucet Dr. Robert N. Downer Brooke H. Duncan Morrie L. Eakin James S. Eaton Jr., MD Lionel Ehrenworth, MD E. Warren Eisner Mrs. Ernestine Ellender Dr. June B. Ellis Dean B. Ellithorpe, MD Gerald M. English, MD Peggy Wyatt Engman James T. Evans, MD Merri Steinberg Ex Judith Fabian, MD Rev. Fairfax Fullerton Fair Dr. Gerald P. Falletta H. Mortimer Favrot Jr. Charles R. Feezer Judge Martin L.C. Feldman Charles E. Felger, MD Darwin C. Fenner Dr. Richard J. Field Jr.

William Preston Johnston Society Ann Hippensteel Fitzgerald Patty Bayne Flasdick Rudolf M. Flasdick, MD Harold L. Flatt Michael M. Fleishman James B. Florey, MD E.C. Forbes Albert & Eleanor Fraenkel Julianne R. Frank Irwin Frankel Mrs. Rosemary L. Fray Gabriel Fried, MD Reuben I. Friedman Dr. Paul A. Friedrichs Richard G. Fullerton William J. Furnish Jr. William D. Futch, MD Jane Pharr Gage Joyce & Don Gallant David J. Gallina Louis B. Gariepy, MD Mrs. Raymond Garland Harry R. Garvin Dr. & Mrs. Roger S. Geibel Mike & Marcy Gertler Jodi Gill, Esq. Lawrence E. Gill Barry M. Glenn Cindee S. Gold Michael Howard Gold Cecile L. Gordon Gregory Grady Thomas A. & Patricia Graves Louise Gray Anthony & Marina Gregorio Frank Xavier Griffin James C. Groves Mary L. Gumerman Priscilla Handy Elmer J. Harris, MD Richard Harrison Walter E. Harrison Jr., MD Courtney Proffitt Hays Dr. Jack R. Hays Dr. & Mrs. Jerome L. Heard Dr. Stephen F. Heartwell John E. Hendershot Jr. Dr. Charles W. Hennig Elaine Ricketts Hicks Barry J. Hildebrand Franklin & Joyce Bruff Hildebrand Sarah Lou Hill Bettina C. Hilman, MD Robert C. Hinckley Irene Hirsch Edward J. & Ruth W. Hodge Shirley W. “Lee” Holt Sarah Grace Hudspeth Mary E. Hurley, MD Dr. & Mrs. Earl C. Hutchins Louise Box-Hutchinson, MD Robert H. Hutchinson, MD

Herbert Ichinose, MD Scott Intagliata Jerome M. Jacobs Charlotte Jenkins Charles T. Jensen II Jan Johndrow, MSW, ACSW Dr. Nelson F. Jones Jr. Harold B. Judell Dr. Judy Ward-Steinman Karst Campbell Norman & Carol Kauffmann Ann Jeannette Kelly, MD Hugh M. Kiefer Dorothy Jung King Charles T. Kitzmiller Elaine Kleinbart Lynne V. Knapp Robert C. Kneip, PhD Sally Knight James E. Kokoszynski Dr. Thomas F. Kramer Elaine R. Kuhn Dr. & Mrs. Jack Kushner Melanie Kusin Deirdre Kyger Martin L. Lahm III Herman E. Lang Mrs. Yvonne Crespo LaPrime Mrs. Connie Larimer Laurie Larwood, PhD Dr. Jeffrey S. Lauber Thomas I. Lecher, MD Thomas M. Lee Major D. Andrew Leinberger II Jayme Levin-Muriel Dr. Arthur E. & Diana I. Lewis Teck S. Lian, MD Gary R. Libby Charitable Trust Dr. & Mrs. David S. Light Michael J. Link, DDS Susan L. Littlefield Gary A. Lloyd David D. Love Dr. & Mrs. C.W. Lowrey Dr. Jimmy K. Lu Mrs. Emma L. Luke Paul S. Lux, MD Virginia Mary Macagnoni, PhD Howard & Siesel Maibach Major David F. Maier L. Russell Malinak, MD Dr. & Mrs. Frank J. Malta Stephen T. Mann Lester I. Marion, MD Elsie Brupbacher Martinez John L. Martinez Richard C. Marvin Jr. Thomas E. Marzolf Patricia Ann Purtell Mathis Dr. Roger S. Mathis Dr. Gregory K. Mayer Laura Deegan-McAdams

