TRUTH

TRUTHintranslation

features14: Home AbroadAlumni expatriates create new lives outsidethe United States.By Andrea Hammer20: Black Voting RightsHow Swarthmore helped in the 2006reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.By Jeffrey Lottand Richard Valelly ’7524: An InformedCitizentryThe precarious state of public-affairsbroadcasting threatens our democracy, saysveteran PBS news producer John Siceloff ’76.By Jeffrey Lott30: Stopping SprawlCommunity activists offeralternatives to bigger, widerhighways that encouragesuburban sprawl.By Elizabeth Redden ’0534: Campus ViewEchoes of The Emerald Isle ring outacross campus.Photo by Eleftherios Kostans36: A Singular CareerRobert MacPherson ’66 defies the stereotypeof the unworldly mathematicianBy Dana Mackenzie ’79departments3: LettersReaders react.4: CollectionCampaign success and campus buzz40: ConnectionsSwarthmore comes to you.42: Class NotesAlumni news and views47: In MemoriamRemembering departed friends andclassmates58: Books + ArtsKill Me Like You Mean It by Kiran Rikhye ’02,directed by Jon Stancato ’02Reviewed by Jeffrey Lott72: In My LifeOrcas and IceBy Kerstin Kirschenbaum Rowe ’9380: Q + A“Preposterously Delightful”—Hansjakob WerlenBy Carol Brévart-Demmprofiles67: Care, Comfort,ConvenienceBJ Entwisle ’78 helps to revive an abandonedmedical tradition—the house call.By Susan Cousins Breen69: The Ethics GuyBruce Weinstein ’82 is in the businessof doing the right thing.By Audree Penner77: Compassion inBusinessGabriel Fairman ’02 believes that corporatesuccess depends on more than just a product.By Carol Brévart-Demmon the coverIn March 1965, a young demonstrator in Montgomery, Ala., with theword “vote” written in his sunscreen, marches for black votingrights—part of a long struggle for black suffrage in the United States.Photograph ©Bettmann-Corbis. Story on page 20oppositeAn unidentified snowboarder, using an improvised jumping platform,shows off some “righteous” skills after one of this winter’s meagersnowfalls. Photograph by Eleftherios Kostans

parlor talkIcast my first presidential ballot in 1968, voting rather reluctantly for Vice PresidentHubert Humphrey. The Vietnam War was raging, the Democratic Conventionin Chicago had spawned a police riot, and I couldn't understand why I hadto choose between the lesser of two evils—Humphrey or Richard Nixon—in myfirst presidential election. I desperately wanted to be able to support someone Icould believe in, but that wasn't an option in 1968—and, as I have learned in subsequentelections, it isn't often a choice in our two-party process.It's actually remarkable that, during that tumultuous year, I wanted to vote at all.I was a college dropout and hippie vagabond, not exactly part of the mainstreampolitical system. But voting mattered to me then—and still matters now. As ateenager, I'd witnessed the black voting-rights struggles, the courageous marches,the brutal murders, and the inspiring speeches. I had listened to Bob Dylan andknew the times were indeed changing.I had seen that African Americans cared so deeply about the franchise that theywere willing to risk their lives to attain it. The blood of Selma—and, a centurySwarthmorescholarship,backed by theCollege's consistentcommitment to socialjustice, had a smallbut significanteffect on the federalgovernment's effortto protect blackvoting rights.before, of the Civil War—elevatedthe vote for everyone, including whitemale Americans like me whose votingrights had never been in question. Ourhistory, however, contradicts the ideathat democracy has prevailed since theRevolution.As the magazine’s history of blackvoting rights (p. 20) makes clear, theexpansion of suffrage in the UnitedStates has been a constant battle sincethe founding of the Republic. Manybarriers to voting have fallen—property,gender, and race among them—but, asevidenced in the recent history of theVoting Rights Act, significant obstaclesmust be monitored and overcome.Swarthmore scholarship, backed by the College's consistent commitment to socialjustice, had a small but significant effect on the federal government's effort to protectblack voting rights.For a time after 1968, I lived in rural Vermont, where our paper-ballot votingbooths were nailed together with pine lumber and simple muslin curtains. It wasthere that I voted for George McGovern, who managed to win Massachusetts butno other state. He would have ended the war quickly, but the electorate decided on4 more years for Nixon. (After Watergate and some articles of impeachment, histerm turned out to be fewer years than that.)I've voted for a huge crop of losers since then. I've learned to live in the minority,hewing to principles and trying to feel just a little bit smug as my candidates wentto their noble defeats. It's not a good way to feel. George McGovern was a reallygood man—a man of peace. Why is it so difficult for us to vote for candidates whotruly promise peace?—Jeffrey Lott2 : swarthmore college bulletinSwarthmoreC O L L E G E B U L L E T I NEditor: Jeffrey LottAssociate Editor: Carol Brévart-DemmClass Notes Editor: Susan Cousins BreenStaff Photographer: Eleftherios KostansDesktop Publishing: Audree PennerArt Director: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt,Gaadt Perspectives LLCAdministrative Assistant:Janice Merrill-RossiInterns: Lauren Stokes ’09,Lena Wong ’10Editor Emerita:Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49Contacting Swarthmore CollegeCollege Operator: (610) 328-8000www.swarthmore.eduAdmissions: (610) 328-8300admissions@swarthmore.eduAlumni Relations: (610) 328-8402alumni@swarthmore.eduPublications: (610) 328-8568bulletin@swarthmore.eduRegistrar: (610) 328-8297registrar@swarthmore.eduWorld Wide Webwww.swarthmore.eduChanges of AddressSend address label alongwith new address to:Alumni Records OfficeSwarthmore College500 College AvenueSwarthmore PA 19081-1390Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN0888-2126), of which this is volume CIV,number 5, is published in August, September,December, March, and June,with a special issue in September, bySwarthmore College, 500 College Avenue,Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Periodicalspostage paid at Swarthmore PA andadditional mailing offices. Permit No.0530-620. Postmaster: Send addresschanges to Swarthmore College Bulletin,500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA19081-1390. © 2006 Swarthmore CollegePrinted in U.S.A.

lettersCOURAGE TO ACTIt is a sad commentary on the Americanpeople and our current culture that, asSean Barney '98 points out in “A Soldier'sTale” (December Bulletin), “the well educatedand the well-to-do are increasinglyabsent from the military's ranks.”With a tear in my eye and a lump in mythroat, I thank Sean Barney for the sacrificehe has made. He had the courage to acton his convictions when most of us turn ablind eye and look in the other direction.WILLIAM NORWOOD '50Spokane, Wash.FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHSThank God for Sean Barney. He sawthrough the trees and understood the fundamentaltruths of today: We are at war,freedom is not free, and democracy impliesresponsibility. The selective study of history—doesthe name Neville Chamberlainmean anything to anyone?—is dangerous.Paradoxical and tragic as it is, there aretimes when war is the only route to peace.I am still hopeful that my son-in-law'sdeath on 9/11 was not in vain.ROBERT ROWLEY '61Danbury, Conn.IF THERE MUST BE HEROIC ACTSSean Barney's devotion to his ideals isexemplary. The risk that he exposed himselfto in their name—not to mention theprice that he paid—makes his positionthat much more believable and persuasive.Thus, he has a great responsibility to whathe represents. Yet, although I can followthe thinking that led him to enlist andthen to volunteer for duty in Iraq, I am leftwith a nagging doubt.He writes about the loss of Americanlives and mentions that these often comeabout as a result of Iraqi suicide missions.How convinced or desperate must one beto resort to such a drastic measure?Although murder was part of SaddamHussein's politics, Iraqi men and womenwere not committing suicide on this scaleunder his regime. The great loss of civilianlives and the suffering of the rest of Iraq'spopulation is therefore a direct result ofthat war. This—and not the loss of Americanlives—is what is really wrong.I am not talking about differences ofopinion but about the wanton waste ofhuman life for a cause that was lost fromthe start because it was based on flawedthinking, false pretenses, and outright lies.How can it be right to serve ideals that arebeing trampled by President Bush himself?I live in Germany, and when Bush isirresponsibly compared to Hitler, it has adifferent ring here. With blind trust, theGerman people followed their democraticallyelected leader into a catastrophe,persuaded that they were doing the rightthing. If ever there was an example of aleader unscrupulously abusing the besttraits of his people, this was it. Viewedfrom this vantage point, making war onIraq seems nothing less than insane.With all due respect for Sean Barney'ssuffering, is there not a higher duty thanrisking your life and condoning the loss ofother lives—American and Iraqi? Would itnot have been better to mobilize with thesame devotion to duty every last moralfiber in America to prevent this sad waste?If there must be heroic acts, then whyaren't the Marines—with soldiers like SeanBarney at their head—marching on theWhite House?JEAN-MARIE CLARKE '74Staufen, GermanyTHE BEST TEACHERSHow wonderful to see a full-page pictureand a profile of Centennial ProfessorEmerita of Classics Helen North (“Q+A,”December Bulletin). My one regret, yearsafter graduating from Swarthmore, wasthat I never took a course with her. I was achemistry major—why would I need GreekLiterature in Translation? Yet everyone whotook that course worshipped ProfessorNorth. Going to her class was the highlightof their week.During the years that she was leadingAlumni College Abroad trips to theMediterranean, I had neither the time northe money to take them. Finally, when Ihad both, I managed to plug a giant hole inmy education by traveling with ProfessorNorth around Ireland, looking at Neolithicsites, learning about the Stone Age, theCelts, medieval times, and William ButlerYeats. At age 83, she ran circles around us.It was an honors seminar without havingto write the papers. I treasure every minuteI spent with that remarkable woman.It really is true that the best advice youcan give a young person starting college is:“Find out who the best teachers are, andtake their courses. It doesn't matter whatthey are teaching."ELIZABETH PROBASCO KUTCHAI '66Charlottesville, Va.REMEMBERING DOUG WEISSIt was with dismay and sadness that I readof Doug Weiss' death in September 2006(December Bulletin). Although some 30years have passed since I last saw Doug, Ihave recently been thinking of him whiletrying to make a rather unremarkablecomeback in the local weight room.Some time after I made Doug's acquaintancein the Swarthmore Field Houseweight room, he challenged me to a contest:the most dips on the parallel bars andthe most behind-the-neck pull-ups on theUniversal Gym bars. He easily won the firstcategory, and I won the second, but thecontest itself didn't matter. What reallymattered was that, whenever I saw him, hetook a personal interest in me and mytraining, reaching out a hand of friendshipin the process.God has a special place in his heart forthose who reach out to others as Doug did.ROGER KARNY '76DenverFOR THE RECORDNovelist Benjamin Kunkel was inadvertentlymisquoted in “The Writer's Writer”(Dec. Bulletin). Referring to Norman Rush's['56] award-winning novel, he actuallysaid: “For my money, Mating is the bestAmerican novel of the last 30 years.”march 2007 : 3

collectionThe Meaning of Swarthmorebeats goal by $15MOn Dec. 31, the College completed TheMeaning of Swarthmore, the most successfuland ambitious capital campaign in its143-year history. The final total in gifts andpledges—$245,462,000—surpassed thecampaign’s original goal by more than $15million. A remarkable 87 percent of alumnimade a gift to the College during the periodfrom July 1, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2007.“We are all delighted at the outcome andthrilled that we’ve surpassed our goal,” saidMeaning of Swarthmore Co-Chair FredKyle ’54. “The campaign was successfulthanks to the hard work, dedicated effort,and generosity of many, many people.Everyone pitched in. We received gifts fromalumni ranging from as far back as the1920s to last year’s graduating Class of2006. The outpouring of support fromalumni and the entire College communityhas been deeply gratifying.”President Alfred H. Bloom noted that“the College, a remarkable institution, isnow even stronger. The success of the campaignis a magnificent collective accomplishment,which will allow Swarthmore tocontinue to live its distinctive vision anddeliver its singular educational impact formany years to come.”Made public in September 2001, TheMeaning of Swarthmore focused on academicand student-life priorities essential topreserving and extending the quality of aSwarthmore education into the 21st centuryand beyond. Among its most significantaccomplishments, the campaign has:• Funded 10 new tenure-track and severalnon–tenure-track faculty positions and createdfive new second-semester faculty leaves• Helped put in place new curricular initiativesin cognitive science, film and mediastudies, and Islamic studies• Created 170 new scholarships and reinforcedthe College’s commitment to needblindadmissions and financial aid• Supported each varsity sport with a fulltimecoach and funded improved athleticfacilities• Underwritten the cost of a revised HonorsProgram• Built a state-of-the-art science centerand the Alice Paul ’05 Residence Hall• Renovated the College’s original building,Parrish Hall, the figurative and literal“heart” of the campus• Established the Lang Center for Civicand Social Responsibility, Swarthmore’scentral link between rigorous academictraining and the development of leadershipskills required to shape a more just, democratic,peaceful, and inclusive world• Created the position of associate deanfor multicultural affairs• Built an endowment for religiousadvisors• Expanded the scope and impact of theCareer Services Office; and• Opened up additional personal developmentopportunities for College staff.“This campaign is significant, in part,because it expanded the College’s capacity tofund its programs and meet its needs for thefuture,” said Dan West, vice president foralumni and development. “Our entire developmenteffort has been stepped up to a newlevel of effectiveness.”This spring, celebratory events to thankSwarthmore alumni, parents, and friendsare scheduled to take place in San Franciscoand Los Angeles in March; Philadelphia onApril 17; New York City on May 8; Washington,D.C., on May 14; and Boston on June19. Invitations will be sent out in advance ofeach event, and a reply is requested.—Alisa GiardinelliENVISIONINGSWARTHMORE 2025In January, a planning committee consistingof faculty members, administrators,alumni, the Student Council president,and members of the Board of Managerswas formed to begin the process ofenvisioning the College in 2025.In a February letter to alumni, BoardChair Barbara Weber Mather '65 andPresident Alfred H. Bloom invited participationin the first stages of the planningprocess by asking for thoughts on thesequestions: “What is your vision of theSwarthmore of 2025? In what wayswould you want the College to be similarto and in what ways different from theSwarthmore of today?”Alumni responses to these questionswill become part of a semester-long discussionthis spring that will lead to theformation of “focused planning groupscharged with identifying how the Collegecan best advance toward the goals set,”the letter said.The planning process began just afterthe successful completion of The Meaningof Swarthmore, which raised morethan $245 million in gifts and pledges tofulfill many of the goals set by a previousplan that was completed in 1999.—Jeffrey LottThe College’s state-of-the-art science center was a campaign centerpiece.©ESTO/JEFF GOLDBERG4 : swarthmore college bulletin

The Beauty of BeauvaisJesus Calling Peter and Andrew is one of dozens of stained-glass windowsthat Michael Cothren, professor of art history and consultativecurator at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pa., writes about inPicturing the Celestial City: The Medieval Stained Glass of BeauvaisCathedral (Princeton University Press, 2006). The book offers thefirst serious look at the collection of Gothic stained-glass windowsoriginating from the 13th, 14th, and 16th centuries that has dominatedthe experience of those who enter the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Beauvais, France.Lavishly illustrated and elegantly written, Cothren’s latest bookhas been declared “a staple for scholars and students of medievalstained glass” by Stephen Murray of Columbia University. Theauthor takes the reader back in history to examine the four mainphases of the cathedral’s medieval glazing campaigns. He also dismantlesa long-held misconception that medieval pictorial art was asubstitute text or “Bible for the poor” and shows how the richstained-glass scenes functioned more as sermon than scripture.—Susan Cousins BreenSWARTHMORE LEADS INBLACK FRESHMEN ENROLLMENTAs the College welcomed 43 black first-year students to campusthis year, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education announcedthat Swarthmore was first among America’s highest-ranked liberalarts colleges for the greatest percentage of black students in itsfreshman class.According to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jim Bock’90, “this achievement represents Swarthmore’s commitment to adiverse educational experience, and we hope that more prospectivestudents will see and appreciate this.”The number of black students at Swarthmore also creates a“critical mass” that Director of the Black Cultural Center TimothySams says is essential to a healthy and viable community of blackstudents on campus.Sams sees breadth and depth among these students. “Thereis a deepening heritage that the black students at Swarthmorehave achieved beyond numerical representation,” he says, “inwhich they are actively engaged and leading organizations thatallow them to weave themselves into the Swarthmore communityin ways that maintain their own cultural identity.”Along with higher levels of applications and enrollment, thenumber of admitted early-decision black students has also grown,demonstrating a growing interest in the College.—Susan Cousins BreenTripleHoorayIn November, Joseph WhartonProfessor of Economics RobinsonHollister received the PeterH. Rossi Award from the Associationfor Public Policy Analysisand Management. Given inmemory of the achievements oflate eminent sociologist PeterRossi, the award recognizescontributions to the theoryand/or practice of program evaluation.Hollister was honoredfor his contributions to thefield, with emphasis on the useof random assignment designsto test the impact of new socialpolicies. He was praised as “adevoted teacher who has introducedgenerations of studentsto the intellectual challengesrelated to program evaluation.”Many former students are nowprofessionals in the field.”Frederic Pryor, emeritus professorof economics and seniorresearch scholar, was a recipientof the J. Michael Montias Prizefrom the Association of ComparativeEconomic Studies inJanuary. The prize is awardedbiennially to the author of thebest overall paper published inthe Journal of Comparative Economics.Fo-cusing on industrialeconomies, Pryor’s paper illustratesa new statistical methodfor classify-ing economic systemsand linking them to economicperformances.Associate Professor of RussianSibelan Forrester was honoredin the fall with the awardfor Best Translation in Slavic/-East European/EurasianWomen’s Studies published in2004–2006. In a press release,Forrester’s translation, AmericanScream: Palindrome Apocalypse, offemale Croatian poet DubravkaOrai Toli’s Urlik Amerike: PalindromskaApokalipsa was laudedas “a wonderful example ofwhat this translation prize seeksto recognize. It is an extraordinarybook of poetry and proseby the celebrated female Croatianpoet, essayist, and literarycritic … masterfully, creatively,and sensitively translated by thewell-known female Slavic literaryscholar....”—Carol Brévart-Demmmarch 2007 : 5

collectionDinnerwith theNobel LaureatesDressed in a long, black satingown and elbow-length whitesatin gloves—and escorted by aman in tails—petite Ranga Atapattu’08 was going to a party.Not just any party, but the eventof the year in Stockholm, Sweden—theNobel Prize dinner.Atapattu, who studied atStockholm University last fall,was one of only 100 students inSweden who won a pair of ticketsin a lottery to attend thebanquet in the famous Blue Hallof Stockholm’s Statshüs. BothAtapattu and Saben Murray, theBrown University student whoaccompanied her, also wore traditionalwhite caps that identifiedthem as students.Although Atapattu did notget the chance to meet him,another Swarthmorean wasamong the more than 1,000guests at the party. John Mather’68, who shared the 2006 prizein physics, was seated withSwedish royalty on the upperlevel of the hall.The elegant evening beganwith opening remarks by KingCarl Gustaf XVI and featuredentertainment between eachcourse of the meal.“My Swedish contact familytold me that the food is such abig secret before the banquetthat in Sweden, if I found outjust an hour beforehand, I couldprobably have made a lot ofmoney. It’s never been leaked tothe press. Once the menu isrevealed after the ceremony, it’sserved at a well-known restaurantin Sweden,” Atapattu said.This year’s banquet menuincluded a mosaic of salmonand scallops with Kalix bleakroe; herb-baked saddle of lamb,mashed potatoes and Jerusalemartichokes, olive oil–glazed vegetablesand port wine sauce; andfor dessert, pineapple parfaitwith caramelized pineapplesalad and mint.Atapattu heard Mather’sspeech after dessert and latersaw Sweden’s Prime MinisterFredrik Reinfeldt and GeorgeSmoot, the co-winner inphysics, at the after-dinnerdance where a band played jazz.© FREDRIK SANDBERG/EPA/CORBIS“In Sweden, the banquetis something akin to the celebrityaward shows in the UnitedStates. They show the entirething live on television, andcomment on the dresses,the food, the performances,”she said.Atapattu described severalhighlights she experienced duringthe evening: “When I sawthe place setting with my nameand all of the gold-rimmedglasses and plates, when I stoodup and saw the royalty descendingwith the winners, and whenthey served dessert. This was thefinale. The chefs descended thegrand staircase with their trayswhile the music and lights werestill on from the previous performance.The trays heldpineapple pieces withsparklers flying out ofthem. My mouth droppedopen at that moment.”Atapattu almost didn’tenter the lottery because,although the lottery ticketscost only $3, actually winningwould mean purchasinga $150 ticket to theevent. Then, she wouldneed to buy a dress, jewelry,shoes, and all theaccoutrements required forsuch a celebrated occasion.“But I called my parents, andmy mom convinced me by saying,‘even at that price, whenwould you ever get such achance again’ They also offeredto pay for some or all of it, ifnecessary,” Atapattu said. Sheestimated the entire eveningcost $500.“I will always rememberbeing part of this amazingmoment in history,” Atapattusaid. “In the room with me weresome of the most intelligentpeople in the world. People whoworked hard to achieve worldchangingdiscoveries. I wasproud to be a part of honoringthem. I know it will remain oneof the best nights of my life.”—Audree PennerRanga and SabenMELISSA KING6 : swarthmore college bulletin

Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown (right), leads a tour of the College'splasma physics lab during an international symposium held last fall.In a world where oil supplies are dwindling and globalwarming is increasing, there’s a need for clean,renewable energy sources. One such source maysomeday be nuclear fusion using deuterium, a naturallyoccurring isotope of hydrogen, which, whensuperheated and fused to larger nuclei such as helium,releases energy without producing eitherradioactive waste or carbon dioxide.Associate Professor of Physics Michael Browntalked about the process in November at the openingof a symposium that brought top U.S. and Japanesefusion researchers to Swarthmore. When deuteriumis heated, he explained, its nuclei and electronsbreak away from each other. This results in theformation of a plasma in which the freed nuclei fuseto form helium. The new helium nucleus has a lowermass than the sum of their two original masses, andthe difference is emitted as energy.Brown’s Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment(SSX), conducted with his students in the College’sstate-of-the-art science center, focuses on one of thekeys to controlling fusion reactions—the behavior ofplasma. At the heart of the SSX is a vacuum chamber in which twinhigh-energy bursts of plasma called “spheromaks” are produced—andthen observed as they reconnect magnetically. The goal is to betterunderstand how these plasmas (also called “magnetofluids”) behave—and ultimately to apply that knowledge to the design of fusionreactors.Currently, Brown told the symposium audience, the energyrequired to create and contain the plasma in which fusion takes placeis roughly equal to the amount of energy produced. Thus, the cost ofthe fusion process remains higher than the value of the electricity itcould produce.But laboratories around the world are working on the problem.Brown’s experiment is part of the Center for Magnetic Self-Organizationin Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas funded in 2003 by theNational Science Foundation. The center’s other members are researchuniversities: Princeton, the University of Wisconsin, and the Universityof Chicago.Japan has become a hub for alternative concepts of nuclear fusion.Professor Yasushi Ono of the University of Tokyo described the efficiencyand cost of different forms of fusion with which Japanese scientistshave experimented. His team built a reactor that creates toroidalrings of plasma (shaped like smoke rings) that are brought together toform a spherical cloud capable of sustaining fusion for longer periodsof time. Ono’s approach is now generating renewed interest in theUnited States.—Jeffrey Lott, with reporting by Myles Dakan ’10, Daily GazetteEVE STENSONCARBON-NEUTRALALUMNI WEEKENDSteps will be taken this June to offset theenvironmental impact of Alumni Weekendby making it possible for the College toreduce its long-term carbon emissions.Following a suggestion from MatthewSt. Clair ’97, Professor of Engineering CarrEverbach and students in his environmentalstudies class Swarthmore and the Biospheretackled the problem. Based on acomplex set of assumptions, they calculatedthe total carbon emissions for theweekend—including travel, meal preparation,air conditioning, and campus activities—at640,565 pounds. Details are atwww.swarthmore.edu/es/energy/AW2007.Comparing this to the world market forcarbon credits, they fixed a value of $8 perattendee for the “cost” of the carbon. Butrather than ask alumni to pay their carbonbill on the world market, it was decided tosupport the College’s efforts to reduce itsown carbon footprint.Upon registration for the weekend,alumni will be asked to donate a “carbonneutralweekend” fee of $8 per person.The College will pool these funds to makeimprovements in its sustainability—andfuture environmental studies classes willmonitor the result. One example mentionedin the calculations was to convertincandescent-bulb exit signs to LED(light-emitting diode) signs, which drawjust 4 watts of power versus an average 40watts for incandescent fixtures. Each newsign costs about $75 to install.The fee will be entirely voluntary—andtax deductible.—Jeffrey Lottmarch 2007 : 7

collectionJoie deGlassUnder the tutelage of his father, Fletcher Coleman (foreground) is learning the trickyart of glass blowing, for which, he says, perfecting the basics is crucial.MEGAN NADOLSKIFor the past 8 months or so, Fletcher Coleman’09 has been spending his free time learningthe art of glass blowing in the shop his fatherconstructed 30 years ago in a barn on thefamily’s Ohio farm.As a child, Coleman often traveled toexhibits and craft shows with his father, a professionalglass blower who sells his works toretailers and galleries.“I finally got to the point where I reallywanted to blow glass myself. My dad’s growingolder, and I wanted to learn while I wasstill home a bit and had the opportunity,”Coleman says. “It’s an incredibly interestingand rewarding process that allows you to havea final product. You have all these ideas inyour head, and then, at the end, you have thisbeautiful piece of glass that you’ve made—atangible product of the creative process.”Coleman’s fellow students are also benefitingfrom his artistry. At the end of last semester,he organized a campus sale of his creations.“I was just testing the waters,” he says,“to see what the response would be. My stuffisn’t expensive. I do this because I enjoy it,and it’s hard to put a price on stuff like that,especially for someone in my position becauseI’m not that good at it yet.”Coleman’s fellow students would disagree.His entire inventory sold out in 40 minutes.—Carol Brévart-Demm8 : swarthmore college bulletin

wash up!In the back of your mind is your mother’s voice, saying, “Wash yourhands.” You think you’re getting away from that when you go to college,but instead, the same hygiene reminder is coming from yourfellow students—from a group named Swarthmore Clean Hands.Seniors Michael Stone and Stephanie Koskowich set out last fallto improve student hygiene by promoting better hand-washinghabits. Koskowich’s motives were admittedly selfish: “I just got sickat Swarthmore a lot, and I was tired of it.” So they put out the wordand got organized.Mara Phelan ’10 has an interest in public health and began collectingstories about illness. “It’s a domino effect with people whoshare bathrooms,” she says. “One sick person touching faucets anddoor handles can get everybody sick.” She’s noted spikes of sicknessaround midterms and finals. “We hope when students see this datathey’ll take proper precautions. Stress levels are high, and they’renot getting enough sleep. They’re not taking care of themselves.”The group’s first priority was to make it easier for students totake care of themselves by washing before meals. Sharples DiningHall has one set of bathrooms near the main entrance—each withjust three sinks. Although students know that they should washtheir hands before eating, Stone says that “the infrastructure makesit difficult for us to do that.” Koskowich agreed, saying of Sharplesthat “although it’s great that there’s a common space where we allcome together, it’s also a breeding ground for germs.” SwarthmoreClean Hands asked for and got foaming sanitizer hand soap in theSharples bathrooms.The group is currently working to conduct a student survey tosee what kind of hand sanitizer is preferred—according to Stone,students want one that “doesn’t dry out or leave a sticky residue.”The administration has been supportive and will almost certainlyfund the project once a sanitizer is chosen. Koskowich cited a studydone at a large school where they installed hand sanitizers “and notonly did sickness rates go down, but it actually saved them money.”Once the sanitizer is installed, Clean Hands will try to track therate of upper respiratory infections at Swarthmore, collecting statisticson symptoms to see how they spread on a small campus. VisitingSociology Professor Ginny O’Connell and her Research Designclass are helping with the study. With Haverford as a control group,ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSStressbustin’“One waffle or two? Three?”“Why not?” “Strawberry andmaple syrup? Whippedcream?” “Oh, yeah!” Thesewere some of the utterancesheard at the Dec. 14 MidnightBreakfast in Sharples DiningHall. Dean of Students JimLarimore said it was organizedto provide students with anemotional boost beforefinals—“not to mention afew calories to help them getthrough a long night ofstudying.”Staff and faculty members—includingpresidentAlfred H. Bloom and his wife,Peggi—attended, some manningthe kitchen as cooks,waiters, and servers. Larimoreworked the waffle line withPaula Dale, executive assistantin facilities and services, whosaid: “I’m usually bleary-eyedby that time of night, but thestudents were so happy andappreciative that we all gotcaught up in their energy.” Studentsreceived star-shapedstress balls as party favors. Atmidnight, all joined togetherfor a Swarthmore tradition—the “primal scream.” “Imagine800 students and a handful offaculty members, including thepresident and his wife, screamingin unison at Sharples,”Larimore said. “Next year, I’mgoing to throw down my hotpad and run into the diningroom to howl with them. Ican’t wait,” Dale added.—Carol Brévart-Demmthey will compare the spread of sickness in a community that usessanitizer with one that does not.Stone hopes the group will survive beyond its stated goal ofClean Hands: “We wanted to build up a body of people payingattention to public health issues on campus.” Amber Viescas ’09would like to inspire a shift in the way students see their ownhealth. She wrote in an e-mail: “Swarthmore’s emphasis on academicperformance ‘first and foremost’ can actually erode physicalhealth. Every Swarthmore student sees that conflict every time theyget sick: They ask themselves, ‘Do I go into class and possibly infectmore people, or do I stay in and risk getting too far behind?’ I’m notsure all professors see it the same way.”Although the core group is small, more than 60 different studentshave been involved in Clean Hands in some way or another—a small hand-washing army, hoping to give the “Garnet Death” thenasty end it deserves.—Lauren Stokes ’09MICHAEL GILMOREmarch 2007 : 9

collectionKYLE LEACHRecords Fall As Swimmers Make a SplashMen’s swimming (7-2, 6-0 CC) The Swarthmore men concluded abanner 2006–2007 season, with the program’s first-ever CentennialConference dual meet title and a second-place finish at theCentennial Conference Swimming Championship meet. The Garnetbroke six school records at the meet, led by Andrew Koczo ’07and Douglas Gilchrist-Scott ’09, whotogether collected 12 medals. In the 100breaststroke event, Koczo posted an NCAAprovisional time, broke the school record,and won the gold medal; Gilchrist-Scott, aschool-record holder in four events, gatheredseven medals. The pair joined withBrian Roth ’09 and Jon Augat ’07 to win agold medal in the 200 medley relay—thequartet set a new Centennial record andschool record in the process. Augat alsoenjoyed a strong Centennial meet, collectingthree gold medals including a schoolrecordperformance in the 50 freestyle.Junior Ian McCormick led Swarthmore inpoints, rebounds, and blocks—and wasselected second-team All-Conference.Women’s swimming (7-3, 6-1 CC) TheSwarthmore women won a share of theCentennial Conference (CC) dual meet titlewith Gettysburg and Franklin & Marshall.Freshman Anne Miller qualified for theNCAA Championships after setting threeschool records (100 and 200 butterfly, 500freestyle) and winning three gold medals, asthe Garnet swam to third place at the CentennialConference Swimming Championshipmeet. Allie Jordan ’09 also set threeschool records—in the 50 and 100 backstrokeand as a member of the Swarthmore400 medley relay team, which won gold andset a new school record. Senior Sarah Cotcamppicked up three gold medals, includingan individual gold in the 50 freestyle, and classmate Janice Yeoalso collected two golds for Swarthmore.Men’s indoor track (8th at CCC) Senior Matt Schiller won goldin the 400 meters at the 2007 Centennial Conference Championships,and the distance medley relay team of Ross Weller ’08,Schiller, Connor Darby ’09, and VernonChaplin ’07 took home the bronze medal.Weller also posted a top-10 time at 3,000meters.AURORA IMAGINGWomen’s indoor track (8th at CCC) SophomoreCait Mullarkey won the gold medal at800 meters at the Centennial ConferenceChampionships, and freshman Nikya Corbettjust missed a medal with a fourth-placefinish but still managed to post a top-10time in the 3,000. At the St. ValentineInvite, hosted by Boston University on Feb.11, Corbett broke the indoor mile recordwith a time of 5:16.02, besting the previousmark set by Sarah Hobbs ’05.Men’s basketball (11-14, 8-10 CC) JuniorsIan McCormick and Matt Kurman receivedAll-Centennial honors at the culmination ofthe season as Swarthmore finished sixth inthe Conference, just missing a berth in theCentennial playoffs. McCormick, a forward,made second-team All-CC after leadingSwarthmore in points (14.9 per game),rebounds (8.6 per game), and blocks (2.08per game). On Feb. 16, McCormick becamethe sixth Garnet man to score 1,000 pointsand collect 500 rebounds in a career.McCormick completed the season tied withRob Ruffin ’00 (1998–1999) for the school10 : swarthmore college bulletin

DOES SWARTHMORE HAVE “SCHOOL SPIRIT?”Following the selection of the phoenix asthe new Swarthmore mascot last spring,steps have been taken to create a costumedcharacter representing the mythicalbird in time for an anticipated fall2007 debut.Ideas solicited from the student bodyduring the winter were recently reviewedby a student-staff committee, whichchose two as the basis for a final design.According to Karen Borbee, professor ofphysical education and senior womanadministrator in the Department ofPhysical Education and Athletics, a professionalcostume vendor will now beselected to refine the student ideas andproduce a phoenix costume.Current members of the committeeinclude Karen Berk ’08, Zach Moody ’07,Kristen Traband ’08, and Brendan Work’10 as well as several staff members fromthe Alumni Relations Office, AthleticsDepartment, and Dean’s Office.Borbee said the committee saw elementsin each of the two student designsthat they wanted to incorporate in thefinal product. (The student submissionswere not available at Bulletin press time.)“This has been a student-driven process,”Borbee said. “It’s their idea, and we [staffmembers] are advising them”Berk, who plays varsity basketball andvolleyball, said that the mascot will notsupplant “The Garnet” as the name forthe College’s intercollegiate teams. “Thephoenix will provide a way for the wholecommunity to be united behind a symbolof our pride in Swarthmore,” she said.“We want to see the mascot beyond athleticevents—at Alumni Weekend, FamilyELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSWeekend, and other campus gatherings.”Asked whether there was “school spirit”at Swarthmore, Berk said: “I definitelythink there’s school spirit here, but it’sshown in different ways. School spirit at alot of other institutions is funneledthrough athletics, but at Swarthmore, wesee different expressions of our pride.Sometimes, our spirit shows through academics,or rallies for social change, orother clubs and activities.”Still, it appears that support for teamsand participation in athletics is playing apart in building community at the College.A recently released progress report onintercollegiate athletics stated that “theCollege as a whole is benefiting from theenhanced sense of community generatedby the intercollegiate athletics program.” Italso found that student athletes “gain avery worthwhile experience despite mixedwin/loss records.” [A copy of the report isavailable in pdf format at www.swarthmore.edu/news/athleticsreport2007.pdf.For a print version, call the Office of Newsand Information at (610) 328-8533.]—Jeffrey Lottrecord for blocks (50) in a season, also collecting the fifth-mostrebounds (206) in a season. Kurman, an All-CC honorable mention,led the team with 41 three-point field goals, averaging 11.1points per game (third on the team). He ranked eighth in the Conferencein assists per game (2.72), setting a career-high with 68helpers.Women’s basketball (4-20, 1-17 CC) The Garnet women madeappearances in the championship game at the Swat Tip-Off Tournamentand the Seven Sisters Championship (the fourth consecutive).Junior center Karen Berk made All-Centennial for the secondconsecutive season, leading the Conference in scoring (18.5 ppg.),rebounding (12.5 rpg.), and free throws (125). On Jan. 27, Berkbecame the sixth Swarthmore woman to score 1,000 points in acareer and also broke two blocking records during the season.Badminton (5-2) The Garnet, led by freshman Kim Kramer andsenior Candice Cherk, won the Collegiate Trophy at the 2006 Mid-Atlantic Juniors Tournament. Kramer picked up the individual singles’title and teamed with Cherk to win the doubles’ title as well.Kramer is undefeated in singles’ competition this season, claimingthe women’s singles title at the 2007 Northeast Collegiate Tournamentheld at Swarthmore.—Kyle LeachJunior center Karen Berk led the CentennialConference in scoring, with 18.5 points per game.ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSmarch 2007 : 11

collectionCOLLEGE COMMITSTO PURCHASE35 PERCENTWIND POWERAt its February meeting, the Board ofManagers made a commitment to purchase35 percent of the College’s totalelectrical energy needs from windpowersources. With this move,Swarthmore will become the Pennsylvaniainstitution of higher educationpurchasing the highest percentage ofits power from renewable sources."We are very pleased that we havebeen able to increase the College'senergy mix derived from wind powerfrom 19 to 35 percent," said PresidentAlfred H. Bloom. "This goal was conscientiouslysought by student groups,and we are very proud to realize it."Earthlust, the student environmentalgroup, launched a campaign tobring renewable energy to campus in1997. Although the college originallypurchased 2 percent of its total energyfrom wind power, this percentage roseto 8.5 percent in 2005 due to continuedstudent involvement.In November, Earthlust hosted arally on the steps of Parrish Hall to celebratethe administration's commitmentto renewing its contract withwind power companies and to encouragethe College's leadership in a cleanenergyfuture by increasing windpower purchases."We are thrilled by this victory; it iseverything we asked for at this point.However, we know—and the administrationknows—that it's only one stepforward on a path toward total carbonneutrality," said Earthlust memberRachel Ackoff '07.The student-run campaign forrenewable energy at Swarthmore ispart of the Campus Climate Challenge,an international project of more than30 leading youth organizationsthroughout the U.S. and Canada.The Challenge is building a generation-widemovement to stop globalwarming.iSTOCKPHOTO.COM“Coming Out” ChalkingsSpark DebateThe annual “Coming Out Week” sponsoredby the Swarthmore Queer Union (SQU)—the College’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, andtransgendered students organization—regularly features a favorite form of campuscommunication: chalked messages anddrawings on campus pathways. In November,some Coming Out Week chalkingscaused significant controversy—and aprovocative campus discussion of the limitsof public expression.Chalkings are typically used to advertiseupcoming campus events, but during ComingOut Week, “we’re advertising that we’requeer,” says Diana Pozo ’09, an organizer ofa week-long series of events intended toraise consciousness about queer issues andaffirm the identity and sexuality of queerstudents.An estimated 15 members of queergroups chalked anonymous messagesacross campus on the night of Sunday,Nov. 5. They ranged from questions suchas “When did you come out as straight?” toslogans such as “Don’t assume I’m straight,and I won’t assume you’re an ass **** ” and“Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians!”One rainbow flag proclaimed, “Befree to be yourself.”But the chalkings everybody was talkingabout were graphic cartoon depictions ofexplicit sexual acts, including heterosexualanal sex, a masturbating woman, and alarge vulva outside Sharples Dining Hall.Pozo explained that although “some peopleidentified them as pornography,” she consideredthem to be “an expression aboutthe silent nature of my sexuality.”By the time rain washed away the firstround of chalkings on Tuesday, there hadalready been significant discontent voicedabout the sexual images and messages—both by queer students who didn’t thinkthe chalkings represented them and bymembers of the wider community whoexpressed concern about how children andcampus visitors would react to the drawings.Some students said that the explicitimages triggered memories of sexual abuse.Others thought that the chalkings mighteven be a form of illegal sexual harassmentLAUREN STOKES ʼ09“What happened toliberal campuseswhen suddenly we’rearguing forcensorship? Underwhat circumstances isit acceptable tobehave in ways thathurt people andcontinue doing it,particularly when thehurt is throughsexual speech?”12 : swarthmore college bulletin

