By Deni Béchard ’97  
Photos by Thea Cabreros '13

In Cures for Hunger, Deni Béchard relates the story of growing up in British Columbia with a reckless father who has a mysterious past. In this excerpt Deni’s mother has left his father and moved to Virginia, but he can’t escape the feeling that his father holds the key to understanding himself.

Another card had arrived. It bore glittery words, “Thinking About You.” Inside was his number, nothing else. As if in a movie about prison, I felt like an inmate who receives a gift in which the means of escape are hidden. I left the house and went down the highway to the 7-Eleven.

A storm was blowing in, the sky dark and the power lines swaying. Trucks slowed and chugged into turns where the highways intersected, and after I dialed collect, his voice came thinly onto the line.

We hadn’t spoken in months. He sounded different, reserved and unsure of himself, nothing like what I’d imagined since my mother had confessed his crimes to us.

He asked how I was, and I told him, “I’m okay. I’m just sick of school.”

“Oh,” he said. He asked how my brother and sister were, and I said, “Okay.” I talked a bit about rebuilding an old motorcycle I’d found in the barn where my mother kept her horses and a leather jacket I wanted. But then I ran out of things to say and we were silent for so long that I knew I had to tell him, that I had to share the only thing I could think about.

“Bonnie told me.”

“She told you what?”

“About”—I said—“about your crimes.”

He didn’t speak.

Clouds were moving in, drawing evening with them.

“What did she tell you?”

“She didn’t say much. I was the one who asked. I guess I already knew.”

“You already knew what?”

“That you’d been to jail. I was proud of you. She said you robbed banks.”

Again the long silence. Wind blew through the dust of the parking lot, knocking a crushed Styrofoam cup against the brick wall.

“She said that?” he asked, softly.

“I want to know about what you did.”

“What I did?”

“I want to know everything. It’s amazing. No one else has a father like you.”

He was breathing into the receiver.

“What do you want to know?”

“About the banks. Did you only rob banks?”

“No.”

“What else did you rob?”

“I . . . .” He sighed. “Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“You want to know about this? You’re proud?”

“It’s amazing. I think it’s amazing.”

I’d been almost panting, my heartbeat too fast. I sensed how much of a stranger he was. Four years had gone by, and I’d imagined him as he was before, living in the same house, driving the same car. But from the way he spoke, the care with which he chose his words, I knew he’d changed.

“I robbed banks,” he said. “It’s true. I robbed a lot of banks. And jewelry stores.”

“How many?”

“Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . maybe fifty banks. Armed robbery wasn’t a big deal. It was easy. I only did one bank burglary. That’s different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Burglary is when you go in at night and take everything. You go into the vault. Robbery is with a gun. Anyone can do that. But burglary takes brains.”

The image of him with a gun, robbing a bank as if it were nothing, impressed me, but burglary didn’t interest me at all.

“What about the jewelry stores?”

“Lots of them,” he said as if to please me. “I unloaded what I got with the mob.”

“The mob?”

“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s pretty common. I probably robbed—I don’t know— fifty jewelry stores, too. It was like a job.”

His voice became hoarse, and he coughed. I asked how bank robbery worked, and he told me about surveillance, knowing what time the armored truck came on payday. That’s when the tellers had more money. He hesitated, clearing his throat, and said, “Anyway.”

I could hardly breathe, hardly think of what to ask next. I had so many questions. I wanted him to speak, but he grew silent. Then the words came out of my mouth.

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Rain had begun to fall, striking up the parking lot dust, the sky flat and low and gray, the wind strong.

“No,” he said finally, his voice so hoarse he was almost whispering. “Listen, Deni, I got out of crime because of you guys. I wanted a family. I didn’t want to go back to jail and not see my children. That’s why I stopped.”

“But it’s amazing. I think it’s amazing. No one else has a father like you.”

The downpour began in force, gusting under the overhang, soaking me where I huddled at the phone. Lightning flared beyond the highway, illuminating the cluttered rooftops of a subdivision. Thunder shook the ground, and the line went dead.

I hung up and pulled my jean jacket over my head and ran home.

Deni Béchard’s first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He also writes articles, stories and translations for a number of magazines and newspapers. 

Potash Hill: You grew up in an unusual and, let’s say, at times problematic family. How do you think your upbringing has influenced your writing? 

Deni Béchard: I think that my childhood gave me an interest in subjects that have been present in my writing for a long time: violence, displacement, mysticism, the experience of the outsider, the transformative power of art and just about any sort of extreme behavior. Also, from a young age, I used reading and writing to create a sense of continuity and coherence in my life, and this has become a theme I’ve often explored: the way we use stories to create meaning and fashion identities.

PH: In Cures for Hunger your father tells some truly amazing stories that seem hard to believe. To what degree do you believe them, and what effort did you make to fact-check?

DB: I think that his stories are largely true, though I’m sure that he often exaggerated or adapted them based on whatever he was trying to convey in that particular moment. He retold them often, and depending on his mood or what had happened recently in his life, he emphasized certain details. He might also have claimed to have robbed more banks and jewelry stores than he actually did, but I’m not sure. Most robberies are thought to be committed by serial bank robbers, so 50 doesn’t sound like a lot when we consider that he made a living as a criminal for more than a decade. As for fact-checking, I didn’t do any. A factual account of my father’s life isn’t of use to anyone, and he used so many different names that I’m not sure it could be had. Rather, I wanted to write about the influence that his character and his stories (true or not) had on me, and what it was like to grow up with a bank robber for a father. As a point of interest, Maisonneuve magazine ran an excerpt, and their fact-checker found an article that almost perfectly matched my father’s account of his 1967 burglary in Hollywood.

PH: You wrote your first draft of this memoir soon after your dad passed away, in 1995. What has been your process for completing it in the meantime, and how has it changed?

DB: The memoir in its current form barely resembles the book that I wrote immediately after his death. For about a decade, I worked on it with the intention of making it into a novel before I accepted that I was writing a memoir. Though some of the material from the various versions is still present, the book in its current form took shape during a winter that I spent in Kabul. I was struggling to write about Afghanistan, and one day, standing on the roof of my apartment, it occurred to me that I was failing to see the joy in people’s lives and was focusing excessively on hardship and failure. I thought back to the memoir and realized that I hadn’t told that story properly either, that even though my childhood was chaotic, I’d enjoyed it—in fact, largely because it was so chaotic. Things that happened later overshadowed that, and I went back and rewrote the book trying to recall how I’d felt as a child and the solutions I’d found growing up. The solutions of youth often seem obvious as we get older, but they have the power of revelation to the child.

PH: How has your perception of your father changed as a result of writing Cures for Hunger?  

DB: I think that writing the memoir made me see him as a much more complete and nuanced person. It forced me to examine how he changed and the details of his character, and increasingly, I saw that I hadn’t fully understood him—that, in many ways and despite his flaws, I was the culprit in several parts of the story.  

PH: The book includes some touching anecdotes from your years at Marlboro. How did your time here help shape your writing in general and/or this book in particular?  

DB: Marlboro offered me a sanctuary. I’d been bouncing from home to home, trying to direct my ambitions, and being at Marlboro both grounded me and helped me develop my goals. As for writing, I had the time, encouragement and freedom to experiment with language and form, and to begin finding my voice.  

PH: What are your plans for any upcoming writing projects?  

DB: I am currently finishing a nonfiction book about a group of conservationists working in the Congo rainforest, and it’s due out in 2013. I also have a novel about Afghanistan that I’ve been working on for a while, and I hope to go back to that full time in a few months. In general, I would like to alternate between nonfiction and fiction. Fiction is my first love, but nonfiction puts me in situations that I wouldn’t otherwise experience and that make me see the world differently. Also, finding narrative solutions in nonfiction makes me think more creatively about fiction, and vice versa. 