Shannon W. McAdams John S. McCabe Hon. Kenneth McClintock Leslie T. McClung Sancy Hawkins McCool Walter C. McCoy, MD George & Colleen McCullough Howard & Mary McDonald Maria M. McDougal Judy Stewart McEnany Sharon H. McGrath Charles E. McHale Jr. Thomas & Mary Meehan Jennifer Tuero Melius J. Patrick Michaels Jr. William A. Middleton, MD Mrs. Elene B. Miller Mrs. Bernard D. Mintz Mary Leake Moise Dr. Jack Moore John L. Moore, MD M.S. Justavino Morales Dr. Peter J. Morgane Dr. Michael S. Morse Jacquelyn Morton Grover E. Mouton III Joseph F. Mueller Jr. Charlotte M. Mugnier Mrs. Donald B. Myers A. Taylor Nance Max Nathan Jr. Ronald D. Newton Randall K. Nichols Kristin T. Nielsen James R. Nieset Mercedes Plauché Nieset Dr. John L. Niklaus Harry Nimmergut Mark Noar Dr. Anne W. Normann Dr. Merlin M. Ohmer Vera L. Olds

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William Preston Johnston Society Barry H. Shafer Steven C. Shapiro, MD Edward F. Shaver Jr., MD & Beverly K. Shaver Kendall Shaw Harry G. Shulman II Ralfe O.P. Silverman Jr. Mrs. Selma M. Silverman Mrs. Noel T. Simmonds Terry K. Simmons Dorothy B. Skau Beverly Skelly Lionel J. Skidmore Stephen E. Slattery Ralph Slovenko Alma L. Smith Catchings B. Smith Elmer L. Smith Lottie Lee Smith Dr. Thomas H. Smith III Ann Howell Snow Dr. Gisela Spieker George C. Sprague Robert H. Sprain Jr. Dr. Gene & Mrs. Peggy Dean St. Martin Laura Starks Mr. & Mrs. Moise S. Steeg Jr. John F. Steel, MD Dr. & Mrs. Russell W. Steele Mr. Thomas T. Steele Cynthia S. Steinhauser, PhD Frank B. Stewart Jr. Lawrence B. Stewart W. Woodrow Stewart Carolyn Graham Stifel Clifford & Susan Stockmyer Elizabeth Lunn Stocks Yvonne R. Stohlman Carolyn G. Stolz Eleanor Francisco Straub Roger C. Suttle Jr., MD Elbert W. Sutton, MD Michael K. Tarver Russell J. Thames Mrs. Leila Rossner Thissell Rev. LaVerne Thomas III Wilmer J. Thomas Jr. Mary Sue Sherwood Thompson Robert E. Thompson, MD Sam A. Threefoot, MD Dr. Leon L. Titche Hyman C. Tolmas, MD Charles E. Tompkins III Kenneth R. Trapp in memory of Don F. Mahan John C. Trebellas, PhD David Treen Judith J. Trotta Harry L. Truly Jr., MD J. Bowman Trumbo Drusilla I. Tudury

Paul D. Pace, MD Richard S. Paddor Jane Parker Robert E. Parks Dr. Henry H. & Mrs. Barbara S. Payne Eldon D. Pence Jr., MD Carl C. Perry Donald J. Peters Jr. Christian J. Pettersen Richard Pettit Marie Frey Phillips Robert A. Pierpont Jr. Rainer N. Pinkoson & Charles Pinkoson, MD Dr. Charles V. Pollack Jr. Marky & Uwe Pontius Darrell A. Pope J.B. Postell Richardson K. Powell Thomas C. Prager, PhD Carolyn M. Clawson Prickett Mildred M. Proske Barbara Pyle Mrs. Robert E. Raborn Dr. Martin P. Rappaport Erman Franklin Rawlings, MD Randolph C. Read Mrs. Katy M. Reed Raymond D. Reed Hon. Edmund M. Reggie Richard E. Reibman Colleen Marie Robinson Dr. & Mrs. Neil H. Robinson Sonja Bilger Romanowski William E. Rooney Dr. Floyd D. Roos Mrs. Barbara Levsky Rosenblum Mrs. Joseph L. Rosenzweig Sharon E. Roth Carl B. Rountree, MD Mrs. John C. Rourke Mary Ellen O’Quinn Rowland Janice Ginsberg Rubin Linda Russell J. Patrick Ryan Joyce Joseph Dennery Sabatier Stanley Saperstein, MD A. Lester Sarpy Nicholas Sauro Barbara Stewart Sayes James H. Sayes Philip G.D. Schaefer Dr. Michael Schafir Milton & Margie Scheuermann Donald A. Schexnayder, MD, PhD Martin F. Schmidt Helen L. Schneidau George Theodore Schneider, MD Dr. Sally M. Seaman Frank R. Seavey Mel Selzer

and more than 500 members who wish to remain anonymous.

