Author: etaylor

Greetings from Chicago! The pandemic continues with the Delta variant causing increased anxiety and higher infection rates around the country. I hope that everyone and their families, friends, and loved ones are all safe. Summer came to an end and my two daughters returned to in-person school. They are now in the 7th grade!  I caught up with my sister Humera Syeda ’90 in Albany, New York, with her kids and our parents over the summer.

     Suzie Purcell Byers ’94 and Carl Bradford Byers ’93 moved to Spain in September 2020 so that Suzie could begin serving as Head of School at Madrid Montessori. Because of the pandemic, Carl was able to do his venture capital work at F-Prime Capital and his teaching of entrepreneurial finance at Harvard completely online. Also, their older two children decided to take gap years from college so that they could join them. Their son, Jacob Purcell Byers, will graduate from Wesleyan with a BA in Film and English in May 2022, after having earned his masters in Spanish TV writing at ECAM in June 2021. Their older daughter, Emily Purcell Byers, began her undergraduate degree at Amherst College in August 2021. Their younger daughter, Katherine Purcell Byers, just finished a year at American School of Madrid and will continue her high school years at Concord Academy in Massachusetts.

    Kate Gordon ’94 writes that she joined the U.S. Department of Energy as a senior advisor to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. In this post, she will be working to implement President Biden’s executive order calling for an equitable and just energy transition in coal, oil and gas, and power plant communities. Kate previously served for two and a half years as the director of the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and a senior advisor to Governor Newsom on climate policy.

    Jessica Sharzer sent this heartbreaking update: “Wesleyan has been very much on my mind these days. I was a transfer student so I had my orientation with the incoming class of 1995.  I bonded with a guy named Andy Neiman ’95 and we remained friends for the last 30 years.  When he had a psychotic break right after he graduated, I flew out to Saint Louis to see him in a psychiatric hospital. Andy struggled for years with mental illness and died by suicide in June.  I recently traveled to Saint Louis for his memorial and burial and saw a half dozen Wesleyan folks. Although it was tragic circumstances, it was nice to bond with old acquaintances and exchange memories about Andy.” Deepest condolences to Andy’s family and friends.

As you can see, I received few updates.  I know people keep in touch on other social media platforms but please continue to send in updates so that we can include them here too. Stay safe everyone!

Hi Wes friends. Thank you so much for writing in, and sharing your news. In the space below, you will find updates about careers, cross-country moves, a new college president, and the launching of a political campaign. Please continue to share your news with us!

     Micah Cormier emails, “I can report I’ve moved with my family to a quintessential New England town on the Connecticut shoreline, about 30 minutes from Wesleyan. My wife Melissa and I work at Yale, where I make short films to promote research and scholarship at the university (drawing on my past experience working on documentaries for television). I spend the rest of my time trying to be a good dad to my daughter Sadie (12) and son Lucas (8), developing my own documentary projects, and taking beginner piano lessons.”

     Anna Balivet Jordan writes, “I am in the Seattle area working as a celebrant specializing in celebration of life and memorial services. I write and officiate ceremonies across the life cycle including weddings. My website can be found at ritualarrangements.com. I’m also working toward a funeral director’s license and hope to use my directorship to advocate for family directed funerals, and green burial practices.”

     Dan Kapelovitz was a candidate for governor of California in the 2021 recall election.

     Camille McGadney writes, “We are moving to Galesburg, Illinois, where Andy ’92 is the new president of Knox College.”

     Jodi Samuels writes, “Last October, I moved into a new position as director of strategic support for colleges and scholars at the Foundation for California Community Colleges. The position was created to launch the new Finish Line Scholars Program, which provides scholarships to economically disadvantaged students who are at least halfway through their educational program and emergency aid to students facing unexpected financial hardships. The program was created thanks to a pledge of $100 million over 20 years from the Jay Pritzker Foundation, representing the largest gift ever to community colleges! I’m also overseeing two grant programs that support projects for nursing education and real estate education and will be gradually taking over responsibility for the Osher Scholars Program, which provides scholarship support for all 115 California community colleges. Given the current conversations happening nationally and at the federal level about community colleges, it’s an exciting time to be working in this field!”

Greetings and salutations from Washington, D.C.

