COA Volume 6 I Number 2 I Fall 2010 THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE COA Vision: The faculty, students, trustees, staff Letter from the Editor and alumni of College of the Atlan- tic envision a world where people Some changes call attention to themselves-there's the value creativity, intellectual achieve- coming of the light in the morning and its glorious de- ment and diversity of nature and parture at night, and there's the less frequent change human cultures. With respect and of a president moving on, making a clear mark in our compassion, individuals construct collective history. Change is a birthright at College of meaningful lives for themselves, the Atlantic. It happens daily in class and conversation, gain appreciation of the relation- from the small understandings granted by new facts ships among all forms of life and to the crucial inner changes that come as we all-students, staff, and faculty safeguard the heritage of future alike-confront ourselves and cross-examine our preconceived notions. generations. I think of this issue's cover, a detail from the painting of Jacob Wrestling the Angel by Catherine Clinger, our new faculty member in art and art history. I Front Cover: can't help but feel that it is himself that Jacob is fighting, his demons, possibly his reluctance to change-after all, this contest results in Jacob's becoming a Jacob Wrestling the Angel (detail), fountainhead of a great nation. In Catherine's depiction, it's hardly even a wres- oil on linen, 10x8 in. by Catherine tling match: the man is attacking the angel, as if Jacob were desperately trying Clinger. (see page 17) to prevent change. How well I know that feeling! There's a lot between Catherine's painting on the cover and our student Alice Back Cover: Anderson's lovely watercolor on the back. Much of it reflects the transforma- Warszewiczia coccinea, wild tions that life brings. But one particular sentence keeps tugging at me. Having poinsettia, watercolor study on just been named president emeritus at convocation, our founding president, Ed paper by Alice Anderson '12. Kaelber, spoke to the assembled students saying, "No matter how well you do Created during COA's field trip to in class, not much can be done unless you find others with different points of Costa Rica in June of 2010. view and figure it out together." (see page 10) The very creation of COA can be seen as the result of a civil, but intense wres- tling with the academic establishment of that day. COA has since grown, evolv- ing through its own internal struggles, but what amazes me is its stability. Think of the single degree, the internship term, the senior project, learning by doing, small seminar classes, COA's democracy. These transformative academic ap- proaches formulated by COA's founders-surely in conversation with those who challenged their point of view, be they early trustees, faculty members, or first students-remain foundational after nearly forty years. The key to this consistency might lie in Ed Kaelber's words. COA incorporates debate into our very fabric. When important issues arise, such as the ques- tion of formalizing the college's recent growth, the discussion is an open one. Come January, we'll have a final decision as to whether COA will encourage growth by five to ten students per year for five years. The plan also calls for an additional faculty member for every ten new students, and an annual review of the impact of this growth. So that all members of the community could voice their response to the plan, months of fervent discourse resulted in a special evening All College Meet- ing lasting nearly four hours. Students, especially, spoke about community, intimacy, connection to each other and to faculty. They were so passionate, so thoughtful and articulate, that I know I was not alone in believing that whatever change may come, our center holds true. Damn Id Donna Gold, COA Editor MIX PRINTED WITH CERTIFIED Paper from responsible sources WIND FSC www.fsc.org FSC® C021556 POWER P.S. There's one more slight change to announce. For the past five years, the annual report has been folded into the autumn magazine. This year, it will be Printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks on equipment using 100% wind-generated power. its own publication. COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Volume 6 Number 2 Fall 2010 Letter from the President 2 COA Beat EDITOR Donna Gold A President Moves On & Other News from Campus 3 EDITORIAL GUIDANCE Heather Albert-Knopp 99 Howler Monkeys & Cane Toads 10 Rich Borden Dianne Clendaniel A field experience in Costa Rica Julia De Santis 'Il Jennifer Hughes From The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating 12 Danielle Meier '08 Jabulile Mickle Molefe 14 By Elisabeth Tova Bailey ('78) Rebecca Hope Woods Nancy Andrews' Beyond the Eyes are the Ears 16 EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Bill Carpenter An appreciation by Colin Capers '95, MPhil '09 ALUMNI CONSULTANTS Jill Barlow-Kelley Dianne Clendaniel DESIGNER Rebecca Hope Woods A Bridge Between Worlds 17 PRINTING IS McCarthy Printers Augusta, Maine Catherine Clinger, COA's Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts COA ADMINISTRATION Oral History 20 David Hales Andrew Griffiths President Administrative Dean Cathy Johnson '74: First Graduate Sarah Baker Kenneth Hill Dean of Admission Academic Dean Lynn Boulger Sarah Luke LEARNING BY DOING: 22 Dean of Development Associate Dean of Student Life coa's INTERNSHIP TERM Ken Cline Associate Dean Sean Todd for Faculty Associate Dean Applying Sustainable Principles to Federal Buildings: Thomas A. Fisher '77 for Advanced Studies Internship Revelations: Sarah Cole McDaniel '93, Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 BOARD OF TRUSTEES For the Love of Lizards: Holly Furholmen Zak '94 Ronald E. Beard Suzanne Folds McCullagh Finding a Life: Jesse Kowalski '97 Secretary Sarah A. McDaniel '93 Edward McC. Blair Asking the Right Questions: Tracey Hutton Thibault '99 Life Trustee Jay McNally '84 Leslie C. Brewer Philip S.J. Moriarty A Human Ecologist in Education: Jasmine Smith '09 T.A. Cox Phyllis Anina Moriarty Dianna Emory William V.P. Newlin Life Trustee Donor Profile 30 David Hackett Fischer Trustee Emeritus Daniel Pierce Tom Cox A beautifully functioning heart Trustee Emeritus William G. Foulke, Jr. Chairman Helen Porter Amy Yeager Geier Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 Trustee Emerita Poetry 31 James M. Gower Life Trustee John Reeves Cooking by Abigail Dunn '13 Life Trustee Hollow by Sarah Wineberg '13 George B. E. Hambleton Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Life Trustee Henry L.P. Schmelzer Elizabeth D. Hodder Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Excerpt from The Reluctant Poet 32 Vice Chair Life Trustee A work in progress by Richard Hilliard '09 Sherry F. Huber Clyde E. Shorey, Jr. Trustee Emerita Life Trustee John N. Kelly William N. Thorndike, Jr. Life Trustee Treasurer Alumni and Faculty & Community Notes 36 Philip B. Kunhardt III 77 Cody van Heerden Susan Storey Lyman John Wilmerding Life Trustee Trustee Emeritus In Memoriam 47 Casey Mallinckrodt Vice Chair Q&A with Toby Stephenson '98 48 COA is published twice each year for the College of the Atlantic community. Please send ideas, Human Ecology Essay Revisited 49 letters, and submissions (we are always looking for short stories, poetry, and especially revisits to An Encounter with the First People of Sri Lanka human ecology essays) to: By Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in biology COA Magazine College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 dgold@coa.edu www.coa.edu From the President As many readers of this wonderful magazine know, in October we announced that I will be stepping down at the end of this academic year. The trustees and Barbara and I have been discussing this change for some time, and while we are all content that the timing is right for a wide range of reasons, we certainly approach this decision with mixed feelings. It is a tremendous honor and privilege to serve as president of COA. I hope each of you recognize that for Barbara and me it has been a labor of love much of the time it has been great fun; most of the time it has been rewarding; and always it has been worthwhile. This is a precious and nearly unique alternative to most models of undergraduate higher education. Its value and its future are almost unlimited. As a college, working together, we have much of which to be proud. Our finances are sound, our reputation is strong, and the quality of the educational experiences we offer, measured in every objective way, has never been better. Graduation and retention rates are at all-time highs. We have more faculty teaching a wider range of offerings than ever before. And we have maintained the sense of community that is, and always must be, a hallmark of College of the Atlantic. Certainly there will be challenges for a progressive institution seeking to be better, this will always be the case. And that is good news. COA will emerge stronger from each challenge. Change happens, and regardless of how one feels about it, change always presents rich and positive opportunities. As we go through this transition, I will do all that I can to make sure that we recognize those opportunities for this wonderful college, and capitalize on them. For now, however, the most important message I can send with this column-which I have dearly loved writing over the past few years-is that all is truly well with COA. In my inaugural address, I noted that this college has an unyielding commitment to learn more, teach better, act more wisely, and cherish each other and this planet that is our only home. That is as true today as it was then. Every day we continue to ask our questions, test our answers, and do our part in preparing leaders to meet challenges we cannot yet fully imagine. In closing this note, please let me express my deepest appreciation to each and every one interested in COA for all that you have done to make the last five years so fulfilling for Barbara and me. David F. Hales, President College of the Atlantic 2 COA COA Beat David Hales Moves Ezra Silk of the Bar Harbor Times came by to speak with David Hales just on with the after he announced his retirement. Class of 2011 The following is an excerpt from the interview published in the October 22 ollege of the Atlantic By Donna Gold issue. BHT: What's your vision for the school The leaves were at their most in the future? brilliant on the October day DH: It will be small. that David Hales, College of the Atlantic president since BHT: How small? June 30, 2006, announced that DH: | can't put a number on "small." Essentially, when we say small, we he will be moving on at the end mean intimate. It's less a case of the of the school year. numbers than a description of the kind of relationships that members Hales presided over a period of the learning community have of clarity, growth, and stability together. It's about creating at COA. The college has fully an undergraduate educational come into its own in the last few years, gaining recognition for its experience that is intense for the student that still has guidance and academic strength and innovative sustainability, increasing admis- quality and wisdom coming from a sions applications while becoming more selective, and balancing its faculty. budgets despite the difficult economy. BHT: What is your nightmare vision "College of the Atlantic is an amazing institution," said Hales, 67. "I of COA, if the school went wrong cannot imagine a place with more enthusiastic, creative, and intel- somewhere down the road? ligent students, more devoted faculty and staff, and a stronger mis- DH: It would lose focus on the student. It would lose a sense of integrity with sion. I am very proud of the accomplishments of the last four years, its old values. It wouldn't be practicing and it seemed to me and the trustees that this was the right time to what it teaches. begin a leadership transition for the college, allowing me to play an expanded role on some other issues about which I care deeply." BHT: Which values are you talking about? Under Hales, COA became the first institution of higher education DH: Justice. Fairness. Sustainability in its broadest sense We need to find to be carbon neutral, gaining worldwide attention as one of the some new ways to help structure those most sustainable institutions in North America. While other colleges relationships among humans and have had to drastically cut back because of the failing economy, between humans and nature. That's COA expanded its faculty and staff, diversified and strengthened its what sustainability is all about. It's not academic programs, increased faculty chairs, and saw its net assets just environment, that's a part of it. Part grow from $26 million to almost $43 million. Meanwhile COA has of it is how we practice economics, remained committed to affordability, enabling full support to those not talk about it, but practice it. And part of it is about human justice and most in need while providing financial assistance to more than 80 fairness. So for US if we as an institution percent of its students. aren't wrestling with those problems in our daily behavior, then that will be Applications are up, as are the numbers of accepted students who inconsistent with our values enroll. COA had 280 students when Hales became president; to- day it has 330. Retention and graduation rates are at all-time highs. BHT: How do students feel about the administration? During Hales' presidency, the Kathryn W. Davis Student Resi- KOB PYROT. COA Beat DH: In the people who self-select to be dence Village was completed, Sea Urchin was renovated into the here, starting with me, among the faculty Deering Common Community Center, and the college's land and among the students, | think there's a holdings have increased. little bit of inherent suspicion of authority. As Hales said in an interview with the Bar Harbor Times (see side- BHT: Are you suspicious of yourself? DH: Absolutely. Always. For sixty years, bar), "This college is on a roll. It's very strong right now, and it's a I have never thought that trust forms good point to stop and think, particularly if you're well into your the appropriate basis for a relationship seventh decade, 'How long do I want to do this?' and 'Would a between a citizen and their society. Trust new leader with a new set of energy and visions and ideas take doesn't enter into it. Verify. Watch power [the college] to the next stage?' I'm really happy with many of the like a hawk. things we've done. I'm not satisfied, but I could stay here twenty BHT: According to a 2006 COA magazine years and still be unsatisfied at the end. I don't think that satisfac- profile, you told the then-board of tion is part of my DNA code." trustees in your job interview that you weren't sure if you wanted the job. Reflecting on Hales' decision, William G. Foulke, Jr., chairman of Is that true? COA's board of trustees, said, "David has been remarkable for his DH: Well, yeah. | guess it's kind of clear and focused vision of the college's strength and potential. It interesting now, given that I'm leaving. I've never loved a place more. There's has been a very successful tenure and it is with deep regret that just great joy in this job, most of the time, the board anticipates his leaving at the end of this school year." and it's worthwhile all of the time. So yeah, I'm quite certain that for the time, COA has recently won the New England Board of Higher Edu- it was the right thing for me to do. cation's Robert J. McKenna Award for the school's educational innovations, and the Paul Simon Spotlight award from NAFSA: BHT: So, what's next? Association of International Educators for its International Envi- DH: I don't know | hope | will have opportunities to contribute in a ronmental Diplomacy work, and moved into the top tier of rank- meaningful way to things that I care ings by US News & World Report. The college also launched two about in the future, but I'm not in any endowed programs, Sustainable Business and Sustainable Food position at the moment to comment on Systems, and a summer program for high school students, Islands what those might be. My focus right now Through Time. is to wrap up this job with efficiency and dignity and consistency, and make sure Hales is COA's fifth president, coming to the college from a long that when the next president arrives, he or she will be very happy with what the career seeking environmental change in the public sector, most re- institution is, and ready to take it to the cently as Counsel for Sustainability Policy to Worldwatch Institute. next step. He directed environmental policy and sustainability programs at the United States Agency for International Development under the BHT: Any interest in returning Clinton administration and served under President Jimmy Carter to government? DH: I'm not really interested in any as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of the Interior. kind of a full-time job. I've got three Hales has also moderated major international environmental con- grandchildren who are strangers. I'd like ferences and represented the US in international negotiations. He to get to know them. I want to spend followed founding faculty member Steven K. Katona, who served more time at the YMCA, or out running, as president until June 2006. and regain a little bit of, just, personal health. So, no, in the sense of a full-time job, I'd be surprised if somebody enticed Plans for a presidential search are underway with the expectation me to go on back to doing something of a new president coming in at the beginning of the 2011-2012 for ten or twelve hours a day. I've been academic year. doing that for fifty years. 4 COA COA Beat In the Air @ COA Recognition for COA A few of COA's recent accolades: Top tier of all colleges: US News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges" Top five liberal arts colleges for international students: US News & World Report Princeton Review's The Best 373 Colleges Top ten most environmentally aware and sustainable colleges: Princeton Review, Sierra Magazine, and the Fiske Guide "A" for sustainability in campus food, administration, and climate change and energy according to the Sustainable Endowments Institute Top of the Top: National Survey of Student Engagement We no longer have to say it ourselves, the National Survey of Student Engagement, or NSSE, says it for us, and with research to back it up: A COA education results in active, thoughtful students who have ample opportuni- ties for real connections with their teachers. Students are so involved in their pursuits that they frequently carry discussions from classes into conversation with friends and faculty. In other words, COA students care about what they learn, and they continually use their knowledge-applying it to their daily life, to conversations, and to research. The NSSE survey, taken last year by students at six hundred North American colleges, is considered to be one of the most comprehensive and objective assessments of higher education. For the fifth year in a row, COA ranks among the top of the top ten percent of all schools surveyed. The survey, given to all COA first-years and seniors, asks eighty-five specific questions about how the students relate to their studies. Here are some examples of affirmations by COA students compared to those at all colleges surveyed by NSSE in 2010: COA Other Colleges Do your classes emphasize critical and analytical thinking skills? 94% 85% Do you integrate ideas from other courses in class work? 90% 62% Do you discuss ideas from class with students outside class? 83% 63% Do you frequently contribute to discussions in class? 