Colby Magazine

Alums Walk for Charity

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Sam Rouleau, ready for volunteer duty in Texas. When Nick Tucker ’10 and Sam Rouleau ’10 set out to walk across the country, volunteering along the way, the distance seemed vast. But they’re measuring the trip not in miles but in the parade of people they meet. The founders of Making Strides left Maine in August and have stayed with Colby alumni along the way. In late December they were in Dallas, Tex., with the families of Katherine Roberts ’93 and Katherine Tagtmeier ’92. Tucker and Rouleau bid their hosts goodbye with the prospect that their Colby connection may lead them to meet again. Not so for many of the people the pair has met along their trek, including the children in an AIDS center where Tucker and Rouleau built a brick walkway and, as a reward, played with the kids. “They seemed happy,” Tucker wrote on the pair’s blog. “That is until we had to leave and Reginald started to cry. Sam and I had a hard time walking out that door. Usually people could say ‘it’s ok, i’ll be back.’ But that’s not necessarily the case with us.” The Making Strides site has blog posts, a map showing the walkers’ location, news coverage of their journey, and contact information.

"Moms Who Need Wine" Uncorks the Mommy Market on Facebook

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Phenomenal Facebook following has Marilé Borden '94 contemplating the future of Moms Who Need Wine

Trading Places

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

How would life at Colby be different if you were of the opposite gender? Students in the course Girls and Activism asked that of their peers, then took photos of them with their responses. The resulting exhibition hung in the Diamond Building in November. To read some of the responses, see \\\'Trading Places\\\' at insideColby.com.

TwitterFEED

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

A selection of tweets from @colbycollege. Click here to see links, catch up on tweets, or sign up.Waterville to get $50K from @MaineArts Commission. Colby Museum Dir. Corwin: City is “poised to become a destination for arts.”Dec. 16Fri. @ 1, @MPBNews Speaking In Maine: Maria Fenwick ’03 on young teachers and urban school reform @TeachPlus #educationDec. 16Walk. Bike. Telecommute. Other. Ezra Dyer ’99 talks to @ColbyCollege classmate @NFallat about @UnDriving @NYTimesDec. 14RT @emmaloupearson: First day of finals @colbycollege #playedhardworkingharder | Time for all that hard work to pay off. Good luck to allDec. 14RT @elisa_anne: Love this @insideColby post: “Never pass up opportunity to learn.” Easy to forget, but so importantDec. 12Reid Farrington ’99’s production of A Christmas Carol is on the cover of @TCG’s American Theatre mag. #theaterDec. 5 RT @inthecac: Definition of the Day: Dana SauceDec. 53 Mule teams played Bowdoin 12/3: men’s hockey won after trailing, women’s hockey won in OT, women’s b-ball won by 15 Dec. 5Prof. Catherine Besteman’s student-produced immigration exhibit wins national museum award | Sun JournalDec. 2

Biomass Plant Models Clean Energy

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

One million. That’s the number of gallons of oil Colby will no longer be burning annually. It’s also a conservative estimate of the number of dollars Colby will save annually. But the new biomass facility, which became operational in January, is a boon to Colby for more reasons than that. A number of factors make Colby’s $11.25-million facility a model for green energy. “We’ve gone above the minimum requirements to try and have the cleanest emissions we can,” said Director of Physical Plant Patricia Whitney. Biomass has recently been criticized for not being as clean-burning as was previously thought. A 2010 report by researchers at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences cast doubt on biomass as a carbon-neutral fuel and sparked a media blitz. The New York Times reported on plans for multiple biomass facilities being dropped because of public disapproval. “We’ve gone above the minimum requirements to try and have the cleanest emissions we can.”-Patricia Whitney, director of physical plantBut proponents of biomass point to factors that make for a cleaner plant, and Colby meets those criteria, according to Whitney. One major factor is that Colby’s plant is producing heat, which is more efficient than producing electricity with biomass. Another key factor is that Colby’s biomass—low-grade wood chips and forest waste including bark and treetops that would otherwise be left on the forest floor—is coming from sustainable forestry operations within a 50-mile radius, keeping trucking to a minimum. The holding area for biomass fuel, which includes twigs and branches that would have been left on the forest floor. Colby’s plant uses advanced technology, including a gasification combustion system, to create cleaner emissions. “It’s a two stage burn—you burn the gas [along with] burning the wood—so it’s cleaner and more efficient,” said Whitney. Cyclonic dust collectors and a $480,000 electrostatic precipitator minimize pollutants entering the atmosphere. The plant itself has been built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) specifications and is expected to receive at least LEED silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. In burning approximately 22,000 tons of wood instead of 1 million gallons of oil, the College estimates a reduction of more than 9,500 tons of carbon annually. The plant is a major component in Colby achieving its goal of carbon neutrality by 2015.

A Conversaton About Sexual Conduct

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Professors Adam Howard and Lisa Arellano moderate the November 15 community conversation about sexual conduct. Allegations of sexual misconduct this fall prompted the first of a series of community conversations about sexual conduct and sexual assault on campus. On Nov. 15 more than 500 students, faculty, and staff convened in Page Commons for a two-hour discussion moderated by professors Adam Howard (education) and Lisa Arellano (American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies). The volume of questions made it clear that this discussion would only begin to address the community’s concerns about sexual assault at Colby and the larger cultural issues that feed behaviors. Questions ranged from the specific (What is Colby’s procedure when an assault is reported? What resources exist for students?) to the more broad (What can we do to make people feel safer on campus? How does silence contribute to the problem?). In response to calls for more education about Colby’s policies and the procedures around reporting sexual assault, Director of Counseling Services Patti Newmen discussed the process from the counseling perspective. “Whether it happens with a student coming in weeks, months, even years after the event, or within minutes of the event, we’re available to help them through the steps,” she said. Senior Associate Dean of Students Paul Johnston shared the procedure for filing a complaint—from working with the Colby administration to filing criminal charges, if a victim so chooses. Knowing how difficult these conversations can be, Johnston said, “Don’t feel like you have to come alone, and don’t feel like you have to bear that by yourself.” The Dean of Students Office, he said, supports victims in whatever course of action they choose to take. Students criticized the use of a student handbook to disseminate procedural information and discussed how to better reach students. Associate Dean of Students and Director of Campus Life Jed Wartman encouraged students to share ideas on how to “get more creative” about sharing Colby’s policies. One reply—“A great way to disseminate this information would be a gender resource center”—was followed by thunderous applause. Professor of Education Lyn Mikel Brown and Berol Dewdney ’12 proposed a gender and sexuality diversity resource center last year, and discussions are ongoing. A proposal for a full-time position will go to the Board of Trustees in February, according to Brown. A resource center, advocates say, would create a place for ongoing discussion of this and other related issues. Issues of consent came up repeatedly—from what qualifies as consent to creating a culture in which “enthusiastic consent” is the only acceptable form. Students in the group Male Athletes Against Violence talked about how men can contribute to change. And students began to discuss action steps—not what the College could do, but what they could do. “If you don’t know some of the ways in which communities have taken care of themselves and each other, you owe it to yourselves to learn those things,” said moderator Arellano. “I am just suggesting that you don’t want to entirely concede your power to take care of yourself to somebody else.” Students’ ideas flowed. Think about the language you use and how it may disrespect others. Pass community standards to freshmen. Know what consent is. Don’t use alcohol as an excuse. Hold everyone to a high standard. Model respect. Said one student, “We’re here because we’ve been used to meeting high expectations in all areas of our lives, and I don’t think this should be any different.”

