Author: Anne Marcotty

Last April, Nezia Azmi relocated to Honolulu where she now lives with her husband and recently began working as international and special programs coordinator in the Dean’s Office for the College of Education at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa. Nezia and Paul enjoy days at the beach as well as ridiculously perfect mangoes and papayas on a regular basis.

Retse Johnson-Daniel is living in Atlanta with her husband, Alfred, and 4-year-old daughter, Ania Mari. She works as a special education and science teacher at Dutchtown High School, where she also co-sponsors Sisters of Virtue and coaches the swim team. Retse was awarded Teacher of the Year for the 2014–2015 school year and recently gave birth to her second daughter, Amya Irie, on Feb. 3.

Arcelie Reyes has begun working as a birth and postpartum doula in NYC. Having already helped a lot of parents and their breastfeeding babies as a La Leche League leader, Arcelie is excited to delve deeper into birth work. She and Evan Newell ’02 are looking forward to September, when their daughter, Phoenix, will join her big brother, Kingston, at school.

Rachel Morris was married to Samuel Bruce on May 17th. Many Wesleyan alumni spanning more than a decade of class years were in attendance. The couple continues to reside in New York City.

Geoffrey Hill completed his fellowship in interventional radiology at Thomas Jefferson University in June of 2014. He, his wife and two children moved to Saratoga Springs, where he is working for Adirondack Radiology and developing a new interventional oncology program at Glens Falls Hospital.

Emily Chenette welcomed a baby son, Avelino Hudson, on Aug. 14, 2014. She is still living in the Hartford area and is a social worker.

Jessie Rubin is living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, working at Yahoo on its event marketing team, and was planning to marry her fiancé, Darius Van Arman, in Brooklyn come August, with many Wesleyan friends in attendance.

Alison Criscitiello successfully completed Borderski (an all-women’s winter ski traverse of the Pamirs in Tajikistan)! She headed to the Canadian high Arctic for May to drill ice cores as part of a new project she is the principal investigator on.

Andrew and Betsy Fippinger welcomed their second child, Henry David Fippinger (Wesleyan class of 2037), into the world on June 3, 2015.

John A. Graham accepted a one year position as a post-doctoral associate at the Yale University Institute of Sacred Music. He would love to reconnect with alums in the area!

Dana Goldman lives in her hometown, Atlanta, with her husband and daughter. She started her own psychotherapy private practice this past year, Stone Cottage Counseling, treating kids, teens, and adults.

Rikkia Hunter Ben Yehudah is living in New Haven, Conn. She works at a large nonprofit organization as a clinical director. She is an expressive arts therapist and will receive her license to practice counseling this year. She is married and has three children. She also works with youth and the arts and hopes to develop an organization with her colleagues.

Meghan Kelly (now Kelly-Stallings) works as a policy analyst for the Seattle Public Library. She and her husband, Danny, welcomed their new addition, Amos, on Feb. 22. One of Amos’s favorite baby-sitters is Kristin Kyrka ’04.

Jill Benson lives in Asheville, N.C., and is pursuing a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery at East Carolina University. She and her husband, Brett, just welcomed a new addition to their family, a bouncing baby boy named Miles Rafael.

Ariana Mufson Dazet graduated from Simmons College with her MSW, specializing in perinatal social work, and will be starting off her new career at McLean Psychiatric Hospital. Her son, Desmond, is almost a year old.

This fall, Aaron Paige will begin his second year as a visiting assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Denver.

After 11 years of teaching middle school humanities and developing curriculum, Liz Simmons is a doctoral candidate at Penn in the teaching, learning, and teacher education division.

In early June, 15 ladies gathered in Waterbury Vt., to celebrate Sonya Behnke. Participants included Erin Malone, Melissa Courtemanche, Julie Perlin, Catherine (Rodin) Faulk, Laura Pfeiffenberger, Dr. Sarabeth Broder-Fingert, Emily Berman, Martina McPherson ’04, Bernadette Doykos ’04, Meriel Darzen ’04, Jenna Flateman Posner ’04, Leila Bozorg ’04, and Lynn Leber ’06. They’re all excited to gather again on the Maine Coast in early August for the nuptials.

