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Class Notes 2003 by Edward Wasserman February 03 In the last dopey Star Wars movie I rented, the republic was in great peril of declining into empire. Maybe George Lucas is onto something. You do wonder whether our own core democratic institutions have the legs for the long run. Take elections. My congresswoman just got re-elected with 90 percent of the vote. (I used to think that only happened in places like Iraq.) Redistricting in this state — which since 2000 is the stone-dead canary in the coal mine of popular suffrage — has enabled the majority party to gerrymander near-parity in voter registration into crushing legislative control. Above all there’s campaign money — $1 billion spent on these midterm elections, 25 percent more than in 2000, a presidential year. Reformers focus on where this money comes from and generally overlook a better question: Where does it all go? A noble exception is classmate Paul Taylor, an ex-journalist who leads the Alliance for Better Campaigns. www.bettercampaigns.org. Since politicians raise stupendous sums mainly to buy TV and radio time, and since broadcasting depends on airwaves licensed from us, the public, Paul’s group proposes we do what other democracies do: Provide candidates free air time. The Alliance proposal just might relax the chokehold of big money on politics. Why beat up politicians for stuffing their pockets when somebody else is picking those same pockets clean? Problem is, when you want to take hundreds of millions from the same media that set the nation’s news agenda, how do you rally popular support? You could, I suppose, buy air time. … Dennis Evans jdevans@u.arizona.edu writes: "I'm in the midst of my sixteenth year at the University of Arizona, and since becoming associate dean of humanities 10 years ago have had several occasions to work with our classmate David Nix in the University Attorney's Office. … As a campus community, we're still recovering from the aftershocks of the shootings of the three women faculty members who were killed in our College of Nursing in October. One of the most moving and beautiful memorial services that I have ever witnessed helped enormously to begin turning things around, reclaiming the legacies of these extraordinarily gifted women as their students, patients and colleagues streamed to the microphones to attest to the many ways they continue to touch and inspire the lives of those who worked with them." In Boston, Edmund Robinson edmuund@aol.com was pleased by the suggestion that we share setbacks in these columns, not just triumphs: "Imagine, an invitation to admit that some of us aren't lining up for a Pulitzer, don't have that second house on the Cape, will be lucky if we make our Visa payment this month. "I realized why I have felt viscerally alienated from the whole alumni scene. Yes, I've been to a few reunions myself, but the dominant ethos seemed to me to compare our achievements. "I don't have any particular pain to share at this point; my divorce is six years behind me and I'm enjoying my second marriage, pursuing dual careers as a criminal defense attorney and Unitarian Universalist parish minister. But I want to thank you for giving us all permission to be less than supermen. You have probably ratcheted down the anxiety level for a thousand folks just a hair." Andy Coe coeandy@hotmail.com recently made the trip East from Palo Alto — where he heads community relations for Stanford — with wife Liz and 11-year-old Ryan for the Princeton game. "There were special ceremonies that weekend honoring Yale's former football coach, Carm Cozza, on his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame," Andy writes. "Former Class of ’70 footballers myself, Lew Roney (and his wife Charlotte) and Bill Harper (and his wife Dodie) attended. At the game on Saturday we ran into Wayne Cutler, co-captain of the ’70 TD/Silliman football team." John Marshall Evans reports he became director of the State Department’s Office of Russian Affairs on May 1. "I hope all of you have noticed how U.S.-Russian relations have improved since that date." … Omitted from the last column’s legacies: Joe Wheelwright JWheelw484@aol.com notes that his daughter, Tess Thatcher Wheelwright, is a sophomore in Silliman. Joshua Sanes sanesj@pcg.wustl.edu writes from St. Louis, where he’s a professor of neurobiology at Washington University. "We use fancy genetic engineering to make mice in which we can actually see live, fluorescent synapses, and then ask what makes them connect or disconnect. We are now starting to look at the changes that occur as mice age." Josh was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a great honor. His wife, Susan Corcoran, has become a lawyer after many years in public health. Their two children are in high school, "staying as far as possible from the nerdy, anhedonic lifestyle of their parents." ("Anhedonic" is the opposite of hedonistic.) I’m very sorry to report