CLASS OF 1986 | 2022 | FALL ISSUE

Here’s some news from fellow ’86ers:

Jaclyn Brilliant writes: “A fond hello from New York City! I’ve spent the past 30-plus years working at Notre Dame School of Manhattan, a small high school in NYC’s West Village, including 10 years as principal—quite the ordeal during the height of COVID times! I’ve stepped down from that role starting with the 2021–22 school year but still work at the school as an English teacher and in the communications department. I’ve been married to Anthony Jenks ’85 for going on 33 years, and we have two adult daughters: Madeline, an attorney in D.C., and Josephine, a graduate student in art conservation at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Empty nesters now, we moved out of our Brooklyn home and into an apartment in Midtown Manhattan a few years ago. Long walks along the East River with Nina Mehta, phone calls with Ann O’Hanlon, and lots of fine takeout sustained me through the COVID crisis. Anthony and I welcomed a puppy, Bonnie, and are now enjoying the chance to really explore our new neighborhood, travel, see live performances, and perch at restaurant bars again.”

Ellen Santistevan shares: “I can report that I have seen no one from Wes in years, although I recently had a very brief email exchange with John Tauxe ’84, who happens to live moderately close to me in New Mexico.

“My work as a craniosacral and visceral therapist has kind of exploded, and I have been teaching classes in ethics and bodywork, having finally come to recognize that ‘less is more’ when it comes to both work as well as teaching.

“I got to go to Yellowstone National Park in February with my other alumni association (from NM Tech) and fell absolutely in love with the landscape. I was absolutely transfixed by the vibration of the earth as the geysers rumbled and erupted. Although I did really want to pet one of the wooly cows, I refrained and stayed safe.”

Eric Howard sends in this update: He “is very excited to have started a new position: CEO/executive director of the Timber Framers Guild, a community of business owners, employees, and others who care about post-and-beam and timber-frame structures from the perspective of architecture, engineering, construction, renovation, and/or ownership. Some love the beauty or are excited by the sustainability angle; others appreciate on the art of creating or repairing a structure that will last 250 years. Guild members span the North American continent, and some are overseas.” Those who might want to take a weeklong class on timber framing (or send their child to a class) should contact him.

Julia Barclay says she has “a hybrid collection of essays, stories, and a stage text coming out in October entitled The Mortality Shot, which will be published by Liquid Cat Books. The material was written in the past five years and includes reflections on death of family and friends, intimations of all of that from childhood, and on my own mortality dealing with long-haul COVID. It also touches on process of my late-in-life (last year at age 57) diagnosis on autism spectrum, about which I am now writing a memoir. My website: TheUnadaptedOnes.com is where I announce new work, list services such as writing workshops, coaching, and gentle yoga for healing, and also write about life stuff on a blog. I was commissioned to record all of my experimental stage texts (22 years of them) for a 22-hour radio show RadioArtZone, broadcasting in Europe and online. That broadcast [occurred] in mid-September.

“Alums I have seen and been in touch with recently include Renee Bucciarelli ’83, Shawn Cuddy, Nathan Gebert ’85, Spencer Reece ’85, Bennett Schneider, Lisa Kaufman ’80, and Jenny Boylan ’80. Also chat online with West Coasters, Orna Izakson ’87, Don Rea ’84, and Andy Laken ’88. The whole Wes community is a thing of beauty and remains the reason I am happiest I attended our strange little university.”

Ralph Saverese reports that his book See It Feelingly was recently translated into Japanese. He and his son DJ have been teaching online creative writing workshops to intergenerational and inter-abled groups across the world.

From Lisa Porter: “I am currently working as the interim resident director and co-head of voice and dialects for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in San Francisco. I have been acting—Julia in Pam MacKinnon’s Fefu and Her Friends at ACT and going into rehearsals in a month as Gruach (Lady MacBeth) in Dunsinane at Marin Theatre Company. My daughter Maggie just graduated from Northwestern. While currently in the Bay Area, I am contemplating a move to NYC. In the last few months, I have seen Melinda Newman, Bennett Schneider, Pauline Frommer ’88, Kevin Pratt ’87, Ernie Laftky, Shawn Cuddy, and James Hallett, which has been amazing!”