for which the College could be liable.Reactions similar to these have beenexpressed each year since the chalkings firstappeared in the early 1990s. Thinking thatthe proper response to speech that offendsone person is not censorship but rathermore speech, Michael Stone ’07 stood infront of Sharples on Wednesday morningwith a bucket of chalk and invited studentsto express themselves on the wide stonepatio. Stone said that “the only thing that’sgoing to make this situation different fromthe year before is if somebody jumps in andgets the two sides talking.” Almost immediately,Stone says, conversations began todevelop.The chalked responses, which rangedfrom “Is it wrong to be straight?” to “Shutthe F *** Up Already,” were erased by morerain on Wednesday night—but a secondround of queer chalkings appeared onThursday. Statements like “The chalkingswere not for you, they were for me” raisedmore questions than they answered, accordingto Stone.“We don’t likefeeling like we’rebeing provoked bypeople who refuse toexplain themselves….The public[sidewalks were]being used in a sexualmanner that clearlymade peopleuncomfortable,”Stone said.Pozo explained thatthe second round ofqueer chalkings did,in fact, respond tothe original chalkers’frustration withWednesday’s messages:“I was personallyconfronted multipletimes,” Pozosaid. “They camefrom a place of angerand a place of distress.”On Friday, copiesof a new “ChalkingsManifesto” appearedat Sharples. Writtenby Coming OutWeek organizers, the document attemptedto answer questions about why the firstchalkings had appeared but succeeded onlyin further stoking the debate, particularlybecause of a statement that asserted:“Attacks on the sexual nature of the chalkingsare inherently homophobic andheterosexist.”Kayley Whalen ’08 explained that themanifesto “was not meant as a means tosilence discussion about the chalkings butas a political expression of our reasonsbehind the chalkings.... In future years,we’re going to refine the language of themanifesto and put it out there from thestart.”She explained that her agenda as a transgenderedperson is about bringing sexualityinto the public realm, because “the societalprivileging of sex as the private realm—andthe constant assertion that it’s obscene—istied into the continued oppression of queerand trans identities. A lot of the chalkingsare a refusal to buy into the ‘equality’ modelof queer liberation—a refusal to say queerpeople are just like anybody else.”Pozo agreed: “As members of a sexualitybasedcommunity, if we can’t discuss sexualityin a public forum, how can we unite as acommunity?” She also cautioned membersof the campus community not to assume“that because you haven’t seen homophobiaat Swarthmore, it doesn’t exist,” citing arecent incident where a queer student’s“Queer Safe Space” door sign was burned.More discussion ensued in the FriendsMeetinghouse a week later, when more than120 students showed up for a discussionmoderated by Associate Professor of HistoryBruce Dorsey and Visiting Assistant Professorof Religion Elliot Ratzman. Emotionalstatements, apologies, and tears wound intothe late hours, but there appeared to be noresolution of the question of what thechalkings might be like in the future.Although surprised by the diversity ofresponses to the chalkings, Ratzman notedin a later interview that “if anybody wasagainst the idea of Coming Out Week ingeneral, they weren’t speaking. The power inthe room was the radical pro-chalkers, andthey were the ones who had to beappeased.”Stone also stressed that “there are peoplewho have strong religious convictions onthe matter, and those people are beingnotably silent. It’s just as unreasonable forthem to feel that they have to be silent asany of the other kinds of silences going onhere.”Stone also thinks that a lot of issuesopened up by the chalkings discussion are“not being followed through on. What happenedto liberal campuses when suddenlywe’re arguing for censorship? Under whatcircumstances is it acceptable to behave inways that hurt people and continue doing it,particularly when the hurt is through sexualspeech?”Although many questions remain, thechalkings controversy could be read as a testamentto Swarthmore’s strong sense ofcommunity. As Pozo said: “I’m allowed to beat this place where I can draw sexualimagery on the sidewalk having to do withmy identity as a queer woman. That I feel Ican do that is a real testament to … our confidencein Swarthmore as a community thatis able to adjust itself to the needs of groupsthat still feel marginalized.”—Lauren Stokes ’09march 2007 : 13

HOMEPASCALE ROUZIESAlthough many will always think of the town where they were born as home,few spend their entire lives there. Some willingly move to another place to put down roots near family and friends. Others move—or mustrelocate—to follow career paths. Still others, those with a thirst for adventure, deliberately pick up stakes and travel across the country—orthe world—to create entirely new lives.For those with wanderlust, travel offers the opportunity to explore new cultures and locales, where they sometimes discover a sense ofbelonging—and the peace of finding their true home. Sometimes, Swarthmore’s Foreign Study Program, which offers opportunities to exploreinternational destinations from Ghana to Grenoble, sparks an interest in living abroad. Occasionally, those visits unfold into long-term stays.More than 100 alumni from the classes of 1980 to 1995 are recorded in the College’s database as living abroad for at least 10 years inplaces such as Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, and Spain. Their varied professions include translators, researchers,historians, and policy officers on peacekeeping missions.The following stories explore the paths of five alumni expatriates—their choices and compromises—as they integrate a broad spectrum ofexperiences beyond the United States into their lives.Jim Michener once worked for Lao Airlines and is seenhere with a Chinese-made Y-12 aircraft.14 : swarthmore college bulletin

ABROADALUMNI EXPATRIATES CREATE NEW LIVESOUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES.SEEKERJim Michener ’73: Vientiane, LaosBy Andrea HammerJim Michener not only shares the same name as the late James A.Michener ’29 but also a Quaker heritage, Swarthmore affiliation,and writing profession. Living in Laos, he is currently writing Poisonin the Wind, a novel about his boyhood life in Solebury, Pa., and hislife as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War.“I’m nobody’s namesake,” he says, recalling a letter in which theolder Michener encouraged him to absorb the richness of other culturesfor his writing career, which hedid during his own military experiencesduring World War II.The younger Michener was 20and wearing a uniform when he firstarrived in Asia. He experienced 2years of wartime there—from 1964 to1965 in the Philippines and Okinawaand 1966 to 1967 in Vietnam. At age23, he returned to the United Statesand did not go back to Asia until 20years later, when, in 1987, he purchaseda one-way ticket to Bangkok.He put his total savings of $3,000 inhis pocket and boarded a plane.Michener had no job waiting forhim and planned to stay only 6months. But he has remained inSoutheast Asia, which he is still“decoding.” Now, Michener has experienced20 peacetime years there in “a kind of self-imposed exile,”he says.Michener compares the “old-fashionedness and timelessness” ofLaos with the old Quaker world of his grandparents, the source ofits charm for him despite the cruelty of communists—particularlyin the past. He also decided to leave America in search of knowledgethat wasn’t available in classrooms or books, both of which taughtMichener to be skeptical of anything but original sources.“I’ve never considered anything that I’ve done in my life to be ajob,” says Michener, who worked enough before leaving the UnitedStates to start receiving Social Security benefits last year. “What onedoes should always be fun.”A film producer at Television Film Studios in Ho Chi Minh Cityis collaborating with Michener to adapt his more than 200,000-Michener now thinksof old Indochina andThailand as his home,viewing the UnitedStates as a “foreigncountr y,” although hemisses American food.word Poison in the Wind manuscript into 50 television episodes forVietnamese television.Laos has no bookstores; everyone gathers information on theInternet and through cable television. They live without “frills”—noshopping malls, movie theaters, or fast-food chains. Michener alsosays that a Party policeman, who watches the nine homes in front ofhis, occupies every 10th house.Athough Michener was born in Doylestown, Pa., and missesAmerican food, he now thinks of old Indochina and Thailand as hishome—viewing the United States asa “foreign country.” He sees no needto return.“What gets Washington into somuch trouble overseas, I think, isalways thinking in linear terms,which is the opposite way that mostAsians think, even highly educatedones,” Michener says.He adds that it is becomingincreasingly difficult for non-Asiansto find work because of the localizationtrend. When an expat managerleaves a major company, Michenersays, a local with a U.S. college educationis now the replacement.Michener can walk from his hometo the Mekong River in 30 minutes.In the opposite direction, he is in aStone Age rice paddy in 30 minutes.But he has been robbed at home eight times in 14 years. Thieves, hesays, are a never-ending headache in Third World countries.“So it isn’t paradise, and poverty isn’t picturesque. The attractionfor me, a bachelor, is that domestic help costs next to nothing,” hesays. By leaving the mundane tasks to his household staff, he is ableto focus on his writing. “Of course, they expect you to send theirchildren to private school and pay for hospitalization, which you do.And you’re knitted into their family, and they become yours. And it’sjust a lot of fun on good days and a gargantuan headache on bad.”A Thai executive, who had never been to Laos, visited Michenerseveral years ago. “He remarked: ‘It’s a time warp. It mirrors the eraof my grandparents. The place is just like Thailand before WorldWar II,’” Michener recalls.“Hey, I like it like that.”march 2007 : 15

SOUL HOMEDiane Levine Umemoto ’65: LondonDiane Umemoto’s husband, Steve, was determined to do humanitarianwork in Southeast Asia. So, shortly after they were married in1966, he joined Unicef. For the next 30-odd years, they lived inSouth and Southeast Asia.When the couple first moved to Asia in 1969, Umemoto taughtat the University of Indonesia and ChulalongkornUniversity in Thailand. She alsowrote freelance articles.Umemoto says that Swarthmore’s honorscourses taught her independent study.The College instilled “lifelong loves”—literatureand art—and gave her the skills tolearn, a key to “survival” as a spouse whocouldn’t always obtain a work permit.“What saved my life was finding otherdynamic women who set up study groups,put out cultural publications, eventuallywrote books, and always did charitablework. Learning and giving were Swarthmore’score values,” she says.Now a resident of London, she teaches at the American Schoolthere. When Steve retired in 2000, Umemoto did not want to retireor return to the United States.“So, for the first time, I looked for a job on my own—rather thanappearing on a school’s doorstep as a ‘local hire’—and was extremelyfortunate to find this one in London,” she says. Having taught ininternational schools for about 20 years, she describes teaching as a“portable profession.”Umemoto’s neighborhood, near the school, has apartment houses,townhouses, terrace houses, and flats.“If I walk in one direction, toward St. John’s Wood, I’m in withthe yuppies and wealthy retirees. In the other direction, towardSwiss Cottage, I’m in lower- and middle-class territory, like Queens,N.Y., where I grew up,” she says of her “vibrant community,” wheresamosas and bagels are available in the same shop.Thirty-five years ago, Umemoto sewed all of her children’sclothes because off-the-rack items were not available in Indonesia.Shopping was largely in outdoor markets, for all goods—not justproduce. During biannual home leaves, her family spent hours poringover the supermarket shelves.“London is like any big city, only better. It’s safe enough to goout at night, and there are large beautiful parks within easy walkingdistance—all the cultural advantages of New York and greeneryas well.”Umemoto’s main hobby is watercolor painting, and she spendsher leisure time poking around museums and historical areas. Sheparticularly enjoys visiting historic mansions that are owned by theNational Trust and open to the public.“London is my soul home,” she says, even while missing U.S.autumns. “When I was growing up in New York City, I read a lot ofEnglish literature. Living here is the fulfillment of a dream. The factthat London resembles my hometown, New York, doesn’t hurt.”Despite concerns about finding high-quality affordable health16 : swarthmore college bulletin“London is mysoul home,”Umemoto says.“Living here isthe fulfillmentof a dream.”care, Umemoto would like to remain in London indefinitely.“Gradually, I have become more out of sync with standard Americanviews. In recent years, the disconnect has become immense.I find it more and more difficult to identify with the prevailingAmerican attitudes, with the inability of many Americans to understandthat America is now seen as a bully, not a savior,” she says.“For most Americans, people in the rest of the world—especiallythe Third World—are non-people, too alien to relate to. But for me,having lived with them, they are very realindeed, ordinary people like the rest of us,just trying to get on with life. It matters tome when we Americans are responsible fortheir deaths and try to convince ourselvesthat we are only killing terrorists.”For those new to living abroad, Umemotoadvises: “Understand that you are going tolose your identity, and go with the flow. Therewards can be enormous, provided you canstop expecting the small things of life to bethe same as they were at home, which takesabout 2 years to accomplish. You can reinventyourself. Every moment in a foreigncountry is an adventure.”Umemoto adds that if you go to the Third World, you learn neverto take any material goods for granted—and certainly not your health.“If you are going as a spouse, the biggest challenge might bekeeping your marriage together. Adjustments are much more severefor a nonworking spouse; my husband only had to face that after heretired and followed me instead! When culture shock hits, it’s easyto blame each other.”DEJA VUJudith Lorick ’69: Mougins, FranceAs a child in Philadelphia, singing was at the center of JudithLorick’s life. She started as a soloist in church and moved into jazzduring her college years, when she performed at the Villanova JazzFestival.After college, Lorick lived in southern California, working herway up the corporate ladder in human resources. In the early 1980s,she formed the Judith Lorick Quartet in California and began a fulltimecareer as a jazz vocalist, receiving rave reviews from local critics.Since then, she has appeared in concert as well as in jazz clubs andfestivals in the United States and Europe.Libération, a major French newspaper, said of Lorick (Dec. 1,1998; translated from French): “One would place her more appropriatelybetween Sarah Vaughn, for her boldness of melody andrhythm, and Shirley Horn, for an impressive art of silence thatknows so well how to glide between the notes.... Judith Lorick navigateswith sensuality through unexpected improvisations, just thisside of perfection.”Lorick first visited Europe to study in Spain during the summerbefore her senior year. The train from Munich to Barcelona wentthrough the Côte d’Azur, and she got off in Nice to spend some timeat the beach.

Teacher Diane Umemoto often takes her studentsto the British Museum (left), where the Asianartifacts are among her favorite collections.Judith Lorick (below) is a jazz singer living inFrance. She also is an independent consultantwho develops and facilitates leadership programsand skills-building seminars.JIM VARNEY“It was an amazing experience: The air felt familiar on my skin; itsmelled familiar. I seemed to know where to walk…. It was as if I had beenhere in a former life,” she says.Lorick decided that she would live in France one day. After living insouthern California, she decided to step off the corporate ladder in humanresources and pursue a career as a jazz singer in 1984.“I decided to fulfill the rest of my dream and moved here,” says Lorick,who moved to Mougins [just north of Cannes] in 1988 and continued toearn a living in music. A few years ago, Lorick enjoyed supervising the constructionof a new home.“It’s very close to everything. But, when we look around, all we see aretrees; blue skies; and, through a tiny hole in the trees, the Mediterranean,”Lorick says. “The only thing that took getting used to is living behindgates. Unless one lives directly in a village, most of the villas have a hugehedge and an electronic gate. Popping over for a chat is just not done.I was thrilled recently to find a note from our new neighbor asking ifI wanted to meet her. She’s British and also misses the spontaneity of aneighborhood.”Lorick buys everything fresh at the green grocer, fish market, and bakeryfour or five times a week. She goes to the supermarket for staples only.“I and my German partner, Heiner, have adopted some of the Frenchobsession with food. Much of our social life is around lovely meals,” shesays. “We often drive over to Italy, less than an hour away, for lunch andshopping. We also collect and enjoy good wines.”Today, music is on the back burner for Lorick, who started consulting in1998 and has a flourishing business as an independent consultant, developingand facilitating leadership programs as well as team-building andskills-building seminars. She also is a coach for executives in leadershippositions in international companies.Although Lorick misses friends and family, she only occasionally thinksabout U.S. conveniences. She has to organize her activities around shopsthat close for lunch and by 7:30 p.m. as well as on Sundays.“Home is definitely here now. I can’t imagine living in the States at thispoint. I worked hard to rebuild my life here and did so successfully. I raisedmy son here; he lives in Aix-en-Provence,” Lorick says. “Almost all of mywork contacts are here, both in music and consulting. Most important, Iam happy here.... I love my life.”.Lorick is more informed politically than whenshe lived in the United States. She says that livingaway from the States for so long has allowedfor greater objectivity.Swarthmore was her first exposure to manydifferent cultures, enabling study abroad andencouraging curiosity. She was a language major, wholearned French and Spanish and—equally important—howto learn a language, which facilitates living abroad. Loricknow speaks five.To download samples of A Sleepin’ Bee and You’ve Changedfrom Lorick’s first CD and Songs for My Mother (1999)—atribute to her mother and jazz singer Nancy Wilson—visitwww.flohr.net/judith.march 2007 : 17HEINER BECKER

LIMBOHannah Brown ’84: Moshav Beit Nekofa,JerusalemNew York City native Hannah Brown went to Israel in 1984, thesummer after graduating from Swarthmore, just to visit the Jewishstate and learn the language. During that year, she met her futurehusband, Yoram Yovell, and they moved back and forth for severalyears between Israel and America. But, in 2000, after their childrenwere born in America, they moved to Israel permanently.“My husband and I agreed when we married that we wouldreturn to live in Israel after our children were born. My husbandwas born in Israel and missed it very much when we lived in NewYork. So I don’t see myself moving back to the States,” she says.“I’ve lived abroad so long that I don’t feel quite at home in NewYork anymore but don’t really feel at home in Israel either. I’m justin a kind of limbo.”Brown, a literature major who won two fiction prizes at Swarthmore,has worked as Newsweek’s Jerusalem bureau chief and as aneditor and columnist for The Jewish Daily Forward. A former moviecritic for the New York Post, she now writes for the Jerusalem Post andlives in a moshav—a small village—outside of Jerusalem.“In the past, moshavim were similar to kibbutzim in that someof the land was owned and worked by the entire moshav, but peoplelived in their own houses. On a kibbutz, there are no privatelyowned houses. Now, in most of the moshavim in my area, there isno real agriculture, so they are more like suburbs,” she says. Brownoften shops in a nearby Arab village, Abu Ghosh, one of the fewMuslim villages that have friendly relations with Jewish Israelis.“Strangely, I don’t feel that threatened by the possibility of beingthe victim of a terror attack on a daily basis,” Brown says.Whenever she goes to a public place, Brown is accustomed tosearches of her purse and the trunk of her car. Her family rarelytakes public transportation, where the risk of terrorism is greatest.“I have friends on the left of the spectrum and friends on theright but almost never discuss politics with anybody. We all knowwhere we stand, and no one I know really feels that there is anyhope of changing anyone else’s mind about anything,” she says.For a while, in 2003, Brown was concerned about the schoolsshutting down for the duration of the Iraq War. “Fortunately, thatdidn’t happen,” she says. Nonetheless, all children in Israel wererequired to have gas masks in school.Still identifying herself as American, Brown has a greater appreciationfor the high standard of living in the United States.“For example, in Israel, almost no one has full-time hot water.You have to heat the water with a heater before you shower. In thesummer, if you have a solar heater, you don’t need to heat it electrically.But you can’t always take for granted that there will be hotwater,” says Brown, who misses U.S. conveniences.In particular, she can’t help but notice that bureaucracy, the conveniencesof daily life, and tolerance of people who are different—things that were so common in New York—are missing from theCOURTESY OF CHRISTIAN HENRYFor 2 weeks each month, Christian Henry (above) worksand lives at The Island School in the Bahamas.SHIA LEVITTWriter Hannah Brown (left), on the roof of her home nearJerusalem, still identifies herself as an American.18 : swarthmore college bulletin

