LANDSCAPES TIME COA COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Volume 14 Number 1. Spring 2018 COA LETTER FROM THE EDITOR COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The job of any worthwhile print publication EDITORIAL is to build and perpetuate a dialogue with its Editor Daniel Mahoney Editorial Advice Heather Albert-Knopp '99 readers. If readers feel engaged, respected, Lynn Boulger challenged, and included, a strong relationship Dru Colbert Darron Collins '92 is built between public and publication. Since Jennifer Hughes its inception, the woman who has shaped a Rob Levin Amanda Mogridge number of conversations in the COA Magazine Chris Petersen has been Donna Gold. Donna is a tireless Eloise Schultz '16 Karen Waldron champion of COA; you can feel her passion Editorial Consultant Jodi Baker for this place when reading through her letters DESIGN from the editor in the magazine's archives: Art Director Kenyon Grant https://www.coa.edu/coamagazine/.She and ADMINISTRATION graphic designer Rebecca Hope Woods, who President Darron Collins did the layout for the last decade, created a Academic Dean Ken Hill Administrative Dean Andy Griffiths worthwhile, gorgeous publication. Both Donna and Rebecca have moved on Associate Academic Deans Judy Allen, Chris Petersen, Karen from the COA Magazine and all of us here thank them and wish them well. Waldron Dean of Admission Heather Albert-Knopp '99 Dean of Institutional This means there is a new team for the spring issue of the COA Magazine. Advancement Lynn Boulger Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke I have taken up the editorial duties and Kenyon Grant is the new designer. Director of Communications Rob Levin At our first editorial meeting Kenyon and I sat in Straus classroom in Turrets BOARD OF TRUSTEES (the same one Nell and James dragged a mattress through (p. 32)) and Timothy Bass Casey Mallinckrodt thought about possible approaches to the next issue. We both love the zine Ronald E. Beard Anthony Mazlish aesthetic (p. 22) but decided Kinko's was too far a drive and "zine" was the Michael Boland '94 Jay McNally '84 Leslie C. Brewer Philip S.J. Moriarty wrong vibe for this particular project. We sat for a while itchy, scratchy, full of Alyne Cistone Lili Pew false starts. We were clueless But in great cluelessness comes great freedom Barclay Corbus Hamilton Robinson, Lindsay Davies Nadia Rosenthal and the longest conversations begin with a single word, HELLO. Beth Gardiner Abby Rowe '98 Amy Yeager Geier Marthann Samek Winston Holt IV Henry L.P. Schmelzer The theme of this issue is Landscapes Over Time. At a larger editorial Jason W. Ingle Laura Z. Stone Diana Kombe '06 meeting in the fall that phrase was mentioned and it stuck in my head. It Steve Sullens Nicholas Lapham William N. Thorndike brought to mind the Hudson River School and the malleability of "truth" in how those artist approached their craft (p. 8). It reminded me of how writers LIFE TRUSTEES Samuel M. Hamill John Reeves take the whiteness of the page and dig into it, the way rivers dig into the John N. Kelly Henry D. Sharpe, parched landscape of the American West (p. 38). Landscapes Over Time, a William V.P. Newlin math equation where "Landscapes" is the dividend, "Time" is the divisor, TRUSTEE EMERITI and the quotient is unknown. Can you ever divide the land and have the David Hackett Fischer Philip B. Kunhardt III '77 William G. Foulke, Phyllis Anina Moriarty answer be an equitable split? Will there be any remainders? (p. 18). George B.E. Hambleton Helen Porter Elizabeth D. Hodder Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 Sherry F. Huber John Wilmerding Now that this issue of the COA Magazine is almost put together, I can see connections running all through it. On a practical level, Landscapes Over The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of Time is about process and work and doing the things you need to do. It's College of the Atlantic envision a world where about education, action, and being in the world. Landscapes. Artifacts. people value creativity, intellectual achievements, and Deserts. Math. Mentors. Conversations. Because for the longest time I diversity of nature and human cultures. With rspect thought nothing good could come from my mouth, so I began to write. and compassion, individuals construct meaningful lives for themselves, gain appreciation of the relationships among all forms of life, and safeguard Thanks for sharing this space with us. the heritage of future generations. Dan COA is published biannually for the College of the Atlantic Community. www.coa.edu COA lecturer in photography Josh Winer '91 created the images on the front and back cover. Both images are Cyanotypes. Both were made in 2018. Both make me fall in love with the world all over again. Thank you for that, Josh! Front: Sand Beach and the Beehive, New Years Day 2017, RESIST Back: Single Jetty In this issue LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT 2 NEWS 3 Q&A:THE AMERICAN SUBLIME 8 BLACK & WHITE INFRARED LANDSCAPES 14 PRETZEL LOGIC 18 EPITOMIZING D.I.Y. 22 ODD JOBS 28 EXCERPT FROM ETHNOWISE 30 WATCH 32 THE GREAT WEST 38 PROFILES 44 ALUMNI NOTES 48 COMMUNITY NOTES 51 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT One un-seasonally warm evening this January, three-and-a- half inches of rain fell from the skies. By the next morning the temperature had dropped by 30 degrees and the floodwaters that had gathered in The Great Meadow of Acadia National Park, just east of Dorr Mountain, had frozen rock solid. During the weeks following those weather events, hundreds of people experienced something otherworldly: ice skating through the frozen red maple swamp forest and across The Great Meadow itself. I dusted off my skates one evening, donned a head lamp and took to the ice. It was one of the most remarkable outdoor experiences I've ever had. On January 26th the Bangor Daily News ran a piece about Mount Desert Island's newest skate park and, appropriately, asked and answered the climate change question. Although this was clearly a weather event, the paper noted that such events will be much more common in the immediate future due to anthropogenic climate change. I will admit that part of me questioned (to myself, until now), "Can't we just enjoy this incredible experience? Does everything need to be so complicated?" But I quickly answered my own question: no, we can't only enjoy the experience; and, yes, things are always complicated. Landscapes, as you will read throughout this edition of the COA Magazine, are dynamic, complex matrices of the human and natural worlds, and part of the role of human ecology is to understand, massage, and predict landscapes as they evolve over time. The Great Meadow is one of the most iconic landscapes in Acadia National Park. The character and functioning of that icon depends on many variables acting across time. Over the long term, for example, if we continue to emit carbon dioxide at the current rate, we are likely to see more flooding and wild weather extremes. Over the short term, things like the concentration of beaver and the diameter of the culvert that passes underneath the Park Loop Road can have more severe, more geographically specific, and more predictable impacts. Who makes those decisions about carbon dioxide, beaver, and culverts? To what end? For whom? To what certainty? The closer you look, the more you come to understand human communities and the landscapes we inhabit as a dance of influence, where the question, "Who leads?" is ambiguous and not always easy to answer. Where some ignore or become paralyzed by this complexity, human ecologists revel in it. The stories herein reflect the rich relationships, the intricate decisions, and the nuanced approach human ecologists bring to the important work of understanding and being present in an ever- changing world. Enjoy them, Darron 2 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE News COA PROFESSOR SEAN TODD TEACHES LIFE IN THE WORLD'S OCEANS The Great Courses has partnered with the Smithsonian to produce a vivid exploration of the underwater world in Life in the World's Oceans, a 30-part video course led by College of the Atlantic Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences, Dr. Sean Todd. Giant worms, microorganisms that eat metal, faceless fish, giant sea spiders - marine life is even more otherworldly and fantastical than we ever imagined. Life in the World's Oceans takes viewers from the tiny phytoplankton that can only float at the whim of wind and currents to the giant gray whale that migrates 16,000 kilometers each year, and brings them face to face with everything in between. "Even if you live in the most landlocked area, you feel the influence of the ocean, its effects on climate, the air that you breathe, or maybe just the fish that you eat," Todd says. "As a community of species, we are extremely lucky to live on a planet that possesses an ocean so bountiful." Created in close consultation with Top: Dr. Sean Todd heads out to sea. Don Wilson, Curator Emeritus from Bottom: A humpback whale, just one of the many creatures studied in Life in the World's Oceans. the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Life in the World's Oceans offers viewers a fascinating look into the complex lives of marine Todd explores the variety of life plunging the depths of the seas - these mammals. Drawing on Professor in the seas and shares what we are experiences that very few people Todd's own exciting research and field have only recently learned about get to share. With Life in the World's experience, and enhanced by stunning biology, evolution, life cycles, and Oceans, viewers get an unprecedented visuals from the Smithsonian, the adaptations - starting with the ocean chance to get up close and personal course features 30 insightful lectures, itself. with the underwater world, so they which work together to provide can better understand and appreciate a comprehensive overview of the Swimming with dolphins, talking the magnificence of that environment. subject. to whales, touring the barrier reef, COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 3 COA FILM PROFESSOR NANCY ANDREWS WINS 2017 GOTHAM INDEPENDENT FILM AWARD FOR "BEST SHORT FORM BREAKTHROUGH SERIES" FOR THE STRANGE EYES OF DR. MYES The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes Acclaimed College of the Atlantic "The underlying message in Strange twist on The Fly combined with Yellow film professor Nancy Andrews Eyes is that everything is connected Submarine and Twin Peaks," began as wins the 2017 Gotham Independent in ways we might not perceive, and an experimental 2010 short film called Film Award for Best Short Form we have to work harder to broaden Behind the Eyes are the Ears. The piece Breakthrough Series for her Sci-fi/ and deepen our consciousness of was shown in various museums and Afrofuturist YouTube show, The that. If we could see beyond our own independent film venues and was Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes. personal perspectives of what is true, collected by the Museum of Modern we might understand that there are Art. The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes other truths that are just as valid - incorporates animation, live action, and if we could see those maybe Andrews said that she and White musical numbers, and comedy to tell we wouldn't be as dogmatic, and continue to use their unconventional the story of Dr. Sheri Myes (Michole dangerous, in our beliefs." storytelling methods to raise Briana White) as she attempts to consciousness and create a more expand her perceptions through mad- The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes was one understanding world in the new series scientist-like experimentation. The of ten projects chosen to participate in they are writing, which is a sequel of series is adapted from Andrews' 2015 IFP's 2016 Screen Forward Labs, and The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, but with feature-length film of the same name Andrews turned it into a web series some fantastical twists. made in Bar Harbor and Mount Desert with editor Paul Hill at the Wexner Island. Film/Video Studio. "I could just make a bumper sticker that says, 'World Peace,' but that's "Michole and I have been working Strange Eyes was filmed in 2013 with not my style. Anyway, the world is hard to carry forward this mission- a large cast of Mount Desert Island a complicated place and Dr. Myes is driven kind of work that is important residents, local landmarks, and scenes a complicated character," Andrews to us," Andrews said, explaining that from Bar Harbor's iconic Fourth of said. "I want people to engage in the their intentions are to open people's July Parade. College of the Atlantic show and leave with something they eyes to the commonalities we all share, faculty, students, staff, and alumni hadn't thought about. I'm interested and to worlds we cannot readily see. were central to making of the film: in provoking thought, and challenging art professor Dru Colbert served as conventional forms." Afrofuturism has been around for production designer, audio visual a long time. One can find it in the technology specialist Zach Soares co- novels of Samuel R. Delany and composed the music, Rohan Chitrakar Octavia Butler, the music of Sun '04 was director of photography, and Ra, Parliament/Funkadelic, and Marco Accardi Janelle Monáe. The common thread '16 was one of Afrofuturist work is that it sees a of the actors. place for people of color both in the Approximately future and in the fantastic; in this way, 70 people from afrofuturism is a decolonization of the college were the imagination, of the mind itself. involved with Dr. Myes pushes into the future with the film, whether a technological breakthrough that in front of the is really a breakthrough to a past camera or behind where humans and animals had more the scenes. symbiotic relationships. According to Tochi Onyebuchi, "Afrofuturism The film and is a Janus-faced endeavor. That past the series, shimmers before us, mirage-like, as which Andrews we cast our gaze forward. Squint hard describes as "a enough and what do you see?" Director Nancy Andrews (right) kicks back with actor Michole Briana 4 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE SAILING PROGRAM COA BUSINESS GURU CONNECTS STUDENTS BRINGS ABUNDANCE WITH THE SEA MODEL ABROAD Utilizing a small fleet of Rhodes 19s, The founder of College of the Atlantic's students taking part in COA's new sustainable business program, COA sailing program spend the fall gaining Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and fresh perspectives on the lush natural Socially Responsible Business Jay and cultural heritage of Maine's Friedlander, shares his Abundance Frenchman Bay, while also developing Cycle model of entrepreneurship and balance within their rigorous academic COA's interdisciplinary approach to lives. receptive audiences at the 2017 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland. Led by COA trustee Abby Rowe '98, the Friedlander traveled as part of the program intimately acquaints students approximately 30-member Maine with the winds and tides of the bay and delegation to the Assembly, where provides extensive seamanship skills, he gave talks on eco-tourism, energy while providing time for students to security in remote communities, and decompress, reflect, and restore their College of the Atlantic sailing program participant Sterling academic exchange over the course of spirits. Ford '20 bounces ideas off Priyam Chaudary '20 while the three-day event. preparing to sail on Frenchman Bay. COA STARTUP NEARS WINTER CAMPERS BRAVE BONE-CHILLING $100,000 PRIZE CONDITIONS ReProduce, a sustainable business A weekend trip with the COA Outing Club to North Woods Ways wilderness startup created by Anita van Dam center, founded by alumni and noted master Maine guides Alexandra Conover '19 (see Profiles, p. 44), moves Bennett '72 and Garrett Conover '71, sees students packing gear through a forward to the mentor round of TV snowy forest and sleeping in canvas-walled tents at -11°F. business competition Greenlight Maine after a winning pitch in Led by two participants in COA's year-long traditional skills program, the group the semifinals. The team joins of winter campers utilized pine needles, spruce boughs, standing deadwood, just 12 others competing for the and traditional boots and mittens made from animal hide to keep warm and show's $100,000 award this spring. cozy through their sub-zero adventure. ReProduce was created by van Dam in COA's Sustainable Strategies course and developed with help from Grace Burchard '17 in the Transforming Food Systems class. The pair honed the idea in COA's Diana Davis Spencer Hatchery sustainable enterprise accelerator. The business aims to market value- added products from excess and cosmetically imperfect produce from Maine farms. ReProduce focuses on increasing local food access, addressing food waste, and creating extra revenue streams for Maine farmers. COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 5 GARDEN ARCH RESTORED ACOUSTIC TECHNIQUES POINT TOWARD BETTER WHALE The failing, 108-year-old granite arch at the entrance to the Sunken Garden is restored in an effort led by Yaniv PROTECTION Korman '18, with help from the Maine Stone Mason's Guild, professor Isabel Mancinelli's Landscape Architecture class, Data from a massive study using sound-based ocean and the COA Gardening Club. monitoring methods could help make the case for enhanced protections for endangered North Atlantic right whales, The arch restoration project caps a two-year effort by according to whale researcher and study contributor Dr. Korman and members of the gardening club to bring the Sean Todd, the College of the Atlantic Steven K. Katona long-neglected garden back to life. Rehab work on flower Chair in Marine Sciences. beds, pathways, and borders continues this spring. The garden is an original part of the gilded-age Emery Estate Todd, a collaborator on a 10-year North Atlantic Right Whale that once made up much of COA's campus. study utilizing hundreds of acoustic-based, underwater monitoring devices, says the evidence shows that right whales are rapidly changing their migration habits, and spending more time in unexpected areas along the East Coast and up in Canadian waters. This knowledge helps explain the recent, sharp increase in fatal human-whale interactions but also points towards potential solutions, Todd says. Also contributing to "Long-term passive acoustic recordings track the changing distribution of North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) from 2004 to 2014" (Nature Scientific Reports) were COA alumni Jacqueline Bort Thornton MPhil '11, Julien Delarue MPhil '08, and Scott Kraus '77. The study was coordinated by Sofie Van Parijs and Genevieve Davis at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Students at College of the Atlantic, led by senior Yaniv Korman '18, work to restore a century-old arch at the entrance to the college's Sunken Garden. FOOD SYSTEM DIVERSE SPEAKER TREK TO THE TOP OF EXPLORED SERIES LAUNCHES KATAHDIN An exhibit designed by students in The College of the Atlantic Diverse A weekend hike up Maine's highest COA's Foodprint course fills the walls Voices Series kicks off with a packed peak brings thrills, chills, a big moose, of Take-a-Break with profiles of the performance by New York City Youth and a beautiful sunrise for the College students, regional farmers, faculty, Poet Laureate Nkosi Nkululeko, a of the Atlantic Outing Club. The group producers, staff, and vendors who presentation by Kenyan-born COA of eight, including outdoor leaders contribute to the College of the Atlantic trustee Alyne Cystone on navigating and newbies, drive north to Baxter "foodprint" in ways that align with the two cultures, and a performative State Park, at the center of the new school's institutional mission: creating lecture by Chicago-based artist Garland Katahdin Woods and Waters National a sustainable food system at COA. Taylor. Monument, camp for the night, climb and descend Mount Katahdin-the The students behind Art of the The Diverse Voices Series highlights highest peak in Maine-and drive Dining Hall immersed themselves the rich tapestry of races, cultures, and back to campus in the span of a busy in COA's food system and pulled viewpoints that comprise our shared 24 hours. back the curtains to reveal all of the human experience. Funded with a players behind the food on our plates. generous, anonymous grant, the Series The innovative Foodprint course is sponsors a broad range of speakers and taught by Elizabeth Battles Newlin events throughout the year that serve Chair of Botany Dr. Suzanne Morse to illuminate our collective challenges and Partridge Chair in Food and and commonalities. Sustainable Agriculture Systems Dr. Kourtney Collum. 