86% 67% Have your studies helped you to learn effectively on our own? 87% 74% Delta Project In June, COA hosted the Delta Project, a think tank create better roof- on sustainable campus environments. The confer- ing tiles, paints, ence brought together sustainability leaders from and other build- δelta project profound change issue at a time. higher education, business, nonprofit, and govern- ing materials for mental organizations to envision the greener institu- the future. tional facilities and campuses of 2050. Throughout the three-day event, participants shared Keynote speaker Janine Benyus of The Biomimicry Institute kicked off the conference with a discussion their experiences and challenges in transitioning to of how to apply to the built world the ideas of bio- greener institutions, from design strategies to discus- mimicry-a concept encompassing everything from sions of how people interact with the spaces where the way a lobster's exoskeleton has inspired indus- they live and work. Especially appreciated were the trial design to the self-cleaning surface of lotus leaves. workshop sessions where participants had the time Applying nature's solutions to problems can help us and space to discuss a wide range of ideas. COA 5 COA Beat COA's First President Emeritus COA's thirty-ninth year of classes opened with a celebra- tion of Ed Kaelber, the college's founding president, and now its first President Emeritus. W Ann Peach, Kaelber's longtime assistant, sat with him on stage, the two clearly delighting in each other's compa- ny. When David Hales handed Kaelber a large glass vase etched with the COA logo, Kaelber immediately turned to Peach, held the glass high, and remarked on the great beer of the At stein he had been given. In introducing President Emeritus Kaelber, Hales reminded the assembled students, faculty, staff, and some parents that this college does not have to be here. "It is easy to consider it inevitable," he said, "but the presence of this college here today is the result of people who are willing to take risks." Among them, of course, was Ed Kaelber. When it came time for Kaelber to acknowledge his honor, he looked out at the many young faces in front of him and said, "Of all the things this college does well, it attracts bright, energetic youth." He spoke about the self-confi- dence it takes to come to a college that is still rather small, one that asks students to take real initiative to formulate their own course of study within the human ecology degree. "It is a confidence wrapped in humility," he added, closing with these essential words-ones that all of us, COA students, staff, faculty, and alumni might take to heart, "No matter how well you do in class, not much can be done unless you find others with different points of view and figure it out together." Human ecology. The Lucy Bell Sellers Stage On Thursday, October 7, the stage at COA's Gates Community Center was formally named for the woman who has been responsible for the most productions on that platform. COA now has the Lucy Bell Sellers Stage- though many of the performances she created actually predate the college even having an elevated platform. Instead, productions were created in Turrets Great Hall, or on a contrived, two-foot platform set at the end of the old Kaelber Hall. The evening began with a slide show of the many wonderful per- formances Sellers created, and included tributes from trustees, members of her family, actors, and David Hales. Trustee Bill New- lin, brother to Sellers, donned the bear head he wore for A Win- ter's Tale, and then, sans head, read some of his sister's writing. It included this letter, penned in verse and sent to her 1991 students who had decided that it wasn't enough to perform Hamlet-they also needed to add Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: "What do I think as I head to the south? I think of the plays and of you, And I feel most exceedingly down at the mouth When it hits me again that we're through. So I cheer myself up, while I'm still on the go By playing again in my brain A sort of interior video show Called Shakespeare and Stoppard in Maine." 6 COA COA Beat COA Meets the World-And Its Leaders When the First Family visited Bar Harbor in late July, it was remarkable how many points of contact there were between the Obamas and COA. The whole family stayed just down the road from the college, passing COA by land and by sea. When they went for ice cream, it was at Mt. Desert Island Ice Cream, owned by Linda Parker, the wife of faculty member in gov- ernment and polity Jamie McKown. And when the President and First Lady had their night out, they ate at Havana, owned by Michael Boland '94. Rumor had it that they almost visited the Bar Harbor Whale Museum, too, but it seems as if their lobster dinner kept them overtime. The Obamas are not the only leaders greeted by COA folks. Natalie Barnett '11 and Stephen Wagner '11 were at the Organic Research Cen- tre at Elm Farm in the United Kingdom, one of our transatlantic partners, when Prince Charles came to celebrate the farm's thirtieth anniver- sary last May. He stayed long enough to hear an explanation of human ecology from the stu- dents. And Jian Wang '07 met Archbishop Desmond Tutu while working with the Olympic Commit- tee in advance of the 2012 London Olympics, assisting the accessibility manager in making the games more accessible for both disabled and non-disabled people. From top: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with Michael Boland '94 and wife Deirdre Swords after dining at Boland's restaurant Havana. Jamie McKown, Linda Parker, President Obama after the Obamas chose their treats at Mt. Desert Island Ice Cream. Prince Charles visits the Organic Research Centre, meeting with Roger Hitchings, Elm Farm's head of advisory services, Stephen Wagner '11 and Natalie Barnett '11. Bottom: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jian Wang '07 look at a photo together. COA 7 COA Beat Wandering Whale Wows World: Allied Whale match surprises all Freddy Johansen's image of Whale 1363, photographed off Madagascar. On a whim, Norwegian tourist Freddy Johansen took Allen, along with Johansen and four others) they had a whale watch cruise while scuba diving in Madagas- no idea this journeying whale would capture the car in 1999. About a decade later, he decided to scan imagination of the entire world-especially that part his photograph of a diving humpback whale, and up- of the world that is known as the blogosphere. load it onto Flickr. Articles appeared in The New York Times, Boston The result has been a near-tsunami of attention to Col- Globe, USA Today, Nature.com, Scientific Ameri- lege of the Atlantic, thanks to citizen scientist Gale can, Smithsonian, the websites of BBC, ABC, CBS, McCullough of Hancock, Maine, an Allied Whale as- and in papers throughout the world, including India, sociate who frequently cruises Flickr for whale imag- Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Brit- es. McCullough found that this very whale-Number ain, Canada, and Brazil. Stevick spent the better part 1363-had also been photographed by longtime col- of a week writing and speaking with reporters. Rose- laborators working in the waters off Brazil, a quarter mary Seton, Allied Whale research assistant, was in- of the globe away. terviewed for an Australian radio station. The journey from Brazil to Madagascar is the longest Its gender is as unusual as the distance traveled: this distance a mammal has been known to travel, ever. whale is a female. In the few documented cases of Except, of course, the human mammal. whales venturing beyond their breeding groups, says Stevick, it's been males who did the straying, but this When McCullough called Allied Whale with the female traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, around Af- news, research associate Peter Stevick '81 knew she rica and well into the Indian Ocean, a minimum of had made an important connection. Humpbacks do 6,090 miles-nearly twice as far as the annual hump- travel north back migration. and south between This journey has implications for understanding and winter breed- managing whale populations worldwide. Says Ste- ing grounds vick, "While the journey of this one whale is extreme, in warm her example shows us that we should pay attention; tropical wa- whales may not always do what we expect, or re- ters and the main in tidy groups. The picture of their behavior is nutrient-rich messier, and their east-west movement could well be colder waters more important than we have previously recognized. Jessica McCordic '12 seeks humpback where they Because of that, our management focus needs to be whale matches at Allied Whale. feed in sum- more expansive." mer. But they don't tend to move east-west between breeding grounds. The finding also underscores the importance of the whale fluke and the discovery-made by founding Even so, when his scholarly paper on the discovery faculty member and former president Steve Katona was published in the United Kingdom's Royal Soci- and Scott Kraus '77-that each humpback whale ety journal British Letters (co-authored by COA reg- tail is distinctive, thus individuals can be identified. istrar and longtime Allied Whale researcher Judith Knowing this has revolutionized whale studies, en- 8 COA COA Beat abling scientists to follow individual whales with a camera and telephoto lens. Since then, Allied Whale has been curating extensive photographic catalogs of humpback whales. These matches, says Stevick, who serves as a scientific advisor to both the North Atlan- tic and Antarctic Humpback Whale Catalogs, are part of "a long, tedious, and time-consum- ing process." COA student interns do a lot of this work, as well as citizen scientists like Mc- Bone Brigade Cullough. Columbus Day, 2010 saw some Obtaining the photographs to match is the intrepid COA folks heading out to result of extensive international collaboration Drisko Island, off Jonesport, Maine, and the willingness of scientists and individu- where a right whale had washed als to share data. This very collaboration that up weeks before. This right whale allowed for the discovery has already been was right dead, not a pretty pic- recognized. At the 2009 Biennial Conference ture-nor a perfumed one. Allied on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Katona Whale researchers and students was singled out for his encouragement of gamely necropsied the behemoth, large-scale cooperation in research. Stevick finding clear propeller lacerations- and Allen were also noted as outstanding or- though whether they occurred be- ganizers and collaborative researchers. fore death or after, is still unknown. Why this whale made this journey remains As you will read on page 48, Toby a mystery. As Stevick told a reporter for Our Stephenson '98, Bar Harbor Whale Museum director and whale restorer Amazing Planet, "We cannot know what mo- tivates an animal, but occasionally exploring extraordinaire, now has the skel- new habitat is something that animals must eton. Bone by bone, he will eventu- do if they are to adapt to changing conditions ally reassemble the huge creature. and to their own and other populations. She Clockwise from top: Rosemary Seton, Allied may well represent an extreme case of this Whale research assistant, carries the right whale's upper jaw, known as its rostrum, type of exploration." On the other hand, he up the ramp from COA's dock; the right added, "it could be that the animal got very whale's collected bones; Barbara Beblowski '14 and Rachel Sullivan-Lord '14 push a lost." mandible-laden dolly up the ramp. The Rock is Back After being devastated by the storm surges of Hur- ricane Bill in August 2009, Mount Desert Rock is back in action. The lightkeeper's house and the outhouse are now fully restored. In late August, the college held a small flag-raising ceremony to thank those friends of the rock whose donations made possible the repairs. Present were Matt Drennan '86, Scott Swann '86, MPhil '93, Tony Naples '04 and Dan Dendanto '91, along with four interns who had been living on the remote island, new students, and even some reporters. Stage II of the repairs-to either replace or repair the gen- erator building that was severely damaged by the storm-is on the horizon. All that's needed is the funding. The flags are raised: The American flag up top, and the Earth flag below; Sean Todd, director of Allied Whale, works with researcher Dan DenDanto '91 to install the flag pole. Students Christopher Spagnoli '12 and Sara Beth Golaski '12 prepare to hoist the flags. COA 9 HOWLER MONKEYS & CANETOADS A FIELD EXPERIENCE IN COSTA RICA Immediately after graduation this past June, students in Steve Ressel's Applied Amphibian Biology class joined students in John Anderson's Neotropical Conservation Biology course to experience tropical biology firsthand through a ten-day trip to two very different Costa Rican field stations. Students spent most of their time conducting small-scale research projects at Tirimbina Rain- forest Center in Heredia Province, then headed to the Pacific coast for a two-day visit to Curu Wildlife Reserve on the Nicoya Peninsula, thus comparing the biota of wet and dry tropical forests. Their time in the field was quite concen- trated, as can be noted from the following field log kept by Robin van Dyke '11. First Excursion, Day 1, Tirimbina 2:00 pm Found a large cane toad and a litter toad on the trail. 2:11 pm Saw a huge rainbow-colored insect on leaf. Found a dead snake, a lowland forest racer, with large eyes and very long tail. 2:27 pm Passed leaf cutter ants crossing trail. 2:31 pm Found a little brown frog (a Fitzinger's rain frog?) and set up a game camera along the trail. 2:50 pm Becca [Abuza '11] saw a whiptail lizard and a juvenile casque-headed lizard that ran into the undergrowth. 2:57 pm Heard parrots calling. 3:09 pm Jordan [Chalfant '12] spotted a small (about I cm-wide) fer-de-lance in the trail, and a strawberry poison frog. 3:15 pm Saw a Leptodactylid frog, very small. 3:18 pm Light rain. 3:21 pm Heard howler monkeys howling. 3:25 pm Saw peccary tracks on trail, set up second game camera to try and get pictures of them. 3:30 pm Found a tarantula nest, with tarantula inside, on a tree trunk. Jordan found a very calm hog-nosed viper on the trail. 3:40 pm Saw another Leptodactylid frog, very light-colored. From The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating By Elisabeth Tova Bailey ('78)* 1. Field Violets at my feet when did you get here? snail ~ Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) In early spring, a friend went for a walk in the woods But out of the blue came a series of insidious relaps- and, glancing down at the path, saw a snail. Picking es, and once again, I was bedridden. Further, more it up, she held it gingerly in the palm of her hand and sophisticated testing showed that the mitochondria in carried it back toward the studio where I was conva- my cells no longer functioned correctly and there was lescing. She noticed some field violets on the edge of damage to my autonomic nervous system; all func- the lawn. Finding a trowel, she dug a few up, then tions not consciously directed, including heart rate, planted them in a terracotta pot and placed the snail blood pressure, and digestion, had gone haywire. The beneath their leaves. She brought the pot into the stu- drug that had previously helped now caused danger- dio and put it by my bedside. ous side effects; it would soon be removed from the market. "I found a snail in the woods. I brought it back and it's right here beneath the violets." When the body is rendered useless, the mind still runs like a bloodhound along well-worn trails of neurons, "You did? Why did you bring it in?" tracking the echoing questions: the confused family "I don't know. I thought you might enjoy it." of whys, whats, and whens and their impossibly dis- tant kin how. The search is exhaustive; the answers, "Is it alive?" elusive. Sometimes my mind went blank and listless; at other times it was flooded with storms of thought, She picked up the brown acorn-sized shell and looked unspeakable sadness, and intolerable loss. at it. "I think it is." Given the ease with which health infuses life with Why, I wondered, would I enjoy a snail? What on meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly ill- earth would I do with it? I couldn't get out of bed to ness steals away those certainties. It was all I could return it to the woods. It was not of much interest, do to get through each moment, and each moment and if it was alive, the responsibility-especially for a felt like an endless hour, yet days slipped silently snail, something so uncalled for-was overwhelming. past. Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as My friend hugged me, said good-bye, and drove off. if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at At age thirty-four, on a brief trip to Europe, I was all. felled by a mysterious viral or bacterial pathogen, resulting in severe neurological symptoms. I had I had been moved to a studio apartment where I could thought I was indestructible. But I wasn't. If anything receive the care I needed. My own farmhouse, some did go wrong, I figured modern medicine would fix fifty miles away, was closed up. I did not know if or me. But it didn't. Medical specialists at several major when I'd ever make it home again. For now, my only clinics couldn't diagnose the infectious culprit. I was way back was to close my eyes and remember. I could in and out of the hospital for months, and the compli- see the early spring there, the purple field violets- cations were life threatening. An experimental drug like those at my bedside-running rampant through that became available stabilized my condition, though the yard. And the fragrant small pink violets that I had it would be several grueling years to a partial recov- planted in the little woodland garden to the north of ery and a return to work. My doctors said the illness my house-they, too, would be in bloom. Though not was behind me, and I wanted to believe them. I was usually hardy this far north, somehow they survived. ecstatic to have most of my life back. In my mind I could smell their sweetness. *Elisabeth Tova Bailey chose to use a pen name for her book because she continues to deal with chronic illness. COA alumni will remember her as the Beth who lived in Seafox when she was a visiting student in the spring of 1978. She would love to hear from alumni and is easily reachable via her author website contact page: www.elisabethtovabailey.net. 12 COA Books, Music & Films Books The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating Before my illness, my dog, Brandy, and By Elisabeth Tova Bailey ('78) I had often wandered the acres of forest that stretched beyond the house to a hid- Elizabeth Tova Bailey is pub- den, mountain-fed brook. The brook's lishing under a pseudonym, song of weather and season followed us SOUND but she was a visiting student as we crisscrossed its channel over par- in 1978. According to the Huff- tially submerged boulders. On the trail ington Post, the book is "An home, in the boggiest of spots, perched WILD SNAIL exquisite meditation on the re- storative connection between on tiny islands of root and moss, I found EATING nature and humans with diminutive wild white violets, their sentences of stunning lyrical throats faintly striped with purple. beauty." (2010) These field violets in the pot at my bed- side were fresh and full of life, unlike Baobabs in Heaven the usual cut flowers brought by other By Tawanda Chabikwa '07 friends. Those lasted just a few days, Tawanda Chabikwa's senior leaving murky, odoriferous vase water. BAOBABS Project, "set at the cross- In my twenties I had earned my living as IN HEAVEN roads of city and village life, a gardener, so I was glad to have this bit modern and mythic history, of garden right by my bed. I could even is urbane and humorous, water the violets with my drinking glass. thoughtful and sensual, vio- lent and nostalgic. Most of But what about this snail? What would I us view Zimbabwe through do with it? As tiny as it was, it had been a glass darkly; but now, going about its day when it was picked through the directness, ur- up. What right did my friend and I have gency, and immediacy of to disrupt its life? Though I couldn't Tawanda Chabikwa's fic- imagine what kind of life a snail might tion, we can see this ago- lead. nized country face to face." (From Bill Carpenter's jacket endorsement.) Available at www.ndiniwako.org (2010) I didn't remember ever having noticed any snails on my countless hikes in the woods. Perhaps, I thought, looking at Re-structuring Lives: Interviews with Russian Professionals the nondescript brown creature, it was By Patricia Ciraulo '94, MPhil '05 precisely because they were so incon- spicuous. For the rest of the day the A collection of interviews snail stayed inside its shell, and I was with Russian intellectuals too worn out from my friend's visit to following the break-up of the Re-structuring Lives give it another thought. Soviet Union. Patty Ciraulo conducted the research for this compilation while on a Watson Fellowship in 1998 From The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by and 1999. (2009) Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Copyright 2010 by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. Snail illustration by Susan Brand. The Plants of Acadia National Park Calamity By Linda L. Gregory '89, Glen