Israeli way of life. Brown has two children, Daniel and Rafael, oneof whom has autism.“Although I work, my life revolves around my son’s care and helpinghim learn. He is making progress, and it is very rewarding. Butbecause of this, I probably have not been able to invest time inlearning to acclimate myself to Israel,” Brown says.She describes the special-education bureaucracy in Israel as particularlyrigid, with some administrators who don’t believe thatautistic children can ever be helped in any significant way.“If I weren’t forced into contact with these bureaucrats, then Iwould probably be more positive,” she says. “On the plus side, myson receives treatment at the International Center for the Enhancementof Learning Potential in Jerusalem, founded and run byReuven Feuerstein, a professor who has pioneered extremely effectivetechniques for teaching people with autism, mental retardation,learning disabilities, and brain injuries,” Brown says.WHY NOT?Christian Henry ’96: Cape Eleuthera, Bahamas“It’s a risk to goabroad, but it’sriskier to stayput,” Henr y says.In 1998, after teaching at a private school in New Jersey, ChristianHenry was open to adventure. An opportunity arose when he met anex–Navy Seal who was starting The Island School in the Bahamas, anonprofit school, where groups of students from high schoolsaround the United States, the Bahamas, and Canada can spend 3months experiencing the Eleutheran environment and people firsthand. Henry accompanied the first group of 20 high school studentsto Eleuthera.“It wasn’t so much a question of why liveabroad as much as why not?” says Henry,who divides his time between Eleuthera andBaltimore, where his fiancé lives. “My personalgoal is to do good and do well, as theQuakers used to say. It is important to me tospend time creating a meaningful life formyself and others—and the fruits of thatare a community of learning and growth.”In addition to English, math, and history,Island School students are offered environmentalart and marine ecology. SCUBAdiving, island exploration, and two short kayaking expeditions complementdaily morning exercise. Science research projects and campuswork help students to develop leadership and teamwork skills.The fee for one semester is $15,975 in 2007–2008. Each semester,about 40 percent of the school’s students receive some financialaid; more than $320,000 in scholarships, from small foundationsor private individuals, were awarded this year.“It was so much harder than we expected to start a school fromscratch. Luckily, I have a boss who encourages people to grow.Through Duke’s Cross-Continent Program, which combines oncampusand distance work, I was able to get an M.B.A. and still keepup my duties at the school,” says Henry.After 8 years, the school now has 500 alumni; a local middleschool, founded by the nonprofit Cape Eleuthera Foundation inSeptember 2001, which evolved from The Island School’s CommunityOutreach Program; and a marine science/green technologyresearch institute.As chief financial officer of the foundation since 2004, Henryhelped to develop the school’s academic program. Currently, he isresponsible for management, administration, and development ofrelationships with high schools that send students to the Bahamas.“I am also offering a course in entrepreneurship; it is a first steptoward a longer process of making the lessons of The Island Schoolreal,” Henry says. “It represents one small way we are trying to keepthe promise we make to our students as they get on the plane to gohome. We say that the learning they have done here is only useful tothe degree that it has significant impact in their world.”In 2003, Henry co-founded the Cape Eleuthera Institute, whichprovides research opportunities for students and models sustainablesystems. He received a 2003 Kinship Conservation Institute Fellowshipto study market solutions to environmental issues.“It’s great to be part of a learning community and to feel like ourschool has impact outside the gates,” Henry says. “Young peoplewho have a vision and a way to make it happen in a self-sustainingway—in a way that creates value for everyone involved—are themost powerful force we have to change the world for the better.”Henry lives on campus, 5 miles from Deep Creek, the nearesttown. The supermarket and bank are a 45-minute drive away. Thereis but one doctor on the island, which is a 2-hour flight from Miami.He says that the island “bush” is dense and low; the islands are flat,not volcanic.“Tourism drives the economy here, and because most Americanschoose Nassau and the glitzy casino world of Atlantis, islands likeEleuthera remain depressed. Houses standhalf built; roads have potholes with names;and outside of government jobs, there is littlebesides fishing and farming to keep peoplegoing. But it’s sunny, never dips below50 degrees, and the color of the ocean atsunrise will break your heart every day,” saysHenry, who wakes up for a 6:15 a.m. facultymeeting before an hour of exercise with thestudents.Born in Fort Belvoir, Va., Henry movedevery 4 years until high school as part of acareer army family. He lived in Germany andlearned how to “regrow roots” in new places, he says.“Barry Lopez writes about this great idea of home called thequerencia. It’s Spanish for ‘home’ or ‘hearth,’ but it also is the placein a bullring where a bull retreats to when a matador has hurt it. Itis the place you get your strength from. I have several of theseplaces; one is where I live with my fiancée in Baltimore, where Ispend 2 weeks each month. One is in the woods in Lawrenceville,N.J., where I went to high school. One is in the bell tower atSwarthmore,” he says.“I went back for my 10th reunion. It was powerful to hear thosebells ringing, and it brought me right back to being 19 and giddy onthe smell of daffodils and fresh-cut grass.” TAndrea Hammer is a freelance writer and editorial consultant in Philadelphia.She is the former managing editor of the Bulletin.march 2007 : 19

How Swarthmore College influencedthe 2006 reauthorization of the1965 Voting Rights Act – and otherfacts about black voting rights(in 20 dramatic steps).18651 President AbrahamLincoln delivers a speechfrom the balcony of theWhite House on April 11,proposing partial AfricanAmerican suffrage. In thecrowd is actor John WilkesBooth. Three days later,Lincoln is assassinated.Text by Jeffrey Lott and Richard Valelly ’75; design by Karlssonwilker, Inc.2 Black suffrage spreads rapidly throughthe South through CongressionalReconstruction under the protection ofthe U.S. Army. The process culminatesin the passage of the 15th Amendment:“The right of citizens of the United Statesto vote shall not be denied or abridgedby the United States or by any Stateon account of race, color, or previouscondition of servitude.” Congress is giventhe power to enforce this.1866: Veterans of theConfederate Army startthe first Ku Klux Klan.It is suppressed by theEnforcement Act of 1871.1867-18701871-18753 Congress passesfive separatestatutes that make ita crime to interferewith the right tovote and permitfederal monitoringof elections.187718901882: The ChineseExclusion Actdenies citizenshipand votingrights to ChineseAmericans.COURTESY OF AGRIBUSINESS COUNCIL;JAMES WORMLEY RECOGNITION PROJECT4 A great crisis in Republicansupport for black votingrights occurs when lameduckPresident Ulysses S.Grantand President-electRutherford B. Hayes permitRepublican governmentsin three southern states tocollapse, making way forwhite Democratic control.5 Mississippi Democrats meet in Jacksonto write a new state constitution. It disenfranchisesAfrican-American voters,beginning a 20-year process of driving allblack voters out of the Southern electoratethrough such devices as the poll tax,literacy tests, residency requirements, andthe “white primary.”18936 For the first time since 1857, the Democratic Party gainscontrol of both houses of Congress and the White House.They repeal the election enforcement statutes passedduring Reconstruction. When they return to power 4 yearslater, Republicans acquiesce, leaving African Americans tofend for themselves.20 : swarthmore college bulletin

1955: Rosa Parks refusesto give her seat on aMontgomery, Ala., bus toa white man.19609 In Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court, in response topressure from NAACP lawyers including Thurgood Marshall,strikes down the white primary. It holds that racial discrimination inDemocratic primaries violates the 14th and 15th Amendments. Thedecision triggers a huge black voter registration drive in the South,increasing black registration by more than 100 percent.10 The Civil Rights Act of 1960 givesthe Justice Department standing to suelocal election officials and to petitionfederal judges to register black voters.The Kennedy administration encouragesblack voter registration, but the strategyfails in Deep South states, resulting in awave of violence against black activistsand their white allies.1944African Americans demonstrating for the right to vote1915: D.W. Griffithreleases The Birth of aNation. The second KuKlux Klan is founded.1920BRUCE DAVIDSON8 The 19th Amendmentis ratified:“Theright of the citizensof the United Statesto vote shall not bedenied or abridgedby the United Statesor by any State onaccount of sex.”Black WWI veteransreturn home andbegin to organizelocal chapters of theNAACP. In 1921,Maggie L. Walker,a black woman,runs for educationsuperintendent ofVirginia.7 Alice Paul graduates fromSwarthmore College. Shebecomes a leader in thewomen’s suffrage movement,devising the radical tacticsthat finally force PresidentWoodrow Wilson andCongress to report the 19thAmendment to the states.1905Alice Paul unfurling the ratification banner, 1920LIBRARY OF CONGRESS / WINNING THE VOTE BY R.COONEYmarch 2007 : 21

1962: James Meredith becomes the firstblack student to enroll at the Universityof Mississippi. President Kennedy sendstroops to quell riots.1964 196511 The Civil Rights Act of 1964addresses accommodations andpublic transportation but not voting.1966: The Black Panthersare founded by HueyNewton and Bobby Seale.13 Federal officials registerseveral hundred thousandblack voters. Between 1964and 1968, the registration ofblack southerners increasesfrom 43% to 62%. The 15thAmendment is restored to life.19661970: The 1970 Voting Rights Actbans literacy tests in 20 states,including N.Y., Ill., Calif., and Texas.12 National television attention focuses on a voterregistration campaign in Selma, Ala., where policebrutally beat demonstrators. Congress passes theVoting Rights Act in response to a dramatic appealby President Johnson.AP1982© BETTMANN/ CORBIS199914 After twice beingrenewed by Congress—and extended to coverLatino voters—thetemporary enforcementprovisions of the act areextended for 25 years.A permanent amendmentestablishes the right ofminority voters to electminority candidates oftheir choosing.ChristopherSeamanPeyton McCraryRichard Valelly15a Peyton McCrary is the historianin the Voting Section of the U.S.Justice Department.Christopher Seaman ’99 majored inhistory and later received a law degreefrom the University of Pennsylvania.He is currently an attorney in Chicago.Richard Valelly ’75, professor ofpolitical science, has taught atSwarthmore since 1993. He wrotethe prize-winning book The TwoReconstructions: The Struggle forBlack Enfranchisement.15 After a year as Eugene Lang Professor of SocialChange at Swarthmore, Peyton McCrary returnsto his job in the Justice Department. That summer,Christopher Seaman ’00 works with McCrary inWashington under a Roland Pennock SummerFellowship. Studying official correspondence, theycode the legal basis of Justice Department reviewsof Southern election plans. They thought the datamight be interesting.22 : swarthmore college bulletin

19 The Swarthmorearticle is discussed inCongressional hearingson reauthorization.The House JudiciaryCommittee reports anamended Voting RightsAct that specificallyoverrules Bossier.The committee reportjustifies reversing thecourt decision throughextensive reference to theSwarthmore article, whichis published in June 2006by the Michigan Journalof Race and Law.2006PAUL MORSE20 President George W. Bush signsthe renewed Voting Rights Act.It contains new language thatstrengthens the Justice Department’sability to fight discrimination againstminority office-holding.2005-200618 Knowing that the Voting Rights Act’senforcement provisions would requireCongressional renewal by 2007, theydevelop and circulate an unpublishedmanuscript among voting-rights lawyers.20042001, John Liu iselected to the NewYork City Council,becoming the firstAsian-Americanelected to a majorlegislative positionin the city withthe largest Asian-American populationin the United States.200015th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 187016 In Reno v. Bossier Parish SchoolBoard, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing forthe Supreme Court, effectively preventsthe Justice Department—when reviewingelection changes under Section 5 of theVoting Rights Act—from objecting tochanges intended to discriminate againstminority voters unless the change isdesigned to make matters worse for thoseminority voters.NARA17 Following Bossier,McCrary, Seaman,and Valelly analyzetheir data to predictthe impact of the courtdecision on JusticeDepartment efforts togain compliance withthe 1982 amendment.They find that Bossierclearly contradictsrecent Supreme Courtprecedent and willlikely prevent furtherincreases in minorityoffice-holding.march 2007 : 23

REBECCA WHARTON

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever thingsAN INFORMEDCITIZENRYTHE PRECARIOUS STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS BROADCASTING THREATENS OURDEMOCRACY, SAYS JOHN SICELOFF ’76, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF NOW ON PBS.By Jeffrey LottREBECCA WHARTONKhadijah White ’04, the youngeststaffer in a New York office full of experiencedTV hands, is pitching a story—one ofthree being considered on a January afternoonfor the PBS program NOW With DavidBrancaccio.A half-dozen people listen as Whiteexplains how, after the Food and DrugAdministration approved a vaccine forhuman papilloma virus (HPV), the Centersfor Disease Control (CDC) quickly recommendedlast year that all girls be vaccinated,starting at age 11–12. The virus, which is sexuallytransmitted, is thought to cause mostcervical cancers in women.Backed by the CDC recommendation,public health authorities in several stateswant to make the vaccine a routine part ofchildhood immunization schedules—likeprotection from hepatitis B, diphtheria, orpolio. But, White says, conservative groupsare objecting: “They say that giving the vaccineto girls as young as the sixth grade islike giving them permission to have sex.”White, a production associate, thinksthat a recent clash over the vaccine in theMichigan state legislature might provide agood avenue for the weekly public affairsprogram to examine what could become anational issue.Producer Peter Meryash, head of White’sIn 2001, John Siceloff (left) teamed upwith Bill Moyers to launch NOW on PBS.The weekly news magazine, hosted since2005 by David Brancaccio, airs aroundthe country on Friday nights.production team, lists some of the publicpolicyquestions being raised: Should thevaccination be mandatory, or might there bean opt-out provision for parents opposed toits use? Will most private insurance cover it?Will government health programs pay tovaccinate girls who are from families thatcannot afford it?Cervical cancer kills about 3,700 womeneach year in the United States—more thana third of those diagnosed with the nowpreventable disease. “To be most effectiveacross society, the vaccine needs to be widelyused,” White adds.Executive producer John Siceloff ’76 listensattentively to White’s pitch and twoother ideas offered by Meryash’s team. Askinga few questions, he encourages them tokeep working on a story about the legal falloutfrom a constitutional amendment inOhio intended to ban same-sex marriage —some judges there have interpreted it asvoiding domestic-violence laws—andWhite’s HPV piece.Siceloff, slim and boyish at 53, is aTV news veteran. His office overlookingNew York’s Penn Station rail yard is decoratedwith striking photos he took in Africaduring a post-Swarthmore Watson Fellowship.His Watson project explored how differentcultures constructed stories and howthe introduction of photographs influencedthose tales. Thirty years later, he’s stilltelling stories with words and pictures.Siceloff worked as a filmmaker and freelanceTV journalist in Africa and CentralAmerica from 1978 until 1984. He joinedCBS News in 1984 as a producer based inCosta Rica and Nicaragua, then covered theregion for NBC from 1987 until 1989, whenhe returned to the United States. A decadeof news and documentary production followed,first at NBC News and, from 1995, atABC. He’s won three Emmy Awards fornational news and a Peabody Award for hiswork on ABC News’ 9/11 coverage.He left commercial television in 2001 tostart NOW With Bill Moyers on PBS. Leadinga staff of 60, Siceloff and Moyers designedthe hour-long program from scratch. Bothwanted the freedom to do in-depth interviews,investigative reporting, and thoughtfulcommentary in a setting that wasn’tdriven by ratings or advertising concerns.When accepting a 2004 Emmy for bestreport in a newsmagazine, Siceloff said themission of NOW is to “encourage viewers toparticipate as citizens—not just deliveringthe news but giving people the context tothink about their relationship to the largerworld.” The Emmy-winning show Inside thePentagon had examined a shadowy plan—later abandoned in light of publicity thatincluded the NOW report—for the Air Forceto lease a fleet of 100 air-tankers from Boeingfor $900 million more than it wouldhave cost to buy them outright. Exposure ofthe deal later cost Boeing CEO Philip Condithis job.Moyers, now 72, retired from NOW inlate 2004. But the incisive, thoughtfulbrand of journalism he personifies remainsthe program’s stock-in-trade. Despite theshow’s success—it has grown to 2.5 millionviewers weekly, more than Hardball Withmarch 2007 : 25

get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” —Thomas JeffersonChris Matthews and Larry King Live combined—Siceloffworries that “the space forserious public-affairs programming thatlooks at economic, cultural, and politicalissues that affect our lives today is shrinking.A democracy needs engaged citizenswho have accurate information, but whatpasses for public information throughoutthe country is in a precarious state.”There are many reasons for this“precarious state.” Serious public affairsbroadcasting has been in decline on thecommercial networks for two decades, aperiod that neatly coincides with the rise ofgiant media conglomerates that own TVnetworks, newspapers, and hundreds ofradio stations. On the public side, a steady“OVER THE PAST5 YEARS,THERE HAVE BEENSUSTAINEDAND REPEATEDATTEMPTSTO GET USOFF THE AIR,”SICELOFF SAYS.drop in government support for the Corporationfor Public Broadcasting (CPB) has ledto a “culture of begging for funds” thatthreatens the quality of programming.Then there’s the political pressure.“Over the past 5 years, there have beensustained and repeated attempts to get usoff the air,” Siceloff says, almost losing hisQuaker cool. (A birthright Friend, Siceloffserved for nearly a decade on the board ofthe American Friends Service Committee.)The most serious of these attempts originatedwith Kenneth Tomlinson, who wasappointed chairman of the CPB in 2003 byPresident George W. Bush. Tomlinson, a formereditor at Reader’s Digest and close friendof Bush aide Karl Rove, went on a crusadeagainst alleged liberal bias in public broadcasting.Without the knowledge of the CPBboard, he commissioned an amateurish$14,000 study of the week-to-week contentof NOW that classified guests and topics. Healso threatened in private e-mails to withholdfunding if PBS did not offer its memberstations a political commentary programhosted by the editors of the Wall Street Journal.The Journal program aired briefly onPBS and then moved to the Fox Network.After Tomlinson’s actions were revealed,Moyers snapped: “The more compelling ourjournalism, the angrier the radical right ...gets. That’s because the one thing theyloathe more than liberals is the truth. Andthe quickest way to be damned by them as aliberal is to tell the truth.”Tomlinson resigned from the CPB boardin November 2005, following an internalinvestigation that determined he had violatedcorporation policy by trying to influencethe content of PBS programs. Nevertheless,Siceloff says, “the thought is chilling. PBSbelongs to the people, not to whateveradministration is in power in Washington.”A further challenge is financial.“It often surprises people to learn that lessthan 20 percent of funding for publicbroadcasting comes from the federal government,”he says. The rest must be raised—mostly by the member stations—from anaging member base, foundations, and corporations.”Still, 20 percent is important,and it’s repeatedly been the object of politicalmanipulation.PBS, which collects fees from memberstations for the national programming itproduces, provides about half of what’srequired to put NOW on the air each week—about what it takes to do a talk show,Siceloff estimates. To pay for additionalcosts like research, travel, and field production,he and Brancaccio spend a significantamount of time raising money.Despite significant corporate supportfrom Calvert, the investment firm known forits socially responsible mutual funds, “weneed to identify another $1 million this yearto keep the program at the level of qualitywe want,” Siceloff says.It infuriates him to watch the FederalCommunications Commission auction theelectromagnetic spectrum to big corporationsfor huge sums—“our airwaves,” hesays. “We’re in the midst of a land grab ofspace and spectrum by commercial intereststhat can make huge amounts of money.”An effort to get Congress to funnel someof the auction proceeds to public broadcasting“went nowhere,” perhaps because thesame Republican Congress had earlier triedto cut PBS altogether, giving up only after agrassroots campaign by members of localstations convinced individual representa-ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSMedia conglomerates are moving awayfrom tough reporting to “comfy, viewerfriendlynews with big doses of celebrityand entertainment,” Siceloff says.26 : swarthmore college bulletin