6 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Gyoza ] GARLIC 1 2 GROUND PORK CHOPPED CABBAGE OO! SESAME OiL SOY SAUCE ADD GiNGER, SEASONING. GRATED b CHiVES, CHOPPED OYSTER SAUCE 3 PLACE FiLLiNG DAB WATER ON => PiNCH 3-4 SEAL THE TIMES AND FOLD RiM iN CENTER UPPER HALF RiM 4 5 FRY UNTIL iT'S GOLDEN AND CRiSPY! STEAM FOR & 10 MiN "Gyoza" Lika Uehara '20 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 7 MONSTER COURSE: HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL Team taught by arts faculty members Catherine Clinger, The Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts, and professor of drawing and painting Sean Foley, Journey into Substance is a three-course expeditionary program located in physical and cultural landscapes. Through curated immersive experience, students explore the concepts of beauty, wonder, and the sublime in the context of 19th Century American landscape art. By wandering to and through sites visited by painters of the Hudson River School, students encounter the places that structured the ideas and enterprise of the artist/naturalist/ explorers who created a body of work that is iconic in the American imagination. The class visits museums, archives, private collections, and topographies in the Berkshires, Catskills, Hudson River Valley, and the North Woods and Coast of Maine. Following the journey, students create ambitious works of art sourced from their experiences that respond to the sites, concepts, and artists that embody the ideas of this course from a human ecological position. Q&A THE AMERICAN SUBLIME Dan Mahoney: Why this monster like that. It was a certain kind of course now? like-mindedness when it came to being present in the landscape of Sean Foley: First off, what was so the Hudson River Valley. So they amazing was how easy it was to put developed this nostalgic relationship together this "monster course" at to the landscape, which was changing COA. The school supported us and rapidly. allowed us to design and run with our ideas. I can't imagine another SF: They had a selective vision institution in the country where that is but because human beings like even possible classification so much, we put them in the same "school," but really, they Catherine Clinger: Exactly. were the first modern American painters. They were composing these SF: Catherine and I are both interested paintings, choosing what to include in Romanticism and the Gothic and Storm King Art Center, Cornwall, New York and what to exclude. There is this darkness in general, like Thomas famous story about [Albert] Bierstadt, Cole's storm paintings with the who painted more in the West, where broken trees and those landscapes. he just moved a mountain from one When I first got to COA, I'd be side of the canvas to the other because walking around campus and I kept interested in trying to resituate our it made more sense compositionally. thinking about Cole and Church students to the idea of the Hudson And you might have Thomas Cole arriving before any of this was here River School being something larger dragging in a hillside from the right and what a problem it all was for than a School since it really is not a to get it a little closer to the tree so them. They arrived in their suits and "school." he could triangulate the person in ties with their painting kits strapped the scene Painters have done this onto their backs, hacking through the DM: How did it become known as a for ages, but the gall of the Hudson brush pushing forward, trying to find "school"? River School artists just completely the spot. Since I arrived at COA, the upending the landscape is like a Hudson River School is always on my CC: Well, they all lived in New York. metaphor for what was happening mind. Church, Bierstadt, and Heade hung with westward expansion. out together in the 10th Street Art CC: And the other part was that Building in Greenwich Village. DM: Right. Their world was we were both interested in the changing so quickly. I can see them relationship to materiality with those DM: You're kidding. They were all wanting to document the wilderness artists, the materials they used to just neighbors? because it represented godliness or make art and understanding that the ideal there were conventions and traditions CC: They were neighbors in a way that defined how things were done but they didn't get together to paint CC: Yes, that, but it also represented in the past. So both of us were very or have a paint circle or anything the potential for the human COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 9 62 imagination. There's nothing like a void that can be filled. So, as the attention was starting to turn from the East to the West, there was a preoccupation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, at least in the American imagination, to really measure the vicinity and environs around NYC, Philadelphia, and Boston. But also, measure how far one could go with the human imagination in these spaces, because a lot of these artists were very accustomed to the traditions that came out of Europe, traditions governed less by place 63 and more by ideas, mythology There's a reason why when you read Wordsworth or Coleridge you still get this feeling that all you had to do was go to Scotland or the Lake District Just go a little bit further out of the city. In America "space" was really starting to shrink. Especially in the East as the push west was really picking up steam. DM: Part of the aesthetic of the Hudson River School was the idea of the sublime. Along with the sublime comes this idea of wonder of something beyond language. Sublimity is about immersion and surrender CC: The thing is that people really Leigh Rankin '20 at Albany Institute of History and Art bought into the whole Edmund Burke to a certain degree. They almost "self dialogue" that he had would let a space take about sublimity, but it was matched by the beautiful and the picturesque. them where it could go.. I analysis: what was that thing and what can I do with it? And then you And you need to have that tension to love that. use your imagination to make these understand sublimity. The picturesque associative connections between is completely orchestrated and things or develop some sort of absolutely artificial, it breathes into a analogical thinking rather than some space and organizes it, the beautiful SF: Wonder has always been this sort of linear thought In the end isn't necessarily a lazy reception but dismantling of any linguistic capacity you get artistic movements like the it is a way of having an uncontested to understand what you just saw, Hudson River School creating from relationship with nature Then you witnessed, etc. I equate wonder with that seed of wonder. get to sublimity and your breath, your vision and it precludes curiosity. language is, in fact, taken away. The So you see this thing happen, this DM: The essays in the syllabus for ground, if it's not shaking, is moving spectacular sunset, or you see the class were really eye opening anyway, and suddenly you realize something tragic, something that is for me. In Barbara Novak's essay you can't put everything in a box. I just appalling to you, and you can't "American Landscape: Changing like to think of it as all of a sudden register what happened. That only Concepts in the Sublime," she points you realize you're having a full body lasts a split second, but that's the out that there would often be two experience Sublimity is about seed. After that what kicks in is this people in these landscapes. Is that so immersion and surrender to a certain whole notion of curiosity. Wonder when you got your breath back you degree. They would let a space take and curiosity are often conflated but could say to your companion: was them where it could go I love that. curiosity is that moment of subjective that real? 10 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE CC: That is so great. That is why DM: In Julian Bell's essay, SF: DIA Beacon and Storm King and I brought up the beautiful, the "Contemporary Art and the even Church's Olana, the estate, picturesque, and the sublime, Sublime," he discusses how science Teresita Fernandez had a show up because you need to have a point of in the twentieth century caused there when we went. There is a comparison. In visual art those people artists to reinterpret the sublime program at some of these institutions who appear in landscape paintings are You get, for instance, Rothko. like Olana where they have guest called "staffage." artists come in and do "artist CC: What I love about that reading is interventions." A guest artist comes DM: Like surveyors? Someone that everyone thinks about sublimity in and puts up a show as a sort of holding the stick to get the slope? in America as iconic views and critique of this Manifest Destiny landscapes but when you take the outlook or asks the question: what CC: Exactly. So there might be two two eyes and turn them within, like constitutes painting? But we went to people in the poetic presentation the Greek gods do, you look at your those spots to provide some context or two people in the visual own reflection in someone's eyes and give the students time to access presentation but there's someone All of a sudden you realize you and develop a relationship to the else and it's like a triangulation might be present, and you might be content of the course. The other enables us, the viewers, to having a full body experience but occupy and be present in that space it really is all happening in your CC: The DIA Beacon and Storm King through our imaginative projection head Poor Rothko, he drove himself seemed critical. And they were at the into the staffage, or the figures or into such a dark place from which top of the list from the beginning. whatever. he could not recover. I think that is We didn't just think, we love it there why the Hudson River School is so so let's just make an excuse to go DM: In Wallace Stevens' The Idea important for our students to come there. Storm King is like turning the of Order at Key West, you have this in contact with. Often things are held experience of art outside-in. So DIA speaker walking down the beach in capsules of the past and we lose Beacon, even though there are some and he is listening to a woman the connections to how ideas cycle objects located outside and some singing and the waves breaking through history. The more that we objects that enable certain kinds of and he is wondering about real and see how other people have worked experiences outside, for the most imagined worlds and toward the end with the potentialities then things part you're in this huge enclosed of the poem the speaker says, "tell become, as Dario Gamboni would say, space. During the historical period of me, Ramon Fernandez and the "potential images." In the end, we the Hudson River School, what was reader is just: who the hell is Ramon did not ask our students to create the overwhelming to most people was the Fernandez and how did he get here? penultimate climactic object or project. idea of panoramic vision. Remember, Now I know: Ramon Fernandez is this was the same time period balloon the staffage! DM: I loved that show. travel first started. It was like an all seeing eye, it was like a divinity CC: And sometimes the fiction is it's CC: Thank you. They worked really when you're up high looking down me and someone else, but maybe it's hard. And it wasn't about achievement Panoramic vision was the capacity to not maybe it's the inner voice. And or success and it wasn't about failure see all around. I hate to use the word "trigger" but either. We were thinking if we are there's that thought that someone going to distill this down, the idea DM: There is the importance of the is actually listening even if you of sublimity being a grand form of journey, which is striking. It really need to imagine that someone. So experience, that whole process of gets me thinking about Robert you are out there and you are having distillation, how sad that would be, Smithson and the journey to art for this experience and you are actually right? To take these students to all of both the artist and the viewer Like starting to question whether you are these cultural institutions, to these just getting out to the Spiral Jetty. in your body any more, it is really museums, to experience art over a nice to have another material being 200 year period, not just 25 years CC: Not everything is available to us of the same species If you have a in the nineteenth century. To let go at all times. I think that oftentimes staffage, it is like having a spiritual of the ideas in the "isms" and the we think we have to get on the hiking companion. Communion means that movements and see that we share trail or go to the apex of some granite you are sharing and that is a very experiences that might not all be formation somewhere. But one doesn't important spiritual concept as part of expressed the same way, but sublimity need verticality necessarily to have the Hudson River School. And you is not American it is human. that and sublimity So when you get have to remember in the scientific on the Hudson, it is very different to tradition of the time, these guys DM: How did you put together the drive alongside of it or to come across were documenting things, making list of places to visit? DIA Beacon it and bisect it than it is to go up it, or observations They were citizen and Storm King surprised me. down it. Just being on that river is a scientists. phenomenal experience. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE name some fungi and experience a little bit more with these know how it worked things. And then to go across the in the surrounding river to Storm King where there are environment. That was no walls and you just feel like you're really inspirational for falling Which is great, you know? me because there was Here you are in a landscape again and a mutual exchange of it's pretty obvious that this landscape information at that point, has been made for you. which made us partners. There was no hierarchy. So DM: So you start to look at how I had the same amount of everything in the world has been curiosity and wonder on engineered for you. It makes your these journeys as they did. eyes sharper. And then there were the galleries CC: It really does and you start to realize that, wow, maybe I'm not a CC: We set it up for them vessel unto myself. in the galleries, you go in and really get in to DM: That there is a pretty valuable the picture on the wall piece of knowledge. and you have a dialogue with it, but then you go CC: The subject for the class and the in the DIA Beacon and readings were set up in such a way to there's the Smithson, formally calculate what sublimity is the piles of sand and and then talk about it in these formal broken glass, and Walter discourses: What is the definition of De Maria's great I Ching landscape? What do you mean by piece. You get there and the word landscape? What about the all of a sudden you have etymology of the word? And discover to move your head, your it's not all English and so on. And entire body. That museum then to come forward in the twentieth requires a different type of century to things that are in the participatory urgency from present but seem the most unfamiliar the visitor. to the extent that the past becomes super familiar DM: You just pull the rug out So all of a sudden DM: When the past is your only you have the sublime touchstone you come back to the idea again and it's foreign, it of old white dudes setting your frame is something that you are of reference. So then you need to talk not expecting. Can you about a "colonized mind" and how swing with it? can you decolonize your thinking? Top: Mariana Cadena Robles '18, Priyam Chaudary '20, Jeremiah Kemberling '19, Sean Foley, Emily Michaud 18 on the Owl Trail, Baxter State Park. Middle: Jessica CC: We live in this place that is SF: Exactly, the "colonized mind." Arseneau '18, Catherine Clinger, Priyam, Emily, Katie engineered for the picturesque, in You know, a lot of students come Leard '19, studying Sanford R. Gifford at the Thomas Cole House, Catskill, NY. Bottom: Mariana, Emily, Priyam near proximity to Acadia National Park. out of their educational experience Big Niagara Falls, Baxter State Park So, there is still an expectation that thinking imagination is not something there are boundaries that contain that is privileged or special or even the immeasurable in these great necessary. What is taught and what SF: We were in Baxter State Park, foresighted cultural productions. is valued in school is remembering and I was hiking up this mountain And then to take them into the DIA specific parts of a book, for example, with Emily Michaud '18, Jeremiah Beacon and to be within walls but because they might be on a test and Kemberling '19, Priyam Chaudhary all of a sudden not having the sense not remembering your own emotional '20, and Mariana Cadena Robles '18, of boundaries at all because of these reaction to a book, which has no and it was amazing for me to watch expansive works that most of our boundaries, no rights and wrongs, how they responded to the trail and students are uncomfortable with. It's and is completely subjective. When lichen and fungi and mosses. They not that you have to work harder, students get to college, it is almost like could just stop in their tracks and it's just that you have to trust your they feel the imagination is scary. It 12 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Priyam Chaudhary '20 at Millinocket Lake is a scary proposition taking a studio Now I'm getting really William Blake be present in their work. We wanted course because you are making up the on you! them to trust their experience. content as you go along. You rely on yourself for each next move. DM: I really loved the show the class CC: Often times there is this "we all put up at the Blum Gallery. It was come together" and instead it was CC: The imagination is über so distinct - like looking at different "let's experience this together" and important. No matter what path points of view - unified but very then completely fall apart - not in a you're going to take, and how much singular. You had text based stuff, break down in tears kind of way - you try to submit yourself to this drawings, paintings, installations but really dig down into your own bizarre world that we've concocted, well. And maybe someone has had there's always a place to go and you SF: The only thing we both knew the same full bucket all along, but by can create the doorway yourself was that we wanted the students to the time you get it all the way down there and you start dragging it out, it's transformed That's what was so amazing about that show. And Sean There was a mutual exchange of and I were really pushing them, so we didn't know how it would all turn information, which made us partners. out There was no hierarchy. I had the same DM: It seemed like the start of something rather than the end of amount of curiosity and wonder on something. these journeys as they did. CC: Yeah. Well Hopefully that's what this is all about. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 13 My encounters with the natural landscape of Ecuador reveal themselves as both continuously expansive and, at the same time, deeply intimate. These towering mountains that we live with on a daily basis, most notably Vulcan Imbabura and Vulcan Cotacachi, are always standing over us, even when we are sleeping. Though physically formed through tectonic forces, other unseen forces are also at work. They exist not only as geologic features; they are also spiritual presences in our lives. The landscape of a place is always more multi-layered than the purely physical features that may first meet our eyes. The landscape is also a soul feature, embodying the spirit of a place. In making these photographic images, I enter into a relationship with the natural landscape of Ecuador, collaborating with the mountains, the land and the sky. I first began making black & white photographs in the mid 1970s. The images shown here were made in the last couple of years in the Sierra region of Ecuador, the land where my father was born and grew up. Four of these images were made within a ten minute walk from our home in Cotacachi. The image of the tree was made nearby, at the volcanically formed Lake Cuicocha. The cathedral image was made at the Gruta de la Virgen de la Paz (Grotto of the Virgin of Peace) in Carchi Province, close to the border with Colombia. All of these photographs were made with a mirrorless interchangeable-lens digital camera, modified by removing the internal infrared blocking filter. I am grateful for many things about returning to the land where my father was born, one of which is that coming here has allowed me the time and the space to re-immerse myself in making photographic images. * Black & White Infrared Landscapes BY STEVE DONOSO COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 15 Steve Donoso '80 studied photography at COA with Mark Melnicove and Brian Swift. Steve currently writes and photographs. He is the author of Returning the Gift: Dialogues On Being At Peace Within Ourselves and the World, with Eckhart Tolle et al. Steve lives with his wife, Rebecca, and their adopted former street dog, Bilbo, in the Sierra region of Ecuador and on the west coast of Florida. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 17 PRETZEL LOGIC BY DAN MAHONEY WITH GRAPHIC IDEAS FOR FUTURE GERRYMANDERERS, DRAWINGS BY LEIGH RANKIN '20 E very ten years the U.S. Census borders. This practice, known as "Redistricting today has become the Bureau launches hundreds of redistricting, was intended to keep most insidious practice in American thousands of data-collecting democracy sharp and the electoral politics - a way, as the opportunistic workers into the country. Their basic scales balanced. However, according machinations following [the] census task is to tally up all the people living to The Atlantic's Robert Draper, make evident, for our elected in the United States and note changing demographics, and although what comes back is an immense sweep of numbers, this work is, unfailingly, humanizing. It's an image of who we AN OVERSIZED , YET are: awkward, crude, confusing, like a class picture in middle school. When STYLISH I think census I get all nostalgic for the imagined American ideal, fresh scrubbed census workers hitting the road, knocking on doors, talking to their regional cohort over a tall glass LA DISTRICT 4 of milk. In the age of Google Maps, there is something so delightfully old fashioned about the whole thing I begin to believe again in the genius of democracy. There is a mean average of 711,00 people jammed into the each of the 435 congressional districts across the United States. Each state, in turn, has its own legislature consisting of smaller districts allowing for more local representation. After every new census, new district maps need to be drawn. On the national level, states with greater population growth pull congressional districts from states with population loss, but even if a BATON ROUGE state maintains their current level of districts, they still need to redraw their maps due to shifts within their 18 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE leaders to entrench themselves in According to Dr. Jamie McKown, James 435 impregnable garrisons from Russell Wiggins Chair in Government THE NEIGHBOR'S DOG which they can maintain political and Polity at COA, there are a number GA DISTRICT 11 power while avoiding demographic of factors to consider when it comes realities." Redistricting permits to redistricting. Chief among them ATLANTA politicians to appeal to a narrow slice when trying to create more equitable of the electorate, which encourages a political representation is defining regressive, horse-and-buggy kind of what norms we, the electorate, value. thinking on the part of people running What do we want? McKown points for office. out the paradox in trying to create fair district maps: does fair necessarily What partisan redistricting does is equal good? And what exactly does eliminate the need for the give and fair mean when it comes to electoral take of politics. If you stack voting politics? Questions like these beg blocs in your favor, you don't need for more than simplified sound bite to answer to your constituents and responses. McKown addresses these you never need to compromise. When topics in class and plans to further representatives are not concerned scrutinize them in a new COA course system that teams of specialized about being voted out in a general tentatively titled The Seven Deadly Sins mapmakers advise states involved in election and are forced to answer of American Politics. When McKown and redistricting how best to maximize only to their base, the result is an his students explore some of the more their party's returns on election night. unbalancing, a tipping of scales vexing political issues (like redistricting, The two principal tactics used in toward the more extreme views of a campaign finance reform, or the gerrymandering are "cracking" and particular party. Party polarization is electoral college), he likes to use the "packing." To "crack" a district is to one concern, another is that partisan analogy of having a holey winter coat. dilute the power of like-minded voters redistricting causes representatives to You don't need your winter coat until by splitting them across multiple you need it and then you realize (again) districts and to "pack" a district is there are holes in it but you wear it to concentrate like-minded voters AMESBURY anyway vowing (again) to fix or replace together in one district to reduce METWER it before next season comes along. their voting power in other districts. BRADFORD For examples of how egregious the practice has become, one need not ANDOVER ROXFORD ROWLEY look any further than recent court THE GERRY IN GERRYMANDER cases involving Wisconsin, Maryland, TOPSFIELD North Carolina, and Texas. LYNNFIELD DANVERS HAMILTON The Framers left redistricting up INFORMATION to the states; subsequently, if one Over time, many protections against BEFORCE political party is in charge of the state blatant partisan redistricting have legislature, it will seek to draw a map been built into the legal system: LYNN warped toward favoring others in the First Amendment's prohibition CHELSCA the party. This method of friendly on viewpoint discrimination, the map making has become known as Equal Protection clause of the Gerry's salamander "gerrymandering." Gerrymandering Fourteenth Amendment, the Voting gets its name from an 1812 political Rights Act of 1965, and a whole lot be allotted unproportionally. If a state cartoon satirizing a redistricting map of court interpretations regarding assembly has 100 individual districts, drawn under the administration of "compactness" and "contiguity" of basic rules of symmetry call for both Massachusetts Governor Elbridge districts. While the Supreme Court parties to translate popular support Gerry. All of the other districts in has weighed in on the issue, saying into representation. Accordingly, if the map were relatively compact but redistricting to create a partisan the state voted 55% Democrat, it is one, and it, according to the cartoon, advantage can be unconstitutional, it reasonable to expect to see 55 Dems was shaped like a reptile. (Gerry + has also indicated that a certain level in the state legislature. However, if a Salamander = Gerrymander). of gerrymandering is to be expected. political party gets 48% of the state- With both parties looking to bend the wide vote and captures 60 assembly In the two hundred years since rules in their favor, the question seats, there might be a problem with Gerry made his mark, the practice becomes, literally and metaphorically, that state's political symmetry. I'm of gerrymandering has become what is over the line? If the Supreme looking at you, Wisconsin! so ingrained in the US political Court gives a definitive ruling on COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 19 the constitutionality of extreme offered two standards to gage political Plan I shows a pretty equitable map party gerrymandering in June, what redistricting: political symmetry and (six districts split evenly between guidelines will states be given in "the efficiency gap." To illustrate the plain and starred voting blocks), each determining what fair district shapes difficulty of creating better district district is a 4-3/3-4 split, which will look like? maps, Feldman suggested looking at produce highly competitive races the pros and cons of just one of these due to candidates needing to appeal tests, the efficiency gap. The efficiency to a closely divided electorate. Plan gap measures "wasted" votes, all II shows that same district only now SHAPES: FAIR AND OTHERWISE votes cast for losing candidate and all in a highly gerrymandered state. A the extra votes cast for the winning large proportion of plain voters have If you have a problem with your car candidate are considered "wasted" been packed into one district and all you get yourself a mechanic; if you (note: every time Feldman used the the other districts have a 4-3 majority have a problem creating shapes you adjective "wasted" to describe votes, for the star party. This map would be get yourself a geometer. (Yes, Virginia, he visibly cringed). One then adds flagged as having an efficiency gap of there is a geometer.) A collective up both numbers, finds the difference -1/3. Plan III shows the same district calling itself the Metric Geometry between the two sides, and divides outcomes as Plan I, and even though and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG) that by the total number of votes both have an efficiency gap of zero, formed to help experts and the public in a state. This will yield a single the result in Plan III is noncompetitive understand the math of redistricting. percentage: the efficiency gap. The elections. Plan III would not be The MGGG was organized by Moon lower the percentage the better the flagged by the efficiency gap. This is Duchin, an associate professor of map. Feldman used the graphic below where the problem lies. mathematics at Tufts University, to illustrate how redistricting might in order to "bring mathematicians take shape when considering the together with experts in law, politics, efficiency gap: and voting rights as we head into ENTER THE ALGORITHM the 2020 census." The MGGG hopes to see its work used as a tool for In the 1986 case Davis V. Bandemer, holding politicians accountable when the Supreme Court agreed it had the they create district maps. In order to power to intervene in cases of partisan create good districts one first has to gerrymandering but declined to do so hypothesize a good district shape, and because, according to Justice Kennedy, this is where the math comes in. the court lacked a "manageable standard" to indicate when it had Dr. David Feldman, a math and occurred. The efficiency gap has Plan I: EG = 0 physics professor at COA, applied been getting a lot of press because and was chosen to attend an MGGG it gives courts a single, judicially workshop aimed at raising awareness discernable and manageable standard. of the gerrymandering problem. This But, as Duchin points out, the major past fall, Feldman gave a Human flaw in the efficiency gap is that Ecology Forum at COA where he "partisan gerrymandering is a multi- outlined several desirable features dimensional problem" impossible to often considered when talk turns reduce to a single number. It's like to creating equitable district maps: someone giving you only the area proportionality, competitiveness, code of their phone number, you get a partisan fairness, and minority Plan II: EG = 1/3 slice of information but it's woefully representation. All of this seems incomplete. sensible until you start doing the work of drawing lines around Feldman supports a multidimensional populations - what, if anything, will approach to the problem of be sacrificed? gerrymandering. The MGGG and other mathematicians, political There is a whole host of minutia to scientists, and computational experts consider when tackling a problem working on gerrymandering advocate as intrinsic to the American electoral building algorithms able to explore system as gerrymandering. The Plan III: EG = 0 the enormous universe of possible plaintiffs in Gill V. Whitford, districting maps. If a programmer is Wisconsin's gerrymandering case given specific rules for fair districting A Formula Goes to Court: Partisan before the Supreme Court, have Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap (i.e. contiguous districts, respect Bernstein and Duchin, authors 20 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE county borders, comply with Voting Some states, due to their particular educating yourself and using the Rights Act, etc.), computers can demographics, might require strangely wealth of tools at your disposal. generate thousands upon thousands shaped districts, districts that are far of maps giving the public the ability to from compact. This must be part of the When it comes to gerrymandering, flag outliers in a legislature's proposed equation especially when we consider both Feldman and McKown agree that redistricting plans. One such team at the age old adage: people vote, land the solution will be more political than Duke compared the current Wisconsin does not. judicial. A lot of the nuts and bolts legistlative district map to 19,184 will be left up to voters. If enough alternatives. The graph below shows To arrive at a meaningful critique of of the electorate concludes partisan how much of an outlier Wisconsin any redistricting plan, Feldman stated gerrymandering is a disease eating actually is. the need to simulate many different the host body from the inside out, the alternatives. It does little good to maps will become more equitable. 50 55 60 65 70 75 compare Wisconsin's district map Collectives like the MGGG are doing to that of Rhode Island. We want to their best to keep the conversation WSA12 "respect each state's unique political pointed toward political action and 0.2 and geographical topography," ergo nonpartisan solutions. Fraction of result we want to compare Wisconsin to other possible Wisconsins. Writing in a similar time of 0.1 Computers can help do this work unbalancing, Ralph Waldo Emerson but computers alone will not solve remarked, "Democracy becomes a WI the gerrymandering problem. With government of bullies tempered by 0 all the possible variables you cannot editors. The editors standing in the Evaluating Partisan Gerrymandering in Wisconsin program a computer to spit out a privilege of being last devoured." Herschlaga, Raviera, and Mattinglya, authors single "best map" of a state, but When it comes to gerrymandering, computers can show when district the temporary gains one party can Computational mathematicians at maps are disenfranchising voters. The make are not worth the erosion of the University of Illinois Urbana- Court can help by issuing a ruling that confidence in our representative Champaign using completely different declares once and for all that partisan system. 2020 is coming over the algorithms found similar results gerrymandering undermines basic horizon, slouching toward Bethlehem, to those of the Duke group. That's rights guaranteed by the constitution. PA, to alert us, to offer us a precious the sort of check and balance that And, instead of offering up a silver gift: an awkward, crude, confusing makes Feldman excited about this bullet, the Court could acknowledge picture of who we are. It is up to technology. the value of a multidimensional us, the electorate, to move beyond approach when it comes to drawing political payback and middle school good maps. Committed scholars and myopia because what we think researchers can help by giving people we already know often obscures PEOPLEVOTE, LAND DOES NOT the knowledge and tools they need the amazing thing we've never to hold map-drawers accountable. encountered before. * It would be ideal if all districts could And you can help, dear reader, by be carved up into neat packable Sources for this article: The Atlantic, shapes, but they can't. There are a The Washington Post, The New York number of factors that thwart the Times, and the amazingly patient Dave dream of hexagonal districts, chief Feldman. among them is the reality of self- THE OLE TIN CAN TELEPHONE gerrymandering. Feldman noted that IL DISTRICT 4 To find out more about the Metric larger urban areas across the country Geometry And Gerrymandering Group tend to be more Democratic and rural CHICAGO go to their website and read up. Many areas lean more toward Republicans great links, articles, ways to get involved: this is a truism in the U.S., except in https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/ the south where sometimes it's not. Geographical borders also come into play when maps are drawn, rivers, mountain ranges, and inlets bisect districts. All of these different types of borders must be taken into account. In addition, Feldman added, each state has a unique political geography that varies from region to region. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 21 EPITOMIZING D.I.Y. HOW A ZINE COLLECTION BEGAN AT COA By Arielle Greenberg Z I N E S E ven Jasmine Bourgeois '17, the New Hampshire native who started College of the Atlantic's zine collection, hadn't heard the term until her sophomore year, when she stumbled upon zines while working on an independent study about underground feminist art. But as Jane Hultberg, the director of the Thorndike Library says, "anyone who creates a zine is 'transforming thought into action to make a difference in the world," and as such, Bourgeois had found a medium that is right at home at COA. A zine (pronounced "zeen," like a diminutive for "magazine") is an amateur print periodical aimed at a specific niche audience and distributed through independent methods. In other words, most zines are made by an individual with little to no publishing background, and sent through the mail or traded in person for other zines. Zines are most associated with their heyday in the late '80s and early '90s, when they were made in a variety of low-tech ways - markers, typewriters, early home computers - and produced at a local copy shop, fueled only by counter-cultural passion and coffee. And the recently established, small- but-growing zine collection at COA's Thorndike Library has plenty of holdings that fit this definition. But zines are more varied - and date back further - than those Den produced in the grunge era, and are proving to have unlikely staying power and significance in the age of digital media. gebenedeit unter den illustri 1930s. Now, of course, we have the internet and cosplay conventions, but back then, where could you go to fill your desire to endlessly discuss the obscure plot details and romantic relationships of your favorite sci-fi novel and comic characters? Originally called fanzines, mechanical reproduction (the mimeograph, cheap printing presses, etc.) made it possible for lovers of the genre to connect with others who shared their obsession, and the advent of Star Trek in the 1960s gave a whole new urgency for fans to boldly go where others had What helped make this possible? The advent been wanting to go, too. of cheap photocopying services at independent copy shops. This technological development Other special-interest communities who came about at the same time as the punk could not find themselves or their values movement, in the 1970s, which was another represented in magazines or other periodicals cultural phenomenon for which there was little also began producing zines - about wrestling, outlet or understanding in the mainstream pagan beliefs, libertarianism, and other media. So the people who loved punk made "fringe" activities and modes of thinking. their own media: zines in which record and The countercultural movements of the '60s concert reviews, band news and other material also found a way to get their messages out could be shared across the country and the in what were often called "little magazines," world, even if you lived in a town with no a more literary version of the zine; at the punk scene to speak of. height of the artistic flourishing of the San Francisco Renaissance - in which all manner of As the original punk movement of the 1970s innovative music, art, literature and political got turned into a talk show punchline, "happenings" were being produced - the many of the original punk zines died down, San Francisco Public Library started what but punk never entirely went away. As an they call "The Little Maga/Zine Collection." aesthetic movement, punk evolved into many Collecting the work wasn't always easy, since sub-groups over the next few decades, and these publications flew below the radar and each spawned zines. At the end of the 1980s would often cease to exist after only one or and beginning of the 1990s, new kinds of two issues. But a collection of forty titles that punk were developing - notably, grunge and opened to the public in 1967 got reestablished, hardcore; straightedge, which stood against rearchived and expanded in the late '80s, just drug and alcohol use; and, perhaps most as San Francisco - and other counter-culture significantly, riot grrrl, a short-lived but highly hubs all over the country - were becoming influential feminist movement that empowered new hotbeds of zine production. young women to form their own bands and start concert venues, record labels, and zines as outlets for their beliefs. The upswing in punk youth cultures meant a groundswell of zine titles. By this time, the zine directory Factsheet Five, which had been launched by Mike Gunderloy in the 1980s with a geek focus, had become a bible for all kinds of zine-makers and readers (Gunderloy's personal archive related to Factsheet Five now ann Maximum Rock n' Roll, and Sarah Dyer's zine guide Action Girl had a riot grrrl focus. A 2016 ultier Adult article by Chloe Arnold on the history of zines for the encyclopedic website Mental Floss states that, "by 1993, an estimated 40,000 zines 20 N H were being published in North America alone, many of them devoted to riot grrrl music and politics." But the swift growth in the popularity of zines SPL in the '90s was also their downfall: many zine-producers - who were often young adults on tight budgets and with no permanent address - could not keep up with the demand for their publications, while others shifted their zines into full-fledged subscription periodicals with paid staffs and advertising. Add to this And like the San Francisco Public Library, the rise of the internet and the resulting ability many university libraries have been forward- for cultural fans to post or connect with others thinking and started collections. In 2001, the via newsgroups and websites, and it's easy to Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History see why the zine boom was short-lived. Hai and Culture at Duke University acquired the 1500 zine collection from Sarah Dyer at Action Plus, by definition, zines are difficult to find and access. Brian Heater, a writer for Boing PC Girl. The University of Iowa, which has long held materials related to fandom, acquired Boing, which began life as a zine and later the archives of sci-fi collector James "Rusty" morphed into a website, wrote in a 2013 article Hevelin in 2012, which includes among its for the site about how, "to counteract their 10,000+ holdings some of the earliest examples nebulous, dissolving nature," some "of the of zines in existence, and is currently being best representations of the medium" have been digitized for safekeeping, as part of a larger collected into bound books. "While these don't "Fan Culture Preservation Project." have the same thrill as newly printed single issues, it's impossible to overstate the value of But few of these other university collections these volumes, which help to preserve a rich originated as student projects. COA's collection culture history that would otherwise vanish of print zines is the outgrowth of Bourgeois' with the disappearance of their remaining senior project, which looked at "the socio- copies," Heater states. politics of archiving, (sub)cultural production, and alternative media consumption" through This is why collecting and housing the the lens of 21st century zines. "Creating a original, ephemeral objects in libraries - in collection wasn't actually the original focus," all their photocopied glory - is so important. Bourgeois says, "but I became wrapped up in archiving and exploring what librarianship actually means when working with such a specific medium that follows a logic atypical from other forms of publication." Bourgeois was aided in her efforts by Jane Hultberg, director of the Thorndike, who was first approached a few years ago by students inquiring about a zine collection. "At the time, it wasn't a priority for us with the resources we had," she says. But students kept asking. Hultberg also noticed that students were producing zines of their own and distributing RISTYNA them around campus. So when Bourgeois ACZYNSKI approached Hultberg with her idea for a senior project, Hultberg saw it as a perfect results. "Jasmine did a fabulous job researching other COMETBUS library zine collections and how they developed and maintained them," Hultberg says. "She worked with ABOLISH our staff to establish a cataloging system for the zines, BECOMING RESTAURANTS THE suggested ways to display and circulate the collection, A WORKER'S MEDIA: CRITIQUE OF and then worked with the library to implement this. We THE FOOD SERVICE ANGEL owe her a debt of gratitude for all she accomplished." INDUSTRY Pen Pals CRITICAL HISTORY Bourgeois chose to keep the Thorndike collection CLAMOR broad, because, she says, "it feels inappropriate to put MAGAZINE parameters on expression." However, she notes that the INFO collections policy she drew up "is a living document, so it can always be changed to reflect what the students, librarians, and other community members want out of the zine collection." Now that Bourgeois has moved on to a post-graduate life of writing about music for a variety of magazines, Catherine Preston-Schreck, the Thorndike's Work Study Coordinator & Library Assistant, oversees the collection. In a stroke of good fortune, it turns out that Preston- Schreck is herself a zine-maker and reader from when she was a teen back in the '90s, and continued to make and consume zines as a source of vital community later, during what she calls "the alienating early years of parenthood." She is passionate about the way zines act as social artifacts that offer "valuable perspectives that enrich and inform us personally while providing critical texture and voice to wider issues," while also embodying a "tactile history: the hands of the maker, and touch of the readers who held the object before me." According to an online resource maintained by Barnard College, COA is currently the only educational institution in Maine collecting zines and making them available. Preston-Schreck is connecting with other collectors and archivists to grow the collection, and to "work towards organizing zine workshops for COA students and with island youth." GirlPower Why zines at COA? Certainly their DIY, interdisciplinary, exploratory nature fit well within the COA philosophy. Preston-Schreck adds, "Zines are Top: Part of COA's zine collection. Bottom: Classic riot grrrl zine. acts of courage. They speak hard truths, ask difficult questions, interrogate social norms, and challenge default answers. Through their physicality, they offer ABOUT THE AUTHOR an extended conversation with a wide community, one individual at a time. All of these impulses I see enacted at COA on a daily basis." The archives of writer Arielle Greenberg's early '90s riot grrl Bourgeois agrees. "Zines are all about engaging with zine William Wants a Doll are larger dialogues about everything from money to gender housed in the Sallie Bingham to religion to race to bikes to politics to baking," she collection at Duke University. She says. "The artifact of the zine is a way for people to is a visiting faculty member at talk and learn and care about big things in condensed, COA, where she taught a course accessible packages. Plus, they're sort of like the voice on 1990s alternative culture. of the underdogs - which feels an awful lot like COA's ethos to me." * 26 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE I 1 A ' I 1 A A I IND D D A A O . 5 ()) Top: "This is Me" Bottom: "Asad" both taken from: Praxis: A Graphic Novel On the Experiences of Activists of Color by Aneesa Khan '17 27 00 00 00 I. Serving in the U.S. military 13. Part of arboretum crew destroying invasive plants with 2. Hospital custodian assigned to fire and chainsaws the operating rooms 14. Being a child actor for 10 years 3. Assembling cardboard boxes for a paint factory 15. Model for life drawing classes 4. Fluid wrangler in a primatology 16. Taking care of autistic kids lab dealing with monkey poo, urine, blood etc. 17. Santa's helper in a department store during the holidays 5. Reading and grading consumer remarks on women's 18. Driving a load of coin-op underwear for a Madison washer-dryers across the Avenue advertising company country 6. Disco dance instructor for 19. Bid caller at an auction house seniors/jazz dance instructor 00 for 5 year olds 20. Serving Oral Roberts pickled herring on a buffet line at a 7. This one The Godfather themed costume party 8. Teacher's aide out of a supply closet 21. Sleeping bag inspector 9. Hemorrhoid inspector for 22. Driver/pit-crew, dirt-track stock mandatory physical exam given car racing to entire university incoming class 23. Picking up roadkill oooo 10. Carousel attendant 24. Picking broken glass out of the crates of bottles cracked during II. Cleaning oiled seabirds assembly at a pop factory 12. Hot tar roofing in Georgia O 00 24.h 23.s 9.27 O'IZ 20.e 8.61 !'8I P'ZI ^'91 15.r 14.p E.E. 12.n II.a 10.j 06 x '8 I'L 6.f M'S 4.k 3.u by 7'l ANSWER KEY: 0 00 + Match the COA faculty member to the strangest job they've ever had a. JOHN ANDERSON m. SUSAN LETCHER b. RICH BORDEN n. TODD LITTLE-SIEBOLD c. BILL CARPENTER O. SUZANNE MORSE d. KEN CLINE P. CHRIS PETERSON e. CATHERINE CLINGER q. STEVE RESSEL f. DRU COLBERT r. DOREEN STABINSKY 24 g. KOURTNEY COLLUM S. SCOTT SWANN h. GRAY COX t. DAVIS TAYLOR i. JAY FRIEDLANDER u. SEAN TODD j. SARAH HALL V. NETTA van VLIET k. KEN HILL W. JOHNVISVADER I. JAMIE McKOWN X. KAREN WALDRON 29 O 00 00 29 EXCERPT FROM Ethnowise: Embracing Culture Shock to Build Resilience, Responsiveness & Connection by Michael J. Kimball '87 (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2018) JAIPUR, INDIA - JANUARY, 2013 Hanuman, where, I was told by my guides, the monkeys bed down at night, and a shrine for the elephant-headed Galtaji is the name of the site on which the Monkey Temple god Ganesh. The top of the hill is capped with a Surya (sun (Galwar Bagh) sits. I found a tuk-tuk driver today named god) temple, a tall conical-shaped building of white marble Jaisingh, the very name, he told me, laughing, of the former carved into a panoply of geometric shapes and creatures Maharaja of Jaipur. Jaisingh is probably in his 50s, but he from Hindu mythology - elephants locked in mortal could be older or younger. Like one of the boys whom I combat; goggle-eyed human-goat animorphs; a Suessian "hired" to take me up to the Monkey Temple today told long-faced animal with a ski-jump nose (that could be a me, "In your country, people don't look so old even when fanciful gator or fish I suppose). With the exception of this they are. In India, people look old even when they are temple, everything else is, like much of India, in a state of not!" Jaisingh is a stocky, grizzled, round-faced man with dynamic disrepair, as if making a critical statement about salt-and-pepper hair and a friendly smile. His English is the relation between the nature of impermanence and the not good (still immeasurably superior to my Hindi!), but cost of living in the present moment. The hill is ensnared in with the help of another driver, I told him where I needed a web of telephone and power cables. The buildings have to go and answered his clarifying questions. On the way to an almost metaphorical feel to them - expressions of a more and from Galtaji, in halting English glorious past eclipsed by poverty and he pointed out various attractions of opportunism. When you look closely, his city - bazaars, historic sites, an you can see the craftsmanship that entire street dedicated to shipping went into their original construction - cargo, the Muslim neighborhoods beautifully carved pillars, some and marketplaces windows still encasing the delicate lattice-work for which Jaipur is As soon as we pulled to a stop at famous, other window holes stabilized Galtaji, people emerged from all with carelessly stacked bricks. What directions and eagerly surrounded were once brightly painted exteriors our vehicle. A man offered to sell now look indiscriminately sandblasted. me bags of peanuts for the monkeys Flecks of pink plaster cling like suicide and, as he was doing so, a boy who jumpers to dust-yellow walls. looked to be about twelve years And then there were the monkeys. old showed up to warn me about All the way up the hill, they sat alone the monkeys, saying that he would and in groups along and on top of help me climb the hill so that they the short wall that bordered the trail. wouldn't bother me. I stepped out of the tuk-tuk, bought They looked like the men I saw on the side of the road a bag of peanuts, which the boy, whom I'll call Abhi, on my drive to Jaipur - serious, watchful, unemployed. immediately took in hand, and we started our ascent. We For the most part, the monkeys were reasonably polite were soon joined by another, older boy, whom I'll call in taking peanuts from me. The odd one would get a bit Raju, who spoke very good English. They were both quite overzealous and have to be driven off. Occasionally they friendly and happy to protect me from the monkeys (why would get in a scuffle with each other over the goods just yesterday, Raju told me, a woman had been attacked and there would be screaming, gnashing of teeth, fight and bitten on the neck and shoulder) and instruct me on and flight. But most of them would quietly reach out and proper etiquette in the temples. gently take a peanut from my hand. I noticed that few of them ate their peanuts right away. Knowing that the time The trail that climbs Galtaji consists of a dirt path paved it took to extract a peanut from its shell - even though this with flagstones, burnished by centuries of foot traffic. The could be masterfully and efficiently done with only one's hill on which the temples sit is not very tall, maybe 100 teeth, tongue, and lips-might equal the loss of another feet high, and the trail snakes up the side of it, passing, peanut, the monkeys would take one after another and among other things, a locked-down temple for the god store them in what seemed to be a bottomless pouch inside 30 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE "A rare blend of anthropological insight, contemporary psychology, ancient wisdom and personal experience. A bona fide source book for multicultural understanding in our changing world. Kimball speaks in a vowice for our times-for anyone in search of interdisciplinary and trans-cultural understanding. A compendium of scholarly integration, cross- cultural insight and personal humor-from a life time of world watching. A truly fun book for thinking people Dr. Richard Borden, COA Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology and author of