Tag: 1989

Before we get to all the awesomeness going on with all you awesome people, Michele and I want to remind everyone that our 35th REUNION is coming up this spring! Clear your schedules, reserve your rooms, and prepare to descend on Foss Hill en masse! Now to our updates.

Alex McClennen Dohan got into the sheep spirit, writing: “Well, I don’t baaa-lieve I have anything too quirky to report, but Dave Dohan and I just celebrated 30 years of marriage in June. Our lambs are grown—daughter is an attorney and son a grad student—and our current home flock consists of a dog (part shepherd!) and a cat. Vacations are more fun than work, but we are both still happy in our jobs—me knitting various programs together in the Education Department of Mass Audubon, and Dave spinning along as a physician.”

Amy Redfield is loving living in Lisbon. Holler if you’re in town.

Marisa Cohen still works at Hearst with Stephanie Dolgoff, even though the chatbots keep threatening to take all the magazine jobs. Her daughter, Bellamy, graduated from Williams last spring and is living at home while launching a journalism/songwriting career (another daughter, Molly, is a junior psych major at Bowdoin). She and her husband have been spending more weekends in the Berkshires. (If you’re near Richmond, Massachusetts, look them up!) She’s also been making up for lost theater time during the pandemic by seeing a lot of Broadway shows this year, often with Sarah Chumsky, and David Averbach when he’s in town.

Sam Glazer was featured in an article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Sex, Drugs and Spreadsheets.”

Karen (McClafferty) Jarsky is living in Acton, Massachusetts, with her husband and son, who is headed off to college in the fall. She is loving teaching writing (remotely) for UCLA. Her local friends include a surprisingly large number of Wes alums ranging from Class of 1983 to Class of 2016. Clearly age doesn’t matter when you have Wesleyan in common!

David Levine convened with Stu Berman, Neil Blicher, and Alan Cohen, at Rick Kotler’s beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for their annual summer retreat. Joe Biden was a no-show and no classified documents were found in Rick’s garage. They nonetheless had a good time commiserating about how old we are. Likely more was discussed, but who can remember?

John Hlinko is still living in Georgetown in an old church that was converted about 100 years ago. It’s right next to a park that used to be a cemetery and given that property lines weren’t that well delineated a century ago, he’s been urged “don’t dig too deep” when planting stuff in the yard. Amazingly, the house doesn’t seem to be haunted.  His wife, Leigh, is an architect and has written two books—The Green Workplace and The Healthy Workplace (especially relevant in the COVID era). They also collaborated on Pandemic Pickup Lines, which has raised funds for pandemic-related relief efforts.  One daughter is a high school senior looking at colleges and the other still has a ways to go for that. He is still working with Left Action, an activist community aimed at promoting good causes and candidates, and opposing things like fascists overthrowing democracy. It is likely to be a very busy year, with 2024 elections coming up quickly. . . .

In the same vein, Chris Zurn just published a book entitled Splitsville USA: A Democratic Argument for Breaking up the United States (Routledge: 2023). He makes the argument that there is a real danger of the end of basic electoral democracy in the United States in the next few years and suggests that the only way to avoid that is to negotiate a peaceful political divorce of our single nation and reconstitute several new nation states in its place.

Jessica Glass writes: “Hard to believe it’s been two years since we lost our beautiful comrade, Dominique Jones ’91. That was a very sad thing about 2021. But getting together at Lewis Canfield’s (’90) home in NYC to celebrate Jonesy’s life and memory helped a little. Drove to Brooklyn and cried in Deirdre Simon’s (’90) car. Commiserated with members of her family, and many Wes friends from several different graduating classes. Dominique had an amazing way of transcending age, race, class, whatever divides. She had a spirit that was genuine and positive and truly interested in people. We all remembered her interest in fashion and artistry in knitting, her deep appreciation of books and libraries, magazines and reading, her love and support of her friends, her infectious laugh. Many folks who knew and loved Dominique have made donations to a fund at the Brooklyn Public Library called Shine on Me, a program that supports unhoused adults with life coaching and resource advice. Dave Raymond ’87 and I trundle on with our historic sheep farm in northern Connecticut, with 60 adult woolies and 30 lambs each year. Producing wool blankets, sheepskins, and our inimitable Hildred’s Farm Sheep Calendar keeps us busy when we’re not producing video and engineering audio. Sheep on Earth, Good Wool to all!”

Camille Kotton reports having a wonderful visit with Sandeep Wadhwa when he came to stay with his daughter when they were touring colleges. Same when David French was touring with his son. She is on the CDC advisory committee on immunization practice (ACIP) and has been making national decisions on vaccination for the past three years.

