COA THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Volume 11 . Number 1. . Spring 2015 UNCONVENTIONAL ANGLES COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Unconventional Angles Letter from the President 3 News from Campus 4 Watson Report Anouk de Fontaine '14 6 UNCONVENTIONAL ANGLES: HUMAN ECOLOGY IN PRACTICE 10 A Classroom without Walls The Great West Course 12 Field, Story, & Studio: Classic COA Classes Scouring the Waters Chris Petersen 14 Nature of Narrative Karen Waldron 16 A Lasting Impact Ernie McMullen 17 To Samsø and Beyond 19 The Community School of Mount Desert Island 22 Drawn Diaries Valerie Giles '88 24 Unconventional Angles Khristian Mendez '15 27 Leaders of the Track The Human Ecology of Blocking and Jamming 30 Seeking Light Paul Grabhorn ('81) 33 "The Water Cycle" Eloise Schultz '16 36 "Footsteps" Lea Bushman '15 41 Alumni Notes 42 Donor Profile Martie Samek 45 Community Notes 46 Plant Ecology and Evolution in Harsh Environments Book Excerpt 50 In Memoriam 51 The Bagel Hole Agnes Smit 52 Summer Events at COA 53 Sam Allen '16 walks through a solar array on Denmark's carbon-negative Samsø Island during the European portion of the fall "monster course" on energy and islands. What is a monster course, you ask? It's one, focused-monster-class combining all three of a term's credits. See page 19. Photo by Paige Nygaard '17. COA indicates degree alumni by a parenthesis around their year. COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine From the Editor Volume 11 Number 1 Spring 2015 Unconventional Angles: Human ecology in practice Editorial Editor Donna Gold Often when I think of human ecology, it is in romantic terms. I imagine the Editorial Guidance Heather Albert- Shlomit Auciello '17 all-encompassing sweep of an arm, the slow turning of an entire planet, the Rich Borden cycles of seasons or of water as rain flows into rivers and evaporates, the Dru Colbert Darron Collins '92 interdependency of creatures. Not long ago, I read this passage in the human Dave Feldman ecology essay of Caroline Powers '15 and thought, yes! this is it: Jennifer Hughes Kate Macko Lauren Rupp '05 It starts with a dance around the edge. All around and within, there are golden Eloise Schultz '16 Zach Soares '00 lights alive. They are beings or ideas or moments or spaces-with births and Josh Winer '91' existences and deaths. As they flicker and shine and fade, they are moving as well. At Editorial Consultant Bill Carpenter Alumni Consultants Jill Barlow-Kelley times they swim alone, swim together, swim by each other, or into each other. Dianne Clendaniel Design Meanwhile, I was also reading the piece Khristian Mendez '15 submitted to this Art Director Rebecca Hope Woods issue, exploring the challenging questions that community members so often experience from students, faculty, staff members, alumni-questions that COA Administration President Darron Collins '92 change us so that nothing again is precisely what it had seemed. Khristian titled Academic Dean Kenneth Hill his piece "Unconventional Angles" and (after speaking with him) I realized it Associate Academic Deans Catherine Clinger Stephen Ressel characterized this entire issue, and caused me to reexamine my own sense of Sean Todd human ecology. Maybe human ecology is not only about a flow of inclusion but Karen Waldron Administrative Dean Andrew Griffiths also a series of probing illuminations aimed at campus from all angles-flares of Dean of Admission Heather Albert-Knopp '99 lightening reaching into our minds. Dean of Institutional Lynn Boulger Advancement Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke Through human ecology, students learn to listen, to converse, and especially to COA Board of Trustees consider alternatives, but mostly, they learn to question. Becky Baker Suzanne Folds McCullagh Dylan Baker Linda McGillicuddy Timothy Bass Jay McNally '84 Even as the study of human ecology attempts Ronald E. Beard Stephen G. Milliken to fashion an entirety out of the cloth of our Leslie C. Brewer Philip S.J. Moriarty Alyne Cistone Phyllis Anina Moriarty universe, to reveal the connections, as Caroline's Nikhit D'Sa '06 Lili Pew essay implies, it also pierces our comfort with that Lindsay Davies Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Beth Gardiner Nadia Rosenthal connectivity. This vision challenges us to come at Amy Yeager Geier Marthann Samek problems from various approaches, pushing some Elizabeth Hodder Henry L.P. Schmelzer H. Winston Holt IV Stephen Sullens of us into war zones with our cameras, others onto Philip B. Kunhardt!!!! '77 William N. Thorndike, Jr. roller derby rinks using our bodies as battering Anthony Mazlish Cody van Heerden, MPhil 15 rams (don't miss that article-it's a great one!), our teachers into 24/7 classes for weeks at a time, and Life Trustees Trustee Emeriti William G. Foulke, Jr. David Hackett Fischer our students to field questions from numerous-and Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. George B.E. Hambleton unconventional-angles. John N. Kelly Sherry F. Huber Susan Storey Lyman Helen Porter William V.P. Newlin Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 John Reeves John Wilmerding Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Dami Id Donna Gold, editor The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of College of the Atlantic envision a world where people value creativity, intellectual achievement, and diversity of nature and human cultures. With respect and compassion, individuals construct meaning lives for themselves, gain appreciation of the relationships among all forms of life, and safeguard the heritage of Correction: In the Fall 2014 article on the work of Nancy Andrews, we omitted credit future generations. to Zach Soares '00. Zach co-composed much of the music in Nancy's first feature film, COA is published biannually for the College of the The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes. Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters, and submissic (short stories, poetry, and revisits to human ecology essays) to: Cover: Untitled by Valerie Giles '88, graphite, colored pencil, and gouache on tinted paper, 9 X 12 inches, 2007 (see page 24). COA Magazine, College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 dgold@coa.edu Back Cover: Somes Landing Dawn by Ernest McMullen, oil on board, 33 48 inches, 2014 (see page 17). WWW.COA.EDU MIX PRINTED WITH CERTIFIED Paper from responsible sources FSC WIND www.fsc.org FSC C021556 POWER From the President President Darron Collins '92 snapped this selfie at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City in March with artist Richard Estes (center), and Ernie McMullen (far right). COA editor Donna Gold has been hounding me to uncomfortable complexity of what's in your head and finish up this letter. My delay stems neither from outside your body. procrastination nor forgetfulness. Unconventional Angles has thrown a real wrench into my machine. What's the I had the privilege to partake in another such thread? Where's the theme? How to tie things together calisthenic: during winter term 2015 I was able to "audit" with a nice, pretty bow? Roller derby, bagels, and Ernie McMullen's last class in 2-D Design: Drawing wilderness in the West? with graphite, ink, and charcoal. I bound the audit of the last sentence in air quotes because I managed to I'm as guilty as anyone. Humans by some cognitive attend only about half the classes and complete half default adore the process and product of taxonomizing, the assignments. After over four decades of dedication organizing, prioritizing, and otherwise trying to simplify to this institution, Ernie McMullen has retired from the world's complexity. Such reductionism is one way teaching (see page 17). The class never asked us to to understand how the world works and how human abandon order, but it certainly demanded we reorient beings move through it. Human ecology asks us to fight our understanding of the way the world appears in that tendency and, even for a president and alumnus three-dimensional space when trying to compress of a school of human ecology, bucking the deep-seated those dimensions onto a piece of paper. I wish I could drive to order a chaotic environment has been difficult bottle that experience and douse everyone's morning for me in this case. coffee with it. It was one of the most remarkable learning experiences I've ever had. Ernie-you will be But, as is so often the case, writing through the blockage missed! has been reaffirming. Forcing such abstinence on order is a psychological calisthenic I highly recommend. By executive order and I hereby dedicate Unconventional Consider the following pages an obstacle course Angles to our own Ernie McMullen! for such an exercise. Read them without pattern- recognizing glasses. Read them not to uncover a logic between personality, coursework at the college, and work after the college. Read them for the quality and diversity of ideas and for the inherent beauty within complexity itself. Become comfortable with the Darron Collins '92, PhD, president COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 3 NEWS FROM CAMPUS DECEMBER forays to 33°F, and averaging 14°F, COA residence halls engaged in a COA receives Maine Preservation's hot competition to reduce energy 2014 Honor Award for usage. The winner is Seafox, which Rehabilitation for our work lowers usage by a whopping 18%. restoring The Turrets. Overall, residences are down by BABY BELTED GALLOWA 8%, proving, say organizers, that it WELCOMED AT PEGGY A presentation on the impact can be done! ROCKEFEL ER FARMS of collaboration in two Yucatan fishing villages by Pablo Aguilera MARCH del Castillo '15 is selected as one of three "exemplary" Twelve students spend half their undergraduate posters at the spring break at Mount Desert 2014 American Anthropological Island Biological Laboratory Association Annual Meetings in tracking the development of sea Washington, DC. urchins and analyzing genetic samples as part of an annual JANUARY molecular genetics workshop DORR MUSEUM CELEBRATES SPRING offered to COA students. WITH AN EGG-STRAVAGANZA FOR CHILDREN Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes, faculty member Nancy Andrews' first APRIL feature film, premieres at the Rotterdam International Film COA President Darron Collins '92 Festival, known for its indie meets with the community to hear and innovative films. Indiewire about strengths, weaknesses, calls the film gorgeous and how we stand out, how our deliciously weird. Enhancing interdisciplinarity works, and the COA presence at the Dutch other questions, all to create our festival is Jennifer Prediger '00, new strategic plan, called the MAP. appearing in both Strange Eyes and ROC CAIVANO, EX-FACULTY, Valedictorian. Eliza Oldach '17 receives a PAINTS ASHLEY BRYAN AS ASHLEY'S BLUM EXHIBIT CLOSES Fulbright Scholarship to New A design by Arika (Bready) von Zealand for her project, A New Edler '12 is chosen by MOFGA, Lens for Coastal Conservation: Maine Organic Farmers and Developing and Applying the Gardeners Association, for the Habitat Cascade Theory. 2015 Common Ground Country Fair poster. The Princeton Review's annual ranking of sustainable colleges FEBRUARY and universities places COA at #8. Naomi Klein, author of This MAY Changes Everything (which EARTH DAY AT COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC quotes Anjali Appadurai '13 in Khristian Mendez '15 presents the introduction), is picked by a staged reading of his senior COA seniors as their graduation project play, The Floor is Yours, an speaker. She accepts. inquiry into the many aspects of the United Nations' environmental As a result of COA's 24-Hour governance system. Challenge, the college receives 810 gifts and nets $68,711 in an Senior project shows abound in intense 24-hour marathon of fund the Ethel H. Blum Gallery as one raising. of many means of displaying work to the public. Exhibits range from During one of the coldest weeks a multimedia look at Detroit's FANDANGO SUPPORTS NEPAL- in February, when temperatures venerable women to explorations FUNDS GO TO DIYALO FOUNDATION range from -4°F to a couple of brief of voice and vulnerability. 4 FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU Doreen Stabinsky's Zennström lecture can be found at http://media.medfarm.uu.se/ play/video/4851. Photo by Niclas Hällström, What Next Forum, Uppsala, Sweden. DOREEN STABINSKY inaugurates Swedish climate change role When Sweden's Uppsala University-considered abroad with faculty member Ken Cline. Come fall, via one of the world's top educational institutions-created Skype, she'll again prepare COA students to be effective a visiting professorship in climate change, COA's own youth leaders at the upcoming Conference of the Parties Doreen Stabinsky was chosen to inaugurate the position. (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention Partly, she was picked for her expertise on the on Climate Change in Paris. Meanwhile, Doreen will impact of climate change on agriculture and food create a similar delegation from Uppsala. Following the security, and her work advising governments and December COP, COA students will head north to Uppsala international environmental organizations on agriculture to spend some time with their Swedish peers answering and climate change. But partly, too, the choice was about the question, "What's next?" Doreen's focus on students. Uppsala is fascinated by COA, says Doreen. The Zennström Visiting Professorship in Climate "Students in Uppsala are eager to be more active Change Leadership (funded by Skype founder and participants in their education. People here are really Uppsala alumnus Niklas Zennström) was inspired by excited about having COA students come," she adds. "I students who longed for greater transdisciplinary gave a talk about COA and its pedagogy-after my talk research and collaboration when dealing with climate they were even more excited." change. Student connection is so important to the As COA faculty member in global environmental position that when Eva Åkesson, Uppsala's vice politics, agricultural policy, and international studies, chancellor, introduced Doreen at the first annual Doreen has been instrumental in preparing delegations Zennström lecture last March, Eva spoke of Doreen's of students in the language, issues, and proposals of UN background, of course, but also her "international climate meetings. As a result, COA students have become reputation for her work with students, enabling them so comfortable with the details of these meetings, to be active participants in the global environmental and are so passionate about the issues, that they, and political arenas." their organization Earth in Brackets, frequently take Doreen is spending the year connecting with leadership positions in the international youth effort on scientists, social scientists, graduate students, and climate change. And today's youth, says Doreen, "are not undergraduates at Uppsala and the nearby Swedish just future climate leaders; they are already leading the University of Agricultural Sciences, but she won't ignore way, advocating for and implementing changes needed COA. Currently, she's teaching French Food Politics and to address climate change." European Political Institutions in the Vichy, France term FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU 5 NEWS EXCERPTS FROM A TRAVELING JOURNAL Anouk de Fontaine '14, Watson Fellow Anouk de Fontaine '14 received a Watson Fellowship to explore dance in various locales around the world. Through her project, Dance as Medicine: Looking at Dance as a Tool for Community Healing, Anouk is seeking to shape a dance form that can assist personal and communal recovery. Born and raised in Belgium, Anouk came to COA after attending the Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. English was her fourth language; Portuguese is her sixth. NOVEMBER 10, 2014 From what to wear to how loud I should speak, this Cuiabana Trust: Trust is not an easy thing to (woman from the north of Brazil) receive, to be awarded. Confiança has taken my hand to guide me they call it here. through my experience in Rio. I have been living in Rio de Janeiro now for several months. NOVEMBER 28, 2014 On the day I arrived, I was already dancing in a local feira, Feira de Dance: Both my dance activities São Cristóvão. On the second day, and the work I help out with I was joining a ballroom dancing at a center for individuals with class in the favela near my house. special needs have made me The class has been meeting three full and happy. I have been times a week since then, the studying capoeira, a sixteenth- third of August, for three hours century martial art combining each session. We have become a dance, acrobatics, and music community, sharing meals, beers, that was created in Brazil by and meeting each other outside Anouk de Fontaine '14 with Sandra African slaves; dancing with a new of class to go to parties. However, Ferreira Mendez de Azevedo, the woman company from the favela; and she calls her Brazilian mother. genuine trust, confiança, has only volunteering at a physiotherapy been awarded to me by very few-if center. Physiotherapy gives me a any-of the sixty people who form a mother, her husband, and her new perspective on movement, that group. daughter from a previous union, muscles, the brain and the body- Surprising? Not really. Being in a bairro called Estácio, near the how dance as a therapy for patients obviously gringa, female, and doing center of the city. I am the first with cerebral palsy is so different a project that sometimes seems to person they have rented a room to. from dance as therapy for children lack structure and sounds fictive, I have learned so much from a with autism, for example. would lead many to be dubious of minha mãe brasileirai, my Brazilian the real reason for my presence mum. She makes her home a place Things Brazilians, particularly here. full of her energy. The home is Cariocas (Brazilians from Rio) offer: But frustrating, yes. humble; she comes from a working- How to enjoy life, celebrate life, class family. She is not well, but she connect with people, feast, never Communication: Already is so courageous, good, and has a feel alone, always smile, go out, complicated in one's own language. love for life and for connection with enjoy the little things-a beer with Between what I am trying to say people that is contagious. a friend in the street, a Saturday and what you are understanding, afternoon at the beach, a Sunday much can be misinterpreted. When Cooking food: "Only when you are morning running kites in the park. cultures-Belgium and Brazil-talk inspired," my Brazilian mother says. And the noise, always the loud as well, communication takes on "Food has to be cooked with love. noise, just in case someone would this invisible dimension. Confusion When the woman of the house is think of feeling lonely among the is frequent. not inspired, when she is not feeling permanent vibration of life around good about the household, she them. How can I really learn this Connection: How do you enter a cannot cook. And so she should alegria, this joy of life? And then culture? I have been staying with not." carry it with me everywhere I go? 6 FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU NEWS DECEMBER 3, 2014 The moment you get your first discount at the local fruit market because merchants recognize you, you have become their amiga. You get extra fruits, specialties made just for you, and you are sent home with good wishes for the others living in your household. The moment you start getting ready at the time you said you were going to meet someone at the other end of the city. The moment you realize you don't really remember all the things that you found so different, strange and peculiar about the place when you first arrived. You try hard to remember, but you only recall the vague feeling of finding things ZERO different. The moment you perceive co-living with cockroaches as normal. The moment you realize the shootings you hear on a regular basis in the favela near your house Top: While in Brazil, Anouk spent time at an orphanage. "One day," she says, "I realized have become routine. Scary, but the children's portraits had never been drawn. I am not good at drawing, but I took one class at COA and / thought I could try. The young man, Anderson, cried. He had never been you hope your local family can tell looked at so deeply and observed so carefully." Photo by Andre Hawk/+5521. when really you should worry. Bottom: Anouk (on right) danced with several groups while in Brazil, including this one, Origem. Except as noted, photos courtesy of Anouk de Fontaine '14. The moment you start looking at visiting Europeans in the