Ecology and Experience: Reflections from a Human Ecological Perspective (North Atlantic Books) their throats, just below the jaw. When these were full, they him the peanuts and a bottle of water. This is also part of would somehow cough up the peanuts, one at a time, and India's essence person must find a way to survive, shell and eat them at their leisure but, unlike the sad animals I saw yesterday in the zoo, each person is also tied into an intricate social network that I like to sit on the lower rooftop of my hotel, which is is all but invisible to the casual observer. The boys work decked out with a pleasant arrangement of tables, chairs, with each other and, of course, for the adults who run the and potted plants. The view is inspiring. I'm at just the shops at the Galtaji entrance. My tuk-tuk driver, Jaisingh, right height to be nearly level with the tops of other had to pay someone for the privilege of parking his vehicle buildings and I can watch children and teenagers up on at the entrance, so he asked me for 50 rupees to cover the their own roofs flying kites. Kites are everywhere here in "parking fee." In India, everyone is an entrepreneur but Jaipur, both those in the air and those down below that also, in a sense, works for the same company. have lost their battles with other kites. For it's possible to buy string that is encrusted with glass powder and, if I don't know if every tourist who visits Galtaji is invited you're skillful, attack a neighboring kite with your own to go fly a kite. It's probably part of the package deal. and cut it out of the sky. The trees bordering the courtyard Regardless, I had a blast. It was also fun to see my guides, of my hotel are festooned with fallen kites, which dangle who make it their business to work each tourist for forlornly from dusty branches like forgotten holiday maximum financial benefit, just relax and be boys. Their ornaments. As I write this, the rooftop kite-flyers are basted faces were open and joyful as they watched their kite in the setting sun's butter-yellow glow. The sky is spangled rise higher into the sky. Periodically, they would return with small, diamond-shaped paper kites, blue, red, green, to their jobs, offering to use my camera to shoot pictures purple, orange. and video of me taking a turn with the kite, telling me that I was unusually good at it, so much better than most Raju and Abhi told me that the annual Jaipur kite flying of the foreigners they've met. But then the kite would dip festival will arrive in just ten days and everyone's getting or climb and need more of their attention, and they'd be ready for it. When that day comes, the entire sky will be enchanted once again. filled with dogfighting squadrons of kites. The boys' eyes glittered with anticipation. When we had almost crested At one point another kite appeared on the scene. That one, the hill, Raju told me that he loved to fly kites but the Raju told me, had a glass string and we shouldn't fight glass-encrusted string was very expensive, so he just used with it. Yet somehow (boys will be boys?) that's ultimately regular string. He offered to run back down the hill, get his just what we did. With Raju's skillful maneuvering, our kite and bring it back up so we could fly it. Would I like kite inexplicably cut through the "enemy" kite's string. We to do that? I said of course and down he went. When he all watched in astonishment as the loser fluttered haplessly returned to the bottom of the hill, kite in hand, Abhi and to the earth. Along with whoops of triumph, both boys I could see him starting back up the trail. "Do you want jumped up and down, laughed, and shook their heads in more peanuts for monkeys?" Abhi asked. Yes, I guessed amazement. This event was a topic of discussion - in both so. He bent over the wall and shouted down to the older Hindi and English all the way back down the hill (and is boy. "Do you want water?" I supposed, yes, that might be a probably being talked about still). It's not at all clear to me good idea, too. He shouted down to Raju again. It was like how a regular piece of string can sever a glass-encrusted a verbal bucket brigade: Abhi shouted to Raju, who then string - how David's kite can take down Goliath's. I guess shouted to another boy near the entrance, who brought I'm still talking about it, too ETHNOWISE Michael J. Kimball '87 is a contemplative anthropologist and mindfulness teacher at the University of Northern Colorado. He holds an MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and mindfulness teacher certification through the Center for Koru Mindfulness. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 31 Author note: There are a hundred ways to tell a story. The story this essay is based on is a dandy. It involves a famous movie star, his famous wife and child, her boyfriend, COA, and the coolest/most expensive watch ever sold at auction. Many publications have told the story and have done a great job. I do not want to tell the same story again, for me this is more about being lost and falling in love, about how learning happens when you are just trying to find your way and, ultimately, about the role of mentors in our lives. That is Watch what was most interesting for me, and that is where the essay led me. This is a "lyrical essay," which means that it might take a minute to get accustomed to the style. Do not be afraid. Be patient. Happy reading. W hen James Cox '87 and Nell Newman '87 lived in Turrets, they would regularly drag a mattress down the hall to the Straus classroom balcony. They found the spot a romantic and restful ideal; why not spend the cool nights keeping each other warm while for Nell, James, and Paul listening to waves breaking thirty feet away? The problem came after sunup when students started filing into Straus for classes unaware of the romantic vagabonds occupying BY DAN MAHONEY the balcony. ARTWORK BY LEIGH RANKIN '20 As a young high school graduate, that story would be the single motivating factor for putting COA on my "colleges to take a look at" list. To me, colleges appeared very large and uniform, small cities where everyone knew the drill and there was little room for self-expression outside pledging allegiance to your favorite brand of gin. Pulling a mattress out onto a classroom balcony was about the limit to what my seventeen-year- old self was looking for from higher ed. Robert Trivers, a former student of professor Bill Drury, remembers Drury inviting him to go bird-watching one day on a small island off the coast of Maine. "We left bird books and binoculars behind and strode to the nearest small tree growing alone in the open. He then made a series of high- pitched bird sounds and soon the tree began to fill up with birds, themselves making a series of calls. As the tree started to fill up, it seemed to attract more and more birds, so that as if by magic all small songbirds in the area were streaking toward Nell Newman and James Cox during their time at COA. the tree under which we were standing " was ready to meet him. Reading Leaves of Grass was like At the age of 43, Paul Newman entered the car racing looking in a funhouse mirror, all streaks and lines I did not game. He soon found a friend and mentor in Jim "Fitzy" recognize. I took a poetry class in college a year when my Fitzgerald, another old-timer who happened to be the life had broken down and there was nothing Nothing winningest driver in Sports Car Club of America history. And then these lines pressed themselves inside me: Fitzgerald once remarked, "It was great, we were a couple of misfits but he had the beer and I had the cooler, so It avails not, time nor place - distance avails not, it worked out." The two men were inseparable until I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so Fitzgerald ran his Nissan 300ZX Turbo into a wall at St. many generations hence, Petersburg Grand Prix at 100 mph. Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd James heard about COA when a friend spoke about an independent study welding bike frames for maximum Paul Newman starred in a number of memorable films: strength and minimum aerodynamic drag. James hated the Hud, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and college application process, the value given to standardized Cool Hand Luke. Just being featured in one of those movies testing, the buying and selling schematics of it all. He would make an acting career complete, but Paul was decided to visit COA. not done by a long shot. In 1969 Newman starred in two films; one, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, made him Professor Butch Rommel carried out a stack of books and a Hollywood legend, but the other, Winning, made him a dropped them on the floor of Turrets. If you want racecar driver. By becoming a racecar driver, Paul Newman to take a class from me, you need to start reading these books continued to fill out the letters of his already famous name. as soon as possible. You've been warned. No excuses. He then walked out of the advising forum. The students assembled The idea that Whitman's eyes were searching into the there were flabbergasted and intrigued. future for mine set my mind on fire. I took Leaves of Grass everywhere that winter, slowly becoming part of a dialogue Nell Newman never had a place. Her actor parents were that started more than a century before I was born. constantly on the move, causing her to hop from school to school growing up. What from the outside looked like an James was into the aerodynamics of bird flight but did not upbringing of incredible privilege was, for Nell, incredibly consider himself a great student. When he arrived at COA limiting. Sharp, shy, and frustrated, she dropped out of he hoped to find like-minded souls and maybe become high school at 16. inspired to learn a thing or two along the way. What he discovered at COA were the twin dynamos of Bill Drury I was introduced to Walt Whitman many times before I and Sentiel "Butch" Rommel. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 33 Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, of all poems, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are from them, millions of suns left,) No more modest than immodest. You shall по longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in Unscrew the locks from the doors! books, Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. "By this time Bill [Drury] was down on his knees, bent over, and most of the time making a deep kind of moaning Paul Newman was driving in the race when Fitzgerald sound. The birds actually appeared to wait in line to get slammed into the wall. He waited, hands clamped to the closest look at Bill they could; that is, they hopped from steering wheel, with other drivers on the track for 45 branch to branch until they rested on a branch about eight minutes as rescue crews worked to save his friend's life. feet off the ground and not more than two feet from my Fitzgerald was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby face." hospital. Newman was unable to finish the race. He flew home the next day. James and Nell arrived on the COA campus in 1983. James remembers being absolutely stunned by Nell and thinking James met an oil delivery guy named Gordon who was she "looked like trouble." They quickly started dating, he deeded land on top of Frenchman's Hill. Gordon needed soon would discover that her real name was Nell Newman, only half of the ten acres he had to build a home so James and she was Paul Newman's daughter. He says he should and Nell purchased the other half and put up a teepee. have been clued in by the eponymous salad dressing she Summer teepee living on MDI with a small solar panel, a carried with her and the way their friends laughed when 12-volt battery, and the one you love sounds ideal - a rite he told the story of meeting Paul at a racetrack in upstate of passage - until winter comes. Once the weather turned New York. James and Nell would be together for the next cold, Nell moved back into town; James, however, rode ten years. out the winter in his hilltop teepee, proving something to himself he cannot now remember. Paul's wife, Joanne Woodward, gave him a Rolex with the words Drive Carefully Me inscribed on the back. Paul wore Butch asked students to meet him at 5 a.m. at Jordan's it for 15 straight years. The watch became known as The Restaurant. These were his official office hours. He met Newman Daytona and Rolex soon produced an entire line with students, gave them advice, and forced them to of watches under that name, banking on the enduring cool become part of a larger community. of Paul Newman. Nell remembers Rommel handing a shoebox to each student. Inside was a scramble of all the bones of a snowshoe hare. Each student was to assemble the full skeleton by the end of the term. This work was to be done outside of class. Rommel pushed Nell further than she thought possible. He saw something in her, a spark, or a resiliency Nell scarcely knew existed. He was a tough taskmaster but Nell proved she was up to the challenge; she thought with greater breadth and depth than she ever thought possible, she began to see connections where she once thought there were dead ends. Paul Newman's life rapidly changed from that of an actor who raced cars on the side to that of a driver who once proclaimed, "behind the wheel of a car is the only place I've ever felt graceful." Nell and James, still friends after all these years. 34 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE LADI What does it mean to be cool? To be stoic? Controlled? Stylish? Maybe being cool is about finding your tribe, about finding somewhere to you can wear your skin as if it were your own Whitman's poems were comfortable in their own skin, they wandered, sauntered, and tramped. They visited workshops, listed the tools, headed out of doors to stroll along city streets, across the country, and into the cosmos. They were death defying. I am he who goes through the streets with a barbed tongue, questioning every one I meet - questioning you up there now, Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before? James spent summers working construction jobs in order to fund his education. He spent a summer rehabbing the tree house at the Newman's place in Connecticut. Paul noticed James did not have a watch, so he slipped his Rolex Daytona off and gave it to him. It was a simple act, like giving someone a glass of lemonade on a hot day. He held it out saying, "looks like you could use a watch This one keeps pretty good time if you remember to wind it." James looked at him, said thanks, made some small talk then carried on with his work. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Paul Newman and Jim "Fitzy" Fitzgerald having a dance. Paul Newman began Newman's Own on a lark. When organic did not mean eating bland. She founded the Nell the company began making money he and co-founder A. Newman Foundation in 2010 with the goal of "carrying E. Hotchner decided to give the profits to charity. Quiet, on her father's legacy of charitable giving, coupled with passionate philanthropy became a hallmark of Newman's her passion of the environment." James, still great friends life. It's worth asking how much of this new outlook with Nell after all these years, serves as the treasurer of the was tied to who he became after he discovered racing. foundation. If acting created the icon Paul Newman and car racing created the man Paul Newman, then altruism became the After Paul Newman died in 2008, watch collectors and animating force that focused his eyes into the future - and Hollywood memorabilia enthusiasts began asking about that Whitmanian vibe seeped into everyone around him, the location of the famed Daytona. By then James had including Nell and James. stopped wearing it as his every day watch and kept it in a safety deposit box. In 2017, James and Nell determined "As each bird hopped down, Bill, as if on cue, could the time was right for the watch to be sold. In October, the introduce them. This is a male, black-capped chickadee. watch sold for $17.8 million, the most expensive watch ever You can tell because of the black along the neck and sold at auction. James, in a truly Newmanian way, decided shoulders. I would guess he's about two to three years to donate a large chunk of the proceeds to charity. old. Can you see if there is yellow on his back between his shoulders? This is a good index of age." I tramp a perpetual journey, My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from In 1993, Nell began Newman's Own Organics using the the woods, same ideals she learned from her father regarding giving No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, back. The company produced great tasting organic snacks I have по chair, no church, по philosophy, and pet food. Nell was on the front lines of the organic I lead по man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, food revolution proving once and for all that eating But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 35 My left hand hooking you round the waist, When discussing her own philanthropic motives, Nell often My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the quotes her father, "If people knew how good it felt to give public road their money away, they wouldn't wait until they were dead to do it." It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not James is now in touch with Céline Cousteau, documentary know, filmmaker and granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau, about Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. marshaling the power of her famous surname, the Rolex Company, and her grandfather's Rolex Submariner to bring Selling the most sought after watch in history makes you attention to environmental degradation of the world's an instant celebrity in the most extraordinary subcultures. oceans. Strangers began to contact James wanting to grab a small chunk of the Daytona moment. James printed up t-shirts Researching this story brought me to The Nell Newman to commemorate the sale and now sends them to the Foundation website where I encountered this piece of prose curious after they make a donation to a charity in their from the "Preface" of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass: own community. For James, using the sale of the Newman Daytona as a community building tool just makes sense. This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up Whitman's work did not make me feel like I was for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, overdressed or underprepared or empty It encouraged hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and questions It met me where I was and brought me where I indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known need to go. I return to it every chance I get. or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the The night before the Newman Daytona auction, Nell, mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season James, Mario Andretti, and the Wall Street Journal's of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at Michael Clerizo held a panel discussion with those school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your interested in the history of the famous wristwatch. The talk own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the moved in and out of the spectacular relationship of Paul richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its Newman and Joanne Woodward, to Paul's Hollywood lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every career, his philanthropic work, and his friendship with motion and joint of your body. racing legend Andretti. In a picture commemorating the event the foursome stand before a large abstract painting In the "Preface" and the long poem that follows, "Song of by Joan Mitchell. James wears a tuxedo once owned by Myself," the speaker is auditioning for the reader. After Paul Newman, Nell so like her mother with generous fifty full pages of inventing modern American poetry, the smile and long blond hair And I can't help but think of speaker earns his name: Walt Whitman. Nell and James as a facsimile of Paul and Joanne, the long relationship, the support they give each other, and the We are given names when we are born and we spend the legacy of giving they carry forward. rest of our lives either fighting against or filling out those names. Sometimes we kick it all to the curb and start over. It's difficult to blend into the student population when No matter. We find what we need to find. We find Bill you're dragging a mattress behind you, but I imagine it's Drury and Butch Rommel. We find Walt Whitman and Paul not the most extraordinary thing for students to encounter Newman. Fitzy, Nell, and James. We find our tribe. We get on COA's campus. Who were those students running to work. We continue the conversation that started long counter to the Reagan '80s when greed was good and before we were born. That is what it has always been about. yuppies sought to save the world with the purchasing power of their platinum Visas? My guess is they weren't And if you're lucky enough to look like Paul Newman, it so different than students at COA today. They found some ain't gonna hurt you none. * answers and discovered more questions than they ever thought possible. 