Poems by Ellen McCulloch-Lovell

After Su Tung P’o
My second story window is green
Filled with fresh maple leaves
And sun falls below where day lilies
Along the roadside wave and fade. 

How soon the earth swings after solstice
And the sun past dinner fails.
Come now, close your book,
There will be dark enough and soon
To sit and study by your lamp.

First Frost
Dark time, it’s coming–
Ring around the moon,
Fire in the stove,
Plants in, herbs up;
First frost tonight.

Soup in the bowls and
Blankets on the bed.
Sun sinking early,
Sooner night, deeper in.
Stars cast in vast array. 

Green cells must freeze
Between midnight and the day,
Season of waiting, season of leaving.
Crying overhead. Dark, dark.
The great gray wings
stroke open the great gray sky.

Under the Black Glass
I can’t see out:
the hemlocks, birches
gone with that sliced moon
I saw before asleep.

The flannel on my face
proves I’m in bed: alright.
All else has disappeared.
The mind

under cover-lid
does not see yet
why trust this day.

Most of the Marlboro community knows Ellen McCulloch-Lovell as college president, and perhaps as a supporter of the arts through her past work as executive director of both the Vermont Arts Council and President Clinton’s Committee on Arts and Humanities. Fewer know her work as a poet, including a collection of poems titled Gone, published by Janus Press in 2011. Ellen completed her MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in 2012, and taught a class at Marlboro last fall called The Poetry of Witness.

By Gary Johnson ’05 

Modelling the flows of ecosystem services from landscapes to people could help make land use management decisions more informed…and more beneficial.

We all understand on some level that we receive benefits from nature, from the air that we breathe to the food on our table. But have you ever tried to list them all, to quantify them, or even to trace them back to the specific parcels of land where they originated? If you could somehow uncover all of these hidden connections between people and their local environments, you could fundamentally alter the ways in which we interact with and manage our landscapes, both for greater sustainability and for improved quality of life. The field of ecosystem service assessment and valuation tackles this very problem by cataloging services that different landscapes can provide and assigning values to them based on their contexts.

Some of these “ecosystem services” are fairly straightforward for us to imagine. Consider the provision of food, fuel and fiber by agricultural land or the production of lumber by forests. In both cases, a piece of land gives rise to something tangible and valuable to humans through natural processes. These products can be used directly by the landowners or sold on the market, and in either case their value is theoretically captured by this landowner.

However, when we think of landscapes in monetary terms, based solely on the marketable value of their products (e.g., wood, fruits, roots, leaves, plant fibers), we inevitably overlook the functions that they can provide as intact ecosystems. In other words, we need to ask the question, “What valuable services does a forest provide as a forest rather than as a supply of lumber?”

These are a few of the answers: filtering carbon dioxide from the air, mitigating the effects of global warming on climate change; producing oxygen that allows us to breathe; keeping soil and nutrients like phosphorous from eroding into our waterways; providing habitat for animals, plants, fungi and countless microorganisms that we might also benefit from; presenting us with numerous recreational opportunities; and improving the views (and market values) of nearby properties, both public and private.

So what, then, is the value of a forest? Perhaps we could estimate this number by adding up the worth of each of these individual contributions to our welfare. However, questions of worth are really questions about the perceptions and values of people, which are subjective and vary quite a bit across space, time, culture and educational level. Thus, it is very important when making statements about ecosystem service values that we avoid saying “this service has value X” and instead say “this service has value X to these people in this context.”

In that spirit, researchers have been conducting surveys all around the world for the past several decades, asking people how much they value the services of nature. Unfortunately, these studies are both expensive and time-consuming, limiting the number of samples that can realistically be collected. At the same time, the past decade has seen institutions around the world, from natural resource agencies to development corporations, coming to realize the decision-making power of this information.

This brings us to the realm of computer modelling, where I have made my contributions to the field. To our benefit, we now have lots of geospatial data (i.e., maps) regarding not only where the forests, fields, rivers and lakes are, but also where the towns, roads, farms and community centers are. Computer models enable us to link all of this information together and finally tease out the biophysical connections between people and the specific landscapes that provide them services.

To actually calculate the values of ecosystem services on landscapes, we use a modelling framework I created called Service Path Attribution Networks (SPAN). Using this approach, an ecosystem service is defined in terms of four components, called Source, Sink, Use and Flow, that relate to some kind of matter, energy, or information—called the “service medium”—produced by a given ecosystem. These variables chart the production of each service medium, its movement across a landscape and its beneficial or detrimental effects on the people it encounters. Specifically, for any given location, Source is a measure of the quantity of service medium produced in a given time period; Sink measures the capacity to absorb the service medium; Use is the demand for or vulnerability to the service medium; and Flow is the quantity of service medium passing through.

At the beginning of a SPAN model, each location on a map is assigned a Source, Sink and Use value based on data from that location. This tells us which areas are capable either of providing a service or of benefiting from one. However, this does not tell us whether any services are actually delivered. To determine this, we simulate the movement of the chosen service medium—such as water for irrigation or flooding, soil for erosion control or sediment deposition, or bees and other insects for pollination—from their Source location to Use locations (i.e., you and me). Along the way, the service medium may be captured by Sinks, possibly reducing the overall amount reaching any Use destination. Think of it as a computer game for water, bees and other environmental benefits.

Once our simulation is complete, we can represent the relationships between Sources, Sinks and Users graphically as a map of flow values. Locations on the map are connected by lines indicating the amount of service that successfully travels between them, connecting landscapes with human beneficiaries like a giant web. In this map we have a strong tool for analyzing the current value of a service in terms of its impacts on specific user groups.

To illustrate these abstract ideas with a concrete example, let us imagine using the SPAN framework to model an ecosystem service we are all very familiar with: scenic views. In this case, the service medium is light  traveling from scenic landscape features (Sources)—for example, mountains, rivers, lakes or wetlands—to the eyes of people (Users). As they acquire more unobstructed views of the Source locations, these people experience an increase in their property values and other more subtle benefits. However, in addition to the scenic features, these same people may also see unsightly features (Sinks) such as industrial development, billboards and highways, which reduce the value of any view that passes through them. Our Flow simulation calculates all the visible Sources and Sinks to each User given the local topography (i.e., elevation data) and estimates the value to each user based on their mix of these views.

These same methods are being used to simulate the flow of water and flood mitigation, carbon dioxide and carbon sequestration, crops and food resources and many other benefits of nature in a variety of social contexts. By applying various computer modelling techniques to the problem of ecosystem service assessment and valuation, we can start to map out the connections within any given region between the particular landscapes that provide services and the people who receive them. One of the great strengths of the SPAN framework is that it provides a common definition and representation for the myriad ecosystem services that people are currently trying to model. This allows us to generate maps combining many different services that can be directly compared and analyzed.

Now armed with knowledge of these connections, decision-makers can actually take into account the effect on specific human groups of different land management or climate change scenarios. Being able to broadly identify who is likely to win and lose makes it possible to bring the people who will have the most at stake into decision-making discussions.

Our hope is that by bringing more of the spatially relevant details about ecosystem services into land use management decisions we can begin to support more holistic development or conservation plans. These plans will account for service sources, sink regions and the flow corridors crucial to the transmission of these benefits to human users. As this work is applied by government agencies and businesses, we stand to chart a better, more informed course for our future and that of our environment.

Gary W. Johnson Jr. graduated from Marlboro with a Plan in computer science and geoinformatics, and is currently a doctoral student in computer science at the University of Vermont. Last summer Gary received an award for “Best Student Paper” at the International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software in Leipzig, Germany, for his paper entitled “Modelling Ecosystem Service Flows under Uncertainty with Stochastic SPAN.” 

