The Editor's Blog

The Expanding Universe

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:35:56 GMT

It used to be, in the Dark Ages of 2005, that we published a magazine. On paper. Then we sent it to you. Our job was done. On to the next issue.

The magazine was put up online, of course, but that was an automated (and magical) process that us editorial types had little to do with. One of my colleagues would let me know that the magazine was online and I'd send an email to our list of alumni and others who might want to know.

I look back on that now like black-and-white TV.

Now we deliver magazine content to you in an ever-increasing variety of ways. We post on Facebook. Tweet stories. Readers add Colby to their RSS feed.

All of this means that you can see the magazine in a variety of different ways. On your iPad. Your phone. Your laptop. Or you can have it delivered in paper form to your door. (Still the format preferred by our readers).

I'm sometimes concerned that we've become so consumed with the way we deliver the magazine that we'll lose sight of the importance of the content. Interesting stories. Strong photos. Compelling stuff that we hope you'll enjoy and will reflect the good things going on at Colby and in the greater Colby community.

But not to worry. Yet.

In a week or two, old-fashioned paper magazines will begin arriving in mailboxes. Digital versions will land in the multitude of devices that are now part of our lives. I hope you will look. Read. Feel drawn to read stories through to the end. Maybe you'll be moved to comment online. Send an email. Or even an old-fashioned letter (that still does happen).

My concerns about the medium overtaking the message have been assuaged once again as I consider the stories headed your way. Marile Borden and her Facebook phenom, Moms Who Need Wine. Capt. Erik Quist, USMC, horribly wounded in Afghanistan but courageously facing the future. Mike Daisey's remarkable show about Apple and Steve Jobs.

There's much more, of course, and I hope that the time we spend making sure you can read the stuff hasn't diminished the value of what we deliver.

Let me know. I'd love to know what you think.

Good things to Come

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:11:43 GMT

I'll be honest. Things get a little dull around Mayflower Hill in the summer. It's not that there isn't plenty going on. Colby magazine doesn't really pause. We have researchers on campus. Prospective students and their parents arrive in a steady stream. We have scientists and physicians, forensic experts and Great Books readers.

But something's missing. Students. Lots of them.

They're coming, though. Like the first glints of fall foliage, signs of student season are appearing. Last week it was students doing emergency medical training, a couple of "victims" laid out on Dana Lawn. And then there are the few student cars rolling in early, packed with student stuff. And this morning, a great moment. I came around the corner by Pulver and the patio looked like a flower garden. It was COOT T-shirts, tie-dyed and laid out to dry. Every color under the post-Irene sun.

I had to smile. And snap a photo.

And then I felt a familiar feeling. I tried to identify it. Last year at this time? Nah, that wasn't it. And then I realized that this was the feeling you get when your home is an empty nest. And every once in a while, the nest refills as kids come rolling back in.

It happens at home. It's about to happen on Mayflower Hill. I can't wait.

Deja vu vu

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:39:17 GMT

Working at Colby having gone to Colby sometimes causes the old Yogi Berra saying to hit you between the eyes: deja vu all over again.

Got a good deja vu dose yesterday. Beautiful day on Mayflower Hill. Sunny, a little breezy, temp hitting 60. Most of the snow gone, except for the piles outside the field house, the end of the Foss Parking lot. I decided I'd had enough of staring at the screen, walked up the hill toward Miller. And there they were, like something out of a promotional video about college. Students reclining on the terraced slope in front of the library steps. Students tossing Frisbees. Students sitting on benches with books. Students playing guitar. One class gathered outside.

it could have been ... 1978 (but for the lack of bad 70s haircuts). Charlie Bassett holding forth on the lawn. Everybody kicking back, soaking in the first rays of spring sun. Lots of contented smiles. Life on the Hill is good.

I did a turn around the academic quad, smiling inwardly, maybe outwardly, too. I thought of Scrooge escorted by Dickens's ghosts, as though I could have walked into any of the groups of students and said, "Hey, we used to do this very thing," but remained invisible.

Passing the torch

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:46:54 GMT

Not to indulge myself too much (an ex-newspaper guy writing about Colby journalists twice in a row), but this is a subject I can't resist.

Alexis Grant ?03, a journalist and editor, got her start in the newspaper business by connecting with Jay Gallagher ?69, a veteran political reporter and bureau chief in New York State. Gallagher offered Grant an internship covering the New York legislature (never a dull moment there), and then served as her mentor, editing her stories, guiding her reporting. Grant went off to journalism school, the Houston Chronicle, did travel writing from Africa, and now works as an editor and writer for U.S. News & World Report.

Things did not go as expected for Gallagher in recent years. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, an experience he chronicled poignantly and irreverently ("Medical update: For those keeping score, I'm getting around with less wincing. Am still complaining a lot, though.") on his blog and died in May.

Grant wants to repeat the generosity he showed her. She's set up a Jan Plan internship that matches Colby journalists with students interested in a possible journalism career, whether it be newspapers, magazines, television, or new media. The idea is to give students a hard look at the career. I know from experience, that many of them will be hooked.

Alexis can provide details. She can be reached at alexiskgrant@gmail.com

If you tell her you read about her program here, I'll feel like I was a small part of the chain.

And it all started with the Colby Echo

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:03:27 GMT

As editor of Colby magazine, I'm privy to a news feed of alumni accomplishments. But sometimes I get the news where I live, in this case at breakfast on the front page of my Morning Sentinel newspaper.

The lead story in the Sentinel (and nearly 500 other media outlets around the world) was a story co-written and reported by Matt Apuzzo ?00, correspondent for The Associated Press based in Washington. It was about how the CIA often promotes and rewards agents and analysts who commit the biggest blunders. Matt Apuzzo vs. the CIA. I sipped my tea and smiled.

Full disclosure: Matt is a friend of mine and former colleague at the Sentinel. He worked there as a student intern when he was at Colby and we spent many a night in the newsroom, Matt taking sports scores over the phone, me finishing a column. What struck me at the outset was Matt's ebullient enthusiasm, his clear relish for everything about the newspaper business. When he worked his way up to reporting, he would take an assignment and bound off into central Maine, like a hound on a fresh track. There was no stopping him and he almost always delivered the story. This was a guy who had journalism in his blood.

Matt majored in biology at Colby but he really majored in the Colby Echo. He spent most waking hours working at the paper, and his unwaking hours recovering from the grueling weekly pace. It was a Colby education that served him well.

After graduation, Matt rocketed up the newspaper ladder. He focused on organized crime, but also covered Katrina, sleeping in his car and filing remarkable stories from the ravaged coastline. Now he's writing stories about justice and other matters from Washington D.C. Big stories. The kind that end up on the front page of the New York Times and Washington Post. He's affecting the course of the nation.

Good for him. Good for the country. Good for Colby.

This ocean science is personal

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:21:42 GMT

Harry Nelson ?76 remembers it like it was yesterday. It was Jan Plan his freshman year, 1974. He arrived on the island of St. Croix. White-sand beaches, sparkling blue water?and a microscope to which he was attached eight hours a day.

One of the first environmental studies majors at Colby, Nelson was an intern at the Lamont-Doherty Marine Station. His task was to count marine diatoms as part of a research project investigating the effect of marine upwelling of nutrient-rich waters on phytoplankton communities. By hand. One by one.

Nelson recounted the experience at Colby one recent morning before a class of Jan Plan students. "When I got back to Colby, everybody said, 'Where's your tan?'" he said.

He returned to Colby to give a presentation to a Jan Plan class taught by Peter Countway, a scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Colby has established a strategic partnership with Bigelow that has Colby faculty and students working with researchers from the lab at Boothbay Harbor and Bigelow ocean scientists teaching at Colby. Nelson was invited to speak and demonstrate a sophisticated piece of equipment invented by a Bigelow scientist and manufactured and sold by Fluid Imaging Technologies, where he is director of sales and marketing for aquatic markets.

The FlowCAM, a box-like device that hooks up to a laptop, counts and identifies microscopic particles in water, and produces high resolution images of the organisms, mostly phytoplankton. At the Jan Plan class, the machine analyzed a beaker of water, sending organisms popping up on a big screen. Scientists in 35 countries use the machine for real in their studies of marine microbes and the ecology of our oceans.