“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologuetives to buck their leadership and restore theproposed cuts.At the National Conference on MediaReform in January, Peter Hart, activismdirector at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,described how “the fight against publicbroadcasting happens the same way everytime.”First, “the right wing pundits or politicians… scream about liberal bias and callfor defunding the system…. Advocates forpublic TV rally to save Big Bird, save SesameStreet. The “compromise” result, Hart says, isa leaner budget. “The right has chippedaway at public broadcasting. Management atpublic broadcasting will often express interestin accommodating these bogus rightwingconcerns … and then we repeat thewhole thing about 2 to 4 years later.”The Bush administration’s 2008 budget,delivered to Congress last month, onceagain seeks to eliminate federal support forpublic broadcasting. It’s ironic, Siceloff says,that the “education president” wants toslash the budget for PBS, the largest singleeducational institution in the country.The problems faced by NOW and PBSare no small skirmishes, but many mediaprofessionals and activists see the steadyconsolidation of commercial media ownershipas the root cause of the “precariousstate.”“More and more, journalists in these bigcompanies are moving away from toughinvestigative news to comfy, viewer-friendlynews, with big doses of celebrity and entertainment,”Siceloff told an internationalaudience of journalists at a recent meetingof World Information Transfer, a U.N. sponsoredprogram.And, because of its size and global reach,Big Media is inevitably enmeshed in a conflictof interest with government: “Thesegiant companies have dozens of regulatoryand tax issues working in Congress and thegovernment at any one time. How can journalistsin the employ of such megacorporationsreport on these issues without bias orinfluence from the corporate boss?” Siceloffasked.NOW has regularly reported on mediaconsolidation, especially after the FCC in2003 attempted to relax rules that prohibitedmedia companies from owning multipleSPANNINGER SAYSTHAT WHEN SHEFIRST WORKED AT CBS,NETWORKNEWSDIVISIONS “WEREN’TEXPECTED TO BEPROFIT CENTERS....WE WEREN’TEXPECTED TOHOLD OUR OWNAGAINST THEACADEMYAWARDS ANDTHE BASKETBALLPLAYOFFS.”outlets in a single market. The FCC proposalwas blocked by a Federal court, but,Siceloff says, “most of the commercial presswas silent on this story. A lot of the big playersstood to gain.”In a commentary aired on NOW inNovember 2003, Moyers told viewers: “TheMartha Spanninger ’79 has seen “a slowbut steady erosion of the quality of newson TV” during more than 20 years in thebusiness. She joined NOW in 2004.founders of this country believed a free andrambunctious press was essential to theprotection of our freedoms. They couldn’tenvision the rise of giant megamedia conglomerateswhose interests converge withstate power…. We think this is the mostimportant story of all, the one that determineswhat other stories get told—andhow.”Brancaccio puts it more bluntly: “Mediaconglomerates have so many fish to fry inWashington that they really don’t want theirnews divisions rocking the boat.”Sixteen NOW staffers—with equalnumbers of men and women—gather fortheir weekly production meeting. The topicis this Friday’s program.Next to Siceloff, on one side of thesquare table, sits Martha “Marty” Spanninger’76, the program’s senior supervisingproducer. The classmates have been friendssince their theater days at Swarthmore and,although they have never worked as closelyas they do at NOW, their careers havecrossed paths many times. Spanningerjoined NOW in early 2005 after nearly 3decades of TV news jobs at CBS—where sheELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSmarch 2007 : 27

to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who meanwas first hired as a receptionist in 1977—andat NBC and ABC. She too owns a Peabodyand an Emmy, both awarded in 1990 for theMTV documentary Decade, which chronicledthe 1980s.Producer Bryan Myers describes thisweek’s program, which features countrymusic legend Willie Nelson and his pet project,a brand of bio-diesel fuel marketed by acompany he partly owns. “BioWillie,” ablend of cottonseed oil and regular dieselfuel, can be used in any diesel engine. TheNOW report will follow it “from plow topump,” Myers says, fielding questions thatare both technical and editorial. The atmosphereis collegial, with discussion of a rangeof related issues, including ethanol and therole that Big Oil might play in the bio-fuelsindustry. Myers lists some of the potentiallynegative consequences of bio-fuels, such asthe environmental impact of clearing moreacres to grow crops for fuel.Back in her office, Spanninger talks aboutthe changes she’s seen during her career. AtNOW, she supervises five production teams,developing reports that can take as little as 6days or as long as 6 months to get from ideato air. The environment at PBS is more conduciveto this flexible pace—like it used to beat the commercial networks.When she started in news production inthe early 1980s, Spanninger says the BigThree news divisions “weren’t expected to beprofit centers.” At the CBS Reports documentarynews program, where she first encounteredMoyers, “we could take a year to do astory that was important. There was no ratingspressure. We weren’t expected to holdour own against the Academy Awards andthe basketball playoffs.”But, she says, the commercial success ofCBS’s 60 Minutes, which became television’smost-watched show in 1979–1980, changedthe news business by spawning “a wholeindustry of newsmagazines” that were alsoexpected to make money.At the same time, the networks wereabsorbed by larger corporations such as GeneralElectric, which bought RCA/NBC in1985, and Capital Cities Communications,which took over ABC the same year. Moreand more news divisions “had no gut fornews” and “there was a slow but steadyerosion of the quality of news on TV,”Spanninger says.In public broadcasting, it seemed thatthere could be a different model. PBS, whichprovides programming for 300 member stations,has a solid history of public-affairsshows such as Washington Week in Review,NewsHour, Frontline, and the documentaryprogram POV. Moyers’ contributions haveincluded Bill Moyers’ Journal and such deepthinkingseries as The Power of Myth, Healingand the Mind, and Genesis. (In April, Moyerswill come out of retirement to revive BillMoyers’ Journal.)Brancaccio asserts that PBS is the mosttrusted media brand in the nation. “It’s selfevidentthat we aren’t doing things like[NOW] for ratings,” he says. “It has to havesome higher purpose.” Still, he says, trust ina free and open press has fallen in recent“IN-DEPTH COVERAGEOF ANYTHING—LET ALONE THEPROBLEMS REALPEOPLE FACEDAY-TO-DAY—IS ASSCARCE AS SEX,VIOLENCE, ANDVOYEURISM AREPERVASIVE,”MOYERS SAYS.years. He cites a recent poll conducted by theBBC, Reuters, and the Media Center, whichfound that although an average of 65 percentof people in the 10 countries surveyedthought that the media accurately reports thenews, just 46 percent of Americans agreed.“The information food chain is broken,”Brancaccio says. “Journalists and others—like historians, sociologists, and scientists—are supposed to come up with the facts. Andthat’s supposed to spark the next step. Wehold hearings. We form solutions.”It’s this public conversation that Siceloffsees as vitally important to a functioningdemocracy. “In the next 10 years, we faceboth a crisis and an opportunity in howAmericans learn about what’s going on inthe world.” With the rise of the Internet,“the paradigm for how people get, use, andact on information has changed.“The crisis,” he says, “is the increasingpotential to insert government and corporateinterests at the heart of determining whatkinds of information we receive.”In a speech to the National Conferenceon Media Reform in January, Moyers asked:“What does today’s media system mean tothe notion of an informed public [that is]cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally,it means that virtually everything theaverage person sees or hears, outside of herown personal communications, is determinedby the interests of private, unaccountableexecutives and investors whose primarygoal is increasing profits and raising theshare prices…. In-depth coverage of anything—letalone the problems real peopleface day-to-day—is as scarce as sex, violence,and voyeurism are pervasive.”The media reform movement, whichhas been gathering steam in the past fewyears, encompasses many different organizationsand has a broad agenda, but consolidationof media ownership is seen by mostreformers as the root of all other evils,including the decline in local programmingon both radio and television.In his new book, Fighting for Air: The Battlefor Control of America’s Media, New YorkUniversity sociologist Eric Klinenbergasserts that “Big Media companies parlayedbold political entrepreneurialism and thefederal government’s blind faith in the powerof markets and technology to win historicconcessions from Congress [in the TelecommunicationsAct of 1996] … which they usedto dominate local markets coast to coast.”Klinenberg’s book also tells the story ofgrass-roots efforts by citizens and civicgroups to keep local cultural and informationlines open—essentially the story of themedia reform movement itself.Although groups across the political spectrum—fromthe American Civil LibertiesUnion to the National Rifle Association—have collaborated on some media reformcauses, notably equal access to the Internet,the movement has its critics on the right.Accuracy in Media (AIM), a conservativepress-watchdog group, charges that “the socalled‘media reform’ movement, whichwants to check and dilute the power of con-28 : swarthmore college bulletin

to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” —James MadisonAs a production associate at NOW,Khadijah White ’04 has contributedimportant ideas to the program.servative media, especially talk radio,includes members of communist groupsopenly dedicated to America’s destruction.”Less strident criticism of Klinenberg’s—and the movement’s—emphasis on ownershipconglomeration comes from MichaelSchudson ’64, professor of communicationat UC–San Diego. Writing in the ColumbiaJournalism Review, Schudson acknowledgesthat ownership matters but says there areother factors that affect the quality of informationfound in the press and on the air.These include public taste, which mediacompanies may try to “anticipate and channel”but cannot control; “professionalnorms, values, and courage” among journalists,who, unlike their corporate bosses, arewilling to “risk their lives covering Iraq” or“track down the expert who might explaincancer clusters”; the “public legitimacy” ofthe media and its natural foil “public disaffectionand protest”; and “the climate ofopinion within which the media operate”—including the current influence of scienceand religion, modern society’s tolerance fora certain “coarseness of public expression,”declining deference to “conventionalauthorities and canons,” and the broadlyendorsed “view of the United States asmulticultural.”Finally, Schudson writes, “the degree ofconsensus in the political elite matters.When there is significant, open disagreementamong politicians, the media areempowered and emboldened to report critically;when politicians close ranks, as theydid … in the wake of Sept. 11, the media haveno constituency for pressing alternativeviewpoints.”Five weeks after she pitched thestory on HPV and cervical cancer, KhadijahWhite is wrapping up last-minute productiondetails for Vaccine Debate.She conducted much of the initialresearch and set up interviews with a pediatrician,his 14-year-old patient, and the girl’smother. The story also featured RepublicanState Representative Patricia Birkholz, whointroduced legislation requiring the vaccinein Michigan. Peter Sprigg of the FamilyResearch Council argued that vaccinationshould be entirely voluntary. Another conservativeis quoted as saying, “This is tellinggirls that they can be promiscuous and stillbe safe.”“We were looking for the best voices onboth sides of the issue,” White says. Askedwhat she hoped the impact of NOW’s storymight be, White paused, then said: “Ideally,parents will see this, and fewer girls will dieof cervical cancer. As a woman, it’s beengood to help get this story out there. We tryELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSto provide the information people need tomake good decisions. A lot of the [healthcare]agenda has been set by men who willnever experience cervical cancer—andwomen need to be heard.”White says “it’s fun to find somethingand watch it come to life.” At NOW, she’scontributed to stories such as one showinghow laws intended to prevent voter fraudoften make it more difficult for minoritiesand the elderly to cast ballots and anotherthat investigated health-insurance policiesthat turn out to cover very few of the costsof being sick.But, she says, there’s often not enoughtime to do justice to a subject the way shewas taught at Swarthmore: “It’s hard, comingout of Swat…. I want to get as muchinformation out there as possible. I’malways concerned that we haven’t saidenough. Still, this is a place where you cangive voice to people who don’t get heard.”It had been a good week for White, whojoined NOW after teaching for a year inBrooklyn. The HPV story aired on Feb. 23,and she was credited as associate producer.The vaccination controversy heated up whenGovernor Rick Perry issued an executiveorder on Feb. 5 mandating the immunizationof girls in Texas, so “it’s fortunate thatwe went ahead with it,” White says. And, inpreparation for a future program, she hadhung out for most of a day with actor andactivist Danny Glover, who had unexpectedlyhelped her with something that’s been onher mind since she left Swarthmore. Likemany young college graduates, White isunsure about her future—it seems as ifthere are almost too many possibilities.“[Glover] told me that he had ‘kind offallen into acting.’ It wasn’t what he had setout to do. He said, ‘I always knew that whatI wanted to do is to be of some use.’” Whitesays. “That’s what I want to do, too—to beof some use. I believe that all paths leadsomewhere, whether it’s teaching, journalism,whatever you do.“He also told me that acting had been anunexpected revelation for him. I wrote thatdown. I guess I’m still looking for my unexpectedrevelation.” TFind links to NOW programs and otherresources mentioned in this article at the BulletinWeb site: www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.march 2007 : 29

JIM GRAHAMDenis Newbold ’71 (left) and DeeDurham ’83 have organized membersof their community to oppose sprawl,but their efforts have not always beenwelcomed by highway planners,developers, and others in southernChester County, Pa.30 : swarthmore college bulletin

StoppingSprawlWhat does urban sprawl look like?COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS OFFERALTERNATIVES TO BIGGER,WIDER HIGHWAYS.By Elizabeth Redden ’05Nestled along Pennsylvania’s border with Maryland and Delaware,southern Chester County, Pa., is rolling country known for itsmushroom houses, horse farms, trickling creeks, and open spaces.Take a ride on Pennsylvania Route 41 from the Delaware state linenorth toward the city of Lancaster, Pa. You’ll see tidy farms, historicvillages, and occasionally, horse-drawn Amish buggies. But you’llalso contend with scores of tractor-trailers and congested trafficfrom new housing developments and shopping centers that arespringing up—almost like mushrooms—all along the corridor.Known as the Gap-Newport Pike since the early 19th century,this 22-mile highway has served as the main north-south routebetween Lancaster and Wilmington, Del. Now it’s under increasingstress from sprawl—and, to solve the problem of traffic congestion,the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) proposedwidening a 10-mile stretch to four lanes and buildingbypasses around the historic towns of Avondale and Chatham.But some residents say they have a better way to manage growthand keep sprawl in check: If you don’t build it, they won’t come—atleast not as quickly.“My view on sprawl is that it is, to a large extent, facilitated byinfrastructure,” says Denis Newbold ’71, one of the founding membersof S.A.V.E. (Safety, Agriculture, Villages, and Environment).The nonprofit community organization, which advocates for sustainabletransportation solutions in southern Chester County,counts two Swarthmore alumni among its leaders. “There’s an insatiabledemand for transportation. If government takes the attitudethat it will support an insatiable demand for transportation, it willnever stop,” Newbold says.Arguing that government can no longer build its way out ofsociety’s transportation problems, S.A.V.E.’s success so far can bestbe measured in terms of what hasn’t happened, not what has.Formed in 1997 to block what seemed to be an inevitable expansionof Route 41, its efforts have prompted PennDOT to re-evaluate itsoriginal plan, backing off from the conventional approach of turnmarch2007 : 31

COURTESY OF THE BRANDYWINE CONSERVANCYing two lanes into four—plus turn lanes and high-speed limitedaccesslanes. Now, as PennDOT’s environmental process moves forward,S.A.V.E. will be judged by what it helps to create through itscontinued advocacy for a two-lane alternative to widening Route 41.The transportation department’s work to encourage townshipswithin the corridor to replace traffic signals with roundabouts—anoption long advocated by S.A.V.E. as a mechanism to enhance safetyand cure some of the local congestion without building biggerand wider—is a step in the right direction.Newbold, an aquatic scientist who studies southern ChesterCounty’s watersheds, moved there in 1983, before the suburbansprawl really hit. Even then, he says, he would shake his head whilewaiting to cross Route 41: “Even in the 1980s, I would think,‘Hmm, this is a pretty busy road; I hope they never turn it into asuperhighway.’” But that was the plan.“We’ve spent more than $1.2 million in the last 10 years. Isn’tthat amazing? That’s a lot of money to spend on battling your owngovernment,” says Dee Durham ’83, executive director of S.A.V.E.since 2002 and the organization’s only paid staff member. “Thestate was doing what they’d always done. They thought they weredoing the right thing. How could a bunch of lay people know betterthan engineers?”“The difference,” Durham says, “is that the lay people love theircommunity and know what they want it to be.”But where S.A.V.E.’s leaders saw a need for traffic-calmingdevices and limitations on trucks, the state wanted to double theroad’s capacity. Originally, Durham and Newbold say, their argumentsfaced great resistance, and in 2001, their two-lane alternative—whichalso featured a two-lane bypass around Avondale—was flatly rejected. “They shut the door on us at that point,” Newboldsays.However, with the election of Democratic Governor Ed Rendellin 2002—and the looming reality of a state budget crunch thatmade building new highways less feasible—S.A.V.E. pushed thedoor back open. In a protracted game of high-stakes Ping-Pong,competing consultants produced studies alternately supportingS.A.V.E.’s two-lane proposal and rebutting it. In 2005, withPennDOT finally embracing the concept of “context-sensitivedesign,” S.A.V.E. and other stakeholders from local government,the business community, and industry, met with the agency monthlyto find a solution to the safety and congestion problems onRoute 41.“PennDOT was looking at how to do things differently,” saysMary Raulerson, the agency’s project manager for Route 41. “Wewanted a compromise alternative that everyone could live with.”But, as Raulerson says, other than the stipulation of a need to makesafety improvements at existing intersections, no clear compromisearose from the meetings.Without a clear community mandate, PennDOT is now workingwith the Federal Highway Administration to formulate a list ofappropriate capacity-building initiatives that will undergo environmentalstudy. The options will then be presented in public hearingsand only after assessing the feedback will the agency determine the“preferred alternative.” The four-lane option isn’t off the table,Raulerson cautions, and it likely will be studied alongside otheralternatives. But, she adds tellingly, “We don’t believe that themunicipalities want four lanes throughout the whole corridor.”Durham says roundabouts will reduce existing congestion, citingfederal data showing that roundabouts increase traffic capacityby 30 to 50 percent, in addition to reducing injury crashes by 76percent, with up to a 90 percent reduction in fatalities. By routingtraffic around a one-way circular intersection, cars can continue filteringthrough a yield rather than being forced to stop, preventingback-ups. “The U.K. model is ‘Wide nodes, narrow roads,’ in otherwords, fix the congestion where it occurs—at the intersections.There’s no need to widen the whole roadway,” Durham says.Not everyone agrees with S.A.V.E.’s agenda. “The issue is one ofunder-capacity and significant congestion,” says Jack Weber, chairof the Southern Chester County Organization on Transportation,which advocates for a bigger bypass around Avondale, furtherremoved from the town, than the one that S.A.V.E. has proposed.Weber refutes the argument that roundabouts will cure congestionand believes that, although expansion is not a foregone conclusion,the state should purchase right-of-way now to prepare for possiblefuture construction. “We respect S.A.V.E’s opinion but don’t necessarilythink it’s what’s best for the county,” says Weber.32 : swarthmore college bulletin

KEARY LARSON/WWW.SOMETHINGINTHESKY.COMThey explain optimisticallythat this is the directionof progress—a progressthat begets preservation.Opposite: New housing developmentsare springing up along the Route 41corridor in Chester County, Pa., builton some of the state’s best—and mostbeautiful—farmland.Above: Improving traffic flow throughthe use of roundabouts is an alternativeto increasing a highway’s capacity.Not all townships in Chester County want a roundabout. Butalthough the Britain-based roundabout movement was slow incoming to Pennsylvania, Durham and Newbold say an increasingnumber of municipalities are now embracing the roundabout concept.The first roundabout in southern Chester County opened inAugust 2005 on Pa. Route 82 near Unionville. It was the secondroundabout to be constructed in the state and is a model for futureconstruction, say Durham and Newbold. They explain optimisticallythat this is the direction of progress—a progress that begetspreservation.When asked whether they think they’ve fully escaped the threatof Route 41 becoming a superhighway, Newbold and Durham lookat one another before answering. “We think so,” Newbold saysslowly, with the caution of a veteran community activist.“There’s change happening across the country,” says Durham,who rode horses in Chester County as a child and previouslyworked in historic preservation. “You can’t keep building bigger,wider roads to ‘solve congestion.’”“We’re into an era—I hope—when we don’t build dams and wedon’t build nuclear power plants and we don’t build highways,”says Newbold. “We now know there are better ways.” TElizabeth Redden writes for InsideHigherEd.com in Washington, D.C.march 2007 : 33

campus view34 : swarthmore college bulletin

ERIN GO BRAGH!Light of foot andnimble of finger,dancer CatharineMcIntire Parnell ?06and piper JamieKingston ?07 led animpromtu parade ofrevelers through thecampus on St.Patrick?s Day 2006,treating the Collegecommunity to a breathof Irish spring.march 2007 : 35