that William J. Yurcheshen has died. Will was an internist in North Hampton, a New Hampshire town of 3,800 near Portsmouth. His widow Jan says he hadn’t been ill and simply collapsed Oct. 5 while doing yard work. Will got his medical degree at the Medical School of Ohio and served two years on an Indian reservation in Gallup, N.M., before doing his internal medicine residency. He practiced in San Antonio before settling in New Hampshire. Will was extensively involved in the life of his town, and a town council resolution referred to him as North Hampton’s "first physician." (Jan says he wasn’t the first chronologically, so we assume the title is an honorific.) He was active in the United Church of Christ and a local retirement community board, and was a dedicated Rotarian. He received a Paul Harris Fellowship, Rotary’s highest award. Will’s survived by his wife of 21 years and three children. His youngest two are in college — a daughter a sophomore at Emory and a son a freshman at Texas Christian University. The family has created a trust to enable them to stay in school. Checks to: Anna C. and Scott W. Yurcheshen Educational Fund, Robert B. Field Jr. Disbursing Agent, Colliander Field and Brown PA Client Trust Fund, 126 Daniel St., Suite 100, Portsmouth, NH 03801. Remembrances are welcome here. March 03 Helping your daughter apply to college is a lot like helping her jump into a Cuisinart. You wish she didn’t have to, you hope she’s ready for a nasty ride, you stand by with the bandages. The current flap over racial preferences at the University of Michigan comes at a good time, since it reminds us that the promise of merit-based admission is a slippery one. Kids have no illusions about this. They know the whole process is marinaded in a quirky favoritism of one sort or another, and that they’re competing not on their overall deservingness, but on their ability to edge out others from the same sliver of candidates that they’ve been assigned to — whether pianists, linebackers, Mother Teresas, hunter-gatherers, Wyomingites. That our president would pick race as the one dubious selection criterion he can’t abide has less to do with principle than political calculation. That a guy whose entire career was distinguished by an absence of distinction, whose every step from prep school to the White House was taken only thanks to the energetic help of family connections and suck-ups, should now declare himself a champion of meritocracy is an irony too rich to stomach. From Prescott, Ariz., this from Bob Witkowski rjpix@cableone.net: “I'm in Arizona where every pick-up truck proudly bears the sticker ‘I'll Fight for Freedom’ but the occupants go silent when I ask them at stoplights when they're going to enlist.” Bob has a four-year-old daughter, Hannah. “Being a Dad at 55 is a trip. Keeping in touch with my pal Mike Sokolow is very rewarding. And I have rediscovered my passion for making images — the old fashioned way with film, chemicals and antique Leicas. Hannah has become my new subject and we are having a ball. “When I talk with Sokolow, I realize how much I miss Yale and how much I appreciate my time there. Hell, it was painful when it happened, but far more rewarding now in the afterglow of 32 years.” “In the 2002 election,” writes Charles Pillsbury from New Haven chapillsbury@igc.org, “I ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate to protest,among other things, the military budget, the ‘war’ on terrorism, inclding our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and corporate crime and corruption. Despite Tim Bates’ worries, I did not elect the Republican.” Charlie notes that he got 5 percent of the vote, the Republican got 29 percent and the Democratic incumbent 66 percent. “In the process, I pushed the incumbent to vote against the Iraq War Powers Resolution and was 15 votes shy of beating the Republican in the city of New Haven.” This from Mark Zanger rjpix@cableone.net: “I assumed your call for gloomy news was about putting together a loose mutual aid network, of which I participate in several very helpful ones, as we parents of truly crazy teens can find each other across the Grand Canyon after a while. Then someone who's just getting the bad news, when you feel like you're the only one in the world, has some names to call up or email for advice… “In addition to the usual stuff like borderline high blood pressure and inability to get enough freelance work, I have unfortunately developed some expertise to share on programs for troubled and mentally ill teenagers and bipolar illness in particular. I like your idea, but don't want to be the poster boy for it, because I'll have some good news in a few months when my American History Cookbook comes out.” (Learn more about Mark’s earlier American Ethnic Cookbook for Students at www.ethnicook.com. From Carl Milner carl@cmilner.com in Edmonds, Wash.: “I had hoped to offer my children not a society where they could do better than I financially; but