This sort of groundbreaking technology has changed the way ocean scientists work, and the type and scope of information they can glean. "When I was a student I thought marine biology was porpoises and manatees," Nelson said, pointing to the microbes on the screen. "In ocean science, this is where it's happening."

And, he said, if a student were to do the same job today, there might be more time on the beach.

Another alum We Wished We'd Met

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:11:07 GMT

Every once in a while my colleague Laura Meader will look up from her computer monitor and say, "Here's another one we should have written about."

Laura writes the obituaries that appear in the magazine and some of those "stories" touch her and us in certain ways. Often it's an older alum who led a remarkable life but one that, for some reason, slipped by us here at Colby magazine. We're left wishing we had met this person, had the opportunity to chat.

Alice Bocquel Hartwell ?36 is one of those people. Born in Quebec, relocated to Waterville as a young girl with her pastor father, Hartwell majored in French and taught the subject in schools from rural Maine to LIttle Rock, Arkansas. A gifted soprano, she married a choir director, and eventually returned to Waterville to teach high school. In her obituary in the Morning Sentinel the list of professional groups in which she served goes on and on.

The photo with the obituary shows a white-haired woman with a hint of adventuress. Which she was. After retiring from the classroom, she took up "freightering," traveling the world as a passenger on non-passenger ships. Both coasts of Africa, Australia, the Falklands?Hartwell logged 47 countries, most by herself. "She was an intrepid woman," her obituary said.

And one of many in the Colby alumni body, I know. We can't write about all of them here at Colby but still it give us a twinge of regret when we meet them only after the fact of their remarkable lives.

Back in Waterville, she was sometimes greeted by a former student singing "La Marseilles," a requirement for her fourth-year French students.

A reader's letter: Magazine is well done but demoralizing

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:30:35 GMT

We get letters praising Colby magazine. We get some criticizing Colby magazine. We don't usually get letters from alums saying the magazine is well done, but "to be honest, though, that is also rather demoralizing for someone who is unemployed."

The letter referred to the editor's column in the summer issue, which discussed the fact that some alumni feel they don't measure up to the subjects in the magazine. The anonymous writer signed the note, "A Proud but Humbled Grad." No name, unfortunately, because I would have liked to talk to this person. Still do.

The writer was a self-described graduate from the 90s who was in corporate communications, first in New York and then in other cities around the country. "It was an interesting, rewarding and enjoyable time," the writer said.

But then the recession hit. This Colby alum was "downsized" not once, but twice. For the past two years, the writer has been unemployed.

"I doubt that my situation is unique among Colby grads in these difficult times, but you would never know that reading Colby. It would be really interesting for me to read about others (who may be more forthcoming than I am) in a similar plight and what they are doing to find work. Even more interesting would be to read about what Colby is doing?or thinking about doing?to assist its alumni."

I wish I had a name so I could tell this person that the Colby Career Center does help alumni. Roger Woolsey, Todd Herrmann, and the rest of the Career Center team do their utmost to help current students and alums. They're good at what they do. And Colby has made job placement a priority.

The larger question remains, though. By emphasizing success, does the magazine unintentionally discourage alums who have hit a rough patch, for whom success has come and gone? That's not our mission. We want to explore the world of Colby alumni, and that pool, like the public at large, includes all manner of experience, good and bad.

So I would do the story this writer described: how Colby alumni knocked off course by the recession are trying to regain their bearings, their careers. How tough is it out there? What insights do they have to offer?

I don't know how many alumni read this blog, but I hope I hear from some. Perhaps the "proud but humbled grad" will be among them.

Brown-nosing? Not at all

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:26:02 GMT

I had a nice conversation with Adelin Cai ?05 recently for an upcoming alumni profile for Colby magazine (summer 2010). I wrote the piece but because of space limitations had to summarize some of what appears below. But I think it's too important to let it go unsaid.

Now a policy specialist at Google, Cai was a strong student at Colby. Native of Singapore, international relations with an strong interest in human rights. Three months after graduation she was at Cornell getting her masters in public administration. Internship at the United Nations. But when Cai hit the nonprofit job market in NYC, she didn't get far. She's fine now, loves her job at Google. But she was disappointed at the time and spent some time wondering what she could have done differently.

"I was somewhat idealistic in thinking that I could get a job in the nonprofit world without doing a lot of networking," Cai said. "It was this stubborn thing where I thought, I can do this on my own merits. I don't need someone to point me toward someone who will read my resume. I realize in hindsight that that was a little bit too idealistic because that's the way it works in the nonprofit sector.

"I guess I was also a little proud about the fact that I thought my resume was very strong and I should have been hired on the merits of my resume. That?s really not how it works. I think that's something that not everyone realizes. I thought, I'd gone to grad school. I'd done my internship at the United Nations in a very relevant field. I had great internship experience from being at Colby. I had a lot of funding to do internships in London and New York. So I didn't think my resume was that bad. But unfortunately you do need someone to be your cheerleader internally in the nonprofit world."

"For me, I thought networking was kind of like brown-nosing your way into a job, but it's not really about that. For me now, networking is getting to meet people and talk to people and getting your resume out there."

She's helped a couple of people get their resumes looked at at Google, she said.

"I don't see it as them being a brown-noser or trying to get some favor out of me. I actually and really excited when I meet someone from Colby or someone from Cornell who says, 'Hey, I don't know you but this is my resume and someone else referred me to you.' I take a look at it and I say, 'Yeah. You're a really great person and I'd like to have you in my organization.'"

Cai's advice for undergrads?"Definitely leverage that network."

High Finance, Indeed

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:39:03 GMT

I like Colby. Some days, I really like Colby, like when I opened my e-mail this morning and found a cheery note from Christina Feng ?08, in her second year with Teach For America in New York City.

This is her story:
Feng had her ?high finance? students at the High School of Arts and Technology fired up. Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, had agreed to visit their class.

Then Blankfein had to cancel. Feng, who had tapped all of her finance contacts to make sure her students were versed in mergers and acquisitions, proprietary trading, and hedge funds, wasn?t giving up.

She went to the Colby Alumni Directory and found an e-mail address for another star of international finance, Barclays head Bob Diamond ?73, the chair of the Board of Trustees. Feng wrote Diamond a note.

?I explained my situation and asked politely if he might consider coming in,? she said in an e-mail to Colby. ?I was straightforward in stating that I wanted to show my students that they deserve and are able to receive the attention of successful and talented people like himself (especially a Colby alum at that!), no matter what their own personal backgrounds might be. Because my students are talented, and can be successful, too. They just need the tools and opportunities.?

Diamond fired a note right back.

"Should have asked a good Colby man before Lloyd,? he said.

The Barclays chief arrived for class promptly on Wednesday morning, May 19, and put the students at ease. ?My students loved Bob's down-to-earth personality and even my shyer students asked great questions,? Feng reported. ?I sincerely hope that every prospective student understands the willingness of Colby alumnae to support each other. It's absolutely amazing.?

Ripped off

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:19:22 GMT

Colby friends:

The summer print issue of Colby magazine should have arrived at your doorstep sometime in the past week. Unfortunately a few (less than 20 so far) have landed back on our doorstep, covers torn off by some mechanical process and undeliverable.
If you were expecting your magazine and it hasn't arrived, send me a note (geboyle@colby.edu) and we'll zip one out to you.

thanks,
Gerry

Noteworthy

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:30:42 GMT

A postscript to my post of 4-23:

On Tuesday, I grabbed my umbrella (afternoon thundershowers on Mayflower Hill) and headed for the Bixler Bandroom for an end-of-year recital by Carl Dimow's guitar students. As I headed for the door to Bixler, a guy in shorts and flip flops, a guitar case slung across his back, bounded past. I wasn't late.

These recitals come fast and furious this busy time of year at Colby. But once you're in your seat, perusing the program, you're very glad you fit it in.

This recital had a little of everything. Bonnie Raitt, bluegrass, Statesboro Blues, a Celtic medley, and even baroque guitar and renaissance vihuela (a guitar variation). The music was fun, the players earnest and focused. It was interesting to see the different types of music juxtaposed. How often do you hear "Love me Like a Man" and "Caprichio Arpeado" back to back?