H. Mittelhauser '89, by Josie Sigler '99 Sally C. Rooney, and Jill E. Weber Josie Sigler's chapbook. According to the writer Considered the definitive guide Dorothy Allison, Josie Sigler writes to, "give some to plants found in and around child, some thirteen-year-old, the hope of the re- Acadia National Park. This made life, to nourish the covenant of truth." Avail- guide, created by COA alum- able at www.proempress.com. (2009) ni and visitors, uses much of the research of the late Craig Music Greene, COA faculty member Cora Rose in biology. (2010) By Cora Rose Lewicki '10 Songs written and performed by Lewicki, with the help of a Serpentine: Evolution and Ecology in host of COA musicians. Avail- a Model System able at www.corarose.com Co-edited by Nishanta Rajakaruna '94 and (2009) Susan Harrison Serpentine soils have long fas- cinated biologists for the spe- Films cialized floras they support and the challenges they pose On a Phantom Limb to plant survival and growth. By Nancy Andrews, faculty member in video and This volume focuses on what performance art scientists have learned about A film examing the jour- major questions in earth his- ney of a human-made hy- Serpentine tory, evolution, ecology, con- brid, a surgical creation- servation, and restoration. part woman, part bird- (2011) passing through death, purgatory, and returning Soil and Biota of Serpentine: A World View to life. The boundaries Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of reality, fantasy, documentary, and fiction are on Serpentine Ecology blurred in this reprise of classic themes, dilemmas, Co-edited by Nishanta Rajakaruna '94 and and consequences of reanimation. "The monster Robert Boyd did not choose this for her self, to be an amalgam A collection of papers generated by the 6th Interna- for alchemy." With feature interviews and an es- tional Conference on Serpentine Ecology, held at say by Jim Supanick (http://supanickblog.blogspot. COA in June 2008. (2010) com). Andrews' The Ima Plume Trilogy is also avail- able for $20 or whatever you can afford. Visit www. nancyandrews.net/ or contact Andrews at PO Box living must bury 142, Seal Harbor, ME 04675. By Josie Sigler '99 The Vanishing of the Bees Josie Sigler's most recent Co-executive producer Peter Heller '85 book of poetry is the win- ner of the 2010 Motherwell The Vanishing of the Bees is a doc- Prize. (2010) umentary about colony collapse disorder, the mysterious disap- pearance of honeybees through- out the planet. Peter Heller CO- executive producer. (2010) 14 COA Mobility, Migration, and Mobile Phones Amy Wesolowski's 2010 senior project applying math to movements By Julia De Santis '12 Whenever we use our cell phones to text, call, or access the internet, we leave data traces that can then be stored, collected, and analyzed. This data, archived by cell phone companies, has recently been made available to researchers who are developing techniques to mine it so as to better understand contemporary societies. Amy Wesolowski '10 joined these researchers for her senior project "Mobility, Migration, and Mobile Kibera only calling other slum dwellers? Are these Phones." At COA, Wesolowski worked closely people connected to specific Kenyan tribes? Do with Dave Feldman, faculty member in physics and people who live in slums typically transfer money via mathematics. He introduced her to Nathan Eagle, a their cell phones? Do people who move to cities send postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New money back to rural areas? Mexico. Wesolowski and Eagle, who is also a visiting assistant professor at MIT, collaborated on a research Wesolowski and Eagle found that close to half of the project using cell phone data to examine Kenyan people they followed moved every month, either to migration patterns and the social and economic another part of Kibera or elsewhere, and the majority networks of slum dwellers. of people with cell phones live in Kibera for less than two months. This is significant, as it undermines the Over one billion people live in slums around the common belief that slums are traps out of which world, a number that grows daily as rural dwellers people almost never escape. seek to improve their lives by moving to cities. Slums are usually characterized by dense, substandard Now, as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon housing and the squalor caused by the absence of University, Wesolowski is considering whether cell social infrastructure, public facilities, and such basic phone data can be useful in studying the spread services as clean water, electricity, and sanitation. of malaria. Although Kenyans are eradicating the To even begin to make inroads into this chaos, aid disease, it can be reintroduced by mosquitoes workers need to understand migration patterns: who transferring diseased blood to healthy individuals. is moving where, when, and for how long. With the mobile phone data, Wesolowski can trace the travels of more than twelve million people and Wesolowski and Eagle obtained anonymous mobile graph the chances of the disease being reintroduced phone data for one year from Kenya's largest by mapping people's movements from regions where cell phone company, Safaricom. By mapping the malaria is prevalent, to areas where it is not. geographic locations of the towers of the caller and called of over twelve billion calls from more than ten Because this disease-risk map is the first to use million people, they could quantitatively infer places mobile phone data to assess a region's vulnerability, of work and migration patterns in and out of Kibera, Wesolowski is creating methodologies for other the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. researchers doing similar work. She is also Since the records included caller, called, date, creating ways to geographically model the spread duration, and such information as fund transfers, of other diseases. Wesolowski could also see who was sending money While this work raises questions about privacy, and where the recipient and sender were located. Wesolowski explains, "This data could be used for Looking at money sent and airtime purchased, she could also infer information about the economic bad things, but we try to stay on the side of good." In status of the cell phone user. this case, "the good" takes the form of mathematical and statistical techniques that can help governments Through these records, Wesolowski and Eagle could develop policies and services, and assist NGOs begin to answer questions such as: When people as they make decisions regarding school systems, move into the city are they moving into the slum? urban planning, and public health. Applying math If so, do they ever leave? Is Kibera a stepping stone to movements-quintessential, if unusual, human to enter Nairobi's formal work force? Are people in ecology. COA 15 COA Beat An Appreciation Nancy Andrews' Beyond the Eyes are the Ears By Colin Capers '95, MPhil '09 A mix of 16mm, ani- mation, found footage, and live-action footage. The filmmaker, faculty member in video and performance art, began the project by writing a song cycle; imagery was then developed through a series of drawings. A study of pink-lit in- sects exhibiting hu- man features, faces, limbs. Mournful, soar- ing violin scraped over a strummed guitar. Green-filtered images of electrical impulses at play. Fibrous ten- drils. Masks. Creatures Drawing/still from Behind the Eyes are the Ears, ink and photocopy, 2010 of prey. When one reaches "beyond the now"-a phrase used to potentially understand across a broader range of by Dr. Sheri Myes in Nancy Andrews' motion picture perception and scale. Behind the Eyes are the Ears-one risks slipping out of step, out of time, out of control. These three states This motion picture, like its main character, embraces are all explored in this work which, like the scientists the full scope of the unknown-from the sinister to Andrews' work frequently considers-and like the the rhapsodic-understanding that some paths are il- artist herself-focuses on the self as a research object. lusory, but also that the illusion is important because it sets up the reveal, Aristotle's anagnorisis: the con- Though the protagonists in Andrews' works form a text for realization and meaning-making. continuing sequence of misfits, outcasts, mutants, and mavericks, they always seem content to be as The spiral is of increasing significance in Andrews' they are and manifest a sense of empowerment that work-both as a symbol of loss of control and as a seems to increase in each new movie Andrews cre- hypnotic tool. Tempering the spiral is the Rorscha- ates. Although Dr. Myes is charged by the authorities chian inkblot, which becomes more continuous and with "inappropriate expression" and "interfering with organic in each movie. As Beyond the Eyes are the the order of nature," she has the confidence-paired Ears concludes, we are taken beyond concerns of with clarity of vision-to continue her experiments in character, narrative, the human. Andrews & Myes, hybridizing her own consciousness with the percep- apothecarists, take us within the widening blot and tive organs of a range of insects, spiders, and mega- fauna. farther out, beyond. The now-familiar Rorschach is consumed/subsumed by an unknown, other-dimen- Dr. M. appreciates the fact that there is much that the sional entity growing inward from the sides of the rational mind cannot understand, that to open oneself screen-making the peripheral central, conflating to fantasy-in particular the reality of an other which analog and digital into a warm, comforting, enigmat- we may only be able to comprehend as fantasy-is to ic, oily stain of a talisman. Together we experience a have a fuller, more participatory experience of life, hushed, epiphanic singularity. 16 COA A Bridge Between Two Worlds Artist Catherine Clinger From top: The Flood, oil on birch panels in hand-forged iron frame, 60.5x45.25 in.; Annapurna II, oil on linen, 8x10 in.; Many-Eyed Throne, As an artist/scholar, thought and practice meet at a place outside of the self upon a surface of linen or paper. This surface is a hidden landscape, measured within metes and bounds. However, an artwork's existence beyond itself is not a small world limited by edges. Art has always functioned as a bridge between worlds for me; a path not a place. Bridges are products of human ingenuity. These channels unify and separate-and art can do the same. I pursue the spatial poles of arrival and departure in relation to the notion of journey. My paintings and prints are oil on linen, 8x10 in. stages along a secreted trail of experience. Catherine Clinger, Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts COA 17 The Fall (detail), oil on linen, 12x18 in. A/P Ursula's Dream, color etching, 8x10 in. Cathy Johnson, First Oral History Cathy Johnson is COA's first graduate, receiving a degree in November 1973. For twenty years, she has been a lawyer at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, mostly focused on protecting forests and land in Maine's northern townships. We talked at Cathy's kitchen table on a brilliant August day, a plate of cherry tomatoes ripening beside US and sunflowers nodding in the garden beyond. The following is an edited record of that conversation. ~ Donna Gold opened out towards the water in the old building and there were these stairs, and a little wall. I remember sitting there with Dan Kane and we probably talked for an hour and a half, maybe two hours. I remember thinking, this is perfect for me. I have to do this. And sort of knowing that, "Hmm, my parents might not like this, but I gotta do this." I can't remember exactly what happened after that; I know I had to tell my parents-my Dad was the Dean of the Yale Divinity School-and I know my father said, "We're just not prepared to pay for that." The college was very accommodating-they had thirty-one students: sixteen boys and fifteen girls, so I was going to nicely even that out. I got a little bit of money from Yale as the child of a professor, and I had some money saved because I had worked every summer, and then I just took out a student loan and worked part-time for Maine Coast Heritage Trust- it was upstairs in the old building, and I did some painting during holidays, and picked up odd jobs and lived very cheaply. DG: And how did you become COA's first graduate? Donna Gold: So Cathy, you were a transfer student CJ: I finished my classroom work in June of '73, to COA? which is when I would have graduated from Yale. Cathy Johnson: Yes, I transferred from Yale. But COA didn't have the ability to give degrees at that point, because they weren't accredited, so I stayed DG: What did your parents say about that? on at COA and worked as an assistant in the admis- CJ: They actually declined to pay for my education sion office. I spent that next year traveling around to at COA, so I took out loans, and worked, and did it high schools. I'd be on the road every other week, re- myself. cruiting. Sometime in November they got the ability to award degrees; I have a letter dated November of DG: That was a decision- 1973 that said you've graduated-because I wanted CJ: In a way it was a huge decision. You know, to apply to law school and I needed something that "You're throwing away a Yale degree-why would showed that I'd graduated from college. The follow- you do that? You only have one more year ing June, Bill Ginn finished and so Bill and I were given degrees at the same time. That's why I always DG: How did you even hear about COA? maintain that I'm actually the first graduate, even CJ: I had a job with the Youth Conservation Corps though in the ceremony, since his name starts with working at Acadia National Park. The second summer "G," they handed him the first diploma. I worked with one of the original summer students [from COA's summer pilot program] and I forget ex- DG: So what was your senior project? actly how it happened, but I was very interested in CJ: I was looking at the downeast Maine coast and law and the environment and I ended up going down proposing a national park for the area from Ellsworth to COA and talking to Dan Kane [founding faculty down towards Eastport. I did a lot of land use plan- member in law] There was a big French door that ning. I think my actual product was draft legislation 20 COA for a new national park. It did not come into frui- DG: What was the energy of the college at that time? tion, although there has been a lot of land conserva- CJ: There was a sense of excitement, we're doing tion in that area. The Machias River was really sort of something really different here, putting together the the focus of it, and the whole Machias-at least the academics and this new way of education I was stem itself-is protected now, not the backlands. definitely a part of that. Being able to integrate law and science. I wanted to take some science [at Yale] DG: And were you always interested in law- but in those days if you weren't pre-med, they didn't CJ: I was somewhat interested in it, but didn't really really welcome you into the biology class. And I know anybody and I think that's why meeting Dan wasn't really all that interested in molecular stuff, I and having him talk about how the law can help pro- was more interested in nature: How do plants work, tect the environment-that really sort of put two in- and how do they interact, and how do animals act terests together. I took courses with him all year. That and that kind of stuff. The last term at COA I took a was definitely the highlight for me. quite intensive class with Kathy Hazard '76, just with Steve [Katona, founding faculty member and former DG: What about what we now call "student life?" president]. We kind of went through a whole year of CJ: The college was basically my life. I lived in the Bluenose Motel with the other students who were college biology in one term. single. I remember great soccer games that we used I was less a part of the energy, which I sensed, to play on the grass, it was kind of a ritual all fall. which was we're running this community ourselves. A number of the faculty would participate as well. I I do remember lengthy conversations about the din- remember skiing. We did have some snow that win- ing hall and what kind of food they would serve. But ter. And singing. I'm a big musician and I had played I wasn't that involved because I was so poor. At the multiple instruments. I started a madrigal group-I end of my summer at the conservation corps, they don't know how many of us there were probably had some big metal containers of peanut butter left sixteen or so? over, and big bags of noodles. I ended up with two or three of these big gallon cans of peanut butter, DG: Half the school! and an endless supply of noodles. That entire year CJ: We were pretty good. We'd have soprano, alto, I went down to the grocery store and bought bread tenor, bass, and some people would go out in the hall and creamy soups of various sorts, and for lunch I and practice there, and I'd kinda go around between would have a peanut butter sandwich, and for din- the groups and help people learn their parts and then ner I heated up a can of soup and threw in as many we'd get back together and sing them. I remember noodles as I wanted. that as being a lot of fun. I loved music, and that was But the faculty basically turned over their entire the one thing that I probably missed at COA because lives to the college, too. From what I saw, it didn't I was very much into music and there wasn't really appear that they had particularly separate lives either. much opportunity for that. They were inviting students over to their houses for My favorite memories probably were the esca- dinner a lot. I remember I ate a lot at different folks' pades that Dan led downeast, canoeing all these dif- houses, particularly Dan and Marion [Kane]. So it ferent rivers and streams. We'd get lost in the marsh wasn't like that's all I ate for the entire year. somewhere or trudge through the brush "I'm sure the river's over there somewhere." And paddling the DG: Now colleges are really much more integrated Machias. That was my first introduction to canoeing, and I totally loved it. and it's easier to have interdisciplinary majors. It's hard to think how unusual it was at COA- DG: Other memories? CJ: Oh, it was completely unusual. I mean, it really CJ: We haven't talked about The Turrets, which was is the single thing that made me leave Yale. People this completely boarded up, cobwebby thing that would say, "There are only four faculty members? was always a fun place to go scare each other. It was And you take classes from three of them? All year?" illegal, I believe, but we went in there regularly and I just thought all three of them walked on water. Bill kind of snuck around and made noises and scared Carpenter was teaching literature, and even though each other. I can't remember how we got in, but I re- it was the same three teachers each term, I thought member walking around on the creaky stairs and be- each of them was absolutely fabulous and I learned a ing upstairs where the windows weren't boarded up, huge amount from each of them. and looking around the building on multiple occa- sions. For the life of me now, I think maybe I went in DG: So you didn't regret leaving Yale? there with a boy once, and we did a little smooching. CJ: I have never regretted leaving Yale. COA 21 LEARNING BY DOING THE INTERNSHIP TERM A term-long internship is central to COA's educational approach of digging deeply-immersing one's hands in the field of one's dreams. For some, that dirt is actual soil-maybe the fields of Beech Hill Farm or a garden dug with elementary-aged students. Other students have delved into other depths-a storehouse of Andy Warhol paintings, the dense pages of international treaties, a birthing center in the mountains of Mexico, the alligator- filled waters of a large southern swamp-to name just a few. As Jill Barlow-Kelley, our longtime internship director notes, "These ten-week supervised experiences allow students to test their knowledge and skills gained through coursework in the world of work. Interns develop new skills, clarify future goals, and establish impor- tant career contacts. Internships have led to additional internships, senior project ideas, and job offers." Equally important, they also can offer early warning signs that one's dream job may not be as radiant as one hoped. Whether the internship was something a student loved or disliked, the experience is frequently a powerful, life-changing one, as revealed by the following profiles. Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 in the field at Denali National Park and Preserve talking to Cook Inlet Tribal Council youth. APPLYING SUSTAINABLE PRINCIPLES TO FEDERAL BUILDINGS THOMAS A. FISHER '77, aia, LEED™ AP By Donna Gold Tom Fisher transferred to College of the Atlantic in 1974 with a love of the outdoors, dance, craft, and Nietzsche. What he found at COA was a wave of fas- cination with alternative housing concepts, propel- ling Fisher to an interest in building and ecological design. At the time, Ernie McMullen, faculty member in ce- ramic design and art, had begun designing homes, including a solar-powered one for the late Dick Davis, COA's first philosophy faculty member. When construction began, Fisher joined the crew. Architect Roc Caivano was also teaching at COA. Fascinated by working with Caivano, McMullen, and Davis, Fisher took a summer 1976 internship at the NaCul Environmental Design Center in Amherst, Massachu- setts. That, says Fisher, set him on his life's course. The name NaCul combines nature and culture. Its StreamView, a home created by Tom Fisher '77 for the family of founder, the Italian architect Tulio Inglese, studied violinist Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band. with the famous designer Paolo Soleri. Beyond the introduction to energy efficiency in design, and in- Today Fisher is the sustainability manager for the tegrating natural systems into architecture, Fisher Department of Labor's Job Corps facilities program, learned about the basic functioning of an architec- and a regionally known green building expert in the tural office. "As a human ecologist trying to break Washington, DC area. His work took on greater in- into the design world," he says, "I was exposed to tensity-and personal excitement-after an executive architects at various levels in their careers. It was a order from President Barack Obama required all fed- good way of giving a reality check to what is really a eral agencies to implement a broad range of high- very cerebral, academic environment." performance, environmentally responsive initiatives that also serve to mitigate climate change. Fisher not As Inglese worked on designing communities similar only implements these directives, but also advocates to large-scale cohousing developments, Fisher devel- for them. oped maps of the region, identifying the watersheds and other environmental features while also working Fisher has found such fertile ground working toward on actual design ideas. To Fisher, the experience con- developing design and operations processes that ad- here to known principles of sustainability, that he firmed that "this was something I could possibly be has not been otherwise active as a designer in recent good at; something I could possibly do as a career." years. "It's really exciting being here in DC, work- The hands-on aspect of house creation still intrigued ing with some of the top architects and engineers, him, so after graduation Fisher worked construction designing to LEED requirements, and helping to man- before embarking on an architectural career. He now age integrated design and certification processes," holds a master's degree in architecture with a minor says Fisher who is an accredited professional with in landscape architecture from the North Carolina Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. He is also involved with the United States Green Build- State University School of Design where he received ing Council, which developed the LEED standards. the American Institute of Architects' Certificate of Merit Award for integrating architecture, ecology, "I get the sense that I'm in the crux of things here, and coastal land development, and computer modeling the world is waking up to the need to seriously imple- tools-surely human ecology in action. After sever- ment a green paradigm. The federal government is al years spent working in architecture firms, Fisher actually a leading force now," says Fisher. "I never started ENVIRON Design Collaborative, providing ar- would have gotten here without the environmental chitectural services for numerous projects using straw thinking, literature, and values that I was able to ab- bale, solar, and site-responsive strategies. sorb at COA." COA 23 INTERNSHIP REVELATIONS: GETTING TO KNOW WHAT ONE LIKES-AND DISLIKES! By Donna Gold When Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 meets interns at Denali National Park, she is always certain to tell them, "This is an experience, you're here for the experience; a conservation career may not be your ultimate path." She should know. She discovered some great drawbacks to the career promised by an internship to which she had looked forward. So did Sarah Cole McDaniel '93. Their experience reminds us all that an internship is a learning experience-and learning what isn't right is just as valuable as learning what clicks. SARAH COLE MCDANIEL '93 Even in high school, Sarah McDaniel, then Sarah searchers, she was absolutely miserable. One night Cole, was on the science track. Her sister had told her she headed off-site to a public phone, called biology about a small, sciency school near Acadia National faculty member John Anderson, reached his wife Kar- Park. McDaniel visited, fell in love, and applied early en, and burst into tears. After twelve weeks, she left. decision. "Quitting is not something I do lightly," she says. Expecting to become a field biologist, she collected Fortunately, having been at COA, McDaniel had and examined coyote scat in Acadia, and arranged been taking a wider range of classes than just biology. for an internship helping a post-doc student at Texas Though she continued her work in Acadia looking at Tech University track the mule deer herd. Though coyote scat and went ahead with her plans for her she only needed to spend ten weeks on the intern- senior project surveying mammals on Isle au Haut ship, she signed up for six months. (work that was published in the Maine Naturalist), she began shifting her focus, taking more classes in McDaniel joined a team of researchers with doctor- conservation with Ken Cline, faculty member in law ates and master's degrees. She was the youngster. They and policy, than in biology. worked around the clock, eight hours on, eight hours off, riding around the high desert in ATVs, attempting After COA, McDaniel received a master's degree in to track the movements of individuals among a herd environmental studies at the Yale School of Forestry of radio-collared deer. But first the deer had to show. and Environmental Studies, then a law degree from Harvard University, where she served on the Harvard "I found I didn't have the personality characteristics Environmental Law Review. Still regarding herself as to sit around in a hot, dusty desert and wait for deer "an animal person," she has happily transferred her to walk by," says McDaniel, who has been a COA desire to protect animals to protecting their habitat. trustee since 2004. "Being on an ATV was cool, but She is most proud of helping to preserve a missing listening for beeps and writing down where they OC- link in the Hundred-Mile Wilderness previously curred was not a satisfying job experience." Not in owned by Plum Creek by representing the Appala- isolation; not when two members of the small team chian Mountain Club in its purchase of the thirty- were a couple who were not getting along-to put it thousand-acre Roach Pond Tract near Greenville, mildly. Maine. "I didn't have the personality that could tolerate that "Never, walking in here, did I think I was going to be dysfunction for very long," McDaniel says. Isolated a lawyer," she says. And if she hadn't had the intern- among tense, angry teammates, bored with the work, ship? "I would have taken some field job. It would uncomfortable with the competition among the re- have been a painful learning experience." Left: Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area, Alpine, Texas. Right: Sarah McDaniel '93 crouches beneath the Mt. Washington Summit sign, to which her daughter Rosalie (in a skirt), is clinging. With McDaniel are her sister, nieces, and nephew. 24 COA CHRISTIE DENZEL ANASTASIA '92 Christie Denzel Anastasia's experience was nearly the opposite to that of Sarah Cole McDaniel's. Not that Anastasia (known as Christie Denzel at COA) came to COA to do law, but she planned on working inside, doing scientific research at a laboratory. But her internship-a coveted and fascinating genetic research project at The Jackson Lab- oratory-caused her to know herself better. She realized she needed a job that would allow her to be outdoors, at least some of the time. Anastasia's journey has been one of rev- elations. She still remembers the moment when she decided to apply to COA. Raised in an urban environment in southern Con- necticut, she didn't even know that national parks existed before she came to COA. But as a first-generation college student, she Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 treks down the Savage River inside Denali National Park was hesitant about going to a small college and Preserve with the Alaska Range in the distance. Behind her is son Svante Fortino, and so far away. Admission staff at COA encour- behind him is son Xavier Orion. aged her to visit; it was not in her realm of thinking. COA landed in her "do not apply" pile. She passed on the job invitation. It was not easy. In fact, it was so difficult that at the time, she felt it was It gnawed on her until one night she woke up at the wrong decision. "But if I listened really down 3 a.m. and moved the application from the "do not deep inside, my conscience told me not to go." apply" pile to the "yes, apply" one. Anastasia had help from her internship team, includ- Her first and last summers at COA, Anastasia worked ing former COA librarian Marcia Dvorak and John at Acadia National Park. In the middle, she took paid Anderson. She also felt quite bolstered by an unex- internships at the Jackson Lab, researching autoim- pected remark from Ken Cline. "Someday you'll be mune diseases one summer, spending another sum- mer trying to understand what elements of environ- a superintendent in a national park," she recalls him mental disasters remain in the atmosphere. saying. That remark, both off-hand and extraordinary, is what COA so often offers, she says, "inspiring oth- A crisis came when the scientist she was working ers to see what is in their hearts." with decided to move his lab to the University of Cin- cinnati and invited Anastasia to go with him. "Here's Anastasia went into the National Park Service and my ticket to a free grad program," she recalls. "It was worked her way up from interpreter to educator, get- a dream invitation." But something had gnawed at ting a master's in business psychology along the way. her. One day, the scientists had decided to collect the Just as this magazine was going to press, she wrote to DNA of poplar trees outside the lab, gathering DNA say that she was promoted from managing a science from each of the poplars. Though they were scien- center in Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve tists, they didn't understand that this sampling would to the position of management and program analyst not offer variety, as all the trees would be genetically for the park. Adds Anastasia, "Very exciting human identical. ecology work to be done even deep in the interior This experience catalyzed the realization that she of Alaska!" never wanted to be such a specialist that she would miss seeing the big picture. While she doesn't spend as much time working out- side now, the big picture is hard to miss. "My home is Furthermore, Anastasia says, "I realized that while I right next to over six million acres of wilderness. This loved the very organized, controlled environment of is wilderness with a capital 'W.' I know it really well, a lab, and working with smart dedicated people on and my kids are growing up in it." big projects with big implications, it didn't win out over my need to be outside and 'grok' the broad in- Then she adds, "I'm really glad I woke up that night terconnectedness of things." and moved the application package." COA 25 FOR THE LOVE OF LIZARDS HOLLY Furholmen ZAK '94 By Julia De Santis '12 As a young girl, Holly Furholmen Zak was fascinated by reptiles. She raised lizards of her own, and when she saw a television program about people work- ing with alligators, she turned to her father and said, "That's what I want to do." She retained this dream, coming to COA in 1990 to study biology. Twenty years later, she is still sharing her excitement for out- door biology with others. Like many COA students, Zak had not one but two internships. Jill Barlow-Kelley, director of internships and career services, encouraged Zak to look through a national wildlife refuge database for a place where she could pursue her interest in herpetology, and she quickly found Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia. Although the refuge had never had an intern before, they thought Zak would make a good addition to the team, contributing to the refuge and learning in the process. In 1993, Zak became their first intern. For three months, she acted as a regular employee Holly Furholmen Zak '94 in the Okefonokee National Wildlife Refuge in 1993. working on advanced research projects. She stud- ied red-cockaded woodpeckers, black bears, frogs, More recently, Zak has focused on jobs with flexible marsh/wading birds, and alligators! One night, schedules so she can spend time with her three chil- she even found herself stranded in a motorboat, sur- dren, Jenna, twelve, Brandon, five, and Savannah, rounded by the reptiles, with an angry female alliga- four. Now, Zak's love of reptiles, combined with her tor trying to chase her away. This experience, as well COA education, her internships, and her experiences as the other challenges Zak faced as she air-boated as a mother are being directed toward a new project: through the waterways, only confirmed her desire to launching an outdoor day camp, Research 4 Reptiles. jump into the world of biological research. Research 4 Reptiles will bring children enrolled in For her second internship, Zak worked in Louisiana 4-H programs to the prairie to do hands-on field re- taking morphological measurements of harvested al- search studies with native reptiles. They will collect ligators, analyzing two hundred alligator stomachs for important data for Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie food content. Then she returned to Okefenokee for to help them make decisions regarding conservation. her senior project, performing red-cockaded wood- Zak wants students to understand that snakes and turtles are not "WE NEED PEOPLE TO THINK ABOUT THE gross and slimy creatures, and CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS, AND THAT'S that they play crucial roles in our WHY HUMAN ECOLOGY IS so IMPORTANT." ecosystem. Through reptiles, Zak hopes to show the students how HOLLY Furholmen Zak '94 we are all connected, and that our actions have consequences. pecker surveys and mapping their colonies. After As she says, "We need people to think about the graduating, Zak returned to Okefenokee yet again to consequences of their actions, and that's why human work on wildlife surveys and a contaminant study as ecology is so important. As humans, we need to see a temporary biological science technician. In 2003, the connections around us. We're connected to ev- she received her master's in biological sciences at erything else, whether we like it or not. We need to Northern Illinois University. be good caretakers of our earth." 26 COA BEYOND INTERNSHIPS: FINDING A LIFE JESSE Kowalski '97 By Donna Gold Jesse Kowalski's internship didn't only point him in the Joanne Carpenter, former faculty member in art and right direction, it became his direction; some might art history. When he did "horribly" in biology, but say it became his life. In the fall of 1996 Kowalski totally took to the art, he started to question his focus: interned at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. "Maybe art's my thing," he recalls thinking. He took Barely two weeks after his internship was over, his another course and was hooked. "Joanne Carpenter supervisors called him wondering if he could return mentored me, she turned me onto art," he recalls. for six months to work on the young museum's first major traveling show. They wanted him in March; he As for Andy Warhol, what intrigued him was the art- wasn't graduating until June, but fortunately, Kowal- ist's dual nature. "He'd go to church every Sunday, ski's senior project was about Andy Warhol, so in the but he'd create films that were pretty racy." Warhol best COA fashion, it all worked out. was also expansive, working in film, print, drawings, and television. "He was very creative, intelligent, When the traveling show was assembled and out the well-rounded," says Kowalski. door, the museum found another job for him, and then another, and Kowalski is there today, having ad- When Kowalski applied for an internship, the mu- vanced from project assistant to curatorial assistant to seum was only in its second year. He had a variety of his current position as director of exhibitions. duties, from creating a mailing list database to help- And yet, museum work certainly wasn't in Kowal- ing install shows to undertaking curatorial research. Kowalski left the museum excited about a career in ski's mind when the high school chemistry whiz from Wichita, Kansas chose to attend COA. Mostly, he the field. "I figured I'd move to New York City and do says now, he was seeking something different. Hav- something there." ing taken music rather than art in high school, the Kowalski found more than a career through his in- closest Kowalski came to Andy Warhol was a book ternship. In 1998, a student named Heather came to he had found in a bargain bin in Kansas. intern at the museum. She left, but she and Kowalski Still, that book intrigued Kowalski enough to stop at stayed in touch-and then some. In 2004 Heather the museum when he reached Pittsburgh-halfway Kowalski was hired by the Andy Warhol museum as between Wichita and Bar Harbor-on his first jour- their registrar. "It's fun," he says. "We don't report to ney to Maine; only the museum had yet to open. each other, but we have traveled together." Current- That first term at COA, Kowalski was still seeking ly, however, their two children, ages two and four, new experiences. He took biology and a class with have put a crimp in that particular pleasure. Jesse Kowalski '97 curating a gallery of Warhol's Marilyn works. COA 27 ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS TRACEY HUTTON Thibault '99 By Julia De Santis '12 Tracey Thibault The time spent with the State Planning Office con- had always loved firmed Thibault's interest in land use planning. She playing in the knew she wanted to work in cities and towns, but she woods. As a child, still wasn't sure in what capacity. After graduation, she joined the she took a number of planning positions including Girl Scouts and mapping work at the James W. Sewell Co. of Old in high school Town, Maine; and a position ensuring land zoning worked as a camp laws for Maine's Department of Environmental Pro- counselor. When Thibault's mother heard about Col- tection. Thibault now lives in New Hampshire, where lege of the Atlantic, she knew the interdisciplinary, she is the associate planner for the City of Lebanon- experiential program would intrigue her daughter. and she just hired her internship boss as a consultant When mother and daughter made the trip from New for the master plan she is currently creating. Hampshire to Bar Harbor, Thibault thought it felt like a perfect fit. Thibault says she uses the environmental skills she learned at COA daily, "to help the conservation com- Looking at the course descriptions, she noticed the mission decide what would be appropriate land to focus on primary source materials and the emphasis buy, what the policies should be about camping, and on applied outdoor learning experiences. One class whatever other issues might arise." The tenets of hu- in particular, The Maine Woods, caught Thibault's man ecology are guideposts when she has conversa- eye. Co-taught by Ken Cline and Davis Taylor, facul- tions or presents on sustainable development. ty members in environmental policy and economics, respectively, The Maine Woods required students to And when she makes decisions, she approaches ev- spend a week in the woods before the start of the ery issue from many different directions, looking for term. Thibault made sure to sign up. Reflecting on it the connections and trying to ask the right questions: fifteen years later, Thibault remembers, "The class in- "Is this decision good for the jobs in the town?" and, troduced me to COA and taught me how people of a "What are all the different ways this decision will af- different time period really valued the land, and how fect how the residents and visitors work, play, and that tradition has stayed alive in Maine." live in the community?" Throughout her time at COA, Thibault continued to study and appreciate the land. Working with Gordon Longsworth '91, COA's Geographic Information Sys- tems lab director, and Isabel Mancinelli, faculty mem- A HUMAN ECOLOGIST IN ber in planning and landscape architecture, Thibault EDUCATION: KNOW YOURSELF, dove into the world of GIS and land use planning. KNOW THE WORLD During the summer between her junior and senior Jasmine Smith '09 years, Thibault interned in Augusta with the Land Use Photo and story by Julia De Santis '12 Planning Program of Maine's State Planning Office. She engaged in a variety of activities from redesigning Jasmine Smith never had any doubt in her mind that the website to educating community members about COA was a perfect fit for her. Aware of the powerful Maine's overboard discharge program. Learning on connection between sense of place and education, the job, she traveled around to the state's boat docks, she describes her first visit to COA: "It just felt right. telling fishermen that if they removed human waste The island. The people. The interdisciplinary ap- properly, the state would pay some of the costs. proach to academics. It felt and still feels like home." Thibault also helped review comprehensive plans At a young age, Smith knew she wanted to go into for cities, and supported those involved with smart the field of education, and developed her passions growth-the anti-sprawl movement that advocates for ecology, natural history, and the outdoors at COA compact development and open space. At the time, while taking classes to be certified as a secondary every town was required to have a comprehensive teacher. COA's own interactive and interdisciplinary plan to receive funding, dictating public policy for curriculum served as a model for the kind of educa- transportation, utilities, land use, and housing. tion Smith now strives to create for others. 