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Bennett Schneider said on June 16, 2023, the Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence received the Los Angeles Dodgers’ community hero award on the team’s annual LGBTQ Pride Night at Dodger Stadium. Bennet, as Sister Unity, was one of the members to accept the award on the group’s behalf. “The award recognized our group’s 27 years of work as activists and fundraisers in the LA LGBTQ community,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, there were “2,000 protestors right outside the stadium, and three weeks of back-to-back press interviews and news coverage, positive and negative.” Bennett also noted that the garment he wore at the event was “hand sewn and every single red AIDS ribbon—about 100—was sewn on by Lisa Rosen.
“A month afterward, Lisa and I dined al fresco with Amanda Marks ’88. . . . Still see Nathan Gebert ’85, who now winters in Japan every year and stops off here in Southern California to visit on his way to and from.”
Rich Koffman writes, “My wife, Jacqueline, and some friends (including Rich Monastersky and Victoria Nugent ’91) and I recently formed a private sponsorship group under the State Department’s Welcome Corps program. The program allows groups of private citizens to sponsor and help resettle refugees in the United States. Our group was matched with a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who arrived here in late September after more than two decades in a refugee camp in Tanzania. With some guidance from the folks at HIAS, who provide resources for private sponsorship groups nationwide, we have helped him find an apartment, register for government benefits, and sign up for English classes, and we are working to find him employment. It’s been a challenging, eye-opening, and rewarding experience thus far. I’ve even learned a little bit of Swahili! I highly recommend the program to anyone who may be interested in helping refugees establish themselves in the United States.”
Kate Nunn Mini wrote,“I am now practicing pediatrics in New Haven. Yale Health is a wonderful place to work! Although I continue to see patients, my focus over the last few years has been pediatric mental health, specifically, integrating behavioral health into primary care. My kids are doing well out in the world, so it’s a great time for me to dive into this work!”
Emily Cowan said, “Big changes for me in the last 18 months: I bought a condo on the northern edge of Concord, New Hampshire, and I started a new job at a community mental health center. I’m glad to be working for a big organization again, especially one with tech help and administrative support. Middle age has not improved my abilities in these things. My daughter is a lifty at a ski resort out West, and I’m holding off on getting my next dog because I travel to see my parents. They are both 90 and they are marvels.
Dana Walcott wrote,“After working at the same place for almost 25 years, I have a new job. I had been unhappy at the old place for the last one to two years. I could not do the same old stuff any longer. I needed something new. I needed a change. I found a new job working at a world-class loudspeaker manufacturer 10 miles from my house here in Massachusetts. I could not be happier.”
Jeff Liss said, “My wife, Susan, and I have now moved full time to the East Side of Manhattan, finally selling the house in the Philadelphia suburbs. I ran into classmate Nina Mehta on the street shortly after moving in! I recently left my job in big consulting to be the global VP of Customer Experience at a large provider of solutions for health-care professionals. In the last few years, I have crossed paths with old friends: Tim Harvey ’85, Dan Seltzer, Carrie Normand ’87, Majora Carter ’88, and the newly elected first selectman of Fairfield, Connecticut, Bill Gerber. I am also now the board chair for a great nonprofit called the Josephine Herrick Project (www.jhproject.org) and work closely with our executive director, Miriam Leuchter ’85.”
Roger Lebovitz reports that his latestbook,Obscure Blessings, will be published by Fomite Press in 2025.
Kris Bluemel shared she was recently appointed to the position of interim associate dean of the McMurray School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The last time she worked in a normal office environment, Monday through Friday, was in 1988 when she was a marketing assistant at the University of Georgia Press. She is still involved with publishing and books as professor of English and Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair of Humanities at Monmouth. Her latest book, Enchanted Wood: Women Artists, Rural Britain, and the Twentieth-Century Wood Engraving Revival, is due out from the University of Minnesota Press this year.
Ethan Knowlden wrote he is “making good on my retirement pledge to get involved in ending homelessness here, I am now on the board of the Arizona Housing Coalition, the state’s largest housing stability advocacy organization. I’m also interning at a local law firm that focuses on affordable housing transactions for nonprofit and for-profit clients. And I fill the rest of my time serving as president of my local community council while we commence a $10 million expansion of our community center.”
Steve Berliner contributed that he is“alive and well and retired (with no regrets), living in New Orleans with my fiancée of 10 years, Laura. Two kids—Felix ’25 and Rebecca, a senior in high school—dog Rudy and cat Wiley, and Laura’s son, Christopher, a musician living in Oakland. I spend most of my free time enjoying retirement with Laura, visiting with my kids (they live in Brooklyn with their mom), tying flies, swing dancing on Frenchmen Street, and tinkering around the house (a historic side-hall shotgun built in 1836). Need to do more fishing with those flies. Taking an online computer programming class and enjoying that a lot too. I still talk now and again with my college buddy, Andrew Bennett—saw him a few Thanksgivings ago in D.C., which was great. Went vegan in 2020 and am enjoying my vegetables!”
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