Strings were plucked and picked, chords were strummed, thrree students (Maya Ranganathan, Jack Harris, and Dan Reeves) accompanied themselves as they sang. Feet (attached to friends, faculty, parents, visitors from Waterville, a staff member or two) were tapping.

When I talked to Dimow last month, he said one of his hopes when he teaches guitar at a liberal arts college is for music and musicianship to become part of his students' lives, not necessarily on a stage, but at home. At parties. In the kitchen. Music, he said, has been part of the human experience almost forever. It should continue to be, but in the age of iPods, will young people still want to pick up a guitar and play that first C chord?

They will, and have. Sitting in the band room, listening to Colby students' heartfelt versions of Fats Waller, Wes Montgomery and Luys de Narvaez (died in 1549), was profoundly encouraging. And a lot of fun. As I walked across campus afterward, I had a smile on my face and tunes dancing in my head.

Hall pass

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:12:14 GMT

I had an appointment to see Carl Dimow?guitarist, flutist, associate professor of music?to talk about a new CD he put out with guitarist Nathan Kolosko. It's called Border Crossings and it's a great blend of jazz and samba and so-called world music. We chatted about that for a while (more about that in the summer issue of Colby mag) but before and after we just talked.

About teaching guitar to Colby students. About ex-students who've gone on to be full-time musicians (my favorite is a virtuoso banjo player who plays much of the time on cruise ship). About the place of music in our lives. About college students who, in the age of the iPod, decide at age 20, that they want to learn how to play the guitar.

I don't know why I find this sort of thing encouraging. Maybe it's because I sometimes feel our technology is swallowing us up. Or suffocating us. Or filling up our heads so there's no room for anything else.

But college students do want to learn to play an instrument, often from scratch. Dimow said he gets novices, he gets advanced players, he gets everything in between. He has students who want to learn to play and sing at the same time. (not as easy as it looks). He has the student who said, upon hearing about Dimow and Kolosko's new CD, "You're putting CDs out? Nobody buys CDs anymore."

But Dimow, a soft-spoken guy with an easy and ready sense of humor, is no Luddite. He and Kolosko have a performance video on YouTube that, as of the day of our conversation, had over 53,000 hits. And he uses YouTube all the time in the studio. It's the modern equivalent of playing a record over and over to learn a new riff (memories of "Honky Tonk Women" come flooding back), or going to clubs to watch a player's fingers move on the fretboard.

"I use YouTube in lessons all the time," Dimow said. "If I'm teaching a B.B. King tune, I'll just pull up B.B. King playing the music."

It's reassuring to see that times change. but not really.

The New Journalism

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:13:25 GMT

An interesting one from the Chronicle of Higher Education. A post on a new blog, Umagazinology, created by the editors of Johns Hopkins Magazine, proposes that there is a growing need for good journalism in college alumni magazines. Why? Because newspapers and commercial magazines are struggling to stay afloat.

It's an interesting argument; what other magazines or newspapers exist without direct financial constraints? Where can journalists, often (as is the case with Colby magazine) extensive experience in print and electronic journalism, continue to do serious work? Viewed in this way, magazines like ours have increased responsibility, not only to cover the bases on campus and in the alumni body, but to explore broader issues. If we don't do it ...

From community to commune

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:16:03 GMT

Dust has settled from the spring 2010 issue of Colby (now at the printer) and before we turn our attention to summer 2010, I want to tell you a bit about an alumna who appears in this issue.
I first met Gwynelle Dismukes ?73 in 2000 at The Farm, a commune in Summertown, Tennessee, one of the least likely places you'd think you'd find a Colby alum.

The Farm, settled in 1971 by hundreds of young people arriving from the west coast in a caravan of brightly painted buses, is a pastoral place, now home to a far smaller number of aging "Farmies." But the Farm also accepted newcomers and Gwynelle was one. A longtime community activist, and a single mom with two kids, she decided that a sprawling commune in central Tennessee was a safer place for her teenagers than the streets of Nashville, or Washington, or Boston.

Gwynelle had lived in all of those cities and wherever she was, she contributed. A small sprite of a woman, she published community newspapers, performed spoken-word poetry, wrote a book about Kwanza, produced street festivals and concerts, among many other things.

She also left her home in Ashville, South Carolina in 1969 to come to Colby.

Mayflower Hill was just one destination in a life that was all about exploration. When I met her at The Farm, she gave me a tour and introduced me to some of the Farmies, including the founder, Stephen Gaskin. Then Gwynelle and I sat and talked in her little house in the woods. I don't recall exactly what we talked about but I remember a intensely curious and energetic woman who wanted to spend her life making other people's lives better. She spent a decade at the commune, then moved on, ending up near home in Ashville.

Gwynelle is just one alum but she falls into a category I think of as the explorers. Restless and curious, they stop at Colby like migrating birds, fuel up with knowledge and skills, and fly on. Gwynelle did just that. Her obituary appears in this issue. Because of space limits, it's as brief as her life was rich.

The Olympic Trails Crossed Mayflower Hill

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:33:10 GMT

Okay. So they didn?t ski or ride for Colby. But I like to think Olympic champions Lindsey Vonn, daughter of Linda Krohn ?74, and Seth Wescott, son of former track coach Jim Wescott, had a little Mule in them as they raced for the gold in Vancouver. After all, Colby is one big family. So think of this as the Colby family extended.

Krohn was in the crowd at the finish when her eldest nailed the downhill and fulfilled a nearly lifelong dream. ?Since she was a little girl, she wanted to win more medals than anyone ever had," Krohn told the Olympic-sized press pool. "Olympic gold is the ultimate.?

With her downhill victory, Vonn is a household word now. But Krohn has been trailside rooting for her daughter since Lindsey was a kid skiing on a bump of a hill in Minnesota. The family moved to Vail, Colorado so Lindsey could train, and by the time she was in her late teens, she was off and skiing.

Now Krohn watches her daughter?s World Cup races on the Internet. She?s not alone.

Krohn is part of a group of ?Colby girls? who have stayed close friends since Mayflower Hill. The group, including members of the sorority Chi Omega, gets together every year or two, and they were all watching on TV when Lindsey flew to victory. One of the ?girls? is Susie Hoeller ?74, an attorney in Arkansas, said she was thrilled for Lindsey and for Linda.

The medal win prompted Hoeller to recall women?s sports when she and the others in the group were at Colby. Women?s basketball wasn?t played full court because it was considered too strenuous. Hoeller played on an intramural men?s hockey team because there wasn?t a team for women. When she was told she couldn?t play with men because she might get hurt, she and other women students started their own team. Some of the new recruits showed up with figure skates.

?Maybe Linda had the ability to be a ski champion,? Hoeller said, ? but there weren?t the same opportunities.?

Instead, Krohn will have to ?settle? for being a champion?s mom. Hoeller said Krohn, who also practiced law, has been a stalwart supporter of her daughter?s career, and has overcome obstacles in her own life.

?We have an enormous amount of affection for her,? Hoeller said. ?If you talked to any of the other eleven, they would say the same thing.?

If retired Colby track and field and cross-country coach Jim Wescott had stayed at the North Carolina State, Seth Wescott might be a champion surfer. Or mountain biker. Instead Coach Wescott opted for Colby. The rest is Olympic snowboard cross history.

Seth Wescott grew up skiing and snowboarding at Sugarloaf (alongside many Colby students), and also tagged along with his dad at Colby. He apparently absorbed some of his dad?s sports philosophy.

Jim Wescott liked Colby?s ?healthy mix? of social life, athletic, and academics.

He encouraged training partners to push one another to higher levels. "You hope they see the value of it. You hope they continue to help each other in life," he told Colby staff writer and College Editor Bob Gillespie. Wescott urged his charges to keep the fun in athletics, advising them to take their running shoes wherever they went. ?There's no telling what you'll see, from the Champs Élysées to rabbits.?

It would appear that Seth Wescott has taken that advice to heart. He doesn?t enter every race possible. He surfs in the off-season, snowboards alone on big mountains in Alaska. He still lives at Sugarloaf, where he owns a restaurant. He takes time to encourage and mentor racers at Carrabassett Valley Academy, his alma mater.

But even long before his race to the top of his sport had begun, his dad may have had an inkling.

In 1992, the Division III National Championships for track and field were held at Colby. Wescott loved the scene, the assembled athletes from all over the country. ?It was like a miniature Olympic Village,? Wescott said.