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New Meaning for Computer Language

“Machine translation was a dream of computational linguists for centuries, and within the last few decades it has become a reality,” said Elias Zeidan, who did a Plan of Concentration in computer science and linguistics. He compared web-based translators using a variety of metrics and found they were not yet viable alternatives to human translation. Elias also used statistics to analyze the Voynich manuscript, a mysterious, 15th-century book written in an unknown alphabet, looking for patterns or clues to the language. “Some of the glyphs look like the Latin alphabet, others look like Arabic numerals, and still others bear no resemblance to any known writing system. Based on statistical properties of natural language, I conjecture that the writing is a language—Middle German? Czech?—enciphered into this writing system.” 

  

 

By Adam Franklin-Lyons
Illustrations by Evan Lorenzen ’13

How did people communicate over long distances before the advent of telegrams, telephones and tweets? History professor Adam Franklin-Lyons believes he has found some new answers for 14th-century Spain.

his article is really two stories in one. The first story is an astonishing fact about medieval Spain; the second story is about how we as professional historians often do our research. Not to leave you in suspense, here is the astonishing fact: the official mail couriers for the Valencian city government and for the courts in Catalonia ran far and fast.  The fastest time I have found so far in my documents is 350 kilometers (217 miles) in only three days. At that rate, you could take off from the front door of the Marlboro dining hall Thursday morning and arrive on time to a Saturday night concert at Carnegie Hall. No horses, no relays, just running. They frequently averaged 90 kilometers a day or more, though their slower journeys were at a rate of only 50 kilometers a day. I will come back to what this actually means for medieval history in a second, but for now, let’s talk about the “slower” half of the story: how historians do their job.

Last summer I spent most of June on a research trip to Spain. My normal work revolves around agricultural production, trade and famines in the Mediterranean. I spent some time in Barcelona looking at historical hospital management records to try to understand how people treated the sick and the poor in the 14th century, and then I took a short trip to Valencia to continue work on their control of grain imports. I only had a couple of days, so I proceeded through the documents as quickly as possible. One set of documents that I used—a common source for looking at grain trade—records the payments made by the exchequer of the city (known in Catalan as the clavaria) for any official city business. The clavaria pays for anything from provisions for city festivals to construction of walls or public buildings. I was looking for a subsidy, called an ajuda, that the city offers to grain merchants when there is a food shortage, to encourage imports. The subsidy is a good indication of when the city starts to be concerned about the quantity of grain in the market, which is often long before anyone official actually starts complaining about major shortages or referring to a “famine” in official letters. Since I only had a couple of days in Valencia, I was trying to move quickly. Fortunately, they let you take photos at this particular archive, so my method was to thumb quickly through the book, taking a picture of any page that mentioned the grain subsidies without paying particularly close attention to anything else on the page.

A month later I was sitting in a café back in Brattleboro reading more carefully over my images of the documents. This time, I not only took detailed notes on the grain imports—where they came from, how much the city paid, quantities of grain, etc.—I also read over everything else on the page just to see if something interesting popped up. On the very first page, the first item was a payment to a man named Bernat Sala, titled “oste de correus,” basically the postmaster. The first time through I noted only that the city paid Bernat a salary, which he in turn paid to a courier to deliver a message to Castile regarding the possibility of war. The trip took 25 days, which seemed reasonable to me at the time; even in retrospect, this is not remarkably fast. On the seventh photograph, there was another payment to Bernat Sala, but I largely ignored that one since I figured it would be similar to the first record I had read. Finally, on the 15th photo, I noticed a payment to Bernat Sala that said that one of his runners had travelled to Barcelona and back in seven days. I have taken that trip by train a couple of times and it did not seem short to me, or possible to walk in such a short time. So, I went to my preferred online map program, asked for directions from Barcelona to Valencia and got back 348 kilometers. At that point I was dumbfounded: a 700-kilometer journey in six days. This is the speed mentioned in the first paragraph, and it is clearly astonishing (if you know anyone who runs marathons, or even ultra-marathons, ask them—they will be shocked). From then on, I wrote down the details of every trip I found mentioned in payments to Bernat.

Among these trips, certain particulars started to become clear. Some trips, almost always during a crisis, were labeled “in a hurry.” These were usually important diplomatic communications, information about battles or (relevant to my research) runners sent to find out the price of grain in neighboring cities during a shortage. The initial trip I discovered to the court of Castile, probably held in the city of Burgos that year, does not say that they were sent in a hurry. The runner carried normal diplomatic letters and probably made the trip on a more or less regular basis to maintain communication between kingdoms. Faster trips represent emergencies, and the runners got paid accordingly. On the 25-day trip to Castile, the runner received four solidi per day—about double what an agricultural laborer made in a day—a good wage, but not extravagant. The runner who made the fantastic round trip to Barcelona in under a week? He received a salary of 22 solidi  per day, plus 66 extra solidi as a reward for such a swift trip.

I have found no indication anywhere that they ever used horses. While I cannot be absolutely certain why, I know that horses are more expensive to keep and maintain. Additionally, horses provide the greatest speed advantage when used in stages (as later mail services would do—think pony express). Stages necessitate way stations and even greater infrastructure investment; they are also quite vulnerable in unstable political situations. I currently think that individual runners were more reliable and also less conspicuous, without sacrificing a great deal of speed.

The runners carried only the smallest amount of weight. They ran in a tunic and tights with fairly ordinary shoes and carried a small pouch that held their letters as well as some sort of provisions. The clothing might not seem like ideal running gear, but compared to the heavy wool robes or cloaks worn by most people, even in hot weather, this outfit does begin to feel light and efficient. I know from another note in the clavaria that Bernat Sala purchased a large amount of candied fruit, “for the runners,” so I assume that provided the short-term energy needed to keep moving. The letters themselves, the primary reason for the journey and the speed, communicated all manner of information between officials, nobility and city leaders: news of war, official treaties, requests for purchase of grain, sometimes promissory notes to pay for major purchases or even bribes to influence events at court.

This small glimpse of so many letters moving back and forth illustrates an impressive amount of written communication; and their sometimes incredible speed challenges several assumptions I previously held about medieval Europe. It means that many more people would have had extensive access to recent information. People did not make decisions in a vacuum, unaware of what was going on even in the next village. I am fairly certain that during times of crisis the runners would not have been willing to share the contents of their communications with any old villager on their route (and come to think of it, I am not even certain they would have been able to read or even known the content of their messages). However, we do know that even illiterate citizens of towns knew a great deal about their town’s decision-making, laws and recent events. If official news from fairly great distances got included in this mix of knowledge that people had, it probably meant that the citizens knew about happenings in other regional centers as well. Through day-to-day market travel and more mundane communication, this means that people within as much as 40 miles of Valencia could also have known, to a greater or lesser degree, what was happening in the larger city, and by extension news from across much of Spain, on a fairly regular basis. Drawing circles of the spread of this knowledge around every sizable city in the region (Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida, Tortosa) starts to cover a significant percentage of available space. It starts to feel like news could travel very far, very fast, and penetrate quite deeply within medieval society. All but the most remote villages could have had some sort of access to the goings on of the greater world on a semi-routine basis. This integration far exceeds what most medievalists I know would have considered normal.

To end back on my second story about historical research, I don’t know how true all this is. I only have around 15 trips by runners over the course of a six-month period. I will need to cover all of the payment books (around a dozen volumes, if I remember correctly), compiling a large list of trips and trying to answer a variety of questions: Did they go slower based on the season? Do they ever work with other runners hired by other cities? Who else did they communicate with besides their official handlers? How small of a city might have had professional runners? For now, I know none of those things. Future work will involve returning to my newly discovered source, but also hunting for new sources now that I have new questions. Truth be told, that hunt is why many of us go into history in the first place. Sure, writing up findings and the sense of accomplishment in finishing a project is great. But having unanswered questions—perhaps questions never before asked —that is what historical research is all about. That is exciting. 

Adam Franklin-Lyons teaches history at Marlboro, with a particular interest in the economic, social and environmental history of the Middle Ages. This article is loosely based on a paper Adam plans to present at the Plymouth Medieval and Renaissance Forum in April. 