8By Dana Mackenzie ’79A Sin8ularCareerROBERT MACPHERSON ’66 DEFIESTHE STEREOTYPE OF THE UNWORLDLYMATHEMATICIAN.Ifthere is one thing amathematician dreads, it’s asingularity. Singularities are placeswhere the usual rules—of geometry, oralgebra, or calculus, depending on theproblem—break down. For example, ablack hole is a singularity in spacetime. Amore ordinary example is the crossingpoint in a figure 8. If you were in a cardriving along a figure-8 track, youcould drive full speed aheadmost of the time. Only atthe crossingpoint,the rules would change. Itis the only place where traffic cancome from another direction, and so youwould have to slow down or stop and lookboth ways. That is the nature of singularities.Robert MacPherson has made a career of going forwardwhere other mathematicians were forced to stop.His specialty is understanding the structure of singularitiesin multidimensional spaces. Perhaps he is a singularityhimself—in the best sense of the word.MacPherson is a person to whom the usual rulesdon’t apply. The son of a conservative father,MacPherson became a political radical. He wasbeaten by police at the famous April 1969Vietnam War protest at Harvard.36 : swarthmore college bulletin

His first Ph.D. student, Mark Goresky,eventually became his life partner—a rarearrangement in math (but not so rare aseither gays or mathematicians would think).“Goresky and MacPherson” has becomepractically a single mathematical entity,much like “Rogers and Hammerstein” or“Ben and Jerry.” In the early 1990s,MacPherson spearheaded a unique reliefmission, raising more than $100,000 tokeep Russian mathematics afloat—andsmuggling a significant part of that moneyinto Russia himself.MacPherson is not a rule breaker bychoice. He’s more of a rule inventor, andnowhere is that more evident than in hismathematics. In the 1970s, he and Goreskycreated a new theory called intersectionhomology, which has revolutionized the waythat mathematicians deal with singularities.Previously, they had mostly worked aroundthem. A black hole can be understood bylooking at the space around it. A figure 8can be understood—sort of—by looking atsimilar shapes, the hourglass shape formedby the outside edges of the track, or the twoseparate oblongs formed by the insideedges. Goresky and MacPherson’s rules havein many cases eliminated the need for suchwork-arounds.“Intersection homology totally changedthe landscape,” says Paul Gunnells of theUniversity of Massachusetts, a former studentof MacPherson. “It’s a tool that isalmost universally used now. For example, itrevolutionized representation theory—it’sabsolutely inconceivable nowadays that youcould do without it.”MATH OR MUSIC?Born in Ohio in 1944, MacPherson was theson of a nuclear engineer. Herbert MacPherson(called “Mac”) worked on the ManhattanProject as an expert in the production ofgraphite with no boron impurities. Mac wasnot pleased that Robert went into mathematics.“Among his friends, the word ‘mathematician’was a put-down,” MacPhersonsays. “It meant a person who had no physicalintuition, who was interested in thewrong aspects of any question and had nointerest in reality.”Robert MacPherson is far from thestereotype of the unworldly mathematician.He is an avid cyclist, loves boats, and is anexcellent chef and amateur carpenter. “Hemakes it a point to do everything at leastonce—build a wall, install plumbing, put upa barn,” says former student Tom Braden,now at the University of Massachusetts.During MacPherson’s Swarthmore years,mathematics faced some very stiff competitionfrom another passion—music. Hemajored in both. “I studied the Well-TemperedClavier and the Goldberg Variationsmore than any other book, including mathbooks,” he says. “The density of ideas isincredible.” As the only music major in hisclass, he enjoyed almost unlimited attentionfrom the two-man music faculty of ClaudioSpies and Peter Gram Swing.During a summer internship at OakRidge National Laboratory, where his fatherwas the deputy director, MacPhersonworked with a mathematician named RobertCoveyou. They were a good match—neitherreally fitting into the buttoned-down cultureof the national laboratory. (Coveyou’sgroup was jokingly called the “Baker StreetIrregulars.”) But their work is still cited.To simulate nuclear reactions, engineersneeded a way to generate lots of randomnumbers (because radioactive decay isinherently a random process). Mathematicianshave devised various formulas to produce“pseudo-random” numbers. But Coveyouand MacPherson discovered that manyof these approaches actually perform badly.If you graph strings of two (or three, or 20)consecutive pseudo-random numbers in a2- (or 3-, or 20-) dimensional space, you willoften find that they cluster onto planesinstead of dispersing themselves randomlythrough space. Coveyou and MacPhersondeveloped a “spectral test” to detect thesebad pseudo-random number generators,and that test is still state-of-the-art today.Although his career led to mathematics,MacPherson remains a serious musicenthusiast, an opera lover with front-rowseason tickets at the Metropolitan Opera inNew York. “Bob is extremely allergic toRobert MacPherson (left) and his mathematicscollaborator—and life partner—Mark Goresky (right) now reside inPrinceton, N.J., where MacPherson is afellow at the Institute for AdvancedStudy. They have pioneered the field ofintersection homology.ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANSmarch 2007 : 37

ackground music,” says Goresky. “If thereis music playing, then he’s listening to it,thinking about the harmonies, trying tohear the inner voices, concentrating on it.”The two own a Steinway grand piano, whichMacPherson frequently plays after dinner.“INVENTING OUR WORLD”While he was at Swarthmore, MacPhersonsays, he knew that there was something differentabout himself. “I remember thinkingthat there was some difficulty, and this wasa difficulty I was going to overcome. I didn’thave a name for it,” MacPherson says. Thewords “homosexual” or “gay” were rarelyuttered back then—even as insults.For a while, MacPherson seemed to havehis “difficulty” licked. He got married as agraduate student at Harvard, and manyfriends considered it an ideal marriage. Butin 1970 he took a teaching position atBrown, and, in the fall of 1971, a graduatestudent named Mark Goresky arrived.Goresky was also married, but that didn’tstop a remarkable chemistry from emergingbetween the two men.“During my third year of graduateschool, Bob and I saw a lot of each other,”Goresky says. They worked together, haddinners together, even planned a gardentogether. MacPherson invited Goresky andhis wife to come with him the following yearto Paris. “It is easy to see now, 30 years later,that the intensity and electricity that wasdeveloping in our relationship was somethingvery unusual,” says Goresky. “But atthe time, neither of us imagined that wemight some day move in together.”Certainly, they had far from the typicalstudent-teacher relationship. One memorableday, they were working together on aproblem and couldn’t agree on the notation.MacPherson decided that there was onlyone way to resolve the impasse: a duel withwater pistols. They chased each otheraround the Brown University Math Department,which was in an old house with lotsof nooks and crannies, until Bob found theperfect spot to lay an ambush. Sure enough,he heard steps coming downstairs, leapedout—and soaked one of the most seniorfaculty members of the department.During their year in Paris, Goresky andMacPherson discovered intersection homology,the theory that would make both ofthem famous. Goresky received a doctoratein 1976, and they spent the next year apart.“During that year, both of us independentlybegan to wonder about sexual orientationand to experiment to see what we were reallyattracted to,” recalls MacPherson. The followingyear, they spent increasing periods oftime with each other.Still, it couldn’t last. In 1978, Goreskyand his wife returned to Vancouver, theirhometown, where he got a job at the Universityof British Columbia, where he felt cutoff from the rapidly developing circle ofideas involving intersection homology. After3 years, he moved back to Massachusetts. Intheory, at least, the move precipitated thebreakup of his marriage in 1981. Bob wasseparating from his wife at the same time; infact, the two couples were divorced in thesame month. “It’s obviously not a coincidence,”MacPherson says. “You could seewhat was going on at an emotional level.”During a 1985 sabbatical in Rome,Goresky and MacPherson tried livingtogether for the first time—an arrangementthat was conveniently ambiguous as long asthey were abroad. By 1987, the ambiguitywas over. Both of them were in the job market,making it clear they were a packagedeal. After being hired at M.I.T. (MacPherson)and receiving a substantial raise atNortheastern (Goresky), they bought a 100-year-old oceanfront Victorian house inQuincy, Mass.—a commitment akin to amarriage. “I loved that house,” says Goresky.“I can still remember our first night there. Itwas a hot August evening, and we had allthe windows open. I fell asleep to theswoosh, swoosh of the waves on the shore.”Asked to compare their story with BrokebackMountain, MacPherson and Goreskygive intriguingly different answers. “I guessthe similarity is that both of us were highlyresistant to the idea that we were gay, andwe didn’t know any other gay people,” saysMacPherson. “We were inventing our ownworld—that’s the parallel I would makewith Brokeback Mountain.”For Goresky, the movie portrayed a fatenarrowly averted. “I found the story quitemoving,” he says. “Time and again, Ennismakes plans for them to move in together,but it never happens. Then Ennis dies, andJack ends up living an empty life of memoriesand regrets. This was almost our story. Icame very close to staying in Vancouver.”Now, the two are much more connectedto the gay community at large, but they arenot sure how much it accepts them. Oneyear, MacPherson helped plan a session oncareers for gay students for the annual SagerSymposium at Swarthmore. He was stunnedwhen no scientists were invited. The ideathat gays could have careers in science was,apparently, news to the gay community.“I get that same impression when lookingat the national gay media as well,”MacPherson says. “There is huge coverageof people in politics, in queer studies, artistsand musicians. It’s almost as if, if you’re acreative gay, that’s the end of the story.”And yet Goresky and MacPherson are farfrom the first same-sex couple in mathematics.Two of the most famous Russian mathematiciansof the 20th century are AndreiKolmogorov (1903-1987)—virtually theinventor of probability theory—and PavelAleksandrov (1896-1982) a topologist andinventor of “Aleksandrov spaces.” Althoughprinted references to their relationship areextremely oblique—homosexuality was acrime in the Soviet Union—they livedtogether for more than half a century, andthe nature of their friendship was an opensecret among Soviet scientists.“Every Russian knew it, and there was arumor that even Stalin himself knew it,”says MacPherson. “Kolmogorov was a memberof the Academy of Sciences”—a body ofgreat power in the U.S.S.R., quite unlike itsAmerican counterpart—“and he proposedAleksandrov for membership. [Nikolai]Luzin said, ‘In the academy we only havemathematicians, not wives of mathematicians.’At this point, Kolmogorov got up andslapped Luzin,” MacPherson says.But that wasn’t the end of the story.Word of the incident reached Stalin, thesupreme dictator, who could easily arrangefor anyone in the Soviet Union to disappearforever. Stalin pondered, sucked on his pipe,and then pronounced, “I sometimes lose mytemper, too.” In this way, Aleksandrovbecame a full member of the academy.A RUSSIAN WINTERMacPherson has been closely connected toRussian mathematics since 1977, when hemet Israel Gelfand, a student of Kolmogorov,in Paris. He first visited Moscowin 1980 and returned yearly thereafter. Hesmuggled Russian research papers out forpublication in Western journals, cutting thenames of the authors off the papers so theywould not be in danger if the papers wereconfiscated. Not that they ever were.38 : swarthmore college bulletin

Although it was illegal (the papers were supposedto be scrutinized first for “statesecrets”), the border guards shrugged whenthey saw that it was “just mathematics.”MacPherson, the consummate collaborator,found in Moscow the mathematicalcommunity of his dreams. “Every time Iwent there, I would feel so happy, as if I hadcome home again,” he says. None of the bestyounger mathematicians could get jobsdoing math, because they were Jewish.Instead, they did research purely for the joyof it. “No one had an office, so math wasdone in people’s houses, over tea. The mathwas at such a high level and so pure in itsmotivations,” MacPherson says. “Peoplethought that they would never get any materialreward for the work they did.”Unfortunately, after the Soviet Unioncollapsed in 1991, the situation took a drasticturn for the worse. An economic crisisdevalued the ruble to the point where $50 inAmerican currency could support a familyfor a month. Russia’s mathematicians (andother academics), who had supported themselveswith low-paying sinecure jobs, suddenlystopped getting any paychecks. “Thegovernment had a choice of paying scientistsor subway drivers, and they paid thesubway drivers,” MacPherson says.MacPherson asked the American MathematicalSociety (AMS) to set up a relieffund, and within months, American mathematicianshad contributed more than$100,000. “I’ve never heard of anythingelse like it,” he says. Later, MacPhersonhelped persuade the Soros Foundation tocontribute an even larger sum.But there was a problem: how to get themoney into the anarchic country? “This wasthe one romantic moment in my life,”MacPherson says. After the AMS determinedthat it was not worth paying outrageouscommissions to untrustworthy middlemen,MacPherson and Tim Goggins, anAMS staffer, decided to carry it by hand.“I was really worried,” MacPherson says,“because we were carrying about $23,000—and, at that time, you could be murdered for$50. The Russian law was that if we broughtthat kind of money in, we had to declare itat the border, but everyone knew the borderguards were in touch with the hoodlums.”So after years of smuggling math papersout, he smuggled the money in.MacPherson handed it out, $200 or$300 at a time, at Public School No. 2 inMoscow. He resists any suggestion that themoney was largesse. Officially, the paymentswere grants, awarded over the space of twoyears to 374 mathematicians on the basis ofpeer-reviewed applications. According toSergei Gelfand, Israel Gelfand’s son, who isnow an officer of the AMS, it was a watershedmoment in Russian mathematical history—thefirst time that money had everbeen awarded on the basis of merit. In spiteof the chaotic conditions, every designatedMacPhersonraised more than$100,000 to helpsupport Russianmathematicians,thencarriedbundles of cashacross theRussian border.grantee eventually received his or hermoney, and every penny was accounted for.Most importantly, the program kept Russianmathematics going. “The situation today isdefinitely much better than I ever thought itwould be,” says Gelfand.Even so, MacPherson misses the olddays. Most of his Russian friends have nowemigrated to the West, and to see them henow has to travel all over the world, insteadof crowding into an apartment or a publicschool in Moscow. But he agrees that theRussian system is producing talented youngmathematicians, and the institutionalizedanti-Semitism is thankfully a thing of thepast.PARTNER AND TEACHERIt’s hard to tell exactly what has madeGoresky and MacPherson such a perfectmatch, both as collaborators and as a couple.Part of it, undoubtedly, is that they arenot clones of each other. Everyone whoknows them comments on this: MacPhersonis the geometric mind, the intuitivethinker whose lectures, more often thannot, include drawing beautiful multicoloredpictures on the blackboard. Goresky is theperfectionist who makes sure all the detailsare correct, puts them into words, makessure the papers get written. There is no“senior” or “junior” in the partnership,although it placed a strain on Goresky whenMacPherson moved to his current positionat the Institute for Advanced Studies inPrinceton. Goresky had to swallow the pillof becoming an unpaid member of the institute,but he has gradually come to appreciatethe role of an independent scholar.Despite his Russian adventures, Mac-Pherson’s influence on mathematics hasmostly been quiet. He is widely praised as anexpositor. “When someone gives a lecture atthe Institute and [Pierre] Deligne or [Robert]Langlands is in the audience, the speakerfeels the need to go as fast as possible,” saysBraden. “Bob does not do that. Because ofhis personality, he inspires people to givetalks that others will understand.”As an adviser, his quirks are legendary.Gunnells once wrote a guide for MacPhersonstudents, which dispenses such adviceas this: “If he leaves the room suddenlywithout announcement, don’t do anything.Just wait; most likely he’ll be back. Indeed,sometimes he will leave in the middle of asentence, then return 10 minutes later tocomplete the sentence as if nothing happened…Exception: if he doesn’t return afterhalf an hour or so, then you have missed thelast train to Braintree.”Nevertheless, MacPherson does give hisstudents a full hearing on issues that canrange far beyond math. “I spent my earlygraduate career being unsuccessfully mentoredby straight white guys living conventionalstraight-white-guy lives,” says LauraAnderson, a professor at Binghamton University.“If any of them had any doubtsabout who they were and where they fit inthe world, they didn’t show it. As I waspreparing to bail out of math, I finally metBob and had the first sympathetic conversationof my graduate career. He took a greatweight of alienation off my shoulders.” TDana Mackenzie is a science writer in SantaCruz, Calif. This is his fifth feature article in theBulletin.8march 2007 : 39

connectionsrecent...Delhi, IndiaThere was an impromptu “connection” of10 Swarthmoreans in Delhi, India, in January.Among the five young alumni andfive students who found themselves—andeach other—in India were Anmol Tikoo’07, Dan Hammer ’07, Arpita Das ’08,Aatish Bhatia ’07, and Jesse Goodall ’07 aswell as Emily Wistar ’06 and Tanya Aydelott’05, Sonal Shah ’05, Raghu Karnad ’05,and David Owen ’06.Emily Wistar ’06 (left) and TanyaAydelott ’05 connected in India.PhiladelphiaOn Feb. 7, the Philadelphia Connectionhosted a talk by Congressman Rush Holt(D–N.J.). Holt, a former Swarthmorephysics professor, is now entering hisfourth term in the House. Topics includedthe recent elections and the upcoming109th Congress.TucsonOn Feb. 21, the Tucson Connection bookgroup met for a spirited discussion of JaneAusten’s novel Persuasion. The discussionwas led by guest speaker Gene Koppel,retired University of Arizona professor ofliterature and author of The ReligiousDimensions of Jane Austen’s Novels. Thegroup is organized by Laura Markowitz’85, and the meeting was graciously hostedby Dabney ’51 and Kate Worth Altaffer ’52.WashingtonOn Jan. 13, Sue Willis Ruff ’60 hosted aget-together for the DC book group at herhome. Then, she led the group onward toMake your plans now to join us for Alumni Weekend, June 8–10.nearby Politics and Prose Bookstore,where they enjoyed a lecture titled“Empire, Exile, and Longing for Home:Two Tales from the Sri Lankan Diaspora”by Professor of Psychology Jeanne Marecek,this season’s faculty mentor. Marecek,who has worked in Sri Lanka for morethan 15 years, discussed the books Runningin the Family by Michael Ondaatje andFunny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai.upcoming...APRIL13–15 On CampusFamily Weekend15 New York CityFaculty Talk: “Is All Terror Local? AnalyzingCommunal Violence within theContext of the Global War on Terrorism,”with Assistant Professor of PoliticalScience Jeffrey Murer.15, 22, 29 New York CityLifelong Learning Program : “UtopiaOn and Off Broadway,” a 3-week minicoursewith Professor of History RobertWeinberg. For information, call (610)328-8696, or visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/lifelonglearning.xml.17 PhiladelphiaThe Meaning of SwarthmoreCelebration20–22 On CampusAlumni Council Meeting28 Haverford CollegeMen’s lacrosse: Swarthmore alumni vs.Haverford alumni, followed by lunchand the varsity regular-season finaleMAY3 Wilmington, Del.Garnet Sage Tour of WinterthurCountry Estate and Gardens8 New York CityThe Meaning of SwarthmoreCelebration14 Washington, D.C.The Meaning of SwarthmoreCelebration20 Princeton, N.J.Faculty Talk: “What 35 Years of DrugWar in Latin America Can Teach Usabout Fighting a (35?)-Year War on Terrorin Iraq,” with Kenneth Sharpe,William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of PoliticalScience.22 BaltimoreFaculty Talk: “Does a College DegreeReduce Employment Volatility?”With Philip Jefferson, professor ofeconomics.JUNE8–10 On CampusAlumni Weekend: Reunions for classesending in “2” and “7” and the Class of200519 BostonThe Meaning of SwarthmoreCelebrationFor more information about alumni events,call the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402 ore-mail alumni@swarthmore.edu.40 : swarthmore college bulletin