28 COA She remembers how one class, on the natural history of Atlantic salmon, co- taught by Ken Cline and Todd Little- Siebold, COA faculty members in pol- icy and history, respectively, showed her how to create an explorative learning environment while approach- ing issues from different perspectives and through different lenses. Another class, Curriculum Design, with educa- tion faculty member Bonnie Tai, pre- pared Smith to engage learners with diverse interests, abilities, and prefer- ences. COA's education program asks stu- dents to become human ecologists as they acquire certification. Future teachers learn to explore the relation- before; since September, they have been studying the ships between separate disciplines, a skill they can science of the fall season along with island history then share with others wherever they go. Many COA and ecology. They do art projects influenced by Hud- education courses offer field components, and stu- son River School artists and research bog ecology. dents learn by working in classrooms around Mount They pick cranberries, observe the changing leaves, Desert Island. Smith took full advantage of this pro- draw photosynthesis diagrams in the sand, and learn gram. the island's history as they explore it. For her internship and student teaching placement, "COA really fostered, supported, and modeled what I Smith taught middle school science at Mount Desert believed in and what I thought education should be," Elementary in Northeast Harbor. The school partici- says Smith. "Now I regard so many things in life as an pated in a program called Fish Friends which provid- integrated curriculum. I can't think in any other way. ed salmon eggs to the class. Using what she learned No other college experience would have prepared from her COA classes and her senior project-for me as well." which she created a guide to public participation in dam removal processes-Smith developed an inter- She is currently collaborating with Nick Jenei '09 to disciplinary experiential curriculum for her students. create a model educational program in Bar Harbor The unit focused on salmon, dams, energy, and river focused on the theme, "sense of self, sense of place." ecology, while touching on many of the traditional The idea comes from the notion that students cannot academic disciplines. Smith organized field trips to know how to create change, fully understand world the Leonard Lake dam in Ellsworth on the Union issues, and identify with their sense of place if they River, the Craig Brook Fish Hatchery in Orland, and do not look inward and know themselves first. The culminated the unit with a class-wide mock town program would encourage motivated students to meeting to demonstrate their learning. struggle with the big questions: What is my purpose and what are my passions? How can I create mean- After graduating, Smith moved to northern California ingful, authentic relationships with people and place? to teach at The Woolman Semester School, a small The students could then articulate and act upon what boarding school for students wanting an alternative compels them, inspiring a sense of environmental semester focused on environmental sustainability, stewardship and positive action. peace, and social justice. There she was the resident Environmental Science teacher. She brought her stu- Smith and Jenei are committed to having the program dents all over the state to study the food systems, to on MDI because of the unique natural environment the reaches of the Yuba River Watershed to study hy- and the resulting politics and economics. They hope drology, politics, and place, and to Mexico to study to collaborate with existing island establishments to desert ecology and immigration policy. make the best use of underutilized resources and space. The project is ever-evolving. As Smith ex- While this experience confirmed her desire to be a plains, "The kind of education COA provides and the teacher, she realized that MDI is really where she tools it gives people should not be limited to COA wanted to be. Currently, Smith is a homeschool teach- students. What this world really needs is more hu- er for three children on the island. Her students enjoy man ecologists. Look at the things COA grads are do- an integrated curriculum similar to those she taught ing. The more young human ecologists, the better." COA 29 Donor Profile Tom Cox - A beautifully functioning heart By Donna Gold create his light-filled home in Seal Harbor, connects him to College of the Atlantic, where he has been a trustee since 2008, and a supporter in ways that prove there's no problem with the functioning of his heart. Cox's environmental leanings were fostered early by family visits from his Fort Smith, Arkansas home to the nearby Ozark Mountains, where his mother in- sisted that he should always leave a place in better condition than when he arrived. After receiving a degree in Asian art at Oklahoma University, Cox spent three years on a destroyer in the Pacific as a commissioned naval officer. Discharged too late in the year to apply to graduate school, Cox headed to New York City to find a job. "I started in alphabetical order, beginning with Bankers Trust," he says. "And that's as far as I went." In 1970, Cox left Bankers Trust and became a private trustee. Semi- retired now, he still keeps a few clients-serving the fourth and fifth generations of several families. The gift to COA by David Rockefeller that established The David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection at College of the At- lantic offered Cox a further opportunity to connect with COA. Years before, when Cox sought to protect his land on Sutton's Island, he worked closely with Rockefeller's wife Peggy (whose two farm proper- A large Buddha with long-hanging earlobes meditates ties on Norway Drive were also donated to the col- between windows looking out onto the deck of Tom lege). "She was my mentor," Cox says, "guiding me Cox's home, a peach-hued hibiscus settled before its through the learning process of creating easements." crossed legs. White lilies and roses, and white and So when Lynn Boulger, dean of development, asked peach carnations stand in vases around the light-filled donors to accompany the Rockefeller chair with a room, while a fraught tapestry by the French artist fund to support professional development, fieldwork, Lucien Coutaud hangs over the mantle of his gran- information resources, and other program needs, Cox ite fireplace. This piece's more joyous companion-a stepped up, establishing the T.A. Cox Fund for Eco- celebration of music and wine in post-war Paris- system Management and Protection. takes up one wall of the library wing. Cox's generosity extends from the grand-initiat- Last summer, during a COA reception at his home, ing, for instance, the $25,000-minimum President's food was served on Italian hand-painted plates de- Circle-to something as small and deeply appreci- signed by an artist with a PhD in biochemistry, each ated as boxes of Texas 1015 onions and Florida plate featuring a different function of the heart. "It's grapefruits for COA staff and faculty. Clearly this fi- an example of the mixing of the disciplines of sci- nancial expert also has an artist's sense of the telling ence and art," said the soft-spoken Cox, whose quiet, detail, an awareness that a grand project such as a patient demeanor has an element of the Buddhas he small college of human ecology must be supported lovingly collects. by scores of hands working together-and that these efforts take heart from the kindness and nourish- The same interweaving of appreciation-for art, ment of an unexpected bit of sunlight in the midst of science, and the environment-that led Tom Cox to winter's chill. 30 COA POETRY COOKING HOLLOW By Abigail Dunn '13 By Sarah Wineberg '13 My stomach rumbles, at 1:30 Silent feet in land of sleep in the morning wingbeats leak into outer dreams with you I dreamt I was a weaver finch building my home in your I make us pasta, while you collarbones. take my egg-skull and crack it against the side of a bowl, Weaving through pillars of my dreams whisking my thoughts around and I snip and sweep, the carefully scooping out the small sharp bits of my shell frayed edges of your mind asleep when the strawberry rhubarb pie bubbles over the crust and I gather bright and broken things. leaves its sweet burning juices on the oven floor, and the smoke billows around Bits of teacups, bits of string the oven-light, you reach inside a heart is made of broken things, and try to scrape it away I build a home that beats and screams. with a plastic spatula which melts when it touches the heat and looking at you crouching there with your blue shirt sleeve rolled up and the organic apple label I stuck to your elbow, I think about how you draw all the burning things toward you and then shine your light through their smoke. and later when you stand with your legs on the arms of the chair, holding the ceiling for support and read me poetry so loud and fierce it's terrifying- then, then, I understand why the rocks let themselves get worn down by the sea. These poems are two of a spectacular collection of poetry written by students in Bill Carpenter's Poetry and the American Environment class in the spring of 2010. COA 31 Excerpt from The Reluctant Poet By Richard Hilliard '09 This excerpt from the novel The Reluctant Poet is published here in Maine under my name for reasons of intellectual posterity, but the author should nonetheless be recognizable to the COA community as a recent graduate from southern North America and possible master's candidate. The work is presented in literal form, that is to say, the form in which I received it; scrawled thin and black with few verifiable typographical errors. The obvious miscues have been corrected by our proofreaders at the magazine. Contradictions and alien lan- guages have stayed put. There will be doubts about spatial authenticity. History intrudes often. Can we trust a man who has been his own translator? If delusions about the practice of justice in the United States derail the author's real- ism, the reader must remember the author's senior thesis, "Freudian Mysticism in Administrative Society." Is this a journal entry or a letter? Is it both? Whether the author has lost his desire for poetry or murdered it, melodrama remains a central figure. 32 COA nothing to do, wrote on the libertinage diététique of the Marquis There is a drink in the lexicon de Sade-a paper which Helena has not read, but here named the Car Bomb and asserts she will eat. probably everyone is familiar with Often do I start my evenings drinking its nature. Car Bombs/12:30/The with Helena and the Pomolitkritic (jqué alemán!), Student Theater/Ghosts of Tomorrow because they are the most self-conscious (self- (2046) read the posters. Left to right destructive). Everyone always told me that we have subject, time, space, and Americans "can't hold their licker" [sic!], but in the last item is presumably a film New York the worldly folk drink like landless (phantasmal, I suspect). For the truth peasants. During an argument about the Beatles in about the film, you would have to which some unfortunate undergrad mentions the ask Van, the man behind the scenes, anxiety of influence, Helena explodes. There is but I have never seen a film played an overabundance of shared opinion. I slip away start to finish at the student theatre. invisible like Gringo Starr, the rupture pushing me Even if it is a real film, the year is towards the stairs. wrong, because as we all know, On my way up Freddie tells me (though cinema moves backward easily, I already know, we all know) that he has heard but moving it forward is simply that his short story "Anger or Cool?", the only impossible. coursework he did at all last term, is to be published As I have said, there is a drink in the dean's pet magazine, Monastery. Now that is in the lexicon here called the coche efficiency, I say, moving along. bomba (back home an irlandés Upstairs, I see the screen large and blue, dangles from the end) and this drink, swimming with fish framed close on the quivering like cinema, is irreversible. "Party" gills. Immediately I am thinking to myself that this appears nowhere on the posters, certainly cannot be Ghosts of Tomorrow, since my indeed, no one has used that word good friend Richard Hilliard told me all about it, for the last month. But only the stressing that it had been the only film he'd even word is taboo, the act remains a vital seen that year (though Ricardo is always saying part of the mourning process. Once things like that), and this movie does not at all match sobriety is sufficiently exploded, the his confusing and recursive description (where are reverie will skip over mourning and the telepathic triplets?). give way to gossipy gospels of our Whatever the film is, the music is much dearly departed Estelle's intimate louder. Van has picked songs that center on cars relationship with Prof. Staller and/or bombs and the gender studies kids are (poetesses, both) and her motives for dancing on the stage (is it clear that by "kids" I mean suicide. to show endearment?). Van, when I tell him that I It is only a Thursday and most may leave soon, assures me that the night "hasn't do not have class tomorrow. Still, really even started yet" and he offers me a red glass it is not a large crowd. I have another meeting with pipe stuffed with something called Black Steel, Black my new advisor (Staller is on professional leave) Ice or maybe even Ice Storm. I manage mostly not to about the poems I should be writing (though poetry, laugh and I pat him on the back. Back to the film. as you can imagine, is giving me more trouble than I The flittering flexing fish have gone and a give to it). white woman, 1958?, middle-aged, house-frocked, The party takes the usual formations, groups 1960?, mixes vibrant rose-colored drinks in a cozy fall to their usual geometries: the high moderns of kitchen, and carrying these with a polypropylene Dr. Youlean are getting high up in the balcony, tray proceeds the camera and me out into a Freddie Tuft and Ellen occupy the landing of the courtyard that might as well rest back in Coyoacán, only staircase for the School of Human Ecology 1999, and the drinks, exposed in the afternoon (lately their building is rebuilding and they are fond sun, are transforming into poisonous characters in of staircases and corridors). The plebes and the post- their own right. I turn to Van and say, indicating the humanists mingle on the ground floor. screen with my hand, Van, this strongly resembles a Hillary, one of the elite English joint dream I have been having recently and Van looks at MFA-PhDs is wearing a minimalist nurse's outfit me for a few moments and mutters out pale exhaust, completed (and perhaps promoted) by a naval you'd better watch carefully then, or, you'd better officer's cap. She is passing by, passing out her Jello watch carefully man. Turning back, the screen strolls Shots. I have an Absolute Cranberry and Helena, along and I follow, trying to pick up the threads standing next to me with a Tequila Lime, quickly, (men with umbrellas, puppies with children), but pretextually, brings up a paper Hillary recently dreams are slippery and Van shouts to me (Hosay!) COA 33 and when I turn I see him pointing at incoming Car young girl of course, which makes even more sense Bombs. I think about the poetry I have to write. The if you know my friend Richard, but what is strange English language fills my mind with tepid dishwater. about his little book is that the painter, going rapidly Another drink, I think, I think. blind, becomes obsessed with the painting of an I have another drink including both the enormous scene from the Passion in which every Car and Bomb components with Van, Freddie, single face, including that of the Christ, is somehow June, Hillary, and Lucy who has materialized from also the face of the painter himself. You can perhaps nowhere. Lucy is the only other grad student in my imagine how that logic would be very problematic. I Beckett seminar (along with Karla Dida) and she am not going to spoil the end, I say, but it is really a tells us that she has just come from the library where fine book. she was "drinking hot chocolate and brandy with Oh, um, good, don't spoil it, she says and cinnamon and writing." after a moment we both turn to listen to Van who Naturally, I have never been introduced is telling June and Hillary a story about Freddie to her by anyone (ivy league formality) and while I I believe I have heard before. I try not to listen answer her standard questions I am thinking about and again I am staring at the screen over Van's today's (or now yesterday's?) meeting of the Beckett shoulder (a hip-hop video?), and remembering with seminar. There occurred an argument that was displeasure my unwritten poems, the meeting I have not about Watt, but about distinguishing between tomorrow (later today?) with my new advisor and "conscious and unconscious irony." When I think wondering how best to tell him that very few, let back, even my unspoken opinion upsets me. I think alone I, are capable of writing poetry in English. I there was one comment made by darling Karla even entertain thoughts of telling him that Staller that referenced and cited the text, but the apolitical was going to let me write in Spanish (ou français, vacuum was too strong. Students on opposite sides pourquoi pas?). of the table stared each other down like they would Van is offering the pipe to Lucy. I don't rather die than blink, well, at least until the time had smoke pot, she says. It leads as easily to tragedy come to break for lunch and the room dissolved. as comedy, I say. Her eyes say, "you don't look I only know for certain that Lucy will Mexican." not ask me about Beckett, and obligingly I do not I go into the bathroom and when I am bring it up. As above, so below. Instead, I ask what washing my hands I just let the water run over them she was writing when she was in the library and thinking that tonight will be one of those nights that she replies that she is "doing a novelization" of the water never heats up and I stand there with the Rembrandt's life and I say that sounds ambitious. water running, staring at my hands helplessly testing the temperature and hoping that the water will warm even just a fraction of a degree, please Students on opposite sides of the