Matt Kushner and Lauren Edgar Kushner welcomed their first child, Marian Lois Kushner, on June 10th at 2:09 in the afternoon, weighing 7 lbs. and measuring 20 inches. Mom and baby are fine and all are home getting used to the beginnings of family life.

Kate Reder married Nadeem Sheikh on May 9, 2015. Ari Wolfe and Juliet Werner were in Kate’s bridal party. Ari and Peter Wilson-Tobin sang during the ceremony. Other Wesleyan friends were in attendance: Cara Zwerling-Moeller, Rigel Massaro, Joanna Shalleck-Klein ’04, Dan Moger, Jenny Gassman-Pines, Claire Kessler-Bradner, and Alex Krassner ’02. Kate and Nadeem live in London and invite alums passing through to reach out.

Michael Homolka writes, “I am living in New York City and have recently switched careers from book production at Simon & Schuster to the New York City Teaching Fellows program. I have also had a collection of poetry, titled Antiquity, accepted and it is forthcoming in 2016 from Sarabande Books.”

Elizabeth Savage and her husband of nearly five years, Michael Schopf, are expecting their second child in October. They live in Portland, Ore. Elizabeth is an attorney whose practice focuses on civil litigation.

Ben Spatz’s book, What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research, was published by Routledge in March. The acknowledgments mention Pedro Alejandro, Cheryl Cutler, and Hope Weissman. He and his partner, Michelle Goldsmith, also welcomed their first child that month as well.

Speaking of babies, in addition to her continued success as a NYC wedding photographer, Sarah Tew is building a body of personal work on home birth, so if any of you pregnant New Yorkers out there are interested in participating, check out her website and get in touch.

Again, re: babies: had an awesome stay with a pregnant Mary Robertson in Brooklyn. She and her husband, Josh, were expecting a baby boy in July.

On a still related note, Don Kim and his wife are expecting their first child in December.
Lauren Royce lives in NYC with her husband and two daughters, who are 5 and 7, and continues to love her career as a child and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice.

Being a list person, I appreciated the following dispatch from Raymong Kuo:
“1. My wife and I welcomed our daughter, Layla, our first child.
“2. We moved into our new home in Brooklyn.
“3. I received my Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.
“4. I started as an assistant professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY, but moved earlier this year to Fordham University in the same capacity.
“5. I regularly see Alexandre Su, who also lives in Brooklyn.”

It was great to hear from Josh Kagan. He recently became the director of business development and sales for Clean Fund, a specialty finance company that provides commercial building owners with capital to do energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. “No kids (yet) though have been married for four years almost to the day.”

I also heard from the wonderful Amos Hausman-Rogers, who writes, “I have been traveling and raising money for charity by donating and seeing if people want to match my donation for home-lessness. I raised a fair bit, and think I’m taking the summer off.”

I still remember seeing Sarah Kozinn perform at Wes and being struck by her talent, so I was especially glad to get her news. “My husband and I moved to Los Angeles in 2013 after almost 12 years in NYC,” she writes. “I am a theater professor at Occidental College and just published my first book, Justice Performed: Courtroom TV Shows and the Theaters of Popular Law (Bloomsbury). Last September we multiplied and had a baby! He’s an adorable goofball. Other than that I’m still acting and writing and hanging with Wes folks out here.”

From Sonya Abrams: “I hightailed it to San Francisco immediately upon graduation and haven’t looked back, and I now have three kids under four years old (Most recent addition, Keira, born in February), so my professional pursuits have been temporarily buried under a pile of sippy cups and Pampers, though I still find time to do some freelance event photography for a public affairs forum.”

Rachel Stevens, in western Mass., had an even more memorable blizzard experience than the rest of us sorry New Englanders. “During the January 27 blizzard—luckily only six inches here, my brother in Worcester got 33—we welcomed Lillian Winslow Stevens! She is spoiling us rotten, and loves visitors.”