36 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE I 2 3 audhary '20 In the West, mine tailings are as tall as mountains in the East. Vast steps are formed by the tons of displaced earth. They are layered with the colors of oxidizing iron and copper like the painted hills {community} Great West: an Update COA MAGAZINE John Anderson 10/9/17 to community So I am sitting in a laundromat in Moab Utah after a great day on the river (no, we didn't flip, yes, we got wet) over half way through the Great West Monster course and thinking about you all and what we have been doing. Here it is in a nutshell: I think you can be proud of your fellow Human Ecologists. We came out west to listen to people Not Like Us and to witness landscapes Not Like Home and to learn what we could from the vastness of open spaces and the smallness of kangaroo mice. We have met many fascinating people and have discovered much about ourselves. We have learned of the innate courtesy of ranchers and their passionate love of the land and a way of life that is increasingly endangered by climate change, economics, and shifting needs. We have seen small towns hanging on by their fingertips as their young people flee to the bright lights of the coasts. We have sat in awe in the presence of mountains and desert lakes. We have listened to people whose great great great great grandparents were on the land long before the first wagon rolled out of the east, and felt their pain as they confront many of the same troubles we see in Maine-lack of opportunities in a changing world, the scourge of Meth and Oxycontin We have seen whole landscapes dominated by development-resorts and casinos where we never saw a smile or heard a laugh. We have walked in happy silence by the shores of a saline sea whose people have chosen to never succumb to the glitzy lights just over the hills. We have hiked further and climbed higher than some of us at least thought was still possible for us. We have drunk from many strange streams and slept to the laughing water and the call of geese heading to some south we will never reach. We have been met by the enormous kindness of strangers-people who are incredibly generous with their time and their thoughts, people who wish to reach out a hand and explain why all this matters so much to them, why it should matter so much to us. We have seen the sun on the high hills as we shivered in canyons, and have baked on the plateau while mountains silently put on a robe of snow. We have learned a great deal about each other: Katie's grace in a kayack on a new river, Ivy's amazing ability to find the things I lose daily and to keep smiling through it all, Austin's knack for sauntering, Jack's encyclopedic knowledge of arcana, Rachel's love of '70s pop and her infectious belly laugh, Kali's love of horses-ALL horses, the amount of kale and other inedible greens that twelve people can consume so many many more things that make up the tapestry of our lives. We have driven four thousand miles and have maybe three thousand more to go. I have sat at the wheel of Black Beauty for over a hundred hours on roads good, bad and indifferent, and been kept awake with laughter and with song. We have added more than our share to the Earth's carbon burden, and in so doing we acknowledge that we owe a debt. Will it have been worth it? Was it Chou en Lai who said "it is too soon to tell"? It IS too soon to tell. World changing? Hardly. Life changing? Maybe. I am deeply impressed and humbled by these students. By their grace under pressure. By their eternal optimism and cheerfulness. By their hunger for learning. By their kindness. A long time ago Ernst Mayr told me of another generation of COA students, "Take care of those students. They are the Hope of the Future". Dr. Mayr, I have tried. I try, but they take care of me Tree, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona Sophia Prisco '18, Escalante, Utah Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah 40 Crosses at border wall in Nogales, Arizona. Elk near Burns, Oregon. Sara Lowgren '20 at Darwin Falls, Death Valley To be local to a place includes two things primarily: it is to be involved-anxiously engaged in the goings on-and to be there, able to actually look upon the landscape, to care about a place enough that you are physically present. The definition of local I offer is simple, and rooted in the same emotion as the rugged individual myth: love. In loving a place, you tie your fate to its fate. It's a big risk to become a local. Ky Osguthorpe '19 Team taught by faculty members Dr. John Anderson, W.H. Drury Professor of Ecology/Natural History, and Ken Cline, J.D., David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection, Ecology and Natural History of the American West is a three-course expeditionary program located entirely in the American West. The West has played a key role in the development of modern ecology and in our overall understanding of the Natural History of North America. Researchers such as Joseph Grinnell, Starker Leopold, Ned Johnson, Phillip Munz, and Jim Patton contributed enormously to our understanding of the Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park interactions, distribution, and abundance of the enormous range of plants and animals occupying the western states, while the incredible variety of topography found between the Pacific slope and Great Basin Desert, containing both the highest and lowest points in the Lower 48, provides an ideal setting for both observation and experimentation. This intensive field-based course provides students with the opportunity to examine first-hand some key habitats within Nevada, California, and New Mexico, and to conduct a series of short projects on the fauna and flora in select sites. The course examines terminal saline lakes, open deserts, montane meadows, pine forest, riparian hardwoods, wetlands, and agricultural landscapes. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 41 Dr. Tom Fleishner asked, "How are we to save the world if we are not in love with it?" I asked Tom, "Do you think that the ranchers, dam constructors, mine workers, loggers or oil drillers love the very land they exploit?" He first replied with a sympathetic smile, second with this: "Feelings and facts are both very important. Above all, learning the ecology of another person's love requires patience and hard listening." Ivy Enoch '18 The 2017 Great West class takes place in a unique moment in time. America's public lands are under siege, in a way they have not been for more than 100 years. The continued existence of this Hoover Dam. From left to right: Rachael Goldberg '19, Chloe Hanken significant public legacy is in doubt-both in a '20, Caroline Brown '17, Jack Shaida '18, Kali Lamont '18, Ken Cline, Sara political sense and in the broad ecological changes Lowgren '20, Austin Schuver '18, Ivy Enoch '18, Sophia Prisco '18, Katie Clark '19, Beverley Guay '19, Ky Osguthorpe '19 that are occurring with climate change, fire, and invasive species. In the course of 7000 miles, 8 HOOVER DAM weeks, and hundreds of conversations, a group of 12 students and 2 faculty sought to understand what is happening on and to our public lands. Through meetings with ranchers, wilderness advocates, anti-government activists, land managers, scientists, recreation professionals, educators, alumni, and tribal people, we sought some understanding of the changes, attitudes, and conflicts that are embroiling the West. From the cell-free wilderness peaks of the Sierra to the painful border fence trying to rend Arizona from Mexico, we traveled, observed, listened, wrestled with, and ultimately tried to make sense of a vast region of the country. The combination of the boundless curiosity and enthusiasm of the students and the generosity of the people who we met along the way produced a rich tapestry of ideas, emotions, and observations. Holding the serenity of a mountain lake and the blazing neon of Las Vegas in a single thought, let alone in a single class, was a challenge, but an important one to try. It will take all of us more than the eight weeks to process and make sense of all that we saw and learned. As with all COA classes, there is something extra that is gained by going through this experience together. And although we are not all changed in the same way, we are all definitely changed by the experience. Special thanks to biology faculty member Steve Ressell and alumni Erica Maltz '07, Anneke Hart '16, and Julia Rowe '02 for helping us make this class the rich experience that it was. Ken Cline Chloe Hanken '20 looking over Yosemite Valley, CA 42 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE SUMMER 2018 AT COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC Tuesday, July 10 at 9 am Thursday, July 19 at 5 pm Tuesday, July 24 at 9 am Coffee & Conversation Blum Gallery Opening Coffee & Conversation John Ravenal: Outdoor Sculpture in the Stefan Elliott: Humanity's Oldest Stories Marie Griffith: Moral Combat Changing Art Landscape Illuminated: Frustrated or First-Rated, Rhythm or Riddle *Saturday, July 28 from 6:30-8:30 pm Tuesday, July 17 at 9 am The Champlain Society Reception Coffee & Conversation Amory Hill, Bar Harbor Olympia Stone: Double Take: The Art of Elizabeth King The Champlain Institute: International Affairs Saturday, July 28 through Friday, August 3, 2018 Saturday, July 28 at 5 pm Wednesday, August 1 at 1 pm A Conversation with Ambassador Susan E. Rice Eliza Griswold: On the Ground: Listening to Afghan Women's Voices Monday, July 30 at 9 am Nick Dowling: Hacking, Informatsionnaya, and the Grey Zone Thursday, August 2 at 9 am Ted Widmer: Is Democracy Failing? Monday, July 30 at 5 pm Neal Katyal: Standing up for the Rule of Law in the Time of Trump Thursday, August 2 at 5 PM Sarah Z. Daly: Violence and Elections After Civil Wars Tuesday, July 31 at 9 am Ambassadors Bill Eacho, C. Boyden Gray, and Jim Friday, August 3 at 9 am Lowenstein: US-EU Relations Karen Greenberg: Liberty and Security Today Tuesday, July 31 at 5 pm Friday, August 3 at 5 pm Antony J. Blinken: Walls or Bridges: What will Shape American Senator George Mitchell: US-Middle Eastern Relations Past and Greatness in the 21st Century? Future Wednesday, August 1 at 9 am Admiral Jonathan Greenert: Security in the Indo-Asian Region Tuesday, August 7 at 9 am Tuesday, August 21 at 9 am Thursday, September 13 at 5 pm Coffee & Conversation Coffee & Conversation Share the Harvest Farm Dinner Rep. Chellie Pingree: Current Climate in John Bredar: Masterpiece: WGBH's the US House of Representatives National Programs Tuesday, August 14 at 9 am Tuesday, August 28 at 9 am Coffee & Conversation Coffee & Conversation Libby Chamberlain: Pantsuit Nation David E. Shaw: Saving our Oceans *Invitation only COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 43 PROFILES COLLECTED AND EDITED BY ELOISE SCHULTZ '16 Photo credit: Jenny Nelson of Wylde Photography microplastics. "I remember thinking: fold her professional work into credit- ABBY BARROWS this amount of pollution is insane," hours. In probability and statistics, Abby reflects. She had encountered she examined her data on microplastic As the manager of a research lab in larger plastic pollution in seahorse concentrations in commercial seafood Stonington and owner of an oyster and sea turtle research, but hadn't samples from the Gulf of Maine. With farm now in its fourth season, Abby thought about the impact of smaller guidance from environmental law Barrows MPhil '18 initially resisted particles. That moment inspired her professor Ken Cline, she investigated the idea of graduate school. Between to transition back into research, where local and regional water policy, running the lab, publishing papers, she incorporated microplastics into continuing a relationship with the and building her house on Deer Isle, her water quality monitoring work. EPA to collect data underpinning she'd kept pretty busy over the last She began to collaborate with COA laws around microplastic pollution few years. "I didn't want to have biology professor Chris Petersen discharge. Finally, in chemistry, she to jump through a lot of hoops for and with Adventure Scientists, for had the opportunity to learn more someone else," she says. The thought whom she now works as a principal about the structure and composition didn't strike her until a few years investigator. When Adventure of polymers, including what strong ago, while she was leading informal Scientists encouraged her to get an liquids might help dissolve non- education programs for the Marine & advanced degree, the school for polymer detritus found in samples but Environmental Research Institute in human ecology on the neighboring retain the microplastic. "I incorporated Blue Hill. It was here that she heard peninsula was an obvious choice. the pilot chemistry research directly Marina Garland '12, who had just into my working knowledge on finished a program with Semester Through independent studies and polymer chemistry with the hopes at Sea, talk to the students about class projects, Abby has been able to of improving my laboratory protocol 44 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE in the future." COA has given Abby years, Abby has presented her "It was great to have the Hatchery to a sounding board for her research research at numerous freshwater and help check off the boxes in terms of while building her knowledge marine science conferences, where what I had already been doing, but base to include policy and science data has been collected by trained also to learn about important business communication. "I am not interested citizen scientists. Recognizing the components that were new to me." in being a scientist who publishes difficulty of standardizing research Most importantly, she says, "these something and gets lots of pats on the methods, she's put together a national are all skills that I can apply toward back from their cohort." Learning how field methodology paper which becoming more successful, whether as to effectively communicate scientific comprehensively reviews microplastic an independent research scientist or research and package data for use monitoring techniques and highlights business owner." by policy and regulatory bodies the pros and cons for each through a is something that can truly incite citizen science lens. "I am wrapping COA's holistic educational approach change." Gaining experience with the up these major projects that have been has encouraged Abby to better legal application of scientific research a big part of my life for the last five integrate her laboratory and farm has helped her to develop a more years," she says, reflecting on her own practices, allowing each enterprise comprehensive view of conservation work: one methodology comparison to feed into the other. Looking back policy. The question, "How extreme study, two global microplastics at her time as a student, she reflects do you go with regulation?" can projects, one Hudson river study and that "the biggest surprise has been be answered by knowledge of the one Montana-based project, the first how well I've been able to connect feasibility of a law and the benefits - watershed-based study on spatial and my time in the classroom at COA to or pitfalls - of the precedents that have temporal microplastic distribution. my professional life." Even in a time already been established. Now, she's hoping to step away from when more and more young people global projects in order to better align travel unorthodox career paths, she Abby's research on water quality her business and research, including says, the tendency is still to become and microplastics has brought focusing on her oyster farm. She more and more specialized. "But the her from the Southern Ocean entered a semester with the Diana problem with specialization is that surrounding Antarctica to the Coral Davis Spencer Hatchery sustainable it can alienate you and prevent you Sea of Indonesia. She loves being in business incubator intending to from seeing the bigger picture. What's situations where you have to think identify steps toward becoming a been great about COA is that it has on your feet. Human ecology, she successful research consultant, but given me professional skills as well says, "gives you the skills to be a instead decided to further develop the ability to approach an issue from specialist and also a communicator the plan for her oyster farm, which multiple disciplines." across disciplines." In the last several had been running for a few years. studied small-scale food production in ANITA VAN DAM the hopes of gaining insight into the European market. Next, she's hoping If Anita van Dam '19 were to give to take her research interests to Mexico any piece of advice to future COA and Central America. Not only are students, it's that "learning what you these experiences part of her human love will push you to learn more and ecological study of food systems, but learn better." It's a stance that she's they've provided valuable insight for taken to heart as she learns