table stared When I come back out to the each other down like they would rather die than balcony, Lucy has either dematerialized or has actually transformed into Nestor the blink, well, at least until the time had come to locksmith, who stands now holding Bomb above Car with Van, Hillary, Freddie, and break for lunch and the room dissolved. suddenly me. Down, down, and down we go. Nestor, a wily Columbian who has Human Resources convinced that he is two I tell her that my very good friend Richard different people (who get two different pay checks), Hilliard has in fact written a novel about a painter, tells us that we might want to turn the music down though this one is a completely fictive character and "because it's kind-of loud" and also because in ten I tell her that the book is done in a "pornographic minutes he is supposed to let the dean into Opal realist" style, even using my fingers to make the Hall across the quad. quotation marks in the air, a cultural inheritance that It does not take much. Soon the music is I am not proud of, but perhaps the phrase lingers in low, white noise, Van is talking to Nestor and June the air just a moment longer, buzzing. but everyone else is going or gone. I am helping Have you read his book? I ask, but she says Hillary clean up. no, she does not read contemporary fiction and There are no more Car Bombs, she says. I laugh and tell her that is what Richard tells me; It was good timing, I say. you and he share sympathies, I say. But I continue I need a cigarette, she says. heedlessly, the painter becomes obsessed with a Alright, I say, and then we can walk home. subject of his, I say, and that is all quite usual, and When Hillary and I reach the roof of the his neurosis is grounded in a particular model, a theatre the air is freezing and I give Hillary my 34 COA jacket to cover up her legs and we sit, watching walk. Hillary is ready too, rather, has been ready the grounds stir here and there. A white campus for quite a while now. Perhaps she is even a little security vehicle idles by Opal Hall. The moon is impatient with me, but I am glad to have another mostly obscured by streaks of cloud. Soon Nestor person around to tell me that it is time to go home. is walking up to the building and waving to the I might have stayed a long time on this roof if I campus guards. A black Lexus drives up beside the had been alone: looking for something, waiting white. for something, limbs all folding into my sweater That's Staller and the dean, Hillary says. because it is cold on top of the world. I cannot see through the distance. Hillary tells me that Estelle's parents have been trying to get the local police to investigate Hillary tells me that Estelle's parents have been their daughter's poetry to see if it contained criminally self-destructive thoughts. Hillary trying to get the local police to investigate their thinks that Staller even wanted to talk to Estelle's parents, or well, at least let them daughter's poetry to see if it contained criminally read her poetry, but the dean "won't let her, self-destructive thoughts. doesn't want her speaking to anyone until he finishes his 'investigation'." Staller is quite far away, too far to know that I walk Hillary down the night-steeped it is her. But I imagine that I can see her face and a hill, down into the prickly lights lining the tiny look of powerlessness, or regret, or maybe divine city (English!) and I say to her, as plainly as I can anger. Soon she follows Nestor and the dean into manage, "Look, I was admitted to this school on my the building. poetic merits but the words come out too fast, So he's confiscating poetry? I ask. unhinged. I think my English prose was spent on Do you want to know why I think Estelle Lucy (what a terrible language!). Hillary puts her arm killed herself? Hillary asks me, shivering. I say in mine, but she too is elsewhere so I mostly watch nothing. She continues, "I think that her parents our shadows circle us as we move beneath street knew she was a lesbian." lamps and leafless trees. Fragments of Estelle's poetry are surfacing I leave Hillary at her steps and say ecstatically: her eyes were green in March and goodnight and when I get myself back to my blue in July, and he feeds on embroidered time apartment, I somehow manage to seat myself to and make he most / of machine or of ghost / time write, and happily what comes out is not poetry, will still unwind him and I cannot connect them Richard, Ricardo, Riquito, ¡chavo giratorio! correctly to one other or stop them circling around One month ago, the only MFA in poetry in their tracks, they just continue over and over, here worth anything killed herself, but she did not and it is Estelle's voice reading them to me which is jump into a gorge, she walked into a lake. I know it particularly fantastic since she never read her poetry sounds fictional, but really it was poetic. aloud (though Staller read them, once or twice). The When I was thinking of leaving last night's campus security vehicle spins its tires and rockets party (and the country) I observed a poetry raid, or out of the parking lot. The past is written where the so it appeared to be (a foreigner's first). But I was future is lost. reminded of our second winter in Maine. I am thinking that I am a terrible poet. "make he most / of machine or of ghost / Why did Estelle walk into the lake when time will still unwind him" she could have jumped from a bridge? You can look Do you remember that film "Ghosts of where you want for that answer, but you will still 2morrow?" I saw telepathy but no triplets. Do you have to dredge for it. remember the last time you were "in town" and "Are you going home for Christmas, Jose?" we spoke about moving to China? Mexicans may Hillary asks me, and not knowing what it means to build their space-age railways, at least such is the use the formal tense, she could also not know that I subject of "The Reluctant Poet," the sublime science might have liked to hear her say José Luis, no matter fiction I will mail to you once I have it written. I how her speech might stumble. am finished with poetry, being so lucky as to have I say no. stayed invisible. You see how confession always Everyone is still inside Opal Hall, or maybe comes after profession? In the Orient we could they have left by some other door. There is, as the even pass for brothers. Do you remember that you Americans say, "nothing to see here." The plot of promised to write? the night has revealed itself and so I may begin your friend, my acceptance of it, even feeling ready to commit José Luis F.M. attempted poetry. Mostly, though, I am ready to December 7, 2012 COA 35 1977 Brother/Sister. It was produced at The venture involves building Venus Theatre in October and will nine Gold LEED-rated homes on Tom Fisher is making his home in be at Detroit Repertory Theatre in Collinsbrook Road. Silver Spring, Maryland. He is cur- July 2011. Her play Tunnel Vision rently directing the National Job will be workshopped at Wellfleet 1984 Corps Facilities Sustainability pro- Harbor Theatre in collaboration gram as a sustainability manager. with New Perspectives Theatre in John Dandy is a master electrician Mary Levanti-Cuellar left her April. She is also working on com- for Dandy Solar Electric. He stays missions from the Tenement Mu- busy promoting energy efficiency teaching position at the Ashwood seum with America-in-Play. while installing solar power. Waldorf School in Rockport, Maine last year and now helps to Matthew Hare accepted a position 1980 run Catama Video Productions. as an associate professor at Cornell She is also a volunteer teacher at Saejit Wendy University in the Department of Portland Adult Education, a pro- Greene writes Natural Resources. gram geared primarily toward the "My partner and I immigrant population. 1985 moved from Colo- rado to Asheville, Peter Heller married international 1978 North Carolina in belly dance performer Tara Harper Bruce Phillips is currently serv- the spring of 2010 this September in a New York City to launch a new ing on the board of the Clean Air ceremony that included several chapter of our lives. We're loving Task Force, a non-profit organiza- COA alumni and friends from the Asheville and have started teach- tion dedicated to reducing atmo- MDI area. Peter continues his work spheric pollution through scientific ing astrology workshops together. as an executive producer of films research, advocacy, and private I've integrated my skills as a coun- and consultant to non-profit orga- selor, astrologer, and expressive sector collaboration. He recently nizations-a skill he first picked arts therapist to help people live returned from a trip to China on its up in the COA development of- with greater authenticity, passion, behalf, visiting Shanghai, Beijing, fice. He recently produced the and purpose. I work with the ecol- and Inner Mongolia. film The Vanishing of Bees, which ogy of the soul on its human jour- was screened at COA's Family and 1979 ney." Alumni Weekend. Loie Hayes was excited to see a 1981 1986 shout-out to her work with Boston Terry Good '80, Pancho Cole, and Climate Action Network in a re- Barclay McCurdy continues to Jaki Erdoes '80 traveled together cent article in The Nation (www. love being a physical therapist and from Bar Har- thenation.com) about the Green spending two months in south- bor to Wash- Justice Coalition that BostonCAN western Costa Rica each year. ington, DC to helped found. When not in meet- attend the Ral- ings or working to create a local 1988 ly to Restore power base for a global shift to Sanity 2010. Dorie Stolley recently accepted sustainability, she's busy learning a position as a refuge biologist at about Alzheimer's through help- 1982 the Rhode Island National Wildlife ing her spouse, Julie, care for her Refuge Complex. mother, learning about colleges to- Greg Stone, chief scientist for day as she helps her eldest daugh- Oceans at Conservation Interna- Betts Swanton is a self-employed ter decide where to apply for 2011, tional, gave a talk about the es- exhibition designer. She makes her and learning about eighth grade in tablishment of the second largest home in Bar Harbor. the wireless age from her younger marine protected area for the TED daughter. Mission Blue Voyage. The talk has 1990 been posted on www.ted.com. Looking for the Pony, a play by Emily Bracale opened her home- Andrea Lepcio, is a finalist for 1983 based healing/art studio in Bar the Dramatists Guild Hull-War- Harbor this fall. She practices riner Award, along with Ruined, DeWitt Kimball is part of an ef- Reiki and includes the option of The Orphan Home Cycle, Circle fort to build Brunswick, Maine's art-making for her clients. Her Mirror Transformation, and The first green housing community. own trials with Lyme disease have 36 COA Alumni Notes given her a particular interest in of- port of fellowships from Fulbright- as an environ- fering support for people dealing Hays, University of California Los mental consul- with this disease. See her online Angeles International Institute, and tant providing exhibit, In the Lyme-Light: Portraits the Asian Cultural Council. Her re- environmental of Illness and Healing at www. search is on issues surrounding the compliance and inthelyme-light.org. protection and transmission of cul- pollution preven- tural knowledge focusing on three tion support. The 1991 mask dance dramas. family bought a house last year and turned their David Hiltz is a member of a crew 1996 suburban backyard into gardens. featured on the Discovery Chan- Jessica and James recently resumed nel's reality show, Swords: Life on Dr. Ann Clemens joined the staff coursework toward their master's the Line. A lobster fisherman on of Bend Memorial Clinic's urgent degrees. Isle au Haut, he was excited to join care department. She is a gradu- Linda Greenlaw for the swordfish- ate of Jefferson Medical College Ben Lord and Laura Casey '01 ing season on the Grand Banks. in Philadelphia and completed her have settled down on twenty-five family medicine residency at the acres of Vermont goodness with an 1992 University of New Mexico. She assortment of people and domesti- recently moved from Albuquer- Angela DelVecchio is busy work- cated animals. Their daughter, Eva que, New Mexico to Bend, Or- ing as a family nurse practitioner at Grace Lord, was born November egon with her husband and two- Mount Desert Island Hospital. 7, 2008. Ben is a middle school year-old daughter, and writes that teacher; Laura is a mother. Togeth- 1993 she is thrilled to be living in such a er they are the Foraging Family and beautiful place! blog about their experiences eat- Jennifer Mazer recently wrote to Mike Staggs and his wife Lynne ing wild foods. Check them out at say, "I am deeply saddened by the celebrated their tenth anniversary foragingfamily.blogspot.com. passing of Shane Davis ('93) and on Prince Edward Island looking Martin Koeppl, beautiful souls. 2000 at wind generator operations and Shane was a student at COA for potato farms. two years. He was always fun to Genevieve Soloway Angle is work- talk to with late night sessions and ing for the National Marine Fisher- 1997 occasional playing of Turrets piano ies Service to protect endangered at 1 a.m. Martin taught at COA Kim Ballard is the new member- species and their habitats. She from 1990 to 1996 in media arts ship coordinator and office man- works and lives in Portland, Or- and education. He made the mun- ager of GrowSmart Maine, a non- egon with her husband and two dane so beautiful and was always profit in Portland that promotes daughters, Madeline, five, and willing to listen. I raise a cup of economic development and job Kate, three. coffee in their memory and hope creation while conserving Maine's Corinne Harpster and husband that we 'pay it forward' what we natural and working landscapes- Dave welcomed a daughter, Naia, learned from them." true human ecology! She moved to last November. Corinne started a a gorgeous old home in downtown Sarah (Cole) McDaniel has been naturopathic residency focusing Gorham with her boyfriend, Chris, selected for inclusion in the 2010 on pediatric and women's health and cat, Gus. She encourages all New England Super Lawyers list this fall at Mother and Child Natu- COA alum and staff to become in the Rising Star category. Sarah ral Medicine in Carnation, Wash- GrowSmart members and/or come celebrated her first year in her ington. visit her! own firm, Maine Land Law LLC, Sara Wilson Etienne has sold her PA. Based in Gorham, she works 1999 first novel to G.P. Putnam's Sons statewide focusing her practice Books for Young Readers. Cur- on property law issues including This fall Heather Albert-Knopp be- rently titled The Harbinger, it is boundary disputes, easement liti- came COA's new Director of Sum- due for publication in spring of gation, land conservation, permit- mer Programs. 2012. Set in a near-future world in ting, and appeals. Jessica Damon is still living in the which a diminishing oil supply has CedarBough (Blomberg) Saeji and Washington, DC area with husband led to chaos and mass rioting, the husband Karjam are enjoying a year James, two-and-a-half-year-old son book's sixteen-year-old heroine in Korea while CedarBough does Jack, and ten-month-old daughter must uncover secrets before they doctoral research with the sup- Eleanor. She is working part-time destroy her and the world she lives COA 37 in. Sara admits "that the 'prison- with Brianne (Press) Jordan and business two years ago, she got a like school' in my book (though her husband Brian in Philadelphia job at Southern Illinois University, as different from COA as you can for a fun-filled time visiting the still sells books online, and runs a imagine) is located on an island off bizarre Mutter Museum and eat- pet-sitting business. She has been the coast of Maine. And one of the ing traditional Philly fare. Jen and helping her dad run for governor main buildings in the book is defi- Jason are very excited to welcome with the Green Party in Illinois nitely Turrets inspired." their first baby, due in early May. and djs at a community radio sta- tion, WDBX, which streams live 2001 Jody Kemmerer recently pre- at wdbx.org. Recently diagnosed miered her documentary film Sky Mike Zwirko and with skin cancer, she has faith that Dancer in Amsterdam at the Bud- Erin Heacock'04 her treatment will work, and is dhist Film Festival Europe. The married hoping it won't ruin her plan to run were screening was sold out several on July 24 in the for city council next spring. She days before the event and received Berkshire Moun- can be reached at jbradshaw21@ a great response both from the au- tains of western yahoo.com. dience and in the press. Sky Danc- Massachusetts. er will show at festivals through Ed Stern is researching fishery sci- Mike proposed to Europe, North America, and Asia. ence capacity in Newfoundland Erin on COA's campus on October Jody was thrilled to work with fel- and Labrador and preparing to run 9, 2009, and they vacationed in low alum Zach Soares '00, who the research vessel Gecho II for Bar Harbor following the wedding. mixed sound for the project. The the Center for Fisheries and Eco- Mike is a paralegal on ERISA litiga- next public American screening systems Research. Ed and his wife tion matters at Fidelity Investments. will be at the International Bud- Valerie have just purchased their He remains actively involved in dhist Film Festival in San Rafael, first home in St. John's, Newfound- both state and national political California on December 5. land. Alumni visiting the province campaigns. Erin completed her are welcome to visit! master's degree in urban and envi- Joshua Machat left New York for ronmental policy and planning at California to join his girlfriend, an Melissa (Curcio) West, who took Tufts University in 2009 and cur- assistant professor in the music de- time off after her first semester at rently works for Vanasse Hangen partment at University of Califor- COA to hike the entire Appala- Brustlin, Inc. as an environmental nia San Diego. After a blissful eight chian Trail, explore Europe, and planner focused on transportation months off, he is now working for get married, is now a student at projects. Erin and Mike live in Mel- the Getty Research Institute in Los Radford University. rose, Massachusetts with their cat, Angeles on Pacific Standard Time: Bruce. Art in L.A.1945-1980, a major ini- 2004 tiative of the museum. 2002 Bri Duga and Finn Pillsbury and husband Seth Jen (Dupras) Dussault and her hus- wife Drake '03 wel- graduated band Jason, along with their two comed daughter from Life Uni- awesome adopted dogs, live in a Elizabeth Watson versity with tiny Cape Cod house they call their Pillsbury on May their doctor- own thirty miles north of Boston. 