one where they could do as well as I have done financially and better than I have done spiritually. … I had hoped they would be able to be less selfish and self-centered than I am. I had hoped they would see that happiness lies not in the accumulation of mountains of stuff but in the accumulation of friends, the love of family, and in living a life that in some small way makes the world better. I am somewhat embarrassed by what I am actually able to offer them. “I was heartened by the size and demographic of an anti-war demonstration that I recently attended in Seattle. A wide range of ages and economic status were represented. Even middle-aged guys with haircuts and jobs. But then it occurred to me that 35 years or so after my first anti-war demonstration, I am still having to do so. Has anything really changed?” “It is indeed a dire time,” Tom Walker comments from New York. “I have a particular chip on my shoulder about the Israeli colonies being the source of a lot of trouble. Had the experience of working with the Living Theatre in Lebanon for three weeks last year. Usually we work in Italy and to a lesser extent in the NY metropolitan area. We find great responses wherever. But we seem to be a minority.” Douglas Grimes doug.grimes@aya.yale.edu is doing a Ph.D. at the University of California-Irvine, concentrating in collaborative technologies in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences. “I discovered Berkeley College classmate Gary Chanan here at UCI, where he chaired the physics department until last year… Gary looks healthy and relatively content.” Best wishes to Carl Eifler, c.eifler@morganstanley.com, on his marriage to Victoria Longo on Sept. 14 in New York. Vicki is a managing director with Morgan Stanley’s equity division. “The wedding was fabulous, surpassed only by a 10-day honeymoon in Hawaii,” Carl writes. From New York, Robert Mazur rbmazur@wlrk.com is still lawyering with Wachtell Lipton. “Marilyn and I have moved back to Manhattan after 23 years in the suburbs,” he writes. As to his children: Matthew, Yale ’98, is in his second year at Harvard Law; Zachary, Yale ’00, recently moved to Rio de Janeiro; Alexandra, Yale ’05, is a sophomore at Davenport. Gene Shapiro’s daughter Lauren is working as an editorial assistant at the Yale Press. I’ve received very belated word that Keith M. Powers died, apparently in 1997. The last address we have for Keith was Salem, Ore. Anybody have further information? A final note: Friends of Will Yurchesen can reach his widow Jan at 215 Atlantic Ave., North Hampton, NH 03862. August 03 You’d think that when the people who are training the next generation of journalists gather, they’d have deep things to talk about. But the topic that drew the greatest heat at the recent national conference of media educators in Kansas City was pretty simple: Plagiarism. That was partly thanks to Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was sacked for deceit. But the professoriate’s funk goes way beyond Blair. Classroom plagiarism has become pandemic. Many students appear to have little sense that information and ideas are actually somebody’s work, and that authorship needs respecting. The magical abundance of the Internet is one cause. Kids boot up before they can Velcro their shoes, and grow up believing information comes from PCs, just as they believe money comes from walls. Grade schools have yet to ratchet up their academic demands so that students don’t get A’s for downloading text and stitching it together. The intellectual property business is getting tough. If you make music, your fans burn their own CDs. If you write, your magazine demands you sign away secondary publication rights. Unless you’re Disney and can muscle Congress to extend your hold on Mickey Mouse forever, your creative output looks more and more like grist for the cybermill, to be ground up and spit out, your byline expunged. Ken Neill MEMFLYKEN2@aol.com, who’s a publishing god in Memphis, sent this soon after his encounter with some ferocious, 100-mph weather in July that wrecked sections of town. “This evening, 40 hours later, 300,000 people are still without power, including myself now, operating on declining battery power on this computer. But that's the least of my worries, since at 6:45 a.m. yesterday, a 125-year-old massive oak tree in front of my home went the way of all flesh during this mega-storm. Fortunately, I did not — although it was a near thing. My home was not so lucky. The tree came crashing through the residential section, destroying nearly all in its path, and rendering the house uninhabitable. ”Keep in mind that everything happens for a reason; maybe this was the Lord's way of saying I needed to adopt a more minimalist life-style. In any event, myself and my loyal canine servant Danny are in fine form, and we are each congratulating the other for our mutual good sense in fleeing to the closet in the house interior at the exactly correct moment. The same Lord