Erika Levy is still enjoying her work as professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Teachers College, Columbia University. She lives in NYC with her husband and her son. She is thrilled that her daughter will be starting at Wesleyan in the fall! She loves staying in touch with her Wesleyan friends.

Ethan Halm took a new job as the vice chancellor for population health at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, and is the deputy chief population health officer in the RWJ Barnabas Health System in New Jersey. He is excited to be taking on these new challenges and being back in the Northeast.

And finally, we are sad to report that John “Johan” Booth passed away on June 29, 2022. His obituary can be read at https://www.gatheringus.com/memorial/john-johan-booth/9381. His brother David also wrote about John, which can be found here. David shared that his brother’s life work was in the U.S. Antarctic Program. “He worked at Palmer and South Pole Stations as a science technician. He loved the social life of the South Pole, where a small staff community would fend for itself during the long isolation of dark months. He loved the physical beauty of the South Pole, where the aurora danced overhead. He loved the varied science conducted at the Pole, where his intelligence, meticulousness, and curiosity found purpose. He loved mentoring others in that science. He loved sharing about Antarctica through countless visits and slideshows in schools and community settings, and through a celebrated email correspondence chronicling both the social and the scientific aspects of life on the ice.”

John “Johan” F. Booth ’86, MA’86

John “Johan” F. Booth ’86, MA’86 passed away on June 29, 2022. His brother, David Booth, shared the following obituary:

John Booth ’86 died June 29, 2022. Early in 2021, John experienced
odd symptoms—phantom smells, brief episodes of loss of balance, brief
episodes of difficulty word finding.  In April, an MRI revealed a mass
in his brain. This turned out to be a glioblastoma, an aggressive and
almost invariably fatal brain tumor. John underwent surgery to remove
much of the tumor. Radiation and chemotherapy followed with the aim
of slowing regrowth of the tumor. During eight weeks of radiation
therapy John stayed with his Wesleyan friend Bill Belt and family in
Philadelphia. Treatment allowed him about a year to enjoy old
friendships before the tumor began to progress once again. Early on,
John resolved that he did not want to endure a terrible final illness,
nor did he want to prolong his life through burdensome interventions.
Thankfully, the law in Washington State, his longtime legal residence,
provides for the possibility of “death with dignity,” or physician-
attended death. He took the final medicine on the morning of
Wednesday, June 29.  His final words revealed neither anxiety nor
doubt: “Cheers” (as he lifted the cup), “Jesus!” (as he encountered
the bitter taste), and “well, here we go” (as he began to get drowsy).
A hospice nurse said she had never served a patient who seemed more at
ease in their final repose. John donated his body to the medical
school of Washington State University, where it will serve medical
education.

John studied computer science and astronomy at Wesleyan and later at
UC Santa Cruz. He found his life’s work in the U.S. Antarctic Program
where he came to be called Johan. He worked at Palmer and South Pole
Stations as a science technician. He loved the social life of the
South Pole, where a small staff community would fend for itself during
the long isolation of dark months. He loved the physical beauty of
the South Pole, where the aurora danced overhead. He loved the varied
science conducted at the Pole, where his intelligence, meticulousness,
and curiosity found purpose. He loved mentoring others in that
science. He loved sharing about Antarctica through countless visits
and slideshows in schools and community settings, and through a
celebrated email correspondence chronicling both the social and the
scientific aspects of life on the ice. By the time his Antarctic
career concluded he was among a short list of the people who had
wintered over the most seasons. In the Northern Hemisphere he
cultivated a community of companions from every chapter of his life.
He loved the Mountain West with its vistas, its histories, and its
opportunities for hiking and biking. He loved reasoned arguments.  He
respected statistics and probability. He applied his intelligence
happily to baseball, the economy, politics, human behavior. He was a
faithful and generous friend who gave freely of his attention and his
resources. He was great at helping you puzzle out a life problem.
Confronted with an absurd and terrible diagnosis, he lived and died on
his own terms. He is missed by parents, siblings, stepsiblings,
nieces, a nephew, and cousins. He is also missed by the grand
community of his friends and colleagues, including friends from
Wesleyan. Memories are being collected at GatheringUs.com.
https://www.gatheringus.com/memorial/john-johan-booth/9381

 

 

CLASS OF 1986 | 2022 | SPRING ISSUE

Our class is still looking for one or two volunteers to be Class Secretary and gather stories to share with our classmates. If interested, write to me or to Liz Taylor ’87 at classnotes@wesleyan.edu.

