Potash Hill

Published twice every year, Potash Hill shares highlights of what Marlboro College community members, in both undergraduate and graduate programs, are doing, creating, and thinking. The publication is named after the hill in Marlboro, Vermont, where the undergraduate campus was founded in 1946. “Potash,” or potassium carbonate, was a locally important industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, obtained by leaching wood ash and evaporating the result in large iron pots. Students and faculty at Marlboro no longer make potash, but they are very industrious in their own way, as this publication amply demonstrates.

Editor: Philip Johansson
Photo Editor: Ella McIntosh
Staff Photographers: Ben Rybisky ’18 and Lindsay Stevens ’17
Design: New Ground Creative

Potash Hill welcomes letters to the editor. Mail them to: Editor, Potash Hill, Marlboro College, P.O. Box A, Marlboro, VT 05344, or send email to pjohansson@marlboro.edu. The editor reserves the right to edit for length letters that appear in Potash Hill.

Front Cover: A massive, welded sculpture by Colin Leon ’15, part of his Plan show in December 2015, gives a palpable sense of opposing forces, dynamic balance, and engagement. Learn about Colin’s recent work on a kinetic sculpture at Burning Man 2015 on page 28. 

The class of 2015 put their money where their mouths enjoyed copious cappuccinos and deep-fried comfort food, with a class gift of new stools for the renovated campus center coffee shop, known as “Potash Grill.” Stop by whenever you have a hankering for a hummus wrap or a maple latte. Or see a recent video about the coffee shop by student Matteo Lanzarotta ’18. 

About Marlboro College
Marlboro College provides independent thinkers with exceptional opportunities to broaden their intellectual horizons, benefit from a small and close-knit learning community, establish a strong foundation for personal and career fulfillment, and make a positive difference in the world. At our undergraduate campus in the town of Marlboro, Vermont, and our graduate center in Brattleboro, students engage in deep exploration of their interests—and discover new avenues for using their skills to improve their lives and benefit others—in an atmosphere that emphasizes critical and creative thinking, independence, an egalitarian spirit, and community.

4-Square Rules | A mere sampling:

Black Knight> If a player can catch the ball cleanly between their two hands before it bounces, the player that last hit the ball is out.

Leaping Knight> A variant of Black Knight where the catch only counts if the player is in the air when they grasp the ball. Otherwise, the player is out.

Dark Knight> Another variant of Black Knight where the catch only counts if the player can catch the ball with their elbows (like a bat).

Coup d’Etat> If a player can get the king out without the king touching the ball, they then become king.

People’s Serve> Any player can serve the ball. Don’t fight over it too much.

The Unforgivable Curses> A player may hit the ball on the first, second, or fourth bounce. If the ball is hit on the third bounce, that player is out.

Exile> Players may not touch their squares with their feet. Hands and other body parts are permitted.

Serenade> The player in first square must serenade the king with a song of their choice.

Quaker> All players, active and nonactive, must end their sentences with the word friend. They also must not curse.

Brooklyn> Everyone needs to be rude to each other and use at least one swear in each sentence.

We the People> In order for a rule to pass, all players must get a majority vote.

Double Talk> A rule that is specifically designed for arguing over whether the game requires it or not. It is the most important rule of the game.

The Corridor of Trauma

By Haley Peters ’15

In 1881, just after novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf was born, her father Leslie Stephen purchased Talland House, a small house on the outskirts of St. Ives, Cornwall, as a vacation home for his growing family. The family enjoyed the home until the death of their mother in 1895. Then they let the home go. Ten years later, after Woolf endured the traumatic loss of her half-sister and of her father, Woolf and her sister Vanessa visited the home. The house was lit and occupied. They said they “felt like ghosts” themselves. Twenty-two years after that visit, in 1927, on the other side of three losses and several complete mental breakdowns, Woolf published her novel about another traumatized family and their house: To the Lighthouse.

The story is told in three parts. The first and third parts each describe a day at a house owned by the Ramsays—the first in 1910 and the second in 1920. The second section describes the passage of ten years between these two days. In a small journal labeled “Notes for writing,” Virginia Woolf imagined her novel as “two blocks joined by a corridor.” The blocks on either side represented the first and third sections of the novel, “The Window” and “The Lighthouse”; the corridor represented the intervening section, “Time Passes,” which encompasses ten years, a war, and three deaths. Woolf knew personally the devastation trauma causes to a person’s fundamental assumptions about the world. However, by challenging those assumptions, by forcing a person to rewrite their personal narrative and rethink the framework by which they make meaning of their world, trauma creates growth. We see the Ramsay family as they exist in two spaces of time, on either side of ten years of grief and trauma. On either side of the corridor, a guest in the house named Lily attempts to make a picture. Meanwhile, we witness three pictures of the Ramsay family: a family before trauma, the dark senselessness endured by the traumatized family, and the family members who survived and grew.

This excerpt comes from Haley Peters’ Plan of Concentration in literature and writing, titled “‘The Dark Voicelessness in Which the Words Are the Deeds’: Considering Death and Grief through Reading and Writing.” You can find excerpts from other recent Plans, from “The Dirt on Mutualism” to “Layers of Legality: Interactions between State Law, International Law, and Shariah,” in the Virtual Plan Room. Photo by Kelly Fletcher

Road to Citizenship
I have had such pleasure reading the most recent Potash Hill (Fall 2015) and rejoicing that the college is still going strong. All the faces are new, with exception to Tom Ragle and Ellen, as are many of the buildings. I am so impressed with the current roster of faculty, Kevin Quigley as our new president, and students.

I continue to talk to younger people and tell them how important a college degree from a liberal arts college is, no matter what path you want or end up taking in the future. Some of us never had a career, so to speak, but delved into many and varied interests: from Greek classics to volunteer coordinator, to political research analyst, to sheep herder, to certified tree farmer. Along this path, there were hundreds of hours of volunteering for the Greek Resistance, Friends of the Library, hospice care, and as chair of the county No One Dies Alone committee. Most recently I have been appointed trustee to the State Library of Oregon.

I have to credit Marlboro College, as well as Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, for giving me the tools and time to become a better citizen, working to make my local community—wherever it has been—healthier and more aware of the external world. And before I forget: the major topics for Town Meeting in my time were parietal hours, pets on campus, and dance weekends.
—Jennie Tucker ’67

Potash Thrills
I’m so pleased with how the redesign of Potash Hill came through last year. When I opened my email today to see the cover of the last issue, my heart dropped and I had goosebumps from how beautiful the image on the front cover is. I promise to revisit the hill sometime. Congratulations on another incredibly successful publication.
—Elisabeth Joffe ’14

Just tore through my Fall 2015 copy of Potash Hill, and wanted to let you know I felt completely comfortable, and at times very happy, with the new design (even though I still miss the sparse, elegant old black-and-white version). I was very touched by Lucy DeLaurentis’ tribute on the last page. I’m not sure if I ever met Lucy, but I think of her often.
—Pearse Pinch ’14

What a splendid issue of Potash Hill. The cover is astounding in its simplicity, its beauty, and its refusal to do the usual alumni magazine schtick. What gorgeous graphic design, throughout. Surely, if there is an award for alumni magazines out there, you deserve something for your style and elegance.
—William Morgan, friend

Inaugural Impressions
I think the Peace Corps–inspired day of service that was part of President Quigley’s inauguration was a great idea. It’s the kind of gesture that is emblematic, we all hope, of his activist first year as president. I also want to applaud him and the college for initiating the multifaceted Renaissance Scholars program. It’s fresh, inspirational, and innovative, plus it appears to draw on his own professional and personal experiences, and this will only give it the staying power it merits.
—David Lincoln Ross ’76

In response to some uncertainty stimulated by President Quigley’s inaugural speech, I can attest that poet Robert Frost was indeed a trustee of Marlboro College, the very first. That trip I took with my father to visit Frost and share his idea of starting the college was specifically to ask him to be a trustee. If there’s any doubt, there is a book of Frost’s poems in my father’s library inscribed: “To Walter, from his trusting but untrustworthy trustee.” My father also got Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Dorothy Thompson, and George Whicher, English professor at Amherst, to be on the board soon after, because he wanted creative thinkers to make up the board beside the traditional lawyers and bankers.
— Geoffrey Hendricks, friend, and son of founder Walter Hendricks