metro The moment you manage to samba without looking at the lyrics on the as a mainstream Brazilian woman like a passista alone in your room. page they give you! would: skeletal, no butt, white- Nobody saw, but you know you just transparent, arrogant, ignorant, too got it. It is in you. You will be able to These moments are precious. They serious, wrong fashion style, money do it again. are my testimonies; the steps of a confidence, but hey nice hair. choreography called meu Brasil, "my The moment you can hold a whole Brazil." The moment you cannot remember smart conversation in the local how you could end a meal without language and people think you are By tuning in to the melody of a coffee or spend a day without from the south of Brazil. Not from people, of a place, eating feijão. outside of Brazil. We learn. By dancing, we practice. The moment your coffee-making The moment you sing an entire gets approved by locals. samba song at a samba school FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU 7 ALAN'S SHOP Story and photo by Galen Hecht '17 On Bar Harbor's Cedar Avenue, "Ruthie, be nice," his eyes bright and can navigate every familiar a handsome red house trimmed behind gold, round-rim glasses. nook and cranny. He uses his hands in white stands dwarfed beside Alan manages the bustling to feel the wood; what most see the doors of a two-story, timber- shop with calculated strategies, with their eyes, he interprets with framed barn painted to match. taking the time to ensure that all his hands. His projects are complex In the morning, a steady stream the details of a project are in place and unique. Best of all, he is eager of smoke wisps out the barn's before he moves on to the next to share what he knows. chimney and the sound of power step. When he's in action, it's a Currently, Alan is a visiting tools echoes along the street. Alan sight to see: focused and quick, professor at COA, teaching DeCheubell is in his shop. he'll leap up on the counter to pull the course Building a Skin-on- A master woodcraftsman, Alan a strip of hot wood from the steam Frame Kayak: Introduction to built the house and barn himself bender before hopping down to Woodworking. Eight students out of reclaimed wood. The first wrap the piece quickly around a are learning about practical floor of the barn is packed with mold, soon to be the fitting for a mathematics, design, small stock lumber and old gadgets; it door's glass pane. business, and woodworking. emanates the comfortable aroma Typically Alan has a student Each one will leave with their own of pine and spruce. A Rangeley assistant helping to measure and handmade boat and a quiver of boat is parked beside the storage run various machines. At first, one skills for future jobs. racks; the hens-Alan's girls-cluck might not understand why such an An educator's role is to share away in their coop on the side wall. able craftsman needs an assistant, methods and ideas with a vision, Everything has a purpose and a but after a few minutes with him it with or without sight. Not only story. becomes clear: Alan is blind. does Alan teach what he knows, he The heart of 16 Cedar lies Alan's twenty-five-year career demonstrates that with willpower, upstairs. The woodshop is working for carpenters around generosity, and a willingness to equipped with an old twenty-four- Mount Desert Island, including adapt, setbacks are no more than inch yellow planer, a jointer, table thirteen years managing the an opportunity to embark on new saw, radial saw, and the custom AB and JR Hodgkins' woodshop, adventures. duplicator lathe that Alan designed ended in 2007 when he couldn't and built with a five-speed Toyota read for his bad eyes. But Alan Galen Hecht '17 began working with transmission. The walls are hung persevered. Even as he was losing Alan DeCheubell as an assistant in the with drawings of boats and his sight, he built the house and spring of 2014; he did an independent airplanes; small drifts of sawdust barn and started his own custom study in traditional boatbuilding last are packed into the corners. Ruthie, woodworking business. In place fall. This spring, together with Alan Alan's little white dog, barks a of hand-eye coordination, Alan and Marc Fawcett-Atkinson '18, Galen welcome to visitors from her chair relies on his well-tuned spatial developed the boatbuilding course. by the woodstove as Alan calls, awareness. In the shop he is agile 8 FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU NEWS DIOS BO'OTIK-THANK YOU Projects for Peace In 2007, to celebrate her hundredth Yucatec Mayan in the Yucatán for birthday, the late philanthropist six months with visiting lecturer Kathryn W. Davis committed one Karla Peña. Alongside the two million dollars to fund one hundred RealizArte leaders, Becca will help student-led projects with the hope establish a summer performance of generating peace within the arts program for youth, with daily world. This summer, Becca Haydu workshops in theater, music, and '16 is among her beneficiaries. She Mayan culture. Themes will change has been awarded $10,000 from by the week. When focused on the ongoing Projects for Peace music, for example, there will fund to help establish a Yucatec be workshops on learning and Maya cultural center in Yaxkukul, writing Mayan lyrics, playing outside of Merida, the capital of pre-Hispanic instruments, and Palmi García, Cindy Orozco, Becca Mexico's Yucatán. She is working studying other traditional musical Haydu '16, and Anai May in Yaxkukul. with leaders of the fledgling Centro forms. The summer will culminate Palmi and Anai will join the summer's cultural center. Photo Courtesy of Becca Cultural RealizArte, who seek to in performances designed by Haydu '16. promote local traditional culture. the students with the goal of Becca came to know this stimulating an ongoing arts center while studying Spanish and program in Yaxkukul. COA's New OUTLANDS Journal "How can peace and stability be on campus and in town at Jesup promoted amidst conflict and Memorial Library. OUTLANDS globalization?" That's the question Journals on foreign affairs posed by the editors of the second abound, but Outlands has a special issue of Outlands, a journal of perspective: it's the voice of Ursa's foreign affairs launched in spring generation. "I wasn't seeing a lot of 2014 by Ursa Beckford '17 and ten analysis on global issues conducive other COA students. to the world I want to live in," says The idea began when Ursa, Ursa. "We hope to create a space nephew to Craig Greene, the late for new thought and better analysis faculty member in biology, visited to confront the challenges of our as a prospective student. Ursa time." Peace wondered whether there was a These challenges, he adds, "are foreign affairs group on campus. so extreme that people sometimes & "Start one," he was told. And feel they have nothing to offer. But Stability so this homeschooled student, young people do have good, strong BE PROMOTED AMIDST raised without a television in ideas on these topics." Outlands CONFLICT & GLOBALIZATION? Clifton, Maine, began the Council editors seek submissions from COA on Foreign Affairs, or COFA, along and beyond. Next up: "Borders (personal, social, ethnic, cultural, with the journal. Now in its second + Boundaries." Asks upcoming lingual, physical, political) permeate year, COFA meets to discuss editor Leah Kovich, "What borders all human interactions-how do issues and edit the journal, and and boundaries have you faced, we confront the lines that divide also hosts weekly presentations overcome, or succumbed to in the us?" For more, and for subscription on international issues-both world foreign to you? Such walls details, visit outlandsjournal.org. FIND MORE STORIES AND PHOTOS AT NEWS.COA.EDU 9 inconventiona gles HUMAN ECOLOGY IN PRACTICE 10 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE A COA EDUCATION IS in the words of current students dynamic unique awesome meaningful enriching timeless passionate thought-provoking personalized affordable self-directed immersive Muddy (literally) and full of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities A COA education is life. It is MoΓe than academics, More than preparing for a career. It is learning constantly on all fronts-academic. emotional, personal, universal. With thanks to Shlomit Auciello '17, Ursa Beckford '17, Christi Beddiges '18, Roman Bina '16, Julie Bowser '17, Alyssa Coleman '16, Izik Dery '17, Maria Hagen '17, Emily Hollyday '15, Kiera O'Brien '18, Lilyanna Sollberger '16, and Mari Thiersch '18. This page: Ken Cline and Zinta Rutins '15 work a two-person crosscut saw to remove a fallen tree in the wilderness of Yosemite National Park. Following page: Participants in the Great West course: from left, Arianna Rambach '16, Anneke Hart '16, Meaghan Lyon '16, Kristin Ober '16, faculty member Ken Cline, Chris Phillips '15, Erickson Smith '15, Zinta Rutins '15, Madeleine Motley '16. Photos by faculty member John Anderson. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 11 A Classroom and to see how those things played Hetch Hetchy Valley, then across Without Walls: The out in terms of public policy and the Sonoran Desert and through management decisions," says the canyonlands of Utah to Great West Course John Anderson, faculty member Albuquerque, New Mexico, where in biology, who organized the they participated in a conference By Michael Diaz-Griffith '09 course with Ken Cline, faculty celebrating the first fifty years of member in environmental law and the Wilderness Act. For John Muir, father of policy. "Most of the students had Says Erickson Smith '15, "From America's conservation movement, spent little or no time west of the the very first day we were taking the Sierra Nevadas were the "range Mississippi; we wanted to make detailed natural history notes, of light," a wonderland of celestial sure that they got a good sense not only of the animal and plant effects: noonday radiance, Alpine from the first that they were in species that we saw, but about how sunsets and "the irised spray of another country." these were distributed across the countless waterfalls." For students Signing up for a three-credit 4,000-mile track that we traversed, in last fall's field-based three-credit "monster course" means dedicating the weather, the topography and course on the American West, this a whole term's learning to one geology of the landscape, the range of light was a classroom. topic, but understanding it from presence or absence of water, and Whether reading aloud from John myriad angles. One could say more." Muir's account of the Tuolumne that students studied ecology At each stage of the journey, Meadows (while in the Tuolumne and natural history with John, the class met with government Meadows), volunteering with public policy and the wilderness agency personnel, activists, non- wilderness managers in Yosemite with Ken, and the literature of profit staffers, ranchers, scientists, National Park, or spending the the American West with both, nature poets, and alumni active weekend visiting a local ranching but in truth there was never any in wilderness management and family with divergent views on separation by disciplines. In the related fields. In Nevada, at environmental politics, students best traditions of human ecology, Pyramid Lake, they met with Paiute saw the American West in its own learning extended to every hour tribal managers; at Mono Lake, they light, impossible to do from a of the day and proliferated in all met with the activists who saved classroom in Maine. directions. Beginning in California, the lake some twenty years ago. "We wanted to immerse the the class trekked eastward into Says Anneke Hart '16, "The Mono students in the culture, landscape, the Great Basin Desert, south to Lake Committee was moved that a and natural history of the West, Yosemite National Park and the bunch of twenty-somethings knew 12 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE about and cared about their efforts Bethlehem, provided its own kind of to save the lake." There, poet and depth. Past Monster Classes environmental activist Gary Snyder By the time they arrived in gave an impromptu reading. Playing Albuquerque for the National 2014 Made in Italy: Intercultural off the unique history, landscape, Wilderness Conference, says John, Encounters in the Veneto culture, and political reality of each the students were "clearly aware (Heath Cabot, Salvatore Poier) setting, different themes were of the meaning and importance 2013 The Unexpected Journey: explored along the way: in the of material that would have been Art, Literature. and History on the Cadillac Desert, part of the infamous mysterious six weeks earlier," Road in Nuevo Mexico Death Valley, the class focused on material that gets to the heart of (Catherine Clinger, Karen Waldron) land development and water policy, today's most pressing debates a subject starkly conveyed by a trip about land conservation, water 2013 Guatemala (Todd and Christa Little-Siebold) to Hoover Dam, according to John. policy, and wilderness advocacy and As Ken wrote for the COA management in the West. There, 2010/ongoing Spring in Vichy. News website, "Water defines the students discussed their work with france West. Nowhere is this more true some of the nation's top wilderness (various faculty) than with a small fish that exists in experts, meeting Terry Tempest isolated pools in Death Valley and Williams, whom they had just read 2009/10 UK, Germany: Our Daily the Mojave Desert. In the field with and discussed, along with radical Bread: following Grains through the food System California Department of Fish and activist Dave Foreman, co-founder of (Suzanne Morse, Molly Anderson) Wildlife fisheries biologist Steve Earth First. For Anneke, a highlight Parmenter, the class surrounded a of the conference was, "knowing 2009 The Maine Woods small, warm spring pool where most what Dave Foreman meant when he (Ken Cline, Steve Ressel, Bonnie Tai, of the surviving Shoshone pupfish told a story about being chased by Tonia Kittelson, MPhil '11) in the world live. This ghost of the a musk OX in Alaskan backcountry 2006 Guatemala Pleistocene was thought extinct, but and realizing that that wouldn't be (Todd and Christa Little-Siebold, following state, federal, and private a bad way to die." Six weeks earlier, David Camp) efforts, the population is now over she says, she might not have four hundred-but all in this one laughed-or understood. 2005 Tobago: Tropical Marine tiny pool." Later the class joined the The theme of the course was Ecology (Ken Cline, Helen Hess, Chris biologist in sealing a leak that was echoed in the keynote address by Petersen) dewatering habitat for the highly Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, endangered Amargosa vole. who said, "We all know that the 2005 Art & Community in the Before dinner each night, the best classrooms have no walls." Ken South Carolina Lowlands group reflected on the expedition, emphasizes the point: "We taught (Dru Colbert, Tora Johnson, MPhil '03) discussing passages from, say, the this class in this 'best classroom' and 2001 Plants and Animals in Peril: field journal of explorer John C. were able to do things that we could Maine's Endangered Species at the Frémont-or their own field journals. never have accomplished back at George B. Dorr Museum Over the course of a few weeks, the COA." (Dru Colbert, Steve Ressel, Rick quality of their insights deepened Agrees Anneke, "This course Stevenson '93, Dianne Clendaniel) significantly. Says Erickson, "Having helped remind me why it's worth 2000 Maine to Tennessee: Rivers six weeks to explore such different, going through the struggle of (Don Cass, Ken Cline, Helen Hess) but abutting, landscapes allowed higher education: there is life us to notice distribution patterns beyond reading about what happens 1996/ongoing Winter in Yucatán. and make connections that we in the world while you're stuck Mexico probably wouldn't have made in inside." (various faculty) a shorter amount of time or with 1989 New Zealand Seminar a quicker form of transportation." Michael Diaz-Griffith '09 is the (Peter Corcoran) The literary component, including assistant director of New York's Winter conservationist Terry Tempest Antiques Show. He and his husband, 1989 COA in Greece: Language. Art Williams' Red, an impassioned Alonso Diaz Rickards '12, live in New History. and Painting plea for the preservation of the York City. (JoAnne Carpenter) Canyonlands, Edward Abbey's 1988 India: The Asian Journal controversial essay collection, (Bill Carpenter) The Serpents of Paradise, and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 13 field, Story. & Studio: Classic COA Classes Chris Petersen and Ite Sullivan '18 unravel a net to gather specimens on Northeast Creek, near campus. Behind them are teaching assistants Devina Viswanathan '17 and Tyler Prest '16. Photo by Shlomit Auciello '17. Scouring the sparkling eyes and sense of humor behavior and biology of fish. He's Waters: Chris belie his gray hair and beard. He is especially interested in the fish the first to put on a wetsuit, step of coral reefs. "This means that Petersen's Decades into the surf, and dive into the chilly I have spent thousands of hours waters where students compare snorkeling on rocky and coral of Marine Biology the similarities and differences reefs from the Gulf of California of species of whelk, learn the to Panama in the Eastern Pacific, By Shlomit Aucillo '17 relationships between the plants and throughout the Caribbean," he and animals along the shore, and says. "I am, most of all, a behavioral Each week during the fall term, gather specimens for both the ecologist, trying to understand why students in Chris Petersen's marine touch tank in COA's George B. Dorr animals behave the way they do." biology class don rubber boots Museum of Natural History and for and waders to prowl the shores of dissection and observation under A quest for knowledge Frenchman Bay and Mount Desert the microscopes in the college's I've come to this class as a Narrows. Carrying nets, buckets, zoology laboratory. 