CLASS OF 1970 | 2025 | SPRING ISSUE
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Aloha, everyone. We have lots of news.
First, from what I can tell, our classmates in LA seem to have been lucky in not losing their homes in the fires. Bob Stone published some hair-raising accounts and photos on Facebook. Guy Prevost posted a “safe” message on FB too.
In book news, Ted Reed’s new book is Unions Flying High about airlines’ unions. I love the publicity photo in which he’s wearing a Wesleyan hoodie. Eric Blumenson’s ’68 book is Why Human Rights? A Philosophical Guide. I’ve seen a lot of email comments on the book. Here’s a wonderful review by Stevens Ingraham:
“Wishing to echo others who have offered applause for your new book. Two paragraphs into the intro, this aging head sees that it is not exactly the stuff of cocktail conversation. But such soaring themes!
“Deceptively simple . . . starting with the analysis of human rights through the prism of a moral mandate. Intuitively, yes, of course: human rights are, or should be, rooted in deeper soil than the stuff of ‘mere’ law . . . statutes, treaties, even constitutions. We thrill to the courage shown by Gandhi, King and Mandela in opposing unjust laws for this very reason.
“Anyway, way to go, Eric, in taking on such an ambitious project. (I’ll be one of those guys in the back of the class hoping you won’t call on me to expound further, OK?)”
Steve Talbot’s movie The Movement and The“Madman” was scheduled for broadcast in Kentucky on Inauguration Day. Not long ago, it was aired in Vietnam as well. In Steve’s words: “I just received word from VietnamTV1—the major national broadcaster in Vietnam—that they aired my documentary, The Movement and The“Madman,” in prime time last weekend. . . . I am elated and very moved. Even though my film focuses on events in the U.S.—on Nixon/Kissinger and the anti-war movement in 1969—the whole context is the war in Vietnam. After it aired on the PBS series American Experience last year, one of my goals was to get it shown in Vietnam.
“Now, at age, 75, it feels like my life is coming full circle—from my days at Wesleyan protesting the war with so many of you in our class and making my first anti-war documentary, March on Washington, with Dave Davis, David White, Bill Tam, and others, to actually going to North Vietnam in 1974 to make a film there with Dave Davis and Deirdre English, to now having my most recent film broadcast on national TV in Vietnam. Things like this make getting old worthwhile!”
Joining the retirement community are Brian Silvestro and Alan Dubrow. Brian’s retirement from 50 years of law practice was on January 1. Brian wrote, “What’s next? Good question. First and foremost, there will be more trips to San Diego, Chicago, Colorado Springs, and Richmond to visit more often with our four boys and their families. Jane retired five years ago or so, after 25 years of teaching. That should open a whole new world for us to live with no pressure to meet work obligations or deadlines. I can’t even imagine what that will be like! There are also a number of volunteer opportunities for me on the horizon. Starting to sort through those now.”
And Alan Dubrow, who recently surfaced and got connected with Gus Spohn, wrote, “I am retired from my academic nephrology practice. Married 32 years to Stella, who is a nurse. We have always lived in the Big Apple, traveling a lot, mainly to France and Italy. You couldn’t pay me to move from New York. The weather here is better than that in most parts of the country.”
Jeremy Serwer wrote concerning our upcoming 55th Reunion: “Since I’ve been asked by the alumni office to chair outreach again for our 55th Reunion, we’re calling on all classmates who can make the trip to actually do it. While [so far] there are no specific plans other than a class dinner, we all will be able to avail ourselves of the numerous activities planned by other milestone classes. We’ll also have a class ‘lounge’ somewhere on campus (centrally located, of course!). And, of course, the more who attend from ’70, the better it gets: lots of catching up to do!” We are also looking for classmates to volunteer outreach efforts to other mates for the reunion. Please to contact me directly: jeremy@theserwercompany.com, or jeremy@wesleyan.edu. Contact access to classmates will be provided.”
