CLASS OF 1971 | 2018 | ISSUE 2

Aloha, classmates! Not much news this cycle after a rather full one last magazine.

If you can believe it, planning efforts are underway for our 50th Reunion in 2021. Volunteers are needed to work on outreach and planning. Please contact Kate Quigley Lynch ’82, P’17, ’19 (klynch@wesleyan.edu) if you’d like to be involved.

I heard from Georgia Sassen, who reminds us that Harvard, in this case, is the town in Massachusetts, not the university. She is still in private practice in psychology, part-time, and now has more time for her poetry. She received a grant from the Harvard Cultural Council to give a reading there called “Ancient and Contemporary Women of Harvard: Poems in Their Voices.” She directs the nonprofit Building Resilience in Kids (BRIKontheweb.org) as her pro bono public mental health work.

Katy Butler has a Facebook group called Slow Medicine. It deals with issues of dying with dignity. She is the author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, a must-read about the dying of her father, Professor Jeffery Butler, then her mother. Katy has a new book coming out, The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life. Check Amazon for release.

Over Memorial Day weekend I was on the Big Island (far from the volcano) in Kona. I was a delegate to the Hawaii State Democratic Party Convention (or the “Dump Trump Confab”). One of my fellow delegates was the illustrious Russ Josephson ’70. I still think it’s some kind of sign that the class of 1970 and 1971 class secretaries should live less than one mile apart on a remote rock, the most isolated rock on earth, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Are we a metaphor for how estranged our classes are from the main body of classes? Hope not. Anyway, being this is an election year, all the Hawaii politicians were present. Since Hawaii is virtually a one-party state we got to meet our next governor and other state leaders. Just love life here. Easy to make yourself heard and effect change.

I challenge you as you read this to send me an e-mail with news about you. Aloha for now.

Neil J. Clendeninn | Cybermad@msn.com
PO Box 1005, Hanalei, HI 96714