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Lizbeth A. Turner Ralph T. Turner Dr. Pamela Tyler Stephen J. Uman, MD E. Peter Urbanowicz Jr. Gene L. Usdin, MD Dr. H. Wallace Vandever M. Dreux Van Horn II Wim F. Van Muyden Mr. & Mrs. Frank Van Sickle Maria Varela, MD Paul Verkuil Roger A. Wagman Margaret Waisman, MD Laura Waller Alison S. Walsh Virginia N. Walther Jacqueline Bartling Ward Margaret S. Ward Grace Lauer Warolin Maria L. Watson Lyn Wattley Ambassador John G. Weinmann Martin S. Weinstein Kenneth A. Weiss Miriam Sue Soline Levy Weiss Earl & Sandy Wendt James E. & George Ann Wesner H. Josephine Wander Westlake James G. & Nancy W. Wetrich George Wheeler V.M. Wheeler III Knox & Patricia White Claire Lewis Whitehurst Dr. Nancy Wiener J. Richard Williams, MD Dr. Charles B. Wilson Randall & Mara Winn Andre V. Wogan Judge Dorothy D. Wolbrette Drs. David & Joanne Wolf Dr. Thomas P. Wood & Mrs. Nancy Wood John H. Woodbridge, MD Robert Moore Woolfolk Ms. Carolyn Woosley Martha G. Worthington Dr. Paul J. Wotowic Herbert B. Wren III, MD Mrs. Joseph F. Yoder Mrs. Michel Yuspeh Lawrence L. Zarrilli Elana & Brian Zucker If your name should be included as a member of the William Preston Johnston Society in the future, please contact the Office of Planned Gifts at 504-865-5794 (toll free 800-999-0181). To learn more about planned gifts to Tulane, visit www.plannedgiving.tulane.edu.

In Jimmy’s Honor E. RAMóN ARANGO NEVER ATTENDED TULANE UNIVERSITY. But he chose giving to Tulane as a way to honor the life of his late partner, Jimmy Rooks. Rooks (L ’58) attended Tulane Law School on scholarship and stayed connected to Tulane for many years.

When he died in 2006, Rooks had willed to Tulane a partial interest in an apartment complex.

Arango helped Tulane convert this bequest into cash, and the Jimmy Taylor Rooks Scholarship Endowed Fund was created, providing scholarship support for law students. What happened next surprised even Arango.

Jimmy Rooks and E. Ramón Arango on a trip to Cuba sponsored by the Tulane School of Architecture.

“I decided that I would leave the major part of my own estate to Tulane, in Jimmy’s honor,” he said. Arango’s gift, which includes naming Tulane beneficiary of an IRA, will create another fund, the J.Taylor Rooks Scholarship Endowed Fund, which will also provide scholarship support for law students.

NAME TULANE BENEFICIARY of part or all of your IRA, employer-sponsored retirement plan, or life insurance policy. It’s simple, and could result in tax savings as well.

THEN LET US KNOW. We’d like to know how you want Tulane to use your gift. And we’d like to recognize you, if you wish, with lifetime membership in the prestigious William Preston Johnston Society.

Contact us for sample beneficiary designation language and read more about Arango’s gift at www.plannedgiving.tulane.edu.

Your Gift. Your Way. Office of Planned Gifts • 504-865-5794 • toll free 800-999-0181 Bequests • Gift Annuities • Charitable Trusts • Retirement Plan Gifts • Securities Gifts • Real Estate Gifts • Insurance Gifts

Office of University Publications 31 McAlister Drive, Drawer 1 New Orleans, LA 70118–5624

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PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID

Tulanian T H E M AG A Z I N E O F

WINTER 2009

Friends in Deed Alumni give hands-on help in rebuilding New Orleans T H E M AG A Z I N E O F T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y

RAMBLIN’ MAN Nick Spitzer digs American roots music

SPEAKING TREASON Tim Wise talks race, fluently

hiddenTulane Shelf life. Weighted down with the past, bookshelves in Special Collections of the HowardTilton Memorial Library hold New Orleans city directories, encyclopedias of Louisiana history and Tulane Jambalayas .

TULANE UNIVERSITY

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