We didn’t get many submissions for Class Notes or many volunteers to serve as secretary.  Via our Facebook group (255 members), we asked for submissions, and Emily Zaslow Hourihan commented, “I got nothing!!! Ha ha. Xox,” to which Steve Cadigan replied, “C’mon. I don’t believe you,” and she then said, “I’ve been in my bathrobe for three years!”  Also on Facebook, there was a lot of discussion about William Garson Paszamant, better known as Willie Garson to his many fans and throughout the entertainment industry—stage, film, and television. Best known for his role in the iconic HBO television series Sex and the City, he died of pancreatic cancer last September.

In case you missed it, the prior issue of the alumni magazine had a full-page picture of Michael Bay accompanying a story about the future of film and a full-page article by Steve Cadigan about his book on the future of work.  Because Steve had been LinkedIn’s first HR officer, I went to LinkedIn and discovered that several classmates have a great relationship with their employer. Later this year Becca Golden will be celebrating her 30th anniversary with the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, where she oversees national grant-making programs, and Forrest Maltzman will soon be celebrating his 30th year as a professor of political science at George Washington University.  Via Facebook, Steve also noted he had a chance last summer to visit Tony Zimmerman and his wife Anne at his home in Hartford, has been in regular touch with Gus Conroy who is in Houston—comparing notes on life and work—and also met up with Scott Donohue, who humbled him in a tennis match and then asked if Steve wanted to go on a bike ride up a steep mountain with him . . . no thanks.

How are the rest of you doing with your aspirations?  I also know that some have retired, while others are moving on in different ways.  Bridge Growth Partners, a leading technology investment firm, announced in November that it had appointed Jonathan Harber as senior advisor to identify and evaluate investment opportunities. He has expertise, insights, and relationships from more than 30 years as a pioneer in education technology. He recently was CEO for Pearson K12 Technology, overseeing a business unit with 1,000 employees and serving over 25 million students.  Another job change was Noah Pickus, who after 25 years at Duke University, joined the Minerva Project as chief academic officer and their associated university in the role of professor of social sciences.

Lastly, David Hill deserves our deep thanks, as he continues to serve in a leadership role in the university-wide Alumni Association.

CLASS OF 1986 | 2021–2022 | WINTER ISSUE

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.

 

CLASS OF 1986 | 2021 | ISSUE 1

For this issue of Class Notes, rather than share stories about individual members of our class, your class secretary would like to celebrate us as a community and celebrate our journey through life. This spring marks 35 years since we graduated, which puts us at about the halfway mark from 20 to 90. We’ve done so many interesting things; there are so many interesting things still to come.

      In the interim, we have certainly gotten dispersed geographically: we can be found in 44 states and several foreign countries, though there are 15 states where a couple of us can be found (AK, AL, AR, DE, ID, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, NE, OH, SC, TN, WV). At the other end of the scale, there’s New York City where more than 80 of us have congregated. When reviewing our class list and our majors, I had not realized that nearly 1-in-7 of us were English majors (about 100 out of about 750) and that 200+ others were nearly equally distributed among four other majors: Art, Biology, History, and Government. If those five majors made up half the class, maybe we weren’t that diverse after all? Though in each of the five there are quite a few subdisciplines. In any event, what we did at age 18–22 may have helped set the trajectory for our lives, but those majors don’t fully encompass who we are today and why we are loved and appreciated, and while there probably were some broken hearts along the way, hopefully we didn’t accumulate too many enemies.

      In recent years through this Class Notes column we’ve learned about spouses, children, parents, jobs, hobbies, trips, and various passions. We’ve heard of deaths, illnesses, divorce, intermittent retirement, and career shifts. At my urging, you’ve also told of local, often unrecognized, things such as coaching youth sports, serving on the school board, or volunteering at a church or food pantry. These things may not be splashy, but they make a difference, and so it was a pleasure to honor and recognize you for them.