My dear buddy Ben Stanko has a message, too. “I’ve moved from South Philly to the Mount Airy neighborhood in Philadelphia. My wife, Kim Massare, and our two-and-a-half year-old-son, Theo, are having lots of fun exploring the woods around the Wissahickon Creek. I’ve also recently been promoted to district arborist in the urban forestry division of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.”

We have a winner for this round’s nonprofit spotlight, wherein I donate to one awesome organization that you nominate. The spotlight goes to Women’s Prison Association, thanks to Samantha Yard. In the fall, Samantha begins a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship in PTSD at the Seattle VA. Her husband, Antoine McNamara, continues his work as a patent litigator, and their daughter, Sophie, is about to start preschool.

Samantha, who conducted her dissertation research with women in jail and prison, added that the Women’s Prison Association (WPA) provides services across various stages of involvement with the criminal justice system, and “they have actual outcome data (a rarity) showing that their programs reduce recidivism, which is why they get my vote.” Join me in donating to the WPA this month at wpaonline.org!

Meanwhile, here in Boston, my boyfriend, Nick, and I eloped and bought a house in the city with a little yard, enabling my intense gardening addiction. We adopted two former street cats that are unbearably cute and ridiculous. I’m still working with incarcerated teens, managing a program that gives them access to lawyers. I’m also on the board of Phinney’s Friends, an all-volunteer nonprofit that helps disabled, low-income people in the Boston area keep their beloved pets by providing assistance with their care: phinneysfriends.org. We’re always looking for volunteers, and many tasks can be done remotely!

Thanks, all. I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but I would love to catch up at our upcoming 15th Reunion. Also, starting with the next issue, Aryn Sperandio will join me in writing the notes. So you’ll be hearing from her, too.

Class of 2000, great to see many of you at the 15th Reunion in May, and we have officially began the journey towards our 20th Reunion! Now on to the news, notes and updates…

Scott Mayerowitz and his wife, Sheri, are excited to announce the arrival of their daughter Leah Paige Mayerowitz. That’s why the family wasn’t able to attend our 15th Reunion but they look forward to seeing everybody for our 20th.

Jason Robinson and his fiancée, Cassandra Flemming, are proud to present Bryce Robinson, born June 7, 2014. Mom and Dad have known each other for 20 years and are happy and blessed to be a family.

Luke Davenport writes “I recently left my job at IBM to start an education consultancy called District Public that helps New York City school leaders use their data more effectively. It’s an exciting change and very rewarding so far.”

Andrea McKnight says “I continue to practice law in southeastern Massachusetts. I’m pleased to announce that for the third consecutive year I was recognized with the Massachusetts Super Lawyer Rising Star award. My practice consists of domestic relations matters and civil litigation—pretty much anything that keeps me in a courtroom!”

Rachel Quinn lives with her partner, Eesha Pandit, in Houston. Earlier this year, they joined 10 of Rachel’s 12 siblings and hundreds of family members in laying her father Dr. Bernard Kwesi Glover to rest in his home village of Akutukope in the Volta Region of Ghana. This fall Rachel will start a tenure-track position in women’s, gender and sexuality studies and comparative cultural studies at the University of Houston. She is working on several articles as well as her first book manuscript, which focus on Dominican women’s lives in Santo Domingo, mixed race identities, and gender and sexuality in contemporary transnational Caribbean culture.

Aaron Shield accepted a tenure-track job as assistant professor of speech pathology and audiology at Miami University of Ohio, where he continues his research on autism and deafness, and teaches undergraduate and graduate students about language development and language disorders. He and his husband, Reginald Harris, moved to Cincinnati this summer.

Gabe Paquette is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins, where he directs the university’s Latin American studies program. Gabe and wife Johanna Bard Richlin ’08 welcomed their baby daughter, Antonia Bard Paquette, into the world on June 5.

Dani Snyder-Young earned tenure at Illinois Wesleyan University last year. Her daughter, Parker, was born in March.