Rankling Racism
Even after several years, I still find it tactless and upsetting that the Summer 2012 issue of Potash Hill quoted this Marlboro Citizen personal ad: “I’m looking for a new best friend. Candidates should be Jewish, neurotic Freudians, and pathological narcissists.” I am certain that if stereotypes about other ethnic or religious groups replaced “Jewish,” and said something like “Candidates should be African-American, loose-fingered, high-jumping rappers and pathological car-jackers” or “Arabs, easily offended, overly attached to concepts of honor, and pathological terrorists,” there would be a loud outcry about racism and stereotyping, and rightfully so. I’m sure it was meant to be “funny,” but I believe that anyone with any kind of sensitivity would see that this ad was in very poor taste.
—Marlboro Alum

(Potash Hill regrets that anyone was offended by this reprinted ad from the Citizen, which was indeed meant to be “funny,” and apologizes for being so insensitive. We hope that other readers will not hesitate to bring any concerns about the content and design of the magazine to our attention. —eds.)

Online Inclinations
I enjoy reading Potash Hill. I read it when it comes out as a PDF file online, then about four to eight weeks later I get a hard copy in the mail. I would like to make a small donation to Marlboro by requesting you stop sending me a hard copy.
—Anne Brooke ’73

(If there are others readers out there who would prefer to receive Potash Hill in a digital format only, especially those like Anne who are overseas, please let us know at pjohansson@marlboro.edu. —eds.) 

By Meg Mott

Since Plato, political philosophers have taken on the responsibility of intellectual freedom. Politics professor Meg Mott explores how political philosophy and collective action combat the isolation of neoliberal economics.

The political theorist is committed to thinking outside the box or, as Plato might say, “thinking outside the cave.” Without this rigorous activity, the masses would remain shackled, forced to consume the same mind-numbing shadows produced by the regime. Without the intervention of the political theorist, the cave dwellers would understand politics to be a spectator sport. Only when the shackles come off do the cave dwellers start asking political questions, the first being, “What can we do about these ankle bracelets?”

Looking back across the millennia, it’s easy to see the value of political philosophers, especially during times when the cave was so stuffy. Most of us think of the Middle Ages as a time when church orthodoxy obliterated the marketplace of ideas—a time when political philosophy was really needed. But nowadays, with everyone on their mobile devices and contemplating their various options for where to dine out and whom to dine with, the need for political theorists seems less necessary. And yet, every era has its own particular cave, as invisible to its inhabitants as it is dismissed by succeeding generations.

The relatively new cave that political philosophers want us to notice is known as neoliberalism, an economic theory developed by Friedrich Hayek and then embraced by the University of Chicago School of Economics in the 1970s. Better known in this country as “Reaganomics,” neoliberalism operates under the assumption that markets make better decisions than government bureaucracies. Neoliberal leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet, privatized national industries and cut social services.

The effect on political culture was profound. With everything framed in terms of economic efficiencies, political values, such as deliberation and collaboration, bordered on extinction. Instead of practicing collective life, a society of individuals competed with each other for personal advantage.

Neoliberalism rewrote the metaphor of the cave: instead of looking at the same shadows on the wall, each cave dweller is fixated on their individual screen. At least in the ancient cave we might have rolled our collective eyes at the stupidity of the protagonist or found ourselves weeping in unison. Even the industrialized cave, described by Marx, provided the basis for a common experience. Once the workers saw how they were each alienated from their labor, they would rise up and demand better conditions in the cave. By making us think that our natural condition is separate, neoliberalism destroys the very possibility for collective action. Under neoliberalism, we aren’t just alienated from our labor. Rather, the I is alienated from the We.

Michel Foucault was one of the first political philosophers to raise the alarm about these new conditions. In a series of lectures in the late 1970s he spoke about a type of power that used “techniques oriented towards individuals and intended to rule them in a continuous and permanent way.” This “pastoral power” wasn’t an entirely new way of organizing the masses: Christian kings had used it successfully for centuries to guide their flock. However, when pastoral power was combined with market rationality the result was dangerously antipolitical. Where the medieval rulers moved the flock toward a shared and blessed future, the neoliberal rulers moved each member into total isolation.

Since Foucault’s time, the situation has become even more dire. According to contemporary political theorist Wendy Brown, entire “vocabularies, principles of justice, political cultures, habits of citizenship, practices of rules, and above all, democratic imaginaries” are slipping away. Political questions such as “What do we need to improve our neighborhoods?” have been displaced by “How can I get ahead?” With all aspects of existence described in individual terms, we can’t see ourselves as anything but isolated players in a highly competitive game. This is even true in higher education, argues Brown, where college administrators have abandoned political conceptions of life for the metrics of the marketplace.

Brown’s concerns are well founded. Under the Obama Administration, colleges and universities are required to report average student debt and expected earnings for their graduates. It makes sense, then, that college students would come to see themselves in purely economic terms. Who can afford to invest their time reading Plato or Foucault? The denizens of the neoliberal college do not have the leisure to think politically, but must figure out the cost and benefits of studying a particular major.

It would appear that we have become the very society that Foucault predicted would emerge under neoliberal policies. “We are at the civilizational turning point that neoliberal rationality marks,” concludes Brown, pointing to its deep antihumanism and surrender to a condition of human impotence. Normally, this would be a time when political philosophy flew in for the rescue, but with so few undergraduates investing their time in political theory, who will free us now? Has political philosophy finally met its match under neoliberalism?

While I share Foucault’s and Brown’s concerns, I’m too much a student of Aristotle to cede our natural political instincts. Even in this era of handheld devices and precarious economics, collective political action has not been erased. If anything, we’re seeing an upswing in democratic action, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. The individuals who participate in these social movements are not alienated from each other but are compelled to act together. They find themselves having to organize themselves and make collective decisions. The conditions of the neoliberal cave, like the conditions of Marx’s capitalist cave, provoke a social response.

Black Lives Matter, for example, has used the conditions of police violence against unarmed black persons to organize toward greater political action. By challenging police violence, Black Lives Matter threatens the most invidious quality of neoliberalism: the process of individualization, when each person is obsessed with his or her isolated screen. When everyone’s eyes are on the same disturbing event, the audience discovers its power. Earlier protests expressed outrage at what the state was doing, with calls like “No justice, no peace.” As the group realized its strength, the line shifted to Kendrick Lamar’s “We’re gonna be alright.” Like Marx’s proletariat, protestors began by focusing on what was being done to them and then began imagining what they could do for themselves.

If social movements respond to real world events, not to lectures delivered by erudite philosophers in refined auditoriums, why do we need political philosophy?

Political theory’s enduring contribution is its capacity to step out of an existing framework and offer a different set of values. As my dissertation advisor Nick Xenos recently said, political theorists do not study the Thing. We study the Thing behind the Thing. In other words, we study the Thing that runs the projector. Where social movements organize around the disturbing events on the screen, political theory asks, “What does police violence tell us about the crisis of capitalism?” We study patterns of control across centuries in order to assess the current manifestations. We study the past so that we can think beyond the syntax of the present.

Political theory becomes crucial when social movements are asked to speak to the larger public. This is particularly true of Occupy Wall Street, which is often dismissed for not having achieved any goals. Looked at from the rubric of neoliberalism, where success is defined as “meeting one’s objective,” OWS clearly failed. But explored under the values of democratic philosophy, where success means developing political habits and enlarging a group’s political imagination, OWS clearly succeeded.