Little did he know ? .

A Preview

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:21:51 GMT

One of the best things about this gig is all of the unexpected, unrelated, and serendipitous stuff you learn on the job.

Like what? As long as you asked, these are just a few of the subjects I've been absorbing as we ready the winter 2010 issue:

The real reasons for the unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan (ask the Pashtuns), windmill construction (mind-boggling), what it takes to get from a refugee camp to Colby (smarts, hard work and courage), language in the age of G-Chat (evolving), Alcatraz (home to celeb criminals), Al Capone's mental state in his dotage (bonkers), Joan of Arc (one tough kid), the poetry of Adrian Blevins (tender, raw, and real), theater set design (not for the timid), technology in our lives (no panacea), Japanese-American relations around World War II (and an accused double agent), 19th century pop history (instant bestsellers), life on the streets today (sad and rough), America's gated communities (do they keep people out or in?), and ethnography (sort of like journalism but with more contemplation).

And that's just one issue. Next issue it's Colbians' lives in the military, an embedded reporter for the Washington Post, up close and personal with Bill Russell, and a new novel by alumnus Geoffrey Becker. I already peeked; it's good.

So that's today's report from Colby mag, where the stream of interesting people never stops, all the news never fits, and everyone we meet is way above average.

Sorry about that

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:51:51 GMT

My colleague Ruth Jacobs just let me know how long it had been since I last wrote something here. Whoah. Time does fly by when you're doing the spring magazine, well into the summer magazine, seeing students around campus and then (in the last week) seeing them slip away into summer break.

Except the seniors, who still are here, gearing up for the big day, May 24. Everyone hopes for sun (the forecast looks good) and chairs on the lawn for the festivities.

What I'm reminded of at this time of year is how quickly a college career passes?certainly for the parents, and maybe for the students, too. As a parent, you drop your son or daughter off and then, just a few short months later, it seems, you're sitting in the audience hearing the names run through the alphabet.

Of course, some of the graduates may think the last four years were an eternity. But not many, I'll bet. For them, it's been four jam-packed years, with remarkable accomplishments, some of which ou see in Colby magazine, most of which you don't. We'd need a weekly magazine to make a dent.

Cape Cod inspiration

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:40:24 GMT

One of the perks of working at Colby is being a few hundred yards from a world-class art museum. From Richard Serra to Winslow Homer. Whistler to Warhol. And Bevin Engman.

Engman is a still-life painter, and Colby faculty member, who recently spent time re-exploring her childhood haunts on outer Cape Cod, in and around Truro. The result is a collection of new paintings now on exhibit at Colby. It's a remarkable body of work. Luminescent. Succinct. I started at the beginning and worked by way around. And then I went around again. And again. Landscapes, but not quite. Studies of the light at the horizon. Rain on a marsh. The wavelength of waves. Great stuff. Through May 31. Check it out.

connections

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:26:04 GMT

So I'm chatting with Ratul Bhattacharyya, a senior from New Jersey, soft spoken and serious. He wants to write something for the magazine about the Jan Plan in Kalimpong, India. It's a program and subject dear to his heart. More in an upcoming issue of the mag.

We talk about that but then we digress, Ratul and I. We get going on the movie Slumdog Millionaire, organized crime, gangsters in Eastern Europe. Ratul seems to know a lot about different things. He suggests I read Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts. It's a hugely popular novel about a criminal who flees Australia for the slums of Bombay. Reviewers call it over the top (900 pages) and irresistable. How did I miss it? Who knows. I've been doing my own books, and Colby mag. But Amazon says I also should read Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. I say thanks, Amazon, but Ratul already told me. Interesting how conversations lead to interesting and even illuminating things, if you let them.

Apostrophic

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:32:29 GMT

Pretty regularly I find myself thinking of my late friend and colleague Bob Gillespie. Usually, it's when someone commits some egregious grammatical blunder. Yesterday it was news of an entire city commiting one collectively, consciously, and without regret.

Birmingham, England has decided to abolish apostrophes. I'm not kidding. Or should I say, Im not kidding. Officials there decided apostrophes are "old-fashioned and confusing." Of course, they're confusing, if you don't take the ten minutes to learn. Like saying learning to spell is confusing so letz just doo watevah we want. Oh, wait, a minute. People are doing that. Or it's too confusing to learn to play guitar, so we'll just wave an electronic facsimile in front of a computer screen. Wait. People do that, too.

The handbasket is full and headed for you-know-where, dont you think?

one century, two readers

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:31:06 GMT

I'm reading a fascinating book and you won't find it at Barnes & Noble. It's called First Footsteps in East Africa and it was written by a British explorer named Richard F. Burton. In 1855. The book, his diaries of his expedition through what is now Somalia, was published in 1910. Colby added it to the collection in 1911. From what I can tell, it's only been checked out twice.

Burton is part philosopher, part anthropologist. He's from that British tradition of soldier/adventurer that helped create the British Empire. Half of English aristocracy was tromping around jungles and deserts, the North and South poles, in the 1800s. Now we've got Richard Branson. I bring the book up here because it's interesting (Burton was both renowned and reviled in Britain, and died feeling he hadn't been given adequate credit for his discoveries).

But on a much different note, it shows the sort of treasures that remain in the library stacks, waiting to be discovered.

I want my Phdd

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:44:15 GMT

We get all kinds of random e-mail at Colby magazine, some of it not suitable for a family blog. But the people who sent this one today must know this is a prestigious institution where education is valued.

Now you can Buy Diploma, Bacheelor, Degree, MasteerMBA, PhDD at LowPrice!
       Call us up for more details
    No Classes/Exams/Books/Interview/Tests
100% NO Pre-school Qualification Required!
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Diploma, Degree, Bacheelor, MasteerMBA, PhDD available in the field of your Choice so you Can even Become a doctor and receive all the benefits that comes with it!

Please leave 3 below info in voicemail:

1) Your name
2) Your country
3) Your phone No. (Please include Countrycode)

Call Now!! 7 Days a week, 24 hours a day waiting For Your call
Our staff will Get back to You in 1 - 3 working days

Now, normally I ignore these but times are tough and I figure an advanced degree might come in handy. Especially in the field of my Choice. Let me think. Economics? Mathematics? French? (I did take 113-114 at Colby). Maybe I'll get all three. No lines. No waiting.

That's Dr. Boyle to you.

bohemian rhapsody

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:56:27 GMT

It's part of winter on Mayflower Hill: hundreds of cedar and Bohemian waxwings gather to munch on the fruit of the flowering trees on campus. Today there were hundreds (thre? four?) circling and swooping and chittering in the top of the pine trees in front of our building. Laura Meader called me over to see. "It's like when you see a rainbow," she said. "You just look around for somebody to share it with."

Not as colorful as a rainbow but pretty amazing nonetheless. And then, when the fruit is gone, probably in a week or so, the flock moves on.

A gift idea

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:10:13 GMT

I don't know what I'd like more. The Lotus Exige S240 that Ezra Dyer ?99 was driving the other day. Or Dyer's job, which allows him the opportunity to swap exotic automobiles like an NBA star.

Dyer, the son of a Maine lobsterman, is an auto writer. A former Echo columnist, he writes for magazines and he reviews cars for the New York Times. But not just any cars. Just today he is on the Times online edition buzzing around a track in a brand new Lotus. Not bad for a guy who learned to drive bouncing around his parents' backwoods in Maine in a beat-up all-wheel drive Subaru.

I talked to him a few months back about doing a car piece for Colby mag. Time to get in touch again!

No Blue Tubes

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:45:29 GMT

Starting back in on this blog from Mayflower Hill, kind of like transmitting from the WMHB antennae that used to be atop Roberts.

Funny thing about blogs. They have a potential readership of between zero and infinity. Far cry from my former former writing gig, cranking out columns for the Morning Sentinel. At the paper, you had a pretty good idea of who was reading your stuff. In the good years it was just under 30,000 households, many of them marked on the country roads of central Maine by blue newspaper tubes on metal stakes. If readers liked what you wrote, or if they didn't, they'd tell you at the corner store. Or march up the stairs to the newsroom and demand an audience. Or call and rant. Or leave a note on your windshield.