Elsie Kagan and Carl Robichaud welcomed a daughter, Willa Tilden, into their family on May 27. Her brothers, Jasper and Alexan, are delighted by the addition. Elsie continues to teach and make art in Brooklyn, where she started a parent artist network, and this year received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Carl continues his job at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he makes grants to organizations working to reduce nuclear risks. Elsie and Carl recently visited the Bay Area to spend some time with Dan Engler and Sahra Halpern.

Liz Shulman and her husband, Andrew, welcomed a baby boy—Isaac Emmett Mastronarde—on Oct. 7, 2014. He has blazing red hair and dual Canadian-American citizenship.

Sarah Maine lives in New York, working as director of product development for California-based company Independent Means, and doing creative projects in her spare time. On Aug. 1, she married Scott Sherratt, with Jenessa Joffe ’00, Anders Peterson, Rob Finn ’98, Karen Correa, Allison Radecki ’98, and Neal Wilkinson ’98 in attendance. A wonderful time was had by all!

After 11 years of schooling, Jennifer Karlin graduated from the University of Chicago with an MD in June. During her time at UChicago, she also earned a PhD in the conceptual and historical studies of science, an MA in anthropology, and a fellowship in clinical medical ethics from the MacLean Center. Since so many people were coming into town for the MD hooding and graduation, Jen and Andrew Mullen decided three weeks before the celebration to include a marriage ceremony in the weekend festivities. The ceremony was officiated by Amelia Borofsky at the Ivy Room in Chicago on May 30, 2015. In attendance were the following revelers: professor of psychology and the science in society program Jill Morawski and her family, Jessie Torrisi ’98 (sang and played guitar), Abigail Levine (choreographed a solo dance which turned into a choreographed flash mob!), Laura Zaks (spoke in ceremony and her boys, Luka and Tiago, were flower boys), Diana Glanternik (sang “Moon River” and spoke in ceremony), Shira Gans ’01 (spoke in ceremony), Laura Plageman (spoke in ceremony), Margo Simon (whose husband, Josh Millis, sketched the ceremony in real time) and Martin Lijtmaer (played guitar at the ceremony and reception). See online version for full list of Wes alums in attendance. After returning from a week-long honeymoon in Fiji, Jen left Chicago and moved to San Francisco for her residency in family medicine at UCSF.

When Amelia Borofsky is not officiating weddings, she is a character and researcher in Gemma Cubero del Barrio’s Homecoming, a documentary on climate change and two women who return to Pukapuka, the remote coral atoll in the Cook Islands where they grew up.

Dukagjin Blakaj joined the faculty at the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital at the Ohio State University in Columbus.

Ryan Boutin never expected to be back in Middletown, but he is a physician (hospitalist) at Middlesex Hospital, where he occasionally treats Wes students.

Lauren Tobias lives in D.C., where her son just finished kindergarten. She left the Institute of Medicine two years ago to start her own consulting shop. This spring, she caught up with Jill Clark and Monisha Nariani, and saw Lina Kee and Ookie Ma ’98 when they were stateside this summer to have a second kid. Lauren sees Alison MacAdam occasionally, now that she is back in D.C. after a year in Boston. After 11 years, Alison left All Things Considered, but not NPR. She is now an editorial coach and trainer working to create more opportunities for public radio producers, editors, and reporters to talk about and improve their craft. She shares storytelling techniques from the best NPR content at nprstorytelling.tumblr.com.

After living in New York for almost 16 years, Jayanthi Raja Segaran and her husband, Tirtha Das PhD ’01, moved to the suburbs of Westchester, with two little boys in tow (Rohin, 7 and Eishaan, 3). She has a shorter commute to her job at PepsiCo in White Plains, and a garden to call her own.

Michelle Kawka runs her own portrait and corporate photography and video business in New York City, specializing in character driven portraiture. While her studio is located in Chelsea, she recently moved uptown to Washington Heights. Check out her work at www.michellekawka.com.