Even with groups with clearly articulated goals, such as Black Lives Matter, social movements run the risk of winning battles and losing the war. If community policing is instituted in this country, it will need a different set of principles than were developed under neoliberalism. Most of the tough tactics used by police were developed with the support of black leaders in black neighborhoods that were being destroyed by drug use and crime. These community leaders, like all leaders operating in the cave known as the War on Drugs, believed what the screen told them to believe: that crime was the result of individual actions and personal choices. Black Lives Matter may reject those principles but they need other vocabularies and political imaginaries, to quote Wendy Brown, to explain those noneconomic principles.

In fact, many of the organizers of Black Lives Matter are doing what the organizers of the Civil Rights Movement did: they are developing political habits. They are meeting in church basements and role-playing encounters with the police, who are afraid of getting hurt; and homeowners, who are afraid of riot; and business owners, who are afraid of looting. Building on the lessons learned by Freedom Riders in the 1960s and AIDS activists in the 1980s and other nonviolent organizers who use creativity and imagination to resist the logic of the marketplace, organizers in Black Lives Matter are increasing our collective capacity for democratic action. And while the habits are themselves liberating, one still needs the political principles to anchor these habits outside the cave.

Political theorizing, a capacity we all share, reminds us that we can think beyond the logic of whatever rationality is keeping us shackled to the shadows of the day. Even the tightly ordered neoliberal cave, with its insistent demands for productivity and efficiency, will not keep us from our political natures. The world reliably gives us the conditions to be more than the sum of our individual anxieties. We just need to see ourselves as political actors: the sort of people who know that what they create is infinitely more interesting than anything being projected on the screen.

Meg Mott teaches political theory at Marlboro and is director of Speech Matters, a semester intensive that investigates a single issue through the many ways it is talked about (see Fall 2015 Potash Hill). 

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Up from Substance Use Prevention

“If you come in from a perspective of ‘this substance will only destroy your life’ you are creating an environment of shame—you are only keeping people further disconnected,” said sophomore Ariana Rodrigues-Juarbe, a student in Speech Matters last fall. She presented her final project, a ‘zine on how we talk about substance use in our society, at a public forum by eight students from the semester intensive at the Marlboro College Graduate Center in December. Ariana’s emphasis is on turning “prevention into comprehension,” or to take Meg’s metaphor one step further, to step outside the cave of “Just Say No.” “It all came together with the idea that if we want to actually address substance use, we have to understand that not everyone is coming from the same place, both in how they use, and in what that use means in their life,” said Ariana. See video excerpts from the public forum.

By Kelly Hickey

The feminist movement in the 1970s suffered from serious divisions, based on race and class, in cities across the nation. Through the oral histories of feminist activists from the region, senior Kelly Hickey explores how Vermont provided a unique environment and a haven for the movement.

During the second-wave feminism of the 1970s, American women across the socioeconomic spectrum fought against the insufficiency of their domestic identity of “wife and mother.” It would be easy to assume a coalition between middle-class activists and working-class women during that time, but the reality is far more complex. With notable exceptions, the vast disconnect between women solely fighting sexism and those with added layers of oppression, especially class and race, proved too difficult to overcome for most second-wave feminists. Why did attempts to be more inclusive fail? How does our collective memory of second-wave feminism reflect the reality of its exclusivity?

These questions become more manageable when examined locally. Southern Vermont served as a hotbed for radical political and social activities in the ’70s, with activists from cities nationwide moving “back to the land” in attempts to heal their broken society. I spoke with a range of women from Brattleboro, Putney, Guilford, and Marlboro, to find out more. They were involved in communes, art communities, women’s health services, and legal counsel. All of them spoke eagerly and candidly about their activities in the ’70s, with the hindsight to truly analyze them, and they were each interested in and excited for class-based activism in the present day. All the women I spoke with were delightful, and I owe a great deal to their willingness to share.

Their stories corroborate other accounts from more-public figures, but certain particularities make them unique. Firstly, and perhaps foremost, Vermont was largely rural in the ’70s, and remains so to a vast degree today. Much of the city-based organizing of groups like Cell-16 and the Redstockings, radical feminist groups with socialist ideologies that included class struggle, was impossible here. Cities hold lots of energy, but rurality has its benefits too. The archetype of the Vermont farm woman carries with it strength and resilience. Women here were already working alongside men when feminists in cities pushed for workplace equity. They already did hard physical labor, and mechanical or technical work that no city woman would be expected to do. When activists from the city arrived in Vermont, they felt at home.

“We were all doing things like fixing cars and carrying wood, stuff like that,” said Vermont State Representative Mollie Burke, who moved to Vermont in 1970 and has been active in the Brattleboro community as an artist and teacher. “Things traditionally associated with guys. So I think we thought, this is a liberation, of sorts. To feel like you’re not gender-bound by anything that you do.” That hard-work ethic was a treasured part of Vermont feminism that continues to this day.

Along with rural living, feminists in Vermont had particular opportunity in terms of inclusion. Most farm workers and small-town dwellers at the time were working class, and the activists and organizers who migrated here were mostly college-educated children of the middle class. There was vast opportunity for cross-class dialogue, which occurred only in a limited sense, but which surely affected the flavor of local feminist organization as compared to feminist groups in other regions.

Of course, Vermont populations were, and still are, almost entirely white, so feminism in the region had little to deal with in terms of racial tension. The lack of racial diversity couldn’t be considered an asset to any burgeoning social movement, but it is a fact that influenced the way women’s liberation organizations were run. Instead of hearing directly from women of color, in many cases Vermont feminists had to sympathize from afar with situations quite removed from their daily lives. Isolation could be difficult in other ways, as women in rural Vermont had fewer interactions with other politically active women than did women living in, say, New York.

Feminist women in rural Vermont certainly lived a different existence than many city-based feminists in the ’70s. Those who could afford to attend conferences and trainings elsewhere, those who could spend time and money on higher education, and those in professional networks kept the rest of the women connected to feminist movements across the nation. In Vermont, as in other rural areas, the middle class served as the links in a network of poor or otherwise marginalized women.

Certain issues in particular did ignite cross-class coalition among women. One of the most serious and significant of these was violence against women. The Women’s Crisis Center in Brattleboro, and presumably other women’s health clinics around the country, provided safe space for women to talk about their abuse, their fears, and their needs. Women realized that domestic violence was an issue for all of them, regardless of background.

The Honorable Patricia Whalen is a local judge who founded the Rural Women Leadership Institute of Vermont and served on the International Criminal Tribunal for Bosnia. In the ’70s, Patti worked at the Women’s Crisis Center, which she helped found, providing legal aid to low-income women. She described one incident where a wealthy woman with beautiful clothes came to the center, and the other women resented her right away. She was very attractive and had no outward signs of being beaten like the others.

“She said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. My husband would never do that to me, because he would never want the public to see that he hit me,’” recounted Patti. “And then she just pushed her sleeve up, and she said, ‘No, he just put his cigarettes out on me all the time.’ She was just horribly burned and scarred. And the women were like, ‘Holy crap, my husband never did that to me. Wait a minute, that’s, like, really bad.’ And so there was always common ground found in stuff.”

As these crisis centers started to use consciousness-raising circles as healing spaces for women, more cross-class interactions and sympathies became possible. Violence against women is more prevalent in lower economic brackets, and working-class women also tend to need more legal assistance and time in shelters after leaving abusive partners. But while most of the long-term clients of the crisis center were working-class women, middle-class and wealthy women who visited the clinic for shorter-term support were able to participate in an open and honest cross-class dialogue.

Abortion rights groups and advocates of accessible birth control options also managed to initiate dialogue across class lines, as unwanted pregnancy and family planning are issues with which all sorts of women can identify.

In the end, however, working-class women still didn’t have even close to the options of their middle-class sisters. Mollie Burke experienced the radical ’70s as more of a personal evolution than a group consciousness-raising. Her story of working in a male-dominated, blue-collar environment epitomizes the difference between working-class women and the educated middle class, even in Vermont.

“I worked as a waitress, briefly. I was a terrible waitress,” said Mollie, laughing. “There were other women who worked at this restaurant, that no longer exists, and one woman had six children. And the kid, who was the son of the owner, would boss these women around, and call them ‘girls.’ I mean, it was horrible. But I could get out, you know. They needed to stay.” And truly, education was the pith of it. Many of these activists had no more money than the women they worked alongside and for, but they had the family and educational safety nets to change course when necessary.