Anyway, most writers labor in solitude but like to think that their writing is the beginning of a sort of conversation. So here goes:

Every few weeks I have breakfast at Colby with one of my former writing professors (he's still a writing professor; just not mine, though he is tapped as a trusted reader of works in progress). He's a mentor, a good friend, somebody to talk baseball with over eggs and home fries. (I highly recommend eggs at Roberts). Anyway, that got me to thinking:

How many Colby alumni keep those relationships going with favorite professors over the years. How many professors have students turn into lifelong friends. We're thinking of a story about this phenomenon, which I have a hunch is very much a Colby thing.

Let me know. Comment here or send an e-mail to geboyle@colby.edu. Back to you.

Tigers in their Tank

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:03:34 GMT

Colby's Philip Nyhus and his student are using GIS technology to map possible habitat for tiger reintroduction in China. Colby magazine did a cover story on it and it got noticed by a tiger conservationist in India, Ashutosh Mahadevia.

Ashutosh works with an NGO called Tiger Watch in India, and he wanted to know the best way to reach Philip so they could compare notes. The tiger preservation network is global, and we were glad to help make the connection, especially because Ashutosh's daughter, Darshini Mahadevia, is a Colby junior. Who knows what will come of it, but the seeds planted here are sown far and wide.

Made my day.

He's Colby!

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:52:52 GMT

Family members (there are a couple) with no affiliation to Colby get annoyed at times like these.

Listening to NPR, there's a report that Hugo Chavez has ordered out the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy ?73.

He's Colby!

The State Department deplores the move, and says Chavez's charges of a spy plot at absurd. Who delivers the message? Sean McCormack ?86.

He's Colby.

Okay, so on to the next story. It's a report interminably unfolding sub-prime crisis. The analysis comes from NPR correspondent Chris Arnold ?92.

He's Colby, too.

So in consideration of family members who did not or have not done four years on Mayflower Hill, I try not to say it aloud, but I think it. When Gerry Hadden ?89 comes on, reporting from Spain, I don't say a word. But I think it.

He's Colby.

Moving Target

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:04:49 GMT

First-year students arrived yesterday in a caravan of SUVs that was lined up by 8 a.m. Stuff was unloaded and the campus was soon being criss-crossed by new members of the Class of 2012 and their bookstore-bag toting parents.

It's quite a scene, gaggles of students, bonded by room assignment, sports team, the look of the guy across the hall. I love watching the first-years and their parents and am always reminded of the addage that dog owners resemble their dogs. Eighteen-year-olds would cringe to think so, but they do look like young versions of the 'rents, their outward resemblance as linked as their DNA.

The 400-strong group assembled in front of the art museum and after some farewell embraces, proceeded onto the quad and up to the Miller Library steps. They come in all shapes and sizes, looks and styles. Some look like they own the place already and others are masking the fact that they still are mildly petrified.

It's a moment in a rite of passage, and for that reason presents particular challenges to a quarterly magazine. I could record this scene in more detail but by the time the next issue of the magazine lands, this will be a snapshot of something long past. The Class of 2012 is changing right before our eyes and by October, they won't recognize the people they were on that first day.

That, of course, is what places like this are all about. It's a metamorphosis and it's well underway.

Birds in Hand

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:52:52 GMT

An ad in Colby magazine last issue boasted that Perkins Arboretum is home to 22 species of birds. Hah.

The number slipped by us, but we should have known that 22 was way low. Now we know that, and we know what species of birds hang out in the woods on Mayflower HIll. According to Bets Brown, scientist, birder, and well-placed source, the the real number is over 100, including:

Black Duck
Mallard
Ruffed Grouse
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Bald Eagle
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Coopers Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Killdeer
Solitary Sandpiper
American Woodcock
Herring Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
Barred Owl
Chimney Swifts
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Eastern Wood-pewee
Eastern Phoebe
Great-crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
Least Flycatcher
Blue-headed Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Common Raven
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
House Wren
Winter Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Veery
Hermit Thrush
Wood Thrush
American Robin
Gray Catbird
Brown Thrasher
European Starling
Bohemian Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing
Nashville Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Northern Parula
Cape May Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Pine Warbler
Palm Warbler
Black and White Warbler
American Redstart
Blackburnian Warbler
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat
Canada Warbler
Cerulean Warbler
Scarlet Tanager
Chipping Sparrow
American Tree Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Baltimore Oriole
Pine Grosbeak
Evening Grosbeak
Purple Finch
House Finch
Pine Siskin
Common Redpoll
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow.

Our Far-Flung Correspondent

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:21:19 GMT

Alexis Grant ?03, journalist and regular Colby contributor (see "Different Prescriptions," spring 08 Colby), recently left her job as a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and began a tour of Africa. Alexis is filing a few profiles of Colby alumni on the way, so you'll see some of that work in the magazine in coming issues. But in the meantime, she is writing a travel blog about her experiences.

Alexis is an indefatigable traveler, an observant writer, and relates easily to the cultures in which she immerses herself. It's almost like being there!

Human Terrain, indeed

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:31:26 GMT

In the spring issue of the magazine, we ran a story about the Human Terrain System, the program that the Army has implemented to put anthropologists on the battlefield in Iraq. The Army's intent is to give the military insight into the cultural nuances there, so as to better understand both friend and foe. Anthropology Professor Catherine Besteman is among many vocal critics of the program. Besteman and others say the program violates the code of ethics of anthropologists, which says, among other things, that they not put their subjects in danger. That story prompted a letter from Lt. Col. Christopher M. Caponi ?91, U.S.M.C., saying anthropologists should be applauded for putting their lives on the line.

And on the line they are.

Last month, the first HTS anthropologist was killed in Iraq. Michael V. Bhatia was killed by a roadside bomb along with two U.S. soldiers. Bhatia, from the University of Oxford, educated at Brown University, specialized in conflict resolution. There's a story about his life and death in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"Michael was very conscious of, and very reflective on, the controversies around the program," a colleague was quoted as saying. "He was someone who really thought long and hard about it. I know we talked about it before he went. He took the criticisms very seriously. In a sense, he was the kind of person who was on both sides."

Critics and supporters? Americans and Iraqis? Shiite and Sunni? In this conflict, which thus far has defied the resolution Bhatia studied, the war also is divided into two other camps: those who survive and those who do not.

On that, there's no room for debate.

My Favorite Martian

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:20:54 GMT

Sorry about the absence. Got caught up in putting out the summer issue of the magazine and the blog fell through the cracks. But I'm back to say you MUST check out the story, "Mars Up Close,"now in Colby mag online. It's about Scott Murchie ?81, who heads a team taking photos of Mars that are key to the ongoing and future exploration of the planet. The story, by Tom Nugent, is fascinating. The NASA images are fantastic. Shows that we're all humans but our brains are wired so differently. Building this amazing equipment. Shooting it up to Mars. Landers and rovers and mobile laboratories. ... And I can't figure out all the stuff on my iPod.

Tastes good--and profitable, too!

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:21:39 GMT

Interesting thing about Google searches. They turn up Colby connections nonstop?sometimes by chance.

A story came through in the Financial Times of London about b.good, a healthy-burger chain in Boston co-founded by Jon Olinto ?98 and Tony Rosenfeld ?97. Olinto and Rosenfeld know business and food and that plus a lot of very hard work will get you places. We wrote about b.good in 2007. Since then it's become increasingly clear that the b.good'ers were on the cutting edge of a healthful trend in the restaurant industry. Americans are more aware of what they eat and are demanding restaurants that don't serve them junk.

Enter b.good. "We didn't set out to save America from being fat, but we want to provide people with an option they feel good about," Olinto told the Financial Times reporter. "It's the way you'd make food at home, if you had time."

The story goes on to say that the enterpreneurs made 16 percent profit on $1.3 million in sales at their Back Bay restaurant alone. That's a healthy profit, points out Rebecca Knight, the Financial Times Boston correspondent.

Not bad, writes Knight, who should know. She's been writing about the financial side of the news since 1999. And she knows a bit about Colby as well, since her dad is Colby's own Cal Mackenzie.

Sometimes our increasingly global world is small, indeed.

