Articles Written By: emae2021@pomona.edu

In Memoriam: Jerome J. Rinkus

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Jerome J. Rinkus

Emeritus Professor of Russian
1938-2023Emeritus Professor Jerry Rinkus, who taught Russian language and literature at Pomona for three decades, died on February 24, 2023. He was 84.

Rinkus arrived at Pomona in 1973 and remained at the College until his retirement in 2003, serving for a time as chair of the Department of German and Russian.

A specialist in 19th-century Russian literature—the era of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Chekhov—Rinkus came of age during the Cold War, studying Russian at a time of critical interest to the U.S. government.

“In a sense, politics has influenced the overall pattern of my life,” he told Pomona College Magazine in 2003. “But it is the love of literature that has kept me going.”

Rinkus was an undergraduate at Middlebury College when the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Earth’s first artificial satellite, igniting the space race between the U.S. and the USSR that led to the first moon landing in 1969.

After graduating cum laude from Middlebury in 1960, Rinkus was awarded a National Defense Education Fellowship to continue his study of Russian from 1960 to 1964, earning a master’s degree in Slavic languages and literatures from Brown University in 1962. His doctoral studies at Brown were interrupted when he was drafted during the Vietnam War, serving from 1966 to 1968, after which he returned to Brown and earned his Ph.D. in 1971. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the work of Sergey Aksakov after writing his master’s thesis on Maxim Gorky. Rinkus taught at Bucknell University from 1968 to 1973 before arriving at Pomona.

“If not for Jerry Rinkus, I would not have embarked on the career I’ve enjoyed for the past three decades,” said former student Thomas P. Hodge ’84, now a professor of Russian at Wellesley College. “He made a huge difference in my intellectual life and in the lives of the many other Russianists who passed through the department he lovingly nurtured at Pomona.”

Hodge also noted that in the early 1980s, before word-processing software, it was also difficult to find Russian typewriters. “I vividly recall the way he painstakingly handwrote and glossed entire stories and long poems, then handed out the photocopies to us. He was indefatigable,” Hodge said.

Rinkus also had a policy for students in his beginning Russian class who struggled to find the words in their limited vocabularies to accurately describe aspects of their personal lives in Russian.

“I don’t care if you tell the truth, as long as it’s grammatically correct,” Rinkus told his students. “Every student in the room broke out laughing,” Hodge recalled. “I announce an identical policy for my own students every time I teach Elementary Russian.”

During the early parts of his career, Rinkus told Pomona College Magazine, many of his students learned Russian in preparation for government jobs as translators, diplomats or to work for the CIA.

“If you studied Russian in the old days, you could either work for the government or teach,” he said in 2003. “When the Soviet Union collapsed, interest in Russian dropped 40 to 50 percent. It was almost as if they were studying it to understand our enemy.”

During his long career, Rinkus earned grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, among other organizations. He traveled to the Soviet Union numerous times during the Cold War when it was uncommon for Americans to do so, participating in teaching exchanges, leading tours and conducting research.

He led a Pomona College alumni tour group to Russia, Siberia and Central Asia in 1978. In 1990, during the era of glasnost under the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Rinkus led a Pomona alumni tour group that visited Tallinn, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Moscow and cruised the Volga River the year before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Rinkus was the grandson of emigrants from Vilnius, Lithuania. In addition to John Tarin, his partner of more than 40 years and husband since 2015, Rinkus is survived by a niece, nephew and cousin.

In Memoriam: Robert E. Tranquada ’51

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Robert E. Tranquada ’51

Public Health Advocate and Trustee
1930—2022

Bob Tranquada ’51, former chair of the Pomona College Board of Trustees and former dean of the medical school at USC, died on December 4, 2022, in Pomona. He was 92.

A diabetes researcher turned public health advocate, Tranquada was instrumental in increasing access to health care for underserved communities across Los Angeles County. He was a founding board member and chair of L.A. Care, today the country’s largest publicly operated health plan.