Dave Keller released his 10th (!) album, It’s Time to Shine, featuring a bunch of new original soul- and blues-inspired songs. He’s also going to be featured in a full-page story in the French edition of Rolling Stone! Away from the rockstar world, he is preparing to be an empty nester, as both daughters will soon be in college; the oldest at Bard, the youngest at New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts. He has a three-week East Coast tour in November. Details at www.davekeller.com.

Stephan Kline reports on his daughter Batya ’23 just graduated from Wes, joining her brother Noah ’21 as an alum. Batya will remain in Middletown for the next two years for a Wesleyan master’s program in ethnomusicology. She is excited to continue her studies on guitar and percussion and they are excited that her tuition is waived for this world-class program and she receives a stipend.

If you’re in the Philly area, drop Josh Drew a line. He is living there with his spouse of 20-plus years who is a Philly local, three kids, ages 16, 16, and 17, two elderly cats, and a pandemic-adopted mutt. They relocated about three years ago after a four-year expat stay in Amsterdam, which coincided neatly with the period 2016–2020. He is practicing law with a Washington, D.C., firm, after spending most of his career with the government and in house. They are visiting campuses, including Wes, helping their high school senior with the daunting college application process. He is in regular contact with Greg Berman, Carolyn Vellenga, Kelem Butts, Mark Saudek, and Kevin Majewski; would love to hear news of others.

Please write to your class secretaries. 

Please write to your class secretaries. 

Y’ALL. Get the popcorn. Our Wes ’89 classmates shared some of their fave food/food hack and snack stories and they are here for you to graze thru. (See? I’m still totally corny and mercilessly single too. Gah! #sendhelp. I’m taking apps … as in appetizers! :))

Erik Attkisson leads with a passionate ode to cheese fries. He described them as a “no doubter” and the prime source of his frosh 15. He reminisced about how he “always found a willing partner to commiserate with” and “solved the world’s problems over” them. However, after “four years of indulgence he never wanted to eat any more. . . .”

Kelem Butts writes, “Living in Low Rise, I used to cook steak for dinner, this was grade-Z quality from Waldbaum’s mind you. But I was not an effective cook and I constantly cooked it on the top shelf of the oven, which would lead to smoke and a fire alarm at least once a week. But how cool was it to be able to eat what you want every night?” He provides a further food-related update: “In May of this year, housemates from Intown 21 all met in New York for dinner, as it’d been some time since we’d all been together, COVID you know. We dined at Congee Village Restaurant in Chinatown and my god was it fun. Greg Berman, Josh Drew, Kevin ‘Juice’ Majewski, Mark Saudek, spouses/significant others, and me. We dined in a private room designed for karaoke; I can neither confirm nor deny that we did a lovely rendition of Guns N’ Roses Paradise City. A joyous time was had by all.”

Carrie Holden Emmerson offers a veritable cornucopia of food memories. She recalls Dave Lahey, Adam Long, and John Hlinko making Taco Bell tacos their go-to dinner. Also, that Adam Weiss considered oatmeal an all-purpose meal. She also remembers Liz Gossels and Lisa Paolillo helping with carbo-loading on Friday nights before soccer games with fettuccine Alfredo.  She had never had it before and has loved it ever since. Also, senior year, Kelly Morgan’s mom visited one weekend and made a REAL MEAL of beef stew. There was also an awesome potluck Thanksgiving dinner with other folks who stuck around senior year.

Likewise, Reggie Jenkins would make REAL FOOD like roasts (!) in his kitchen in High Rise. He still makes magnificent food to this day. Junior year, she remembers Rosemary Reilly testing the “doneness” of our spaghetti by throwing it up on the ceiling. Sophomore year, she recalls Ed Thorndike and his girlfriend cooking meals for us once a week at Delta Tau Delta.  Maybe a precursor to WesWings? Other memories involve ramen, mac and cheese, pasta, and of course, CHEESE FRIES, as well as the sundaes at the pub. She mourns the days when she was exercising a lot more and could eat such things without worrying about adding extra pounds by even looking at it.

Also weighing in on CHEESE FRIES is Alisa Berman. They were “her food”—never had them before Wes and hasn’t eaten them since!

From Lynn Rosenbaum, the following food-related confession. “When studying in SciLi, I often visited the snack vending machine on the first floor. One evening, I discovered that when I pulled the handle, the snack came out—without putting in any money! I got a bunch of free snacks and might have tipped off a few other people.”