mentioned above obviously works in mysterious ways.” Michael Stanton michaels@msarch.com attended the 30th reunion of his Yale School of Architecture class: “It was heartening that Peter McPartland, the other ’70 class member to go to the A&A, was in attendance. Peter describes himself as doing well after surviving some well-documented dark times after graduation. He is living in Connecticut with his wife Lynn and practicing architecture. Peter, a member of Yale’s tennis team as an undergraduate, is still playing competitive tennis, these days on the National Senior's Tennis Circuit, where he is a ranked player." From Santa Monica, this from Harold Harden MD: “During 2002 I was able to complete a general health needs assessment tour of Mozambique, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. If all goes well, I may be able to realize a pre-Yale goal of practicing in that part of the world.” From a proud Robert Schechter, Robert.J.Schechter@kp.org: “With the new list of Yale College admissions, I have become dyslexic. There is a Schechter class of seven-oh, namely me. There is a Schechter class of oh-seven, namely my daughter Rachel. She will be in Davenport, a la Dad. Apparently two colleges now do not have their freshmen in the Old Campus, which Rachel wanted to experience. Also, Davenport will be rebuilt her sophomore year, while she is in some mysterious entity known as the Swing Dorm. Then for her junior year she will return as the first class in the new rebuilt Davenport. Things are changing. Not only is everything on computers, there apparently are (note the non-split infinitive) several stations of Yale TV, at least some of them reserved for academic use. Can anybody lend me a knife to sharpen my quill?” Son David will be a sophomore at Emory (“He's pre-law, so I hope the Yale Law School folks are saving a place for him in Sept. ‘06.”) Daughter Laura has returned from South America to Berkeley, where she’ll be writing her Ph.D. thesis in agricultural economics. “Good old Dad is still in Los Angeles fixing eyes,” Robert writes. “I have now reached the exalted rank of clinical (that means, unpaid) professor of ophthalmology in the UC system. That and a token, as they used to say...” I get feedback on my commentaries, which I normally don’t run because it’s complimentary. In the interests of fair play I’m publishing this from David Zincavage, jdz@inr.net, in Silicon Valley: “I feel sure that I speak not only for myself, but for some not inconsiderable portion of the rest of our class as well, when I tell you that I am actively annoyed at finding the banal political opinions of that unfortunate segment of our class whose worldview has conspicuously failed to evolve since the summer of 1968 paraded month after month in our class notes. Frankly, I think the intrusion of these self-indulgent expressions of lachrymose political complaint and sanctimonious liberal piety into a forum obviously intended for other purposes is a case of plain bad manners, demonstrating only too clearly the quality of moral acumen our Yale class's left wing is capable of supplying. To classmate offenders, I say: If you want to debate, publish on the class listserv, where those who disagree can readily respond, and see what happens to you. Otherwise, kindly keep your political opinions to yourself.” On the other hand, author and broadcaster Bill Littlefield Blittlef@WBUR.BU.EDU writes: “It's good to see somebody in a Yale publication treating Bush as something other than a feather in the university's cap.” As for me, after 22 years in Miami, an exasperating place that we love, we’re moving to the Shenandoah Valley. I’m the new Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee. W&L, founded in 1749, claims the country’s oldest journalism program, created by Lee himself in 1865. He believed the South needed three things to rebuild: business school, law school and journalism program. Give him credit for two out of three. November03 It’s my first autumn after 22 years in the subtropics, and yes, we’ve had some fine, crisp afternoons, with the smell of fallen leaves and wood smoke, the lovely Shenandoah, and the distant ache of nostalgia. Blah blah blah. And the trees are getting naked, mornings are nasty, daylight growing dimmer. Plus, my lips have cracked and on the pumpkin of my soul frost gathers. So you there in the Sunbelt listening to your pals from up North carrying on about the rhythmic magic of the seasons: It’s a lie. You’re not missing a thing. There’s a reason our species was born under the equatorial sun. It’s where we belong. As some smart person noted, people talk about the miracle of winter’s first snowfall. They don’t say anything about the third or fourth. Enough for now. It’s hard, typing in mittens. From Joseph C. Friedman jcfriedman@juno.com: “I've been blessedly retired, now, for six years, leading a serene life of reflection, travel and companionship with my spouse, Leslie, on Mount Tamalpais, in Mill