about ReProduce. The winner of the 2017 sustainable business design for her UMaine Business Challenge, Anita startup, ReProduce, which seeks to has since taken ReProduce through minimize and redistribute food waste the first two seasons of Greenlight on a commercial scale. Holding an Maine, a weekly televised pitch entrepreneurial lens to sustainable contest between Maine entrepreneurs. strategies has inspired Anita to travel The public exposure and mentorship around the world to learn about food opportunities provided by the show systems in different cultural contexts. will help her to gain momentum to In 2017, she spent three months in launch the first market samples in the Taiwan with a group of COA students next few years. and professors and created a recipe book about Taiwanese food economy Anita's interest in food systems took and culture. Last winter, she embarked root in her first year at COA. After on a residency in Spain, where she taking several food systems classes, COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 45 she enrolled in Netta van Vliet's package materials into a new product, Bowdoin College. Now, Anita says, course Waste with food in mind. "But in addition to the energy lost when she's focusing on finding the right that class was more about waste of that product was scrapped. "Machines market to support their mission, as, every kind," she adds. Still, the broad at cidery take out anything that's not "the business itself is socially oriented. focus of the course pushed Anita to perfect. Their waste percentage is The mission doesn't align with profit develop a more transdisciplinary .05%. But I was walking around for more than problem-solving." This perspective, one that views food an hour and saw at least 40 bottles leaves the question, she explains, of systems issues as constituent of that they weren't going to use." Forty "What can we sell while solving the economic and environmental issues, bottles a day, or five thousandths problem?" For their initial design, and vice versa. "My second year I of one percent, may not seem like they imagined repackaging and learned a lot more about food waste much on the factory floor, but it freezing salvaged food, but now Anita because I was taking Agroecology adds up over time. Plus, there's the anticipates branching out to more with Suzanne, Transforming Food inevitability of system error. "What do products-particularly, baby food - as Systems with Kourtney, and Sustainable you do when you break something, the business expands. "It's so typical Strategies with Jay. My final project for or when something malfunctions?" to have your vision change at the Suzanne was about farmers' income Anita hopes that initiatives like same time not feeling like a complete compared to food dollars. In one food ReProduce can help to fill the gaps failure." This, she says, has been one dollar of the production chain, how between producer, processor, and of the lessons of participating in the many cents would the farmer earn?" consumer, with lasting long-term Shark Tank-style pitch contest. But Thinking across multiple dimensions impacts. "Context matters," she says. the most formidable challenge to the of a food system has helped Anita to "When you say something like that business, she relates, has been people's develop solutions that would serve as in a percentage, it doesn't look big at habits, whether producer or consumer. many agents in a system as possible, all. But look at it over a year and look "Habits are difficult to change." instead of disproportionally benefiting at the numbers, it's a lot bigger." She Ignorance of the problem of food just a few. hopes that those numbers will have waste has been another hurdle. "If you enough of a positive impact to change don't know what's going on, you're Anita was also inspired in her first the public's mindset about food waste not going to really make an effort to year by COA's discarded resources and enable her to run a successful change something or anything at all. infrastructure developed by Lisa business. What are we talking about when we're Bjerke '13 MPhil '16. She's applied the talking about food waste? Where knowledge gained in classes and work By repurposing the excess or else does waste occur besides at the experience to her recent residency unsightly produce discarded by farms, consumer level? There's not enough concentrating on European food ReProduce has identified a small-scale education." Part of ReProduce's systems. Recently, she visited a dairy solution for a large-scale problem. In mission is to raise awareness of the processing plant that bottles arroz con the early stages of the project, Anita issue, she says, and then to provide leche. "They can break up to four to was joined by classmates Lilyanna the solution. "You need to give people ten jars A DAY. I'm thinking, that's a Solberger '16, Grace Burchard '17, and ways to change their habits." lot of arroz con leches - how many is Ana Maria Zabala '20, who helped that a year? But they make 1600 jars a to craft the original pitch that took day." She was shocked by the amount first prize at the 2016 Maine Food of energy that it took to process and Systems Innovation Challenge at Greenpeace UK. Under her oversight, ecology," which, she noted, "seemed SUSI NEWBORN the organization bought the Rainbow to go very well with environmental Warrior, an old trawler which they activism." Susi enrolled at COA Susi Newborn '90 has been an activist then brought on environmental in 1984 and counts those years at all her life. Growing up in London campaigns around the world. COA among the happiest in her life. in the 1970s, the daughter of an "Being in that environment foments Argentinian diplomat, she realized at After several years, however, she creativity. There were no exams; an early age that the best way to enact realized that she might need to everything was based on practical or change was through direct action. This get a degree for her experience to written assessment. You honed your determination led her to her first job be translated. Fellow Greenpeace ability to express your thoughts in with Friends of the Earth, where she pioneers Charlie Hutchinson and language, in projects and arts and connected with activists involved in Steve Sawyer recommended that growing things." She took classes issues of social and environmental she look into College of the Atlantic with professors Bill Carpenter and justice and helped to found to study something called "human Steve Katona, worked at the library 46 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE and on the college's magazine, and participated in weekly All College Meetings, which impressed on her the importance of non-hierarchical governance structures. It was this example, she reflects, which helped her to build her sense of inclusive and multidimensional practices in activism. She sees participatory democratic models employed effectively by activist organizations such as La Vida Campesina, who maintain a global vision through more than one million members but are very active around food issues in local communities. The multidimensionality of a human ecology degree gave her not only the lens through which to see problems, but the practical skills to find a solution that includes many diverse approaches. "It includes not just white people's paradigms, but indigenous and nonindigenous ways of looking at the world, and tries to find connections between them." Through her work with Greenpeace, Susi has managed to conduct local- level work on a global scale, which she believes is "infinitely more likely Left to right: Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, Marama Davidson from The Green Party, and Susi Newborn '90 to create change than trying to do the big, macro thing." While studying at the armpit of Auckland," she laughs. Tea, Scones, and Nuclear Disarmament COA, she remained involved in the "Now we're the jewel in the Hauraki about two of her fellow islanders Rainbow Warrior's campaigns. In Gulf!" who participated in the anti-nuclear 1985, the crew met at her house in Bar demonstrations at the Nevada Harbor to plan a response to ongoing Since the days of the Rainbow Warrior, Test Site. She hopes to screen these nuclear testing in the South Pacific. another threat has manifested for films in the US next year while she They organized the evacuation of South Pacific islanders: climate change travels to celebrate the life of the late more than three hundred Rongelapese, and sea level rise. "New Zealand is Greenpeace pioneer and captain of the whose island had been contaminated going to be the first port of call for Rainbow Warrior, Jon Castle. by radioactive fallout from US nuclear massive amounts of forced climate tests in the 1950s. Susi returned to migrants, who will be coming here Looking back at a long career of New Zealand just a few months because they can't drink clean water activism and advocacy, Susi reflects later, after the Rainbow Warrior was anymore," explains Susi. "Their atolls that the most pressing concern facing bombed and sunk by the French Secret have been polluted by salt and eroded the environment is that of "people's Service. Once settled there with her sewage systems." From her home on own view of the world. It's something daughter, she completed an internship Waiheke, Susi is working to develop so intrinsic and individual." The work with Friends of the Earth on their food civil defense and energy management of human ecologists, she believes, is to irradiation campaign and took classes systems that will adapt to the effects view problems in context and to find in the Pacific Studies department of climate change. In addition, she connections where solving one issue of Aukland University, which were also been involved in documenting "might solve a whole heap of others." credited toward her COA degree. By the history of the environmental Her message to other activists is that the time she returned to Maine to justice campaigns of which she's been every interaction has the potential to graduate, she had begun to plant new part, for future activists to learn from change others' perspectives. "We're roots, eventually moving to the small and continue. She recently helped to becoming so individualistic, and island of Waiheke, where five other create the films The Rainbow Warriors America focuses in on itself rather members of the ship's original crew of Waiheke Island about the early days than outward. To change that around, have also settled. "It was considered of Greenpeace, and Kit and Maynie: you have to go person by person." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 47 MM iVEX ⑉11 il THE == !!!! === i "Islan : Peter ALUMNI 1980 Cynthia Jordan Fischer is doing NOTES postpartum doula work while also starting a nonprofit postpartum doula biz. She is also working with infants and toddlers in a Montessori environment. She lives in 1992 After 22 years in CedarBough Saeji is halfway her new "tiny house" in her backyard. California, Rob through her second year teaching Both daughters are married & local, Finn has moved to Korean Studies at UBC in Vancouver. along with her five (yup!) grand- Philadelphia to finally work on his art The students and colleagues are great, children. full time. He is currently working on a new publications are in the works, and watercolor series titled Tree Portraits already in 2018, she's done two invited (Northern California). His next series lectures. 1990 In January 2018 will be larger landscapes of California, Emily Bracale Pennsylvania and Maine done in published her graphic watercolors and acrylic on canvas. 1995 During the summer memoir, Our Last Six Months: an of 2016, Andrea Illustrated Memoir about Death, Cancer, Clark Lawrence has written his first Lani and Curry End-of-life Care, Love, Family, and book, Mezzo Giardiniere (Half Gardener) Caputo hiked the 500-mile Colorado Forgiveness. She is selling it through published in Italian (1st ed. September Trail with their three sons, Milo, her website ourlastsixmonthsbook 2017) by Officina Naturalis. A second Emmet, and Zephyr, exactly 20 years com and at book talks. edition came out in January 2018, after Curry and Andrea hiked the and between book presentations, trail together. Andrea's working on gardening, goats, and guests, he's a book about the two hikes and the 1991 After a long and working on the English version and social and environmental history of rewarding run as a collaborating with London-based the Rockies. In January, she became kindergarten teacher artist David Hollington, who is doing a member of the Board of Directors at the Cushing Community School, illustrations. Clark is now living of the Maine Master Naturalist Beth Heidemann has combined near Mantova, at La Macchina Fissa Program and in April she will join her passion for integrated science (lamacchinafissa.com). the Senior Editor Board at Literary education with global citizenship and Mama (literarymama.com), where she purposeful tech integration to launch has been Literary Reflections editor Go2Science. Go2Science empowers 1993 Jenny Rock recently since 2014. She can be found online at kids to stay curious and become had her collagraph andrealani.com. critical and empathetic thinkers, artwork selected integrating language arts and math for two different international juried with science to maximize student exhibitions: the ASCI (Art & Science engagement and learning. As they Collaborations, Inc) exhibition 1999 The Mad Wolf's Daughter, a new produce materials for classrooms, "Science Inspires Art: OCEAN" (New children's book by Beth and her partner, Curtis, have York Hall of Science, Sept '17-Feb Diane Magras (née Harrison), was traveled to Wyoming to hunt for '18), and the "Rivers of Gold: the released in March. The book follows fossils, and the Galapagos Islands to legacy of historical gold mining" the youngest member of a warband investigate the range of the Galapagos exhibition, involving 4 print groups as she journeys through unfamiliar penguin. Their next trip takes them to from Australia, New Zealand and the landscapes to rescue her father and Namibia for a predator/prey survey. UK, touring in 2018. She represented brothers from a castle prison with the They are always looking to connect the Print Council Aotearoa New unlikely help of an injured enemy with diverse scientists as they craft Zealand (PCANZ). She has a chapter, knight. hypotheses for upcoming Go2Science "Narrative, Rhetoric and Science: missions. In other news, narratives Opportunities and Risks," in press in illustrating Beth's teaching methods the volume Visual Rhetoric (O. Kramer, were highlighted in a soon-to-be- Ed.) with Parlor Press (Anderson, SC, 2000 After nearly ten years of living released book, Teaching in the Fourth USA). And in 2018 hit a milestone of and traveling Industrial Revolution: Standing at the having her 50th peer-reviewed journal throughout the South Pacific, Precipice. article accepted for publication. Amanda Witherell and her partner, 50 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Top left: Dr. Grace Cherubino Top right: Gina Sabatini Middle: Clark Lawrence Bottom: Welcome Laurel Catherine! Brian Twitchell, sailed into San Francisco Bay in September 2017. Part of those ten years were spent working as a journalist and marketing executive in New Zealand. In 2015, they decided to return to the United States aboard their 41-foot sloop Clara Katherine. Two years and 12,000 nautical miles - almost all of them to windward-included visits to Tonga, Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, and French Polynesia. Stories about some of their experiences have recently been published in Blue Water Sailing, Capital Magazine, The Sun, and Wooden Boat. 2002 Jenny George's book of poetry, The Dream of Reason, will be published in April by Copper Canyon Press. 2006 Emma Rearick '08 and Jay Guarneri welcomed their daughter, Laurel Catherine, in November 2017. In May, Emma earned her Master of Regional and Community Planning degree from Kansas State University. After 6 years west of the Mississippi they have returned to New England and now live in Nashua, New Hampshire. 2007 Justin Feldman married Tatiana Sáenz in Boston in July 2017. He earned a Doctor of Science degree from Harvard School of Public Health in January 2018. In February, he delivered a lecture as part of COA's Human Ecology Forum entitled "Racism, health, and the epidemiology of police violence." In March, he started a position as certified chiropractic physician in the land, ecology and politics, and how Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Palestine can provide new ways of NYU School of Medicine. and treats patients with a myriad of thinking the links between the natural neuromusculoskeletal complaints, and the organic. Tara Jensen's book, A Baker's Year: using her human ecological world Twelve Months of Baking and Living the view and skills. And until now, she Simple Life at the Smoke Signals Bakery, never fully appreciated how similar was published in February 2018 by St. 2017 Sergio Cahueque the paradigms of human ecology and has joined the Martin's Griffin. chiropractic are! Environmental Health Strategy Center's organizing This spring Matt Shaw joined Blue team in Portland, Maine. Sergio 2010 Noah Kleiner was Hill Books as Samantha Haskell's believes that to foster a healthy engaged to Lauren '10 first full-time employee after she environment and honest democracy, Cote and lives in purchased the bookstore in February we need to work from the bottom-up. an off-the-grid cabin in Linconville, of 2017. He is excited to join an organization Maine. He owns his own company, that does important grassroots work called Equinox Guiding Service, based toward a healthy, toxin-free future. in Camden, Maine. Noah has chosen 2013 Maddy Magnuson the Maine coast as his classroom and is now the Director has been offering experiences to Maine of LGBTQ+ and kids through outdoor education and Harm Reduction Services at the guided rock climbing trips. According Health Equity Alliance, a nonprofit to Noah, the natural world and the agency providing direct service and next generation are our two greatest advocating on behalf of Maine's assets, combining the two is simple. LGBTQ+ community, people living Seeing your students have an deep with HIV/AIDS, and people who use experiences with world around them drugs. as they climb is the goal. Climbing is just the tool we use. Personal growth Gina Sabatini married her high and time spent in nature is why we school sweetheart Michael Mattei on climb, why we want to share that with June 24, 2017. Dear friends Alicia others. Hynes 'll and Aydan Pugh '14 were bridesmaids. Many other COA friends made the journey to Pennsylvania to 2011 Nina (Wish) Adler celebrate! Gina also recently accepted married David Adler a position at Tradewater, a small on August 27, 2017 environmental company focused on at David's Folly Farm in Brooksville, destroying CFCs. Maine. Nina is a potter and art teacher in Brooklyn, NY. 2014 As an artist-in- Dr. Grace Cherubino completed her residence at the El doctor of chiropractic degree at Palmer Atlal residency in College of Chiropractic on March 24, Jericho, Palestine, Zuri Camille de 2017. Since then, she has traveled to Souza researched the relationship Botswana and the Dominican Republic between political occupation and to do volunteer work with the NGO landscape. Her final work is an World Spine Care. Now she is a board- aesthetic and political reflection on Top: David and Nina (Wish) Adler. Bottom: Justin Feldman THE BLACK FLY SOCIETY is for everyone! FLY SOCIET The Black Fly Society was established to make If you want to give by mail: donating to COA's Annual Fund easier and greener. COA Annual Fund Anyone can join this swarm of sustaining donors by 105 Eden Street setting up a paperless, monthly online gift. Bar Harbor, ME 04609 (Please make checks out to College of the Atlantic) OF THE ATL Follow the instructions at coa.edu/donatenow Questions? 