Q&A With Van Gogh Biographer Gregory White Smith '73

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Gregory White Smith ’73 discusses challenges of Van Gogh: The Life, including the effort to get readers “inside [Van Gogh’s] skin” and the disadvantages of not speaking Dutch

Occupy Movement Rallies Colby

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

As part of Occupy Colby, this public art display hung on the walls of the Diamond Building to provide a space for creative exchange. Occupy Wall Street began Sept. 17. By late October, some students and faculty were wondering why it seemed no one was reacting at Colby. So they took action and organized two events to engage students, faculty, and staff in discussions about the issues brought forth by the Occupy movement and issues at Colby that participants thought should be addressed. A post on a campus-wide e-mail list by Associate Professor Walter Hatch (government) read: “We fill Ostrove to hear representatives from Wall Street talk about the virtues of ‘The Private Sector,’ and yet we do not participate in any of the ‘Occupy Maine’ events. What’s up with that? If you are as curious as I am by the silence at Colby, join me in the Diamond Atrium at 3:45 on Tuesday.” About 70 people did, including about 20 professors, and the small-group conversations that followed seemed more like seminar discussions than activist meetings. Topics included definitions of success, fear, and social class. “It was successful beyond my wildest imagination,” said Hatch of the Oct. 25 event. “It was just a level of creative thinking that I appreciated.” Hannah DeAngelis ’12, who said she thought Colby’s silence was related to a lack of identification with the movement among students, agreed. She spoke of the egalitarian nature of the discussions—faculty participating with everyone else, and no clear leader—and the “solidarity” she saw at the event. “It felt like it was real, and other people cared,” she said. “I hope that more people become involved and I hope that there is even more discussion on campus.”-Renzo Moyano ’14Afterwards, said Renzo Moyano ’14, the movement became part of conversations across campus—from the classroom to the dinner table and on the Community Digest of Civil Discourse, an all-campus e-mail list. “To me that in itself was a huge victory,” said the New York City native. A second event, on Nov. 10, which included visitors from the Occupy Augusta movement, focused on specific issues at Colby: pesticide use, income disparity, and safety, to name three. Students broke into discussion groups and reconvened with action items, some of which, like transparency in Colby’s investments, are currently being pursued. Back in New York for winter break, an enthusiastic Moyano spent a day at Occupy Wall Street. “I hope that more people become involved and I hope that there is even more discussion on campus,” he said. Whether people agree with the movement or not, he sees it as inspiring individual thought. “Because once you think for yourself, you’re no longer thinking within a set structure anymore. You’re questioning things and you use common sense.”

Sports Shorts

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Runner EVA LAUER ’15 finished in 26th place as WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY placed ninth among 51 scoring teams at the NCAA New England Region Qualifier Championships on Nov. 12 at Bowdoin. Lauer was fourth among first-year runners with a time of 22:06.45. BEROL DEWDNEY ’13 finished 31st in 22:12.94, while CLAIRE DUNN ’13 clocked a 22:51.24 to take 53rd place. LAYNE SCHWAB ’13 (59th), KATE CONNOLLY ’14 (73rd), CLAIRE CANNON ’13 (85th), and SOPHIE WEAVER ’14 (91st) were Colby’s other runners. Dewdney finished sixth at the NESCAC meet at Amherst Oct. 29, helping the Mules finish fifth of 11 teams. Her strong season earned her a place on the All-NESCAC First Team. ABBY CHERUIYOT ’12 placed 26th at the ECAC Division III Women’s Cross Country Championships at Williams Nov. 5. Colby finished fourth out of 40 teams. ... With four first-years in the top 100, MEN’S CROSS-COUNTRY jumped to 14th place in the NCAA New England Region Championships at Bowdoin Nov. 12. The results, an improvement over last year’s 18th-place finish, bode well for the future. Colby placed six runners in the top 100, including BEN LESTER ’15 at 77th, CHARLIE COFFMAN ’15 at 81st, BRIAN DESMOND ’13 at 93rd, WILL MCCARTHY ’15 at 94th, MATTHIEU NADEAU ’12 at 97th, and JEFF HALE ’15 at 98th. COREY PARK ’12 was close behind at 106th. ... WOMEN’S SOCCER made the playoffs, falling to Middlebury 2-0 in the NESCAC quarterfinal round at Middlebury Oct. 29. The Mules, the seventh seed in the tournament, ended the season at 7-7-1. The team was backed by goalkeeper EMILY BROOK ’15, who brought a 1.47 goals against average into the playoffs. Brook had seven shutouts in the season, including wins against Hamilton and Bates, and a close 2-1 loss to Williams. Colby clinched its playoff spot with a 1-0 win on ALEX YORKE ’14’s goal over Bates in the regular-season finale. NIKKI PICKERING ’12 led the team with four goals and an assist during the regular season. CAMI NOTARO ’15 had three goals, while KATE LAXSON ’13 had a team-high three assists. ... MEN’S SOCCER also advanced to the NESCAC playoffs, falling to Amherst in the quarterfinals. The Mules finished the regular season strong, with a 1-1 tie with Hamilton and a tough 1-0 loss to Williams. ERIC BARTHOLD ’12 led the Mules in scoring with five goals and an assist, with midfielder ANDREW MEISEL ’13 leading in assists. Meisel’s offense—two game-winning goals and a two-for-two penalty-kick record—led to a place on the All-NESCAC Second Team and All-New England North First Team. Keeper BEN JOSLIN ’12 had a 1.09 goals against average. ... FIELD HOCKEY ended its season with a tough 1-0 loss to Bates, as goaltender MICHELLE BURT ’14 finished the year with 108 saves. Colby was 4-10 overall and 1-9 in the league. ... FOOTBALL recovered from an 0-4 start with a three-game winning streak only to lose to Bowdoin in the season finale, 20-10. The result was a three-way tie for the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin title. CONOR SULLIVAN ’12 passed for 102 yards and rushed for another 23, and CHRISTIAN ROMANO ’14 had 11 tackles. HENRY NELSON ’15, who had seven stops along with KALU KALU ’14, led the Mules with 59 tackles for the season.

Scheck Traces POW Account to Senegalese Luminary

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Raffael Scheck in the French National Archives with documents including the anonymous POW’s report he later proved was written by Léopold Senghor.Photo by Vincent Fournier,Jeune Afrique History Professor Raffael Scheck’s 2006 book, Hitler’s African Victims, opened old wounds in Europe and Africa when it revealed that the German army massacred thousands of black African soldiers rather than take them prisoner during World War II. Now he’s spawned a new round of news stories, interviews—and controversy—throughout the francophone world with a serendipitous discovery he made doing follow-up research last year. He identified a report on German prison camps written by the most famous successful African statesman of the 20th century. While working in the French National Archives in Paris in summer 2010, Scheck discovered an anonymous report written by a prisoner of war from Senegal describing life in a German prison camp. Months later he determined, and laboriously verified, that the narrative was written by Léopold Senghor, an intellectual and political giant of French letters and African politics during the 20th century. Senghor survived the war and gained acclaim as a poet and as the first African in the Académie Française. He became one of the leading intellectuals and philosophers of the 20th century. A cultural theorist even before the war, he was one of three students who developed Négritude, a literary and ideological movement that finds solidarity and pride in black identity and rejects European colonialism and racism in favor of traditional African values and culture. Senghor was the first president of Senegal when it gained independence, he wrote the Senegalese national anthem still in use, and he is revered as a father of democracy in Africa, both for his leadership of Senegal and for the unusual move of stepping down voluntarily from the presidency in an African nation. “He is considered an African Gandhi,” Scheck said. Scheck’s latest research has been featured in Le Monde, as the cover story of the independent newspaper El Watan in Algeria, and in radio interviews in Europe and francophone North and West Africa. And, again, his findings are stoking old and simmering hostilities. Scheck uses the French archives to study original documents from World War II as he researches the plight of French colonial soldiers brought in from Africa to defend France from the Germans. He’s allowed to examine 10 boxes of documents per day and will spend two or three weeks at a stretch going through his maximum allotment each day. But last year, one seven-page typed report arrested his attention for three or four days. In the document Scheck discovered, Senghor writes about conditions in two Nazi prison camps where he was interned. He dwells on an extensive Nazi propaganda campaign directed at recruiting Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, and he is critical of North Africans whom he characterizes as collaborators with the Nazis. Algerians commenting on the Le Monde and El Watan stories take great offense at being cast as Nazi collaborators by a West African, particularly because they remember the role of West African troops used by the French to repress Algerians during the revolution there (1954-62), Scheck explained. After the story came out in Algeria last summer, bloggers and comments online objected to what Senghor had written. Recalling the West African troops as tools of the colonialists, Algerians described those black soldiers as “terribly frightening,” “abusive,” and “brutal,” Scheck said. “They go so far as to say, ‘The evils of French colonialism in Algeria were much worse even than the Holocaust,’” Scheck said. “Some extremely troubling comments.” Most African soldiers in the camps were illiterate, Scheck said, so finding an account written by a highly literate black soldier was of great interest. Where most such documents are written in very poor French and complain about conditions, racial tensions, and corruption in the camps, the seven-page typed report Scheck found was different. When he read that the author had a prestigious French teaching certificate, it was a strong tip that Senghor, the first African so credentialed, might be the author. But confirming it took longer. “It was a very complicated process. I also read his poetry and I found very close correspondence between some of his most famous poems and what he describes in the captivity report.” Now there is no doubt. Documents, above, that Professor Raffael Scheck discovered in French archives. At left, the previously anonymous report about conditions at a German prison camp. Scheck determined that the writer was Léopold Senghor, who would go on to become a renowned writer and statesman. The regional and racial tensions stirred by Scheck’s discovery aren’t the only controversies the document brought to the surface. There are contradictions between Senghor’s description of his life in the camps and the image he curated later as a “resistor of the first hour,” who worked to facilitate escapes. “This report casts doubt on that,” Scheck said. The Négritude movement as it exists today was heavily influenced by Senghor’s experiences in those camps, said Assistant Professor of French Mouhamedoul Niang, who was born in Senegal, studies francophone literature, postcolonial theory, and African philosophy, and has taught at Colby since 2009. And Négritude remains influential still, with ethnographers, anthropologists, and sociologists as well as in literary criticism, Niang said. Though the boxes of documents in the archives are labeled, Scheck says he’s never sure what he’ll find. He ordered one expecting records about POWs and instead found blueprints annotated by French police showing the names and locations of all Jews living in Paris before they were sent to concentration camps. Scheck, who learned French as a German schoolboy in Switzerland, reads the original documents and does media interviews in French, English, or German. He’s working on a book about French colonial prisoners of war, and the Senghor document is a key piece of that. “I think it [the discovered material] will change how people see him,” Scheck said. The report shows how Senghor’s relationships with guards and commanders, and his readings of German literature ranging from Nazi propaganda to Cosmopolitan authors like Goethe, revealed the divergent views, attitudes, and beliefs among the Germans. That diversity, Scheck said, “is crucially embedded in this shift that he made away from a very exclusive and somewhat supremacist concept of Négritude toward a much more inclusive concept.” “This encounter with very different types of Germans, that’s very important for this new concept of Négritude that’s much less stereotyping,” Scheck said. The newly discovered document “fills in the context of what he really experienced that triggered a lot of these changes.”