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Running from Bone Injury

Will Mikell ’13 first became intrigued with the bone physiology of running after reading Born to Run, the story of Mexico’s Tarahumara people who are known to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. A premed student with a Plan of Concentration in biology and literature, Will explored recent research on the mineral bone density and skeletal health of marathon runners. His independent project compares barefoot runners to “shod” runners. “Running shoes have these big chunky soles, and they’re really quite detrimental to your skeleton,” said Will. “We didn’t evolve to include ‘heel strike’ in our running gait, and it actually causes damage to the shins, knees, hips, back, everywhere. A lot of the athletic injuries that you hear about now didn’t happen before thick-soled running shoes were introduced.”

By drew Tanabe ’12 
Illustration by Sophie Mueller ’11

When Japan was rocked by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 2011, Drew Tanabe was in the middle of an internship with the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. His experience helping communities rebuild after the disaster gave him hope for Japan’s social and ecological sustainability.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami left a string of destruction and loss along some 600 kilometers of Japan’s coastline, from Chiba Prefecture to the northernmost island of Hokkaido, nearly half the length of the archipelago. Of the 19,000 persons dead or missing nationally, the small northeastern city of Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture accounted for 4,000 confirmed deaths. Having been in Japan at the time of the tsunami, I decided to head to the northeast to contribute to the reconstruction effort. After my internship concluded in early June, three months after the disaster, I packed my bags and took a two-day bus ride from Hiroshima to Iwate Prefecture. 

A friend working for UNICEF helped me to organize a monthlong trip along the coastline, hard-hit by the tsunami. In my time in the Iwate, I worked digging mud and debris in Miyako, Rikuzen-Takata, Otsuchi and Kamaishi. While working as a farmhand and carpenter on Toru Sakawa’s farm, near Hanamaki, I had the opportunity to help with a project re-electrifying Kamaishi. At the time I was particularly excited to help build solar panels, but since then I have also come to recognize the importance of the network of people that Sakawa had organized.

On our first day of the job, we pulled into the dusty parking lot of Kamaishi preschool to find a small playground, squat and nestled among the tightly packed residential houses. If you drove another two miles past that dusty playground, the winding residential roads and tight urban blocks would yield first to the half-toppled stores in the small downtown and then to unfolding grids of house foundations that stretched to the port at the focus of town. The tsunami had ripped through Kamaishi and left a disabled city, short on electricity, heavy on infrastructural damage, with thousands dead and many more missing, likely swept to sea.

I arrived with a Japanese carpenter in a tiny pickup truck that barely fit the two of us, after a cramped ride from the farm where we were working about an hour inland. When the second truck showed up with two other carpenters, we unloaded our metal pipes and sipped some water. That hot July day we broke ground on a project to install a major photovoltaic system on the playground that would provide 100 percent electrical offset for the pre-school and help to electrify the surrounding neighborhood. Over the next three days we erected one of three three-by-ten-meter frames to hold the solar panels, and dug the foundations of two more.

Everyday around four o’clock the preschool would be let out and parents would walk through the small parking lot to collect their children and head back down the street. As the frame took shape and rose some three meters off the ground, one mother stopped near the bottom of the metal skeleton and showed her four- or five-year-old son what we were working on. She leaned over to point up at the three of us, hanging like monkeys and ratcheting joints into place, and explained that there would be big black panels on there soon that would make electricity for the school. She noted that the electricity came from the sun and not a power plant. What she didn’t mention was that this electricity was filling the void left by the shutdown of nuclear power plants throughout the country in the wake of a triple reactor meltdown in nearby Fukushima Prefecture following the tsunami.

Hearing our project explained to a child who would ultimately be benefitting from the work gave me a deep sense of satisfaction, a realization that through my physical labor I was contributing something tangible—safe, clean, locally owned electricity production—to this small neighborhood faced with such cosmically large hardships. Perhaps that child had lost his father or sister or brother in the tsunami, and there is no doubt that he would face the possibility of radiation exposure from nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. But this photovoltaic system would help to reduce the possibility of nuclear accidents in the future for him and his community.

More importantly, hearing that story made me realize that I was acting as part of a larger educational project that was spreading the message of clean energy throughout the northeastern disaster zone. Sakawa, a committed permaculture farmer and advocate for green lifestyles and technologies in Japan, did much more than run the farm where I was working that July. He was connected with a group of social entrepreneurs, farmers, agricultural workers, carpenters and electronics store owners who were mobilizing funds, labor, expertise and equipment to provide renewable power to municipal buildings along the coast of Iwate. Among other projects, Sakawa and partners had recently finished a 100-kilowatt installation at an elementary school in the nearby hard-hit city of Rikuzen-Takata. By placing these installations in small community settings, Sakawa and his associates were not merely providing vitally needed electricity to hard-struck areas. They were bringing local community members into direct contact with clean technologies and the concept of small-scale distributed electricity generation.

Civic ecologists, like Keith Tidball and his colleagues at Cornell University, offer us a framework to understand the role of projects such as Sakawa’s solar electrification project in Kamaishi following disaster. They propose that all communities are part of a larger social-ecological system (SES): social systems (families, communities, populations, states, etc.) are nested within ecological systems (ecosystems, watersheds, landscapes, bioregions, biosphere). SES resilience theory builds on this foundation and asks what are the mechanisms by which such systems maintain their function and structure in the wake of disaster.

Social-ecological systems are characterized by feedback loops linking social and environmental responses. One example of such feedback is from an urban garden, which benefits both the social community and the ecological community. Urban gardens strengthen the tendency of the SES not only to filter water and manage storm runoff but also to build and maintain strong social ties. A healthy SES has an array of such positive feedback cycles and displays high resiliency—that is, the ability of a system to absorb shock and reorganize after shock while maintaining essentially the same structure, function and identity.

To a civic ecologist, Sakawa’s participation in the solar electrification project can be characterized by his ability to source skilled (the carpenter) and unskilled (me) labor and provide a staging area for regional projects in collaboration with others. His work would be considered a “community of practice” that has arisen in response to disaster. The role of communities of practice is vital to building SES resiliency because they act to collect and redistribute skills and knowledge among their members and the outside world. In the particular case of Sakawa’s project, a focus on ecologically centered activities provides a codependent link between social resiliency and ecological resiliency.

Another example of “community of practice” that I encountered was through an oyster farmer in Kesenuma, Miyagi Prefecture, named Shigeatsu Hatakeyama. For several years now Hatakeyama has been working with students from the University of Kyoto to illustrate the connections between the ocean and the mountains. After a red tide in the late 1980s endangered his oyster farm, he discovered that the source of the algal bloom was wastewater leaking into the local river. He began to work on cleaning up the river and the upper watershed through promoting tree plantings and other stewardship projects. Since that time he has noticed a slow but steady increase in both the quality of water in the river and ocean and the quality of the forest in the surrounding watershed. His work with reforestation has gained a following in Japan, as has his saying that “the sea and the forest are lovers” (mori wa umi no koibito).

While the tsunami deeply affected Hatakeyama and his community, he has been able to see the damage as potentially beneficial in the long run because new houses and community infrastructure will be built with sustainability in mind. “The tsunami cost many lives and countless jobs,” he said. “Many people ask why we still live here, but most of us can’t convince ourselves to move away to the cities. We still want to live on a hillside, where we can see the ocean and go out fishing. We were born and raised here, and we love our home. I think that the most important thing is to cherish your place.”

Now is the hour that northeastern Japan is facing the difficult issues of reconstruction. What industries should be rebuilt? What types of infrastructure best suit the needs of the coming century? How are communities reconstructed after such disruption and loss, particularly among the elderly? There are promising signs of recovery taking a turn in the direction of building social and ecological resiliency, but these are small fish in a large ocean of corporate wholesale redevelopment schemes. The choices that the people and government of Japan make over the coming years will stand as an example of what is possible in building a modern city from scratch. My hope is that they will take advantage of this rare opportunity to rebuild in a fashion that preserves and enhances the stability, integrity and beauty of the land and sea.