Sung An and Suryo Soekarno met up for lunch in Jakarta in May to talk about old times and old friends. Both work in Southeast Asia after stints in the U.S. and elsewhere in Asia earlier in their careers. Sung is a managing director with Falcon Partners, a private equity firm. Suryo is an account director with Millward Brown, a market research and consulting firm.

Thanks for sharing! Keep ’em coming! Hope you all had a relaxing summer!

Jason writes: Greetings from Charlottesville, Va. My husband and I finally made the jump and left the NYC area. We’ve been in Virginia for a year now and opened a restaurant called MarieBette Café & Bakery, named after our two daughters, Marian & Betty. It has been an incredible experience for us and, thankfully, we’ve thus far been successful. One of the best things about the restaurant is that we have been visited by many Wes alums.

Our friends Emily Lieberman and Jules Cohen came in with their three wonderful daughters while on their way to visit Jules’ parents in the D.C. area. Jules and Emily are living in Seattle where Jules works for Microsoft. Emily left life as a lawyer to be a full-time mom and, as you might expect, is truly one of the most fun moms I’ve ever met.

Dena Rosenberg also visited us at the restaurant with her daughter, Odessa, while visiting her in-laws. I hadn’t seen her in more than 10 years and it was nice to catch up. Dena writes: “Heather Marciniec, Maria Stasavage and I went to see Catie Lazarus’s ’99 amazing Employee of the Month show at Joe’s Pub! Maya Seiden and her husband brought their two sons (prospective classes of ’32 and ’34, respectively) to Wes for the first time last weekend! Jehan Manekshaw visited the States this spring and had a mini reunion with Claire Hruby, Polly Fiveash, Aongus Burke and Anand Nayak ’96. Jehan also met up with Nitin Kochhar and Omar Rahim ’96 in NYC, and caught up with Sean Dague in Poughkeepsie! Jehan married Shaizia Jifri and they have a lovely baby boy, Aden. Jehan runs two theatre organisations in Mumbai: The Young People’s Theatre Programme and The Drama School, Mumbai.”

Anthony Veneziale writes: “I started a new company called Speechless and we are taking Silicon Valley by storm, helping people to make presentations that matter, one improvised PowerPoint at a time! It’s www.speechlesslive.com. I am still performing with Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 (now Dr. Miranda thanks to Wesleyan) and Bill Sherman ’02 in Freestyle Love Supreme. I basically still get to make up stuff as an improviser for a living.”
Stevie Caldwell bought a condo last year with her wife, Jill Clark ’99, in Somerville, Mass. They have a 4-year-old daughter and Jill is still working for the Family Planning program under the Department of Public Health in Massachusetts. Stevie works in the tech sector and is also pursuing music with her band, Six Times Seven, and a side project called “And Then There Was One.”

Nicole Macotsis Hefny is working hard to finish her MA in cultural sustainability from Goucher College, while teaching dance, doing cultural programming, and raising her son between Brooklyn and Egypt, as her husband has joined the Egyptian National Boxing Team after a several year hiatus.

That’s it for now. Please be sure to send any updates to Marcus and me.

Greetings, fellow ’96ers! Can you believe our 20th Reunion is coming up in May? Hope to see many of you there!

Let’s start with the Olatoye-Stroziers. Shola writes: “Matthew, big brothers Alexander and Rowan, and I were pleased to welcome Isabel to our family in May. We are managing the fun and chaos while I run the NYC housing authority and Matthew is the editor of a new Dow Jones site called Mansion Global. We see Tracey Gardner, Randy Slaughter, and their beautiful daughter. I was so excited to celebrate the success of Sarah Wildman’s new book, Paper Love, during her many NYC book tour events this year. At my 40th birthday party, Aisha Cook, Donna Temple ’95, Joy Connolly ’97, Ian Halpern, Saeyun Lee ’93, and others were in the house. Thrilled to get to talk to Tanya Schneider Robinson ’94 and her husband, Earl Robinson ’94, who are in New Orleans. Love that you can still run into people on the street and not just on Facebook. Loved seeing Jason Rosado on lower Broadway.”