Recent Releases

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Kafka’s Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of TraditionDavid Suchoff (English)University of Pennsylvania Press (2012)After Franz Kafka died, in 1924, his novels and short stories were published in ways that downplayed both his roots in Prague and his engagement with Jewish tradition and language, so as to secure their place in the German literary canon. Now, nearly a century after Kafka began to write fiction, Germany, Israel, and the Czech Republic lay claim to the writer’s legacy. In Kafka’s Jewish Languages David Suchoff brings Kafka’s stature as a specifically Jewish author into focus. Suchoff explores the Yiddish and modern Hebrew that inspired Kafka’s vision of tradition. Citing the Jewish sources crucial to the development of Kafka’s style, the book demonstrates the intimate relationship between the author’s Jewish modes of expression and the larger literary significance of his works. Suchoff shows how “The Judgment” evokes Yiddish as a language of comic curse and examines how Yiddish, African-American, and culturally Zionist voices appear in the unfinished novel, Amerika. Reading The Trial Suchoff highlights the black humor Kafka learned from the Yiddish theater, and he interprets The Castle in light of Kafka’s involvement with the renewal of the Hebrew language. Finally, Suchoff uncovers the Yiddish and Hebrew meanings behind Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse-Folk,” and he considers the recent law case in Tel Aviv over the possession of Kafka’s missing manuscripts as a parable of the transnational meanings of his writing. This new work, says Yale’s Henry Sussman, is “diligent, innovative, and supremely intelligent,” and adds significantly to Kafka scholarship and Judaic studies. Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander: The EvidenceJoseph Roisman (classics), translations by J.C. YardleyWiley-Blackwell (2011)Roisman has published an inclusive and integrated view of Greek history from Homer to Alexander the Great as part of Wiley-Blackwell’s “Historical Sources in Translation” series. The volume incorporates fresh translations of original Greek and Roman texts, and it draws on a range of sources to link the political, military, and social history of the Greeks to their intellectual accomplishments. “If you want a thorough and expert introduction to the evidence of ancient Greek history—in other words, to the building blocks of western civilization—read this book,” wrote Cornell Professor Barry Strauss. Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic LawDavid M. FreidenreichUniversity of California Press (2011)David Freidenreich begins this book with Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Walls,” with its oft-repeated adage, “Good fences make good neighbors.” In religion, those fences historically have been made of food, food preparation, and mandates relating to both. In these ways, among others, the world’s religions used food to define “otherness,” to identify “us” and “them.” In Foreigners and Their Food, Freidenreich, Pulver Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims establish rules about the preparation of food and the act of eating. Early on, food becomes a way to differentiate and sometimes link religions. From Judean heroes to the teachings of Augustine to consideration of Muslim hunters using non-Muslim’s dogs, the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the other are carefully traced. It is a common theme, from the Old Testament to the Torah to the Qur’an, but Freidenreich breaks new ground as he traces these practices through history. The Immaculate Conception Mothers’ ClubDavid Surette ’79Koenisha Publications (2011) David Surette’s work might be your best childhood friend’s, if you grew up on the streets among the characters of a working-class neighborhood and your buddy became a poet. He writes about love and marriage and growing old, all in a voice that is authentic and honest, like a longtime friend confiding quietly over a beer. This latest collection recalls bachelor uncles, tradesman dads with their names on their shirts, rock and roll, the streets of Malden, Mass., turning 50, his long-absentee bookmaker grandfather. “We didn’t go to the wake or funeral,/and we go to everyone’s./We figured the over and under of whether/it would make my mother happy or sad/and skipped it.” On every page is a poem, a line, a phrase so keenly real you can’t help smiling. “I was a willing kid,/asked to go somewhere, I said, yes,/like a dog on a ride, head out the window.” Ultimately these are the musings of a regular—and observant—guy. In one poem, “Weekend Workshop,” Surette writes: “I read my poem./The famous poet/lifted her nose like I had farted and/asked if I was putting on that accent.” He isn’t putting on his Boston accent, or anything else, in a collection that is at once decidedly unliterary and literary as hell. —G.B.

Contributors

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Lucy Dotson ’13J (“Love Story”), is from New York City and majors in English with a concentration in creative writing and minors in studio art. She will be working on her senior honors thesis, a collection of poetry, during the 2012 spring semester.Neil Genzlinger (“The Apple of His Ire”) is a television critic at the New York Times. Before going to the Times in 1994 he worked at the Washington Post, the Hartford Courant, and the Central Maine Morning Sentinel. He and his wife, Donna Dee ’78, live in New Jersey. Pat Sims (Q&A, Gregory White Smith ’73 and Van Gogh) is a Maine-based freelance writer. She is also an editor for the literary journal Conjunctions. She received a master’s degree from Columbia journalism school. She lives in Waterville.