Michelle Cleaver relates a couple of quickie one-pot meals: couscous, hot dog, peanuts, and broccoli. Or baked potato, dill pickles, garlic, cheese. She also recalls that between herself and my fellow foodie, Anneliisa Aubrey-Walton, they had two hot plates and a toaster oven or two, which led to many wonderful meals in their Butterfield hall.

If alcohol counts as a food, then we can include Liz Marx’s memory of Sandeep Wahdwa blasting Born to Run on Friday afternoons while breaking open Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

David Bradley relates the “unexciting but true” observation that ramen figured large in his Wes dining. There was much controversy about preparation despite the mathematically small number of possible variations: Noodles into boiling water? Boiling water over noodles? Drain? Don’t drain? And critically, how much of that spice packet to add? As for the actual ramen variety/flavor, I’m not sure that mattered!” He also reports he’s in Kigali for the year on a Fulbright U. S. scholar grant, helping the University of Rwanda develop training programs in pediatric cardiology, taking time away from my work at the University of Michigan to commit some time to global health. Happy to connect with any Wes alums!

Jeff Brez offers a first-year memory from Butterfield C of snacking on “sleazy cheese” (Cheese Whiz) on crackers (or heck, just plain!) and enjoying “goldfish in a cloud” in MoCon, which was Pepperidge Farm Goldfish with cottage cheese. He also reports that he left the UN Secretariat in New York and “with my husband and two children moved to Rome” where he works for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

No food updates, but Garry Schumacher reports that his wife Nicole, and youngest son Stormy (now in high school) live pretty much across the street from the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. They often see Ethan Garber ’90 who also lives there. And Bev Tomov (Wachtel) ’92. Anyone passing through is invited to say “hello.” His two older kids have just completed their degrees, one a bachelor’s and one a master’s, and so for the first time in years they have a hiatus in making tuition payments! Very exciting!

Lynn Lazarus and Andrew Shear relocated back to NYC last fall during COVID to be closer to family. Andrew just started a job as the director of post-conviction litigation at the Innocence Project. Lynn has been venturing into modern healthcare and working doing telehealth for two start-ups. She is enjoying taking a break from a physical clinic after spending a lot of time during COVID in full PPE. She specializes in seeing patients while on an island, so far working from Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and Deer Isle, Maine, in addition to Manhattan. Their kids are both in NYC. Sam is a senior at Bard College and Leah is a junior at the New School. They are very happy to be back close to family and friends after 15 years in Oakland. “We’ve seen lots of Wes folk, including Jonathan Fried, Stephanie Dolgoff, Dave Milch, Art Halpern, and Greg Benson.”

Dave Milch also adds: “On a happy note, it was great to catch up with Josh Feldman at the ‘every-five-years’ celebration that Jonathan Fried and his Brooklyn-friends-since-kindergarten host that I’ve been fortunate to be ‘grandfathered’ into. Josh was visiting the East Coast from his digs in the Bay Area where he continues to build beautiful things (literally and metaphorically). On the sadder side, I was able to attend the dedication of a tree on Foss Hill in memory of our dear classmate, Mike Mahon who passed in 2020. Thanks in large part to the organization and love of the Wesleyan swim team (of which Mike was a member), the beautiful tree was planted at the top of Foss Hill between West Co and the Observatory. There was a lovely group that gathered to pay tribute to Mike and share stories of his unique and spirited friendship.  I hope everyone will be able to visit campus and take a moment to enjoy the beauty of the tree, and feel Mike’s warmth, friendship, and love of all things Wes when they do.”

Let’s plan on that for the 2024 Reunion. And also, Michele Barnwell may actually be open to going out for “apps” 🙂 IJS . . . If you’re in North America (or wherever planes fly) get app’ me. HAHA! (There’s no end to the corny, y’all. Save yourselves. 🙂

When we nudged, our fellow ’89ers sent in some good Wes memories. But, y’all (!!!!), wait until you read some of these memories . . . I mean confessions. . . . No, ok—definitely memories :)! Grab a snack and let’s spill the tea:

Lee Ann (Jacob) Gun, whose daughter Emma is a sophomore at Wes (and is loving her experience!), shares: “My freshman roommate and I decided we needed a second couch in our Clark quad living room. So, we set our alarm one night for 4:00 a.m. and set out for one of the Fosses. We walked into their common room, picked up a couch not being used, and walked out, lugging the couch. We struggled to the top of Foss Hill when public safety shined their headlights on us. We dropped the couch and ran. The next morning on the way to MoCon, the couch was there at the top of Foss Hill, students sitting in it. We laughed. We decided we were fine with just the one couch.”