a real-worldexternshipseeks new sponsorsEach January, when the College’s Extern Program kicks into action,the Career Services Office takes on the ever-expanding task of providinghundreds of students with a week’s worth of experience inprofessional settings in cities across the country. With the assistanceof an extraordinary Alumni Extern Committee, headed by JamesLindquist ’80, 180 of the 269 students who applied for externshipswere placed this year, and 80 of them were also hosted in alumnihomes. A record 358 alumni hosted or sponsored students this year.Anonymous student program evaluations produced a number ofpositive comments: “I liked interacting with people who have beenthrough Swarthmore and have done something great with theirlives”; “They [alumni hosts] made the ‘real world’ a lot less daunting”;and “I feel fortunate to have such a strong network of alumni.”The Extern Program is always searching for additional sponsors,in particular in the fields of law and medicine. Externships are availableprimarily in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco,and Washington, D.C., although alumni from other cities may volunteeras workplace hosts, too. Alumni volunteers who live outsidethe primary extern cities are encouraged to also offer housing tointerested students. If you wish to find out more or to volunteer,please contact extern@swarthmore.edu.Lax ConferenceshowcasesentrepreneursEach year, the The Jonathan R. Lax Conference on Entrepreneurshipbrings approximately 150 alumni and students to campus for education,networking, and socializing. This year's keynote speaker wasCheung Kwai Kong '86, president of the specialty retail business atEaston-Bell Sports, who addressed “The Role of Entrepreneurs inShaping our World.”This year's offerings included a first-ever “case study” of ClarixLLC, with its CEO Jagath Wanninayake '96. A panel titled “Entrepreneurshipand the Global World” featured Ronald Krall '69, seniorvice president and chief medical officer, GlaxoSmithKline; RebeccaVoorhies '93, group director, finance and corporate development,Cadence Design Systems; and Theresa Williamson '97, founder andexecutive director, Catalytic Communities Inc. “Web 2.0: Buzzwordor Power Shift” was discussed by a panel including Jonah Gold '04,producer, The Electric Sheep Company; John Hammond '82, seniordirector, Sony BMG Music Entertainment; Jeffrey Schon '73, partner,The Cheyenne Group; and Christophe Watkins '87, vice president,Icarus Studios.Thanks to reception sponsors Mary-Mack Callahan '77, JamesGregory '85, Susan Turner '60, and Wallace Clausen '60, alumniand student externs gathered in New York, Washington, D.C.,Philadelphia, and Boston for socializing and networking. Left: AnaChiu '06 and David Vinjamuri '86. Right: Sanda Balaban '94 andLaura Dattner ’95.swarthmore travelsFor more than 30 years, Swarthmore has offered popular AlumniCollege Abroad trips to alumni, parents, and friends. Trips tothree destinations are planned for 2007.Journey of the Czarswith Professor of History Robert Weinburg, July 18–30Salmon River Whitewater Adventure (Idaho)with Associate Professor of Biology Sara Hiebert Burch ’79,June 18–24Experience Chinawith Associate Professor of Chinese Haili Kong, Oct. 12–27For more information, call (800) 789-9738, e-mailalumni_travel@swarthmore.edu, or visit the Alumni CollegeAbroad Web site at www.swarthmore.edu/alumni_travel.xml.march 2007 : 41

class notesPostcardsSculptor Phillip Stern ’84 designs publications for the College and delightsin capturing images of the beautiful postcard that is Swarthmore—cherry blossomsbursting forth in all their pink finery, stately lampposts gracing walkways, spentmagnolia petals languishing on the lawn, a giant Adirondack chair (created byJake Beckman ’05) dwarfing a gathering of traditionally sized models on Parrish beach.42 : swarthmore college bulletin

ooks + arts“All I want to be is average—but with a great deal of money.”“You can’t expect everything to be altogether real all the time.”Comic ChaosFacts and truth often getmixed up in murder mysteries.Kill Me Like You Mean It,the latest production by TheStolen Chair Theatre Company,twists truth and lies into atheatrical pretzel that circlesaround itself for 90 tight,funny minutes. It’s staged in akeenly drawn cinematic styleand delivered with ironic lines(like those above) that poplike flashbulbs illuminatingthe absurdities of life anddeath—creating what directorJon Stancato ’02 calls “comicchaos out of the possibilitythat American life might actuallybe pointless.”Performed in January tosold-out audiences at The RedRoom, a small off-off-Broadwayspace on New York’s East4th Street, Kill Me is the secondproduction in StolenChair’s planned “CineTheatreTetralogy”—four plays in classicfilm styles. (The first, TheMan Who Laughs, a live silentfilm for the stage, ran in fall 2005. It hassince been published in Playing with Canons,an anthology of innovative theater adaptationsof classical texts.) Playwright KiranRikhye’s [’02] new murder mystery drawsits spirit from Eugene Ionesco’s absurdistdramas and its style from 1940s Americanfilm noir.Stancato says the play seeks to “revisitboth forms in their original context and collidethem to learn what they can teach usabout our responses to the contemporarysociopolitical climate.”From the first scene—in which AmericanPrivate Investigator Ben Farrell (Cameron J.Oro) receives a mysterious phone summonsand then witnesses the murder of the beautifulnightclub performer (Emily Otto) whocalled him—Kill Me rolls out briskly as bothwhodunit and parody-of-whodunit. Absurdistovertones are apparent in every character,including the chief suspects: AmericanFemale Publisher Lydia Forsythe (AlexiaVernon); her writer, American Playboy58 : swarthmore college bulletinJOSEPH BELSCHNERSam Dingman ’04 (left) plays a police detective in Kill Me Like YouMean It, a new off-off-Broadway play by the Swarthmore-spawnedStolen Chair Theatre Company, one of many theater groups born here.Tommy Dickie (Tommy Dickie); and his sister,American Ingénue Vivian Ballantine(Liza Wade White). The “truth”—or whateveryou can believe of it—is eventuallyexposed by American Police Detective Jones,played with great presence and vocal powerby Sam Dingman ’04.Stancato’s cinematic direction—withjump-cuts between scenes, actors revealed atodd angles, and repeated lines that seemlike zooms and close-ups—complementsRikhye’s Tommy-gun dialogue, which tumblesout in staccato phrases and arrestingaphorisms. Despite touches of color, such asMona’s red lips and Vivian’s gown—theCineTheatre is shot through with black andwhite. Stark lighting by David Bengali completesthe look. You can almost hear the oldprojector clattering in the booth behind you.Rikhye’s playful yet precise use of languageand Stancato’s well-informed directionhave attracted attention in New York’sbustling theater scene. NYTheatre.comnamed the company one of its People of the“Looks like it’s going to be a family affair. All the best affairs are.”“I don’t care about the truth. I care about the facts.”Year for 2005. Reviews ofKill Me have boosted its reputationeven further. (Readreviews and see more photosfrom the production atwww.stolenchair.com.)Kill Me is the ninth productionfor the company,which was founded byRikhye, Stancato, and eightother Swarthmoreans in2002. Dingman, also afounding member, returnedto the company for this production.Aviva Meyer ’01was the show’s managingdirector.Stolen Chair—the namecomes from a scene in a filmbiography of Molière byAriane Mnouchkine, seen ina Swarthmore theaterclass—is one of four residentcompanies of HorseTrade, an artists’ collectivethat provides access to facilitiessuch as the 32-seat RedRoom and two other downtowntheaters. In additionto its stage productions, Stolen Chair offersprofessional workshops, in-school residencies,a youth physical theater camp, andmaster classes.“Keeping a company like this going for 5years is a milestone—a real sign of achievement,”says Allen Kuharski, professor andchair of theater, who accompanied me toNew York to see the production and lingeredafter the show like a proud uncle.Swarthmore’s department—long knownmore for studying theater than for makingit—has, in recent years, spawned an impressivegroup of young actors, writers, directors,and theatrical entrepreneurs. Theseinclude Philadelphia’s Pig Iron TheaterCompany, currently led by Quinn Bauriedel’94, Dan Rothenberg ’95, and Dito VanReigersberg ’94; SaBooge Theatre of NewYork and Montreal, with Simon Harding’99; Early Morning Opera, a Philadelphiabasedcompany directed by Lars Jan ’00; FlyingCarpet Theatre of New York, with AdamKoplan ’95 as artistic director; Green Chair

Dance Group, the first dance-theater companyto come out of the College; playwrightDeborah Stein ’99; actress Solveig Holum’97; Poland-based director Michal Zadara’99; and London-based designer Erik Rehl ’94.Recently, many of these alumni havebeen encouraged in their work throughthe Swarthmore Project in Theater, whichprovides free summer housing and rehearsalspace for groups to develop their work.Stolen Chair has held five on-campus residencieswith the support of the project.Stancato recalls that he and Rikhye werethe only two students in the advanceddirecting course at the College—an earlyseed of a collaboration that has lasted 8years. “[At Swarthmore,] we really got a passionfor both the process [of making theater]and the idea of using theater history asour palette,” he says. “Each project we do isa chance to throw ourselves into a new areaof study—to open our minds beyond theaterto literature and politics.”—Jeffrey LottHeidi Carolyn Feldman ’87, BlackRhythms of Peru: Reviving African MusicalHeritage in the Black Pacific, WesleyanUniversity Press, 2006. In an explorationof the people and events thatshaped the resurgence of black Peruvianculture, the author celebrates a culturaltradition that was nearly lost.BOOKSWilliam Armstrong ’54, Thinking Throughthe Children’s Sermon, The Pilgrim Press,2006. In this book, the pastor-author offerssuggestions for preparing and presentingchildren’s sermons in ways that make themmeaningful, edifying, and valuable additionsto worship.Glenn Good, Bernard Beitman ’64, Counselingand Psychotherapy Essentials: IntegratingTheories, Skills, and Practices, W.W. Norton &Company Inc., 2006. Integrating theories,concepts, and techniques into a singleessential source for today’s counselors andpsychotherapists, the authors provide studentswith a textbook that connects theirclassroom experiences with their actualwork with clients.Liza (Crihfield) Dalby ’72, East Wind Meltsthe Ice: A Memoir Through the Seasons, Universityof California Press, 2007. This set ofessays is structured on ancient Chinese seasonalobservances. Susan Griffin, author ofThe Book of the Courtesans, says, “Like a lushgarden, this book is meant to savor.”Arthur Dannenberg ’44, Pathogenesis ofHuman Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Insights fromthe Rabbit Model, American Society forMicrobiology Press, 2006. This 450-pagetext describes 40 years of research by Dr.Max B. Lurie (Dannenberg’s mentor) and40 years of the author’s own research sinceLurie died. Tuberculosis in the rabbit modelresembles the human disease more closelythan the disease in any other laboratoryanimal.Christine Downing ’52, Gleanings: Essays1982-2006, iUniverse, 2006. This collectionof essays reflects both the author’s continuingexploration of Greek goddess traditionsand other aspects of Greek mythology andher ongoing involvement with the thoughtof Freud and Jung.Christine Downing (ed.), Disturbances inthe Field: Essays in Honor of David Miller,Spring Journal Books, 2006. ThisFestschrift celebrates the 70th birthday ofDavid Miller, Watson-Ledden Professor ofReligion Emeritus and Downing’s friendand colleague.(Christopher) Kitoba Sunami ’97,How the Fisherman Tricked the Genie,Atheneum Books for Young Readers,2002. Accompanied by Amiko Hirao’sillustrations, three interwoven storiesshow that good works should not berewarded with evil. The book was selectedas a 2003 “Notable Book” and nominatedfor a 2006 Georgia Book Award.Kenneth Turan ’67, Now in TheatersEverywhere: A Celebration of a CertainKind of Blockbuster, Public Affairs,2006. In a review of the best big films ofthe last decade, Turan, who is film criticat the Los Angeles Times and is heardweekly on NPR’s Morning Edition,explains what makes films such as BladeRunner and Conan the Barbarian so successful,revealing which filmmakersrepeatedly bring quality entertainment toa mass audience.march 2007 : 59

ooks + artsDavid Swanger ’62, Wayne’s College ofBeauty, BkMk Press, 2006. This collectionof poems, which won the publisher’s2005 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, is,according to the contest judge Colleen J.McElroy, about “neighborhoods and welltraveledpaths…. The poet’s strong senseof voice climbs above the resin of form.The cadence evokes imagery withoutlosing the balance of sentiment andsentimentality. These poems are bothhard edged and beautiful, an excitingcollection.”Steven Epstein ’74, Purity Lost: TransgressingBoundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean,1000–1400, The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 2006. The author investigates theporous nature of social, political, and religiousboundaries prevalent in the easternMediterranean during the Middle Ages.Caitlin Killian ’95, North African Women inFrance, Stanford University Press, 2006.This book examines how Muslim womenconstruct and manage their identities in themidst of a foreign culture, why some copebetter than others with the challenges thatconfront them in their new country, andhow they raise their children who will oneday be French.60 : swarthmore college bulletinCarolyn Lesjak ’85, Working Fictions: AGenealogy of the Victorian Novel, Duke UniversityPress, 2006. In this reconceptualizationof Victorian literary history, the authorquestions the relationship between laborand pleasure, two concepts central to theVictorian imagination and the literary outputof the era.Andrew Low ’73, Low on Appellate Practice:Collected Columns, Continuing Legal Educationin Colorado Inc., 2006. This collectionof appellate attorney Low’s quarterlycolumns written for The Colorado Lawyerduring the past 16 years demonstrates hiswit and wisdom in a creative narrative illustratingcomplex legal concepts.John and Anne Tedeschi ’56 (translators),The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality toPersecution, University of Wisconsin Press,2006. This book, the Tedeschis’ eighthtranslation from Italian, offers the firsttranslation into English of Italian historianMichele Sarfatti’s work, which focuses onthe treatment of Jews in fascist Italy.Jeremy Weinstein ’97, Inside Rebellion: ThePolitics of Insurgent Violence, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2007. Drawing on interviewswith almost 200 combatants and civilianswho have experienced violence firsthand,the author demonstrates how characteristicsof the environment in which rebellionemerges constrain rebel organization andshape the patterns of violence that civiliansexperience.Richard Wolfson ’69, Essential UniversityPhysics (two volumes), Pearson EducationInc., 2007. This reasonably priced, calculusbasedintroductory-level physics textbookembraces proven techniques from physicseducation, employing a strategy-basedapproach to help students build the analyticand quantitative skills and confidenceneeded to apply physics in science andengineering.CDsDenise Mitkus, David McCullough, LisaWildman ’84 (Peanut Butter Jellyfish),Peanut Butter Jellyfish, Peanut Butter Jellyfish,2006. This CD of family-friendlymusic for children of all ages offers songsabout tolerance and caring for the earth,children’s favorites, and lullabies.David Randall '93, Chandlefort: In theShadow of the Bear, Simon and Shuster,2006. The author's intense and compellingsequel to Clovermead (SimonPulse, 2005) explores the strength oflove, courage, and forgiveness in thebattle of good and evil.Jane Goodall and Dana Lyons ’82,Circle the World: Songs and Stories,Lyons Brothers Music, 2004. This CD isthe result of a collaboration betweenLyons, a singer/songwriter and activistfor the environment, social justice, andanimal rights; and conservationist/chimpanzeeexpert and storyteller Goodall.Its title song was inspired by Goodall’svision for a global celebration on UnitedNations World Peace Day, with so manypeople marching all over the world holdinggiant peace-dove puppets that itwould be visible via satellite from space.

profileCare, Comfort, ConvenienceBJ ENTWISLE ’78 HELPS TO REVIVE AN ABANDONED MEDICAL TRADITION—THE HOUSE CALL.Patients are grateful for BJ Entwisle (right) and her Frail ElderHouse Call Program.Thanks to BJ Entwisle ’78, internist and geriatrician, a group ofelders living in the Concord, N.H., area are enjoying the returnof an abandoned medical tradition—the house call. Entwisle, directorof the Frail Elder House Call Program, located in Concord Hospital’sCapital Region Family Health Center, explains: “I took 13frail, little old ladies I knew from private practice—who were homebound—tolaunch the program.”“There is something so rich about caring for people in theirhomes,” Entwisle says. “It changes the power dynamic—the patientfeels more empowered, the doctor less domineering.” While there,she learns a lot about the patient: “I see photographs, talk with familymembers, and admire great-grandmother’s quilt. When I’m intheir kitchens, watching my patients take their medicines, it’s theonly time I really know what they are doing with their medicines.”Entwisle had been in private practice with The Hitchcock Clinicin Concord for 10 years when she accepted the position of professorof adult medicine with the newly developed New Hampshire-DartmouthCollege Family Residency Program in 1998. She also signedon to launch the Frail Elder House Call Program. Each elder mustmeet strict conditions to be eligible for the program. “The first isthat they have stopped driving,” Entwisle says. “My nurse assistant,GEOFF FORESTERPeggy Tucker, the hub of this whole program, then screens each candidateto measure their daily level of activity.”Today, Entwisle oversees the care of 120 elders—60 at home andthe others in assisted living and nursing homes—assisted by 16 second-and third-year residents who are learning the finer points ofgeriatric medicine from Entwisle, a subspecialist in the field.According to Constance Row, executive director for the AmericanAcademy of Home Care Physicians (AAHCP), the premise of elderhouse calls is simple: “It’s a way to manage permanent health problemsso elders can age in their own homes rather than an institution.”Personalized care, convenience, and comfort are key benefits. EthelEisely, who cares for an 83-year-old quadriplegic in his home, says:“I don’t know how we would have managed for the last 3 1⁄2 yearswithout the program.” House calls also eliminate transportationproblems and provide someone to call with questions or in a crisis.For Ely Buena, a second-year resident from Greenfield, Mass.,Entwisle is a great mentor and resource who “listens to her patientsand is aware of their environments. She wants us [residents] to seethe elders as individuals who need independence as well as healthcare.” Eighty-six-year-old patient Mary Lou Hancock of Concord,N.H., shared her litany of praises by phone: “Dr. Entwisle is verythorough, professional, thoughtful, and caring. She’s also compassionateand perceptive.”After World War II, the rate of house calls sharply declined.“More patients had access to cars, and medical technology was centeredin one place,” Entwisle says, “so it made sense for patients togo to the physician. In the 1970s, renewed interest in house callsemerged; by 1984, AAHCP had been established. Row believes thegrowing number of elders who are unable to get to their physicians’offices and the financial benefits—home care is a fraction of thecost of hospital care—have contributed to the increase in housecalls. AAHCP estimates that there are 1,000 house-call practicesnationally. According to a study in the November issue of the Journalof the American Medical Association, the annual number of housecalls increased 43 percent between 1998 and 2004.Entwisle’s bond with elders began with her maternal grandparentswho lived well into their 80s. Her alma mater, Boston UniversitySchool of Medicine, has the oldest house-call program in thecountry. As a fourth-year medical student, Entwisle spent a monthdoing house calls in Boston. As a resident at Boston City Hospital,“she realized how much she enjoyed taking care of older people.”Mother of Rachel, 19, a student at Bates College, Entwisle makesher home with four other Swarthmore graduates—Jordan Cornog’74, Julie Dewdney ’75, Juliana Eades ’75, and Christopher Cornog’77—whom she describes as a “family of friends.”Entwisle says, “I tip my hat to the little black medical bag of thepast with an L.L. Bean briefcase that we call the “house-call bag.”—Susan Cousins Breenmarch 2007: 67