When Laura Dine Million wrote in, she also mentioned Sarah Wildman’s book: “I’m still in Los Angeles with my husband, Mike, and two kids, Chloe (7) and Nathan (3.5). I am the producer of the NPR political discussion show Left, Right & Center. I loved seeing Sarah Wildman out here this spring for her book tour!”

Speaking of books, Mary Pagones has published her second one. It’s a novel titled Fortune’s Fool, and you can find it on Amazon.

Benjamin Meyer’s first feature film, Fools, had its world premiere at Dances With Films, in Los Angeles, where it won the Audience Award for Best Competition Feature. He wrote and directed the film and put the final touches on it at Bill Macomber’s Fancy Post.

Aruna Chandran and husband, Kelly Miller, welcomed twins, Lucas Nihal and Nicole Anjali, in May of 2014. Syryna, the family cat, is still waiting for the new “house guests” to leave!

Leigh Needleman and Andrew Frishman ‘97 moved within Cambridge, Mass., to the Central Square area. Leigh works in a neuroscience laboratory at Harvard University. Andrew is co-directing Big Picture Learning. They have two kids (2.5 and 5.5 years old) and try to spend most weekends at Lake Wequaquet on the Cape.

Barrett Feldman relocated to NYC four years ago. After practicing architecture for 13 years, she recently founded an architecture firm—PSF PROJECTS—with two other partners, based in Brooklyn. She writes, “I would happily welcome the chance to work with anyone from the Wesleyan community, as it is a place I continue to hold close to my heart!”

Pascal Pinck also sent an update: “I joined a Seattle-based software company called Socrata, focused on helping government organizations make public data accessible to citizens, researchers, and app developers. If there are any civic hackers or open data nerds out there in Wes-land, I’d love to get in touch!”

Mark Davis continues to work at Wesleyan as the director of planned giving. His daughter, Minerva (or Minnie, 5), is starting kindergarten, and son, Ollie (3), is starting preschool. He hopes that both his children are able to meet other ’96 kids at our 20th Reunion in May.

Thanks to everyone who sent in updates! Please continue to send in news.

Though I am still not ready to accept that it has been 20 years since we have graduated from our beloved Wesleyan University, I am happy to say happy 20th Reunion to you all. It was absolutely fantastic and mind-blowing to see so many ’95ers in the house enjoying all the festivities, food and fun. And you all looked marvelous! It was also a joy to see the li’l ’95ers, the future Wesleyanites, having fun and meeting their parents’ classmates and families. I won’t begin to name all the folks who I ran into but I will say “thank you all for coming!” You made the 20th Reunion a huge success. And to those who could not make, well … sorry, and we hope you make it to our 25th. On to the notes…

Jason Wiser has an animation going up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC this summer. He is doing facial animation and skin texturing for The Return, a wild piece of interactive theater to celebrate the successful re-assembly of Tulio Lombardi’s marble “Adam” statue which fell and smashed into 28 pieces in 2002. The performances run all July 2015. Official announcement: on.wsj.com/1P8GqZ3

Gabriella Klien recently published a book of poems. It is called Land Sparing and was published by Nightboat Books. It was the winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize.

Katy McNeill has been living in the Boston area for approximately 13 years “(probably with many of you close by but we just haven’t run into each other…), still working in the MIT libraries (same place but evolving role). I’ll look forward to seeing everyone at the Reunion; I’ll be bringing my family (wife, Sharie, and our two daughters (ages 9 and 5 now).”

Thanks to those of you for writing in with news to share. We hope to hear from many more of you for future issues. Please be in touch.

Keri Cascio writes, “I moved to Chicago in January to take a job as the executive director of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association. I’m proud to be working for the ‘library mothership,’ and I’m enjoying everything Chicago has to offer.”

Aram Sinnreich writes, “I’ll be moving to Washington, D.C., this summer to start a new job as an associate professor with tenure at American University’s School of Communication.”

Tonya Ward Singer writes from Santa Rosa, Calif., “I’m having a great time raising my boys (7 and 10), and running a business that helps K–12 schools innovate for equity. My book, Opening Doors to Equity, was published this year (and is a Corwin Press bestseller).”