61-year-old undergraduate with and survey equipment, they follow As a researcher, Chris is a focus on screenwriting and the energetic professor whose focused on the reproductive an interest in gender transition 14 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE and the relationship between been conducting this survey since of the environment than would climate change and pandalid he began teaching at COA twenty- small-scale human activities. What shrimp reproduction. These four years ago; the list itself was I learned was that more than half small hermaphroditic creatures compiled by students in his first of current marine litter comes from are an important part of Maine's COA marine biology class. recreational activities on the shore, winter economy and are seeing a Chris sees this list as a way with an additional 28 to 33 percent dramatic decrease in population. of encouraging students to think coming from cigarette butts-such At the same time, human beings about how they might want to a tiny item, but the 845,000 tons of are experiencing an increase in organize their environmental cigarette butts that end up in the the number of those identifying as efforts. "There are a million worthy ocean each year presents a huge transgender and seeking medical things to work on right now. Which problem. A recent survey named solutions to their dysphoria. I way to go is an interesting question cigarettes as the most littered item hoped that Chris' marine biology to me," he says. After two decades, on the nation's roads and beaches. course would help me understand the survey has become a record Lexie Taylor '18 also changed how sex change occurs in one of the trends of marine concerns her perspective on trash. "I was species while I explore the impacts and the changes in the perception very shocked to see how much on communities that stem from of those threats. Currently, he trash was really in the world's both types of transitions. What I says, "global climate change is oceans. I did not put it that high on found was far more than what I was the obvious one. It went from my threat list, but when I saw those seeking. I wasn't alone. not important at all to the most presentations I wanted to change "Working in the cold water off important threat that students it. It was also really interesting to Otter Cliff Point to collect algae perceive." The survey begins a think about what made a threat for an ongoing research project in conversation about how students' more threatening, and how it could connection with Acadia National perceptions and ranking of threats be the urgency of the threat or Park gave me an opportunity to and solvability differ from those the severity." For Rose, the survey discover that I love fieldwork," says of the general population. It also "showed how the less people knew Rose Dawson '18, whose current becomes a mark of the impact of about an issue, the less threatening focus is botany. This algae study the course. "Being willing to change they were likely to rank it-seeing revisits the exact location of tide your mind after listening to one's climate change so far down the list pools observed in the 1920s to see peers and the course material is not that long ago was an interesting if or how the algal community has really critical," he adds. discovery." changed over the last century. Like Chris, I want to "By reexamining the same Assessment revisited understand why animals behave areas for algal community At the end of the term the class the way we do. What I learned from composition, we could see if there reviewed its rankings, along with him, in the waters off Mount Desert were any changes that might those made in 1995 and 2007. In Island, in the bright light shining be predicted by either climate 1995, climate change was ranked on the stage of a microscope, change or species that had been fifteenth out of sixteen. Of greatest and in the animated discussions introduced since the first study," concern then were oil spills-this in our classroom, highlighted the Chris says. was six years after the Exxon Valdez complexity and interconnection of A second team, of which oil tanker hit Prince William Sound's all of us who share the life of this I was a member, spent a half- Bligh Reef. But always, climate earth. As I learned more about the dozen mornings digging sections change was considered among the life cycles of northern shrimp and of cold, gritty clam flats to help hardest problems to solve. other marine species, Chris helped local regulators determine where When our class took the survey me gain a deeper understanding commercial diggers can seek future at the beginning of the term, I of how our small actions radiate harvests. gave trash-inorganic waste-a through our environment and ranking of thirteen. At the end of our decisions have consequences Threat assessment the term, I was surprised to find that may not be recognized for One of the fixtures of Chris' the class consensus ranked it as generations. The relationships class is an assessment asking second only to climate change as we build determine the future we students at the beginning of the a threat to marine ecosystems. share. term to prioritize sixteen existing My original ranking was based on threats to ocean ecosystems, my assumption that corporate- Shlomit Auciello '17 is a writer and ranking them in terms of both sponsored activities would have a photographer from Rockland, Maine, concern and solvability. Chris has stronger influence on the quality completing her BA at COA. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 15 Students gather in the year's second iteration of Karen Waldron's Nature of Narrative class, Nature of Narrative II. Clockwise om the front, Eliza Oldach 15 (back to the camera), Galen Hecht '17, Karen, Maria Alejandra Escalante '15, Micaela Clark 17, Graham Hallett '16, Omer Shamir '16, Eloise Schultz '16. Nature of Narrative: set of materials, Nature of Narrative can see everything in it. Novels in Karen Waldron's offers a way of departing from particular hold elements interesting assumptions about periods of time to human ecology. How is the novel Journey Through and materiality, a way of, as Donna commenting on or embedding Haraway might put it, becoming-with resource extraction, for example? Consciousness one another and our stories. The You can see that is part of how a course is the initiation of a process, world is being built." By Sarah Haughn '08 of recognizing story. Through Nature of Narrative, With Karen, students students read a dozen modern Delineated in print as a ten- collectively listen for and compose novels, ranging from Virginia week class, Nature of Narrative routes of knowing and making Woolf to Monique Wittig, from with Karen Waldron has a felicitous consciousness. Through and as Italo Calvino to Toni Morrison. The tendency to persist. A COA alumna narrative, these routes confront course supplements the novel in my ninth year of the course, I normative, hegemonic discourse form with theories of fiction-a continue to live in the conscious and provide alternative ecological heft of pages from Mikhail Bakhtin study of narrative as a way of being practices for thinking and to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Though, part of and also at times apart from becoming. says Karen, "I'd take a novel over what gets called the world. As Karen says, "The novel a theory any day." Citing scholar Nature of Narrative for me, is a world-making or world- Barbara Christian's essay "The Race then, is not so much a class as it is representing enterprise. You for Theory," she draws attention a path. While many classes provide can see economics, philosophy, to the theorizing work that stories an academic training located in a art, social theory, literary themselves do. determinate period with a specific argumentation, and science. You The interplay between the 16 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE novel and theory, Karen adds, is Nature of Narrative creates is a way it is not about analytic mastery, about "learning to read with more of understanding how meaning about grasping a universalizing layers and levels and ways of gets made and how meanings whole through the modes and thinking about reading. It opens up make worlds. This process requires mechanisms of a discipline. multiplicity, ways of conceptualizing increased awareness of how Rather, studies of literature are the fact that we all inhabit and tell one is conscious, as well as what at their best when they consider each other stories." constitutes consciousness-its how each whole story makes up Likewise, through the practice multiplicity, its collectivity, its part of another whole, and that of writing a series of short papers, contingency. This is evident not our consciousness is a process, Nature of Narrative students only in the works of theory and a practice, a partial collecting of become aware of the connection fiction students engage, but also in meaningful wholes. between narrative and narrative Nature of Narrative's pedagogy. Nine years after sitting in the theory. Thoughts are stretched "Karen did not lecture to Nature of Narrative classroom, on the frames of the stories from us, preside over us, instruct our its influence holds. Along with which they emerge. thinking, but instead struggled Karen, I believe that through these But that is just the beginning. with us to decipher the fiction, stories, which are always both As Alyssa Coleman '16 says, "Nature questioned us, helped us sculpt partial and whole, we grow capable of Narrative was not a class on how our nebulous ideas, encouraged of overturning the anecdotes of to read novels but rather a class on us to move deeper and deeper mastery with the antidote of our how to approach the reading of our within these books," says Matthew multiple mysteries. We are always worlds and realities. It changed the Kennedy '18. "Now, I'd like to think on the way, changing paths via our way in which I relate to narrative I'm a better reader-of novels, of stories as well as the stories of in that I shifted from thinking of a experiences, of the people around those with whom we travel. narrative as something like a short me, of the themes pervading the story I wrote in middle school to the world we inhabit. And I've found Sarah Haughn '08 finishes her very material of life that allowed satisfaction in only ever getting master's in English with an emphasis me, or middle school, or writing to halfway there." in the creative writing of poetry at even exist." Perhaps what Nature of UC Davis this June, then joins Davis' Both portal and practice, Narrative teaches all of us is performance studies PhD program. occurrence and occasion, the path that literary study is best when Ernie McMullen's Lasting Impact By Alonso Diaz Rickards '12 Photos by Becca Haydu '16 Once, halfway through his Ceramics I course, Ernie McMullen was demonstrating how to throw a large pitcher. This is the hardest task imaginable for a beginner ceramist, as it requires raising a tall cylinder and shaping it to be both capacious and lightweight. Ernie's apparent ease at raising and shaping the rotating vessel was met by the class with real awe. Afterwards, someone eagerly asked him what object had been most Ernie McMullen advises a student in difficult to make during his career his Problems in Painting class. as a potter. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 17 "Have you seen my paintings?" was Ernie's reply. Alicia Hynes '11 was an advisee, student, and During his forty-two years at COA, Ernie McMullen teaching assistant of Ernie's. "I saw students come has taught courses and tutorials in painting, life to Ernie who were terrified of pencil and paper, who drawing, photography, two-dimensional design, had enrolled simply to satisfy the registrar," she says. calligraphy, and ceramics. As a painter, he specializes "Throughout the course of ten weeks, Ernie would in hyper-realistic and classically composed takes on the tenaciously transform these tentative students into local landscape, combining a luminist's eye with the artists, somehow drawing out of them talents, visual brush of an Italian calligrapher. He is also a piano tuner acuity, and creativity they perhaps did not know and amateur pianist, a tea enthusiast, and an occasional dwelled inside them." furniture maker. To this range of assiduously cultivated Of the many classes I took with Ernie, and for which skills, Ernie brings a unity of approach that models for I was also a teaching assistant, Life Drawing brought out students invaluable transdisciplinary lessons. the most visceral responses from students. Even on a good day, the sense of failure could be overwhelming, and Ernie would never spare a feeling, pointing out the many unconscious distortions we had just spent half an hour so carefully rendering. Yet in tackling our recurring weak spots, we developed individual, unique solutions, which were greatly encouraged. Drawing had become art-making, acquiring the significance, and the thrill, of a battle with the psyche. "Looking back," recalls Josh Winer '91, now COA's lecturer in photography, "I realize that what I learned in that 2-D course in terms of hand and eye skills was critically important for my future life. But so, too, was the confidence I gained in doing what I'd considered impossible. Yes, Ernie taught me to draw, but he also Ernie McMullen assists Mackenzie Watson '16 during one of taught me so much more: he taught me to believe in my his final classes, Problems in Painting: Techniques, Skills, and own talents, and that persistence pays off." Vision. The many skills Ernie has taught and cultivated offer students a direct, intuitive way of interacting with His Problems in Painting course, for example, their material environment, and of finding their place begins by familiarizing students with the raw materials within it. For some, it is in admiring the specific hue that they will be employing. When I took the course in winter Mount Desert Island takes on during a long summer 2008, we had a hand in the cutting, sealing, gessoing, sunset-and subsequently noting that even the best and sanding of the panels we were to paint on. We were camera is never able to quite capture it. For others, it made aware of the precise history and qualities of the is the dribbling of mysterious glazes over earthenware brushes and paints we were to employ-never student mugs and being fascinated by the unreproducible grade-and shown the correct way of handling them. results. A high sensitivity to craftsmanship permeated the For me, it was Ernie's exacting standards in painting entire course, and hinged together a history of pictorial that most shaped my understanding of the relationship composition, optical theory, and aesthetic appreciation. between the arts and sciences. By his instruction In that class, as in his Life Drawing and Two- and example I learned that drawing or painting Dimensional Design courses, Ernie pushed students with convincing realism demands fully conscious, to depict things, places, or people in a recognizable, subjective interpretation of the most challenging sort. realistic way. He offered no formula, however, to His approach to art-making-always hands-on and accomplish this. As we all soon found out, nothing could inquisitive about the physical world itself-continues have been more difficult. to shape my work as a painter. It is a true ethos for a Such seriousness could initially be off-putting to lifetime of learning, dedication, and lasting joy. students expecting art courses to be downtime from Ernie McMullen retired this spring. He will now the "harder" academic pursuits of marine science focus full-time on his painting. or climate politics, and confusing to those who only wanted to express emotion without going through the Alonso Diaz Rickards '12 is currently working on a series of slog of attempting objectivity. Yet as the term advanced, paintings depicting the parks and urban life of Mexico City, the exhausting process of training eye and hand where he grew up and spent part of 2014. His work can be enabled students to better articulate their individual seen at alonsodiazrickards.com. visions. 18 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Students in the Samsø course, Islands: Energy, Economy, and Community, take in the view of the Danish island of Samsø atop a one- megawatt turbine that powers 650 homes. From left: Zabet NeuCollins '15, Nathaniel Diskint, MPhil '16, Surya Karki '16, Paige Nygaard '17, and in front, Kate Unkel 14. Photo by Jay Friedlander. To Samsø and Beyond By Donna Gold Last fall, sixteen College of the Atlantic students, two faculty members, five Maine islanders, and two members of Maine's Island Institute staff gathered on Denmark's carbon negative, fully renewably powered Samsø Island to study how the 3,800 Samsingers (rising to 13,000 in summer) became energy independent. The group wanted to understand the process, discover what worked and what didn't-and what might be applied to Maine islands. By climbing inside wind turbines and peering beneath solar panels, participants learned something of the nuts and bolts of energy efficiency. But as they spoke with Samsingers, they discovered that the most important lessons had to do with something quite inefficient: listening. And patience. To make broad changes, they found, it's essential to hear everyone's needs, concerns, desires. After all, many Samsingers were at first quite skeptical about renewable energy efforts. "Changes have to occur not just physically but socially," says course participant Zakary Kendall '17. "Social and technological change can't be put into place by outside entities: it has to seep through the cracks of a community. While working on an energy project on Maine's Vinalhaven Island, a fellow student and I shook every hand offered to us and made it a priority to know every name of every face; we made ourselves part of the community." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 19 The work continues on Maine's offshore islands, and closer by, on Mount Desert Island. Because tightening older, leaky homes makes a major difference in energy use, Samsø participants Paige Nygaard '17 and Andrea Russell, MPhil '18 created a pilot project on Mount Desert Island offering group discounts for energy audits and air sealing, while also streamlining the process and paperwork for a dozen COA staff and faculty members. In a kind of relay, students in the hands-on, project-based course, Physics and Mathematics of Sustainable Energy taught by Samsø co-instructor Anna Demeo, COA's director of energy education and management, and Dave Feldman, faculty member in physics and math, have taken up Andrea and Paige's work, and are expanding it. By fall, Anna hopes the greater MDI community can take advantage of similar energy audit and air sealing discounts. Further steps toward a more energy-efficient MDI range from group purchasing of energy audits, air sealing, and insulation, to community solar, enabling community members to offset electricity bills through centralized solar arrays. Delineating the projects' economic, social, logistical, and technological aspects is another effort of students in this spring's sustainable energy course. The Samsø Island project was made possible by the Fund for Maine Islands, linking COA with the Island Institute to form the Collaborative for Island Energy Research and Action, or CIERA. Below: Paige Nygaard '17 and Andrea Russell, MPhil '18 take a warm, fully insulated break from writing their final presentation on the insulation project they organized to complete the Samsø course. Photo by Paige Nygaard '17. 20 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Turrets-Changes Matter What is a BTU? The British thermal unit Tightening really does lower emissions & costs (BTU or Btu) is a traditional unit of energy equal to Extensive work on The Turrets in 2013 was primarily focused on preserving about 1055 joules. the historic building. Still, tighter windows and doors have gone a long way to making the 120-year-old building 20% more energy efficient. A new, more It is the amount of energy effective propane boiler in the annex (emitting about half as much CO2 as the needed to cool or heat one old boiler) helps too. Emissions from The Turrets have been lowered by 25 pound of water by one percent, making it cleaner (by a longshot) than the average campus building degree Fahrenheit. relying on fossil fuels (of course our newest additions, outfitted with solar and pellets, outshine them all). Before Renovation 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal One 4" 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal wooden Match generates 1 BTU when burned Annual Fuel Consumption = completely. 300 Gal 875,000,000 BTUs of energy from Cactual size) 6,300 gallons of #2 heating oil After Renovation 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal 500 Gal Annual Fuel Consumption = 700,000,000 2,600 300 Gal Gal BTUs of energy from 3,300 gallons of #2 heating oil and 2,600 gallons of propane The data for this page comes from Nicholas Urban '15, especially from his senior project, "A Feasibility Assessment of College of the Atlantic's Energy Goals," in which Nick assesses where COA is now in regards to energy usage and suggests a roadmap toward the college's goal of becoming free of fossil fuels by 2050. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 21 Students in the Community School's first year gather with teacher Bethany Anderson '13. Photo by Jasmine Smith 09. A Sense of Self and Place: The Community School of Mount Desert Island By Eloise Schultz '16 On an early spring day in ecology. Nearby, a family of felted enrolls fourteen students from Seal Harbor, Maine, sunlight gnomes sits on a shelf beneath a across the island. streams through the windows of clothesline hung with watercolors Founding director Jasmine a classroom overlooking Acadia drying in the sun. Smith '09 has been working to National Park's Stanley Brook. These two spaces in Seal establish a place-based school Inside one corner of the warmly lit Harbor's Abby Chapel form the on MDI for years (see Fall 2010). room, shoes and jackets have been inside classrooms of the first year Originally, says Jasmine, "Nick [Jenei neatly ordered beside a bookshelf, of The Community School of Mount '09] and I were thinking about a while a blackboard is covered Desert Island. A door leads to the high school geared towards the with a richly chalked drawing of a school's outside classroom: a field complex, big ideas that a human gnarled tree, its roots entangled stretching to Seal Harbor's pebble ecological education inspires. in an underworld exploration of beach, protected by an island at the The mission hasn't changed, Norse myths and fables. The walls mouth of the harbor. Though truly, but it's been retooled." Through of the adjacent room are hung all of Mount Desert Island serves an integrated, expeditionary with colorful fabrics creating a as a classroom for this human- curriculum, weekly outings, and cozy burrow for a study of winter ecological school, which currently town meeting-style gatherings, 22 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE students and teachers have found floe," says Jasmine. "We've seen to communicate what is on their new ways to cultivate a sense of things blossom and die back. In hearts and minds," Jasmine says. self and of place. the spring, we'll start to see it Mindfulness exercises during each Jasmine's years at COA, cycle to completion." Some of the class's morning meeting help to her stint as the director of the students' responsibilities include build an understanding that "to be college's Summer Field Studies, and trail maintenance and visitor a positive, participating member of connections made as a homeschool information. That may sound like a a community, one must know and teacher on the island, laid the big project for a five-year-old, but be at peace with oneself." foundation of the Community it's an opportunity to gain real-life Weekly cycles roll into seasonal School. Her experience is enhanced skills and make connections to the ones, with transitions marked by by a profusion of human ecologists: land. community festivals. In the fall, Bethany Anderson '13 teaches the "They were just meticulous," students organized crafts for a older class, Nick teaches music, recalls Jasmine. "Some of the harvest festival and ventured out Karen Ressel (wife of COA biologist younger students worked on on Northeast Creek to celebrate Steve Ressel) and adjunct Patricia clipping bracken fern from the path. the cranberry harvest. Joined by Ayala-Rocabado teach handwork One child sat down with the visitor their families on Heirloom Apple and Spanish. The board includes log and started writing where Day, students pressed a bounty COA founding president Ed Kaelber, everyone was from, which started of apples into cider at the Smith along with education faculty the conversation of why people Family Farm, bright with fall color. members and COA alumni, and is come to this island from all over the It's one of Jasmine's favorite led by Lynn Boulger, COA's dean of world." memories: institutional advancement. Another fall expedition took "I vividly recall looking "We don't do things like other the students to the Bar Harbor around at all of our families and schools," says third-grader Samara Food Pantry where they learned community members while a Gilhooley, daughter of Lauren Rupp about food access and community student ensemble from COA played '05, COA's coordinator of wellness service. "The visit brought string instruments on a nearby and campus engagement. "We an awareness to the children knoll. The wind was blowing apple spend lots of time outside exploring that there were people in our prints that we had drying on a nature, building, and getting to community in need of something clothesline. Children were sharing know our friends and lots of places our children take for granted: food. their favorite heirloom varieties around here." Weekly outings, They felt called to help support with community members amidst focused on the current themes of members of the community, even a hearty potluck lunch. It was a each class and warmed by a sense ones they didn't know. We're not moment of coming together, of of camaraderie and adventure, sugarcoating it. We're showing beautiful realization." form a major component of the them the essence of life." After less than a year, the school environment. Following the food pantry school has already begun to lay "We have so much fun and visit, the school traced some of the the ground for a new generation of always get into something messy!" vegetables back to their origins at human ecologists: when finishing exclaims second-grader Lolie Ellis. COA's Beech Hill Farm. "We learned up an expedition titled "Our Home, "You know, an adventure, like about the farm's relationship with Our Place, Our Community," trying to figure out a way off of Bar the community and the role it Jasmine asked one of her students Island, getting caked with clay at plays with this system. It's all if she remembered what it meant [local potter] Rocky Mann's, and about context: we're learning that to be a steward. Echoing the dream almost getting stuck when we were stewardship means not just the of a school five years in the making, crossing an old beaver dam!" land, but the people." the student responded, "Someone While the expeditions may take Service opportunities are just who loves a place and takes care of students all over the island, the one part of the curriculum's focus it." Community School also dedicates on cultivating a sense of self within For more information, visit itself to a particular place. The the community; every Wednesday thecommunityschool.me Maine Coast Heritage Trust has both classes gather in a town assigned the students stewardship meeting to share announcements, Eloise Schultz '16 taught singing of the shore path set alongside the cares and concerns, and ideas or classes at The Community School in dramatic cliffs at Cooksey Drive suggestions. "Regardless of the the fall of 2014. Her studies at COA Overlook. "We've been there on a type of share, children are given have focused on education and the balmy September day and we've the practice and opportunity to human ecology of voice. been there when the trail is an ice find their voice inside and learn COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 23 Untitled, graphite, colored pencil, and acrylic ink on paper, 22 X 30 inches, 2011 Drawn Diaries: Valerie Giles '88 Valerie Giles draws lines and loops and eddies with the intensity of a woman on a personal journey. For her, these lines are akin to the way the bark of a tree develops, or grass leaves fold in upon each other. She is entranced by the shapes that are there, and those that aren't-the empty, negative space between. Currently, Valerie is working out of an elegantly spare apartment on New York City's Upper West Side, with a view over a terrace and the intricate patterns of a vine-covered wall. Her journeys on paper are created in pencil or ink; she then "paints" them with colored pencils, acrylic ink, glue, or other materials. These drawings reflect a life that has been focused on discovery. Born to artist parents and raised in rural Pennsylvania and New York, Valerie was introduced to both natural history and art, and allowed to nurture everything from caterpillars and kestrels to horses and goats. Most important, she was left free to wander the woods near her home. "Being ten and being able to go where no one knows where you are is exciting and important and wonderful," she says. "I could explore in my own way and not someone else's prescribed way-it's a very different thing to discover an animal on your own than when someone shows you. There's nothing like it." 24 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Valene 6.9 64 Untitled, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 23 X 30 inches, 2007 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 25 Untitled, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 13 X 17 inches, 2012 COA allowed something of a continuation of that freedom. Valerie knew she would always draw, but she didn't want to study art; she preferred to stay within her own voice. What she wanted was natural history. She studied taxidermy and museum preparation with Skip Buyers-Basso '83, ornithology with the late Bill Drury, invertebrate zoology with Steve Katona, and conservation biology with John Anderson. But her senior project was a series of drawings. "I don't think I'd have had the option to do that at many schools. That to me is so important, the sciences inform me, and then I can make art that's all a part of it." Valerie later worked for Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences in Plymouth, Massachusetts; with David Wagner at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, contributing scientific illustrations and photographs to his guides Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America and Caterpillars of Eastern North America; and as a scientific assistant at the American Museum of Natural History. But Valerie doesn't like speaking about her drawings-for her, the lines she makes are her words; the drawings are like diary entries or letters. As she looks through her portfolio, noticing the modulations of color of one drawing, the delicacy of a line as it intersects with another, she recalls the pupa of a butterfly, the fin of a manatee. Subtly, they reflect the experience of her forty-eight years. Here, in these drawings, she says, "I know what I'm saying." -DG Valerie Giles' work can be found at the Danese/Corey Gallery: danesecorey.com/artists/valerie-giles. 26 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Unconventional Angles Story and illustrations by Khristian Mendez '15 College of the Atlantic is a community that never ceases to challenge. During my time as a student I have been constantly pushed to examine the foundations of my beliefs and actions-not only in classes, but also in highly engaging conversations with other members of the community. It occurred to me that the conversations and intellectual inquiries which sprout daily on our campus likely have a similar effect on others: that we are all constantly changing the way one another thinks. Curious, I set out to question a range of community members about specific instances that challenged and deepened their understanding of the world around us by looking at it from new, unconventional angles. When the climate changes your landscape Shifting priorities Trudi Zundel '13, alumna Jarly Bobadilla, staff Trudi Zundel spent much of her time at Raised in Cuba, Jarly Bobadilla lived in Florida COA preparing to navigate the United Nations' before coming to Maine where he has worked in COA's environmental policy conferences and then reflecting information technology department for five years. He upon the meetings. She traveled the world to follow is an active conversationalist, happy to talk while he what governments were doing (or saying they would updates the software of the community's computers, do) to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and adapt to a helps keep our network functional and efficient, and changing climate. fixes the occasional broken printer. He's also sat in on One of her a-ha moments happened in lecturer a few classes, and likes to jog with students. Candice Stover's class, Classic Shorts: Changing At COA, says Jarly, "Both sides of a conversation Weather, just before she went off to the 2013 UN put effort into understanding. And that is where you Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha, begin listening to people. They tell you their stories, Qatar. Reading and writing stories about weather but also their mistakes. Usually people don't share and season changes brought home, says Trudi, their mistakes." "the emotional, psychological, social, and cultural This humble, human communion frames deep implications of changes to weather and climate. The conversations, adds Jarly, ones that have changed class showed a more personal, emotional side of him. climate change, in addition to the politics and grave Jarly recalls talking with Rich Borden, faculty predictions to which climate activists can too quickly member in psychology. "Rich writes books and letters, become desensitized." Climate change will likely he's a philosopher, and he's also built three houses. affect the landscape she and her family call home, When I came to the US, I had a very closed mind altering the seasons by which she has lived her whole about myself: I worked with computers. My reference life. Ultimately, she says, it might be the stories of was my family's life in Miami: have a job and a nice car environmental change and loss, and not scientific so people can see you're important." data and the threat of global catastrophe, that will Jarly's connection with COA helped to shift help people wrap their minds (and hearts) around how his priorities-and now, with a friend's help, he's climate change will affect them. And maybe it will constructing a house of his own. even catalyze more of us to action. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 27 More than an academic community Pelts and a reimagined ecology lesson Dru Colbert, faculty Jamie Bastedo, parent Dru Colbert and her partner Nancy Andrews came Jamie Bastedo of Yellowknife, Canada is the to teach at COA from the School of the Art Institute father of current senior Nimisha Bastedo. A science of Chicago, an environment strongly influenced by writer, Jamie specializes in ecology and environmental art and artistic practice. "I used to teach art to art studies. During Nimisha's first year, he and her mom, students; I used to hang out with artists," she says. Brenda, visited COA for Family and Alumni Weekend "While this was great and exciting, Nancy and I began and attended John Anderson's section of the Human to find we had a very limited social group." Coming Ecology Core Course. to COA exposed Dru to a sense of community that "John was talking about an ecological classic: inspired her to include community-based projects as the relationship between the population of lynx and part of her class assignments, and to create massive snowshoe hare. Anyone who's taken an ecology performance installations tied to local history class in North America has seen the drawings that involving people from across Mount Desert Island. accompany this lesson: first you draw the graph, The occasion that impacted Dru the most was a then the bunnies go up, which means the lynx go up, coming together of people that profoundly changed ultimately leading the bunnies down." her sense of community. It happened during and But then the class conversation took an after Nancy's time in an intensive care unit. "Growing unexpected turn. up, community to me meant my family and a few "The next minute we were talking about fashion others in the town where I lived," Dru says. But in late trends in Europe. Here we go folks! I buckled up. 2004, soon after Dru underwent a life-threatening We discussed how lynx coats may or may not be experience herself, Nancy had to be life-flighted to popular as a fashion trend. We discussed the quality Boston where she spent four weeks in the hospital, of the trapping records archive from Hudson Bay in three in the ICU. During that time, says Dru, Winnipeg." Students questioned the credibility of the "everybody rallied around us; they sent e-mails and information, and how the data might be skewed. "Off stayed in touch with me during the process." And we went to Louisiana-they probably don't have lynx when she and Nancy returned to their home in Otter or snowshoe hare, but other species that may tap Creek, "our house was clean, our bills had been paid, into the fashion niche. We went around the world, there were flowers on the table, and fresh food in our we talked about institutions, we went down into the refrigerator. Even after that, people had organized to data." Finally John drew the expected graph on the cook dinner for us every night for a month." board and the class circled back to lynx and hare. This experience changed the way Dru thought For Jamie, this exploration underscored "the point about community: "This amount of community of questioning and exploring what we believe to be support between faculty and staff members is true on the surface. COA is a place that digs very unheard of anywhere else. I was so humbled and felt deeply and very widely-we didn't discuss this in my so much a part of something that was more than ecology class in university." an academic space." This sense of community is something Dru experiences to this day. 28 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Bring your paintbrushes to the UN Khristian Mendez '15, student To close this exploration, I thought it fitting to part exclude the other depending on the setting? I left share one of my personal a-ha moments. Last winter the studio with cold, wet hands, confused. I took Doreen Stabinsky's Global Environmental In our final class meeting, Doreen asked Policy course, Animation 2 with Nancy Andrews, and everyone to share something we learned during the Constructing Visual Narrative with Dru Colbert. The mock negotiations. I voiced my paintbrush-inspired policy class contained not just a heavy workload, conundrum. Doreen smiled and pushed for more. but also two intense weeks of mock negotiations on As I spoke, I began to see that the sustainable the United Nation's sustainable development goals. development goals' negotiations-informed as they This meant I had seventeen meetings during the were by other parts of the UN system and by what final weeks of the term, while also completing some societies tend to think-do not recognize artistic of the longest hours and heaviest studio work I had creation as a human need. And yet, almost all of experienced in art classes. One night I was washing our readings about the process of negotiation spoke my paintbrushes, thinking about the Environmental about the need for creativity and new ideas to spur Policy class, and how our mock negotiations were positive outcomes. My vision of myself, and of my about "everything" in the international environmental work in both international diplomacy and art, have policy world: marine biodiversity, food security, water, never been the same. economics, climate change, disasters, unemployment, forests, gender, health, population, and so forth. I looked at my paintbrush releasing the red acrylic paint under the stream of water, and I Being in contact with others at College of the wondered where this paint and the marks I had Atlantic catalyzes imagination and re-imagination made with it would fit in the universe of sustainable from intellectual and emotional perspectives. development. It then dawned on me that so far my While the content of these realizations cannot "artist side" was not spoken for in these negotiations. be written on diplomas, I consider them to be Yet sustainable development is supposed to be about the essence of the COA experience-one in which what humans need in order to live happy, decent lives learning is a challenging endeavor, where questions in harmony with nature. are posed that we haven't before asked seriously This was not just an academic conflict, but and openly, proposing new approaches to very old a deeply personal one. How could people I would problems. These new approaches highlight nuances meet and collaborate with at the United Nations we've ignored in the past, and open new horizons, negotiations recognize that artistic expression and contributing to the richness of a planet where, after creativity can inform what is being discussed if I millennia, we are still learning to live. hadn't made that connection myself? Would each Khristian Mendez '15 is originally from Guatemala City, Guatemala. His senior project, a piece of dramatic literature, was inspired by his involvement with UN negotiation processes on sustainable development and food security. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 29 Leaders of the Track The Human Ecology of Blocking and Jamming By Heather Candon '99 Ten women stand tight in a pack on scoring while also helping Beth Contact became integral to the an indoor track, geared head to toe penetrate the other pack. game. The sport enjoyed a devoted in helmets, mouth guards, elbow Off the track, Beth works as a fanbase until World War II depleted pads, wrist guards, knee pads, and teaching assistant at a therapeutic the derby of both player and roller skates. They are ready for school. The sport helps her to audience. battle. With a blow of the whistle, decompress from the stress of her In the early years of the new the pack shoves forward, a snarl of job. A single mother, derby is the millennium the sport was revived women pushing parallel around the only free time she has away from and reinvented, this time with oval track like a scrum on wheels. her daughter, whom her ex watches women at the helm. Men enjoyed This is roller derby, contact while Beth is at practice. a host of contact team sports, but sport on skates. On the track, she goes by few existed for women. Today, The two teams of five, made up Hammerdown, a colloquial according to roller derby advocates, of four blockers and one jammer, expression well-known to it is among the fastest-growing follow the same direction around downeasters as a certain manner sports in the world, with more the track. The calculated tangle of for getting something done. Each than a handful of human ecologists blockers from both teams skate woman self-designates her derby playing a role in its celebrated neck and neck, and are only a few name, typically a play on words that resurgence. beats ahead of the jammers who represents a mix of personal style, are trying to break through their skillset, and philosophy. For Beth, Testifying the derby human wall. A jammer is known Hammerdown is a way of life both To the uninitiated, roller derby by the star on her helmet-if it's on and off the track. A jammer has may look like a mess on wheels. But not apparent by how she's using to be fearless and aggressive. She there is an evident reverence that her body like a wrecking ball. Both has to take the hard hits and keep players have for the sport. They teams' jammers simultaneously moving forward. don't so much talk about roller try to push through the opposing derby as testify, such is the impact four blockers in order to continue Radically inclusive contact sport it has had on their lives. around the track. It's not until a Roller Derby has been around Carla Ganiel worked in COA's second pass through the rival pack since the early twentieth century, development office from 2005 to that a jammer can score, winning a but not until the early 2000s did 2007, and is now a staff member at point for each blocker she passes. it evolve to include the traits that the Corporation for National and In the thick of it is Beth distinguish it from other sports: Community Service in Washington, (Boland) Beaulieu '95, jostling to democratically principled, female- DC. Surly Jackson is her derby free herself from the group. She driven, and radically inclusive. name, after her favorite writer. takes a hip check from an opposing In 1935, sports promoter Carla herself is a writer; her blog blocker but stays steady on her Leo Seltzer created the "Whip My Assets" details her derby skates. Moving toward an opening, Transcontinental Roller Derby. adventures, among other topics. Beth grabs a teammate's jersey and Though skating had been She had already begun a personal whips herself forward. She flies growing in popularity since the quest to improve her fitness when along the inside track, then jumps 1880s, the epic proportion of the she saw her first derby bout. She the apex with masterful agility. She Transcontinental Roller Derby was wanted in. nails a perfect landing, scoring for something audiences hadn't seen "It's amazing to be with all her team. before. It was the first time men these women who are into fitness Beth plays the jammer and women competed together and exercise, not for beauty position for Bangor Roller Derby. and were subject to the same rules. or appeal, but to be able to do As she plows through the thicket Tens of thousands of spectators amazing things. You focus on your of the four opposing blockers, filled the stadiums. body being able to do what it needs her teammates play defense and What began as a coed race to do." offense at the same time. They skating event gradually turned into work to keep the rival jammer from small teams competing for points. 30 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Transformation on wheels for seven years and reflects on Sometimes there's passionate While a certain camaraderie what's at the heart of the sport: disagreement among people who is necessary for any team sport, "We're interdependent, we're are friends, but we work through it community is integral to roller self-determining. We create because we share a common goal." derby; leagues are skater-owned every aspect of the derby. In the To hear Sarah attest to the and operated. From logo designs to beginning it was necessary to be transformative power of derby, the creation of bylaws, players work this way because everything was one would think she was recalling together on all aspects of business, bootstrapped. But we've continued College of the Atlantic. "I've had the devoting a tremendous amount of because the ethos of our self- privilege of watching some women time to their league. governing community is highly start out timid and grow into Sarah Bockian '05, aka valued. There are people who strong, self-assured badasses. It's Sugarbush, works as a nurse put in more than twenty hours one of the best things derby does in Portland, Maine. She's been a week. Every member fulfills for people." playing with Maine Roller Derby some participatory requirement. Environmental educator Chrystal Seeley-Schreck '02, aka Swirly Burl, affirms Sarah's testimony, "The community is rooted in this crazy physical sport, but the impact is strengthening individuals inside and out in a way that is strengthening the human and ecological communities we are embedded in," she says. "Derby leagues are using their empowered enthusiasm to make the world around us better-human ecology at its finest." Roller derby is becoming international; many regard the sport's presence in places like Egypt and the United Arab Emirates an auspicious nod towards social change. Carla underscores that thought: "There's an awareness that we're creating an inclusive, empowered community that can change people's lives." From discomfort to discovery Indeed every player has a story of transformation. To take part in roller derby is to commit to the hard work of running a team Top: Former development staffer that functions as a self-sustaining Carla Ganiel, aka Surly Jackson, on the right, keeping the Chicago business with a diverse group Outfit's jammer from scoring. of women, as well as to take the Carla was playing in Chicago physical risks that come with the for the DC Rollergirls' traveling B-team, the National Maulers. sport itself. Conflict is inevitable. Photo by Pablo Raw. Business partners and teammates Bottom: Environmental educator are one and the same. Clear and jammer (known by the star communication is crucial to player on her helmet) Chrystal Seeley- safety on the track, and to the Schreck '02 is calling off the jam with her hands to prevent continued existence of the league. the other team's jammer from It takes a lot more than balance scoring. Photo by Jason Harris. to put on a pair of skates and race COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 31 at high intensity intervals, having skills are hard-won, built on the derbying, she now sees many people hit you as hard as they can. courage and confidence fueled by parallels. Like COA, she says, "roller The communities born of roller the unflaggingly supportive derby derby is inclusive and equalizing- derby are also the reason for the relationships. And the personal both create an environment that sport's success. Without the strong strength that each player discovers values individuality. Of course, relationships between teammates, through derby permeates the rest being a human ecologist, I see their courage to be vulnerable and of their lives. the ripple effects that my derby take risks wouldn't be possible. To Though kindergarten teacher involvement has had on other areas fall down repeatedly but get back and "jeerleader" Beth (Vickery) of my life. I am not particularly up. To withstand bruises or worse. Heidemann '91 hadn't originally good at jeering, so it forces me to To speak up in a crowd. These connected human ecology to face public failure and turn it into an opportunity to create joy from chaos. That certainly carries over into my kindergarten work." Massage therapist Sara Levine '04, aka Slayra, agrees. Reflecting on the sport's instructional value, she offers this: "In life, there are times when you have to push through uncomfortable situations and not give up. Roller derby taught me to feel less afraid to try new things." Discomfort as a launchpad for discovery is a familiar concept for human ecologists given the oft-repeated quote of the late biology faculty member Bill Drury, hardwired into our collective unconscious: Pay attention. You are about to learn something.* Just don't forget to wear your protective gear. Additional COA women who have been involved in roller derbies include: UNIDA Tina Franco '16, aka Spitfire Annarose Madamma '16, aka Annaphylactic Shock Brynn Nelson '05, aka Full Nelson Having spent nearly two decades Top: Beth (Vickery) Heidemann living on islands, first in Maine and '91, aka Seven Deadly Spins, then in Spain, Heather Candon '99 is "jeering" for Maine's Rock Coast a writer living in New York. Rollers. Beth holds the 2012 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science *Bill Drury's full quote is: "When your views on the world and your intellect Teaching. Photo by Tim Sullivan. are being challenged and you begin Bottom: Beth (Boland) Beaulieu to feel uncomfortable because of a '95, Bangor Roller Derby's contradiction you've detected that is jammer, playing against Prince threatening your current model of the Edward Island's Twisted Sisters. world, pay attention. You are about to Photo by David Hodges. learn something." 32 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Seeking Light Paul Grabhorn ('81) A Tuareg man rides to a 1997 gathering south of Kidal, in the desert region of northern Mali known as Djiounhan. Writes Paul Grabhorn ('81) of the gathering, "The riders came thundering out of the desert, with hundreds of camels pounding the sand into swirling clouds around their feet. The dignified Tuareg camel riders, dressed in fine turbans and robes, had come for peace and reconciliation discussions hosted by the ICRC." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 33 A refugee girl outside the train that had become her home in Nazran, Ingushetia, about ten miles west of the border with Chechnya, during the 1995 war when Russians and Chechens fought for control of Chechnya. Writes Paul Grabhorn ('81), "Early each morning, after a team meeting, the delegates headed out with their translators in groups of two Land Cruisers; for safety no one went into the field alone. Some delegates worked on the Russian side, some inside Chechnya, assessing needs, building contacts and relationships and coordinating initial relief distributions of medical supplies and food. From Abkhazia to South Africa, Colombia to the Philippines, photographer Paul Grabhorn ('81) traveled with the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, for more than a decade, documenting the aid and need of people caught by struggle. In January 2015, Viking Press issued Paul's record of these years, the large-format book Seeking Light: Portraits of Humanitarian Action in War. Of his first trip, which brought food aid to Somalia in 1992, Paul wrote, "The depths of privation and acute suffering of children was heart-wrenching. Women and children waited patiently in the blazing hot sun. Waited to eat. Not to satisfy their hunger the way we do multiple times a day, but just to gain enough energy to make it through the day." Paul witnessed wars, refugees living in train cars, but also families reunited, amputees given prosthetic limbs, children immunized. In January 1995, Paul was in Chechnya: "Artillery shells thumped in the distance. The explosions were felt in the body as well as heard by the ears. Blasts came in a regular and continual pattern. Grozny was being pounded by Russian artillery shells lobbed from the hills and by fighter jets dropping bombs. On this day we began at a hospital in Stari Atagi about ten miles south of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. There were all kinds of war wounds; the worst were from bombs that contained nails. It took the surgeons hours to carefully remove these nails and bits of shrapnel." At the time, Paul was under contract to the United States government as a publications designer, mostly related to the environment and climate change. Now married and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Paul no longer travels into war zones. But he retains a powerful regard for the humanity that frequently emerges when people are under stress. Reflecting about his experience, he says that in a war, "Ninety percent of conflict is people helping each other." The rest is the fighting. "The normal daily pattern of life has stopped, people are exposed, there's a heart opening; neighbors who never knew each other are helping each other. It's a strange thing to say, but there's something in chaos, in war, that brings out the best in humanity." -DG For more, visit seekinglightbook.org 34 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Top: A family reads a Red Cross message from a missing relative in Abkhazia, a disputed territory claimed by Georgia and controlled by a separatist government on the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the south-western flank of the Caucasus. Bottom: A student recites text written on wooden boards at a desert school encampment among the Tuareg in Mali. TIC MAGAZINE 35 The Water Cycle Story and images by Eloise Schultz '16 A t some point, she stopped birthright. I inherited the ocean of below, they were pale and luminous wearing the ring. When I asked, their grief. as the moon. From the shore, she told me that it had slipped off A woman walking out of water one could see the two of them while she was swimming and sunk looks more like The Ascent of Man bobbing like fishermen's buoys. I to the bottom of the lake. They than Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. was a stream of bubbles nearby, searched for it, a gold glint in the She stoops, leans heavily from foot examining their water bodies like mud and pebbles, but soon gave to foot, and tests out the ground. icebergs extending far below their up. Her breasts swing and water falls bright swim caps. I made them It made sense that way; there from her body in rivulets. She nervous by forgetting to resurface were two things that she had straightens, squinting up into the quickly; but once submerged I been given by her mother and sky, adjusting to the downward liked to stay under, in the echo of presumably her mother before drag of gravity. Her hair, no longer silence. I played at being back in the that; two things that she managed loose to the current like a flag is womb, floating as quietly as I could, to find wherever she went; the two to wind, clumps heavily at her poking at their white heels while things she would eventually give to neck. Venus glows bashfully in her they kicked at the water, counting me, her eldest daughter: water and clamshell at the edge of the sea. My how long I could hold my breath as loss. mother and grandmother emerged I watched the light filter through The women in my family tread. from the lake at a crouch, marked the green murk in splintered rays. We take to it from birth, chasing with lines of scum and duckweed Above the surface of the water, my down coastlines, more liquid strata. mother and grandmother would than anything else. They raised talk for ages. Underneath, I heard me with the gentle lap of water T here's an art to suspension. only the garbled sounds of their on lakeshore, the stinging slap It's being caught by time at the murmurs and exclamations. of a wave caught on the side of nape of the neck, where water rubs Water clings to itself, a boat. My grandmother was a a bathtub ring on the body. When remembering everything. In lake; my mother, a river. I strained the two of them took to the water, summer, a healthy maple tree will towards and from the two of them they became landscape. Fish would transpire-pull up through the like a tidal estuary. The salt, the come and nose at their legs. Above roots and push out through the fierce sparkle of sun on wave, the the surface their bodies were leaves-fifty gallons of water per storm and swell itself, became my suntanned and lightly freckled; second. The water that a rainforest 36 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE and weaker. We were too young to in her arms. His wrists hung limply, know-our parents hadn't wanted withered to the bone. Cradled in to tell us-but my sister and I kept her strong arms, my father looked begging him to play with us, to toss like a baby. The doctor held the and spin us like he used to, and so door open while she laid him gently my grandmother sat us down and inside, and they drove off. She was told us frankly that our father, her gone the whole day. son-in-law, was very sick. She was perfectly matter-of-fact, gripping A fter my mother lost her her chair as she spoke, explaining wedding ring, I began to that we should cry if we needed dream of water. Rooms filled to, but what he needed right now up and we swam in the flooded was some peace and, of course, our street, the whole world an ocean. love. While we wept and sniffled, I dreamt so hard and so deep that she stroked our hair, rocking the I woke drenched in forgetfulness. baby Benny in her arms. I felt Days passed by in a single night. cheated. It seemed unfair to me I spent one weekend poring that we should have to lose my over my grandmother's Talmud, father for something as useless as stolen from the bottom drawer a brother, who didn't do much but of her nightstand, a relic from a cry and sleep. He was even sleeping time when religion was not just then, on the most terrible day of something for tradition's sake, like our lives, blissfully unaware of the an old costume stuffed in a closet. I awful cost at which he had been had only seen her open it once, and born. that was during the week after my I was five years old on the father died. She had been reading in the Congo perspired yesterday morning that my father died, and quietly, mouthing the words on the contains particles from the water while a lot of my memory has page to herself. Hebrew became that flooded the Mississippi in 1927, grown foggy over the years, this the language of her grief, and she the year my grandmother was born. day has only ever gotten clearer. would later teach me to read it as The same water ran down from the I woke up to the sound of my well. When she saw me standing in Bigelow Mountains until 1950, when mother's soft crying. A car pulled the doorway, she abruptly closed the Dead River was dammed and into the driveway, and I heard the the book, shifting to face me and renamed Flagstaff Lake; the same family doctor's voice as he entered opening her arms for a hug. I didn't water into which my mother lost the house. A moment later my know at the time what the book her wedding band in 1994, the year mother opened the door and knelt was-only that it was part of the my siblings were seven and nine by my bed, placing her hands on strange ritual of candles and black and I was twelve. me. If I trembled at all, she didn't cloth that had seized control of our notice. Her eyes were red and she house. M y father didn't leave my kept them closed while she rocked Years later, I crept into her mother, he died of cancer back and forth, murmuring prayers. room and read the translated soon after my younger brother was Then she stood abruptly and did pages of the Talmud in a closet born. He had been an archeologist, the same to Alicia, still fast asleep in with a flashlight, skipping over though his specialty was sediment: her bed. My grandmother knocked words I did not know and lingering ancient dust. Before his sickness at the door and asked my mother on phrases that seemed to hold he always entered the house with if she was ready for the body to be special power. I flipped to a dog- a cheerful bellow, my sister and I moved. The doctor stood behind eared page and scanned from left crowding around to beat the old-as- her. She straightened up, brushed to right, my eyes finally lighting time dirt from his clothes with our her long hair back from her eyes, on Psalm 90:5: You sweep them chubby hands. We adored him. and nodded. After the three of away as with a flood; they are like a When my father began them left, I crept to the doorframe dream, like grass that is renewed in chemotherapy, he stopped his work in my nightgown to watch my father the morning. My head ran through and started losing weight. Benny leave. The doctor was motioning stories I had heard from my friends was only a few weeks old, and it outside where a stretcher was who went to Hebrew school. The seemed that as he grew bigger and waiting, but my mother ignored him first un-creation of mythic earth stronger my father became smaller and bent down to pick my father up took the form of a flood, God's COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 37 temper spilled into a washout. I the porch and smoke cigarettes. gently correct my paddling stroke. was beginning to realize that water I often sat with her, but the smell Stepping through a thicket makes a cycle of time, reminding us made me so sick that I couldn't stay of low, green scrub, we bent to that loss of land is wrapped up into long without feeling nauseous. I gather wild blueberries. I raked my loss of self, of life. Our souls leave wanted so badly to hear her stories, fingers underneath a bush and a our bodies through water; we bleed however, that I persisted, eyes handful of small berries fell into when struck, we are soaked into watering and holding back a cough. my palm: a few hard, light-green or the groundwater or evaporated into deep-red berries, but most were the sky. It might be the Ganges, the Nile, or the Styx, but most everyone M y grandmother's birthday dusty blue. The air was sweet and was only a few days after heady and the clouds, grey and seems to agree that death is a