In her work at the Women’s Crisis Center and in the region, Patti Whalen has had an intimate perspective on the divergence between poor women and middle-class feminists. She described a shift in consciousness of the middle-class volunteers at the center, from collaborating with low-income feminists to fighting for their own issues.

“I think everybody understood, in a way, that we were going to get a seat at the table,” said Patti. “And then when we got a seat at the table, we were all of a sudden going to chair the table.”

The activists who flocked to Vermont to eschew society in the early ’70s realized their potential power—as members of that very same structure. Patti went on to name women she worked with, women who moved on to run nonprofit organizations, who serve in the legislature, who work for other leading activists and politicians. The welfare fight wasn’t being won, and middle-class feminists developed other priorities. They turned to the Equal Rights Amendment with full force, and the failure to ratify that bill stymied any further momentum across classes.

International women’s rights movements began to pick up at the end of the decade, with more frequent UN conferences and greater popular awareness of rights violations around the world. Issues like child brides and female genital mutilation were easy to oppose for American women across class lines. Yet even in Vermont, which had its unique chapter in the history of feminism, it seems this international outreach has done little to unite women across classes on national feminist issues.

Kelly Hickey is a senior at Marlboro working on a Plan of Concentration in oral history and visual arts. This article is excerpted from a paper that is a work in progress toward Kelly’s Plan, originally written for the Politics of Change class. 

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Radicals in These Hills

Kelly and other Marlboro students presented their oral history projects in a public event at the Campus Center in December, titled “Radicals in These Hills,” the culmination of their course Politics of Change: Radical Movements of the Late 20th Century. Taught by theater professor Brenda Foley and American studies professor Kate Ratcliff, the class was part of a pilot for a far-reaching collaborative project produced by Vermont Performance Lab (VPL), in partnership with Green Mountain Crossroads (GMC) and the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project. This partnership is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Samara Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation. VPL theater artist Ain Gordon and HB Lozito of GMC co-directed the class, and many of the oral histories were made possible by VPL’s connections to the local community. “The class is part of a larger vision for a Center for Performing Arts and Social Practice that links coursework and community engagement with VPL artists’ research,” says Sara Coffey ’90, VPL founder and director. “One of the many things we hope to create is an archive on local radical movements, a resource for the broader community that will include students’ work, oral histories, and archival materials.” See a video of the whole event. 

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Small Town Pride

“The Andrews Inn appears to be Vermont’s answer to the Stonewall Inn, a haven for LGBTQ people to be out and proud, to socialize, be free, have sex,” says senior Rainbow Stakiwicz (pictured with interviewee Eva Mondon), a student in last fall’s Politics of Change class. She did her oral history project on the Bellows Falls gay bar, which thrived through “the long 1970s” until closing in 1982 under mysterious circumstances. “It lives in legend and lore, but its life is largely undocumented, considering that it was well known all along the East Coast.” With the help of Robert McBride of the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project and Vermont Performance Lab, Rainbow was able to speak to some of the patrons who are still around. They remember the inn with fondness as a place where they could express themselves at a time when, in most places, they could not. Her project culminated in a short piece of theater based on her findings. See a video of a reading. 

By Jay Craven

Like all Americans, I was shocked by the recent ISIS attacks in Paris, Beirut, Mali, and Egypt, and by mass shootings in Colorado Springs and San Bernardino. Some presidential candidates insist this is the start of World War III—and urge an all-out response.

While I understand the sentiment to rush to war, we shouldn’t forget that World War I laid the groundwork for the cataclysm of World War II. Our own Iraq War created conditions that still fuel conflict today. And gun violence right here at home has claimed 406,000 lives since 9/11—far more than terrorism and war.

Just days after 9/11, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Halberstam attended an urgent meeting of current and former U.S. intelligence officials who insisted upon two things. “Do not do what they want you to do,” they warned. “Do not go to war.” Second, they urged leaders to “dry up the swamp” through constructive engagement, to peel away from insurgents people of aspiration and good will, to show alternatives to people plagued by decades of war, poverty, illiteracy, and suppression of women, progressives, and minorities.

Leaders say that moderate Muslims are the key to peace. And if that’s true, we must find ways to actually support this group, to show that wealthy nations are prepared to invest substantially in social and economic progress as an alternative to war.

When I had a lunch meeting with historian Howard Zinn just weeks before he died in 2010, he recalled lessons he’d learned as a decorated World War II bombing pilot over France, lessons that led him to oppose war. He lamented the 85 million people who were killed by 20th-century wars, the more recent spread of war, foreign intervention and occupation, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism—including domestic bombings and mass shootings.

“The only solution,” Zinn said, “is to abolish war, to mount a call equal to the movement to abolish slavery. The enemy is not a group or nation; the enemy is militarism itself.”

President Kennedy made a similar point in his historic speech at American University when he argued against a peace “enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” He spoke instead of “the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living...not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

I hope we can embrace this challenge to quell violence through imagination, not force. I have to believe it’s not too late.

Jay Craven is professor of film and video studies and director of Movies from Marlboro, the semester intensive program that is spending spring 2016 filming Wetware, a noir thriller based on the novel by Craig Nova. This editorial was delivered on VPR on December 9, 2015.

 

Much Ado About Shakespeare

When Molly Booth ’14 first wrote a time-traveling, young adult story as part of her Plan of Concentration, she had no idea it would blossom into a full-length novel. Now, with a two-book deal under her belt, she can fall back on the skills learned in Plan to write as if “all the world’s a stage.”

It would be hard for Molly Booth to match the thrill of finishing the first draft of her book Saving Hamlet as a junior at Marlboro. “I had electricity shooting all through my limbs,” she says. “I couldn’t stop grinning. I gave myself the rest of the night off from schoolwork, which was an extremely indulgent act, at Marlboro particularly, but I was celebrating.”

If anything could equal that rush of excitement for Molly, it was signing a two-book deal with Disney-Hyperion publishing company last March, just months after her graduation. Saving Hamlet, the story of a 15-year-old girl who travels through space and time to help Shakespeare on the original debut of Hamlet at London’s Globe playhouse, is due to come out in November 2016. Molly’s second book, Nothing Happened, a teen adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, is scheduled for fall 2017.

The inspiration for Molly to write a full-length novel as part of her Plan started with a fiction workshop with T. Wilson, who encouraged her to keep writing. She then took a tutorial with T., while at the same time studying lesser-known Shakespeare plays with theater professor Paul Nelsen. The latter included Shakespeare history, and, a stage manager herself, Molly became enthralled with The Globe and its backstage.

“Those two tutorials just kind of melded together nicely in my brain,” says Molly, who, loving young adult fiction herself and having worked with teens at a summer camp, liked the idea of writing for that age group. When Brian Mooney ’90 took over for T.’s sabbatical during her junior year, Molly learned to “write write write,” and soon she had a novel. “That’s the beautiful thing about Marlboro. All of your interests and passions start weaving together. I really feel it all led to where I am now.”

Since graduating, Molly has been living the writer’s life in Portland, Maine, which she finds to be a great city with cheap rent, beautiful walks, and lots of activism in the community. “It feels good to be writing a book again. Throwing myself into something with everything I’ve got. Catching pieces of thoughts and transcribing them into phrases and sentences that I hope will help and connect people. There’s nothing I love more.”

She tries to make herself write for a few hours a day, and when she gets in the “zone,” she plants herself down and writes like there is no tomorrow. “Never interrupt the flow when you’ve got it going—Plan taught me that.” When she’s not working on her book, she does some substitute teaching and contributes to feminist entertainment websites like HelloGiggles and The Mary Sue. “I like having a lot of projects to work on at once. That way, if I’m stuck, I can switch to another one and shake it up. Plan taught me that too.”

