David LowRon Bloom ’77 is cited in this year’s issue of Time 100, in which the magazine singles out 100 people who “most affect our world.” His name has been included on the list of “Leaders.” For the Obama administration, Bloom serves as senior adviser for manufacturing policy and has been chief adviser to the Treasury Department on the auto industry. Time writer Bill Saporito notes: “Would it be fair to say that Ron Bloom has a unionist's heart and an investment banker's soul? Or would that insult one or both parties? A Harvard-trained banker who later hired on with the…
Cynthia RockwellBy Nina Terebessy ’11 Last week, she enjoyed a Bahrainian feast. This week, she is savoring traditional recipes from Bangladesh. For Sasha Foppiano Martin ’02, however, these culinary travels do not involve passports or airplanes. She is enjoying these meals from the comfort of her own kitchen in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives with her husband and 10-month-old daughter. Every Tuesday, Martin chooses a new country, researching its culture, traditions and cuisine. She assembles a list of recipes, and photographs the preparation of each meal for her blog titled “Global Table.” It is her goal to cook 195 meals from…
This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, Tinkers by Paul Harding, was a bit of a surprise. The book had gotten excellent reviews (though it wasn’t reviewed by The New York Times) and was pushed by independent book sellers. But it was far from a slam dunk for a prestigious literary prize. Even more surprising is the publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, where Erika Goldman '81 is editorial director. This is the first small publisher to release a Pulitzer fiction winner since Louisiana State University Press published A Confederacy of Dunces. Bellevue Literary Press is part of New York University’s School…
Bill Shapiro '87 has edited an entertaining and often fascinating book, Other People’s Rejection Letters (Clarkson Potter), in which he has collected 150 rejection letters sent to famous and ordinary people and presented exactly as they were written. The letters included are surprisingly varied, sent by text message, e-mail and by the U.S. Postal Service, and messages are handwritten, typed, illustrated and scrawled in lipstick and crayon. Alongside letters rejecting Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix, readers can peruse notes from former lovers, relatives, would-be bosses, potential publishers, universities, Walt Disney Productions, the pope and even “the Private Office…
Paul Lewis ’88, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture, Princeton University, is also a partner at LTL Architects (Lewis.Turumaki.Lewis) in New York City. LTL Architects is one of five teams commissioned by New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center to produce work featured at the Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53 Street, 212-708-9400) exhibition, Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront. This project addresses one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation's largest city: sea-level rise resulting from global climate change. The exhibit is open from now until Oct. 11.
Brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist ’02 have directed The Two Escobars, a documentary about the infiltration of drug money into professional soccer in Colombia during the 1980s and ’90s. The subjects of the film are Pablo Escobar, a founder of the Medellin cartel who poured some of his wealth from cocaine trafficking into pro soccer, and Andrés Escobar, a star of the national team who accidentally kicked a ball into his own team’s goal at the 1994 World Cup. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City in April as part of the World Documentary Competition.…
Beautiful new work by veteran photographer Michael Yamashita ’71 may be viewed online in the May issue of National Geographic. His photos accompany an article “The Forgotten Road” by Mark Jenkins who traces the remnants of the legendary trail in China that served as a trading route for tea and Tibetan horses. The ancient passageway once stretched almost 1,400 miles across the chest of Cathay, from Yaan, in the tea-growing region of Sichuan Province, to Lhasa, the almost 12,000-foot-high capital of Tibet.
In an "Executive Profile," the Atlanta Business Chronicle (April 23–29, 2010) highlighted the efforts of Matthew Winn ’92, managing director, Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia, Inc., who is running his third marathon with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program. Winn will be running to honor his 5-year-old nephew, Nicholas, the son of Amanda Winn Lee ’94, on June 6. That same day will be the five-year anniversary of Nicholas’s remission from acute myelogenous leukemia. Winn, himself the father of two children, wears a purple "Team in Training" bracelet, indicating his commitment to this group of athletes who…
This month, Jeff Laszlo '78 and his family will accept the Environmental Law Institute's prestigious National Wetlands Award for Landowner Stewardship in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The National Wetlands Awards are presented annually to individuals who have excelled in wetlands protection, restoration and education. The Trust for Public Land calls the O’Dell Creek Headwaters and Wetlands Restoration Project “an ambitious multi-year effort to restore and enhance one of the most significant and important wetlands complexes in Montana.” Laszlo’s family had settled on the land in the 1930s, when his great-grandfather began a 14,000-acre cattle ranch. O’Dell Creek, an important…
Olivia DrakeAdjunct professor of music Angel Gil-Ordóñez's Post-Classical Ensemble was mentioned in the April 20th edition of The New York Times for performing in Falla and Flamenco at the Brooklyn Academy of Music April 17. The orchestra, paired with a Spanish pianist, performed “a muted by graceful account,” of “Nights in the Gardens of Spain," a tour of Spanish music "that touches not only on the Gypsy influences that crystallized as flamenco but on Moorish influences as well," according to the article. After intermission, Gil-Ordóñez, who also is director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles and music director of the Wesleyan Orchestra…
Four Wesleyan students helped create a new video for Grammy-nominated hip-hop artists Nappy Roots. The video for the song “P.O.N.” was directed by Bill Kirstein ’10 and Ethan Berger ’10. Stefan Weinberger ’10 was the director of photography. The video was produced by Ram Sivalingam ‘10, Adam Paulsen ’10 and Drae Jackson of Drae Jackson Films. The video is online at http://vimeo.com/11508541.