It was great to check in with my old housemate Ralph Martin from Berlin. He is busy with his German wife, three German-American kids, and a German screenwriting gig writing shows created in Germany aimed at an international audience including Hackerville, which he created and is now on HBOMax. HBO is also the place to catch White Lotus, a six-episode soap-satire, written and directed by Mike White, that the New York Times recently called, “a captivating, sharp, and soulful series.” Meredith Tucker is the casting director for the series. So even more reason to watch.

Jonathan Soros just completed a trip across the country. On a bike. He and three teammates from Athletes Unlimited competed in Race Across America (RAAM), logging 3,000 miles from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis, Maryland, in about 6.5 days. The trip included a crazy day of 115-degree temperatures (described as “sitting in a sauna then blow-drying your face with a hair dryer”) in Arizona before climbing into the mountains of Colorado, crossing the flats of the Midwest then racing through the mountains of West Virginia. It was super exciting to see him and his team arrive at 3:00 a.m. in Annapolis. I’m also looking forward to Jonathan’s upcoming visit to the Maryland/Washington, D.C. area to launch Athletes Unlimited Women’s Pro Lacrosse league this weekend. Quite a summer, Jono.

During the pandemic, Jody Sperling continued creating dances with her company, Time Lapse Dance, shifting focus from the stage to producing street festivals, virtual programs, and dance films. Her work has continued to engage with climate and environmental issues—her short film Single Use, a response to plastic pollution, was recently screened in person at The Harlem International Film Festival. Jody lives with her partner and almost-10-year-old daughter in New York City.

Jody’s work is featured in E. Shura Pollatsek’s new, beautifully illustrated book, Costume in Motion: A Guide to Collaboration for Costume Design and Choreography (Routledge, 2021), with photos by Mitch Wilson. The book continues the studies on collaboration in costume design begun in her first book, Unbuttoned—The Art and Artists of Theatrical Costume Design. The book also includes an interview with Robin Shane ’94, assistant professor of Dance Iddrisu Saaka, about West African dance and about her work in sustainable costume design.

Kevin Prufer’s newest book, The Art of Fiction: Poems, has just been released by Four Way Books in New York City.

Joy Rhoden, senior vice president of the American Hospital Association, and her bichon frisé are about to be empty nesters. Her son Nolan (’25) is starting at Wes this fall. He was one of three recipients of the 2021 Hamilton Prize award for creativity and plans to major in neuroscience and Chinese, and minor in studio art, at Wes.

Danae Oratowski is enrolled in a program to become a nurse practitioner. She is currently working as a nurse at NYU Hospital in the acute GI surgery unit and looking forward to seeing everyone next May.

Speaking of our 30th Reunion, be on the lookout for events in your area. Chris Arndt and Oliver Ryan are leading the way with a special mini-reunion, concert and fundraiser planned for January in NYC to kickoff Reunion season. Details are still in the works—Bowery Ballroom, Joe’s Pub, Irving Plaza, and Madison Square Garden are all being discussed—but what we know is it will be a great party for Wes alums and feature the music stylings of Chris, his bass guitar, and his new band of Nashville-based musicians performing their upcoming album Lost Bags, a tribute, in part, to Baggage Claim and those days at Wes.

Looking forward to seeing you in New York City this January and at Wes next May!

It’s truly amazing to think that 30 years ago we had just scattered from campus, looking to find our way in the world. Technology brought us back together for our extended 30th virtual Reunion celebrations, from hangouts and discussions on Zoom to epic trivia to nostalgic frosh hall gatherings on gather.town to a full-on dance party with DJ legend Frank Tuitt. During Reunion, I took no notes of what everyone is up to, so just a few things for now—please write to me with your news!

Big props to Fro Rosqueta who customized the gather.town platform for our Reunion—it’s still there for us to use for gatherings! Check back to Reunion emails for the link, share with friends and go get brunch at MoCon.

Now, onto the news . . . Michael Nachmanoff, as of this writing, serves as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, and has been nominated to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Tracey Osborne, the University of California presidential chair in management of complex systems, has been recognized for her pioneering work in climate change mitigation and its relation to social justice. Tracey leads the Center for Climate Justice at University of California at Merced, though the center will build collaborations across all the UC campuses.

Several of our classmates have joined the Biden-Harris Administration: Narda Jones serves as Legislative Affairs Director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Spencer Boyer serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy.

