CLASS OF 2002 | 2023 | FALL ISSUE
Here’s this edition’s notes from our classmates!
Paul Smaldino, who lives in Sacramento, wrote: “In my academic career, I published a book—a graduate-level textbook on modeling social behavior, out this fall. I also have a band, The Small Dinosaurs, and we just put out an album called Dad Songs [released in August]—a garage/art rock album about the milieu of fatherhood. I have two kids and a wife.”
Jenny He sent along this news: “The exhibition John Waters: Pope of Trash, curated by Jenny He and Dara Jaffe ’09, MA ’12, is on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles from September 17, 2023, through August 4, 2024. It is accompanied by a 256-page catalog edited with text by Jenny and Dara. The book includes an essay by Jeanine Basinger and the exhibition features loans from the John Waters Archive housed in the Ogden and Mary Louise Reid Cinema Archives at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies.”
No Accident, a film Michelle Rabinowitz Carney produced for HBO Documentary Films, premiered on MAX October 10. It follows the civil suit against the organizers of 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and features fellow Wes alum Michael Bloch ’00, who represented the plaintiffs.
Jed Rosenbaum and his wife, Jillian, welcomed baby Zachary to the family in March. They live in Lexington, Massachusetts. Four-year-old Wesley keeps asking when he will get to see the tennis team play again—he attended last fall’s Alumni Pro-Am and a match at Tufts and very much enjoys the “Go Wes” cheers.
Steve Scribner is still living in Denver, co-principal of Shape Architecture Studio. His partner in crime, Morgan Law, is married to Kathleen Jones ’03. Morgan and Kathleen live in Leadville, the highest elevation town in the country, and have two kids and a husky and several bikes, as you do in a mountain town.
Steve wrote, “We’re heading to the East Coast tomorrow, and on the way to see my folks in Maine, will visit Dina Levi in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she is a diversity and inclusion director at Amherst College. She has an awesome wife and two amazing kids, one of whom can play the violin better than you, dear reader. If we’re lucky we may also see Josh Blumenstock and Annie Youngerman ’03 AND Marcel Paret ’00 and Jessie Mandle, who all may just happen to also be visiting Massachusetts. Josh and Annie are living the dream in Berkeley—he’s a professor and she’s a landscape architect. Marcel and Jessie are living the dream in Salt Lake City—he’s also a professor and she’s program director for the Healthy School’s campaign. They have two kids and a sweet old house and a really organized woodshop.”
Steve continued with more updates: “Ryan Huggins is still living in Durango, Colorado, and being a badass—we recently saw her in Denver after she completed yet another half Ironman (yes, she’s also finished a couple of full Ironman’s). She has a house and a huge garden and chickens and a business doing green energy consulting and makes time to enjoy the mountains. And in an incredible alignment of the stars, both Bajir Cannon and John Gordon were sighted (not by me) at the same time and in the same place in North Carolina! Bajir lives outside Kyoto and John is still living in Shanghai. They both have their own companies: if you want to learn bridge talk to Bajir, if you want to learn Chinese, talk to John. Has anyone seen Erik Dawe? He’s still living in D.C., working way too much on really interesting engineering projects.”
As for me (your class secretary), I recently earned a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for a short film I produced called The Sentence of Michael Thompson, which was co-distributed by MSNBC Films and the AVOD/FAST that I co-founded, Documentary+. Another film I produced, The Territory (Nat Geo/ Disney+), was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards and won the entire film team a Peabody Award this year, including me and our esteemed editor Carlos Rojas. Also, Gasoline Rainbow, a hybrid scripted/documentary film I produced, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, and will come out on MUBI later this year. Lastly, another film I produced, Periodical, about menstrual justice, the stigma surrounding periods, and two incredible young women fighting to repeal the tampon tax state by state, premieres theatrically in October in LA, NY, Canada, Miami, and the UK, and will premiere on MSNBC and Peacock in mid-November. It’s a great film, please support!
Keep sending notes my way!