Listen to Lori Lobenstine’s story of what her parents ultimately did after she got arrested on Wesleyan’s campus for protesting: “I forget if it was junior or senior year when we had the sit-in at the president’s office, trying to get Wes to divest from South Africa because of apartheid. Folks were camping in there 24/7 and others were coming and going in support, while other were leading rallies outside. In the end, a whole bunch of us decided we would get arrested instead of leaving willingly. My first arrest! (Not my last.) The best was when my parents sent me a formal card, ‘Proudly announcing the arrest of their daughter . . . ’ like it was a birth announcement. Gotta love being the kid of activists. They were so excited.”

Sherry (Lehr) Föhr remembers “that time during Hurricane Gloria, when we spent hours huddled in the hall of Foss 9, eating a rather eclectic variety of snack foods and telling weather-related horror stories.  That morning, I had to venture out into the storm for a German exam (because why cancel classes for a full day just because of a hurricane?). The classroom was on the top floor of Fisk Hall, where we could see tree branches crashing onto the roof of the frat house next door as we frantically tried to remember various verb endings. When it was finally over, I had to dodge flying bits of shale from the roofs of various old buildings along Wyllys Avenue. It was so nice to get home and be welcomed by my hallmates!”

Hurricane Gloria happened our freshman year and Melissa Herman asks if you remember “putting masking tape on the windows in the dorms? I was biking across campus back to the Butterfields and almost got blown over by the wind. And then it was pretty much nothing compared to our fears and expectations.”

Elizabeth “Betsy” Henry recalls: “It was Uncle Duke Day weekend and I entered the basement of Foss that had been spectacularly decked out with strobe lights, upside-down rooms (furniture on ceilings), velvet everywhere, dark rooms with funky lighting, disco balls, the works, and I get through the maze and there is this awesome band playing this rockin’ song about a magic carpet ride and everyone is dancing and jamming like crazy and the lead singer is this fabulous chick who is belting out this line, ‘Why don’t you ride with me little boy, on a magic carpet ride,’ which is just so catchy. Loved it!  For four years I attributed “Magic Carpet Ride” to this band (which I sadly can’t remember the name of, but always caught their gigs around campus) and danced my heart out every time they played it for years to come. To this day, I still interject ‘boy’ into the lyrics when the Steppenwolf classic comes on the radio and think of that Wesleyan moment. Rock on!”

Checking in from Maine, Karen McVey Fussell mused the following mash-up of good memories: “The spaceship-ness of MoCon, the announcements from the upper deck, Uncle Duke Day, the wonder of an endless supply of Cap’n Crunch.”

Alex Dohan recalls “those crazy evenings in frosh year when we would blow off studying to sneak up to the roof of Judd Hall—for a breath of fresh air!”

Kevin Heffernan writes: “I’d say one of my best memories was playing softball with everyone during senior week. There wasn’t a person who didn’t have a smile on, what with classes over and summer coming.”

Kim Slote wrote in that: “A great memory for me was performing with the Cardinal Sinners in the World Music Hall and how amazing it felt to sing our hearts out and have the crowd be with us every step of the way!”

Phineas Baxandall remembers “that time when the ultimate frisbee team went to Santa Barbara, California, for college nationals was an amazing memory.”

Sending us all greetings from Shanghai, Robin Smith recalls: “that time when I was touring a prospective student around campus, after he finished a late afternoon interview in the administration building and walked into Alpha Delta, when they were having a co-ed Naked Party in the living room. Fun times.” (Also, I wonder if that prospective student ended up WISELY choosing Wes?!?! 🙂 Robin also shared some personal fond memory gems:

“That time when . . .  I would go down to the boathouse in the very early morning, on the Connecticut River, to get ready for crew practice, and the sun was just coming up. Even though it was extremely cold, and steam was rising off the river, it was incredibly quiet and so beautiful.”

“That time when . . . I would leave rehearsal from the ’92 Theatre late at night and meet one of my roommates (a microbiology major), to walk her back home from feeding her cells at the lab. It was our best time to talk and catch up on our day/week and plan for the upcoming weekend.”

“That time when . . . I performed as the character of Babe in Crimes of the Heart, for my senior thesis show as a theater major. Such a wonderful cast and crew to work with in doing that show.”

And the good Wes memories are still being made to this very today; or as Liz Marx aptly says, “It’s a memory that we keep making:  Every Monday night for the past year, Sneep Wadhwa, Anne Liss Johnson, John Hlinko, Lauren Bruck Simon, Adam Long, Ed Aubry, and myself get together for online bar trivia. Our team name is Gross Hall Reunion and we kick ass. We have such fun and our Wesleyan education is put to good use.”