Joshua Samuels continues to practice medicine (kidney disease) and teach at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science in Houston and received promotion to tenured professor in 2020. He’s been on faculty since 2003, and “yes, it took that long from Wes graduation to actually finish training!” Joshua’s distinctions include his annual Houstonia Top Doctors designation and the Dean’s teaching excellence award, received every year since 2015.

Dan Levine, Laura (Lu) Schiavo, and I worked with University Archivist Amanda Nelson to get a digital archive repository for the Class of 1991 initiated. Our class was 100 percent analog, and although many of us share our memories in digital format, those shares are on private company servers, have blurry privacy policies, are not accessible to everyone, and do we know what might happen if the company goes away?

Amanda created a straightforward solution for helping our class via a  form; you can reach out to Amanda directly (anelson01@wesleyan.edu) if you have a much larger collection, or a lot of textual documents or ephemera to donate. She’s also available to answer questions about copyright, privacy, and the take down policy. This project is just getting off the ground, and we’d love to know what you think!

Hello, all.  It was nice to hear from a bunch of new people this time around. Here’s the latest:

Alexis Roberts writes that she, Chris Roberts ’89, and 16-year-old India are moving to Los Angeles for Chris’s new job at the UCLA School of Law (daughter Beatrix ’22 is a senior at Wes and daughter Willa is a sophomore at McGill). They are looking forward to spending lots of time with Liza Maizlish, Ted Skillman ’91, Dan Partland ’92, Ben Brand ’92, and other Wes friends!

In March, John Rasmussen and Krittika Onsanit ’91 met for dinner with another Wes couple, Carolyn Clark and David Patterson, who were in Richmond on one stop of their daughter’s college tour. “We picked a large redbrick restaurant with columns for dinner, so that we could pretend we were on the Olin steps.”

Jonah Pesner’s “happiest update is that my daughter Noa Pesner ’24 had a great first year, culminating with a trip to NCAA finals as part of Wes Women’s Crew who placed fourth overall!”

Meg Steele has launched a walking tour business in her town of Bath, Maine, which was just named one of the “best small towns in America” by Smithsonian Magazine! (Website and social media are Embark Maine Tours.) Meg invites all Wes friends that find themselves nearby to come for a tour!

David Steingart is living in Tallahassee, Florida. “I am a practicing psychotherapist and I have a nine-year-old son. It’s hot.”

Victor Khodadad will be singing the role of Turiddu in New Camerata Opera’s live, fall production of Il Borgo Siciliano. This production will be a unique, 90-minute version of the popular operatic double bill of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The score was prepared by stage director John de los Santos, conductor Sam McCoy, and dramaturg Cori Ellison, and was presented on September 23rd, 25th, 30th and October 2nd at The Muse in Bushwick, Brooklyn. More information is available at www.newcamerataopera.org.

Jennie Bauduy recently got to catch up with “my still dear friend Rona Cohen, who lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey, and educates and advises state officials on clean energy and climate policy. I generally keep close tabs on my buddies Meg Fry ’91 and Mike Novak, both doing well with their teenage son in Queens, New York, and planning their next adventure biking trip. I am also very happy to still be in touch with Professor Alex Dupuy (we discovered we were cousins at Wesleyan), who is doing very well with his wife in Middletown. My own son is headed to Brown in the fall. He has some longtime friends headed to Wesleyan, so I’m expecting some back and forth between the two campuses. I’ve been working as a journal editor for many years in Washington, D.C., and have recently returned to focusing on my own writing. This year, I published a memoir essay in the Maine Review.”

Carolyn Vellenga Berman, who is associate professor of Literature, chair of Literature and co-chair of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, wrote to say that she and her husband Greg (’89) “were delighted to attend the in-person graduation of our daughter Hannah ’21 from Wesleyan this spring. Our daughter Milly ’24 will be a sophomore this fall; she’s looking forward to a post-vaccination campus life.” Carolyn’s second book, Dickens and Democracy in the Age of Paper, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2022. “I enjoyed stopping by the Center for the Humanities on campus, remembering how I first got a taste for the life of a scholar.”

Finally, on July 2nd, just as I was wrapping up these notes, I received the wonderful news from James Rosenblatt that “this morning we welcomed our first grandson!  Theodore Rudy Preblich was born to our daughter and her husband. Everyone is happy and healthy but a little tired.”

On that happy note, I wish all of you happiness and health and, as always, look forward to hearing from you.

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!