"Love Story," a Poem by Lucy Dotson

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

My mother wore glasses, thick and roundas the bottom of a coke bottle, and rosy overallsmy father had a shiny polished helmet of chestnut hair and dated my mother’s older sisterone night in Cold Spring Harbor, he climbed up the trellis and into the wrong windowand after that, and a stint working at a desk in Vietnam, he moved into my mother’s house she read Portrait of the Artist and took physics whilehe grew a moustache that must have been in styleand they ran a coffee shop in the basementand installed a Franklin stove that could sear a palm offand moved to New York City, where one of them took tickets at the movie theater, and they shopped for clothes at an Indian import store down the block,and saw some famous people on the street,and some regular people who would later becomefamous, and had knives waved at them and threw partiesand studied at Hofstra and fixed computers and built a cherry bookshelf on commission and settled down in an old wig factory, had a baby and got married,and on Thanksgiving, they and my mother’s parents my two aunts and their children and boyfriends and my one uncle each wore a colored wig at dinnermy aunt had all her teeth and was beautifulmy grandmother had not yet found the deer tick in the soft hairs on the nape of her neck no one ever wrote on the backs of photos, or took pictures head on with teeth baredbut these are just pieces that my parents pass to each other and to their childrenlike currency, rubbed smooth, from a time when their darkest potential still crouched in waiting,before the parade of concessions, and I knowwhen I look at a photo of my father, the way his lips are parted, the warm blackness of his eyes, that moreexists, that to love is to drink from a glass overflowing, and discover that one is capable of anything.— Lucy Dotson ’13J

Students Raise $16,000 For New Homeless Shelter

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

As director of the Colby Volunteer Center, Dana Roberts ’12 had three goals for November: improve appreciation of the dormitories Colby students call home, increase awareness about local homelessness, and raise $10,000. She accomplished all three. On Nov. 30, the CVC announced it had exceeded its goal of raising $10,000 for the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter’s “Rebuilding Lives” campaign to build a new shelter and homelessness prevention center in Waterville. The student-run CVC collaborated with several organizations both on and off campus and had raised $15,888 by the time classes ended on Dec. 9. The CVC’s effort to educate students consisted of an art display in the student center, a special edition of the student newspaper, the Echo, featuring stories of shelter guests, a panel discussion of local experts on youth homelessness, and a collaborative campaign with hall staff to address a recent increase in dorm damage. “This is our home, and many people don’t have that,” Roberts said. “If we’re at Colby, we’ve been blessed.” The new Waterville facility—which will sleep 40 guests at a time and will replace the existing shelter that sleeps 18—is expected to open in November 2012. Architects’ rendering of the new Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter center in Waterville.

For Nikky Singh, Home is Punjab and Colby

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Home is where one starts from. As we grow olderThe world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicatedOf dead and living. Not the intense momentIsolated, with no before and after,But a lifetime burning in every moment… T.S. Eliot, Four QuartetsWhen I started teaching at Colby in 1986, I chose to live in an apartment complex off West River Road. Having lived in dorms for many years, its spacious rooms with balconies where the birds chirped was just what I wanted. But once I moved in I was horribly ill at home. For the first time I felt a foreigner in America. I missed the open and welcoming spirit I experienced on campus. So that January when a faculty apartment opened up, I quickly shifted, and Colby became my home, and has been ever since. My Taylor apartment was a hop away from my office in Lovejoy, so the personal and the professional elements got richly fused. Some of the students with whom I ate meals, shopped, cooked, watched movies and plays, did aerobics, rehearsed for Divali celebrations, and chatted late into the night also happened to be in my classroom. Those outside friendships generated informal currents within the classroom, making our discussions fun and dynamic. Annually, students from Religions of India class adapted the epic Ramayana into their modern syntax and produced splendid performances that drew large audiences. The actors playing the role of Rama, Sita, Laxmana, Ravana are deeply imprinted in my mind. It was with students that I first met my future husband; it was with students I shared my grief about my mother’s sudden death; it was students who first saw my daughter as we brought her from the hospital. Those five years in Taylor are memorable indeed. And I had my home in India, too. Across the miles I derived my sustenance from its soil. I would visit my parents over the summers, and they would visit me here. My father even led one of my seminars on Sikhism in the Taylor apartment, and my mother cooked us a Punjabi lunch. The two parts of my life were perfectly synchronized. However, with my father’s death in 1998 my home in India was gone. With it, my past. My life was ruptured. Issues of identity and belonging hit me as never before. For years I did not go back to the Punjab. I could not face that loss. My host parents from my undergraduate days at Wellesley urged me to make a visit to Patiala, and with them I did—though we steered away from “the house” as far as possible. Last year I finally faced going home. That was a transformative moment. The Punjabi University honored me with a fellowship and invited me for a lecture. To be welcomed as the “daughter of the university” made it even more precious. Crawford Family Professor of Religion Nikky Singh, standing, hosts students from her seminar on South Asian women in her house for a home-cooked Indian meal. The Punjabi University, from its very inception in the early sixties, had been my home. My father served as the member-secretary of the commission that led to the creation of the university in Patiala in 1962. The university was set up in postcolonial Punjab for the advancement of Punjabi language, literature, and culture (the Hebrew University in Israel perhaps is the only other university founded on language as such). The Punjabi language popularly spoken by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs alike in precolonial Punjab was severely marginalized during the British Raj, and the linguistic divisions fomented by the colonial state led to the violent Partition of India in 1947. The founders of the Punjabi University knew well that human language does not simply mirror reality, it also has the power to transform reality, and so language was to be the resource for understanding both the heritage of the Punjab as well as its entry into future horizons. The headquarters of the university were lodged on the first floor of the main guesthouse in the beautiful Baradari Palace, and my family lived on its upper floor. From the balcony in its haloed senate hall with elegant chandeliers, my friends and I would watch lectures being delivered. Layers of history enriched this site, for once upon a time it was from here that the royal women in purdah watched affairs of state—without being seen. Of course we were not interested in the happenings below. Mere kids full of pranks, all we wanted was to distract a few sets of eyes from the lecturer towards us, and for our success we got into terrible trouble. My parents spent a year at the Center for World Religions at Harvard, and upon his return my father became the chair of the first academic department of religious studies in India. The department launched the Journal of Religious Studies and hosted many international conferences bringing distinguished scholars to the campus to foster understanding and peace amongst people of different religions and nationalities. My father also traveled extensively, lecturing on different facets of Sikhism in Japan, Belgium, Holland, England, and the United States. He was an active member of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, and joined the International Consultation in Search of Non-Violent Alternatives in Derry, Northern Ireland. Through his scholarship, travels, and warmth of personality he developed many lifelong friendships. Since there were barely any hotels in Patiala those days, we often had dear friends from afar, youngsters then but now distinguished professors, stay in our home. Local friends and relatives would drop in, and our house would resound with animated discussions on Sikh politics and history. My larger home was the vibrant university campus where I was exposed to the social and cultural side of the Punjab during its many events and celebrations. There were poetry symposiums and theater productions. It was from here that I left for America in the 1970s. That at-homeness I felt on the Punjabi University campus carried on, for I invariably lived on U.S. campuses as a student in high school, college, graduate school, and as a faculty member at Colby. Just as it provided great joy and freedom, coming home to the Punjabi University invested me with responsibility too: I must work harder to create arabesques of understanding between East and West. I must take up new scholarly projects, which would join the two spheres into one home. I must intimately familiarize my students at Colby with Asian spiritualities so instead of merely producing technological webs in this global market they create meaningful connections and a real sense of home. As Martin Luther King Jr. said decades ago, “We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” My wish for my Colby students is to build us something even more than a large house: in the Maine winter, it should be a warm and cozy home where we can be individual with our unique talents and interests and yet enjoy enduring connections. The shawl I received that December morning in Patiala keeps me snug here. The words that greeted me charge me to take up my “daughterly” duty, and they reveal the phenomenal force of language. Yes, “home is where one starts from.” Now I always look forward to homecoming, in the Punjab and on Mayflower Hill.Nikky-Guninder K. Singh is Crawford Family Professor of Religion and chair of the Department of Religious Studies