A Bird in Hand

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:16:26 GMT

The entrance to the Schair Swensen Watson Alumni Center has big windows?architecturally nice, ornithologically hazardous. So when I arrived at the office today there was a vivid black and yellow bird lying on the mulch, killed by a collision with the glass. Last summer it was a catbird. This time a male common yellowthroat, a very pretty warbler, just arrived back in Maine from the south, perhaps as far as Mexico. Time to put up silhouettes of hawks.

It was kind of sad, but the bird was beautiful nonetheless. I mentioned it to Bets Brown, colleague, biologist, and birder, down the hall. She said Herb Wilson, Colby's resident ornithologist (and Bets's husband) might have a use for it. So I went back outside, picked the bird up and brought it upstairs. I wrapped the bird in a paper towel and put it in the department fridge, then sent Herb an e-mail. As a courtesy, at our weekly magazine meeting this morning, I mentioned that it was a bird in the refrigerator, in case anyone was wondering.

"Eeeew," was the immediate response.

"I don't mind the bird," one colleague said. "It's the lice and bugs that might crawl off of it."

Sissies.

Somebody came up with a plastic bag and the bird was safely zip-locked away. Fine, but what was the big deal?

As I told the group, when my kids were young, they went to a nursery school that was very focused on nature. The teacher, a curious and adventurous person, would bring in the occasional bit of nature for the children to examine. A porcupine's quill, plucked off a road kill. Feathers from a cardinal. Mushrooms and moss.

So I got in the habit of picking up dead animals from the side of the road. Not just any roadkill. Not stuff that was bloody. But I remember a kestrel, a small hawk, its neck broken but otherwise unharmed. The school did a lesson on talons. A partridge, in the same condition. That was the focal point of a discussion of feathers. And of course there were the animals that the cats dragged home from the woods and left on the back step.

Birds. Mice and voles. A whole family of flying squirrels.
Now that made for a good nursery school presentation.

And now a single warbler, alongside the sandwiches and yogurts. Ah, Maine. The way life should be.

Tough Times in the Big Easy

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:05:28 GMT

Jan Plan is supposed to expose students to something transformative. Nico Porot ?10, an engaging guy from Idaho via the west coast, was transformed by a month spent laying linoleum and hanging drywall in still-rebuilding New Orleans. He came back and wrote a compelling piece for his philosophy independent study with Professor Jill Gordon.
Gordon liked it so much she fired off an e-mail to me. I liked it so much I put it up here. Porot was so moved by his experience, he's making plans to go back, and hopes to take other Colby students with him.
Take a look.

Six stories full of sadness--and inspiration

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:53:33 GMT

Rick Russo called a few months back. He asked if I'd be interested in helping with a project to benefit Waterville Hospice. I was glad to assist, but I didn't expect the experience to be so moving.

Six Maine writers with Colby connections?me, Rick, Wes McNair, Bill Roorbach, Susan Sterling, and Monica Wood?interviewed people who had been helped by Hospice programs. The interviews were transforming for all of us; the stories that emerged attempted to do justice to the strength, courage, and resilience of the subjects.

I wrote about Debbie and Ed Crocker, a couple from Skowhegan whose son, Erik, was killed in a car accident when he was 17. I can only hope that, God forbid, I am tested in the way the Crockers have been, I show the generosity and compassion they have shown. From the depths of despair, good things can come.

The book is a benefit for Hospice. It was published by Down East Books. You can read more about it or you can buy it online

Please excuse the shameless promotion; it's a good book about good people and it's a good cause.

A Journalist's Journalist: John Roderick

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:16:55 GMT

When John Roderick ?36 passed away in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago, his son sent an e-mail out to his friends and associates. The somber news was followed within minutes by a flurry of notes of condolence, all including some remarkable anecdote about this remarkable man.

I was lucky enough to have known John and to have been on that list. For those of you who didn't know him, John was a Waterville native. He joined the staff of the Morning Sentinel in high school, went to Colby, joined the Associated Press in 1937, never worked for another news organization. An editor, correspondent and special correspondent, he covered China firsthand and interviewed Mao Zedong. He covered the fall of French Indochina, the creation of Israel and other historic events. He wrote like a journalist with the long perspective of a historian. And he was a charming and generous man.

As the flurry of notes turned into a blizzard, I read each one and wondered whether someone would collect them in some way. I'll leave that to the friends he made around the world who know him better and longer than I. But I am going to include a bit here.

It's an excerpt from a speech John gave in 1965 to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, of which he was president. John talked to a room full of former war correspondents about covering war. His observations are applicable today.

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

War is news.

Big wars are big news.

Newspapers, wire agencies, radio and television networks spend millions of dollars to cover a war. They deploy companies and battalions of reporters and photographers to record it.

What are the responsibilities of these men in the field, at the battlefront? They can be summed up in a phrase: to report the truth.

But truth is an elusive word, hard to define.

A reporter who cables the day-to-day fortunes of the war is telling the truth. He records the advances and the retreats of the rival armies, the number of dead and wounded, the war booty captured.

This kind of reporting requires no particular skill. You can take a reporter off the police and city hall beat and assign him to it.

But he is writing only a limited truth.

In the same way, a reporter who attends a press conference or rewrites the handout of an official on either side of the conflict is being honest if he reports accurately what they say. Anyone can do this.

Even foreign editors, bless their unimaginative little hearts, are capable of this kind of factual reporting.

But is this enough? The answer, emphatically, is NO.

A reporter who is worth his salt will, whether he is covering a war or a peaceful foreign beat, write in depth, take the long perspective, turn out careful analyses, adopt a tough, suspicious attitude to the propaganda handout, whether it comes from a prime minister or a general, whether it comes from the good guys or the bad guys.

Can we take a reporter off the police beat, place him in the jungles of Viet Nam and expect him to produce this kind of copy?

The answer is an emphatic NO. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule.

The analytical reporter does not spring full-grown from the city desk, or from the photo dark room. He has to be educated. He must have done his homework in advance. He flunks the course if he does not know the history, politics, economics, cultural background and mores of the country to which he has been assigned. He gets less than a passing grade if he cannot write a story free of the old clichés. He is dishonest--and lazy?if he settles for the easy label in describing countries and individuals. Are all ?free world? countries really free? Many of them are quite the opposite. Words like ?belligerent?, ?democratic?, freedom-loving?, ?dictatorial?, ?imperialist? and ?colonial? are packed with emotional dynamite. We ought not play with them carelessly.

Above all, a correspondent must be able to see not only the big picture but to recognize the individuals who inhabit it. Too often they are left in the shadows.

Wars are fought by human beings who inflict pain and suffering on other human beings. Many them do not like it. Some do. A good reporter becomes a great one when he is able to capture the emotions of the little people caught in the massive jaws of war. He does a service to mankind if he can write powerfully of the horror, tawdriness, boredom and hopelessness as well as the courage, honesty and dedication of the individuals who fight.

The good reporter must do all of those things and do one other. He must spell out the reasons that prompt men to leave their peaceful homes, take up a gun and fight to the death for an idea, or a principle, or out of simple vengeance and hatred. The ?enemy? are not all ?fanatics? and ?heroism? is a word that applies to both sides. We are wise if we avoid these facile labels in the first case and describe simply what a man does and why he does it. The reader will make up his own judgements with greater confidence if his mind does not stumble on slanted words and phrases.

Finally, the newspapers themselves have a great responsibility. They cannot escape their share of the guilt if a war, or the events which lead up to a war, are badly or inadequately reported. No matter how much money a paper makes or how big a circulation it has, it fails in its duty, it is a second-rate paper if its reporters and editors are second-rate.

Good reporting aboard begins at home, in the personnel office or on the foreign desk.

It is the home office where the men and women who go overseas are chosen.

Good men and women, who fulfil the qualifications I have suggested, cost money. It must be spent. What is the use of spending literally millions of dollars to provide communications and material equipment for a reporter if what he sends back to his home office is trash?

Inadequate or incomplete reporting makes for an inadequate and incomplete knowledge on the part of the breading public.

Our responsibility to report accurately, impartially and in depth is a grave one. Governments have been known to make decisions based on reporting from the field.

A great English novelist once described a reporter as a ?sedulous ape?.

Are we to accept that label, merely repeating what others tell us without a question? Or shall we regard the press as a rack, on which we will stretch the carcasses and crack the bones of the demagogue, the lying bureacrat, the dishonest politician, the scheming propagandist and the bloodthirsty militarist?