After graduating in May with a Plan of Concentration in politics and Asian studies, Drew Tanabe did a summer internship in the office of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. He now works for Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson, and is enjoying living on the other “hill.”

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Disasters and Inequality

Japan’s earthquake and tsunami share more in common with disasters closer to home than you might imagine. “Natural disasters are essentially social events that reflect back to us the way we live and structure our communities,” said Kat Rickenbacker, Marlboro’s new professor of sociology. Kat’s research has focused on environmental sociology, but she also has a passion for disasters. “How do societies respond to disaster, and what does this tell us about the human condition?” asks Kat. “What makes certain communities more vulnerable to disaster, or more able to adapt after a disaster has occurred? I’m interested in how preexisting inequalities contribute to the severity of the disaster.” Her class last fall, Inequality and “Natural” Disasters, included looking at the impact of Tropical Storm Irene on local communities.

By Alexia Boggs ’13 

In an effort to boost lagging recruitment and retention, Marlboro College as an institution is looking at new marketing strategies. Rather than panicking or assigning blame, this is a time for problem-solving: as members of the Marlboro College community, we must help figure out how to energize student enrollment. Since our material resources are limited, we need to use them efficiently but also supplement them with the abundance of critical thinking resources that reside in the community. We will certainly take advantage of new ideas and new technologies that can adapt college marketing efforts to meet the standards of contemporary higher education. But it is my suspicion that in all this effort to problem-solve, we may be losing track of our purpose—to educate. And what a loss that would be.

Last spring, the college hired kor group, in collaboration with Maguire Associates and Libretto, a marketing team from Boston selected from several who each made presentations to the Marlboro community. After being selected, kor came to campus to meet the community, not just to collect the numbers and jot down the data but with a particular interest in getting to know students. They broke out into small groups at Town Meeting, asking individuals what they wanted people to know about Marlboro. They sat in on classes, attended lectures and play rehearsals, and tagged along on several of my campus tours. Over the course of their visit, I got to know the members of the kor group. I felt respected by them, enjoyed their company and felt confident that they would produce an excellent report on the college over the summer.

And they did. The “kor report,” as it has become known, thoroughly examines Marlboro College marketing and admissions strategies from a variety of angles. It is undeniably a useful document for our community, as it provides us with an outsider’s perspective. The kor report serves as a peer edit for Marlboro College. When a friend edits a paper for me, she can tell me what argument it seems like I am trying to make, so I can see if I am effectively communicating what I intend to. Similarly, the kor report can tell us what Marlboro College’s argument is, and from that we can determine to what extent we are communicating what we intend.

This move to revitalize Marlboro’s marketing effort has been controversial, of course. It seems to me that the controversy stems from the tension between a need to sustain the school and the desire to maintain its authenticity—the former viewpoint belonging largely to Marlboro, the institution, and the latter belonging to Marlboro, the community. This tension is substantial and has contributed to much internal reflection throughout the college, both the institution and the community.

In the end, all of us share the desire to know what response, in terms of marketing efforts, will be best for the college. It is evident to me that the realistic need for marketing is one that we as a community can still come to terms with; most of the controversy on marketing Marlboro is not concerned with the question of whether or not to market, but the process and method that will be used. For example, this is the implication of a recently scrawled question on a dining hall whiteboard: “Are students at the kor of [Marlboro’s] marketing efforts?”

I for one do not deny the need for marketing at Marlboro, and I recognize that the kor group or the new marketing director we are hiring could be helpful to the school. However, we must be cautious and conscious of promoting appearances that distract us from our simple strengths, for appearances are not the point. And neither are students the point; they should not be “at the kor” of marketing. Education is at the core of the college, with faculty and students as the primary actors. As such, education should be at the center of our marketing efforts, and oh how simple that makes the marketing strategy—do what you do best: educate.

Keep it simple, Marlboro. We know that our purpose is education, which is the process of teaching and learning. Marlboro faculty are passionate about teaching (and learning); Marlboro students are passionate about learning (and teaching). We perform this function well, in both lean times and boom days, and the sublime nature of education at Marlboro is a boon to those who’ve witnessed its power. Marketing is a necessary measure to keep this noble purpose afloat, but first and foremost Marlboro should be in the business of education.

Alexia Boggs is a senior at Marlboro doing a Plan of Concentration in politics, specifically looking at how political systems channel tensions by circumventing notions of a good vs. evil dichotomy. This essay is adapted from Alexia’s article by the same title published in the October 2012 issue of The Citizen.

The marketing and communications team of kor group, Libretto and Maguire Associates was engaged last spring after a thorough search and proposal process involving representatives from all of Marlboro’s constituencies. In the intervening months, the kor group has worked closely with the admissions office to implement strategies designed to measurably improve the college’s recruitment efforts. “Marlboro is a thoughtful and studious community,” said the kor report. “It needs to put some stakes in the ground, claim its territory, be bold and confident in its messaging and unapologetic for what it offers.”

New faculty members, new greenhouse, new library books, oh my! Say farewell to storied sociology professor Jerry Levy and learn what environmental studies looks like in China.

’51 
BOB HICKEY says, “I was sorry I couldn’t make the reunion, but although I have been retired for over 20 years I’m nearly as busy as I was when I worked. My volunteer activities keep me about as tied down as I was with my fulltime job. I Skyped with my sister yesterday and she said that after visiting relatives in Vermont they decided to visit the Marlboro campus. She was very impressed with how great the campus looked and the progress that had been made since the last time she was there. I noticed that CHARLES STAPLES was able to make the reunion, and I remember him well.”

’52
“All well here—older and maybe wiser,” writes R. BOYD THOMPSON. “We keep in touch with BRUCE BOHRMANN ’53 and would love to hear from others. Maine is the place to be!” Bob also congratulates Annual Fund director Pat Cavanaugh “for a great request letter and ‘gimmick.’”

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Bill Horridge ’51: Class of the Rings
In the process of organizing the alumni office recently, we came across this valuable artifact donated several years ago to President Ellen McCulloch-Lovell on behalf of the college. Apparently, Bill and some other pioneers had this handsome ring designed for their class, a dark stone set in gold decorated with a stag and a tree. The ring included a note:

Ellen, Nice get-together last week, and nicer meeting you. Here’s the ring us old-timers designed many years ago. We also did the logo.

—Bill Horridge

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’53

From Maine, BRUCE BOHRMANN writes, “My knives are going pretty well. Not sure if you’ve heard of SCORE, a national organization of retired successful people who volunteer to mentor small businesses. When Yarmouth’s Herbie elm died (at 217 years) the town encouraged area craftsmen to buy the wood and make products. I got over 150 orders for knives with Herbie wood as handles. Yeah. I had the tiger by the tail. I submitted my ‘company’ (if you can call one man a company) in a national SCORE contest in the category of ‘people over 50 running small businesses.’ Anyway, I won the award. Had to go to New Orleans in August to get the award. And get this: it was a black tie event. A director and videographer came up from Washington and shot what will be a three-minute program with my two mentors and me at the shop. My PR woman said she is going to ‘swamp the area’ with my story. Wanna grind some steel?” Bruce adds that his knife-grinding business actually started at Marlboro. “I used a hand grinder in the basement of the dorm, and my buddies BOB THOMPSON, BILL TOOMEY, LARRY TOYE and some others would turn the handle for me.” Bruce’s website is at bohrmannknives.com.

’59
“A short sugaring season,” write BRUCE and BARBARA COLE. “Warm February, cold snap, then just a few good weeks. We enjoy having biology professor Jaime Tanner, her husband, Than, and their son, Henry, renting our cabin.”