Letters

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

A Tabloid Fellowship?While reading the admiring article on alumnus and press baron Kevin Convey’s arguably scalawag empire (“Ink In His Veins,” fall 2011 Colby), I found my natural satisfaction on reading about a fellow grad who’s found the tenacity and ingenuity to achieve his vision mingled with a strange unease. As near as I can define that unease it consisted of wondering if Mr. Convey, in gratitude for his recognition by Colby, should offer us money for a fellowship modeled after, say, the Oak Fellowship, but in this case to hire a tabloid crusader or maybe a visiting poet of tabloid “haiku,” whether we would find our own vision compromised. I also wondered if Mr. Convey ever considered hiring a repentant English major from his old school and, if so, whether he would consider yours truly. James Foritano ’65Cambridge, Mass.On Botswana, advertising and the liberal artsAs an anthropology and biology double major turned marketer, I welcomed reading President William D. Adams’s essay, “On the Liberal Arts and the Lesson of Steve Jobs,” (fall 2011 Colby). While its critics may see it as unfocused and impractical, as the president points out, one of the values of a liberal arts education is in the exploration itself. Through exploration, students develop “basic intellectual capacities,” which they can then use to excel in any field. For instance, one of the most important things I learned at Colby wasn’t a particular skillset, but rather the skill of how to learn—something I have been able to consistently apply as I teach myself the world of marketing. Yet perhaps a less recognized but equally deserving value of a liberal arts education is how the seemingly unrelated knowledge accumulated during a student’s “exploration” can directly impact one’s future career. For instance, who would have guessed that Jobs’ calligraphy course would influence his design of the Mac, or that I would discover my love of advertising in a public health clinic during my Botswana study abroad? During economic times that may cause many to doubt the value of a liberal arts education, I’m thankful for President Adams’ reminder of the benefits of an education like Colby’s (some of which we many not even consciously be aware of), and for pushing us to keep exploring. Darcy Taylor ’08Redding, Conn. Corrections A news article in the summer 2011 issue of Colby included a report on the granting of an honorary degree to Adelaide Cromwell, who directed the African Studies program at Boston University. The article incorrectly reported Cromwell’s age. She is 92. We regret the error. Due to an editing error, the title of Euripides’ Electra, by Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Classics Hanna M. Roisman was misspelled in the spring 2011 issue. Colby regrets the error. From Colby\'s Facebook Page Post: President William D. Adams told midyear graduates that their post-Colby lives will surprise them. Has yours?In the almost five short years that I’ve been out of college, I have worked for Make-A-Wish, freelanced as a Spanish interpreter, freelanced as a writer/editor, taught child development classes on the side to children in the Midwest, and am currently on the marketing team of a non-profit providing transitional housing and social services to families with children fleeing domestic violence and homelessness. I used to think I was scattered and had too many interests to settle down and pick one path. Now I know that I am blessed with an incredible skill set and the tools I need to live out each and every one of my dreams no matter how big or small they may seem. Colby kept my spark for living and DOING alive and continues to do so as I make connections and hear about the amazing things my classmates are accomplishing.Mariah Buckley ’07I entered Colby knowing what I wanted to do for a career. I left Colby and worked in the Human Services field. I never followed the career that I had desired (I wanted to join the Foreign Service), but I learned how to learn while at Colby. The twists of life have brought me a wonderful son (who wants to go to Colby!!!) and my working hard at my MBA. Steven Witherell ’91I graduated from Colby with a major in Religion/Philosophy with intent to become an Episcopal priest. However, my father, a Maine superintendent of schools, suggested that I take education courses in order to support myself until I went to Seminary. I ended up spending 40 years in education, 29 years as superintendent in Fairhaven, MA. At the same time I served 62 years as a lay Eucharistic Minister in the Dioceses of Maine and Massachusetts.Lynwood Harriman ’49 Visite Colby on Facebook: www.facebook.com/colbycollege

From the Editor

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

It seemed an unlikely place for a convergence of coincidental Colby connections, but that’s what happened on Fourth Floor East, at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, AKA “the Wounded Warriors Floor.” As described in the feature story, “The Road From Marja” this unit at the Bethesda, Md., hospital is where the most critically wounded U.S. combat personnel are treated. Last August Captain Erik Quist ’99, USMC, arrived there after being severely wounded in Afghanistan. His room was packed with medical equipment and festooned with a Marine Corps flag. A Colby banner was hung at some point—but only after Colby connections surfaced. There was Nancy Nasse, who helps Fourth Floor East patients and families cope with the overwhelming logistics for the wounded and their families. Nasse was chatting with Quist’s wife, Liz Czernicki Quist ’98, when Liz Quist mentioned going to college in Maine. “What school?” Nasse recalled asking. Turns out her husband, David Nasse ’99, is a lawyer and a Marine Corps major. “He’s in Kabul right now,” she said. Joining the Colby circle was John Maddox ’99, a U.S. Navy surgeon who met Quist early in his stay. Maddox came into the hospital room, saw Liz Quist and said, “Didn’t you go to Colby?” One year they lived in the same dorm, Foss Hall. We chatted about this in the hospital corridor while one of the many medical teams tended to Quist in his room. It was one of those “small world” conversations—connections worth noting as a diversion from the plight of the patients all around us. I bring it up here for that reason and for another. The military isn’t a typical Colby career track. When, in 2010, we set out to do a story on Colbians on active duty in the armed forces, they turned up only in the dozens, a very small minority in the alumni body of 25,000. (Sixty years ago, this was not the case.) For that reason this story about the selfless service and continuing travails of a wounded Marine in Colby is unusual. Given Quist’s ordeal, that’s a good thing. But I ask you to read it and consider Erik Quist’s sense of duty and his courage and that of his wife, Liz. Then multiply it by thousands. This war has been fought largely out of sight but too often out of mind, as well. The all-volunteer military has allowed us the luxury of wars fought by someone else, someone who most likely comes from a background that doesn’t include a Colby degree. Quist didn’t leap at the chance to tell his story. But in the end he decided he should allow the Colby community to share his experience, not because it is extraordinary, but because it is not. Gerry Boyle ’78, P’06Managing Editor

Mestieri Moves On

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Football coach Ed Mestieri announced Dec. 3 that he was resigning, and a national search was launched to have a new head coach in place for the 2012 season. Mestieri was head coach of the team for the past eight seasons and spent 23 years in all at Colby, including time as offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, and recruiting coordinator. “I felt it was time for a change, for me and for the football program,” Mestieri said.

Elizabeth Leonard Writes Revealing Biography of Joseph Holt

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Lincoln’s Forgotten AllyElizabeth D. Leonard (history)The University of North Carolina Press (2011) Gibson Professor of History Elizabeth Leonard’s new book raises all kinds of questions about the period of American history surrounding the Civil War, including this one: How could this be the first full-scale biography of Joseph Holt? Holt, Lincoln’s Kentucky-bred judge advocate general, was a pivotal player in the run-up to the Civil War, the implementer of changes put in place during the war, and a ferocious—if not entirely successful—opponent of those who sought to water down those changes during postwar Reconstruction. Holt’s was a long and dutiful career, as he served in the administrations of four presidents. But it was as the nation’s top prosecutor that Holt became known as the tenacious pursuer of the conspirators who plotted to kill Lincoln. And yet somehow Holt’s life escaped the exhaustive scrutiny of historians and biographers—their loss and Leonard’s gain, as she perused Holt’s collected letters in the Library of Congress and other locations. The resulting biography is a portal through which readers can witness almost firsthand the simmering forces that boiled over in the Civil War and the political scramble that followed. Leonard, a meticulous and exhaustive researcher, uses Holt’s letters to construct a fascinating and detailed account of Holt’s life and the ways it reflected this tumultuous period of the 19th century. We see Holt, the privileged son of a prospering Kentucky family, heading off to college with his family’s high expectations trailing him. Intensely bookish and no sufferer of fools (his grandfather urged him to get some exercise, saying his marathon study sessions would kill him), Holt became a successful lawyer in Kentucky and a political mover and shaker. Though he owned slaves, he early on questioned the morality of slavery and would later lament that President Andrew Johnson’s concessions to the former Confederate states were undoing the achievements of the Emancipation Proclamation. But it was his decision to uphold the execution order for Mary Surratt that caused him to be painted as vengeful and bloodthirsty. Leonard’s research shows that he reviewed many postwar pleas for clemency with compassion. That nuance was lost to many Americans at the time. They read broadsides fired at Holt by ex-President Johnson and rebuttals by Holt in newspapers. The prosecutor was seen by many as a hard-liner, one who would neither forgive nor forget. Writes Leonard, “… they distilled Holt’s eighty-seven years of life and his nearly twenty years of service to the federal government down to his supposedly essential malice toward his native south and its earnest defenders.” Ultimately, though, the man Leonard portrays is complex, often conflicted, proud of his Kentucky heritage, and protective of his extended family there, proslavery though they may have been. But Holt’s overriding loyalty, Leonard shows, was to the then-young nation and the achievement and potential it represented.