Molly is most looking forward to teens actually reading her book and sharing their thoughts. “Writing a book is a solitary process; you’ve just heaved your soul onto the pages, and you want to know what that really created. I can’t wait.”

Check out what Molly and two other recent alumni had to say about transitioning to the world beyond Potash Hill, during last October's Open House and Family Day events. Also, see what's come from alumni writers in the past year in Book Shelf.

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Class notes are listed by year and include both graduates and nongraduates; the latter are listed under the class with which they are associated.

’51
“Our year was richly enhanced with two different and memorable trips abroad—both European river cruises,” writes CHARLES STAPLES. “The first was a Danube cruise from Passau to Budapest, preceded by a two-day visit to Prague, and the second was in France, a ten-day trip on the Seine River. We continue to be very involved in our Chicago community of Hyde Park and the First Unitarian Church. Joan is still singing, and I still volunteer at the Chicago Cultural Center. We are ‘museum junkies,’ admiring many genres.”

’52
ELMER and GERTRUDE PINION GREEY write, “This year we celebrated 63 years of marriage, and our 87th birthdays. We’re both still active in church. Elmer volunteers at U.S. National Arboretum, and with master gardeners. Gertrude occasionally helps church music—an organist for 25 years. We have five living children, 23 grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.”

’55
The first Marlboro student to graduate with a concentration in painting, artist LINN BRUCE was featured in an exhibit at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in November and December. The show, Stories in Color: Linn Bruce, offered a sampling of work spanning six decades. According to Nora Williams, curator, Bruce’s paintings “exploit the ability of color to evoke emotional and symbolic associations, as well as to describe the world.”

’63
“Still teaching at University College at Rockland (U-Rock),” writes Jonathan Potter. “Currently my course is a history of theatre. Next semester will be an acting class. Just had some poetry published in the Goose River Anthology.”

’66
WESLEY WARD writes, “The new president has made a great start, and the Northern Borders premium is much appreciated. Keep on trucking, Marlboro.”

’67
“Early winter with snow—so nice to see after a horrendous fire season,” writes JENNIE TUCKER. “All is well here in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon.”

SPOTT RANDOLPH reports that he is now a consultant working with car collectors. He writes, “Moved to Florida in 2008, where I ran the office for a propellor shop.”

’68
“Best wishes to all on the hill,” writes WILLIAM "GUY" CAIN. “I hope to get back to campus sometime in 2016, and would love to meet Kevin.”

“I am still actively engaged in theater and therapy,” writes DINAH LANE. “Working with a small, town-funded family therapy team in Burlington, Massachusetts, and recently appointed artistic director of the Latham Players, a performance group of adults on Cape Cod with Prader-Willi syndrome. Enjoying it all.”

’69
JOHN DEVANEY exhibited his artwork at Robert Foster Fine Art, on Nantucket, in August. He talks about discovering theater in college in a profile in Yesterday’s Island/Today’s Nantucket, reprinted from a 2003 article. “A up touring for about eight years, and also had its own theater in Brattleboro. That was a social focus for me, too, because my friends in college were the ones I ended up working with, virtually 24 hours a day.” See the profile. John will have a solo show in Midtown Manhattan, at Gallery 35NYC, in April, with a reception on April 9 from 6 to 8 pm. See some of his work at johndevaney.com.

WENDY NUTE ISHII writes, “It was such a wonderful treat to meet President Kevin Quigley, Alumni Director Kathy Waters, and several new faculty members, and to see old friends from my Marlboro years on my recent visit in October—all capped by a delightful stay at the Whetstone Inn cradled in Jean Boardman’s warmth and hospitality and a sinfully delectable breakfast.”

’71
CHRISTINE HUDSON ABRAMS writes, “Still live on Martha’s Vineyard; see SOO WHITING ’67 at the post office, JENNIE GREEN ’68 around town, and other Marlboro folk.”

’72
“We were surprised to hear the special on Marlboro College on NPR,” writes HAROLD ZAKON. “Keep up the good work, and good luck with your new plan for admissions. I would be happy to visit with any potential applicants from Austin.”

’76
KATHLEEN SMITH reports that she is “fulltime faculty at Rhode Island College, School of Nursing, in Providence.”

’78
SARAH EDWARDS is now living in Ohio and is the executive director for Simply Living (simplyliving.org), an organization that works to create a compassionate and sustainable world through personal, community, and cultural transformation. She writes, “I will always be grateful for my education from Marlboro. It was the only college I applied to. I was rejected, because I could hardly compose a sentence. Confused, I telephoned and said, ‘But I thought you were in the business of teaching people how to write. I need and want to learn how to write.’ The rejection turned into an acceptance, and writing is a big part of what I do in the world.”

NATHANIEL SIMKINS writes, “Began showing new paintings at gallery in New Bedford this year and plan on becoming a member in 2016. New work is based on life painting around Wareham and Onset.”

’80
ROSE CROWLEY CHRISTIAN writes, “Love the Renaissance Scholars concept. Good luck, Quigley.”

CARY BARNEY is currently director of the fine and performing arts department at Saint Louis University’s campus in Madrid. “I teach dramatic literature, acting, creative writing, and sometimes playwriting. I also direct a play each semester, most recently one of my own, Lance & Lana, a modern take on Georg Büchner’s Leonce and Lena. Doing theater on a shoestring at Marlboro was good training for this. My son Sam is in his first year studying history at the Universit. de Toulouse. In the past couple of years I’ve enjoyed visits from INEZ McDERMOTT ’79 and DIANE GAGER ’82. I’d love to hear from anyone passing through Madrid.”

’81
“I’m a psychotherapist in private practice in the Midwest,” writes JOANNA HOCHFELDER. “Attended Tulane University after Marlboro College. Marlboro is a unique place of learning that will always be close to my heart.”

’82
REBECCA JERVIS LEEMAN writes, “Besides leading a team of seven midwives, including doing clinical practice of midwifery and women’s health, I started singing in a group in Albuquerque, a global choir— secular folk. True to the Vermonter in me, I introduced some shape-note tunes into our repertoire. Singing in Arabic, Bulgarian, and other throat-opening dialects keeps life interesting. Shout-out to Marlboro friends.”

’83
XENIA WILLIAMS writes, “The most recent big Renaissance project in Vermont was a scheme by the big Burlington medical complex—then called Fletcher Allen Health Care—for new buildings and a parking garage with illegal aspects in its funding. Big scandal—the FAHC president went to jail.”

’86
“ANDERS NEWCOMER received his MAT in January 2015, from UMass Dartmouth,” writes his mom, Grace. “He teaches English at Greater New Bedford Vocational Technical High School.”

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Conserving Wetland Values: Rebecca Chalmers ’98

“Approximately 20 years ago I found and recorded vernal pools around Marlboro,” says Rebecca Chalmers, who graduated in 1998 with a Plan of Concentration on amphibian ecology and conservation. “Now I am tasked with protecting those very pools.”

As a district wetland ecologist for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, Rebecca helps identify and protect approximately 100,000 acres of wetlands and buffer zones in southern Vermont. Along with delineating wetland boundaries and identifying hydrophytic (water-loving) plants, hydric soils, and hydrology, Rebecca assesses the important wetland “functions and values” identified by the state—things like wildlife habitat, erosion control, and surface and ground water protection.

“I love the quiet in a wetland infrequently traversed by people. The plants seem so vibrant, in song somehow, when I’m in a diverse, healthy community,” says Rebecca. “This year I discovered new populations of a federally endangered plant and a rare salamander, both in the same wetland. I get to be outside in beautiful places, and I learn from everyone I meet.”

Rebecca is often required to negotiate with permit applicants to come up with alternate plans that have less environmental impact to wetlands. Permits may be for something as simple as a deck, as large as a cross-state power supply line, or as complex as a mountainside resort that affects dozens of wetlands in multiple ways.

When she is not traipsing through tamarack–red maple swamps, Rebecca enjoys camping, canoeing, bicycling, and exploring outside with her family. “Advocacy for the hearing disabled is a newfound passion,” says Rebecca. “I plan to use my regulatory experience to help others.”