’60
TSUYOSHI “SAM” AMEMIYA writes from Tokyo, Japan, “I retired from all my teaching back in 2003 and have since been spending most of my time doing research and writing. I have also been interested in activities for human rights and social justice, specifically helping refugees in this country.”

’63
“Currently working at University College at Rockland, Maine, as an adjunct instructor in English, mostly focused on writing and theater,” writes JONATHAN POTTER.

’71
ANN RHODES TROISE is “retired, but doing some English as a Second Language teaching, which is completely new to me.”

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Robert Hullot-Kentor ’71 and Jake Davis ’03: Waxing Philosophical
In October, two Marlboro alumni presented public lectures on campus. Jake Davis ’03 presented a talk at Ragle Hall entitled “Attention and the Qualities of the Heart,” drawing from recent empirical research on attention, consciousness and emotion. A doctoral student in philosophy and cognitive science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a visiting scholar at Brown University, Jake made a case for a timely thesis that lies at the heart of Buddhist ethics.

Robert Hullot-Kentor ’71 (right) gave a talk in the Rice-Aron Library reading room called “The Origin of Space: Why are we unable to know what we know about the climate?” Robert discussed our knowledge of climate change in the context of what he calls the “space of equality,” where equal elements are indifferent to where they are. He is the chair of the master’s program in critical theory and the arts at the School of Visual Arts, translator of several works by T.W. Adorno and author of Things Beyond Resemblance.

Robert said, “It is a pleasure seeing my much admired former teacher T. Wilson— who long ago sent me off to Iowa City, and who is now my colleague—to meet new colleagues here, especially William Edelglass, my host, and to hear how this remarkable, important college is doing. I would wish this experience for each of the students here this evening.” 

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’75

ELLEN SCHÖN exhibited her ceramics in a show titled “Vessel Variations (x3)” at Vessels Gallery in Boston this past fall.

WENDY WILLIAMS has a new book, The Dialectic of Love, an examination of love and sexuality in the novels of D.H. Lawrence.

’78
REGGIE BLASZCZYK lives in the Bella Vista section of Philadelphia with her husband, Lee O’Neill, and a flock of 17 birds. She has published a new book, The Color Revolution, with The MIT Press. Starting in spring 2013, she will be professor of history and chair in the history of business and society at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

NAT SIMKINS had “new paintings in Art in the Barn and Gallery 55 in Natick, Massachusetts, and has a new website, natsimkins.com. Viewed Frank Stout’s website with some great art—nice site. My 14-year-old granddaughter graduated from eighth grade and is a member of the junior honor society.”

’79
“Blessed in the endless mountains of northeast Pennsylvania,” writes ED McMULLEN. “‘A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and book of verse. Ah, wilderness.’”

’80
“Hello, Marlboro,” writes LORI KIRSTEIN. “Well, after 30 years of sitting in cubicles, I have made a break for it. I am singing around the East Bay Area of California (jazz, blues, R&B, pop, classical), and I am going for my dream of a fulltime creative life that includes film (acting, directing, producing). I’m specifically working on films that have depth and meaning and that inspire and inform in various ways, so that consciousness and hope are lifted and new (or should I say better?) human choices are highlighted and made more available to actually put into play. Also, offering a very new combination of authenticity/empowerment speaking and performance to groups, plus coaching to individuals. Marlboro people don’t grow old—we just keep growing, yeah? Peace and love, y’all.”

’81
TRICIA LOWREY LIPPERT writes, “I still work at Mt. Bethel Animal Hospital in Mt. Bethel, Pennsylvania. I’ve been there 11 and a half years now. I had my first ever solo art show in New York City this past fall at the 1199SEIU. I continue to bake for the Ship Inn in Milford, New Jersey, and also make a weekly vegan special. We use as much locally grown organic produce as we can, use local farmers for our meats and brew our own beer. If you are ever driving down along the Delaware River you should check us out. I belong to a plein air painting group called “Come Paint with Me,” which paints together on location from June until October. I also take Zumba Gold classes twice a week and absolutely love it. Lonnie and I will be celebrating our 30th in April. We still have a dog and a collection of cats (eight).”

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Elizabeth Glenshaw ’81: Rowing Wild
Although she is managing director of Clean Yield Asset Management during business hours, Marlboro trustee Elizabeth Glenshaw has been seriously into rowing the past few years. In 2012 she medaled at the Masters Nationals in a four-person boat for the age group 50–55, and this fall she got gold in masters races for eight-person boats both at the Lowell Textile Regatta and at the New Hampshire Championships.

“I am about to go down to the Head of the Charles next weekend,” said Elizabeth. “This is my sixth time competing in this event, with last year being the most special as my daughter Hannah (age 16 at the time) was the coxswain for my boat.”

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BEN SARGENT and MARY LIN ’87 were married in January and have moved to Denver, where they have formed Luminous Thread, a new opera and theater company. They are producing the 2012–13 “Dreampunk” season of original shows and invite all to check out their work at luminousthread. com and inventingearth.org.

DAN PICKER submitted the following poem in memory of Edmund Brelsford:

Edmundo
It wasn’t planned
it was August
I was headed down
the mountain you were headed up;
now I must pause to make sure
I’m remembering it right.
Bright warm sun all around us,
you half hanging out your driver’s side
window rolled all the way down,
that thin left arm dangling loose
relaxed like a skier on a slope
taking it all in as if you couldn’t
get enough, or as if you’d
done it all seen it all reflecting on
a life well spent just there
one day I headed down Route 9
you headed up Route 9 slow carving
curving leisurely taking all that
August sun in an open window
passing beside mine.

’85
MEG SPICER is “living in South Newfane, Vermont, with my partner Lisa and our 11-year-old son, Max (avid Sox fan and aspiring Sox player, according to his plan). I work as a counselor at nearby Landmark College.”

’86
“I have finally finished my dissertation, ‘Paper Towns: Sense of Place in Industrial, Small-Town New England, 1869–1927’” writes DAVID DEACON. “I have been working on it since the last millennium with Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn at Syracuse. In the dissertation I look at the impact of the pulp and paper industry on Bellows Falls, Vermont, Franklin, New Hampshire, and Turners Falls, Massachusetts, drawing on landscape history, photography, history of technology and organized labor. Now all I need is a decent job.”

’89
GEORGE CASEY’s story “Thirty Thieves and Two Princesses” appears in serial format in the magazine Orion’s Child: Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine.

’90
DAVID BOZETARNIK writes, “Since last August I have been living in Dubai, UAE, where I teach foundations English for the Higher Colleges of Technology at the Sharjah women’s campus. If anyone is considering employment in either Saudi or the UAE, I can help out with Q&A support. I still use my yahoo email: wsp_wip@yahoo.com.”

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Brian Mooney ’90: Better than Cats
John Updike said, “Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.” Brian Mooney returned home to Marlboro this year, again, as a visiting professor of creative writing and literature.

“It’s very nice to be back,” said Brian, who was also a visiting professor between 2003 and 2007. “I love working with students who are willing to take risks with their work, and who so readily incorporate what they read and write into their daily lives in order to become ever better citizens of the class, the community and the world. I like it better than Cats,” he added, and when asked whether he meant the Broadway show or the mammal, he said, “Both.”

Brian received his M.F.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1999, and has been senior faculty in creative writing for The Putney School Summer Programs since 1998. His publications include a wide range of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and his current book, Everything Is Something: The Story of Jamestown in 20 Artifacts, is due to be published in 2013 by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Brian is also the inventor of the Storymatic, a writing prompt, teaching tool, parlor game and toy all in one box: thestorymatic.com.

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’92
MICHAEL CRANE started a position with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi this fall as their environmental economist. “They have a national sustainability program called Estidama (www.estidama.org) and I will focus on designing and drafting new sustainable development policies to implement their sustainable vision and expand on current programs,” he writes.