207.801.5626 52 NOTES Welcome Eloisa Maria Black! The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes web Allison Furbish Roberts '04, both of the Light: A Proposal for Action series, creator, Nancy Andrews, was whom work in philanthropy. Research on Quaker and Gandhian nominated and subsequently won the Responses to our Global Crises" for a Gotham Award for Breakout Series forthcoming book on Quakers, politics Short Form. Nancy traveled to NYC Bill Carpenter has a poem called and economics. He will be co-leading along with Dru Colbert, Production "First Couple" in the forthcoming a week-long workshop on "Seeking Designer, and the series' star, Michole book William Irvine: At Home (Marshall Truth about the Human-Earth Briana White on Monday, November Wilkes/Tilbury House), June 2018. Relationship: Insights from the Quaker 27th, for the 2017 IFP Gotham Awards Institute for the Future," at the Friends dinner and awards presentation. General Conference in July. He will Nancy is one of 25 artists selected In November, Kourtney Collum, be giving a paper on "Transforming for the 2018 Portland Museum of COA Partridge Chair in Food and Rationality to Sustain the World: Art Biennial highlighting the diverse Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Dialogical Rationality as a Key to the perspectives and interests of artists presented on a roundtable at the 116th Ecological, Political, Technological and connected to Maine and making a Annual Meeting of the American Moral Existential Crises We Face" at powerful statement about art's impact Anthropological Association in the August 2018 World Congress of in this historical moment (on view Washington, D.C. The roundtable Philosophy in Beijing. until June 3, 2018). brought together community partners, faculty, and student alumni who worked together over five years Dave Feldman gave a Linda Black'o9 and husband Jeff through an ethnographic field school Human Ecology Forum talk on Black welcomed their baby girl Eloisa to investigate links between race and "Gerrymandering in the US: History, Maria into the world! They look forward health in a historic African American Law, Math, and Politics" on October to raising her in the COA community! community in Tallahassee, Florida. 24, 2017. He spoke on a panel on In March, Kourtney presented at the Gerrymandering in Augusta, ME in Science on Tap series at the annual February; the panel was sponsored by Lynn Boulger, Dean of Institutional Maine Science Festival in Bangor, the Maine Citizens for Clean Elections Advancement, presented at the Maine. and the League of Women Voters of annual meeting of the Association of Maine. He offered his Chaos MOOC Fundraising Professionals Northern through the Santa Fe Institute's New England in Concord, New Gray Cox has written a chapter on: Complexity Explorer platform in Hampshire in November 2017. While "Let's Make the Earth Great Again! the fall; Dave's Fractal MOOC will there, she met up with two COA Governing the World from the Ground run this spring. This summer Dave alumni: Chris Hamilton '85 and Up Through Power Grounded in will again serve as the director of the COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 53 The New York Times The New York Times diversified farms that produced both cider and cheese to a more market- York Times Ehe New York based production. Nine students and the teaching team traveled up into the 2017 Cantabrian Alps to visit one of Spain's WARDS most famous cheese-producing region, Cabrales, and then visited orchards New Yor and cideries in central Asturias. The class sprang from a similar course in 2017 England several years ago. Students learned from shepherds, cheesmakers, cider producers, and regulators. It was Left: Dru Colbert, Michole Briana White, and Nancy Andrews; right: Sarah Hall, Gemma Venuti '18, and Alba Mar a fascinating insight into a region that Rodríguez Padilla '18 has maintained many food traditions and agricultural practices in the face of Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems mapped active faults for geohazards new regulatory challenges. Summer School. In November 2017, he assessments and collected samples participated in an hour-long meeting to build a climate record for a region with Senator Susan Collins, together periodically affected by large El Niño The COA Development Office has with other members of the Indivisible events. some new members and some MDI chapter. familiar faces in new roles. Amanda Mogridge has stepped away from This spring, The International Journal her position as alumni coordinator Jay Friedlander, Sharpe-McNally of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and taken on the job of manager of Chair of Green and Socially will publish Heather Lakey's '00 advancement services. Jen Hughes, Responsible Business, led an MPhil '05 article, "Appropriations of a 14-year veteran of the office who interdisciplinary faculty seminar at Informed Consent: Abortion, Medical has most recently served as manager Danish Technical University on using Decision Making, and Antiabortion of donor engagement, is the new the abundance cycle framework Rhetoric." Heather is a lecturer manager of alumni affairs. The office and COA's sustainable business in philosophy at College of the welcomes Wes Norton as the new program as models to jumpstart Atlantic and a faculty member with manager of donor engagement, and their efforts to bring sustainability to the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Kenyon Grant as COA's new creative their entrepreneurship curriculum. Studies Department at the University services director. While in Denmark, Jay met with the of Maine. US Embassy staff and the leaders of the Samsø Energy Academy. Suzanne Morse, Elizabeth Battles Jay also led Business Boot Camps, Susan Letcher, professor of Plant Newlin Chair in Botany, attended based on the Hatchery course, for Biology, welcomed a daughter, Willow the Slow Food conference in Denver food entrepreneurs in Michigan Mireya Letcher, on October 22, 2017. Colorado and then spent three very and New England. This winter he Since joining the faculty in 2017, she hot days (over 100 °F) in Salina, led the inaugural Business Boot has been a coauthor on two scientific Kansas at the Land Institute where Camp in Mount Desert focusing on papers, one in Ecology Letters and they are making great headway in strengthening local businesses. Jay one in Proceedings of the National developing perennial grains systems is returning to Osakikamijima, Japan Academy of Sciences. and domesticating a prairie sunflower over spring break with a faculty for seed and oil. In December 2017, delegation from a half dozen other Morse spent ten days in Australia colleges to continue their efforts to This winter break Todd Little- visiting farms in Victoria and New develop a new educational platform. Siebold took a class to Asturias in South Wales, including vineyards northern Spain called "Sidra, Quesos y and cherry orchards in the Barossa Granjas: La Historia de la Agricultura" Valley and very large scale production Sarah Hall, Anne T. and Robert with COA farm manager Anna Davis, systems of wheat, lucerne, and canola. M. Bass Chair in Earth Systems and fruit explorer John Bunker and COA In February 2018, Morse attended the GeoSciences, traveled to southern grad Laura Sieger '16. Asturias has Organic Seed Alliance Conference Peru with two COA students, Gemma the longest history of cidermaking along with three students, Ana Maria Venuti '18 and Alba Mar Rodríguez in western Europe with a diversity Zabala '20, Josephine Trople '17, Padilla '18, during December 2017 to of cider varieties unrivaled in other and Morgan Heckerd '18. Starting conduct field work associated with parts of world. The class explored in spring, she is on sabbatical and is the students' senior projects. Together the changing agricultural dynamics working with agroecology groups at with Peruvian colleagues, the team as the region has shifted from small, University of Wisconsin - Madison 54 COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. One project includes writing a biography of the on-campus community garden that will reach its 50-year anniversary along with the IN MEMORIAM rest of campus in 2021. If you have stories to share about the garden, please send them her way! A Remembrance of In October 2017, Steve Ressel joined John Anderson's and Ken Cline's Polly Coté Great West course in southern Arizona for a week of "herping" in the Sonoran Desert. Afterwards, Steve traveled The first day we arrived at COA was August 1, 1974. Roc to Prescott College on an Ecoleague was to begin teaching that fall and we hoped to find a place Faculty Exchange, which included to live. On Mount Desert Island. In August. Ann Peach and conducting a daylong field trip on Mel Coté were the only people on campus that afternoon. lizard ecology for students enrolled in They laughed at our naive expectation and explained, Prescott's Fundamentals of Ecology there was no available housing on MDI in August. Mel course. invited us to stay at his house. We arrived, and there was Polly — fixing a minestrone soup with vegetables from Mel's garden, three young boys running around, and a In February 2018, Bonnie Tai was guest room ready for us. She didn't seem phased at all, just invited to share the COA model of generous and open and full of her bright light. We stayed higher education in a Comparative with them three or four nights and were friends for 43 Education class at the National Taipei years. University of Education. The title of Bonnie's short presentation was Her homes were always filled with art - her children's, "COA: A values-driven and student- her own, her friends', museum posters. That was her centered postsecondary education." heart: family, friends and art. She had big studios with oil She followed it with a Q&A, reflection, paintings and wood cuts and lithographs all going on at and some small group discussion. the same time. And her homes were works of art as well, playful and surprising and welcoming. Her other art was cooking. She was an inspired chef and gathered people In addition to a science research trip to who were friends, or who she thought might be friends, Antarctica aboard Seabourn given time together. Quest in December 2017, Sean Todd, Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine I have an early memory of Polly sitting in her kitchen, Sciences, gave an invited talk at the reading a book. It was a late summer afternoon. She wasn't University of Toronto on Allied cooking or parenting or painting. I was surprised by the Whale research in February 2018. His quiet. She said she planned her days to have a moment. Great Courses project Life in the Simple as that. World's Oceans, a thirty-episode video series published in collaboration Every time I saw Polly, she cupped her hands on my face with the Smithsonian Institute, which and held them there for a moment just looking and smiling. he both wrote and is the featured That's how I think of her now. presenter, was also released in February. Helen Caivano Lexie Watson'93 has joined COA's Take-A-Break staff as Dining Hall Manager. She returned to MDI around twenty years ago to raise her children and start her own business, Little Red Hen Baked Goods. She is happy to be back on campus surrounded by amazing food and hungry students. COLLEGE OFTHE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 55 The Right Foot of Juan De Oñate BY MARTÍN ESPADA for John Nichols and Arturo Madrid On the road to Taos, in the town of Alcalde, the bronze statue of Juan de Oñate, the conquistador, kept vigil from his horse. Late one night a chainsaw sliced off his right foot, stuttering through the ball of his ankle, as Oñate's spirit scratched and howled like a dog trapped within the bronze body. Four centuries ago, after his cannon fire burst to burn hundreds of bodies and blacken the adobe walls of the Acoma Pueblo, Oñate wheeled on his startled horse and spoke the decree: all Acoma males above the age of twenty-five would be punished by amputation of the right foot. Spanish knives sawed through ankles; Spanish hands tossed feet into piles like fish at the marketplace. There was prayer and wailing in a language Oñate did not speak. Now, at the airport in El Paso, across from Juárez, another bronze statue of Oñate rises on a horse frozen in fury. The city fathers smash champagne bottles across the horse's legs to christen the statue, and Oñate's spirit remembers the chainsaw carving through the ball of his ankle. The Acoma Pueblo still stands. Thousands of brown feet walk across the border, the desert of Chihuahua, the shallow places of the Río Grande, the bridges from Juárez to El Paso. Oñate keeps watch, high on horseback above the Río Grande, the law of the conquistador rolled in his hand, helpless as a man with an amputated foot, spirit scratching and howling like a dog within the bronze body. "The Right Foot of Juan De Onate" from Vivas To Those Who Have Failed. Copyright © 2015 by Martín Espada. Reprinted by permission. Martín Espada reads at College of the Atlantic on May 18th. The reading begins at 7 pm in the Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Community Center and is free and oben to the public. This reading is bart of COA's Diverse Voices. Series FROM THE ARCHIVES Tasha Ball's Student Perspective Speech from Commencement 2012 My parents are incredibly supportive people. So a great quilt of human ecology. Not one of us has worked supportive, in fact, that at 16 when I told them that I was in isolation on these projects: the artists sought feedback dropping out of high school to move in with my boyfriend from the botanists, the scientists from the philosophers, the they easily agreed and sent me on my way. My parents are gardeners from the ornithologists. From bioluminescence, models of living human ecology: their knowledge of the to children's camps, to brewing craft beer, to studying world is based on an innate understanding of the land, the plastic particulates in Frenchman bay These projects are other living biota they tend and share the world with, and glimpses into how each of us perceives our surroundings their social and political connection to their community. To and express our own autonomy in a sea of ever increasing them, me dropping out of my junior year of high school homogeneity. I - for one - feel so blessed to have shared meant I was simply joining "the school of life." these past four years with you. Miraculously, I went back to finish high school But Just imagine how much has happened in the rapidly even then I never thought I would go on to pursue changing world since we began this journey. Although higher education. I thought college was for the affluent, much of it could cause a person to give up and retreat for the elite, and for people obviously far smarter than into the woods to wait out the extinction of our species, myself. Then, about five years ago something happened. however, standing here today I see there is still so much I distinctly remember it as a time when I realized that hope. honesty is the value I hold most important in life. With that realization came the insight that the only person I was With my closing time here upon this stage, at this lying to was myself. institution, on this island in Maine, with all of you my friends, my family, my great tree of support, I would like I had convinced myself that I was not smart, was not to offer a small bit of gratitude to those branches that have capable, was not graceful, and in many ways, that I was held me up and fostered my own internal success. It would worthless. I was sure that only people far more intelligent be far too easy to simply recognize those of you who are and graceful than myself went to college. At twenty three, most obvious: faculty, parents, advisors, trustees, fellow a non-traditional student by popular standards, I decided I students: you know you have changed our lives and for wanted to make more out of my life. The decision to come that we owe a deep debt. to college, something taken for granted by so many, took a huge amount of courage for me. Even after a full freshman It is those often-forgotten corners of our lives that I would year of new friends, of success, and of keeping up with my like to recognize. To the staff of this institution: to the most work, I wondered still if I had faked my way through. nurturing, good-spirited, and loudest librarians I have ever met; to the buildings and grounds crew with your ever- Now, four years later, I try to look back and recall that present kind nature and your band of tricksters; to this person who was scared of living up to her potential, and I town; to my neighbors and friends; to Fred, the four-year am reminded that we all face challenges and moments of old I babysat every week over the past few years - you self-doubt. What would life be without those moments? remind me not to take myself too seriously; and lastly, to the land that surrounds us here. These mountains have I truly believe that beyond the things that are inevitable in become like old friends whose backs I trek up onto to find life - illness, grey hair, good byes - beyond all those things reprieve. Like great, sleeping, granite giants they have kept we have the power to shape our own realities. Life is about me grounded. how we view ourselves, and how we interpret the world we reside in. Looking at a Monet up close it is a blurred As each of us crosses this stage today, going forward with mess of random strokes. Change your frame of reference the tools we take, I ask you to remember the words of and it becomes ordered beauty. Marianne Williamson: Who we become is about the different ways in which we Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. understand and respond to events in this life, and each Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. one of us has the opportunity to step back and examine the It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. canvas before us from different angles. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous ? There is no better proof of that multiplicity of perspectives than in the programs in your hands. Reading over them, Actually who are you not to be? seeing the many different senior projects is like looking at COA COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609