      For myself, on New Year’s Day of 2020, I decided that I would make a conscious effort do at least one additional good deed each week­—sometimes it was mailing a check to a small, under-resourced charity, other times I added things such as hacking back at invasive plant species and picking up trash on the beach. In January 2021, I looked at my list of the 52 things from 2020 and decided to continue this weekly tradition for another year.

     To help broaden our horizons, please continue to share your stories. I’d love to hear about what you are doing and your community involvement. My email is easy to remember (ehoward86@wesleyan.edu), but note that your notes to me won’t be shared with the class. With this issue I’m stepping down from my role as class secretary, and I also asked for others to serve as co-administrators of our Facebook group. As secretary for the past decade, I’ve enjoyed corresponding with many of you, but after 10 years, it is time for someone else.

     I have the honor to be your obedient servant.

CLASS OF 1986 | 2020 | ISSUE 3

Congratulations. We made it through a very complex year, and we’ve also made it through an amazing 35 years! This coming May is our 35th Class Reunion, but unfortunately, on-site events have been postponed. Information about reunion is online at wesleyan.edu; keep an eye out for an updated date. Still, planning is underway. If you want more information or want to get involved, contact the class liaison, Nelson Albino MA’19, at nalbino@wesleyan.edu.

As I write this in the fall of 2020, there is tremendous uncertainty 

for many, though happily most members of our class seem to be secure in our jobs and in our lives. Here is some news that was shared with me during the past few weeks. 

First, a big and hearty congratulations to David Hill. This past July he became co-vice chair of the Wesleyan Alumni Association, and it is expected that he will become the president next July and serve a two-year term. Several classmates have children who will be joining the Alumni Association fairly soon. For example, Cathy Cotins has a son who is a senior, “He is living on Home Avenue, two doors down from the house I lived in senior year. We’re looking forward to celebrating his graduation on Foss Hill in the spring. I hope that will be possible!” 

Peter Crabtree was hunkered down at home with his wife of 29  years, partly due to COVID-19, and partly due to the Portland air being filled with smoke from nearby fires. “Overall things are good!  I continue to enjoy my psychology practice. I do psychotherapy, supervision of other therapists, and some teaching. I’ve been golfing, fly fishing, and hiking in my free hours. Despite the recent fires and post-apocalyptic feeling, I love Oregon.” Peter has been missing old friends from Wes and hopes to get to the next reunion; he still hangs out with Tony Green, who recently became a grandfather of a beautiful boy. 

Scott Donohue reported that Keith Gaby and his wife Ingrid Embree are empty-nesters, and so moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Oakland, California. They both rise early and work remotely with East Coast offices before that became a standard practice for many. “It’s been great to have them on the Left Coast but a bit hard to share adventures at the moment.”

Ayelet Waldman, Becky Mode and others on their team were tremendously successful as writers and producers of the TV show Unbelievable. The eight episodes were released in September 2019 on Netflix, and only a month later Netflix announced that the miniseries already had been streamed by over 32 million viewers.

Elizabeth Graver, a professor of English at Boston College, wants to “brag about some of my close friends from our class, who continue to awe me.” Sandy Newbury is director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Shelter Medicine Program, an intense job that also somehow leaves her time to do circus aerial arts and white water kayaking. Patrick Symmes (who graduated in ’87 but started out with our class) continues to report on the front lines, most recently writing about the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. His newsletter has been helping many make sense of things. Ralph Savarese, a professor of English at Grinnell (and with whom she had a writers’ group in college), has published a wonderful poetry collection, Republican Fathers (Nine Mile Books) and a second collection called When This Is Over: Pandemic Poems (Ice Cube Press). Elizabeth is still writing fiction and teaching in the Boston College English Department, where there is a strong Wes presence: Tina Klein, Carlo Rotella, Suzanne Berne ’82, and Eric Weiskott ’09.

Also in academia, Kristin Bluemel is on sabbatical from (virtual) teaching at Monmouth University and working on various projects including a book proposal called An Ideal Modernity: Rural Britain, Women Artists, and the Twentieth-Century Wood Engraving Revival. “I specialize in eccentric subjects related to literature, book history, and children’s literature. My husband George Witte is still serving remotely as editor-in-chief of St. Martin’s Press. Will NYC ever recover, we wonder. In the meantime, books are one thing everyone can enjoy while social distancing so we hope people with Wesleyan educations keep reading.”

