April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
April 2012 - Alumni News - Williams College
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CLASS NOTES<br />
of Race and Ethnicity in America<br />
(CSREA), and she is teaching<br />
courses in American Indian studies<br />
for the CSREA’s ethnic studies<br />
concentration as well as for the<br />
Department of American Studies.<br />
Ellen Bognar moved back to<br />
Charlottesville after finishing<br />
her clerkship in Miami and is<br />
now working at a law firm in<br />
Lynchburg, Va. Brian Connors has<br />
moved to Detroit and is working<br />
for a nonprofit doing community<br />
development in southwest<br />
Detroit.<br />
Carissa Carter has moved from<br />
Hong Kong to San Francisco.<br />
One of the new projects in her<br />
life is Scree Magazine, www.<br />
screemagazine.com, a new crossdisciplinary<br />
magazine for which<br />
she is the creative director. As<br />
I was working on these notes,<br />
I learned that she is spending<br />
January in <strong>Williams</strong>town, teaching<br />
a Winter Study course on<br />
design.<br />
Julia (Cianfarini) Schmidt is<br />
still in DC, where she works<br />
for a law firm and keeps busy<br />
with house renovations in her<br />
non-working hours. She is happily<br />
now seeing more of two of<br />
her freshman year entry-mates:<br />
Kate Figge, who moved back to<br />
DC last fall, and Beth Friedman,<br />
who’s now living outside<br />
Baltimore. Julia also runs into<br />
Matt Wessler periodically, as he<br />
lives just a few minutes away.<br />
Verena Arnabal and her family<br />
visited Roshni (David) Guerry in<br />
Delaware, where Roshni moved<br />
to start a new job. Verena says<br />
that her daughter Maya and<br />
Roshni’s son Liam, both three,<br />
had a lot of fun playing together<br />
and tearing it up at the Please<br />
Touch Museum in Philadelphia.<br />
Todd Swanson Merkens wrote<br />
while waiting to be rescued by<br />
a tow truck after the exhaust<br />
system on his car dropped out.<br />
Other than car trouble, he said<br />
that he is doing well and is<br />
continually amazed watching his<br />
daughter, Anja, grow up. Anja is<br />
now (in January) 15 months old,<br />
and Todd says that every day<br />
is something new. On the work<br />
front, he’s still doing toll system<br />
planning and design work in the<br />
96 | <strong>Williams</strong> PeoPle | aPril <strong>2012</strong><br />
Seattle area. He’s hoping to get<br />
into the snow a few more times<br />
this winter.<br />
Todd and his family had a<br />
chance to connect with Noel<br />
Johnson and Lauren (Wiener)<br />
Johnson just before the holidays.<br />
Noel and Lauren moved to<br />
Seattle last fall. Todd also saw<br />
Ethan Katz-Bassett just before<br />
Halloween; Todd said that it<br />
sounds like Ethan is nearing the<br />
end of his PhD and had some<br />
exciting work and ski plans<br />
coming up.<br />
EPHCOMPLISHMENT<br />
The International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, founded in 2003 by<br />
Jeremy Faust ’01, received a 2011 Chorus America/ASCAP Award for<br />
Adventurous Programming. Faust, a medical student at the Mount Sinai<br />
School of Medicine in NYC, continues to serve as director of the chorale.<br />
Judd Greenstein shared a<br />
happy New Year’s with a bunch<br />
of Ephs and their partners,<br />
including Todd Rogers, Matt<br />
Wessler, Matt Atwood, Jackie<br />
Stein ’00, Morgan Barth ’02<br />
and Deidre Fogg ’03. Judd is<br />
still living in Brooklyn but is<br />
plotting a dual-residency move<br />
to split time between New York<br />
and Massachusetts. His music<br />
will be all over the country this<br />
spring, including a big orchestral<br />
premiere in Minneapolis this<br />
March, a multimedia installation<br />
and performance in Scottsdale,<br />
Ariz., this June, and New York<br />
performances in May and June.<br />
Drop him a line if you’re in any<br />
of those places—he’d love to see<br />
you!<br />
Sharmistha Ray’s solo debut<br />
exhibition of paintings, “Hidden<br />
Geographies,” was on display<br />
at Galerie Mirchandani<br />
and Steinruecke in Mumbai<br />
from mid-January to mid-<br />
February. Vogue India featured<br />
Sharmistha’s exhibition as a highlight<br />
of the month in its January<br />
<strong>2012</strong> issue; you can read the<br />
article/interview at Sharmistha’s<br />
website, www.sharmistharay.net,<br />
under “news.”<br />
Michael Cooper’s musical<br />
Sunfish received its world<br />
premiere in February 2011 at<br />
the Stoneham Theatre outside<br />
of Boston, and as I was writing<br />
this column I saw that Sunfish<br />
won Best Musical at a Medium<br />
Theater in Broadway World’s<br />
2011 Boston Theater Awards.<br />
Michael also contributed lyrics to<br />
the musical It Shoulda Been You<br />
(starring Tyne Daly and directed<br />
by Fraiser’s David Hyde Pierce),<br />
which had a successful run at the<br />
George Street Playhouse in New<br />
Jersey last October. Outside of<br />
the theater, Michael reports that<br />
he has moved into a beautiful<br />
new apartment in NYC and<br />
continues to flood Facebook with<br />
status updates.<br />
After being her husband’s first<br />
reader and supporter for the<br />
past 10 years, Tami Thompson<br />
Wood was very excited to see<br />
his debut novel published in<br />
2011 (No Hero, by Jonathan<br />
Wood). It was also a momentous<br />
year because Tami’s son Charlie<br />
started kindergarten and her<br />
daughter Emma began nursery<br />
school. Tami is still teaching family<br />
programs at the Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art (where she’s now<br />
been for eight years), and she<br />
enjoyed bringing Charlie along<br />
to her programs this year.<br />
Last fall Tami and her family<br />
went into NYC for a weekend,<br />
where they had a picnic<br />
in Central Park with Noga<br />
(Chlamtac) Minsky and her baby<br />
Elinor and spent a morning<br />
at the Manhattan Children’s<br />
Museum with Lia (Amakawa)<br />
Morrison and her toddler Ian.<br />
Tami also got a chance to catch<br />
up with Allyson Rothberg and<br />
Lisa Libicki over lunch on the<br />
Upper West Side.<br />
Elizabeth (Pulbratek) Randisi<br />
and her husband became small<br />
business owners in 2011,<br />
purchasing the boutique estate<br />
planning law firm Weinstein &<br />
Randisi. Elizabeth’s sons (4 and<br />
1 ½) are now old enough that<br />
she can unwind with a drink<br />
after a long day of figuring out<br />
small business ownership details<br />
like payroll taxes. She’s also<br />
working on a memoir-writing<br />
project while her husband works<br />
on developing a swampy piece<br />
of woodlands for their someday<br />
dream house.<br />
Fumi Tosu is still based in NYC<br />
and is keeping busy running the<br />
U.S. office of Table For Two<br />
(TFT), a Japanese nonprofit<br />
that aims to simultaneously<br />
address the issues of malnutrition<br />
in developing countries and<br />
obesity in the developed world.<br />
TFT serves healthy, low-calorie<br />
meals at restaurants, universities<br />
and corporate cafeterias, and a<br />
portion of the proceeds from the<br />
food sales go to school meals<br />
programs in Ethiopia, Rwanda,<br />
Uganda and South Africa. If<br />
you’re curious to learn more<br />
about the program, see http://bit.<br />
ly/zCBMrV.<br />
Jeremy Faust is in his last<br />
semester of medical school at
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