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’90
“We like to call ourselves an incubator,” says SARA COFFEY, founder and director of Vermont Performance Lab, in an interview on Vermont Public Radio. “We are an incubator for new work in contemporary dance, theater, and music.” Learn more.

“My first novel was published by Green Writers Press of Brattleboro this fall,” writes BRETT ANN STANCIU (see Book Shelf). “I was at my niece’s graduation in May 2014, and it was such a pleasure to see Marlboro looking so fine. Furthermore, Andrew Delbanco’s speech reminded me all over again just why I am so fortunate to have attended this great college.”

’91
“Life is beautiful,” writes JUNO LAMB. “Potash Hill is a lovely, well-designed magazine, a pleasure to read. So sweet to see old Marlboro friends at the JALF evening—a joy.”

“I have done a good bit of work treating Tibetan refugees for hepatitis B, which is a fairly serious epidemic in Tibet,” writes ANNA ABELE, a naturopathic doctor practicing in West Brattleboro. She has quite a few friends in the Tibetan community in Western Massachusetts, where she lives, and she was sought out by a monk from the Chungpo region because she had treated a nun from his monastery. “My long-term goal would be to go over there and/or have some monks or nuns come here to apprentice with the herb farm where many of these herbs are grown.”

’92
“I recently published a book with Cambridge University Press, entitled Foreign Opera at the London Playhouses, from Mozart to Bellini,” writes CHRISTINA FUHRMANN (see Book Shelf). “This is the culmination of my love for research, which all began with my Plan at Marlboro.” Learn more.

JENNIFER CHANDLER-WARD is founder and director of the Multicultural Teaching Institute, a conference that looks at the intersection of teaching and identity. Jenna leads workshops on issues of race, privilege, and unconscious bias in schools and institutions around New England. Learn more.

’94
BECKY WATSON MOKOS writes, “What a great reunion. So nice to see everyone, and thanks to all who made it happen.”

’95
“It feels good to be in touch,” writes MARYA PLOTKIN. “I do keep in touch with some alumni, like RACHEL PORTESI AHO ’98, AMY HEARD ’96, CORIN CUMMINGS. I have moved back to the US as of about one year ago, after living in Tanzania for the last six years. I work in public health research. I had actually just written requesting a transcript, because I am applying to a doctoral program here in North Carolina.”

KRISTIN ANDERSON’s organization MANOS continues to help bring nursing expertise to women and children in Nicaragua, most recently teaching a course in “essential care for every baby” at the Mesoamerican Pediatric Congress in Managua. See their new website, designed by Kristin.

’96
JANAN COMPITELLO GUILLAUME writes, “Mendel and I had our first child—Mendel Isaac—on October 20, 2014.”

’97
“I’m still loving my job at The Commons newspaper in Brattleboro,” writes WENDY LEVY. “Who knew it was the perfect job for me? I’ve had the opportunity to interview all sorts of interesting people, including Jerry Levy, when he debuted his play, The Third Coming: Marx Returns. It was a treat to go back to Jerry’s house after so many years and chat with him. The ethos of Marlboro helped me feel comfortable talking to pretty much anyone, from a neighborhood shopkeeper to a member of congress.”

JENN KARSTAD writes, “For over the past year I have been working hard at the Anna Marsh Behavioral Care Clinic, the outpatient mental health program of the Brattleboro Retreat, as a program therapist. Psychotherapy is an amazingly rewarding field, and I work with some of the most dedicated professionals I have ever known. JODI CLARK ’95 and I bought the house of DARRELL WILLIAMS ’92 in the summer of 2014, and it is just about the most perfect place for us. Stop by anytime.”

’98
In November, NORA DANIEL exhibited her work at Art@ 43023, a cooperative gallery in Granville, Ohio. “Her work, which has won awards from the Ohio Arts Council and was exhibited in the Governor’s mansion, has a unique compositional and coloristic style,” said publicity for the show.

’02
“I’m thrilled to report that Seth and I welcomed our second daughter, Prudence Kathleen, in May 2015,” writes SHANA DUNCAN. “Prudence is quite possibly the world’s most delightful baby, and Edie has excitedly embraced her role as big sister. In addition to becoming a big sister, Edie is now a kindergartener at the Chinese American International School, here in San Francisco. We’re feeling very proud—and wondering where all the time has gone.”

MELANIE GOTTLIEB writes, “I just left my institutional role to accept the deputy director position at AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officials) in August. I direct marketing and communications for the association, and lead the international education and services division.”

’03
“We were inspired to give to Marlboro again after reading about the Renaissance Scholars program,” write LARA KNUDSEN and CHRISTOPHER JONES ’05. “It seems to redirect focus to the relationship between students and faculty, which was the aspect of Marlboro we both loved best (a teacher, a book, and a log...).”

“I am still living in Providence, Rhode Island, and in my fifth year of teaching movement in the Brown/Trinity MFA programs for acting and directing,” writes SHURA BARYSHNIKOV. “I’ve had a busy performance year, appearing this past fall in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in Boston with Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston and co-founding Doppelganger Dance Collective, a duets dance project focused on the creation and performance of new choreographic works. I am incredibly busy, working both the creative and administrative side of things, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. My daughters are also thriving and will soon both be towering over me. Learn more at shurabaryshnikov.com and doppelgangerdancecollective.com.

’04
ABBY CASE FITZGERALD is the founder and principal of Yellow Arrows, LLC, an innovative consulting services company dedicated to working with higher education administrators in the areas of admissions and marketing, data and operations, and strategy and innovation. Prior to starting Yellow Arrows, Abby spent almost a decade working in admissions at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts.

’05
“I see this as an award for Calcutta Kids and the outstanding work that our team does day in and day out in the slum community in which we work,” said NOAH LEVINSON, who was one of the recipients of the Caring Award in October. Noah founded Calcutta Kids in 2002, as part of his internship for the World Studies Program, and since then has been providing health and nutrition services to pregnant women, mothers, and their children in underserved slums in and around Kolkata, India. Read more.

“I have found my calling, after starting as a Marlboro student interested in philosophy, religion, and psychology,” writes CHRISTOPHER GRENIER. “Now I am a chaplain at a state psychiatric hospital. Some ministers say that they see Jesus in the faces of their parishioners, but I meet Jesus every day in the persons of my patients, especially those who say, ‘Hello, I am Jesus!’”

’06
“Rob and I had our first child, Arthur, almost a year ago now,” writes SARAH WAGGONER ZIMMERMAN. “I am also excited to announce that—in addition to my respectable day job of nurse practitioner— I have started moonlighting as the poetry editor for Friends Journal, a monthly magazine of Quaker life and thought. Only Marlboro could turn out a biology major prepared to take on poetry and theology. I’m so grateful.”

“As of this past August, I’m finally back in school,” writes JOCELYN DELMAN MOSSER. “I’m enrolled at Appalachian State University, and very excited to be pursuing licensure in the state of North Carolina to practice counseling. Meanwhile, I’m still making art with my sister, teaching yoga, and working as a marketing consultant and graphic designer on the side. Greg and I bought a sweet little farm outside Asheville, North Carolina, where we continue to adore one another.” Learn more at JosieMosserYoga.com, AbacusCorvus.com, and CrowboatCreative.com.

’08
“Some days we’re setting up and we hear eagles calling to each other, and we run out and look up,” says KIT HARRINGTON in a recent New York Times article. “Kids are the best at sharing in joy and wonder.” The article features the “preschool without walls” she founded in Seattle, called Fiddleheads Forest School, now in its third year. Find out more.

CARA DOWNEY has been an employee at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center since 2009, working in a Phase I Clinical Trials Chemotherapy Unit. She writes, “I am enrolled in a mental health counseling program at Pace University and currently completing my clinical internship at New York Presbyterian Payne Whitney Clinic. I also developed and facilitated an intergenerational group at the White Plains LGBT Center. The group focused on bringing together people of different ages with the goal of community building.”