Personal note: I urge you all to attend the reunion. Not to be morbid, but we’re not getting any younger. I know there already are some related activities planned, including taking in some Red Sox–Mets games at Fenway just before reunion. See what you can cook up before and after reunion.
For those who don’t receive emails from globetrotting Marcos Goodman, I’m including an entire email about his trip to Ecuador in December. If you’re interested in travel writing that includes a lot of history, you might want to get onto his email list.
ALTITUDE SICKNESS IN QUITO
“I was in Quito, Ecuador, the highest capital city in the world, for nine days, and I was in bed for most of the first eight of them. I did pick up some interesting tidbits which I’ll share, and then I’ll go into altitude sickness.
“On my rare forays outside, I noticed that the traffic lights weren’t working. That was because the electricity was out for the entire city, except for those who had private generators. Think of what the traffic is like, or crossing the street, or being in a city with a lot of crime, and no lights. Starting in April, the electricity had been shut off for up to 14 hours each day, although right now it’s down to just a few. This is because Ecuador is reliant on hydroelectric plants, and there has been a severe drought for a few years. They really have no even moderately short-term solution. So, the well-to-do have generators, and the poor live in darkness. So it goes.
“Ecuador is the only country other than Panama, El Salvador, and a few tiny ones, that uses the U.S. dollar as its currency. It makes conversion rates easy. However, they generally use Ecuadorian-produced coins instead of U.S. coins. That’s because U.S. coins don’t have a numerical value stamped on them, and many people who don’t speak English can’t figure out how much the coins are worth. So far, I haven’t been able to find other countries where the coins aren’t denominated.
“For many years, Ecuador was one of the safer countries in the region. Not anymore. That’s because Peru and Colombia are the major cocaine producers in the world, and the past few years the routes have switched so that Ecuador has become the superhighway of world cocaine export, and the crime followed. Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest port and city, has been the worst hit, as that’s where the boats leave from, but the crime has spread. The murder rate has gone from about 6/1,000 in 2017 to about 45/1,000 this year, which some people say is the worst murder rate in the world. However, it’s not, because a number of Caribbean islands are as bad or worse!
“Oil is by far the greatest source of income for the country of Ecuador. It’s 30% of the country’s exports, and the state-owned company rakes that in to provide the bulk of the national income. A lot of that oil comes from what’s left of Ecuador’s Amazon basin holdings, after Peru took most of it in the 1990s. The second largest export is fish, mostly tuna, making it by far the biggest tuna exporter in South America. Unfortunately, I can’t find out who’s the big tuna kahuna.
“Then come bananas. Danny Noboa was elected president when he was 35 and is the youngest president in the world. He is the scion of the richest man in Ecuador, who is the owner of the biggest banana company, making Danny the richest-man-to-be. He went to NYU, Northwestern, and Harvard, while marrying Gabriela Goldbaum, from whom he is still having a very nasty divorce. Although there are few Jews in Ecuador, she’s Ecuadorian and her lineage is Jewish, as I checked her genealogy, and her grandparents were Katzes. I do my very important research! Okay, on to altitude sickness.
“I arrived in Quito late, took a cab directly to my Airbnb, and went to sleep. As usual, the first thing in the morning I began to walk out to a calisthenics spot. However, I could barely make it across the street. I didn’t know what I had, but I had something. I made it back to my Airbnb and went back to sleep.
“Was it Montezuma’s Revenge? Well, I certainly had diarrhea among other things, but my main symptom was that I had zero energy and was having a hard time breathing. It took me a couple of days before I learned that I’ve really gotta start doing my research ahead of time, not after I arrive, as is my normal procedure.
“So, I finally discovered that I had altitude sickness. Dumb tourist! It turns out that Quito has the highest elevation (9,350’) of any other country’s official capital. Notice that I said ‘official’ capital, because La Paz, Bolivia, is much higher (11,942’), but it’s only the ‘administrative’ capital of Bolivia, where all of the governmental bodies do business. Bolivia’s constitutionally official capital is Sucre, which is just a tad lower than Quito at 9,220’. Bogotá, Columbia, at 8,612’, is the third highest official capital, but I’m skipping Bogota except for the airport transfer.