“After 20 years in the entertainment industry I gave myself a three-month sabbatical this summer,” LAURA FRANK writes. “As a professional traveler, I got what I wanted most: an entire season at home, except for a vacation week in Spain with my husband, Dan. I plan to do it again, maybe in five years this time. Sending good wishes to all those 40-somethings I went to school with.”

CHRISTINA FUHRMANN’s critical edition of Henry Bishop’s 1819 adaptation of the Marriage of Figaro was recently published with A-R Editions.

’93
ALICIA (TATTIE) BRELSFORD competed in the 2012 London Summer Paralympics in the handcycling division.

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Marlboro Launches Alumni Admissions Program
What separates loyal Marlboro alumni from the thousands of prospective future students across the country? Very little, now that the college has launched a Marlboro Alumni Admissions Program (MAAP) to facilitate alumni involvement in student recruitment. Through MAAP, dozens of alumni are helping admissions efforts, including interviews, high school visits and calls to accepted students.

“We strongly believe that graduates of Marlboro offer an essential perspective on the unique nature of a Marlboro education that is crucial to the search for future students,” said Nicole Curvin, dean of admissions. Find out more.

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’95
MARK GENSZLER sends his “warmest regards to the Marlboro posse and suggests they come visit in New York, where I’m studying to be an Episcopal priest. Well, that’s what I do when I’m not riding my bike around the city, which is both vocation and education (and pleasure) in itself. Oh, and friends: I made my small annual gift to the rare and valuable place that is Marlboro, and I urge you to do the same, whatever your means. Really. I hope this finds you all happy and healthy.”

DEIRDRE PYLE is “busy raising our two little girls in Seattle. Still doing geopolitical research for Microsoft—it sounds top secret, and it is! Love to all.”

KRISTIN ANDERSON traveled to Nicaragua in March with two other nurses from Brattleboro Memorial Hospital to teach a course on breast-feeding initiation and management to nurses and doctors at a hospital in Leon. They held a fundraiser in November for a return trip in 2013 to expand on that work, including establishing a room dedicated to mothers and their babies, and to make connections with other hospitals in the country.

’97
“Got married in November 2011 to Dennis Byford,” writes SAMONIA MEREDITH BYFORD. “Am now mother to twin 17-year-old boys. Busy renovating our historic home in Oklahoma City.”

WENDY LEVY opened the Brattleboro Cheese shop on Main Street this fall. Specializing in cheeses from Vermont and around the world, the shop also offers up grilled cheese sandwiches and other cheesy delights.

’01
CARRIE STERR COELLO and her husband have a son, Armando John Coello, born August 2, 2012.

CHOYA ADKISON-STEVENS wrote in June, “Portland summer is sparkly, garden-filled, dreamy. Enjoying running into TESSA WALKER ’07 and LIENE VERZEMNIEKS ’06, and frequent visits to the northeast.”

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Marta Willgoose ’01: Gallons of Honey
At this year’s convocation, Marta Willgoose shared some of her insights as a Marlboro graduate and rising star in the field of communications, including this excerpt. Marta is currently the vice president of communications for United Cerebral Palsy of New York City.

December of my senior year, I had permission to set up a temporary installation in the Drury Gallery. I wanted to test an idea I had for the core sculptural element for my exhibit. I knew it was going to take a lot of help to create the “beast” I had in mind for my senior show.

I faced two major challenges: First, the materials were going to be costly. I’d need two-by-fours, plywood, rope, tubing, hardware and the ubiquitous gallons of honey central to my piece. Secondly, I would need help with construction, sound, electrical wiring and putting the whole thing together, if I was going to have a prayer of graduating on time.

Fortunately, a town meeting sub committee helped me fund the materials for the project. In addition to having the incredible guidance and support of my Plan sponsors, a number of my peers, particularly a filmmaker and a cellist, came to my aid. Together we raised the figurative “barn”: my senior show.

By calling on my community and asking for help, I learned to be a student of life. Every situation offers a lesson. When you may not know how to do something, or what approach to take, look to your community. Even if there is no straightforward lesson plan, you will always find a teacher. You will always find a fresh perspective.

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’02
MEGAN HAMILTON spent last year in Daejeon, South Korea, teaching English to fifth graders.

’03
EMILY HOOD and Timothy Ferrin were married on October 13 in Lake Forest, Illinois. Emily received a doctoral degree in biochemistry from Dartmouth last spring, and is a freelance writer and editor for online education providers in Chicago.

’05
This fall, NOAH LEVINSON celebrated 10 years of Calcutta Kids, the nonprofit organization he founded, which works to reduce malnutrition and infant and maternal mortality rates in the slums of India. Noah and his wife, Evangeline, visited Vermont in September and held an anniversary celebration and benefit for the organization in Brattleboro, and a wedding for themselves in Marlboro.

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Mark Gerlach ’06: Starting Fires with Alumni
“It felt good to be able to give something back to Marlboro,” said Mark Gerlach, a career consultant and job search strategist who served as presenter and resource for an alumni “firestarter” retreat last September. The retreat, organized by Desha Peacock, director of career development, and former alumni director Katie Schendel, gave recent alumni the time, space and inspiration to move toward a satisfying career.

“The joke my friends sometimes make is that I couldn’t find a job, so I got hired telling other people how to find a job,” said Mark, who moved to Portland, Oregon, after graduating, just as the economy was heading south. He ended up working for a staffing service, then as an employment liaison for a local community college. “Oregon had the third highest unemployment rate in the country, so I learned a ton about what jobseekers face in a bad economy.”

When Mark returned back east in 2011, he started helping friends and family and doing a few speaking engagements, aand it snowballed into a consulting business. He’s also working on a book, tentatively titled The 13 Things You Should Do Before Graduating College That Will Help You Get a Job.

“Marlboro helped me figure out how something seemingly unrelated can be a window into understanding an important concept,” said Mark, who did his Plan of Concentration in political theory and economics. “What I didn’t have when I left college was a sense of how business worked, or how professional people made decisions. However, Marlboro did give me a skill set for learning the things I was missing.”

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’08
In January, KELLY BAUR will be studying economics and preparing a documentary film at the Universidad de Concepcion in Chile, with support from a Rotary International’s Ambassadorial Scholarship. Kelly’s documentary will focus on the environmental and social costs of the Chilean paper pulp industry.

’10
“I’ve wanted to serve in the Peace Corps since I was in the eighth grade,” says CHRIS BOYLE, who is teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Berd, Armenia. “I like traveling, languages and culture, and as I learned more about those three things at Marlboro, I thought why not live somewhere else for two years? I don’t regret it, and I am happy to follow something I’ve always thought about doing.”

’12
“The best thing about my work, hands-down, is the rowdy kids,” writes EVA BAISAN, who is teaching English in Japan through the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) program. When not teaching, Eva spends time painting at a nearby temple, chatting up the ladies at the octopus dough ball stand, taking yoga and hula lessons, hiking on ancient pilgrimage trails or searching for fake mustaches at the 100¥ store.

Marlboro sadly bid farewell to Katie Schendel, alumni director, who resigned at the end of September to spend more time with her family and do consulting work. A search for a new alumni director is in progress.

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Marlboro Memory Project
For last spring’s Alumni Reunion, we asked Marlboro’s 2,447 graduates to answer a few questions. Here are some responses to two of the questions:

If you were to create a Marlboro bumper sticker, what would it say?
• I miss Jon Maslow.
• Follow this vehicle to a high place of deep thought and dark nights.
• Always looking forward.
• 2,447 served worldwide.
• I survived mud season.
• Liberal artists at play.
• Fighting Dead Trees take state!
• Got a Plan?
• We have a cookie drawer.
• Marlboro College: 260 students, 1 printer.