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Sharing the Human Experience of War: Brandon Willitts ’12

The year after he graduated from Marlboro with a Plan in literature and writing, Brandon Willits founded Words After War, a literary organization with a mission to bring veterans and civilians together to examine war and conflict. He had come to Marlboro after four years in the military, and believed that a deeper empathy between civilians and veterans was necessary and possible through literature.

“From its inception, Words After War has aimed to build an inclusive community that uses literature as a way for civilians and veterans to better discuss war,” says Brandon, who founded the organization with fellow writers Mike McGrath and Matt Gallagher. “I chose writing and books because I knew how instrumental each had been in guiding me toward a fuller understanding of my own experiences with war.”

In two short years, Words After War has hosted more than 40 events with well-known and emerging writers, five semester-long writing workshops, literary mentorships, and monthly book clubs. It’s also held two weeklong, summer writing intensives at Marlboro College, where veterans and civilians participated in workshops and readings with published authors and Marlboro writing professor John Sheehy.

“The opportunity to bring Words After War to Marlboro has felt like my gift back to college for all that it provided me,” says Brandon, who is also vice president and head of internal communications at First Data, a leading payment processor. “Marlboro changed my life, and I want to show others just how special it is.” Learn more at wordsafterwar.org.

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’10
“I am currently in my final year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working toward my master’s in art education, writes ARIELLA MILLER. “I am also a curatorial fellow at SAIC, and will be one of 12 other graduate students curating the 2016 MFA show. In fact, I’m on a team with IAN (GABE) WILSON ’11. It’s a big small world out there. In personal news, I’m recently engaged to my partner of five years, and we’ve set a date. We live together in Chicago with our cat, Ludi.”

"MICHAEL THOMPSON is alive and well, playing guitar in the rock band Silverface in Denver, Colorado,” write his parents, Stephen and Ingrid.

WILLSON GAUL is working as a research assistant in an environmental science graduate program in Wisconsin. He writes, “I am developing plant- and animal-based ecological indicators to evaluate and monitor the health of ecosystems in the Great Lakes. Catching the eye of environmental science graduate professors was difficult, given my writing undergraduate degree. But once I got into the program, I’ve been able to quickly take on exciting parts of large projects because I am able to solve problems and teach myself as needed.”

’11
KARIM LAHLOU is working at Huffington Post, as editor of Men’s Lifestyle. “I work on the branded content team, helping to monetize an international subscription-free news website, which includes in-depth reporting, writing longform articles, and pitching creative story ideas to clients. I’ve often been asked if I would choose a different college if I could go back in time, and the answer has always been a resounding no. I enjoyed every year I spent there, and I owe a great deal of my professional success to the time I spent at Marlboro.”

’12
DREW TANABE is in his first year studying environmental policy at Cambridge University. “It’s the first time I’ve ever attended lectures, which are exciting, boring, and confusing. It is also the first time I’ve had 100 percent of a course grade depend on a single paper at the end, which is incredibly stressful. England is a great place to be, even if it’s a bit dreary and the sun sets early. There’s plenty going on around the university, and it feels criminal to spend an hour doing nothing. If anyone’s in the ‘Old Blighty’ in the spring or summer please let me know.”

BRANDON WILLITTS spoke about returning from war and reentering society at a symposium last October at Wesleyan University, cosponsored by his literary organization Words After War. The daylong symposium, the first of its kind, featured veterans who had served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Yugoslavia, and Kosovo, alongside teachers and others from the writing industry who have focused their careers on writing about war and conflict. These discussions are important, he said, because “war is the human experience, the human story.”

CASEY FRIEDMAN is living his dream of working on a randomized trial of development projects through Innovations for Poverty Action. “Our trial is in rural Western Kenya, a few miles from the Obama family homestead (really), and we have 960 local farm households in the study,” writes Casey. “The researchers are trying to determine what keeps smallholder farmers from figuring out which products are most profitable to use on their farms. Managing and monitoring everything that has to happen on a mercurial but unforgiving agricultural calendar is pretty challenging, but I have an enormously talented local field manager who has been on the trial circuit for five years to take care of most of the details.”

’13
In August, MADDIE HOLM joined Child Hunger Corps, Feeding America’s nationwide service program designed to alleviate child hunger. Maddie is a fulltime corps member at Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine for a two-year assignment, during which she will assess and develop the organization’s capacity and learn about food banks’ vital role in fighting child hunger.

’14
“I’m currently a master’s candidate serving as a volunteer with the first Peace Corps cohort in Comoros in 20 years,” writes NICK DAOU. “I’m working on my PACT degree from SIT, writing a capstone on the inter-island reconciliation process in the Comorian archipelago.”

“I have a level of faith in human reason and the power of communication that often verges on naIve. It is a stubborn faith, but not immune to being shaken. And, lately, it has been severely shaken,” writes AMEE LATOUR, in a January article in CounterPunch titled “When Facts Fail: Can We Change Hearts and Minds?” Amée currently works as a freelance writer and plans to attend graduate school for further work in philosophy. Read more.

’15
Since graduating, NINA RODWIN has been working at the Paul Revere House, in Boston, where she also had an internship the summer before her senior year. “I ended up writing a paper about the history of the subway in Boston that not only became the independent section of my Plan, but also was published in the Paul Revere newsletter. I work with a fun team, and there is always time on the job to learn more about history.”

AMELIA BROWN has started the MBA program at Clarkson University. She writes, “The summer was very busy, but equally rewarding, as I completed my prerequired courses and began to work in the MBA office. It has been really exciting work so far, and I will continue to be their student worker throughout the year…. In all, it’s shaping up to be a fantastic year.”

Graduate and Professional Studies

MAT
JEFF KAGAN MAT-E ’07 “discovered his love of the outdoors and music through a series of odd jobs including a summer counselor at a children’s environmental camp and a youth hostel desk worker,” says an article in 5280, The Denver Magazine. The article describes how Jeff met PAIGE DOUGHTY MAT-E ’07 in the graduate program of Expedition Education Institute, where they were both studying environmental education, and how together they perform music for kids with an environmental angle. See more.

JOSHUA FARBER ’97, MAT-T ’98 says, “I’m currently teaching media literacy, culture and communications, and English in an inner-city STEM school, and a virtual course in Shakespeare. I’m also directing teen musicals in the summers, and serving as a ‘regional challenge master’ for the Global STEM challenge-based competition Destination Imagination. Oh, and thanks to the Clear Writing requirement, I run and write Cover Lay Down, a blog exploring the intersection of culture and communications through cover songs—the second most popular covers blog in the world. Thanks indeed, Marlboro.”

SHANNON MILLER MAT-T ’09 writes, “I recently moved into the position of program manager of Vermont’s Peer Review Program. It’s one of the state’s alternative routes to licensure for candidates with strong content knowledge. The MAT proves useful in this work, as I’ve managed a move to digital portfolio creation and storage. In addition to that, I’ve long valued my coursework in change management and find that it helps me in making shifts to this longstanding program.”

MEL MOTEL MAT-SJ ’11 and ALEX FISCHER MBA ’14 co-founded The Root Social Justice Center in Brattleboro in 2013. The Root is a collectively run office space for social justice–oriented businesses and organizations and a community space for social justice events. Mel and Alex operate their businesses out of The Root: the Just Schools Project (Mel) offers restorative practices training and advising for schools, while Open Bookkeeping (Alex) offers professional bookkeeping and financial services to justice-based businesses and organizations. Learn more about The Root.

COURTNEY RENKEN MAT-SJ ’11 writes, “I am an employee of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, working as the operations lead for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Liberia-U.S. partnership for clinical research on Ebola. This includes three studies: an Ebola vaccine trial, a treatment trial, and a natural history study on Ebola survivors. I oversee these studies and serve as the point of contact for the operations and fieldwork.”

LEO SLOSS MAT-TESOL ’14 moved to Santiago, where he was offered a position at Universidad Andres Bello. “It is a beautiful university with great students and teachers. I couldn’t be happier. It is exactly the kind of opportunity that I hoped the degree from Marlboro would allow for. Life in Chile has been great—I’m really enjoying it. If anyone is looking to teach or travel in Santiago, please let me know.”