Boland '83 and Buck '78 Nominated To Be Alumni Trustees

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Susan Boland ’83 and Alexander “Sandy” Buck ’78 have been nominated to serve three-year terms on Colby’s Board of Trustees as alumni trustees. Boland is a part-time graduate student at New York University, where she is pursuing her Ph.D. in classics. She was a managing director and portfolio manager at Chilton Investment Company, where she specialized in European equities. Earlier she was a portfolio manager at Credit Suisse Asset Management, a director and portfolio manager at Barron & Partners Ltd., a partner and portfolio manager at Teton Partners, and a portfolio manager and research analyst at Fidelity Management & Research Co. At Colby Boland majored in classics, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude with distinction in the major. She earned a master’s degree in classics from Harvard in 1985. As a Colby overseer from 2003 to 2011 she served on the visiting committee for international studies and chaired the visiting committees for classics and for French and Italian. Boland lives in Manhattan with her partner, Kelly Granat, and their daughter, Alexandra. Since 1996 Buck has served as president of the Horizon Foundation, an education- and conservation-oriented family foundation in Portland, Maine, that makes grants in the fields of art, environment, history, and leadership development. He earned a master’s degree in teaching history at Stanford and worked at: Pingree School as history department chair and director of admissions; Applewild School, where he chaired the history department and led the upper school; and Shore Country Day School where he taught fifth grade. He lives in Cumberland Foreside with his wife Sissy. They have a daughter and a son, both married. Buck served nine years as chair of the board of Camp Kieve, a nonprofit educational institution and boys’ camp in Nobleboro. He is a past chair of the Maine Audubon Society, serves on the Trust for Public Land Maine advisory board, is a founding trustee and chair of the Essex County Community Foundation, helped found and chaired the Maine Environmental Funders Network, and served on the boards of Massachusetts Audubon, Shore Country Day School, and Pingree School. A Colby overseer, he was on an environmental studies visiting committee, and he has been an admissions volunteer. According to alumni association bylaws, other nominations may be made by petition to the executive secretary of the Alumni Council with signatures of one percent of the members of the association. If there are no nominations before May 1, Boland and Buck will be declared elected by the chair of the Alumni Council.

Mike Daisey Bites the Apple

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

For monologist Mike Daisey '96, the death of Steve Jobs was another defining moment in a remarkable career

Alumna's Article Challenges Marriage

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Kate Bolick ’95 started her magazine journalism career as an editorial assistant at The Atlantic magazine. Several stops later—including freelance assignments for Colby—the New York-based freelance writer wrote the cover story—and made the cover. Bolick’s full-page photo graced the cover of the November issue along with the headline for her story, “What, Me Marry?” The story, about the ways men’s diminished prospects and achievement have significantly narrowed options for single women, describes a cultural sea change. Women are marrying later and less often and increasingly choosing to have children without a husband. “Foremost among the reasons for all these changes in family structure are the gains of the women’s movement,” Bolick writes. “Over the past half-century, women have steadily gained on—and are in some ways surpassing—men in education and employment.” It’s a wide-ranging article—historical, sociological, and cultural. And though the facts that support its premise are all around us, the story hit with a bang. Bolick appeared on the television talk shows, was interviewed far and wide, and saw her story optioned by Sony Television for a television series. If you didn’t see the story the first time around, you may see it coming to your home.

Colby and KIPP Charter Schools Form Partnership

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

Colby and KIPP charter schools form partnership

A Half Century of Jan Plan

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

A bold experiment in 1962, Jan Plan remains a "defining characteristic" of Colby

Internship Fund Enables First-Choice Jan Plan

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

Annie Chen ’12 got a grant to do a paralegal internship in New York

Male Athletes Turn to Yoga For Competitive Edge

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST

Earl Smith's Small-Town Mystery

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

The Dam Committee Earl H. Smith North Country Press (2011) Something there is about a small town, and a little extra something about a small town in Maine. At least that’s the way Mainers think of it, including Earl Smith, whose first comic-mystery novel, The Dam Committee, affectionately portrays the lakefront community of Belfry, Maine, with its many quirks and foibles. Smith, College historian and emeritus Colby dean, has fashioned an endearing tale of small-town life, albeit one centered around a murder and a suitcase full of purloined cash. The central characters, cronies Harry and Nibber (and an anthropomorphic golden retriever named Winston), find the loot in a snowbank and proceed to surreptitiously and anonymously donate to worthy Belfry causes. This causes an uproar as townspeople speculate about who might be the secret benefactor—and as Harry schemes to unmask the real murderer. The mystery coexists with the town’s regular doings, which are related with understated charm. There’s the dam committee of the title, a political entity that controls the level of the lake, with all of its ramifications. There is the annual town meeting, where the cemetery sexton pessimistically reports that too many people are dying, and the cemeteries may soon be full. And the orchard owner who indignantly asks that the deer-crossing signs be moved from his property. “I think I’ve done my duty and I want the town to move the signs and let somebody else deal with the damned deer.” As the plot twists and turns, it\'s clear that Smith, a resident of Belgrade, knows these characters well and is fond of them. As he said in a recent appearance at Colby, “You can’t make this stuff up.” Sure you can. And Smith has done just that, allowing readers a visit to the place he calls home and to the fictional world he has created from it.

Boots On the Ground

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

At 40, growing Environmental Studies Program equips students to tackle real-world problems

Erik Quist, USMC, Fights to Recover from Combat Injuries

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Wounded in Afghanistan, Capt. Erik Quist ’99, USMC, works to rejoin his "brothers"

Family Homecoming 2011

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

A looming snowstorm didn’t cool spirits at Family Homecoming Weekend Oct. 28-30.

The Miracle of Zucchini

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

A season in Colby's organic garden

New Maisel Fund Opens Doors to the World

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a tourist attraction that has become, as Sandhya Fuchs ’12 puts it, “like a symbol for multicultural London.”

Goodbye, Oil (Almost)

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

A biomass heating plant that will burn wood chips and forest waste to replace 90 percent of the 1.1 million gallons of heating oil Colby has used annually will be fully operational by the end of the calendar year. The plant is located on Campus Drive, between the Alfond Athletic Center and the Bill Alfond Field.

The Anthropology of Air Travel

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies Chandra D. Bhimull Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies Chandra D. Bhimull has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue her study of connections among airline travel, diaspora, and empire. Bhimull will be in residence at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., beginning second semester. She will continue work on her book manuscript, Empire in the Air: Speed, Perception, and the Geometry of Flight. The Air and Space Museum is an appropriate backdrop for Bhimull’s research, which focuses on Imperial Airways (predecessor of British Airways), the ways the airline was bolstered by British Caribbean colonies between the World Wars, and how the lives of Caribbean people were shaped by airline travel. Bhimull, whose parents moved to the United States from Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands, continued to visit family there, has researched the role of the West Indies in development of flight routes from Britain to the United States and how air travel affected the evolution of empire. She describes her book manuscript as “an historical ethnography of airspace in the Atlantic world.” And, just as air travel is in many ways boundless, Bhimull’s research and curiosity are the starting point for consideration of the myriad ramifications of “upward power and culture in the air.” Bhimull raises intriguing questions about what some might see as commonplace. Airline travel is now ordinary, she points out, but on closer consideration, there’s nothing ordinary about, as Bhimull puts it, “dwelling in the sky.” “When people say, ‘How was your trip?’ you explain what you did before and what you did after, on the ground, but what about that whole multiple hours in the air? What did you do? And how did you experience that? What was it like to sit beside a complete stranger?” For Bhimull, cultural considerations don’t end when we leave the ground. For example, she has studied the first air travelers who, after flying over colonized people, felt that they “knew” the people and place, though they hadn’t visited. Her fascination with “vertical travel” extends to experiences travelers have today. “Think about culture, not necessarily grounded, per se, but think about culture in the air—how a community, albeit one that’s very transient, forms,” she said. “What kinds of rights do people think they’re entitled to on board? What does it mean if you’re on an extended flight and you need to pray? Where do you do that in the air? Is it your right to do that? Should the airline provide a space for you?” For Bhimull, the questions are as endless as the sky itself.