Anna Beane writes “after 25 years of teaching at every type of school (e.g., Wesleyan, a maximum-security prison), I am making a career change to educational technology. Teaching theatre to middle schoolers this past year over Zoom has done me in. A weekly video meet has maintained my sanity with Shirley Suzuki, Barbra Silver, Rachael Nusbaum, Cara Haft, and Diane Purvin ’89. Shirley, Barbra, Cara, and I lived on Foss 6 frosh year, so we’re going on 23 years of life together.”

Ben Junge was promoted to full professor at State University of New York–New Paltz in the Anthropology Department, and had a book come out (called Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair and Resistance in Brazil). I’m excited to be starting a sabbatical year and will spend most of it at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writing up research about politics and cultural memory in Brazil. Bronwyn Poole, a Santa Fe resident and fellow Class-of-’88er, will be my neighbor!

Desiree Ralls-Morrison was recently named the General Counsel of McDonald’s Corporation, and her son graduated Wesleyan this year.

David (DJ) Hallett lives with his husband in Jackson, New Hampshire; they also spend time at a second home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. David’s a lawyer (30 years in practice) handling residential and commercial real estate transactions in New Hampshire and Massachusetts with his own company. On weekends, he helps out at his husband’s chocolate shop, and eats lots of chocolate.

He writes: “In August 2018 I attended the Wesleyan Writer’s Workshop after I finished a young adult novel I had written—it was amazing being back on campus for that week and made me miss my time there like you wouldn’t believe. The ‘Book’ is still ‘in process.’ trying to find the time to finish getting ready to publish is hard, and I have begun ‘Book 2’ of that trilogy—hope to finish before I retire from my day job. It was also fun attending a workshop during the conference by our very own classmate Steve Almond who is a very successful writer himself—I purchased some of his work and enjoyed it, and laughed a lot!

“Several years ago I started on another path as well— joined an international order of druids, The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD), and have been on a multiyear training program, of which I’m halfway through—travelling to Glastonbury, U.K. for meetings with thousands of others going through the training each year. It’s a nature based spirituality and Celtic history course, and something I needed for myself as the more common spiritual options no longer resonate. It’s really gotten me in touch with nature, and myself, and made me much calmer.”

Thanks for staying in touch everyone!

After submission of these notes, we received the news of the passing of Tyler Holt. Tyler was a foreign service officer with the United States Agency for International Development. We extend our sincerest condolences to his family and classmates. A full obituary can be found here.

Hi friends! A pretty empty mailbox this time. I hope it means people are out, busy, and enjoying the return to some level of normal.

There were lots of spring 2021 graduations at various levels of education and various levels of interaction. My son Sam graduated from American University and we watched a taped broadcast from a Washington, D.C. hotel room. It was a very welcome celebration. Wesleyan’s commencement was in person and live streamed. If you watched, you may have seen Ira Skolnik’s son Jonah ’21 graduate with University Honors in both Medieval Studies and Government. This double honor is a first for Wesleyan. Jonah is going on for a higher degree at Trinity College Oxford.

I have a lot of books to report!

Rebecca Bratspies teaches environmental law at the City University of New York and lives in Queens with her husband and daughter. Her co-authored book, Environmental Justice: Law, Policy and Regulation was released in 2020. It is a textbook for undergraduate and law students but she hopes it will also be a resource for communities as well. Rebecca was appointed to the New York City Environmental Justice Advisory Board, and she blogs infrequently with the Center for Progressive Reform. Before the shutdown, she saw Trisha Lindemann and Lisa Ranghelli. In the 2020 Summer of COVID, she went on a socially distanced, graffiti-viewing walk with Janet Lieberman. She also hosted a Zoom reunion for about 30 members of the Karate Club from classes ’86–’89. Rebecca is interested in getting in touch with other Wesleyan people in the New York City area, especially those working in environmental fields.

Eric Lotke released his third book, Union Made, a romance about union organizing. This book joins his other titles, Making Manna, and 2044: The Problem Isn’t Big Brother, It’s Big Brother, Inc., and his work routinely gets good reviews.

Muzzy Rosenblatt’s new book, How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness, Innovations That Work was launched this June. Muzzy joins global experts to profile efforts to alleviate homelessness in 10 cities: Bogota, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, Edmonton, Paris, and Athens. The authors analyze how cities have used innovation and local political coordination to tackle homelessness. Muzzy is the CEO and president of BRC, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, an organization focused on people facing homelessness in New York City.