BILL BLY ’14, MAT-T ’15 writes, “In addition to working at the United Nations, I have been an adjunct professor at Long Island University, teaching web design and development and Adobe Creative Products, and have taught HCI online at Marlboro College Graduate and Professional Studies. I also have developed and maintain several websites for unions here in New York City.” See one featured.

MBA
A letter in the Brattleboro Reformer read, “Turning Point is profoundly grateful to permaculture specialist CIMBRIA BADENHAUSEN (MBA ’09) for lending her generous and enthusiastic skills in permaculture—environmentally sensitive gardening—as we continue work on our new permanent facility.”

LAURA ZEPPIERI MBA ’11 writes, “Life has been crazy since graduation: lots of travel and getting married. Most recently, I left my job at Vermont Energy Investment Corporation in Burlington and moved to Austin, Texas, with my husband to begin a new job at CLEAResult. This is a fast-growing, energy-efficiency consulting firm, and my new role is as a program specialist, working with the small business program. Austin is an amazing city, and we’re loving it (the warm weather definitely helps).”

MSIE
DON ULINSKI MSIE ’02 writes that he received a Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences from Walden University in 2013.

Former Faculty and Staff

DAVID STAM, former librarian, suggests that anyone interested in an account of his meanderings should read What Happened to Me, by David Stam (Authorhouse 2014).

“If I could really tell you how I felt about Vermont, I wouldn’t have to write books. I write books to figure it out,” says retired writing professor LAURA STEVENSON in a recent VPR interview, highlighting her new book, Liar from Vermont. Laura also shared a reading from Liar at the Rice-Aron Library in October. Hear her interview.

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In Memoriam
As we were in production, we learned that JOHN ROBINSON, who taught philosophy at Marlboro from 1958 to 1969, died in November 2015. According to Tom Tucker ’71, “John’s style was Socratic: lots of questions, class discussion, and a paper or two every term. He was a taskmaster with a steely glint of humor and a Cheshire Cat–like grin. I was hopeless but enthralled.” Tom stayed in touch with John over the years, and enjoyed a visit from him in Oregon a few years ago. “John’s interest in the natural world was unabated, and his appreciation for Powell’s Books, here in Portland, took on weighty proportions. I count myself lucky to have come under his careful and reasoned approach to thinking, thinking about thinking, writing about thinking, and using a pragmatic point of view to lubricate the gears of seemingly opposed mental engines. John was a solid bulwark in my Marlboro College education and my life as a teacher.”

 

 

 

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Book Shelf
“The reality of sustaining large, open spaces is that they are much more than the sum of their parts. The term open spaces, as I use it here, is intended to invoke not only the challenge of physical size but also of time, ecology, culture, and all elements therein. This is a fundamentally different approach to science that reconceptualizes both problems and solutions to generate more timely and effective means of addressing the vast conservation challenges we face today.”
– Charles Curtin, The Science of Open Spaces

The Science of Open Spaces: Theory and Practice for Conserving Large, Complex Systems (Island Press, ISBN 978-1597269933) turns conventional conservation paradigms on their heads. Based on his decades of experience ranging from the arid Southwest to the north Pacific, Charles Curtin ’86 proposes a new way of thinking about complex natural systems that builds on the fundamental physical laws of the universe and creates innovative conservation from the ground up.

 

 

 

 

 

Learning BeagleBone Python Programming (Packt Publishing, ISBN 978-1784399702), by Alexander Hiam ’13, is a user’s guide for the innovative, bare-bones computer curiously named BeagleBone. Alex walks readers through the basics of installing and programming the unit, then dives deeper into BeagleBone’s subsystems and more complex built-in peripherals, demonstrating different ways to receive input, including buttons, sensors, potentiometers, and rotary encoders—a practical guide for any self-respecting geek.

 

 

 

 

Foreign Opera at the London Playhouses, from Mozart to Bellini (Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1107022218) is the culmination of years of research by author Christina Fuhrmann ’92, a professor of music at Ashland University. She explores how 19th-century operas by foreign composers were adapted for London playhouses, often appearing in drastically altered forms that were integral to the transformation of London’s theatrical and musical life.

 

 

 

 

 

Oracle (W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0393077988) is the latest collection of poems from Cate Marvin ’93. Publisher’s Weekly calls Cate’s poems “spectral, charged…a wild, ferocious bunch capable of emotional darkness, bound by a strong poetic ‘I’… a successful call to arms.” The speakers of Oracle occupy the outer-borough cityscape of New York’s Staten Island, where they move through worlds glittering with refuse and peopled by ghosts.

 

 

 

 

 

Missing History: The Covert Education of a Child of the Great Books (Threshold Way Publishing, ISBN 978-0996139106) is an intellectual autobiography in the tradition of St. Augustine’s Confessions. Middlebury professor Kathryn Kramer ’75 revisits her school years to figure out how she was indoctrinated into this classic journey. A recurring presence is Katie’s father and former Marlboro professor Corky Kramer. (See an excerpt in Potash Hill, Summer 2011.)

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden View (Green Writers Press, ISBN 978-0996135702), by Brett Ann Stanciu ’90, is a novel of stark and raw beauty set in the Vermont agrarian landscape. Deeply rooted in the day-to-day realities of life and work on a hardscrabble farm, of ill-fated love and obsession, Brett’s book offers a decidedly realistic view of the inner lives of a young farming family and their financial and emotional struggles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence (McGraw-Hill Education, ISBN 978-0071833066), by Jacob Stoller ’73, is an instructive primer based on interviews with an all-star cast of business leaders. Although the methodology is decades old, The Lean CEO reveals the true power of “Lean” through in-depth interviews with CEOs who have gone beyond tool adoption and established the methodology as a corporate-wide management system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colorful Legacy

The visual arts have long been a source of academic focus and shared pride at Marlboro, and in this area one of the college’s supporters stands out: world-renowned artist Wolf Kahn.

“Marlboro is lucky to have benefited from such a long and fruitful association with Wolf, who has given so generously of his vibrant talents,” says President Kevin Quigley. “His support of visual arts at the college has had a lasting impact.”

Wolf was lured to this region by his friend and fellow artist Frank Stout, who taught at the college for 28 years starting in 1965. He recalls that Frank said of Brattleboro, “It’s a normal community. It’s not an arty town.” Wolf adds, “I liked the idea that we would live in a regular community.”

For decades Wolf has divided his time between his residence in New York City and his summer home in West Brattleboro. He has held many different roles at the college, participating on an academic advisory board during President Ragle’s tenure and serving as an outside examiner for art students completing their Plans of Concentration. In 1992 Wolf endowed a scholarship at the college to be awarded annually to a junior or senior who demonstrates talent in the visual arts.

Former college president Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, whom Wolf describes as “an old friend,” determined soon after she took office in 2004 that the arts faculty and their students were sorely in need of better facilities and supplies. Wolf generously provided funding to complete the welding shed and equip the sculpture studio. More recently, Marlboro received a grant from the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation to construct an on-campus storage facility for the artwork of Frank Stout, who passed away in 2012.

“I’ve always thought Frank to be one of the most talented, underrated painters in America,” Wolf says of the friend who introduced him to Vermont and Marlboro College. “I would like to see much of his work available and kept in good shape.” Now 88 years old, Wolf is still fully occupied as a painter and continues to serve as a Marlboro trustee.

“Liberal arts colleges are an endangered species today, despite being needed more than ever. They teach students to think for themselves beyond a narrow focus and become productive and constructive members of society. Marlboro is an outstanding, indeed unique, liberal arts college. I was totally dedicated to it 58 years ago when I came and am equally dedicated to it today.”

 

 

 

 

“Marlboro College is in my will because future generations of students deserve to experience that uniqueness.”
— Tom Ragle, former president of Marlboro College, 1958–81

Learn more about how you can make a deferred gift to Marlboro, and other giving options, at marlboro.edu/giving/how.