The Wesleyan Connection

Kate Wetherhead ’98 currently stars in the off-Broadway musical Ordinary Days with a score by Adam Gwon and directed by Mark Bruni. The show deals the lives and troubles of four young people living in New York City. In a positive review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood says the show “captures with stinging clarity that uneasy moment in youth when doubts begin to cloud hopes for a future of unlimited possibility.”

Wetherhead plays an unhappy graduate student who has lost her thesis notebook, which is found by an aspiring artist (Jared Gertner), and the two eventually meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In his review for the Associated Press, Michael Kuchwara says, “Wetherhead has a quirky, offbeat stage presence perfectly suited for this aggressively neurotic young woman, a person quick to form opinions and not shy about expressing them either.”

The other half of the show deals with a couple, played by Hunter Foster and Lisa Brescia, who problems mount when they decide to move in with each other.

Ordinary Days plays through Dec. 13 at the Roundabout Theater Company Black Box Theater, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, Manhattan, 212-719-1300. Tickets are $20.

In The Calculus of Friendship (Princeton University Press), Cornell University professor Steven Strogatz chronicles the moving story of the friendship he developed with his former high school math teacher, Don Joffray ’50, over 30 years through the exchange of letters between them. For a long time, their friendship revolved almost entirely on a shared love of calculus.

Joffray goes from the prime of his career to retirement, competes in whitewater kayaking at the international level, and loses a son. Strogatz matures from high school math whiz to Ivy League professor, has a failed marriage, and experiences the sudden death of a parent. Eventually they get to know each other better beyond the world of mathematics.

In the prologue, Strogatz writes: “Like calculus itself, this book is an exploration of change. It’s about the transformation that takes place in a student’s heart, as he and his teacher reverse roles, as they age, as they are buffeted by life itself.” Their shared love of calculus becomes “a constant while all around them is in flux.”

A video about the book is on YouTube.

In the Nov. 16 issue of The New Yorker, staff writer Ariel Levy ’96 looks at two new books: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (Little Brown) by Gail Collins, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman (Palgrave) by Leslie Sanchez.

In her essay, titled “Lift and Separate,” Levy discusses not just the content of the two books but also considers how feminism is still so divisive. She discusses some of the triumphs and defeats of the feminist movement and some myths of the movement as well. For instance, Levy writes that “bra burning became the most durable and unsettling image of modern feminism,” but then continues: “So it may be worth noting that it never actually happened.”

Levy notes how activist feminists are often stereotyped and how women like Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain who describe themselves as “traditional” are far from traditional women. She recognizes how the feminist movement succeeded in getting women into the government and the private sector workforce. But she also comments that the “contours of mainstream feminism started to change accordingly. A politics of liberation was largely supplanted by a politics of identity.”

Near the end of her essay, Levy writes: “Feminism as an identity politics has enjoyed real victories. It matters that women serve on the Supreme Court, that they make decisions in business, government, academia, and the media. But a preoccupation with representation suggests that feminism has lost its larger ambitions. We’ve come a long way in the past forty years … The trouble is that the journey hasn’t always been in the intended direction. These days, we can only dream about a federal program insuring that women with school-age children have affordable child care.”

Book co-edited by Grant Brenner ’92

Grant Brenner ’92, Daniel Bush and Joshua Moses are co-editors of Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work (Routledge), which explores the interface between spiritual and psychological care in the context of disaster recovery work, drawing upon recent disasters including the experiences of Sept. 11, 2001.

The book contains three sections structured around the cycle of disaster response and focusing on the relevant phase of disaster recovery work. In each section, selected spiritual and mental health topics are examined with contributions from spiritual care and mental health care providers. This is a useful reference volume for theory and an invaluable hands-on resource, which identifies and considers interdisciplinary collaborations, creative partnerships, gaps in care and necessary interdisciplinary work.

The book grew out of several conferences co-organized by two of the editors during the years following 9/11, and it represents the collective wisdom of many people who have worked diligently and often at great cost to themselves. The volume highlights the often overlooked partnership between spiritual and mental health caregivers, a partnership especially important in distressful situations involving trauma, disaster and terrorism.

Grant Brenner, MD, is in private practice in Manhattan and works as a psychiatrist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and consultant. He is on faculty at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, where he is a chief psychiatric consultant and director of the Trauma Service; is assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Mount Sinai School of Medicine (adjunct); and teaches and supervises psychiatric residents in addition to other academic roles.

Daniel Pollitt ’43, University of North Carolina Kenan Professor Emeritus and longtime civil-liberties and civil-rights advocate, was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the state’s highest honors, last summer.

Nominated for the award by state Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., whose father, Floyd McKissick Sr., worked with Pollitt on a number of civil-rights issues, Pollitt was presented with the award by Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, with whom he was wed last April.

Bestowed for a lifetime of “integrity, learning and zeal,” the award recognizes his activism and commitment to the causes of social justice. In the 1950s, he served as defense council in a number of historic civil-liberty trials, including those of Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller before the House Un-American Activities Committee, helped lead a successful protest to integrate a downtown Chapel Hill theater in the 1960s, and continues to be active in his opposition to the death penalty.

An article in the Carrboro Citizen, quotes him proclaiming his motto: “Constant skepticism is the hallmark of a democratic society.”

For further information, see  http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/2009/08/06/pollitt-receives-long-leaf-pine-award/

Jerry Melillo ’65, a senior scientist at the U.S. Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., says in a study published in Science that the new generation of biofuels will actually emit more carbon dioxide, averaged over the first three decades of this century, than gasoline—although the fuels were meant to be a low-carbon alternative.