Brenda Frink is living in Portland, Ore., She is working as coordinating editor of Pacific Historical Review.

Hi, everyone! Here’s the latest news from some of your classmates:

Jessica Gutow Viner has been named associate director of admission and financial aid at The Harpeth Hall School in Nashville.

Karen Powell will be teaching a variety of tax law courses at Ohio Northern University School of Law starting in the fall. While she’ll still be in Montana for the summers, she’ll be looking to connect with Wes alums in the Ohio area or who are also teaching at law schools around the country.

Lori Vaughan writes, “On April 10th, my husband (John Ferguson) and I welcomed our third child, Lucas. (He joins big brothers Ethan, 9, and Noah, 11.)”

Julie Hanauer was recently promoted to full professor.

Dan Crane continues freelancing for The New York Times, and has turned his 2013 Times article about his home renovation and divorce into a screenplay, currently in development. He’s also writing a story for California Sunday magazine about Hopscotch, a new “mobile opera” by Yuval Sharon which will be performed in and out of 24 cars driving around Los Angeles, premiering in October. His latest band, Ray & Remora, just recorded their first full-length album, which will be out soon. The video for their cover of Pavement’s Gold Sounds features cameos by Kim Gordon, Jeff Goldblum, and Stephen Malkmus. It’s from their 1994 EP, which came out last year, and has covers of six songs that all came out in…1994. He’ll head to Oulu, Finland, once again in August to emcee the 20th annual World Air Guitar Championships.

Dina Kaplan writes, “I just launched a new company called The Path that teaches meditation to people. Come join us if you’re in NYC: thepath.com/nyc—and I’d love to see fellow classmates in the city in general!”

Jessica Sternfeld became tenured associate professor of music at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., where she teaches classical music history and musical theater. She and her husband also became parents, in the summer of 2014, to Zola (now 5) and Harper (4), their two little girls adopted from Taiwan.

Aaron Barr writes, “My wife, Anner, and I are currently in month seven of a round-the-world trip! We’re hoping to make it a full year or more…we’ll have to see how we’re doing after our late August horse trek in Mongolia! Amazing just to write those words… Anyway, we’re blogging at nomaprequired.com and updating facebook at facebook.com/nomaprequired.”

Ghassan G. Medawar and his wife delivered their newborn son, George G. Medawar, in March 2015. He was born at The Lindo Wing, St Mary’s Hospital in London and was named after his paternal grandfather.

Keith Hay writes, “My wife, Fran, and I live in Denver with our three kids, Sonya (10), Anna (7), and Isaac (7). While Colorado’s mountains are still full of snow, we are preparing for a summer of camping, hiking, and climbing. We climbed our first 14er (14,000 foot summit) last summer (Mt. Democrat) and are hoping to do another one this summer. When I am not in the mountains I serve as a senior policy adviser to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.”

Liza Kleinman lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband and their 10-year-old daughter. Her novel for young readers, Azalea, Unschooled, was just released by Islandport Press.
Jason Gellman writes, “I recently joined Snell & Wilmer, LLP (www.swlaw.com), practicing public utility, energy and natural resources law out of the Phoenix office. I also am the incoming co-chair of the ABA Section on energy, environment, and natural resources—energy and infrastructure: siting and reliability committee, and I am to take over the reins as president of the Phoenix Union Foundation for Education, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides scholarships and funding for student programs for students in the Phoenix Union high school district—the seventh largest in the country. I recently completed my second Tough Mudder in March and will complete the Spartan Trifecta with the 12-plus mile Beast in October in Lake Tahoe. Nothing like climbing up ropes, jumping off platforms, carrying buckets of gravel, sliding into 34-degree ice water and crawling under barbed wire through nasty-smelling mud in your 40s. Good times. Still here in the desert Southwest with my wife and three kids (10, 9, and 6). The kids keep me pretty occupied with grand performances and detailed explanations of upcoming events—on top of the other various activities. Busy times.”