I vote for the rack."

You go, Gossip Girl

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:39:59 GMT

I remember the first time I laid eyes on a Gossip Girl book, the series about jaded and precocious prep school kids in Manhattan, written by Cecily Von Ziegesar ?92. This was in 2005 and one came in the mail for review. We passed it around, poo-pooing it as a nasty bit of fluff for teenage girls. But I remember thinking back then that the hundreds of thousands of Gossip Girl readers couldn't be all wrong.

We did the story, sending a writer, Mackenzie Dawson ?99, to interview Cecily at her home. A Colby alumna read the story and wrote in: "Gag me with a silver spoon."

The rest is pop culture history. There's the TV show, of course, though by most accounts it's a pale imitation of the books. And the books, with sales in the millions, were the subject of a thoughtful essay by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker last week. "Von Ziegesar pulls off the tour de force of wickedly satirizing the young while amusing them," Malcolm wrote. "Her designated reader is an adolescent girl, but the reader she seems to have firmly in mind as she writes is a literate, even literary, adult."

Literate? Even literary? I'm fairly literate, occasionally literary. And the parts of the books excerpted by Malcolm were deliciously satirical with a jabbing bite.

So should I dig those books out? I know there are a couple of them around here somewhere. Would a 50-something guy be caught dead with one?
Maybe if I cover the jacket.

offshoring?

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:37:36 GMT

At the magazine, we deal in the written word so we tend to pay attention to these things. And like William Saffire, I know language is changing, yada, yada, yada. But driving to Waterville this morning, in the same "Morning Edition" report, I heard two new words that are worth noting, if not repeating.

In a report on jobs being moved overseas, an expert of some sort kept referring to "offshoring" of jobs. Offshore, the verb. I offshore, you offshore, he offshores. It was something like, "As long as these moves save money, it's unlikely that we can stop offshoring American jobs."

This came right after another expert talking about how the Texas caucus system, which is a big jumbled mess, was "privileging" certain votes. I privilege you, you privilege me.

This is dumb. Privilege is a noun. My boat goes offshore but I don't offshore it to get there. Every word is not a verb. Or am I just curmudgeoning here, clinging to a language that is as fluid and everchanging as our culture?

All Along the Water Tower

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:11:36 GMT

When I was a first-year at Colby, back in the Dark Ages of 1974, a group of us trooped one night from Averill Hall to the water tower atop Runnals Hill. With experienced older students leading the way, we climbed the steel ladder on the side of the water tank and then sat up top and looked at the stars in the clear central Maine sky. We hung out for a while, and then carefully made our way back down.

Against the rules? Probably. Harmless fun? Yes, as it turned out.

Years later the ladder was locked shut to prevent accidents and, probably, liability. Score one for prudent risk management.

I thought of this recently as I walked past the tower one day, remembered that night way back when. The locked ladder was a sign of the times. The latest addition to the tower is yet another sign that the times, they are a changin' once again.

There is a siren on top of the tower now. It's reportedly loud enough to be heard all over the campus and beyond (no one has heard it as yet but a test is scheduled for next month). Officials here say it is to be used only in dire emergencies. How dire? Think Virginia Tech.

Now the College can text your cell phone and sound the Runnals Hill siren-in the event of what used to be unthinkable but isn't anymore. That places like this install these measures as a matter of routine is sad commentary on the ways our society has changed. Makes the good old days seem just that, when the only danger was slipping off the ladder in the dark.

Are we evolving or devolving? I wonder.

At Mary Low Coffeehouse? Jason Spooner?

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:17:17 GMT

Jason Spooner ?95 has slogged it out for more than a decade as a singer/songwriter and guitarist. And every year he and his Portland, Maine-based trio make big gains. Next month they head to west to Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest Music conference. This after a run of good news, from being signed up by Starbucks to having a single at the top of the charts (right behind a cut by Radiohead).

And now Spooner and the trio are coming to Colby, to play at the Mary Low Coffee house March 7. Catch ?em now, because I'm convinced their trajectory is up, up, and away. Everybody has a story about seeing a band before they made the big time (I saw Dire Straits in a little theater in Providence; my friend Leo heard Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in a 400-seat club in L.A.)

If you can't get to Colby, check them out online. Proof that talent, hard work, and artistic integrity?and a Colby education?still can be ingredients for success.

Noah Charney on Zurich Heist

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:52:07 GMT

Noah Charney has weighed in. The Zurich art theft (see previous post)
was most likely a hit and run by organized crime. The art, valued at more than 100 million euro, will be used to barter for drugs or guns?at 10 percent of its value.

Here you have it from Noah himself:

"The Zurich thefts are classic examples of organized crime's involvement in art crime. Thefts such as those in Zurich, like the 2004 Munch theft, are smash-and-grab crimes, the goal being to harvest art objects of obvious high value. The most recent Zurich theft in particular has all the elements of organized criminal art theft--a blitz attack, running through alarms with masks and guns and stealing objects near to the exit, before escaping. Alarms work too well to avoid them, so the recent trend that we see involves thieves not bothering if the alarm goes off, as they are in and out before police can respond. The Zurich theft happened in under 3 minutes, well within the average 3-5 minute police response time in most cities. That the thieves stole objects of obvious high value (based on the signatures of the artists) and objects in a room nearest the door, suggests that this was not a carefully selected list with buyers in mind, but simply a selection of portable high value objects that were easiest to take.

Organized crime benefits from art crime in two ways. 1) For art objects and antiquities that are not well known, are reproducable, or are not registered (such as antiquities taken directly from the earth), these may be sold on an open market by simply doctoring provenance. Organized crime pays off local tomb raiders and petty criminals for such objects, which it then smuggles, launders, and sells on using its international networks. 2) For famous artworks, organized crime has for the most part realized that the only chance they have of being arrested is if they try to liquidate, sell the stolen art. This is dangerous and criminal collectors, despite popular conception, all but do not exist. The criminality of buying stolen art aside, so much of the impetus in the psychology of collecting is related to conspicuous consumption, that stripped of that benefit (as in the case of the art in question being illict), most collectors would lose interest. So organized crime orders art to be stolen to be used as barter or collateral on a closed black market, trading among other crime syndicates for an equal value of other illicit goods, such as drugs or arms. Black market value, if a criminal were to run to extremely high risk of trying to sell stolen art, is estimated at 7-10% of the actual market value. So this percentage is the closed market value of the stolen art, to be met in an equivalent value of other illicit goods. Since 1961, most art crime has been perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized crime syndicates. There are tens of thousands of art crimes per year, so the problem is much more widespread than most people believe, who only take notice when there's a front page museum heist. Whether or not one has a personal relationship with art, everyone should care about art crime because the thefts we find so intriguing to read about are funding all other organized criminal activities, from drugs and arms to international terrorism."

"The art crime problem has maintained its level of efficacy, mostly because most governments do not understand the nature and severity of art crime, due to poor statistics, information, and studies. I founded ARCA (the Association for Research into Crimes against Art) as a non-profit think tank to address these issues."

To Catch a Thief

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:28:27 GMT

When news broke that masked gunmen had stolen four paintings?by Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Cezanne? from a Zurich museum this week, the art world may have been shocked but I wasn't even surprised. Noah Charney ?02 has been predicting this sort of thing for years.

Charney is the art-theft expert soon who is consulted by top museums around the world. I don't know if the Zurich museum had enlisted him but maybe they should have.

I fired off an e-mail to Noah as soon as I got the news. I'm hoping for some insight as to how the robbers pulled this one off and, more importantly, what would their motive be. Can't sell these pictures (valued at 110 millon euro) on eBay.

I haven't heard back from Noah. He may be off promoting his novel in Europe, or working on his TV projects. Or maybe the Zurich people already have him on the line.

So I'll make my own prediction?based on my Colby magazine story about Noah and his work.

The robbers didn't snatch these paintings for some wacko collector, holed up in a castle someplace. Those people mostly exist in the movies.

The gunmen may look to trade them for drugs or other contraband, but that's unlikely, given the desperate nature of the heist. Most likely they'll try to sell them back to the museum with a few days, take the reward and try to run. If negotiations break down, look for the next story: that the paintings have been found somewhere in Zurich?undamaged, the world hopes.

If I hear back from Noah, I'll let you know.