20, 2010 in a joyful ates in chiropractic in September. After teaching high school math home birth. Libby They also welcomed their second for three years, Jen decided to try was a healthy 9lbs. 5oz. Older daughter, Luna Azalea, on July 8, her hand at a new career; she now brother Hawkes was surprised to 2010 and are currently living in works as the Humane Education come home from school to a new South Berwick, Maine. Coordinator at the Massachusetts member of the family, but is excit- SPCA at Nevins Farm-the largest Andrew Moulton and Amanda ed to have a baby sister. The family animal care and adoption center Muscat Moulton '06 were married would like to thank loved ones for in New England, www.mspca.org/ at the San Anton Gardens in Malta their love and support! nevins. Over on June 27, 2010. It was a lovely Columbus 2003 wedding attended by friends and Day week- family from around the world in- end, she and Jessica Bradshaw has been keep- cluding lan Illuminato '06 and her husband ing busy in Carbondale, Illinois. Carmen Bedard-Gautrais '07. The connected After her bookstore went out of couple reside in Northeast Har- 38 COA Alumni Notes bor; Andrew is Julianne Kearney will begin work 2007 working at COA in southern Georgia as a North At- as an admission lantic right whale aerial observer Tanner B. Harris co-authored a counselor and with EcoHealth Alliance (formerly paper in the April edition of the the alumni volun- Wildlife Trust) this winter. She will Journal of Environmental Pollution teer coordinator, assist in conducting research on with journal editor William J. Man- while Amanda is the location of endangered North ning titled "Nitrogen Dioxide and writing her doc- Atlantic right whales while in their Ozone Levels in Urban Tree Cano- toral dissertation. southern calving grounds. pies," looking at the viability of using trees to remove some of the As the coordinator of the refugee Hannah Semler has started her nitrogen oxide in city air. He also gardens in Oakland, California, first semester at COA's transatlan- successfully defended his master's Zack Reidman is very busy find- tic partner Kassel University. She thesis in July at the University of ing garden space for refugees from writes, "In the International Food Massachusetts Amherst. Bhutan, Burma, and Cambodia. Business and Consumer Studies His work was recently featured on course I sit next to chemical en- 2008 the front page of the Oakland Tri- gineers, food technologists, nutri- bune (www.insidebayarea.com). tionists, food engineers, artificial After two years of working at flavour experts, and (thank you Brother's Brother Foundation, a 2005 COA) one other human ecologist. Pittsburgh-based medical charity, Dustin Eirdosh '04 and I are ex- Ilva Letoja is working on a mas- Seth Carbonneau left the Dana tremely happy to have the opportu- ter's degree in European studies: Farber Cancer Institute this fall to nity to assert ourselves in the midst transnational and global perspec- work with Novartis as a research of a microcosm of what the global tives. She is studying at the Katho- associate studying epigenetically food system is made up of at this lieke Universiteit Leuven, one of regulated disease. He has been very moment." the oldest and best universities in having fun competing in strong- Europe. She writes, "So far my time man contests throughout New Mihnea Tanasescu currently lives in Belgium has been nothing short England-hauling monster trucks, in Brussels, Belgium. He is work- of wonderful. Since it's a one-year lifting boulders, and bench press- ing on a PhD in political science programme, it's pretty intense. I ing beer kegs. He lives in Boston that focuses on the political repre- am taking classes concurrently with his partner and fellow COA sentation of nature in relation to with writing my thesis. However, alum William Luther '09 and their the 2008 Ecuadorian constitution it's also an interdisciplinary pro- two Boston terriers, Nasdaq and and the sustainable development gramme, which means that I'm Harley. principle enshrined in the Euro- learning a lot more than I would pean Union Constitutional Treaty. in a traditional political science 2006 He recently published his master's programme. I'm hoping to stay in thesis, "The Dissolution of Philos- Brussels after I graduate, though Sarah Boucher is a project scien- ophy: E.M. Cioran," and is in the I've still got plenty of time to de- tist for Stantec Consulting Service, process of publishing "Your De- cide for sure." Inc., a company that performs mocracy or Mine? Citizen Defini- pre- and post-construction envi- tions of Democracy," an academic 2009 ronmental studies for wind power paper on the perception of democ- projects throughout the country. racy among citizens in Belgium. Abigail Lubahn has recently been Recent projects include avian and accepted to the graduate program bat studies. Amy Zader, MPhil, returned to in somatic psychology to receive a MDI for the weekend of October certificate in dance and movement Sophie Pappenheim married 16-17 to run in the 2010 MDI therapy at Naropa University. She Michael Pledl on August 28, 2010 Marathon. She writes, "Running began her studies in August. She on Oconomowoc the scenic course from Bar Har- is an after-school yoga and dance Lake in Wiscon- bor to Southwest Harbor brought movement instructor for third sin. The couple back wonderful memories of the through fifth graders at Erie City el- live in Minne- island." Aside from running, Amy ementary schools. apolis, Minnesota spends her time completing her with their mis- dissertation in human geography Sarah Short and Sam Heller were chievous beagle, at the University of Colorado at recently engaged in the San Juan Willa. Boulder. Islands. Sam is working for Hitachi COA 39 Family and Alumni Weekend 2010 With gorgeous foliage colors blazing and a crisp breeze blowing off the bay, fall was in its glory for Family and Alumni Consulting in Seattle and Sar- Weekend, October 7-11. Parents of current students joined ah is completing her master's alumni and their families for a full weekend of activities, of education in science edu- ranging from a nostalgic slideshow at the dedication of cation. Sarah, Sam, and Sarah the Lucy Bell Sellers Stage to forward-looking conversations Jackson had a great visit with about food systems. Nearly two hundred alumni and parents Linda Mejia in the spring. hiked, paddled, danced, viewed alumni art, attended classes, and celebrated their connection to COA. 2010 If you would like to join the planning team for next fall, Taj Schottland is currently please contact Dianne Clendaniel at 207-801-5624 or working for the environmen- dclendaniel@coa.edu. tal consulting firm Cardno En- trix conducting ornithological surveys for the Natural Re- The Peregrine source Damage Assessment Sent throughout the THE PEREGRINE in response to the Deepwater year, this electronic Horizon oil spill in the Gulf newsletter features of Mexico. submissions from alumni including articles, op-ed pieces, 2011 poetry and other reflections. You can also read updates from the Alumni Association, news from campus, and At the recent Maine Press As- announcements of interest to alumni. If you haven't sociation Awards, an article received an e-newsletter, sign up on the website written by Blake Davis dur- www.coa.edu/alumnienewsletter. ing his internship with the Mt. Desert Islander received a third place award in the cat- Stay Connected to COA! egory of education for weekly As an inquisitive and passionate human ecologist, your life papers. is likely to take several twists and turns. Send US updates on your life changes and choices. Luka Negoita has been named the 2010-2011 winner of the You can update your information three different ways: Garden Club Federation of 1. Phone: 207-801-5624 Maine Horticulture Scholar- 2. Email: alumni@coa.edu ship. He also received the 3. Website: www.coa.edu/alumni National Garden Clubs schol- arship and the Nell Goff Me- COA Alumni Career Services morial Scholarship from the St. Croix District of the GCFM Resources include: for his extensive work in bot- Alumni Mentorship Program any. He inventoried the flora Career Information and Guidance of Little Duck Island, a botani- Graduate School Information cally unexplored eighty-acre Networking Opportunities island eight miles south of Relocation Information MDI, one of the few medium- Resumé, Cover Letter, and Job Search Assistance sized islands on Maine's mid- Searchable Employment Databases coast that apparently does not have a history of human Interested in providing an internship, guidance, job leads, or habitation. mentoring current students and/or other alumni? Contact Jill Barlow-Kelley, director of internships and career services, at Class year in parentheses in- jbk@coa.edu or 207-801-5633. Services provided by email, dicates a visitor or a student telephone, or appointment. who has not graduated. 40 COA Family ana Alumni weekena 2010 Kylee Allen, along Maine's downeast coast. on Great Duck Island, included coordinator of Says Sean, who directs the pro- four COA students. international gram, "Our success is highly un- student ser- usual; this is the eighth consecu- In July, Molly Anderson, who vices, received tive competitive grant we have re- holds the Partridge Chair in Food the Paul Si- ceived from this federal program. and Sustainable Agriculture Sys- mon Spotlight I think this tems, joined Russell Libby, ex- Award for underscores ecutive director of Maine Organic COA's Interna- the value of Farmers and Growers Association tional Environ- what we do or MOFGA, in the college's sum- mental Diplomacy Program at the for stranding mer Coffee & Conversation series. annual conference of NAFSA, Na- response in In August, Molly traveled to Eng- tional Association of International this region." land and Germany with students Educators, last June. In November This year's in the class Our Daily Bread: she presented at NAFSA's confer- activity included a response to a Following Grains through the ence in Providence, Rhode Island dead right whale carcass headed Food System, co-taught by COA's on the topic, "Small Campuses: by Toby Stephenson '98, cura- transatlantic partners at Elm Farm Thinking Globally, Acting Local- tor of the Bar Harbor Whale Organic Research Centre and the ly" with colleagues from Whea- Museum, stranding coordinator University of Kassel. In Septem- ton and Endicott colleges. All Rosemary Seton (photo), and Jac- ber, she gave a presentation on three colleges have been working queline Bort, MPhil '11, assistant building strong, multi-stakeholder to internationalize their campuses stranding coordinator. The bones partnerships at a conference at the through faculty engagement, cur- of this animal have been retrieved Institute for Development Stud- riculum incentives, co-curricular for articulation at the Bar Harbor ies, University of Sussex, England, activities, and community out- Whale Museum. and participated in a conference reach. on Food Security at the Ditchley John Anderson, faculty member in Foundation in England. October Allied Whale's research group's biology and the William H. Drury, brought the Community Food Se- bioacoustic program continues Jr. Chair in Evolution, Ecology and curity Coalition's annual confer- to see significant success. Work- Natural History, is overseeing the ence in New Orleans on Food, ing with Cornell University's Bio- work of students involved in the Culture and Justice: The Gumbo acoustics Research Program, Sean Acadia Fellows Program, which that Unites Us All; Molly is vice Todd, Allied Whale director and has given $26,000 to student sti- president of the board. She also Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine pends for work in the park. He co-facilitated a forum on research Mammal Studies, implemented a also is fulfilling a $99,000 grant for community food security. tethering system appropriate for from the National Park Service the stormy Gulf of Maine. This to predict the impact of sea-level Video and per- year Allied Whale achieved full rise on seabird nesting islands and formance art recovery of the bioacoustic buoys another grant from EPSCoR for faculty member known as "pop-ups." A buoy re- $25,000 assessing the potential Nancy Andrews trieved from the Jordan Basin/Out- impacts of offshore wind farms on presented the er Fall region, one hundred miles mid-water seabird populations. At New York pre- offshore, is yielding unparalleled the Ecological Society of America mier of her lat- information about winter breed- meetings in Pittsburgh last August, est film, Behind ing activity of North Atlantic right John presented a paper on Gil- the Eyes are whales. Co-led with one of Sean's bert White and climate change. the Ears at the Anthology Film graduate students, Jacqueline Also offering papers were alumni Archives in New York City to a Bort, MPhil '11, this project will Jacquelyn Gill '05, Yasmin sizeable audience. The film was likely result in important implica- Lucero '99, and current students also screened at the Maine In- tions for managing this extremely Hale Morrell '12 and Franklin ternational Film Festival in Bar endangered species. Jacoby '12. John also team-taught Harbor at Reel Pizza. Though Also, the Marine Mammal the first joint Eco League course, Nancy directed, edited, and ani- Stranding Response Group (MMS- Humans in Place, with Tom Fleis- mated the film, was the primary RP) received a $100,000 grant chner of Prescott College and cinematographer, and wrote the from the John H. Prescott Marine Meriel Brooks of Green Mountain music and performed much of it, Mammal Stranding Assistance College. The course, based at the she had assistance from numerous Program to continue operations Alice Eno Field Research Station members of the COA community 42 COA Faculty & Community Notes including Zach Soares '00, COA's The proposed college-inspired in September where he met with audio-visual technology special- by COA's interdisciplinary hu- four past directors of the National ist, who collaborated with Nancy man ecology model-will be an Park Service and several academ- on the music and recorded and entirely new kind of institution in ics from around the country who mixed the soundtrack. COA fac- European higher education. Ad- specialize in park management ulty member in government and ditionally, Rich was quoted in a and research. polity, Jamie McKown, added special New York Times edition his sonorous voice to the film; for teenagers on the history of the Shortly after moving to Maine to Dru Colbert, faculty member in environmental movement. take COA's Allan Stone Chair in art and design created the masks. the Visual Arts, Catherine Clinger Also involved was Michael Last August, Bill Carpenter, fac- spoke with trustee Suzanne Folds Bennett who teaches drumming ulty member in McCullagh about art at COA for at the college. Nancy completed literature and an August Coffee & Conversation this video and her previous one, creative writing, series event. In September, just af- On a Phantom Limb, with the introduced poet ter convocation, she spent an eve- support of a Guggenheim Fellow- Charles Simic ning in a public conversation with ship and a grant from LEF Moving (photo) when he Alan Jenkins, a distinguished Brit- Image Fund. On a Phantom Limb gave a reading at COA. Bill also ish poet who had come to COA to was screened at last February's was filmed for a YouTube spot present his work. Transmodern Festival in Balti- (see it at www.ndiniwako.org) to more, Maryland, and the Ann Ar- help advance Baobabs in Heaven, Faculty members Gray Cox, polit- bor Film Festival in Michigan last a senior project novel written by ical economy, Don Cass, chemis- March. Tawanda Chabikwa '07. try, Davis Taylor, economics, and Ken Cline are involved in fulfill- The Burning Tree, the restaurant Ken Cline, faculty member in law ing a grant through the National Allison Martin '88 runs with her and policy, gave the talk, "Interna- Science Foundation and its Ex- husband, Elmer Beal, faculty tional Environmental Diplomacy perimental Program to Stimulate member in anthropology, was and The Road to Copenhagen- Competitive Research or EPSCoR rated four and a Engaged Learning at the Copen- to study the woodshed of Han- half stars out of hagen Climate Change Confer- cock County. Working with four- five in a review in ence" to the Association for En- teen students, Craig Ten Broeck, the Maine Sunday vironmental Studies and Sciences COA's sustainability consultant, Telegram. The res- conference last June in Portland, and Gordon Longsworth '91, taurant serves an Oregon. With him was Doreen GIS director, the group is explor- amazing array of Stabinsky, faculty member in in- ing whether burning more wood New England seafood: fourteen ternational studies and global en- for home heating in Hancock different species. Wrote reviewer vironmental politics. Just before County is a N.L. English, "dinners at Burning that Ken served as moderator for good idea, and Tree stand out for their fresh taste, the panel, "The Future of Climate if so, how to lively flavors and an experienced Change Negotiations" at COA make that hap- creativity that never strays from with Ambassador Bo Liddegard of pen. As part what people love to eat." Denmark, an honorary degree re- of that grant, cipient at graduation; Carl Pope, Gray and Don Rich Borden, the Rachel Carson former head of the Sierra Club attended a Chair in Human Ecology, is serv- and our 2010 graduation speaker; three-day "tree ing as co-chair of the XVIII Interna- Doreen; Oliver Bruce '10; Mat- camp" in August run by trustee tional Conference of the Society thew Maiorana '10; and Lauren Sherry Huber's (photo) Maine for Human Ecology. The theme Nutter '10. He also moderated Tree Foundation to learn more is Human Responsibility and En- panel discussions after the show- about the Maine woods industry. vironmental Change-Planning ing of Tapped, a film about water, Says Don, "Our group was even Process and Policy, to be held at in both Bar Harbor and Ellsworth filmed and might be on an epi- MonteLago Village Resort in Hen- in May. As the first holder of the sode of American Loggers." derson, Nevada this April. Borden David Rockefeller Family Chair has also been invited to take part in Ecosystem Management and "It was over the top, really," says in a series of planning meetings in Protection, Ken was invited to COA chef Lise Desrochers, co- Germany for an international Col- the Annual George B. Hartzog, director of food services, who lege of Human Ecology in Europe. Jr. Lecture at Clemson University joined famed chef Thomas Keller COA 43 in September Ashoka Changemaker Campuses James Johnson, a recent gradu- to prepare in Washington, DC for a summit ate of Husson University, has one of his focused on building social en- joined COA's IT staff as systems $250-a-plate trepreneurship curriculae. In ad- manager. When not peering into tasting menu dition, the Sustainable Business computers, he drives stock cars dinners. This program received a $100,000 at the Speedway 95 in the Sport one benefit- grant from the WP Carey Founda- 4 Division in Bangor and teaches ted the Island Culinary & Ecologi- tion to support its work building in Bucksport's adult education cal Center in Stonington, run by the program and the Sustainable program. Ingrid Bengis-Palei, a purveyor of Ventures Incubator. Finally, Jay seafood who taught at COA in the Former COA President Steven facilitated an August brainstorm- early years. It usually takes over K. Katona received a lifetime ing event at which incubees a year to get into one of Keller's achievement award from the Ce- Jordan Motzkin '10, founder tasting dinners, and was sold out of Big Box FarmsᵀM, and Noah tacean Society this November. He by the time Lise called for a reser- Hodgetts '10, founder of MDI is working with Greg Stone '82 at vation. But when Ingrid heard of Conservation International, creat- 2030, presented their ventures to Lise's COA connection, Lise was a group of business and non-profit ing an Ocean Health Index, seek- invited to help cook the dinner, ing to understand what creates a leaders. This effort was made pos- serve, and attend Keller's dem- healthy ocean-and how to mea- sible by trustee Nina Moriarty onstration, which was limited to sure it. Susan Lerner, former fac- and former trustee Lisa Nitze. ninety people. ulty member and Ethel H. Blum Kate Macko, the sustainable busi- Gallery curator is on the board Math and physics faculty member ness program administrator, was of the Mount Desert Island His- Dave Feldman and Anna Demeo, instrumental in organizing this torical Society, busily planning lecturer in physics and engineer- event. events for the Celebrate MDI 250 ing, received an $18,000 grant At the end of October, David in 2011, and serving as an artist/ from the US Environmental Pro- Hales, COA president, moderated curator for the Acadia Senior Col- tection Agency to hold a week- the multi-stakeholder discussion lege. Having visited their son Nick long workshop on the science at the Delhi International Renew- Katona who had a fellowship to of renewable energy for area el- ementary science teachers next able Energy Conference (DIREC Coop Himmelblau, the Architec- 2010). At this, the fourth in a ture Institute of Vienna, Steve and July. Additionally, Dave was a series of conferences on interna- Susie went on to Budapest to visit lecturer at a two-day workshop tional renewable energy, Hales Bori Kiss '03 and Andres Jennings "Exploring Complexity in Science and Technology from a Santa Fe asked participants to consider re- '08 in Prague. Institute Perspective," sponsored newable energy as part of a broad Todd Little-Siebold, faculty mem- by the Santa Fe Institute and held social revolution. ber in history, has been explor- at Portland State University last Helen Hess, biology, worked with ing options for internationalizing May. The workshop was attend- Marissa Altmann '13 to write a his classes. He spent a week in ed by business and government Catalonia with alumna Hannah small Maine managers, industrial and medical Semler '06, looking into a pos- Space Grant researchers and engineers, and sible site for a future class with a Consortium university faculty and students. focus on Mediterranean agricul- (MSGC) grant to Dave gave a series of three lec- ture. They visited producers of tures on dynamical systems, mea- pilot a project wine, olives, grains, and historic on marine snails suring complexity, and complex apples. He is planning to head to and their trema- networks. the United Kingdom over winter tode parasites break to consider