“The main thing with altitude sickness is that the altitude offers you less oxygen, the result being that you don’t have any energy, among a number of symptoms. So, during my nine days in Quito, I was only out of my Airbnb for less than an hour each day, very slowly trudging to do some essential things, with long stops to sit down and rest every block. The rest of the time, I was lying down or sleeping, generally 12 hours per day. Luckily, Quito doesn’t have a whole lot of sites that I was interested in seeing anyway, so I didn’t miss out on a whole lot. Also, it was threatening to rain most of the time, and the crime rate is such that I may have been best off just lying in bed, sick or not, which is only a slight exaggeration.
“I normally try to avoid taking drugs to solve my rare health issues, which is not always the smartest approach. But after four days, I finally walked next door to the pharmacy and got the recommended medical solution. Once again, I say ‘medical’ solution, because the common folk solution is tea from the leaves of the coca plant, the basic ingredient of cocaine. Although you need a prescription of the medical solution in the U.S., no prescription was needed in Quito. Maybe I should have gone into a cafe and ordered some coca tea, because the medical solution didn’t do bupkis for me. My last day in town, I forced myself to take the hop-on-hop-off bus up to the equator museum, which was interesting. That was the extent of my touristing in Ecuador.
The good and intriguing thing for me about this altitude sickness was that I lost eight pounds. Now, you really can’t trust what almost all people say about losing a lot of weight fast, as it’s almost always from dehydration or starting with wild overeating followed by purging from whichever end. However, you can trust my weight loss for a few reasons. First, I weigh myself on the same scale at almost the exact same time every morning after taking a pee. Second, except for rare exceptions, I eat the exact same food every day, with the quantities weighed out on my food scale, which I carry with me. Third, I drink the same amount of measured fluid, mostly lemon water and a couple of cups of coffee. On the rare days that I splurge at the bakery, I can almost see the result the next morning, and I eat less afterwards to compensate. Other than those rare splurges, my only other variables are exercise, which is almost the same measured amount five days a week, with a day off for travel and a day off for another exercise break. But totaled up, my exercise calorie expenditure is almost the same every week. That’s except for my nine days in Quito, when I had almost no exercise calories expended.
“Although I was just lying around, I still ate my normal diet. So, my calorie intake from food was the same, but I had almost no calorie expenditure other than the calories used to sustain living. And I still lost eight pounds. I could see it in the mirror. How could that be? I don’t know yet. One possible factor is that you weigh less with an increase in altitude. However, that’s not it, as the decrease in weight from increased altitude is miniscule, .02 pounds for me.
“Another factor could have been hydration, even though I was careful to drink even more liquids than my normal quantity. I was definitely breathing deeper and more rapidly in order to compensate for the lower amount of oxygen, and the exhaled breath contains moisture, which could have added to hydration weight loss. But I doubt it. Lastly, my increased liquid intake could have been overcome by increased urination, which was definitely going on, as I had to get up to pee just about every hour throughout the day and night. Too much information?
“I’m writing this from my third day in Cali, Colombia, and I’ve regained two pounds, but I’m still a skinnier me. I’ll probably never figure out the weight loss and just have to chalk it up to more of the great mystery. But I’ve recovered my energy, and I’m off to see the sights each day. Not that there’s much to see in Cali, Colombia. At least so far.
“Here’s the video, what there is of one: https://youtu.be/r1hlf2fRZTQ”
Here on Kauai, we are keeping on keeping on. Six months after our visit to New Zealand, I’m still pining for New Zealand. We’re trying to get the house ready for sale and I’m preparing for knee replacement early in April.
I wish everyone well and hope to see many of you at the reunion.
RUSS JOSEPHSON | russ_josephson@yahoo.com
P.O. Box 1151, Kilauea, HI 96754