Past met present in this dispatch from James Shiffer: “Last summer, I took a three-month sabbatical from my job at The Star Tribune in Minnesota to reconnect with friends near and far, including many Wes folks. Katrine Bangsgaard ’90 and I laughed about old times while dining in a roadhouse in northern Westchester County. Dan White and I watched humpback whales lunge-feeding in Monterey Bay. Bill Sherman ’90 showed me the magnificent Cascades, including one path along a terrifying sheer cliff. I traveled with my daughter Annika Shiffer-Delegard ’23 to Los Angeles, where Mike DeWitt ’90 took us to the Griffith Park Observatory and gave Annika a surprise gift: the custom wooden sign reading ‘Whispering Pines’ that once graced our Wes-owned house at 37 Home Avenue. I am so grateful for my Wesleyan network.”

Theresa Zinck-Lederer says “Just the other day, when watching my niece and nephew sledding, I commented to my husband about how much fun we used to have sledding down Foss Hill on cafeteria trays from MoCon!”

Kelem Butts didn’t hold back on the good humor with his recent good memory of “that time when Michele (Barnwell) asked for, neigh DEMANDED, we submit to the class notes (and it) was a great reminder of how much Wes meant to me and how much my time there impacts me to this day.  Oh, and my niece was just accepted to Wes, and I really hope she goes so she can get that same Wes experience.”

We hope she chooses/chose Wes too, Kelem.

Clearly, we as a class have shared (and continue to share) in making good Wes memories.

That all said, if you’re reading all this and you did NOT have the best-time-ever at Wes, we sincerely appreciate and embrace you and your experience. Seriously, there are several pain points for so many. We aren’t (ever) looking for any of you to bright side the bs you went through then (or are going through now) either. Each of your/our Wes memories and current challenges are all part of our shared lived experience as classmates and as humans.

We’ve still hopefully got miles to walk together and there’s time to make NEW Wes memories going forward. So let’s make them WITH you at our next on-campus reunion. Deal? (And this is definitely not an official pushy plug, YET!) We’re volunteers. We get nada EXCEPT the fun pleasure of staying connected to you. It would just be really nice to see all of you at our next big reunion, our 35th…?!?! Sheesh!

See you then or see you sooner, around these social media streets.

 

Our collective class of ’89 good-newsy update is . . . we’re still here. Seriously, cheers to that y’all.

Life is still being lived and we’re going to celebrate this thankful fact with news from some of our classmates:

Lesley Savin reports that she is no longer snowboarding y’all. She is living full time in South Florida now and is currently working as a realtor for Illustrated Properties—selling beautiful homes of all shapes and sizes while making people’s home-owning dreams a reality! (Me next please, Lesley!)

Fun fact: Two of our classmates now have daughters who will also be classmates. Kim Slote and Stephanie Dolgoff bumped into each other (virtually) at an orientation for the parents of incoming students at Sarah Lawrence. Each of their daughters—Kim’s daughter Kate and Stephanie’s daughter Vivian—are now freshmen there.

Stephanie is the mom of twins. So she did the drop-off drill twice and says this: “I’m outrageously proud of my kids Leo and Vivian for earning their places in School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sarah Lawrence, respectively. But I’m also really proud of myself for only voicing a version of ‘back when WE went off to college. . . ‘ 13,000 times, instead of acting on the urge closer to 13,033 times. My reward is I can go into their room and retrieve everything they ‘borrowed’ from me over the last 18 years.”

My own freshman Foss 6 roommate, Michele Chase, was back on Wesleyan’s campus this year to drop off her son Alessandro—Wesleyan class of 2025. Woohoo, let’s GO! Sidebar: Yes, the Wesleyan housing overlords put two “Micheles-with-one-L” (one from California and the other from New York City each with an interest in some sort of science major at the time) together in a two-room double freshman year because . . . Wesleyan has jokes. I made a friend for life though. So, #winning!

Hearing about students starting college has me in my (good, warm, fuzzy) feelings and thinking about the company that Elizabeth “Betsey” Schmidt has launched!

Betsey is CEO and Founder of MeshED. Imagine a company that engages students of all backgrounds in project-based learning experiences and archives them. So by the time that student gets around to applying to colleges (and/or pursues a professional position somewhere), they have an archive of their works of imagination, social justice, environmental stewardship, etc. So good and also I’m pretty sure I’m glossing over the good they do. So read up on them!

Til next time y’all!