adding a travel In May, Jay Friedlander, the last spring. She also worked with component to his History of Ag- Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green Robin van Dyke '11 (photo) on a riculture: Apples class. Addition- and Socially Responsible Busi- larger grant from MSGC to expand ally, Todd has been elected to the ness, moderated a panel at a and continue the snail-parasite board of the Maya Educational leadership conference on Maine work through the summer and fall Foundation. food systems and gave a presen- of 2010. Chris Petersen's Marine tation at the spring conference of Biology class helped with some of Isabel Mancinelli, COA's Charles Maine Businesses for Sustainabil- the field work on this project dur- Eliot Professor of Ecological Plan- ity. In August, Jay met with other ing the fall. ning, Policy and Design, par- 44 COA Faculty & Community Notes ticipated in the and Ecology of a Model System, Monitoring Program in Acadia summer's Coffee issued by the University of Cali- National Park." & Conversation fornia Press. A reviewer called it Series in August an "outstanding volume" bringing Natalie Springuel '91 who runs talking with Judith together "leading experts across a the Maine Sea Grant extension at Goldstein, director broad range of disciplines to bring COA, recently returned from a trip of the Somes Pond serpentine into focus, as never to Korea where she spoke at a Na- Center on Mount before, as a window to under- tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Desert Island. standing major natural processes Administration/Korea Sea Grant and patterns in nature." Nishi has workshop about best practices in In conjunction with an indepen- two essays in the book. See more marine outreach, particularly as dent study by Leland Moore '10, at www.ucpress.edu/book. Ad- they relate to sustainable tourism faculty member in government ditionally, "Ornithocoprophilous and working waterfronts. Korea and polity Jamie McKown com- plants of Mount Desert Rock," National University was especial- pleted a project to digitize the the paper Nishi co-wrote with ly interested in the memorandum Town of Eden's original print re- Nathaniel Pope '07, Jose Perez- of understanding between the cords. This is the first digital ar- Orozco '09, and Tanner B. University of Maine and COA, a chive of these records. He also Harris '07 for Rhodora, Vol. 111, model for placing university ex- served as the Pollie Award judge received the Merritt Lyndon Fer- tension agents in relevant com- for the American Association of munities where students from nald honorable mention. For Rho- Political Consultants annual con- dora, Vol. 112, Nishi and Tanner both institutions have the oppor- vention-the academy awards of were secondary authors on the ar- tunity to become involved in real political advertising. world issues. ticle that evolved from Nathaniel's senior project, "Vascular Plants of Suzanne Morse, the Elizabeth For her sabbatical, Doreen Sta- Adjacent Serpentine and Gran- Battles Newlin Chair in Botany, binsky, faculty member in agricul- ite Outcrops on the Deer Isles, is developing a collaboration be- tural policy, international studies, Maine." They found differences tween Norwegian and north cen- and global environmental politics, in species composition between tral US universities for holistic and worked on improving her French serpentine and granite outcrops as experiential learning in agroecol- and Spanish by studying French in well as greater tolerance to heavy ogy, having attended a confer- Vichy, and spending time in Bo- metals and nutrient imbalances in livia. She also attended the Global ence about the subject last May in species found on serpentine soils. Conference on Agricultural Re- Ames, lowa. She also presented search in Montpellier, France, as at the New World Agriculture In August, Steve Ressel and John well as ongoing climate negotia- meeting in Chapingo, Mexico last June and served as an advisor for Anderson, faculty tions in Bonn, Germany, and the gardens at the Bay School in Blue members in biol- four-day climate summit in Co- chabamba, Bolivia in her ongo- Hill, Healthy Acadia on MDI, and ogy, co-organized ing work toward her new course, the Northeast Harbor School. Ad- the third annual Climate Justice. Doreen attended ditionally, Suzanne gave a pre- Eco League facul- several intergovernmental meet- sentation on organic gardening to ty retreat at COA. Faculty from the ings this fall, including the Meet- MOFGA, served on the board of four other Eco League institutions ing of the Parties to the Cartagena Food for Maine's Future, judged (Alaska Pacific University, and Protocol on the California Botanical Society's Green Mountain, Northland, and Biosafety in graduate student meeting last Prescott colleges) joined Steve, Nagoya, Japan winter, and explored a potential John, Rich Borden, and Sean and the Hague exchange situation with Izamar Todd for two days of meetings Conference on Alvarez of the Simón Bolívar Unit- and field trips. Steve also attended Agriculture, ed World College of Agriculture the Northeast PARC (Partners in Food Security, in Venezuela. Amphibian and Reptile Conser- and Climate Change, where she vation) regional meeting held at gave a presentation on the devel- Faculty member in botany, Nis- the Schoodic Education and Re- opment of markets for agricultural hanta Rajakaruna '94 is the coed- search Center along with Robin soil carbon. itor (with Susan Harrison, Univer- van Dyke '11 and Sarah Colletti sity of California Davis) of a ma- '10. Sarah presented a poster on For a delightful morning hour, jor book on serpentine environ- her senior project, "Establishing Candice Stover, COA lecturer in ments, Serpentine: The Evolution a Volunteer-based Salamander literature, spoke with former poet COA 45 laureate Charles Simic in Deering Faculty member in economics Audubon which sent nine middle Common to a large crowd of com- Davis Taylor and Alyssa Mack, school children to nature camp. munity members as part of the former Beech Hill Thanks to the participation of college's popular summer series, Farm manager, students in Dru Colbert's design Coffee & Conversation. were married on class, more children than usual October 20 at the Working with top of Penobscot submitted essays. Katharine also other grant- Mountain. With brought Chewonki natural history ees seeking to them were Mike programs into Hancock County eradicate child- Staggs '97. Sarah Baker, dean of schools this year, and helped co- hood obesity admission, officiated. ordinate a day of nature and en- and promote sustainable and Staff members at The Thorndike vironment activities for sixty kids healthy local Library have been busy getting at Holbrook Island Sanctuary, food systems, Bonnie Tai, faculty items from the collection ready and class trips to Birdsacre in Ells- member in educational and hu- for digital archiving. There are worth. man studies, presented the find- now 307 senior projects avail- ings from the fourth year of a US able for viewing online, numer- Karen Waldron, faculty member Department of Agriculture grant ous annual reports, and even the in literature, spoke with Roxana for Supplemental Nutrition Assis- college's very first catalog. Visit Robinson, author of Cost and oth- tance Program (formerly known www.archive.org and search un- er works of fiction and nonfiction, as Food Stamps) in collaboration der College of the Atlantic. during COA's summer Coffee with Healthy Acadia. She also at- tended the annual meeting of the Katharine Turok, lecturer in writ- & Conversation series. The two Critical Exploration in Teacher Ed- ing and literature, organized spoke for an hour to a standing- ucation Group, which she found- and co-judged an essay contest room-only crowd about writing ed several years ago. for scholarships from Downeast and the creative process. Join US at COA this summer! Experience the incomparable beauty of College of the Atlantic, Acadia National Park, and Mount Desert Island this summer through COA's summer programs: Interdisciplinary Courses for High School Students Earn college credit while exploring Maine's islands and rivers. Field-Based Courses for Teachers and Other Adults Ornithology, geology, poetry, art, and more. Family Nature Camp Spend a week exploring nature as a family, joined by expert guides. Summer Field Studies for Children Send your children to COA's ecology day camp, filled with fun and field explorations. Grades one through twelve. Alumni Symposium — New for 2011 Alumni join COA faculty for a week of digging into new topics through a human ecological perspective. Conferences and Events COA's beautiful oceanfront campus can host your small conference, event, class, or wedding. Learn more: www.coa.edu/summer 46 COA In Memoriam Elmer "Buzzie" Beal from Chiyo-ni, the 18th-century Japanese woman (December 22, 1920-August 15, 2010) haiku master and Buddhist nun: COA Trustee 1972 to 1977 Moonflower in shade Beautiful hidden shadow When I arrived in Bar Harbor in January, 1970 to take part in the development of a new college, give light to darkness it became apparent that a first step was to gain Candice Stover, lecturer in literature support for the idea of a college from MDI resi- dents. And not just those from Bar Harbor. Les Stephen Papazidis '78 Brewer, Father Jim Gower, and other founding (December 20, 1948-November 18, 2009) trustees suggested that I talk to Buzzie and his wife Prue Beal about gaining support for COA in When I heard this sad news, Steve's image came the Southwest Harbor area. Buzzie and Prue were to mind as if he'd been in the office the day be- most supportive and offered to host a gathering. fore. His unusually dark hair and eyes gave him a The gathering was held; in addition to Buzzie and look of fierce intensity that was matched by his in- Prue and me, six other people showed up. I gave tellectual dedication. He was a "non-traditional" a little talk. Afterwards, Buzzie, sensing how dis- student, a little older than the rest. Stephen was appointed I was at such a small turnout said to the first in our long line of senior project novel- me, "Well, you can't expect to get a whole string ists. He worked as the overnight desk clerk at the of fish with just one cast." Of course he was right, and it was just what I needed to hear. Buzzie Atlantic Oakes Hotel, and took full advantage of joined COA's board of trustees where his wisdom that lonely occupation. He spent his whole shift and gentle persistence were key to bringing COA writing and in the morning he would bring in his from an idea to a reality. night's labor, which, over the course of the win- Ed Kaelber, COA president emeritus ter and spring, amounted to a full-length book, Sometimes I Wonder. By finishing this novel David Demeré within a term or two, his focus and ambition set (April 18, 1959-November 1, 2010) a standard for subsequent seniors, helping define I didn't know David as a COA student, but as a what a senior project could be. Though he was neighbor who helped us upgrade our old home already determined on a nursing career, he was just before our son was born. One day, for some a true human ecologist in balancing that choice reason, he came to help with our lawn. With with a devotion to literature and writing. The his own toddler on his shoulders and his four- community has lost a man of energy and vision year-old walking in front, the three Demeré lads who helped shape the COA of his time. mowed our lawn, making parenthood, chores, and learning-by-doing seem as fluid and natural Bill Carpenter, faculty member in literature and as walking down the road. David was a beautiful creative writing craftsman who sought to live a meaningful, sim- ple life of work, giving, and personal exploration. Jonathan Wolken He died of bone marrow cancer at home, with (July 12, 1949-June 13, 2010) friends and family beside him, more than seven A dancer with a love of ideas and powerful verbal years after hearing he had six months to live. skills, Jonathan Wolken was a human ecologist Donna Gold, editor COA magazine all the way. Pilobolus, the creative dance com- pany he and fellow Dartmouth students founded, Marian P. Everdell ('08) is named for a very lively fungus. Jonathan taught (December 7, 1981-June 2, 2010) at COA for a term in the 1990s, and I remember Molly was a mountain poet during Spring 2005, how much COA's cross-disciplinary approach ap- when John Visvader and I team-taught The Moun- pealed to him, and how his teaching style inspired tain Poets of China and Japan. To share one of freedom of mind and movement for trained danc- Molly's translations (or, as John calls them, "ren- ers and novices alike. We were very sad to learn derings") of the poems we worked so closely with that term captures, I think, an element of the that Jonathan died from cancer this past summer. spirit she brought to our community and where Susan Lerner, former faculty member and she traveled. Here are Molly's words for a poem Ethel H. Blum Gallery curator Toby Stephenson '98 Director, Bar Harbor Whale Museum For eight years, Toby Stephenson curated the Bar reason. Nothing came back to the scientists. As soon Harbor Whale Museum in a West Street building pro- as I saw that the Walshes were willing to support the vided by Tom Walsh's Ocean Properties, Ltd. Now research, I was there. They have donated $20,000 a that building will be razed to make way for a large year to Allied Whale since. It's a great model to show hotel complex. While ideas for a new museum settle how for-profit and nonprofit can blend together. Very into place, the exhibits won't be idle. Some are going human ecological! to the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History on campus, others to local schools and other locales. Q: You've assembled, or articulated, a number of the museum skeletons, right? Q: How did you get involved in the museum? Yes. Several are senior projects, the rest were in- During the fall of 2002 Eben Salvatore of Ocean stalled with students. We've also accumulated skel- Properties called up Allied Whale to see if they had etons that were too big to fit here, but are waiting naturalists who could train their whale watch crew. for a new facility. A few years ago we collected a I was working for a competing whale watch at the sperm whale skeleton. This fall we collected a right time. When I was told that they also wanted to give whale off Drisko Island. It's now in a compost pile a percentage of ticket sales to support Allied Whale, in my garden, where insects and microbes will eat I said, "I'll be your man." Then he asked if we were away the remaining flesh. In the spring I'll pull it out, interested in fixing up their whale museum, which bleach it in the sun, and hopefully assemble it in a had fallen into disrepair. Judy Allen [COA registrar new museum. and longtime Allied Whale volunteer] and I saw it as an opportunity to raise money for our field season at Mount Desert Rock; Steve Katona, president at the Q: What's the museum's future? We've never been under the illusion that we had a time, saw the wisdom and gave us the authorization we needed to order supplies, and Judy and I stayed guaranteed future, but we certainly have a vision for up late nights to get it going. We opened in 2003. In a very nice facility for downtown Bar Harbor-if we 2004 Mindy Viechnicki took on the gift shop (she's have the community support to bring that to realiza- now the museum manager) and sales doubled. In tion. It would be absurd if Bar Harbor, the mecca of 2005, they doubled again. eco-tourism for coastal Maine, didn't have a place like this. Unfortunately it will come down to the bot- Q: You put so much into this museum. What tom line. compels you? The primary reason is my dedication to marine con- Q: Can you tell us your most satisfying moments? servation and education. But I also noticed that all the The students I work with, the staff, and faculty. And local whale watch boats were making money offering it's been personally enriching to be able to offer a an environmental experience from the knowledge very cool experience to so many-in eight years we naturalists had gained studying material that was gath- got human ecology across to half a million people. ered by researchers and scientists for a very different That's nothing to shake a stick at! 48 COA RThe Human Ecology Essay An Encounter with the First People of Sri Lanka By Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in biology It took me forty years to come face to face with the ecology in practice, allowing me to explore vanish- Veddas, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka. They ing cultures and glimpse the role of plants in their were a thriving people when my ancestors, the Sin- complex societies. When I teach ethnobotany I am halese, arrived in Sri Lanka some six thousand years not the teacher but a keen learner appreciating hu- ago. As elsewhere, the rest has become a history we man diversity alongside my students. have conveniently tried to forget. I am not sure how I should feel about waiting this long to make the visit As an ethnobotanist I see the world through many but this meeting with the "first people" of my land windows-biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, has humbled and haunted me in more ways than I humanitarian-someone willing to appreciate the can describe. unknown and believe in the many ways of being. Through ethnobotany I take a step back from thinking While the two recent colonizers of Sri Lanka, the Sin- that science is the one way of knowing. The age-old halese and Tamils, were fighting for their right to land secrets of native peoples are those that we should and practices, drawing worldwide attention, the Ved- cherish and preserve even though we don't have the das were silently struggling, their land engulfed by tools to understand them. development and encroachment, and their traditional ways cast aside by us as primitive. Buddhism, Hindu- This brief encounter with a proud culture at the brink ism, Christianity, and Islam were the religions I grew of extinction echoes my first visit to Sinharaja-Sri up with, not the deep philosophies of the Veddas. Lanka's only remaining tropical, lowland rainforest- almost twenty-seven years ago. My week-long visit Sadly, the plight of the Veddas is just one element as a thirteen-year-old focused my life toward a pas- of a global phenomenon. Cultures and languages sionate exploration of how plant diversity is gener- are disappearing at an alarming rate. Just as many of ated and maintained. I still remember staring in awe us don't want the landscape to be all corn fields or at all the shapes and forms of plant life that filled the the skies filled only with crows, do we really want a rainforest and asking myself how they came about world where we speak just one language and follow and how they can all co-exist? I have spent much of a single way of life? my professional life trying to answer this question. This recent visit with the Veddas, I hope, will be the When walking the streets of Sri Lanka I try to look beginning of my life's next calling. away when I see parents taking their kids to Mc- Donald's and young couples having their first dates at Pizza Hut, but I can't escape the fact that kids in the cities speak in English more than in their native tongue and parents are preparing their children to be leaders in a world dominated by dollar signs. In Sri Lankan villages, as in other remote places, kids strive to leave for a "better" life in the city. What are we trying to become? The average Ameri- can spends less than twenty minutes a day outside while the average American father spends less than eighteen minutes a day with his child. The !Kung, a hunter-gatherer people of Africa, only spend two to Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in biology, visiting with the Veddas of Sri Lanka. three days per week working; the rest of their time is spent with family and friends. Children grow up Born in Sri Lanka, Nishi came to COA as an under- knowing their parents, families, and surroundings. graduate, then headed to the University of British Columbia, receiving an MSc in botany and plant While my professional life is driven by my passion ecology in 1998 and a PhD in botany and evolution- to study plant evolution, through teaching I have ary ecology in 2002. For more on the Veddas, visit developed a strong interest in ethnobotany, human www.vedda.org. COA 49 NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE College of the Atlantic PAID AUGUTA, ME time changing world changing. PERMIT NO. 121 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 Warszewiczia Coccinea wild Poinsettia