Here’s some publishing news directly from Pauline Frommer ’88: “On March 23, 2020 we stopped production on a book I’d been working on for months: a photo-rich, map-based guidebook centered around interest-based itineraries of all sorts. But I knew that the city, and world, would be changing drastically, so we put the book (Frommer’s New York City Day by Day) on ice. It’s now been several months of very hard work to replace all of the businesses that went out of business (shops, restaurants, hotels and even museums). But the city is coming back and so is this book, just released in November! Whew! Thrilled to get it out the door, and start editing many of the other Frommer’s guidebooks to places around the globe.”

Pauline reports that her older daughter is going into her last year at Tufts, and her younger daughter is starting Northwestern in the fall. She also says that the thing that kept her sane during COVID was playing trivia every Friday night with a rotating bunch of Wes friends from around the United States over Zoom. Lots of us were doing that.

C. S. “Cal” Coolidge ’91 reports that he is getting ready to send a child to college. His son, Will, is matriculating in the fall at University of California, Santa Cruz, Merrill College, or, as Cal likes to think of it, “Wesleyan West.”

If you haven’t already heard it, Wes Athletics does a podcast called Chris & Coach; Beyond the Box Score. Chris Grace, the voice of the Cardinals and Mike Whalen ’83, the athletic director, interview alums and discuss a wide range of topics including their experience with sports at Wes, their college experience in total, their thoughts on the value of a liberal arts education, and the paths they have taken since leaving Middletown. Chris Roellke and Chris Stiepock have both been guests and their interviews are entertaining and insightful. We’ve got a lot of other athletes who’d be great guests! I’m looking at you, Allegra Burton, Claire Conceison, Dave Robinson, Paul Amoruso, and Amy Mortimer!

No time like now to drop me a line and tell me what you’re up to. Hope it’s something good.

Daniel Seltzer writes: “Survived the pandemic (so far) hunkered down on the Upper West Side. The last of our kids moved out last year and my wife Hillary and I are loving the empty nest effect. In 2019 I started a digital product development company (InData.dev), which was already a remote, distributed team, and saw huge demand in health tech during the past year. We built a digital health passport (CommonPass) that’s gotten a lot of coverage and did other projects in education and finance. I stayed in touch with Daniel Sullivan, Giles Richter ’87, John Ephron, Peter Durwood, Laura Harrington, and David Hamburger.”

     Suzanne Bidwell says: “My big update for the newsletter is that my son, Sam Bidwell ’21, graduated from Wes this year. Like our graduation 35 years ago, it was in the 90s without a cloud in the sky. However, remembering the weather in ’86, I knew enough to recommend a golf umbrella for him so he wouldn’t cook as I did back then. With the socially distant graduation seating, it was no problem and quite easy for me to find him in the crowd too! I look forward to attending future reunions with him sharing my reunion year.”

     Steve Cadigan writes: “I just published a book on the future of work titled Workquake: Embracing the Aftershocks of COVID-19 to Create a Better Model of Working. I am definitely biased but I think it’s a great read for anyone working today or anyone contemplating working— such as our class members who still have kids in school. I can also say that I have had regular monthly Zoom calls during COVID with Gus Conroy, also of our class; he is now based in Houston and doing great.”

Editor’s note: We’re on the hunt for a new class secretary! If you have any interest, please reach out to classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

 

Hello, Class of ’85!

Can you believe it’s been 40 years since we moved into our dorms at Wesleyan? It’s both incredible and all too possible, isn’t it?

This summer, Hillary Hess and I observed our 40 years of friendship by enjoying a leisurely outdoor dinner with our husbands, Peter Gimlin and Michael MacDonald, respectively. Hillary and Peter’s daughter Charlotte is a third-year student at the University of Virginia, and their son Edward is starting this fall at the University of Vermont.

I had the great good fortune to reconnect with a lot of rowers earlier this year, fundraising for Wesleyan Women’s Crew, including Amy Huber, Margaret Bracken Thompson, Lea Barth ’84, and Carlie Masters Williams ’86, who still gets out on the water and is coaching here in the DC area.

Stacia Friedman-Hill is now a recipient of the prestigious Bloomberg Fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She’s received a full scholarship and is working toward her MPH while continuing in her position as a program director at the National Institutes of Mental Health.

That’s all for now—connect with me on Facebook or Instagram or write to me!