profileThe Ethics GuyBRUCE WEINSTEIN ’82 IS IN THE BUSINESS OF DOING THE RIGHT THING.Weinstein’s most recent book is Life Principles: Feeling Goodby Doing Good, which sets forth five basic principles to guideone’s ethical decision-making: do no harm, make things better,respect others, be fair, be loving. He is currently working on anethics book for tweens.Your roommate turns in a term paper she downloaded from theInternet as her own work. Do you tell the professor? A dentalhygienist sees substandard work done by her own employer. Doesshe tell the patient, discuss it with the dentist, or say nothing at all?An employee enhances his resume to get a job. He gets the job. Ayear later, should the employee tell the boss what he did? These arejust a few scenarios that Bruce Weinstein ’82,considers as an ethicist.When Weinstein, known popularly as The Ethics Guy (theethicsguy.com),entered Swarthmore, he thought he was headed for medicalschool. But a course in ethics taught by the late Gilmore Stottintrigued him and pointed him in a slightly different direction. Afterreceiving a Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University in1989, he taught bioethics for 6 years at the West Virginia UniversitySchool of Medicine.While there, he decided that many of the questions bioethicistswere facing were also applicable to the general public. “I decided tomake the world my classroom,” he said. In 1995, Weinstein leftWVU and set up his own company, Ethics at Work Inc.GEORGE POULOSNow living in New York City, he regularly speaks to audienceswith more than 5,000 professionals in fields ranging from medicineto real estate. He has a syndicated weekly newspaper columnand appears frequently as an ethical analyst on TV news shows,including Good Morning America and The Today Show.Weinstein said the reason to be ethical is because “it is the rightthing to do.” But when he asks his audiences the “why be ethical”question, the answer is often quite different.“People will say ‘so I can sleep at night,’ ‘so I can get intoheaven,’ or ‘so I can look at myself in the mirror.’ People have aself-referential response. People want to know ‘What’s in it forme?’” Weinstein said.“As a leader, I needed to answer that question. The good news isthat all roads lead to nirvana. If you do the right thing, you’re satisfyingyour ethical obligation to other people and benefiting yourself.The flip side is if you take the low road, such as if you’re a corruptCEO, it will come back and hurt you. You’ll risk legal liability, yourreputation may be ruined, and you may be fodder for negative discussionin the media.”Weinstein has edited or written five books, and his syndicatedcolumn “Ask the Ethics Guy” appears on BusinessWeek.com, wherea recent comment drew fire in a way Weinstein hadn’t anticipated.He had given his response to whether an employee should tellthe boss that he padded his resume when he applied for the job.Weinstein said he should tell.“Owning up to one’s mistake shows the moral virtue of courage,”Weinstein said. “I believe the employer would keep the employeebecause he did something that wasn’t easy to do.”But BusinessWeek.com readers disagreed.“I know it was a skewed sample because people tend to write lettersmostly when they’re angry, but, having said that, there are somany people willing to defend the behavior of lying with ‘everybodydoes it,’ and ‘the CEO did it.’ Covering it up is really disturbing. It’swhy we see corporate scandals, and it will continue until businessestake ethics seriously,” he said.Weinstein said he chose to become a populist ethicist because“many of our society’s issues are discussed from political, military,and legal perspectives. But we also need to talk about the ethicalperspective. Ethics often requires more of us than the law does.”Weinstein doesn’t think our world is any worse off than in earliertimes. “As far back as Aristophenes and Plato, there were complaintsabout youth,” Weinstein said. “Human nature hasn’t changedmuch. But it’s not clear to me that from an ethical perspective oursociety is any worse off than 20 years ago. The fact that I’m seeing,in my professional life, a more widespread recognition of theimportance of ethics is evidence to me that we’re not getting worseas a society.”—Audree Pennermarch 2007: 69

in my lifeOrcas & IceTHE WORLD IS AN ENDLESSLYEXCITING PLAYGROUNDFOR ADVENTURE SEEKERS.By Kerstin Kirschenbaum Rowe ’93During the past 2 years, I have drivenbeyond the Arctic Circle, hiked glaciers in arainforest, sipped tea in 100-year-old gardens,clocked more than 4,000 miles on acar in Scandinavia, walked a road with myname on it, strolled around Hobbiton, beento Hell’s Gate and back, felt a buffalo’stongue, watched a bear while sea kayaking,and witnessed orcas dancing atop theocean.When I am not teaching more than 120students and grading more than 1,500essays each school year, I travel. No. Notmerely travel. The type of “vacation” preferredby my soul mate and me is an adventure—thetype where the only things barringa longer one are the length of our summerbreaks and countries that don’t handout visas that are valid for more than 30days. Before leaving our continent, we usuallyhave only plane tickets, two guidebooks,and hotel reservations for our first few nights.From there, we poke and prod, saunter andsummit, walk and wander our way into andaround the chosen destination.No set itineraryWe set out one morning in British Columbiaexpecting to arrive at our next destinationby early afternoon. But The Lonely Planetalways tells the careful reader about scenicbyways. So we took a narrow little road justfeet from the ocean through towns that canhardly be called towns. Maybe they were justcollections of buildings that happened to beclose to one another. We finally came to atown referenced in the guidebook, hopingfor some breakfast and a bathroom. Walkingalong the one street, we came upon a sign:72 : swarthmore college bulletinDAVID ROWEKerstin Kirschenbaum Rowe explores a crevasse in New Zealand’s Fox Glacier.“Orcas! 40 minutes away! Tours at 12 and5 p.m.”We looked at each other. Orcas only 40minutes away? We wouldn’t arrive at ournight’s lodging until after dark, but wedecided to change our plans.An hour later, stepping into the inflatableZodiac boat, I was filled with anticipation.A 45-minute ride brought us well intothe Georgia Strait, and the craft slowed. Wesaw the first of many orcas’ dorsal fins comingright up out of the water, like so manysharks. We spent about 20 minutes watchingthe fins and noses of the orcas surfacingand submerging, surfacing and submerging.And then I turned to the left.

“Look!” I screamed—but not in enoughtime for my husband to catch it. Never haveI seen such a stupendous sight. Never will Iforget the image of a 4-ton orca fully, completely,thoroughly airborne, horizontal tothe water, flinging his mass free of his environment.In my mind, he will always be suspendedin the air for as long as he likes,before gravity takes hold, crashing him backinto the waves, into his element.Then, in front of us, another orca leapedclear of the rough waters, flinging his bodyskyward before he, too, plashed back intothe sea. For the next 5 full minutes, therewas a symphony of orcas leaping around us.Over there. Then there. Then over there. Youdidn’t know which way to look, so the threeof us moved our heads like watching a frenetictennis match, trying to keep our eyeson all parts of the ocean. From every direction,it seemed, the orcas flung themselvesinto the air like fountain jets in Las Vegas.The most amazing feat was by one thatdecided to somersault. Truly somersault.The orca whipped his fluke skyward, nose tothe ocean, performing a vertical upsidedownbalancing act, flipping himself clearover his own enormous body. The power ofthese animals was stupefying. We took nopictures. To view the display through a cameralens would have cheapened it. It wasalso impossible, considering the rocking ofthe Zodiac and the speed of the whales.As suddenly as it had begun, it ended.The orcas decided, for reasons unknown tothe most experienced marine biologists, tostay in the water. To swim away. To continuetheir perennial search for salmon. Our jawswere slack. We could not find the words toexpress our excitement and wonder. Wespoke in fragments. But we knew we hadexperienced magic—the magic that can onlycome from having no set itinerary.Take risksThe risks we take do not begin with theoverused title “Extreme … ” But we still takerisks—healthy, good for the soul, low-possibility-of-dyingrisks.Like the time we went glacier hiking.There are two places in the world where glaciersparadoxically reside in rainforests: NewZealand and Chile. Finding ourselves ascant 120 miles away, we boarded a train totraverse New Zealand westward to FoxGlacier and signed up for a full-day hike.Grabbing an alpenstock and strappingon crampons over rented boots, I felt like anold-time explorer. I was Shackleton, gettingready for his trip to the South Pole. Usingthe most basic gear, I would cross continentsand summit mountains. The first steponto the ice was glorious. Tony, our 20-something guide, showed us how to getaround. We had to do a funny kind of wideleggedstomping walk, like the villainouscowboy barging into a saloon. This shovedthe tiny teeth of the crampons into the iceto prevent slipping. We had to play mentalgymnastics with ourselves: The emotionalpart of the brain looked at the ice and said“Step tenderly! Or you’ll slip!” Logically, Itold myself, “Step firmly! So you won’t slip!”It took me about one second to start stompingall over my icy playground. I felt like Icould go anywhere, do anything—much tomy husband’s and Tony’s horror.“Get away from there!” someone behindme yelled, like a reproachful mother.“What?” I thought and half mumbled,annoyed at being distracted from my Lewisand-Clarkdream. “I just wanted to see howdeep this crack was!” I called back petulantly.My husband stomped up behind me.“That can be really dangerous,” heexplained. “Those crevasses can go verydeep, and you could fall far. I don’t want tolose my wife.” I was not prepared to believehim, his glacier-hiking experience being 35minutes—exactly the same as mine. So Ilooked at Tony to get a different answer. Butthe look on Tony’s face told me “the parents”were united. He clearly didn’t feel likespending his fun workday saving somedumb American tourist from a deep, icychasm. “Okay,” I grumbled, sort of agreeingto stay away from the edges of potentiallyhazardous cliffs.Before leaving our continent, we usuallyhave only plane tickets, guidebooks, andhotel reservations for our first few nights.From there, we poke and prod, saunterand summit, walk and wander our wayinto and around the chosen destination.But I was not to be deterred. On morethan one occasion, I got close enough to afascinating crevasse to be able to ask Tony,“Can we go down there? It looks so cool!”And our expert guide would check it out,making sure it wouldn’t cave in and sendour group of 10 to a newspaper headlineand the outfitter to lawsuits. More oftenthan not, he gave the OK and would startchopping ice steps for us. Exploring theglacier’s crevasses was amazing. We weresurrounded by high walls of thick, clear,turquoise-blue ice, smoother than glass.They were narrow fractures, fit only for thefit. I imagined what it must have been likefor Captain Cook and his men to have discoveredthis glacier. How they must haveslid all over it, chopped off pieces for 19thcenturypiña coladas, written home aboutthe strange wonder.We walked through glassy blue tunnelsformed by the melting ice. Ice surroundedus. It was our floor, walls, and ceiling. It wasthe next room and downstairs. It was thousandsof ice rinks. We had to grab our fearand stomp it just as we stomped our crampons.The day was exhilarating.We emerged from our journey unscathedbut deeply touched. My spirit was soaring,filled with confidence. We had entered a differentworld. A world of excitement and ofthe unknown. A world of risk taking. Aworld of adventure. TKerstin Kirschenbaum Rowe worked for 12 yearsas an English teacher, the last 5 at OverlandHigh School, in Denver, Colo., where she liveswith her husband and fellow adventurer, David.Currently, she is enjoying the supreme adventureof staying home with their baby girl, born inAugust.march 2007 : 73

profileCompassion in BusinessGABRIEL FAIRMAN ’02 BELIEVES THAT CORPORATE SUCCESS DEPENDS ON MORE THAN JUST A PRODUCT.Despite his facility with languages, Fairman describes himselfprimarily as an agent for social transformation. For moreinformation on his company, visit www.bureautranslations.com.aving been born in São Paulo, Brazil, Gabriel Fairman grew upHspeaking Portuguese. He also learned Spanish early on from hisArgentine father and picked up English attending Americanschools, where he was also taught French. At Swarthmore, helearned Italian during a semester abroad in Italy. And, in his senioryear, he began studying Mandarin Chinese, which he polished duringa 5-month stay in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Taiwan.So it’s not surprising that Fairman—now back in São Paulo—makes his living working with words, as executive director ofBureau Translations, where translators interpret in 20 languages.Beside his love of languages, Fairman has a penchant for philosophyand psychology—thanks to his College courses, he says, especiallythose taught by Frank and Gil Mustin Professor of PsychologyEmeritus Kenneth Gergen. Fairman graduated with a special majortitled The Death and Rebirth of Human Agency.“This is just a fancy name for the study of how people areimpaired in their decision-making by influences subconsciouslyengrained as a result of their culture,” he says. The rebirth of theseprocesses occurs when we become actively aware of this culturalconditioning of our modes of thinking and allow ourselves to beopen to alternative explanations for human behaviors, rather thanpassively seeing only one “right” explanation. “I could never reallyaccept any one way of thinking as the ultimate way,” Fairman says.MURILO RODRIGUESFairman’s route to his current job was not a direct one. Aftermonths of monastic routine “working as a gardener, meditating,teaching English to children at an orphanage inside the monastery,and practicing kung fu,” he worked at a New York consulting firmfor a while, followed by a year with his father in international tradeand 6 months in the export department of Brazil’s largest mineralexploration company.Back in São Paulo, Fairman was struck by the clash between theharshness of the business world in “this do-or-die, cut-throat city”and the insights he had gained in his pursuit of philosophy andpersonal inner exploration. “I was disillusioned by business practicesthat put the importance of human relationships in the background,so I took over the home business my mother founded 25years ago and turned it into a start-up company that had at its corean emphasis on relationships,” he says.In light of Fairman’s drive to reach beyond the limitations of culturallyimposed perceptions, his choice of profession—in which hemust strive on a daily basis to reconcile the cultural differences thatreveal themselves through language—seems entirely appropriate.His staff—experts at building connections through language—are expected to be equally adept in forming relationships based ontraits like tolerance of differences, understanding, and compassion.For example, Fairman describes being commissioned to translatea set of highly sensitive documents pertaining to a multimilliondollarcontract between a Brazilian company and Chinese company.“We had to understand the thought process of the Brazilian supplierand figure out how the wording in the original Chinese version ofthe contract would fit within this context. Brazilian texts are typicallynot concise and are often filled with flowery language. So, withthe help of consultants, we examined the language of the originalChinese document before translation. Then, after translation, weconsulted with lawyers in both countries and did more rewording orrephrasing before producing the final contract,” he says.Fairman’ s carefully chosen staff comprises 10 in-house consultantsand 15 translators. All spend a fair amount of time in the officeattending training sessions, seminars, or presentations. “I am lookingfor people who have the basic set of characteristics needed forworking in a company, such as punctuality, diligence, and thoroughness,”he says, “but above all, they should be able to understand andaccept differences and be willing to learn from these differences, notjust sit back and accept the status quo.”At weekly meetings, employees share ideas on topics such asproject management, health issues, and company-client relationships.“We have a continuous learning system,” Fairman says. “I’mtrying to balance my theoretical background with the pressingdemands for productivity to build a business based on harmoniousand evolving relationships rather than just a product.”—Carol Brévart-Demmmarch 2007: 77

Q + A“Preposterously Delightful”By Carol Brévart-DemmProfessor of German Hansjakob Werlenloves language—his own and others. Bornin a tiny Swiss valley, he grew up speaking alocal Alemanic dialect, the language inwhich he still feels most comfortable, eventhough his German is impeccable. So is hisEnglish. After attending Spanish classestaught by colleagues and spending time inLatin America, he also enjoys conversing inand reading Spanish. He gets by in French,too. He finds beauty in the sounds of words.As a graduate student at Stanford, his interestin semiotics led him to attend a seminartaught entirely in Russian by an Estoniansemiotician, whose reading of Pushkin heldWerlen spellbound for a semester, althoughhe knew no Russian. He occasionally visits aVietnamese restaurant in Philadelphia,where, over a bowl of steaming phô, he listensto the sounds of the conversation.For 20 years, Werlen has been teaching18th- and 19th-century German literature toSwarthmore students, many of whom stayin touch. Recently, he’s been teaching contemporaryGerman literature and food studies.He is a member of the InternationalHerder Society and the American GoetheSociety.Passionately interested in food, Werlenfounded the Philadelphia chapter of SlowFood in 1998. The international eco-gastronomicmovement, with 80,000 membersworldwide, is dedicated to ecologicallysound food production, the invigoration ofregional culinary traditions, and the pleasuresof the table. He spent a week livingwith a Ketchua family in Ecuador, helpingthe local cooperative of 400 families expandits small cocoa-bean business into the internationalgourmet chocolate and cocoa market.A beer connoisseur, he has friendsamong Philadelphia’s microbrewers.Werlen enjoys using the occasional oxymoron.He’s something of an oxymoronhimself—intensely intellectual, wildly jocular.He describes his time at Swarthmore as“preposterously delightful.” The same canbe said of time spent in his company.What’s cool about the German language?Many German words have a kind of literaldescriptiveness that can be fun when youteach the language, such as Fingerhut (thimble,literally, “finger hat”) or Stinktier(skunk, literally “smelly animal”).Which courses do you enjoy teaching most?My recurring favorite is the Goethe Seminar.He was such a revolutionary writer. Allthose trite, romantic settings of currentsoap operas could be vernacular variationson The Sorrows of Young Werther. Anothergood one was the freshman seminarBetween Appetite and Aesthetics. This was away to sneak in my preoccupation with foodand the history of aesthetics. Rick Eldridge(philosophy) came and explained how thesensual part of taste was banned by Germanphilosopher Immanuel Kant, and Mark Wallace(religion) talked about religious foodtaboos. It was great fun.Is there a work of German literature that everyoneshould read?Read Goethe’s Faust, Part I. It’s funny, beautiful,tragic, and relates to issues beingdebated now—the role of science, utilizationof the earth, things like that.If you could be a German literary figure, whowould you choose?I’d like to have been someone like E.T.A.Hoffmann. He was a jurist by training, composer,conductor, music critic, draftsman,caricaturist, and a great writer. He feltdeeply about art and wrote beautifully andhumorously, yet he also had a dark side. Hewas just a convivial, fun, irreverent guy.Everyone should read Tales of Hoffmann orlisten to the opera.Are you planning any new research projects?I’m collaborating on a volume about the historyof methodologies in my field. I’m interestedin the “half-life” (as I call it) of theory,and I’m looking at a particular set of theoreticalpractices that were important forGermanistik in the 20th century.Do you have a teaching style?I have no fixed script. I love to digress. Afterall, you’re learning about life, so I’m as apt todeliver a plaidoyer for good stout as I am totalk about the Enlightenment.Do you have a favorite beer?Basically, the last good beer I drank. Wehave about 10 world-class small brewers inand around Philadelphia. I know them allbecause they come to Slow Food events Iorganize. Living in the United States rightnow is like living in beer heaven. When I’min Germany, I declare apodictically that,after Belgium, the United States is the bestbeer country in the world. The Germansdon’t take this lying down, of course.What was your most recent Slow Food event?I invited Herb Eckhouse, an Iowa prosciuttomaker and father of Laurel Eckhouse ’03, totalk with us and let us taste his incrediblecured meats. He brought speck, culatello,prosciutto, and pancetta. All his productsmeasure favorably with the best Italian andSpanish cured meats. It’s just like the Americanbeer. Or Metropolitan bread. You cansearch far and wide in France before findingthe quality of sourdough bread-making thatyou find at Philly’s Metropolitan Bakery.Which three words describe you best?Curious, energetic, and change-loving.How do you think your wife would describe you?Generous, funny, and gregarious.What do you consider the height of success?It’s a bit like what Barry Schwartz says aboutthe paradox of choice—when you don’tmanically compare yourself and your lotwith that of others, when you’re happy withyour own situation in life. I’ve reached it.I’ve been here for 20 years. I enjoyed it fromthe very beginning, and I enjoy it more now.According to Hansjakob Werlen, thegrowth of North American microbreweries—suchas Yards Brewing Co. inNorth Philadelphia (right)—has heraldeda Golden Age of Beer in this country.80 : swarthmore college bulletin

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

REVISIT. REKINDLE. REUNION.Come back to Swarthmore this June.ALUMNI WEEKEND 2007: JUNE 8–10All classes ending in “2” and “7” and theClass of 2005 are celebrating reunions,but everyone is invited, so make plans nowto attend Alumni Weekend 2007.Up-to-date information is available athttp://alumniweekend.swarthmore.eduRegistration is now open on-line.Questions? E-mail the Alumni Office atalumni@swarthmore.edu, or phone (610) 328-8402.make this your year!