Valley, Calif… Twenty-five years of law practice in San Francisco was a sufficient quotient for this Yalie. “Far more illustrious classmates, like Robert Stein, continue to labor fruitfully in the pastures of law practice, Bob as head of his own highly successful law firm in San Francisco: Stein & Lubin, in the landmark Transamerica Building. “And Paul D. Chapman is probably the only classmate we have with a building already named in his honor, due to his dedicated and successful work as headmaster of the Head Royce School in Oakland. Paul has held his position for so many years now that he's literally dean of the secondary school headmaster fraternity. “Finally, the ever-reclusive Jim Files (who got his Ph.D. at Harvard in biology, after graduating with our class) recently retired from Berlex Laboratories, in Richmond, California… Jim, and long-time partner Cameron Torcassi, live in San Rafael, but he's aching to move to either Montana or New Mexico if the right property (with sufficient bird-life) will just come along.” Nat Brown bing.brown@comcast.net offers his second class notes submission in 33 years: “I've moved from Chapel Hill, N.C., to the Boston area, Cambridge and now Weston, Mass. After leaving academic medicine in 1989, I continued my career in pharmaceutic research and over the past 12 years have become an internationally recognized expert in the specialized area of developing new antiviral drugs for hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Current position is chief medical officer and senior vice president, Idenix Phaemaceuticals, Cambridge. “Have had a banner year in 2003 — quoted twice in the New York Times including photo feature on first page of Science Times section. For a guy who spent most of his college years in identity crisis, I am happy with how my life has evolved, and grateful for my wonderful wife Bing (Wilma Lim MD) and my focused delightful daughter Alana (age 6). … Bing and I remain in contact with classmate Tom Linden and wife Cyndy, and had a nice visit with Rodger Kamenetz ('70 Br) and family in the mid-1990s. Though I left the Class in 1968 and returned to Yale in '72, my formative years were with ‘70 Br and I retain memories of long-ago late-night activities with class friends — such as meter-vaulting to Olivia's restaurant at 2 a.m. for greasy cheeseburgers after intense discussions of politics and social philosophy.” David Zincavage writes to clarify that his comments in the last class notes weren’t an objection to my political rants, but to anybody’s using this space for such purposes. He adds: “We have a class listserv, usually not used at all, which would be an excellent venue for political arguments. I subscribe, and I very much like to argue politics. http://www.aya.yale.edu/classes/listserv.htm” I still don’t promise to behave. From Mark Zanger, mzanger@world.std.com word about his latest book, The American History Cookbook (Greenwood Press): “The new book is in the same format as the Ethnic Cookbook, but has 350 verbatim recipes from all parts of American history, exactly as they were written down from 1524 to 1977, and with modern directions so you can cook and taste along. You can't go backward in time, but you can go backward in taste.” (A true and perceptive remark, tempting to apply to much of what has been happening globally for the past decade or three. But back to Mark’s note:) “ ‘Endlessly diverting,’ says Alex Beam in the Boston Globe. ‘All I can say is Whew! This is one heck of an ambitious and admirable piece of work,’ writes Sandy Oliver, author of Saltwater Foodways and editor of Food History News. “The recipes were selected to tell the stories of participants in American history, from presidents to a schoolgirl making lunches for her parents to carry into the secret factories at Oak Ridge during World War II. Most recipes are from a wide group of published sources; a handful are from unpublished manuscript cookbooks; and fewer than five are reconstructions by culinary historians. The fifty chapters of the book cover historic periods, such as the Civil War, and topics such as abolitionist recipes, early health food, the first celebrity recipes, city politics of the 1920s, or communal experiments (1842-1975). Among the Boston representatives are such well-known cooks as Lydia Maria Child, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Cornelius, Mary Lincoln, Fannie Farmer, as well as African-American abolitionists Robert Roberts and Tunis G. Campbell …” And from Bart Whiteman Bartwhiteman@aol.com: “Doing well in Lookout Mountain, Georgia just outside Chattanooga. Daughter Mary Bartlett entering fifth grade. Step daughter Elisabeth graduated from the University of Tennessee. Working for Mortgage South and breaking all the records thanks to volume of mortgage activity. Also writing for three local newspapers. Keeping the pot seasoned, stirred and boiling. Participating in Leadership Chattanooga program sponsored by local Chamber of Commerce.” |