river my father's yarzheit. She had low like a blanket, weighed on the for crossing. explicitly told us that she didn't hillside. The leaves, green and stiff want a big party-which, my like scales, scratched my skin as I T here are seventeen rivers in the mother explained, meant that reached hand after hand into the United States called "Dead," but she did in fact want us to make thick brush. Before long, my bucket only one of them has swallowed some kind of fuss. It was my was half-full. an entire town, and this was the mother's idea to paddle to the We took a lunch break on a town they called Flagstaff Village in wild blueberry barrens on the far rock set high above the blueberry western Maine. shore and pick enough to make a barrens. My mother unzipped her Flagstaff Lake had warm, rust- pie. My grandmother would watch backpack and took out a loaf of colored water. It was too murky my siblings at the house. On the bread and a wedge of sharp cheese. for anything to be seen below morning of the big trip, the sky was I took a handful of blueberries from the surface, but we dove anyway, gray and worrisome. my bucket and released them in hoping to find an old coin or other "It'll clear up," my mother a small pile before us. My mother proof that the town had been there. said, looking hopeful. She moved took one and rolled it between We were renting the house from an around the kitchen, pulling her index finger and thumb elderly couple, but it had recently together ingredients for lunch. The scrutinizingly. It was small and been built-constructed when their two women-my mother in her perfect, even bead-like, and wore children could no longer remember carpenter jeans and loose sweater, a crown like a flower opposite the a time when there had been no my grandmother in slacks and a stem. lake. My mother and grandmother cardigan-stood next to each other, "The wild ones are so much spent hours every morning in the framing a measure of time of which tangier," she said, popping the water. I swam around their heels, I had been previously unaware. It berry into her mouth. "You can excited and terrified that I might dawned on me that I might one day really taste what makes it a see the roof of a house, an old car. look like they did: eyes gathering blueberry." I imagined feeling, with my foot, wrinkles, skin freckled with My mother sat in thought while the tip of an old church steeple, or wavering veins. My grandmother I practiced sucking the insides from maybe a treasure chest not seen for had a skin tag on the back of her the wild berries so that just the tart nearly half a century. Such a length neck that showed whenever she skin wrapped around my teeth. of time seemed enormous to me. bent her head. I could feel it roll Looking over at me, she started to It had occurred recently enough, I underneath my fingers when she laugh. knew, for my grandmother to have knelt to buckle my life jacket tightly "Oh Gracie, you're all blue!" been alive when the town was still a around me. "What do you mean?" I asked, town. But my grandmother was the A light breeze stirred the surface defensive. oldest person I knew. of the lake. It was early enough in I picked up her reflective My mother cooked dinner in the the day for the water to retain some sunglasses and studied my face. large tiled kitchen every evening of the glassiness typical of early Sure enough, my lips and teeth- at the lake house. After spending morning. I climbed in the bow of and a good deal of my mouth- all day swimming, her hair hung the canoe and held the gunwales were stained deep purple from in strings and her fingers were cheerfully as my mother pushed the berries. I laughed. My mother wrinkled; lit through the window off the shore with the blade of sighed, leaning back and looking by the evening light coming off the her paddle, launching us into the into the grey sky. The granite was lake, she was the most beautiful mist that had settled over the lake littered with smooth rocks that sight. My grandmother would the previous night. Our journey had been thrown up by the river. I start the water boiling in the late across was peaceful, serene-she watched as she took one of these afternoon and then sit outside on interrupted the silence only to rocks in her hands, an egg-shaped 38 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE stone that had been warmed by the sun, and placed it in on her t-shirt in the center of her belly. She took another stone and solemnly positioned it on her sternum, continuing up the rest of her body until, after she had found a round pebble for the hollow of her neck, she balanced the last slender rock on the gentle slope of her forehead. "What are you doing?" I giggled. "Sending a message to your father," she said softly. T here was a time when she hadn't talked about it. She hadn't talked much at all, allowing the confluence of her pain and fear to break the boat of language, gushing with enough force to memorize the scent of her hair, opened my eyes, she had gone to smash anything that ventured into the specific softness of the skin of fetch our lunch containers. They her waters. I could not look her in her neck. Alicia and Benny clung to had blown across the blueberry the eye at such times. I was afraid her skirt, and she knelt to comfort barrens in the rising wind. that my gaze would break the wall them quietly. I tangled my fingers "We should go," she called, she had so carefully constructed in her hair, leaned over the slope of starting to walk back towards me. around herself. It had happened her shoulder and pressed my chin I buckled my life jacket and jogged before, just a year earlier, when against her collarbone, but could down to the shoreline to clamber I asked one too many questions not douse the ache that shuddered into the boat. Stowing the pail of about my father. through my entire body. Wisps of blueberries between my legs, I "Can't you think before sorrow rode her shoulders and dug my paddle in the water and we you speak?" she had snarled. twined around her fingers, and still inched away from the shore. Restraining herself, she lowered she held us. It was a cold, hard paddle across her voice and said, "You need to the lake, and we were both tired realize that it's hard for me to think watched while my mother and shivering as we struggled about." carefully placed rocks up her against the damp headwind. As we "I want to know about him!" whole body. The taxonomy of approached the opposite shore, the I had protested. Summing up as loss is written in an alluvial field: wind shifted and began to pummel much resentment as I could, I stone rounded to the smoothness our small canoe on the broadside. closed my eyes and spat, "You act of water, water hardened to the The waves slapped against the like he was never even here." heft of stone. It was the first time side of the boat, and we rocked "That's enough," she snapped. that she had shown anything but dangerously from side to side. Furiously she walked down the stoicism while talking about his "Keep paddling, Grace!" my hallway, and I heard the apartment passing-a coldness that had mother shouted, her voice faint door slam before her footsteps hurt me, seeming nonchalant or over the gale. hurried down the fire stairs. In the irreverent. I could not remember I dug my paddle into the water wake of her anger, Alicia and Benny much about my father. I hadn't furiously, but it was thrown aside. toddled out of their room, confused realized that after seven years my As I leaned to recover, the wind and frightened. mother was still nursing a hole grabbed the bow of the boat, It must not have been five inside of her as deep as the lake already unbalanced because of our minutes before my mother itself. weight difference, and tipped us reappeared, but it felt like an hour. She lay there in silence for a on our side. I screamed and heard She opened the door, her eyes red long time. I looked up at the sky my mother shouting "Swim!" And and puffy. and tried to imagine what my life then I was knocked into the water "I'm sorry," she said, bending would have been like if my father underneath the canoe. My arms down to hug me. I allowed myself hadn't died. I do not know how long flailed and I tried to surface, but to relax in her arms, trying to we lay there, only that when I finally the seat of the canoe blocked my COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 39 way. My life vest kept me pinned three," she said, easing me, Alicia, wasn't quite sure if what she was beneath the boat until I wrenched and Benny along with a gentle saying was true, but felt that it must myself out and gasped for air. My hand. be said. "Sometimes we feel as if feet were numb, and I struggled we have to scoop up all the worries to move them. A few yards away, slept dreamlessly and easily of the people who are dearest to my mother stood up in the waves. that night, waking to sun us. To hold their pain so that they I then realized that my legs had streaming through the window. I won't have to, or because it looks sunk deep into mud. The metal spent the morning at the library like they don't want to. pail bobbed up and down next with my grandmother and didn't "But it doesn't work that way," to me, empty. Wrenching my legs see my mother until we were she went on heavily. "You can't from the muck, I tried to stand and home from lunch. I was using a sustain it. Don't try to take it from immediately fell over. My mother butter knife to hack away at the me, Grace. You're not being fair to waded towards me, pulling the candle wax, which had hardened yourself." canoe by a painter line. We dragged to the kitchen counter, when I the canoe onto the shore, and then noticed my mother's naked finger broke through the few meters of while she rolled out crust for my A t that moment, I understood that there were things she brush to reach the road. The house grandmother's pie. Her wedding discussed with my grandmother wasn't far. ring was gone. while I lingered underwater; I felt a stabbing pain in my questions which would become O nce at home, I sank onto my stomach, but didn't quite know central to my own life. Later, I bed and slept until Alicia why. I pulled myself closer on would find words for the thought woke me for dinner. Walking into my elbows to be sure that the that she could not express: the the kitchen, I saw my siblings ring really was gone, that I wasn't heart's movement to sorrow is a clustered around the counter mistaken. loop force, a waterwheel turning where my grandmother had set a "Be careful with that knife, love," over the inevitable trajectory of familiar candle, as she had for the she said. experience. A river will shift its past seven years. I hastened to "Mom, what happened to your course a thousand times and never join them, and my mother struck a ring?" settle, reclaim ancient channels match, cupping her hands around "Oh?" She absently ran her within its floodplains, break its own the wick. fingers over her left hand. "I don't banks to get to the sea. Mistakes "El maleh rachamim shochen know. Where it went, I mean. I think are our inheritance; we keep having bam'romim.. began my it must have fallen off in the lake." to learn the same things over and grandmother. I bowed my head, "When we swamped the canoe?" over again. During an afternoon remembering the old words as she She shrugged. "Where could I spent looking out at the water from spoke them, remembering a time have left it? I don't normally take it the lake house porch, I had asked when the candle burned for a week, off." my grandmother why she always when my mother wept with her face I thought about the lake; the told me the same stories. to the wall. Because after that- rusty water holding the last traces "I'm telling you so that you'll nothing. She must have dammed of the old riverbed, the buried remember," she said at first, up a Dead Sea inside herself with town, and now, my parents' turning her head to blow a stream all of the tears she held back. She marriage. The old lump started of smoke over her shoulder. "But if must have felt like the Dust Bowl. to swell in my throat, like a finger you're getting different meanings " lenishmat Paul.. pressing on my windpipe. She laid out of them every time, am I really My father's name, the only time her hand on my shoulder. repeating them?" it was spoken aloud. "It's okay. It was just a ring." " b'shalom al mishkavo V'nomar, "No it wasn't!" She stared at me Eloise Schultz '16 has had her poetry Amen." for a minute. "I can't believe you're published in A Clean, Well-Lighted "Thank you, Paul," she said not upset about this." Place and Instructor Magazine. softly. "We miss you." My siblings "I am, believe me. But Grace-" A version of this story appeared in murmured their assent. She stopped for a moment, Terrain.org on November 10, 2013, Finally my grandmother looked thinking, and then said, "Our losses the winner of the journal's annual up. "I can't think of a better way to are our own." She glanced at me as fiction contest. celebrate your father than to eat if to see my reaction, and then went his favorite foods. To the table, you on without looking at me, as if she 40 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE POETRY "Footsteps" is part of a collection of poems Lea Bushman '15 is writing FOOTSTEPS for her senior project, "An Exploration of Writing: Practicing Creative Tell me, Expression Through Poetic Form." do you remember the day I fell face first off the deck, the tarp blue and billowing beyond its edge? You fixed me up with a colorful bandaid and snapped a picture so I too could assess the damage and I liked the swollen wound of my eye, the way it matched the floral of my summer dress. Years later I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of hesitance in your eyes before I walked away into my eighteenth autumn. Do you remember? Wait. One second, two Any damage I let scar my body now is mine to heal. The distance between us is marked by the number of frozen footprints I've left behind. But somehow fragments of you still stick to the soles of my shoes everywhere I go. It doesn't surprise me anymore, the way we blend together in our wool sweaters, mud-caked boots, footsteps haphazard yet steady, hearts always healing. It makes me dizzy, how much of you I've become. Still, sometimes when my eyes are closed and I've exhausted every ounce of sanity willing the moonlight closer to my skin, I fall asleep in the memory of your voice humming goodnight songs. 41 ALUMNI NOTES 1978 Museum, is now curator of Jackson Gillman's off-Broadway exhibitions at the Norman Rockwell debut of The Magic of Rudyard Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Jesse Kipling: "Just So" at the United Solo had curated many of the Warhol Theatre Festival, celebrating the Museum's traveling and in-house 150th anniversary of Kipling's exhibitions, including "Andy Warhol: birth, received a Best Educational Portraits" (the most comprehensive Show award. That repertoire is survey of the artist's portraitures) also performed during his annual and "Heroes and Villains: The Rudyard-in-Residence at Kipling's Canada. We will be here at sunrise." Comic Book Art of Alex Ross," which historic Brattleboro, VT home traveled to the Norman Rockwell where Jackson offered Springboards 1992 Museum in 2012. for Stories, a workshop for the Last summer, Jeffrey Miller and development of personal stories, his wife, Lotte Schlegel, became 1998 jacksongillman.com. foster parents to toddler twins. Jasmine Tanguay left her position After 25 years as a biking and at CLF Ventures to spend more 1980 walking advocate, Jeff stepped time with her young sons and down in March from his role as start a solo consulting practice, president/CEO of the Alliance Contextuality. She hopes to for Biking & Walking to explore help individuals and families new opportunities. He is at create meaningful, empowered JefffreyBCMiller@gmail.com or on arrangements for their end-of- Twitter at @JeffreyBCMiller. life transitions, and align these plans with personal values, 1993 including environmental principles such as conservation, nutrient cycling, voluntary simplicity, and Helen and former faculty member sustainability. Jasmine is also Roc Caivano, Polly and Mel Cote, exploring ideas of sustainable former administrative dean, and legacy planning to create lasting Jonathan and Nina (Zabinski) benefits to both the people and the Gormley '78 paused for a group planet. photo on the first of seven days in Paris. Writes Helen, "Three early 2000 generations of COA: the Cotes were the first administration, Jenny Rock returned from New Caivano early faculty, Gormleys Zealand last fall to attend and early students. And now we're all present at the Society for Human mixed up together enjoying each Ecology conference at COA, and other's company while exploring to marry her Kiwi partner, Trevor the world." Gibson, in the old apple orchard on the Troy, ME farm where she grew 1986 up. Says Jenny, "Several bushels of Paul Kozak and two other '93-'94 alumni and a peck of faculty downeast carvers were invited to joined family and other friends in Jaime (Duval) Beranek writes, create a snow sculpture for the an unforgettably warm ceremony." "Longing to get my hands back 2015 Quebec Winter Carnival. Sarah McDaniel, in photo, served in the soil, I found a position on Writes Paul, "Minus 23 celsius at as the celebrant. an organic farm for the summer 3:30 Sunday morning. Sweating and of 2014. Located in Garrettsville, trying to stay dry. If I stop I will fall. 1997 OH, just 15 miles from my home, Everybody has gone in for the night Jesse Kowalski, former director Birdsong Farm is managed by none except for Team Maine and Team of exhibitions at The Andy Warhol other than fellow COA graduate 42 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Matt Herbruck '94. He farms Meanwhile, Jennifer (Wahlquist) 10 acres organically, visits four Coolidge '03 and I are busy farmer's markets, and runs a raising our four energetic children, 60-member CSA program. After Matthew, 11, Thomas, 8, Gwenna, an amazing growing season, my 6, and Andrew 3. We have recently husband, Rob, and I are recharged moved back to Blue Hill, ME, where about having our own small farm Jennifer is a birth and postpartum someday!" Before they do, they doula while I work remotely. Our are moving back to Marquette, on children attend the Bay School Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as they along with those of quite a few Jon Carver, Laura Howes, Sarah expect their first baby at the end of other COA alumni." Jackson, Mike Kersula, and Julie June. In the photo, Jamie is second (Kearney) Taylor '06. from left; Matt's on the right. 2007 Peter Jenkins completed his Annika Ginsberg graduated from master's degree in environmental New York University's Robert F. studies with a concentration in Wagner Graduate School of Public environmental education from Service with an MPA in health Antioch University New England, policy. She says, "I would like to and moved to the Albany, NY area report other exciting things, but to work with Capital Roots. He is that has pretty much taken over the education coordinator of their my life for the last few years. I am youth development and urban really looking forward to finding out farming program. what I used to do on the weekends. On Nov. 20, 2014, a record-cold day I know that there was a time when in Chicago, Matthew Lavoie and 2010 I wasn't reading hundreds of pages Laura Briscoe welcomed daughter and writing papers." Melita Sophia Linden Lavoie into the world. 2002 After a five-year stint in Los 2008 Angeles working at the Getty Amanda Hooykaas, MPhil, was Research Institute and The Broad recently inducted into the College Art Foundation, Joshua Machat of Fellows of The Royal Canadian accepted a communications post in Geographical Society, one of the the art and architecture section of youngest fellows in its history. Yale University Press. He can often She is the field course developer Aly Bell was one of five students be found on the Metro North line and adjunct faculty member at from the University of Illinois to New York City and at Frank Pepe the University of Waterloo in to present at the BOBCATSSS Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven. Ontario. Her courses include fluvial conference, an annual student- geomorphology, environmental organized symposium on library 2005 literature, and conservation and information science themes Max Coolidge writes, "I have and parks management. in Brno, Czech Republic. She recently become a student and Amanda frequently brings her presented "Talkin' 'Bout Their practitioner of a uniquely human undergraduates into secondary Generation" on libraries and baby system-the law-graduating from school classrooms to lead boomers. At the American Library the Thomas M. Cooley Law School conversations on geography and Association midwinter conference in Ann Arbor, MI. I now work as a the roles that we all play in society. in Chicago she was pleased to meet research attorney for the Michigan She has recently launched new Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton Court of Appeals, one of the busiest work in urban wilderness therapy. (above). intermediate appellate courts in amandahooykaas.com. the country. The law is a big part of Dan Rueters-Ward, Cora Lewicki, our human ecology; it's the rules 2009 Meg Barry, Geena Berry, and of our life together, a complicated Linda (Mejia) Black was married Sarah Colletti (pictured), continued set of consequences and outcomes on Sept. 27, 2014, a gorgeous, their tradition of weekend designed to right past wrongs and warm, fall day. Pictured with Linda adventures in the mountains guide future human behavior. are COA friends, Dominique Walk, of Virginia and east Tennessee. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 43 2012 Michelle Klein is completing a master's of science program in environmental and life sciences at Trent University in Peterborough, ON. She spent the past two summers conducting fieldwork on Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Her Cora writes, "As COAers often do, thesis examines the impacts of with a full head of hair! They have we all spread to the winds after vessel traffic and underwater moved to Harrisburg, PA to be graduation. Our little reunions noise on these dolphins. After closer to family. Kyle is working have been a heartwarming, joyful, completing her degree, Michelle for CLEAResult, an international and precious experience. Our most plans to move to the Phoenix, AZ energy consulting company that recent weekend together was in area where her fiancé resides. Any specializes in the implementation wintertime; we traded in our tent leads for employment as a marine of energy efficiency programs and sleeping mats for a Smoky mammal observer, environmental for energy utilities; his work is Mountain cabin and a heck-of-a- consultant, wildlife biologist, and/ delivering energy savings to low view hot tub!" or GIS specialist would be greatly and limited income households. appreciated. He will begin a master's degree 2011 in mathematics and statistics at Hazel Stark completed the Meg Trau writes that she, Robin Villanova University in the fall. graduate program at the Teton Owings '13, and botany faculty Science Schools, focused on member Nishanta Rajakaruna place-based education and field '94 authored a chapter in the FLY ecology. She is now working on textbook Plant Biodiversity: a professional science master's BACK SOCIETY Present Situation and Future degree in resource management Scenario, titled "Implementing and conservation at Antioch Traditional Ecological Knowledge University New England in Keene, in Conservation Efforts," to be COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC NH. published by Springer Publications. Meg is engaged to Ray Serrano and Join the Black Fly Society! Matt Shaw is in Milan, NY, working is planning a May, 2016 wedding. at Rhinebeck's Oblong Books and The Black Fly Society was as an adjunct in video at Dutchess 2013 established to make donating Community College. In March, the Angeline (Annesteus) Charles to COA's annual fund easier first issue of his art newspaper, volunteered with the Catholic and greener. Ramsey Island Mercurial, was part Charities of Central Florida, working of a group show at Red Hook with young Cuban and Haitian We hope you'll join this swarm Community Arts Network. Writes refugees, before heading home to of sustaining donors by setting Matt, "Post-production has also Haiti in August for her wedding. She up a monthly online gift. It's (finally) wrapped on a video shot in now works for Telesur as an English the paperless way to give to Bar Harbor almost three years ago. correspondent. COA. Inspiration for the narrative came from two poems by Jill Piekut, 2014 Follow the instructions at and starred Jill alongside Graham As an interpreter of wild encounters coa.edu/donatenow, or if you Reeder. Luke Madden was first and fun at the Cincinnati Zoo and want to give to the annual fund camera on the shoot; numerous Botanical Garden this summer, by mail: COA Annual Fund COA alumni were cast in supporting Maggie Garcia will offer visitors 105 Eden Street roles or volunteered during additional information and Bar Harbor, ME 04609. production." opportunities to observe animals. (Please make checks out to College of the Atlantic.) Stephen Wagner and Cayla Moore Allison and Kyle Shank welcomed '13 are engaged to be married in their daughter, Willa Brave Shank, Questions? August, 2015. into the world on Sept. 27, 2014. Call 207-801-5625. She was born happy, healthy, and 44 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE DONOR PROFILE Martie Samek: Passionate about COA Even before trustee Marthann traditional and classic, the other adds, is a powerful example of Lauver Samek joined the College creative and innovative." connecting sound academics with of the Atlantic board, she was What impresses Martie about practical, community work for a fascinated by the passion with COA is the way, she says, "COA unique and value-added education which other trustees spoke of the takes the academic, theoretical, experience. college. Now, as a board member and intellectual and turns them into Summers are busy in the since 2011, Marthann-better active learning and hands-on work. Samek household, with daughters, known as Martie-experiences that At this moment of transition and sons-in-law, and grandchildren same joy and power of connection. scrutiny about the effectiveness gathering at their Southwest The daughter of a teacher, and cost of higher ed, COA's hands- Harbor home. For at least a Martie has an extensive on approach just might be one of month, sixteen family members background supporting education. the more interesting and viable live nearby, arranging meals and She received her teaching educational models." outings, or settling in for quiet credentials at Bucknell University while also double-majoring in English and history, and taught at high schools in Ohio and New Jersey until her three daughters were born. Later, Martie worked for a decade in the development office of a New Jersey private school. A consummate volunteer, Martie served on her local YWCA and United Way boards, and was president of the Junior League, among other involvements. But much of her volunteer energy went toward her alma mater, Bucknell. Currently a trustee emerita, Martie was active for years, chairing the Bucknell development committee, serving on the presidential search and transition committees. She "COA takes the academic, theoretical, and intellectual and was also president of the alumni turns them into active learning and hands-on work." association for three terms and a member of the Bucknell parents board, where she and her husband The proof of this approach is in conversation. Even so, Martie Ed co-founded the Bucknell the students. "They're purposeful values her continued engagement parents fund. Martie and Ed met and focused, and almost all are with the college, whether as chair at Bucknell and all three children wonderfully articulate-I think of the development committee's are graduates, so the institution unusually so," says Martie. She priorities sub-committee or as a is meaningful to the entire Samek recalls the winter board meeting, member of the nominating and family. when Zakary Kendall '17 joined presidential review committees. Martie joined COA's board just Anna Demeo, director of energy "Each one of these involvements as term limits ended her time as education and management, brings me closer and deeper to an active Bucknell trustee. "I find to speak about the fall course the center of COA," says Martie. it much like loving two children centered on the Danish island of "You might say that now I, too, am who are very different," she says Samsø. "Zak spoke like a thorough passionate about COA!" of the two colleges that capture professional; he had in-depth her devotion. "I am fascinated and knowledge about the project which Above: Martie and Ed Samek enjoy a Maine boat expedition with their eight appreciative of their differences he relayed with enthusiasm and grandchildren. Photo courtesy of Martie and I love them equally. One is clarity." That term in Samsø, Martie Samek. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 45 COMMUNITY NOTES Heather Albert-Knopp '99, dean find that sense of excitement and special session on "Human Ecology: of admission, served out her two- enthusiasm for Molly as she takes Portraits from the Past-Prospects year limit as president of the board on new challenges and adventures." for the Future" at ESA's centennial of the Maine Organic Farmers Molly extends her gratitude to in August. and Gardeners Association, or those who have worked with her MOFGA. She remains a member of at COA, and says she will truly the executive committee and the miss the stellar students that COA board. Previously, Heather served attracts. She is looking forward to two years as vice president and two life in Vermont, which has some of as secretary. the best food system innovations in the Northeast. In November, John Anderson, the William H. Drury Professor In January, Nancy Andrews, faculty of Ecology/Natural History, was member in performance art and called the "pinnacle" of the Rhode video production, celebrated Island Natural History Survey's the world premiere of her first As part of their quest to hike every celebration of Natural History feature movie, The Strange Eyes of continent, Lynn Boulger, dean of Week. He spoke about his 2013 Dr. Myes, at the International Film institutional advancement, and her book, Deep Things Out of Darkness: Festival Rotterdam with faculty husband, Tim Garrity, trekked New A History of Natural History, and member Dru Colbert, the film's Zealand in March. Last September gave a similar talk, "From so production designer. Previously, they walked a portion of Turkey's Simple a Beginning: a Brief History Nancy worked on the movie's color 500 km Lycian Way along its of Natural History," to Prescott with Rohan Chitrakar '04 and did southern coast. College's Natural History Institute. a final sound mix with Paul Hill At the March Science for Parks, and Zach Soares '00. This winter, Parks for Science conference in Nancy's drawings and videos were Community Wal Berkeley, CA, John presented the part of the exhibit On the Mind at paper "Impact of Sea-Level Rise on Baltimore's Maryland Art Place Nesting Seabird Colonies within of the Maryland Institute College Acadia National Park, Maine." In of Art. Accompanying the exhibit April he presented "Changes in Gull was a screening of her film On a nesting distribution on Great Duck Phantom Limb and an interview on Island" at the Northeast Natural the Maryland Public Radio station History Conference in Springfield, WYPR regarding her art and post- MA. operative, intensive care unit In November, Ken Cline, David delirium and post-traumatic stress Rockefeller Family Chair in Come summer, Molly Anderson, disorder. A podcast is at wypr.org. Ecosystem Management and COA's Partridge Chair in Food and Protection, and Zinta Rutins Sustainable Agriculture Systems, Rich Borden, COA's Rachel Carson '15 traveled to Sydney, Australia will be moving to Vermont's Chair in Human Ecology, received to present "Parks Across the Middlebury College where she will the 2014 Gerald L. Young Book Curriculum: A Multidisciplinary be their professor of food studies, Award in Human Ecology from Approach to Protected Area coordinating a new food studies the Society for Human Ecology for Education" to the World Parks program in their undergraduate his book, Ecology and Experience: Congress. Held every ten years, curriculum and food "tracks" in Reflections from a Human Ecological the congress is the definitive the international and graduate Perspective. Over winter and spring global forum on protected areas, programs. Says COA President he gave book talks at the Jesup gathering the most influential Darron Collins '92, "Selfishly, Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, ME people in the field and setting the I want Molly to stay to help us and at the University of Georgia's global agenda for parks for the continue to build an excellent Odum School of Ecology, among following decade. Presentations program in the human ecology of other places. Rich has been elected were limited, underscoring further food. I know I'm not alone, but I can to the council of the Ecological the excitement of Ken and Zinta also dig past the selfishness and Society of America, and will chair a being asked to describe COA's 46 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE curricular collaboration with We'll miss you Cherie! Acadia National Park to an international audience. Later, After seventeen years, Cherie Ford, COA's Ken met with administrators welcoming presence-who learned every at several Australian national student's name within weeks, whose parks and universities to friendliness single-handedly made us a discuss potential student community-is retiring. We'll all miss her! exchanges and graduate opportunities. "Cherie epitomizes what the COA community stands for-a community. With Ed Snyder, a Friends She greets everyone with a smile, never Committee lobbyist, Gray Cox, hesitates to offer a hug, a listen, or bring faculty member in political on a smile. Hers is the voice that comforts economy and social theory, students, staff, and faculty when vans spoke on "Artificial Intelligence: go missing, advisors go rogue, or classes Promise or Peril" at the Jesup overwhelm. She is extraordinary, with so Memorial Library in January. In much love you can't help but be moved March, he joined COA Spanish by her sincerity. I am certain she has teacher Karla Peña and Polly been an integral part of every student's McAdam '14 in a presentation experience." - Brittany Slabach '09 on COA's innovative Spanish immersion program at the Cherie has been the heartbeat of COA. annual conference of the I will miss her wonderful giggle and Foreign Language Association treasure all the ways she had her fingers of Maine. Later that month, he on the pulse of students, staff, and faculty, and several students attended of Fandangos and birthday celebrations- the Friends Committee on but most especially her heart and National Legislation Spring laughter. Lobby Weekend on Climate - Karen Waldron, faculty Action in DC. Visit Gray's website, breathonthewater. Smiling, kind, helpful-with a great sense com, for songs of love and of humor. Trust me! Remember Cherie's spirit and two new climate choir practices?-staff and faculty gatherings at local pubs. She will be change songs, or find him on missed! - Jill Barlow-Kelly, staff YouTube. Cherie is the organizer. We may be a small campus, but there are staff who In January, Anna Demeo, rarely see each other. Cherie helps us to remember that we are a community. director of energy education - Marie Stivers, staff and management, spoke about COA's Energy Framework at the I loved working with Cherie! Once in my Bread, Love, and Dreams class we National Council for Science talked about a dream where I was sorting mail back home-the Cherie/Mom and the Environment's national archetype. I loved having a staff member care about me every day, even conference on Energy and when I wasn't working. - Anna Flanagan '13 Climate Change in DC. "I will never forget the time I called Cherie from an unlisted number Both Nina Emlen, admission pretending to be a loud, obnoxious, non-English eccentric who wanted to counselor, and mother to know more about "ze College of Man's Eco-logees, and how many eet cost?" Caleb, 2, and Kate Macko, Cherie patiently worked with this strange foreigner's cryptic English and executive assistant and almost had me transferred to admissions-until my cover was blown. Our advisor to the president, and battle of wits lasted many years. I will always value Cherie's friendship and mother to Juniper, 3, sit on her amazing gift for compassion. I could not imagine a better person to be the board of directors of Kids' that first point of contact for a visitor at the college. Who needs a webpage Corner, which offers care for when you have Cherie? My Dearest Cherie, I wish you all the happiness in children from six weeks to your retirement, and keep spreading that love of life!" - Sean Todd, faculty five years, including those of many of the workers at COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 47 A Quaker Approach to the Conduct of Research: Collaborative Practice and Communal Discernment By Gray Cox with Charles Blanchard, Geoff Garver, Keith Helmuth, Leonard Joy, Judy Lumb, and Sara Wolcott, Quaker Institute for the Future Pamphlet Series #7, 2014. The Quaker's adherence to attention, listening, and consensus has a powerful resonance with the integrative approach of human ecology, as Gray Cox, faculty member in political philosophy, reflects throughout his recent publication. The approach parallels other forms of gaining knowledge, including scientific research, and, he argues in this excerpt, each can enrich the other: Science works by consensus rather than votes, Communal discernment, of which the Quaker so the practices of science are closer to those of process is an example, is similar to and compatible Quaker practice than Robert's Rules of Order. If with the tradition of mainstream science. Both opinion is split on a theory because researchers get operate on the conviction that there is an objective different results or have different interpretations truth independent of any individual and that with of them, they work to refine their procedures and patience, such truth can be sought and found. share them until they all get similar, repeatable results. They analyze their interpretations until In conclusion, Gray calls upon Quaker traditions: they agree and form a community that shares a common paradigm for practicing what [Thomas] In considering how to do research that may offer Kuhn refers to as "normal science." If they have us the understanding we need to respond to trouble finding such procedures or arriving at urgent calls to better our world, we have much accord in their interpretations, they may get to learn about how to practice humility, enter frustrated and angry. Animosity may even result. silence, and use collective discernment. Quaker and But in their role as scientists, they remain obliged other traditions offer resources for our continued to keep looking until some way opens for them to experiments with communal discernment and find such procedures or interpretations. collaborative research, and assurance that in the silence we can have openings, not only of They do not pull out their guns to start shooting, seeking, but of finding as well. Through continuing and they do not call the question, take a vote, and revelation, a Presence works through us and comes let the 51 percent determine what is true. to offer leadings, guidance, wisdom, and a powerful transforming love. COA, Acadia National Park, The The Samsø course, co-taught by Jay Exchange in DC. This May, Jay again Jackson Laboratory, and other local Friedlander, Sharpe-McNally Chair taught entrepreneurship at Jackson enterprises. of Green and Socially Responsible Lab as part of The Whole Scientist Business, and Anna Demeo, was course. Dave Feldman, faculty member the focus of two articles in The New in physics and mathematics, York Times, while a third article Donna Gold, COA editor and again taught his Introduction to featured a business boot camp Jay former public relations director, Dynamical Systems and Chaos runs with the Fair Food Network for along with poet and writer Carl as a massive open online course, sustainable food entrepreneurs. Little, also a former COA PR or MOOC, through the Santa Fe Jay also spoke about Samsø and the director, wrote essays for J. Fred Institute's Complexity Explorer idea of abundance at Forum2100, Woell: Art is an Accident, the 2015 Project. He had more than 1,850 a consortium for business and catalog accompanying a major students. Beginning in September, energy innovation in Lausanne, retrospective of the late Deer he'll be offering Fractals and Switzerland, and on "Scaling Isle artist Fred Woell at the Metal Scaling as a MOOC. Both classes Impact: Social Entrepreneurship Museum in Memphis, TN. are based in part on his COA Research in Action" at a panel course, Introduction to Chaos moderated by the executive Carrie Graham, manager of COA's and Fractals. To learn more, visit director of Stanford's Center for George B. Dorr Museum of Natural