On the Liberal Arts and the Lesson of Steve Jobs

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

The full 2010-11 Report of the President, with financial highlights and leadership lists, is online at www.colby.edu/president If you really want to know how Colby is doing these days, spend time with young alumni. I’ve been doing that for some time now, beginning with my travels to thank Colby alumni and friends for their support of the Reaching the World campaign. It has become a welcome part of my routine, when I go to cities for College-related events, to include in my schedule a breakfast meeting with alumni who graduated one to 10 years ago. Because I have been Colby’s president for better than 11 years, I feel particularly connected to this group of alumni and especially interested in what they have to say about their time on Mayflower Hill and how they have fared since they left. It won’t surprise you to hear that the news is mostly good. Almost without exception these young alumni tell me that Colby prepared them well for the challenges they have encountered. What is even more exciting to me is the fact that almost to a person they agree that among their most important advantages are the basic intellectual capacities that we prize so highly at Colby—the capacity to communicate, to think, and to exercise creativity and imagination. Their most common source of sorrow about their time at Colby is that they wish they had taken even more advantage of the opportunities on offer here. All of which adds up—despite some very legitimate and deeply held views about the ways the College could improve—to a solid vote of confidence in the residential liberal arts experience, including the value of learning the intricate social and emotional calculus of living in a small, tight-knit community of very intelligent, and intellectually passionate, individuals. Listening to them, probing here and there to understand fully their sense of the gains they made as students, I become ever more deeply committed to this kind of education in this kind of setting. Exploration—opening oneself up to brand-new things—is one of the key imperatives of the liberal arts education. And in a setting like Colby’s, exploration is a requirement.So why am I about to focus this essay on a college dropout? And why, furthermore, did I welcome the Class of 2015 and new transfer students to Colby this fall with a paean to the very same man? Well, because sometimes when the mold breaks you learn something. Or, to put it another way: think different. The night Steve Jobs died I read—on my iPad—John Markoff’s moving eulogy in the New York Times and wrote to a colleague: “In some way I cannot define, I am connected.” As we all saw in the days that followed, a great many people felt that way, for different reasons and with varying levels of unease about it. My connection to Jobs was both personal and professional. Not personal in the sense that I knew him; we never met. Personal in the sense that he influenced the way I live my life—hyper-connected, yes, with all the negatives that can entail, but also hyper-aware, hyper-empowered, and hyper-in-tune with the ways in which elegance can be brought to bear on technology’s form and function. The professional connection is equally deep, and not simply because of the iPad that goes with me everywhere. Steve Jobs’s life and career have meant a great deal to me as I think about, and tell students about, the value of the liberal arts. Jobs enrolled at Reed College after high school and dropped out after one semester. He stayed in Portland for a year or so after that and audited a few courses, including an art history course about calligraphy. Here’s what he said about that experience in a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University: [The calligraphy] …was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. ... Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. There’s a lot worth considering in that passage: first and foremost, the admonition that you never know what will be meaningful or useful. I think most of the young alums with whom I sit down to breakfast would agree with the spirit of Jobs’s reflection and with the corollary proposition that current students’ predictions about what they will be doing 10 years after graduation are wrong. Exploration—opening oneself up to brand-new things—is one of the key imperatives of the liberal arts education. And in a setting like Colby’s, exploration is a requirement. Jobs’s account of the revelatory effect of his encounter with calligraphy is important for another reason: the critical role that his aesthetic and creative powers played in his success as a leader and innovator. And that points, in turn, to another hugely important dimension of the liberal arts experience at Colby. One of our chief purposes is to help students cultivate their imaginative and creative powers. We do so in part by acquainting students with various expressions of human creativity across time and cultures. This happens most often and predictably in the arts and humanities, of course, which explains why we insist that students have a deep exposure to these forms of knowing and living while they are at Colby. Like Steve Jobs, we too, in a somewhat different sense, are in the business of beauty. I expect I will have to stop talking to students about Steve Jobs fairly soon. The world he helped create moves swiftly, and the students will have plenty of other fodder for reflection on where they have been, where they are, and where they will go. What I do know, and what the young alums I’ve met know too, is that the richness of this time here on Mayflower Hill doesn’t need Steve Jobs (or me, for that matter) to prove itself. It will become for today’s students, as it has for so many generations of students, the root and branch of their future lives.

Real Problems, Real Solutions

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Research Assistant William Supple IV ’12 uses a glass-bottomed bucket to view the shallow-water substrate of Great Pond. Supple and five other students worked this summer with professors Russell Cole, Catherine Bevier, and Herbert Wilson to investigate the impacts of shoreland development on the lake’s shallow-water ecosystem. Colby has focused its environmental resources on Maine’s Belgrade Lakes for decades. Now there’s an expanded and long-term study, and Colby’s environmental resources are more considerable than ever. A research project funded by the National Science Foundation brings together local and state conservation organizations—and an interdisciplinary group of Colby scholars, both faculty and students. The data they provide has helped the state better direct resources at lake quality problems in Maine. “I think their work is equal to or better than the work you’d get from a paid professional consultant,” said Roy Bouchard, head of the Maine DEP Lakes Assessment Program. “And I think it’s a real model for involvement between a college and its community.” The result of the NSF grant has been an intensive and broad study of the past, present, and future of a watershed that comprises seven major lakes that serve as fishery, water supply, recreation center, and economic engine in central Maine. The project, recently funded for a third year, has involved more than 50 students in hands-on research encompassing chemistry, biology, environmental studies, spatial analysis, geology, economics, and science and technology “The fundamental science is cool,” said Whitney King, Miselis Professor of Chemistry, project leader for the second year of the study. “But it’s also the collaboration we’ve established between departments.” That collaboration has focused on the problem—the actual and potential effects of increased development on the watershed—from several different angles, from chemical changes in water quality to shoreline erosion to historical land use to biodiversity to socioeconomics. “The economic drivers that run that watershed are quite complex,” King said. The problem is complex, not only for the Belgrade Lakes watershed but for all Maine lakes, which are both crucial to the state and suffering the effects of development pressures. Last June, for the second year in a row, Colby hosted of the annual meeting of the Maine Lakes Conference, cosponsored by the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement and the Maine Congress of Lake Associations. The day-long conference drew collaborators from local, county, and state organizations, and the Colby team of scientists. And, like the Belgrade study itself, the conference drew on Colby’s expertise in watershed research and civic engagement. Said King, “This is a win-win situation.” Return to Boots on the Ground »

TwitterFEED

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

A selection of tweets from @colbycollege.
To see links, catch up on tweets, or sign up, click the Twitter icon on the Colby homepage.

Mule Mob

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Bleeding Colby Blue, or at least wearing it, members of the Mule Mob cheer on the Mules at the home football opener against Trinity, Sept. 24.

Alumni Recruiters Warm Cool Economy

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Colby Career Center looks to “Warm Market”

Be Careful What You Wish For

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Novelist Drew Magary creates a world where life is extended, for better and worse

For This Rookie Cop, All the Streets Are Mean

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Patrick Brancaccio reviews Gerry Boyle’s new crime novel

The Alchemist

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sculptor Stefanie Rocknak turns wood into captured moments of expression

Through the Mist

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

This photo was taken at 6:30 a.m. with the sun barely diffusing the morning haze. Reported the photographer, “Such glorious light!”

At Home on the Range

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Willard Wyman’s latest novel explores the transitory Ideal of the Old West

If the Ring Fits...