During the quarantine Bennett Schneider solo performed as Sister Unity for a marathon of 10 hours of storytelling live online to raise money for LifeGroupLA, an HIV/AIDS support charity. He watched Melinda Newman’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah live online and participated in a Zoom play reading produced by Renee Bucciarelli. Also in the play were Shawn Cuddy, James Hallett, Deirdra Finney Boylan, Steve Stern, Michael Steven Schulz, Marybeth Kilkelly, and others. Bennett continues to expand his horizons: “While sealed up at home I learned how to make porridge, congee, gruel, and chutney from scratch. Retirement planning has crept into the vocabulary. Nathan Gebert ’85 has been sending me real estate postings for Maine. There’s talk of a group getting land and buildings together for a Wes colony in Maine, assuming we all survive.” 

See you at the reunion events.

Eric Howard | ehoward86@wesleyan.edu

CLASS OF 1986 | 2020 | ISSUE 2

First: Our 35th Reunion is in 2021, so we will have virtual celebrations this winter and spring, and (if all goes well) an in-person celebration in Middletown in late May. Please watch your email or our Facebook page for updates. If you haven’t been receiving emails from Wes, please let me know.

Earlier this year, many of us had children who were graduating from college or high school. Sue Bidwell’s comments about a senior week and virtual commencement were true for many of us. She said replicating senior week at home was a bit of a challenge, but “on the positive side, family members from around the country were able to participate virtually. Whereas even if there were no pandemic, they would have been unable to attend in person, so it was nice to be inclusive of the whole family—and best of all, we could all attend commencement in our PJs!”

Erika Levy wrote from NYC, where she’s an associate professor of communication sciences and disorders at Teachers College, Columbia University. Erika and her colleagues recently received a $1.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a program fostering collaboration between speech-language pathologists and teachers of children who are deaf and hard of hearing. Erica is in regular contact with Craig Hetzer and Liza Baron.

Also, in New York, Jeff Liss has been spending this pandemic time cleaning and organizing his basement and garage. “In other news, I spent the last year losing 75 pounds and can now fit into the Wesleyan sweatshirt I bought in December 1981 the weekend after I was accepted! In December, I joined the Board of Trustees for a small nonprofit that has been making headlines recently as a result of all of the COVID-19 deaths in New York City—The Hart Island Project. You can learn all about it at hartisland.net.”

Dennis Carboni wrote a long email; some extracts are below. Dennis has become a certified ice technician, meaning he operates and maintains a Zamboni ice resurfacer. “I use my engineering skills and art skills every year when we install the ice, layout, and then paint all the hockey markings. It’s hard to describe how much fun, joy, and peace I get out of physically working on the ice.” He’s in regular contact with David Rose and Hal Phillips; in fact, this spring, they’ve been doing a video call every Saturday night. Carboni’s son and daughter are both in their mid-20s and good in their post-college lives. Although Dennis never smoked or chewed tobacco, in recent years his right upper lung lobe and one-eighth of his tongue were removed because of two separate cancer diagnoses, but “I’ve been fine ever since.”

My inbox also had notes from, among others, Elena Scharnoff (“I have my own consulting business, and work continues to flow in”), Charlie Berthoud (a pastor for a Presbyterian congregation in Madison), Steve Price (one of many in our five-year club—those who started Wes in 1981 and graduated with us), Melany Kahn (near Keene, N.H., and very active in progressive politics), Shawn Cuddy (who referred to her husband, James Hallett), and Ann O’Hanlon (we are all fighting the passage of time, eh?), and Ester Amy Fischer (who like many of us, was wondering about the next chapter in her life).

I also acknowledge the new fellowship among many of 50-or-so classmates who participated in one or more of our video conferences earlier this year. It was a great way to learn about the interesting things that our class members are doing with their lives (and look into their private lives, as we saw their backyards and living rooms). The larger gatherings had about two dozen classmates, with some living only 20 miles off campus and some joining us from hundreds or thousands of miles away (the distance winners were Melbourne and the South Pole—each being about 10,000 miles from Middletown).