complexityexplorer.org. Social Innovation for the AshokaU History, continues to volunteer for 48 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE the Mabel Wadsworth Women's Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty World Wildlife Fund Climate Savers Health Center in Bangor, ME. A member in biology, adjunct Annual Meeting in Gothenburg, member of the center's advocacy biology faculty Fred Olday, and Sweden in May. (See page 5.) committee, she helps promote Nathaniel Pope '07 co-authored local awareness of reproductive the poster, "Lichens of the New Bonnie Tai, education faculty rights and feminist issues. Carrie Idria Serpentine Mass, San Benito member, chairs the board of Next also donates her illustration and County, CA," for the California Step Domestic Violence Project. graphic design services to support Native Plant Society's 2015 She also led a faculty workshop on its educational campaigns. Conservation Conference. Nishi honoring cultural diversity for the also gave a seminar on serpentine Blue Hill, ME, Bay School this spring. In December, Sarah Hall, the ecology at the School of Biology Anne T. and Robert M. Bass & Ecology of the University of Fresh from serving as a guide Chair in Earth Systems and Maine, Orono, on "Serpentine: to the Antarctic Peninsula for GeoSciences, presented the poster Evolutionary ecology of a model the expedition cruise vessel M/V "Watershed Landscape Ecology: system," and presented "Serpentine Seabourn Quest, Sean Todd, the Interdisciplinary and field-based Geoecology of Eastern North Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine learning in the Northeast Creek America: Current knowledge and Sciences, began developing an Watershed, Mount Desert Island, information gaps" to the Northeast 18-hour DVD-based course on Maine," authored by Sarah, COA Natural History Conference in oceans and marine mammals biologists John Anderson and Springfield, MA. Also presenting for The Great Courses for a 2017 Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, and were Paul Excoffier '15 on vernal release date. Also, Sean and chemist Don Cass, to the American pool bryophytes, Natasha Krell '16 Allied Whale researcher Peter Geophysical Union meeting in on yarrow and St. John's Wort (with Stevick '81 co-authored the paper San Francisco. Joining Sarah at Hilary Rose Dawson '18), Porcia by Jacqueline Bort, MPhil '11 the conference was Natasha Manandhar '16 on herring gulls, published in January in Endangered Krell '16, who presented her lan Medeiros '16 on serpentine Species Research, "North Atlantic work, "Dynamic Pulse-Driven biota, and Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil Right Whale Eubalaena glacialis Flowering Phenology in a Semiarid '15 on warblers. vocalization patterns in the central Shrubland." In February, Sarah and Gulf of Maine from October 2009 colleagues from UC Santa Cruz Biology faculty member Steve through October 2010." and the University of Grenoble Ressel gave the illustrated talk, gathered at the Institute of Earth "Stories in the Snow: Uncovering In April, Karen Waldron, Lisa Science in Grenoble, France, to Nature in Winter," at the Jesup Stewart Chair in Literature and analyze current data from the Memorial Library in February, a Women's Studies, chaired the Peruvian Andes and Atacama miniature view into his Winter Sherlock Holmes panel of the Desert and discuss future projects. Ecology course highlighting some Popular Culture Association While at the institute, Sarah gave Maine wildlife winter adaptations. conference in New Orleans, LA, and the talk, "Surface Processes and presented "Using the Sidekick in the Morphology of the Cordillera In November, Doreen Stabinsky, the Feminist Cause? Laurie R. King's Blanca, Peru." faculty member in global Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes." environmental politics, traveled In early May she co-chaired the Sunblind Almost Motorcrash, to Asunción, Paraguay to speak Literary Landscapes as Imagined a volume of prose poems, or to the Global Forest Coalition Places panel of the Northeast microfictions, reviewing imaginary international strategy meeting on Modern Language Association in albums and the imaginary bands unsustainable livestock and feed Toronto, Canada, and presented that created them, was published production. In December, she led "Assembling California: Frank this spring by lecturer Daniel the COA delegation to the 20th Norris' Multilayered Landscapes in Mahoney. He considers his book Conference of the Parties of the McTeague and The Octopus." Later an investigation into the attempt UN Framework Convention on that month she presented "Twelve to use words to describe music. Climate Change in Lima, Peru. She Strange Men: Race, Ethnicity, and Accompanying the books, which gave a keynote lecture to the Baltic Gender in Zora Neale Hurston's are hand-bound by Spork Press of University Programme student Trial" at the American Literature Tuscon, AZ, is an audio cassette of conference in Rogów, Poland in Association in Boston. real bands playing the fake albums. April, and a keynote address to the COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 49 Plant Ecology and Evolution in Harsh Environments Edited by Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, Robert S. Boyd, and Tanner B. Harris '06 Nova Science Publishers Inc., November, 2014 Faculty member in biology Nishanta Rajakaruna '94 and partners, including Tanner Harris '06, gather recent findings on the ecology and evolution of plants and other non-animal organisms in harsh environments for this edited volume. Calling it a "wide-ranging collection of recent scientific work on how plants adapt to stress, and how stress shapes higher- order outcomes in evolution, ecology, and conservation," Susan Harrison of the University of California Davis notes in the journal Madorno, "anyone interested in how the world's more challenging terrestrial environments contribute to biological diversity will find much to enrich their knowledge in this book." The following excerpt, written by the editors, is adapted from the concluding chapter. Alpine summits, polar regions, arid deserts, remote have generated much interest in recent years. Plants oceanic islands, saline flats, acidic bogs, rock outcrops, associated with unique geomorphologic features and even wastelands created by human activities such such as mountains and deserts have also been the as mining, all provide extreme habitats for plants and subject of much study due to their unique assemblages other biota adapted to harsh abiotic factors. Such of plant species possessing adaptations to climatic habitats are characterized by extremes in temperature, extremes and other abiotic and biotic stressors. light, water availability, and Such plants have also served chemical and physical soil as models for elucidating attributes. Adaptation to such PLANT ECOLOGY mechanisms of convergent environments often leads to population differentiation AND EVOLUTION evolution, showing how similar functional and phenotypic and subsequent speciation, IN HARSH diversity can be maintained thereby generating biodiversity. among phylogenetically distinct Harsh environments also ENVIRONMENTS lineages in response to similar often provide a refuge for selective pressures. species which may be at a Nishanta Rajakaruna Robert S. Boyd competitive disadvantage in Tanner B. Harris more benign habitats. Whether through adaptive evolution Harsh environments are or exaptation (i.e., ecological important biological resources filtering), harsh environments and represent some of the most often contain a unique promising frontiers in the study assemblage of plants and other of ecology and evolution. They biota able to thrive under are important depositories Environmental conditions inhospitable for Remarch Advance for a significant portion of most other organisms. life's diversity, they illustrate how organisms respond to environmental challenges, and they provide resources The intimate and inseparable important to both human relationship between plants and their substrates results society and other life on earth. We can also learn much from the need for plants to obtain water and nutrients about basic biological, ecological, and evolutionary from the substrate upon which they grow. Thus, it is no principles-including natural selection, adaptation, surprise that the chemical and physical attributes of and coevolution-from studies that focus on plant and the substrate control many aspects of plant diversity, other life found in harsh habitats. This knowledge can ecology, and evolution. Plants closely associated with be employed in numerous biotechnological applications harsh substrates have been described as indicators of beneficial to human society. This book builds on the the minerals and elements found within the substrate, current interest in plants and other organisms found and close observation of such substrate-plant relations in harsh environments and shows the importance of has led to biogeochemical prospecting worldwide. harsh environments to current and future research in Studies of the diversity, physiology, genetics, ecology, all aspects of plant biology, ecology and evolution, and and evolution of plants found on extreme substrates the conservation and restoration sciences. 50 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE IN MEMORIAM William R. (Bill) Booth Though Peter was using computers when they took May 9, 1919-November 10, 2014 up large rooms and computer time was reserved by When I met first met Bill Booth in late 1972, I was the minute, I have no e-mails from him. What I have are a twenty-one-year-old transfer student at COA and he penned letters, sent through the mail. a middle-aged minister recently returned from South Peter loved working with his hands. Over a twelve- Africa to take charge of the Bar Harbor Congregational year period, mostly on weekends, he built his 38-foot Church. I had heard that he was a registered Maine Friendship sloop, the Lucy Bell. For thirty-two summers, Guide and an excellent teacher, as well as a poet, and Peter and Lucy Bell sailed her along the Maine coast, that winter I joined his adult class-the Monday Night carefully gauging tide and weather, for she had no Group. At fifty-three, Bill was more like a man of forty- engine. sinewy and tough with a mind on fire, his heart attuned Peter's ashes will be scattered in Maine waters this to others and to the human quest for meaning. I loved summer. Yes, Peter was a world-class scientist, but what how fiercely he could pay attention-mind seeking out people mention time and again is his kind, gentle nature mind with a respectful give-and-take, reverence mixed and that smile, which will never disappear from my with humility, and soon an enveloping friendship. It mind's eye. was Bill who supervised my senior project on human -William V.P. Newlin, life trustee ecology and religion, a role he undertook with other students over the years, in addition to teaching at the college. I will sorely miss our deep and wonderful John Kauffmann talks-both of us leaning forward in our chairs, his voice October 5, 1923-November 16, 2014 low and calm, mind SO focused, face flushed and alive. I knew about John Kauffmann before I ever -Philip Kunhardt III '77, trustee started working at COA. He was a legend in the river conservation world and I was thrilled that he was on the COA board of trustees (he served from 1983-2003). Peter Hoadley Sellers At my first opportunity, I dragged him into one of my September 12, 1930-November 15, 2014 classes, expecting him to tell stories as rich as his Each weekday morning, my brother-in-law Peter expressive prose, only to discover that he was very shy. Sellers donned a blue, button-down shirt, secured It was like pulling teeth to get him to talk about himself, each pant leg with a Rube Goldberg, rubber band about helping to create the National Wild and Scenic contraption, rode his three-speed Raleigh the seven Rivers system, and the incredible work he had done miles to Philadelphia's Thirtieth Street Station, and in Alaska. One on one, John had amazing stories to caught the train to Manhattan, where for forty-eight tell-he helped to conserve millions of acres in Alaska, years he was a research mathematician at Rockefeller and helped create national parks along the Chesapeake University. Peter was "a brilliant and pioneering and Ohio Canal and on Cape Cod. He wrote articles for mathematician whose research contributed significantly National Geographic, wrote books about rivers, canoes, to the first computer search/matching algorithm for and mountains, and co-published the weekly Bar Harbor DNA," according to the university. His techniques for Times. I wanted COA students to learn more about this recognizing patterns in DNA sequences and analyzing amazing man. As I got to know John better, I saw the genetic material are used worldwide. depth of his patience as a mentor to young people. I But one morning post-9/11, the station baggage started pairing him up with students who shared John's room where Peter checked his bike displayed the sign: passion for wild places, and who could use individual "For Security Reasons Bicycles are No Longer Accepted." help with their writing. He was wonderful-sometimes "What am I going to do, Liz?" Peter asked the I was jealous of those students, they got so much out woman who had been checking his bike for years. As of that time with John. When he moved to Yarmouth, always, his voice was gentle and kind. "Mr. Pete," she ME, I dearly missed our conversations about rivers answered, "That sign doesn't apply to you." and parks, but also missed having him as a mentor for Peter was married to my sister Lucy Bell Sellers, myself and the students. When I help choose recipients who taught drama at COA for twenty-three years. He for the scholarship that John created for students served as a COA trustee for eleven years and a trusted passionate about wilderness lands and waters, I think of advisor for much longer. It wasn't just the "no bicycle" the ones who would have thrived under John's tutelage sign that didn't apply to Peter; he and Lucy Bell lived by and who he would have enjoyed working with. He is their own rules, setting their own priorities. missed. -Ken Cline, faculty member COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 51 The Bagel Hole By Donna Gold Agnes Smit, who fed generations of COA students, bicycling and even sledding her freshly baked bagels to campus by seven-thirty each morning, has shut the oven of the Bagel Factory and walked down its rickety wooden steps one last time. At age 79, Agnes has retired. There may be many origin stories for the Bagel Factory; the one Agnes told me in April was that she was heading to Acadia National Park to meet her sister one day and passed by a Cottage Street bakery that had been started by Amy Goodman ('79), of Democracy Now!, along with Charles Hutchinson, an original Greenpeace rainbow warrior. Amy had taken a leave from Radcliffe College to be a visiting student at COA and then stayed on in Bar Harbor. Said Agnes, "I looked in the window and I thought, 'these people are in trouble.' I figured my sister could wait, so I went in and showed them a few things and they said to me, 'you can have this bakery if you want.'" That was years before Agnes April, 2014, facebook.com/collegeoftheatlantic. opened the Bagel Factory on the Bar Harbor alleyway known as Cadillac Avenue. A bout with cancer intervened, as did stints cooking at various locales on Mount Desert Island, including one at COA in the mid-nineties. But once Agnes opened the Bagel Factory, she baked and cooked and "The only way that I have learned is by mistakes. prepared sandwiches nearly every day I might have an idea you look at it and you go, for years, musing, scolding, weaving bits of philosophy into life stories. something's wrong? It looks ok I wonder. The Somewhere in there, she found time next time I try the other thing." to deliver her bagels. "When you see your customers you have a lot more from the documentary by Navi Whitten '16, information-it's pretty much the same The Baker, Agnes with COA." So what fills the hole left by Agnes' bagels? "Agnes is a hard act to follow," says Lise Desroches, co-director of food services, "Granola consumption is up." "The Baker, Agnes," a short documentary created by Navi Whitten '16, is available at vimeo.com. 52 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 2015 Summer Events at College of the Atlantic June 26 at 5:30 p.m. Film Screening August 6 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. "Family: A Reading" Tale of the Tongs with Judith and Stanley Hallet. Readings by authors Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader) and George Colt (Brothers). July 7 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation "MDI Clean Energy Partners" with energy specialist August 10 from 5 to 7 p.m. Film Screening William Osborn and COA's Anna Demeo. Curious Worlds: The Art and Imagination of David Beck with filmmaker Olympia Stone. *July 7 at 5:30 p.m. President's Circle Lecture Glenstone: An evening with Mitch and Emily Rales. August 11 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation "Investing in Maine" with Slow Money Maine board July 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sherry Geyelin Luncheon member and No Small Potatoes co-founder Eleanor "Growing and Cooking the Year-Round Harvest" with Kinney and COA trustee Ron Beard. author and farmer Barbara Damrosch. August 14 from 5 to 7 p.m. Garden Talk July 14 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation "Designing with Plants the Great Dixter Way" with Great "The Growing Economic Gap." Historian and COA trustee Dixter head gardener Fergus Garrett. Co-hosted by the David Hackett Fischer and COA's Davis Taylor discuss Land & Garden Preserve. Thomas Piketty. August 17 from 5 to 7 p.m. Talk July 15 at 6 p.m. An Evening with George Mitchell "The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust" with Co-hosted by Acadia Senior College and COA Summer Ralph Nurnberger, Georgetown professor. Programs. By limited invitation only. August 18 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation July 21 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation "Music Lessons" with Isaiah Jackson of Berklee College "Implications for Investors" with COA board chair Will of Music, former music director of the Royal Ballet in Thorndike of Housatonic Partners and COA's Lynn London, and COA's John Cooper. Boulger. August 20 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Family Fun Day July 23 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation Kid-friendly activities, food, animals, games, more. Peggy Euphoria. Author Lila King discusses her novel on Rockefeller Farms. Margaret Mead with President Darron Collins '92. August 21 from 5 to 7 p.m. Talk July 23 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Opening Reception "Regenerative Medicine and Human Genome Research" 2 Island Friends, 2 Points of View with Nadia Rosenthal, COA trustee, Jackson Laboratory Blum exhibit of sculptor Katie Bell and painter Clay Kanzler. Scientific Director of Mammalian Genetics. July 28 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation August 25 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation "The Impact of the Allan Stone Chair" with photographer The Historical Atlas of Maine. UMO's Stephen Horn and Clare Stone and Catherine Clinger, Allan Stone Chair in COA's Sarah Hall. the Visual Arts. August 25 from 5 to 7 p.m. Closing Reception at the Blum *August 1 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Reception 2 Island Friends, 2 Points of View Annual reception for The Champlain Society members. August 3 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Screening & Talk COA also hosts these on-going summer activities: Food for Thought, Food for Life with filmmaker Susan Family Nature Camp Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, Jr. Summer Field Studies for Children August 4 at 9 a.m. Coffee & Conversation Summer Field Institute for High School Students "Writing Children's Literature" with children's book writer and artist Ryan Higgins '06 and COA's Katharine Turok. M/V Osprey Whale Watches Summer events, many of which are generously sponsored by The Champlain Society (TCS), are subject to change. For locations and other information, visit coa.edu/calendar. *These events are open to TCS members only. For membership information, call Kristina THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY. Swanson, 207-801-5621. 53 NON-PROFIT COA U.S. POSTAGE PAID 04330 PERMIT NO. 121 The College of the Atlantic Magazine 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609