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

It was Sept. 15. Officer Scott D. Uhlman of the Brockton (Mass.) Police Department was talking to an evidence officer at police headquarters. The officer’s desk drawer was open, and Uhlman spotted a college ring originally brought in with some stolen jewelry recovered in the 1980s. Uhlman saw that it was from Colby, Class of 1978. The initials were KAC with Greek letters etched in the stone. “I looked at it and I said, ‘Hey, can I see if I can return this to the guy?’” Uhlman said. Turns out this cop was a bit of a ringer. Uhlman’s hobby is metal detecting, sweeping beaches and parks for jewelry and coins. He even has a submersible metal detector he uses at the beach in Florida. “The ocean has a tendency to suck things off of people,” he said. He’s found four other school rings and returned three. “One of them was from a Catholic school from 1932 that’s since closed and the building is demolished.” That ring he still has. So Uhlman went online. He found “the director of alumni data or whatever her title is. I said, ‘That’s the lady. She’ll know.’” The lady was Martha McCarthy, who once also had the informal title Finder of Lost Alumni. Uhlman gave McCarthy the class year and initials. She asked where he’d found it and he replied, “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.” And laughed. McCarthy ran a database search and within five minutes was on the phone with Kurt Cerulli ’78, who runs a financial services company in Boston. “I said, ‘This might seem strange, but have you lost your Colby ring?’” Cerulli picks up the tale: “I said, ‘Well, it is possible, but it was stolen thirty-two years ago.’” He was a student at Boston University law school. “I was at the bowling alley at BU. I took off my ring and my wallet and my college roommate’s Colby letter jacket. I put them on the back of my chair when I went up to bowl, and when I turned around they were gone.” The jacket and wallet never turned up. But the ring arrived in the mail Sept. 18. “I ordinarily wouldn’t think of wearing a college ring at this stage of my life, but I couldn’t resist putting it on,” Cerulli said. “And I’m still wearing it.” Cerulli wrote the Brockton police chief a note commending Uhlman, but Officer Uhlman shrugged off the praise. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not like a piece of costume jewelry where you can look at it and say, ‘Ah, that’s junk. Just throw it away.’ It’s important to somebody.”

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson: Witness to History

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Despite curling up under her protective vest to survive a Taliban ambush in Marjah, Afghanistan, and spending six hours awaiting her own execution after being convicted of being an American spy in Najaf, Iraq, NPR Foreign Correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson concluded, “It’s been worth it, both for myself and those informed by my work.” That’s what she told an attentive audience in Lorimer Chapel Oct. 16 when she gave the 2011 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Convocation address. After attending the Lovejoy Convocation, this year\'s Lovejoy Award recipient, NPR Foreign Correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, spent two additional days on campus visiting classes. Honored as Colby’s 59th Lovejoy Award recipient for her courageous reporting, and receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree, Nelson spoke of her reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring uprisings, and subsequent developments in the Middle East. She described wearing a burka when necessary, both to defer to local customs and for a measure of anonymity as she traveled to report stories she couldn’t have gotten dressed as a Westerner. “You can barely see a thing,” she said. “And forget about peripheral vision. I felt like a baby learning to walk when I wore that thing. Many of my Afghan staff would crack a smile whenever they saw me struggling to put the garment on or wobbling around in it.” In Saudi Arabia she donned an abaya and a niqab, which left only her eyes showing, so she could record women arguing “ferociously” with male officials while trying to register to vote. While the women were not successful, “Their courage took my breath away,” Nelson said. Nelson told of accompanying Egyptian protesters to state security headquarters after the fall of President Mubarak: “In hindsight, it was probably not the brightest move for me to be there,” she said. “I mean, how would the FBI react if an Egyptian reporter was discovered in the bowels of their headquarters in downtown D.C. and recording people who are breaking into top-secret files?” “I mean, how would the FBI react if an Egyptian reporter was discovered in the bowels of their headquarters in downtown D.C. and recording people who are breaking into top-secret files?”- Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson on accompanying Egyptian protesters ransacking state security headquartersShe recounted being disabled by tear gas and having to flee protests in Egypt. She told of being on patrol with Marines last year as “one of the Marines I’d gotten to know took a bullet to the head less than fifty feet from where I was curled up in the dirt. He was twenty-three and left behind a pregnant wife.” All of which led her to address the questions, “Why in the world do we do this job? And is it worth it?” “I became a foreign correspondent because I wanted to connect Americans to the rest of the world through compelling storytelling,” she said. “And, yes, to me it’s worth it, even if it means a few premature gray hairs for my husband.” Complete audio of the 2011 Lovejoy Convocation and a transcript of Nelson’s speech are online at colby.edu/lovejoy.

Recent Releases

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

BloodspellAmalie (Gosine) Howard ’97 Langdon Street Press (2011) Victoria Warrick is a witch. Not just any witch, but one with superior witch powers, which she discovers on her 17th birthday. The heroine of this young adult novel may be able to read minds and teleport herself, but she also faces the same trials and tribulations as any teenager—the need to fit in versus the need to be true to herself. Life becomes even more difficult when Victoria falls in love with a handsome young vampire and a forbidden relationship blossoms. Howard, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y., and is a native of Trinidad, turned a short story into her first novel. It’s a good start, as Bloodspell was recommended as a “summer beach read” by CosmoGirl magazine. The Winter Travelers: A Christmas FableDon J. Snyder ’72Down East (2011) Don Snyder’s latest novel is a time-bending story that uses World War II as a prism through which to view the recent financial recession. Charlie Andrews is a young financial baron on the brink of suicide after a spectacular business failure. He is saved by a mysterious homeless woman who leads him on an odyssey of discovery that includes traveling back in time to join a trainload of troops returning from war in 1945. On the journey Andrews learns—like Dickens’s Scrooge—what really counts in life. Snyder’s admiring view of the Greatest Generation is familiar and is a lament for its inexorable passing. Left ambiguous is whether Snyder believes that those who have come after, and who are made of far less stern and rock-solid stuff, have irremediably destroyed the world their parents and grandparents saved. The Thefts of the Mona LisaNoah Charney ’03ARCA Publications (2011) Art-theft expert Charney has aimed his considerable research and storytelling skills at yet another remarkable art heist (following his 2010 book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb). This time it’s the century-old theft of the Mona Lisa, a true story that involves skullduggery in the Louvre, misplaced political loyalties, and even Picasso and Apollinaire. Charney uses primary materials to recreate the shock that roiled France after the iconic painting disappeared and to describe the unlikely thief who pulled off this remarkable and, thank goodness, reversible crime. Proceeds from sale of the book benefit ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes against Art), which Charney founded. An Economic History of the American Steel IndustryRobert P. Rogers ’65Routledge (2010) It’s hard to overstate the role of the steel industry in the development of the United States. Steel was the backbone of the country’s infrastructure, the skeleton of its booming cities. It propelled development of the auto industry and armed the nation for two world wars. Demand for workers for the country’s steel mills shaped migration from Europe to America. The coal industry grew in large part because of demand for steel production. Yet that steel boom was followed by a bust of sorts, as increased efficiency and international competition led to a downsizing of the industry. This evolution involved technology, innovation, organization of labor, and government regulation. Writing a comprehensive and concise history of the U.S. steel industry would seem a daunting task, but Rogers, a professor of economics at Ashland University, does it with care and precision.Beginning with the industry in its infancy in 1860, Rogers traces its path from cornerstone of the U.S. economy to its decline to its reemergence in a globalized market. (The biggest steel company in the United States is owned by an Indian tycoon.) While the book is part of a series of works on economic history, anyone with an interest in the forces that have shaped our country, culture, and world will find it a reflective work backed by exhaustive research. —Gerry Boyle ’78 Jack the Cuddly Dog—Jack Goes West (DVD)Doug Morrione ’93Hello Baby Productions (2010) From fields to the forest, Central Park to San Francisco, Jack the Cuddly Dog—a yellow cartoon canine with a cute smile—takes toddlers on a cross-country adventure designed to stimulate the senses. Created by Doug Morrione ’93 and Max Reynal, Jack, in the title, goes west in pursuit of his elusive red ball. Real-life footage of roaming buffalo and aerial views of the Grand Canyon are made kid-friendly by a child’s narration and the energetic main character who travels by plane, train, and hot-air balloon from New York to California, where he retrieves his favorite toy and watches the sun set over the Pacific

The Inspiring - and Sometimes Terrifying - Professor Benbow

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Comments from Colby’s Facebook post on the death of Professor of English R. Mark Benbow …

Empowered in Kabul

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

Sulaiman Nasseri helps Afghan women gain independence through embroidery

Trading Campfires for Barbecues

web@colby.edu (Colby College) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST

There’s more to “cooking COOT” than mixing and masticating