A Colby Oscar?

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:02:14 GMT

The glitter of Oscar night is a long way from the refugee camps of northern Uganda. But Andrea Nix Fine ?91 and her husband Sean have joined the two with their documentary "War/Dance."

I chatted with Andrea for an hour or so about the film, which tells the story of kids surrounded by war but filled with inner creativity and beauty, which they express through their music. It's a great story and so is the profile of Andrea, which will appear in the spring issue of Colby magazine. She's had a fascinating career and it appears things will only get better.

But back to the Oscars. The Fines are up against a couple of strong Iraq films, and Michael Moore's latest. But War/Dance is so compelling and beautiful. Tune in on the 24th. In the meantime, the heart-rending situation in continues in Uganda, where children are kidnapped and forced to kill--or be killed. Seems impossible that this situation should be allowed to continue but it does.

Taking action on Kenya

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:43:48 GMT

Recent unrest and violence in Kenya following last month's disputed election have set three recent alumni into action.

Romeo Raugei ?06, Michael "Kip" Kiprop ?07, and Tunde Bamigboye ?07 have brought Africa-21, an effort to address political unrest and humanitarian crises throughout Africa, to Colby and beyond.

A letter-writing campaign intended to increase U.S. humanitarian involvement, and fundraisers in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and London are part of a plan to raise money and awareness of the situation in Kenya. Maine's congressional delegation will be hearing from Colby students second semester. The effort will funnel funds to the Red Cross Society of Kenya, which is assisting thousands of Kenyans displaced by the violence.

"Our ultimate goal is to have the United States take a more pro-active role in the Kenyan crisis," Raugei wrote in an e-mail to Colby magazine. "While we can raise money and awareness through friends and coworkers, our government has the resources to bring positive change to the situation in a very tangible way"

The three are well-equipped to pull this off. Raugei is a medical researcher at Rockefeller University. Kiprop, who is from Kenya, is a sales analyst with Barclays Capital. Bamigboye is from Nigeria, and will be teaching economics in Norway.

More to come. In the meantime, Raugei can be contacted for more information at romeo.raugei@gmail.com

Hillary and Hathaway

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:19:29 GMT

Good news for Hillary Clinton and Hathaway Shirt last week. Hillary clawed her way back to a victory in New Hampshire. And after years of work, the Hathaway project undertaken by Paul Boghossian ?76 and his developer colleagues, is a go.

You can't underestimate the importance of this to Waterville, which has seen too many promising development projects evaporate like fog on the Kennebec. One day it's there; the next day it's gone. I firmly believe the Hathaway Creative Center, like the Andross Mill in Brunswick, will be the jolt that the community needs. Hats off to Paul, Colby, the Maine Legislature, and all involved.

But back to Hathaway and Hillary.

About a dozen years ago, I spent a day with a bunch of other Hathaway backers. They referred to themselves as "the girls" and they worked at Hathaway when shirts were actually made there. The company had been bought by Warnaco and the workers, who sewed the shirts in the big rooms in the riverfront mill, were afraid the company would be gutted and they'd be out of work.

It was, and they were, too. In hindsight it seems as inevitable as the change of seasons; Hathaway was a Maine manufacturer that managed to hold on way past its time; economic forces, and some would say the forces of greed, were all against it.

But the women who worked at Hathaway weren't going quietly. They hired a bus and went to the state Democratic convention in Portland. Hillary Clinton, the first lady, was going to be there. They wanted to tell her about their plight. They thought she might be able to do something for them.

I went, too. We rode down the Turnpike, the women singing songs and eating snacks from lunchboxes. I remember one woman who reached into her bag to get me a drink and grabbed what she thought was a can of Coke. To her shock and dismay, it was a Budweiser.
Wrong bag.

We went to the convention, the women wearing their red union T-shirts. They listened as Hillary addressed the convention?and she was a very dynamic speaker, by the way, smart as a whip?and then they had their audience. The press was not invited, but the women came away encouraged and inspired. Little did they know that the demise of Hathaway Shirt was part of a larger trend that Hillary Clinton wasn't going to stop. The shirts could be made cheaper offshore; the buyout artists just wanted the brand, which had value because of the hard work and skill of the shirtmakers in the plant.

Thanks, ladies. Turn off the lights on your way out.

So now the Hathaway plant and the adjacent mills will be resurrected. The lights will be on once again in the big windows overlooking the Kennebec. And I hope that when the tours of VIPs begin, the ladies from the bus are the first to be invited.

One Big Arboretum

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerard Boyle) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:01:06 GMT

I'd like to tell you about some of the wild stuff that goes on around campus?the things you don't always hear about.

No, not the party scene. I know there is one but I'm long home before students kick back. I mean wild stuff that abounds on Mayflower Hill, like .... the flock of a hundred or more cedar and bohemian waxwings (small songbirds) that did cartwheels around campus this fall, feeding on the fruit of the flowering trees that are scattered around. It was one long feeding frenzy until most of the trees were stripped and the flock moved on.

If you're into birds, you always keep an eye on the sky around here. We've had pileated woodpeckers in the big trees bordering the parking lot of Schair Swenson Watson. Bald eagles cruise by on their way to and from Messalonskee Stream.

Last night I ran into Herb Wilson, Colby biologist and ornithologist, on the way out of the building. Some of his students are studying feeding habits of chickadees in the woods behind our building. Their studies show that in each group of chickadees there is a dominant bird that elbows other chickadees off the feeder. Who knew?

I forgot to tell Herb and his wife Bets Brown, also a serious birder, about a lunchtime walk I took up Runnals Hill the other day. A raven flew over, headed toward the water tower. It alighted in a stand of trees, waiting for another raven that could be heard calling in the distance behind it. The first raven took off and backtracked until it met up with its partner, and they began riding an updraft, spiraling slowly upwards?in opposite directions.

Very cool. Wild, even.

Muzzling Idealists

geboyle@colby.edu (Gerry Boyle '78) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:39:39 GMT

These are comments one presidential campaign didn't want you to read.

The campaign staffer, a recent Colby graduate, writes policy briefs for the candidate's senior policy advisor. "My role," the alum said, "is to take an issue and get all perspectives. As long as they're smart people, [they can be] ideologically opposed. You bring all of that stuff together and you present it. It's getting all the viewpoints out there."

This graduate researches and writes about everything from national security and the Iraq war to intelligence reform and climate change. That means gathering information from journals, newspapers, blogs, contacts in the think-tank world, and faculty at colleges and universities.

"It's a fantastic job," the staffer said. "Every day you become an expert."

Not that this meant starting from scratch. The alum was well trained by his work on Mayflower Hill.

"It's really what set me up for this. Through professors like Anthony Corrado, Guilain Denoeux?they really challenged you to look at things. You'd sit there and make a statement and they'd force you to back it up. ? One of two things happened: either your ideas couldn't stand up to scrutiny and they were wrong, or they could stand up to scrutiny and your argument got a lot stronger."

Now the alum's job is using those skills to try to put a candidate in the White House. "I?m doing this because I can't think of anything more important right now than getting [this candidate] into the White House," the staffer said.

But doing that doesn't include talking to Colby.

The staffer did the interview (a 20-minute chat) without informing the communications people at the campaign. When they found out, they said the staffer shouldn't have talked to the press and asked that the comments be retroactively struck from the record. That's why this alum doesn't appear in the campaign feature, "The Making of a President."

It's the campaign's loss.

These gag orders aren't confined to one campaign. We had staffers with other presidential campaigns decline comment. One even misidentified himself when he was approached by a photographer for Colby.

I understand why. A presidential campaign is all about staying on a carefully crafted message. The candidate can't have staffers spouting off to the press wllly-nilly. In the age of YouTube and blogs, one gaffe can go worldwide with the push of a button. Racing around the world like a virus, it can mean trouble for a candidate and can even bring a campaign down.

But there is a downside to controlling the message. You risk losing the fresh voice of young and idealistic campaign workers. They aren't jaded by the machinations of politics. They aren't concerned with any unintended impact of their words.

They believe in what they're doing. Unlike many of us, they think that politics is a good and even noble undertaking.

So the campaign feature story and this addendum are just a reminder. There are young people involved in presidential politics who are working hard for all the right reasons. I can tell you there are more of them out there than you know.