Our three class agents—John Gannon, David Hill, and Michael Levin—and I look forward to seeing you online or in-person in the coming months. If you would like to volunteer a few hours in the coming months to help support the university or help make the Reunion program a success, please let me know.

Eric Howard | ehoward86@wesleyan.edu

CLASS OF 1986 | 2020 | ISSUE 1

Mike Sealander wrote me, saying, “Recently, I have decided to make another go at learning Japanese. I studied at Wesleyan, went to Japan, made progress, and then left it alone. I’m intent on getting my groove back. If there are fellow alumni who would like to chat in Japanese, I’m game.”

Ben Schneider says, “I’m in my sixth year of training LGBTQ activists across North America for The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. May go to France in June for the SPI World Conclave. Still spending time with Melinda Newman, Cobina Gillitt ’87, Lisa Rosenblatt ’85, Julia Barclay-Morton, Dan Kolbert ’85, and others. Was thrilled to dine with Brad O’Neill in the fall. Miss Conor McTeague powerfully. Still occasionally guest lecturing at universities on gender activism and performance.” You can find Ben’s video storytelling on YouTube under Sister Unity.

Ellen Santistevan has joined the hybrid vehicle-owner’s club. “I feel somewhat pretentious, but I do hope that collective individual action will do a little bit to help things along. I don’t know for sure that it will, though, without reining in the big polluters. I also worry terribly about the poisonous battery materials and the fact that it feels like the entire vehicle is made of plastic. I hope it’s recycled plastic, at least! What’s making me happy these days are still being outdoors, being with my family, and playing with my pets. Sometimes I feel tired of work and taking care of people, but having worked for myself for so many years, I doubt whether I could fit into the 9-5 anymore. My two sons also have a really hard time fitting into that rut, and I kind of worry about their futures. My daughters seem to have found their ways to get through the world, at least. I feel like I have no real advice that I can give anymore, as the economy is so different now than it was for us. School is not the guarantee of a living wage. Life seems to hinge on luck and heritage more than anything else.”

Speaking of jobs, Cathy Cotins has changed jobs: “After more than a decade helping lead executive education and enterprise learning at Harvard Business School, I left last spring to join the executive team of a boutique leadership development firm. I love the work we do to transform organizations by helping their top leaders engage in deep personal transformation bringing empathy, compassion, and vulnerability forward and integrating head and heart intelligence. I’m grateful and so happy I found a community of teachers, leaders, and an expanding number of top global companies who value this work. I haven’t been this happy at work for a very long time. Our CEO and founder is a Wes graduate (’85), which was a fun topic of discussion the first time we met before either of us was considering I might join to help lead their growth. Go, Wes!”

And Rick Koffman is partner at Cohen Milstein in DC and co-chair of their antitrust practice group, where he litigates antitrust cases on behalf of the victims of corporations engaged in price-fixing, market monopolization, and other unlawful conduct. (According to the firm’s website, he was co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the largest price-fixing verdict in U.S. history and the largest jury verdict of 2013.) He says, “More interestingly, my son Dustin, who is 21, just published his first book of poetry, Eating Broccoli on the Moon (available at unrestrictedinterest.com).

Andy Layden celebrated 21 years of teaching astronomy at Bowling Green State University (in Ohio, near Toledo) by becoming chair of his Physics & Astronomy Department. In 10 years, he hopes to be retired, living in Puerto Rico (winter) and Canada (summer) and sharing his love of the night sky with anyone who will listen.

Dana Walcott and Stephen Porter ’87 are organizing a fundraiser to digitize audio cassettes of Wesleyan student music so people can listen to it online. The audio tapes are in a special collections at the Olin Library right now. If you’re interested in learning more or donating to the cause, go to facebook.com/groups/wesleyanclassof86.

Throw back poster

Lastly, George Justice has started a higher education consulting firm with Carolyn Dever of Dartmouth College. Dever Justice, LLC leads workshops for faculty development focused on faculty leadership in research, teaching, and service. George and Carolyn write a monthly column for Inside Higher Ed and are working on a book together, Beyond the Dark Side.

Eric Howard | ehoward86@wesleyan.edu