A Reuters report on the study noted that governments and private industry are spending billions of dollars on research into making fuels from wood and grass in the hopes of cutting carbon emissions while not competing with food, as corn-based biofuels do.

Melillo and his team found, however, that these advanced “cellulosic” biofuels will actually lead to higher carbon emissions. They contend that the land required to plant poplar trees and tropical grasses would displace farmland and therefore lead to more deforestation to create new crop farmland. Deforestation is a significant source of carbon emissions. Additionally, these biofuel crops require nitrogen fertilizer, which itself produces two greenhouse gasses.

Melillo notes that the paper is not meant to negate the place for cellulosic biofuels.

“It is not an obvious and easy win without thinking very carefully about the problem,” Melillo told Reuters. “We have to think very carefully about both short and long-term consequences.”

Long-time Wesleyan supporter John Andrus '33 celebrated his 100th birthday Sept. 19 in Wayzata, Minn. Andrus, who donated several prints to the Davison Art Collection, received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Wesleyan at his 50th Class Reunion in 1983. As an undergraduate, Andrus was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, the Paint and Powder Club, and the Inter-fraternity Council. He majored in English and English literature. Andrus's granddaughter, Megan Haynes Kelly ’06, attended the celebration.

John Andrus gets a birthday hug from Edith Thorpe, a co-director of the Surdna Foundation in New York, N.Y. The Surdna Foundation, founded by the Andrus family, was created in memory of John Andrus's grandfather, John E. Andrus '1862. The John E. Andrus Center for Public Affairs, otherwise known as the Public Affairs Center or simply the PAC, is funded by the Surdna Foundation. John Andrus is chairman emeritus of the foundation, which provides support for the care of the sick and elderly, medical research, and higher education.

(Photos courtesy of Megan Kelly ‘06)

Peter Shumlin ’79

Vermont State Senator Peter Shumlin ’79 will be honored at the 8th Annual Human Rights Campaign New England Dinner, to be held in Boston on Nov. 14. HRC New England, the largest GLBT civil rights advocacy group in the country, is this year presenting the marriage equality award to “those who were heroes in our fight for equality.”

As President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Shumlin is considered instrumental on the April 15, 2009 Vermont legislature’s vote to override the governor’s veto and pass same sex marriage into law for the state.

Shumlin spoke about his reasons to support the bill last March on Vermont Public Radio. He called the passage “one of the proudest moments of my life” on the UK’s Guardian web site, where he traces his involvement in this historic legislation back to 2000.

“I owe a lot of my commitment to helping promote social justice to my Wesleyan experience,” he says.

It is expected that on Nov. 16, he will announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Vermont Governor.

Tanya Harrison MA ’08, who studied with Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, and is now at Malin Space Science Systems in California, is first author on a report that says her team found evidence of liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars in multiple locations as recently as this year.

An abstract of the report, titled “Present-Day Activity, Monitoring and Documentation of Gullies With the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera,” was published in the Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7, p. 267. The findings were reported in a speech at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting on Oct. 8, and the work also was presented at the 2009 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting Oct. 19-21.

According to the report, the group found evidence of six active gully flows that formed since 2001. Of the six new flows, three have formation dates constrained to within a single Mars year; these three formed during autumn to early spring, demonstrating that summer warming is not participating in creating the liquid involved in their formation.

“These efforts are focused on understanding how the gullies formed, how they have been degraded, and where they are active today,” the report says.

A recent article in the Tennessean highlighted a notable discovery at Nashville’s Parthenon Museum: a rare and complete copy of William J. Stillman’s 1870 photographic book, The Acropolis of Athens, Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography.

Museum assistant curator Brenna Cothran '01 at the Parthenon — Nashville's full-scale replica of the Athenian temple — shows a copy of William J. Stillman's photographic works. (Photo by Jae S. Lee / The Tennessean)

Registrar and Assistant Curator Brenna Cothran ’01 came across it as part of an ongoing four-year-old project of inventorying every item in storage as other duties permitted. She told Tennessean journalist Janell Ross that when she saw the book, which had been stashed away in a storage room drawer, “The hair on my arms stood up. It was kind of this adrenaline rush.”

Stillman, an American painter, photographer, journalist, and diplomat had published this work at a time when photography was, one might say, in its adolescence, and tourism had just begun to flourish. Nineteenth- and early early-2oth century admirers of Stillman’s work often removed the pages of the album to frame and hang on their walls. Thus, finding a complete copy of his book is highly unusual and the museum set about raising funds to cover the cost of conserving and restoring it.

Now, the back story. The reason Cothran immediately knew this was an exceptional find: her Wesleyan education—specifically classes with Professor Andy Szegedy-Maszak, who admits, “I guess I talked a bit about William James Stillman, about whom I’ve written a fair amount.” Stillman was a natural subject for the Classical Studies professor who, with his wife, writer Elizabeth Bobrick, has assembled a noteworthy collection of photographs, a number of which have recently been on exhibit at the Getty Museum and were exhibited in 1998 at Wesleyan’s Davison Art Center.

Additionally, Cothran’s find has also served to reconnect the former student with Szegedy-Maszak her former professor. “She wrote me immediately,” he says, “and we’ve been back in touch ever since.” Recently she notified him that the Tennessean article sparked the interest of a donor who has agreed to underwrite the entire cost of restoring the album. “The whole thing is pretty cool,” Szegedy-Maszak says.

Cothran agrees: “When I took art history, Latin literature, and other humanities classes at Wesleyan, I took them for the love of learning. At the time, I never imagined that just a few years later, I would be lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to put what I learned to use. This experience has highlighted for me the value of the education I got at Wesleyan.”