Any words of advice to current students?
• Think for yourselves.
• Explore—let your curiosity guide you.
• Keep your hands on the plow.
• See the world. Learn a language well.
• Go for it—learn to learn, love and live.
• Pursue your interests now and do not worry about whether you want to be pursuing those interests for the rest of your life.
• Don’t listen to the advice of alumni. The mistakes you make should be your own.
• Understand how lucky you are and make the most of it.
• Graduate and do good deeds. n Memorize the smell of a Marlboro autumn morning.
• It’s OK to be fashionable. Just make sure you oil and wax your leather shoes.
• Have fun—it goes faster than you think!

Picture Perfect Memory
I received the latest edition of Potash Hill and appreciate the updates on the growth and improvements of the college. How times change. I was most fascinated with the picture of 65 years ago (page 26) and how young many of us looked, and were. After looking closely at that fall ’47 picture I was surprised that (I think) I could remember nearly all the names of those in the picture except maybe one or two. I know some of the returning World War II veterans were older than me and I have often wondered how many of both groups still exist. I think that I was close to being the youngest in the school in that fall picture.

I enclose a picture (above) taken in front of the dorm on our graduation day in June 1951. I thought I might be able to identify everyone in the picture and remember their names once I saw them. Unfortunately, after 61 years my mind evidently is not as sharp as I thought it might be. My recollections are: (front row, from left to right) Dick Titus, Fritz Schneider, Bill Horridge, Arnie Levitt, Bob Hickey, Charles Staples, Ken Briggs (?), Bob Roth; (back row) ?, ?, ?, Bruce Weber, Luis Drake, Clayton Pratt, Dick Murray, Bob MacArthur.

I found the comparison of statistics between then and now to be quite astounding. It sure is indicative of the economic changes that have taken place over the past 65 years. I will be looking forward to the next issue of Potash Hill. I always have fond memories of Marlboro and what the college did for me when I get it in the mail.

—Bob Hickey ’51

Gameful Life
I was surprised and excited to read mention of Jane McGonigal’s book in Will Brooke-deBock’s essay “Unalienated Labor and the Gameful Life” (Summer 2012 Potash Hill). I was fortunate to meet and listen to McGonigal in person last spring at the South By Southwest Interactive Conference here in Austin. She is an energetic and caring hero and an intelligent voice about the impact of gaming in our lives. (Please don’t tell my wife I said this. We don’t even have a Wii for the kids.) Thanks Will, for your very intelligent essay.

—Erik Pearson ’95

Name Shame
To those of us who have for some time been acquainted with the gentleman shown at the left in the photograph on page 57 of the Summer 2012 Potash Hill, he has been known as “Pieter” van Loon ’88 [as opposed to Pietr]. No sweat; these things happen. Still the best damn college-produced publication, period.

—Piet van Loon ’63

Remembering Maurice
Just saw in the latest Potash Hill the article on Maurice Pechet (page 60); didn’t realize he was a trustee at Marlboro. I photographed him last year at Harvard, where I work in the public affairs office. It’s a very touching photo that he and his wife, Kitty, liked a lot; he’s being kissed on the cheek by his fellow Lowell House tutor and artist-in-residence Livingston Taylor. Nice obit on Maurice, and the comment about his smile was right on the mark.

—Jon Chase ’70

James “Butter” Shingle ’50
A Marlboro pioneer, James Shingle (right) passed away in August at the age of 87. Born in Hawai’i, he attended Punahou School in Honolulu. During World War II, Jim was in the Navy, stationed at Pearl Harbor. He graduated from Marlboro College with a degree in literature, then worked at Bishop Insurance before starting his own business, Property Investment Company, with his brother and a friend.

“Butter was a very generous and fond friend of Marlboro,” noted Lisa Christensen, chief advancement officer. “He was a delight to visit (not just because he lived in Hawai’i) because he was interested in many things and was a gracious host. We had many good conversations about the importance of young people getting an opportunity to travel and live in other cultures, as well as models of education like Marlboro that allow students to pursue their own thoughts and interests in literature.”

Jim enjoyed being with his family and friends, who knew him for his great sense of humor and humility. He was an avid tennis player and skier, and he loved to travel. He was a lifelong philanthropist and longtime president of the James & Abigail Campbell Family Foundation. As president of the Kapi’olani Hospital board of directors, Jim worked tirelessly to expand and upgrade the hospital. He is survived by longtime companion Howard Francis Gardiner, as well as his daughter Alice Ka’eu’eu Shingle, two grandsons and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews.

Peter Gore ’50
Another pioneer alumnus and husband of longtime staff member Sally Gore, Peter Gore died in August in his Wilmington, Vermont, home. He was 85. Peter was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and went to high school at Deerfield Academy. He served as a member of the U.S. Navy in World War II before attending Marlboro. Peter received his master’s degree in romance language education from the University of Massachusetts and further studied at Laval University, Canada, and Grenoble University in France.

Peter taught French and coached athletics at Deerfield Academy for 23 years, and then at Wilmington High School. He later served as rural mail carrier and clerk at the Wilmington post office, retiring from there in 1993. Peter also established and operated the Wilmington Antique & Flea Market over the past 30 years. He enjoyed traveling and the outdoors, listening to all types of music and collecting coins and stamps. Peter is survived by his wife of 53 years, Sally, three children and several grandchildren.

Gay Gorton Fullick
In January 2012, Gay Gorton Fullick passed away at the Springdene Nursing Home, in London. She was 83. Gay was the daughter of Audrey Gorton ’55, alumna and member of the faculty for 33 years, and sister of Bridget Gorton ’59. She was an active help to the college in many ways, particularly during theater professor Paul Nelsen's early group visits to London. She is survived by her husband, Roy, her children, Assheton, Michael and Victoria, and her sister, Bridget.

Suvia Whittemore Judd  
In September, Sue Judd (right), a dear friend of the college and wife of long-term American Studies faculty member Dick Judd, died at her home in Marlboro in September. Sue graduated from Williams College with Dick in 1945, one of the first women to attend what was then an all-male institution. In 1950, she and Dick moved to Vermont so he could start his long teaching career at Marlboro College.

“Sue was a presence on campus, as well as an accomplished host for events at their house nearby,” said Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Marlboro president. “For many years, the Wendell-Judd cross-country ski race ended there for a party.” Dick, who died five years ago, taught at the college until his retirement in 1989.

Sue also taught French and art at the Marlboro Elementary School and was very involved in the school’s Parents and Friends group. She sang for many years in the Community Chorus and took piano lessons with Blanche Moyse. She took classes at Marlboro College, and in the 1970s studied pottery with Malcolm Wright and became a serious potter. Sue was an avid organic gardener, and employed many college students to work with her in the garden and around the house. Toward the end of her life, she received visits from some of Dick’s former students. Sue leaves a sister, Elizabeth MacArthur of Marlboro, two daughters, Kate Judd ’82 and Suria Thayer Judd, and several nieces, nephews and great-nieces and nephews.

Robert T. Gannett
A longtime friend and supporter of Marlboro College, Robert Gannett died at his home in August. Robert served four terms representing Brattleboro in the Vermont House of Representatives and ten terms representing Windham County in the Vermont Senate. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard College. In 1942, he received his law degree and enlisted in the United States Army. Bob came to Brattleboro in 1946 to practice law, and conducted an active tax and estate practice until he retired from the Vermont bar in 2012, after having been a member for 64 years.

Bob believed in community and was also actively involved with many organizations in the area, including Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, the Prouty Center, the Vermont Community Foundation, Youth Services, the Green Mountain Club, the Brattleboro Retreat and the Brattleboro Rotary Club, of which he was a founding member. He received an honorary degree from Marlboro College in 2001, for his many years of support and advice, reportedly including steering Tom Ragle to the presidency in 1958. He is survived by his three children, a brother and sister and several grandchildren.

Sophomores Mia Bertelli and Maya Rohr hoist the mother of all turnips from the Marlboro farm at Work Day this fall. For more about progress at the farm last summer, go to Marlboro's YouTube page. Photo by Dianna Noyes