The son of two Pomona alumni and father and grandfather of others, Tranquada was a constant friend of the College. As a Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate in 2007, he said, “I have been couched in the arms of Pomona College for a long time. It would be impossible to return more than a fraction of that I have received.” Awarded an Alumni Scholarship as a student, he returned much, both in service and financial support. The student health facility that serves The Claremont Colleges bears his name as the Robert E. Tranquada Student Services Center.

Tranquada’s path to medicine began early. Hospitalized with a broken leg at age 5, he was so impressed with the doctors who treated him he decided to become a physician. After graduating from Pomona College, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he attended the Stanford University School of Medicine and joined the faculty of the USC medical school in 1959.

Tranquada’s career took a dramatic turn in 1965, when the California Army National Guard medical battalion he commanded was activated during the Watts Uprising to treat casualties of the violent confrontations between L.A. police and residents. Afterward, he was asked by then-USC Medical School Dean Roger Egeberg to head the new Department of Community and Preventative Medicine and to organize a public health clinic in Watts. Tranquada was one of the founders and the first director of the South Central Multipurpose Health Services Center in 1965 (now Watts Healthcare Corp.), one of the country’s first community health centers.

His experience in working to launch the health clinic, which opened its doors in 1967, led to a 40-year career in public health. Two years later, as associate dean of the medical school, Tranquada was appointed medical director of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. After five years as medical director, he became director of the Central Health Services Region of the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

Following other leadership positions, in 1986 Tranquada was recruited to become dean of what is now the Keck School of Medicine at USC with a mandate to develop a new private teaching hospital, today’s Keck Hospital of USC. It was while serving as dean that he was appointed to the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, better known as the Christopher Commission, formed in the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating. He also headed the Los Angeles County Task Force on Access to Health Care following the 1992 civil unrest, which led to the creation of Community Health Councils, a nonprofit that works to promote health and wellness in under-resourced communities.

After stepping down as USC medical school dean in 1991, Tranquada held an endowed chair in health policy before becoming professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1997. During his long and distinguished career, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In addition to his service on the Pomona College Board of Trustees beginning in 1969, Tranquada was chair of the Claremont University Consortium board from 2000 to 2006. He served on numerous boards and was a particularly effective advocate for increasing the number of women and people of color in medicine, serving as a longtime board member of New York-based National Medical Fellowships, a member of the founding board of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and a board member of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital.

Born in Los Angeles, Tranquada was the son of Ernest Tranquada ’27 and Katharine Jacobus Tranquada ’29. He married Janet Martin Tranquada ’51 after meeting at Pomona. In addition to his wife of 71 years, he is survived by children John ’77 (Lisa Sackett Tranquada ’77), Jim (Kristin) and Kate Tranquada; grandchildren Matt ’08, Jessica and Alex Tranquada; and his sister, Carolyn Prestwich ’54.

Civil Rights Press Photos at Benton Museum

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Cecil Stoughton, President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes as his wife and Mrs. John F. Kennedy flank him in the cabin of Air Force One, November 22, 1963 (printed 1964). Vintage wire photograph on paper. 6 9/16 x 8 in. (16.67 x 20.32 cm). Gift of Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg in honor of Myrlie Evers-Williams. P2021.9.70 Inspired by Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 and the gift of her archives to the College, Michael Mattis and Judy Hochberg have donated their collection of more than 1,600 press photographs documenting the civil rights movement to the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in her honor. The Mattis-Hochberg photos include scenes of resistance, acts of civil disobedience and images of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, James H. Meredith as well as photos of Evers-Williams.

Coming to a Theatre Near You

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Rose Portillo ’75, a longtime theatre lecturer at Pomona, has been cast in the upcoming Disney+ film adaptation of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The latest screen version of the popular children’s book has a twist on the original: Alexander’s last name is Garcia, and the film will star Eva Longoria and Jesse Garcia with 9-year-old Thom Nemer as Alexander. Portillo plays Alexander’s grandmother, Lidia Garcia. In another recent Hollywood role, Portillo voiced the part of Señora Guzmán in Encanto, the 2022 Academy Award winner for best animated feature.

Please Don’t Kiss the Art

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Urban Light, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Urban Light, the very Instagrammable installation of 202 historic streetlamps created by the late artist Chris Burden ’69 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gets a lot of love. Maybe a little too much love.

The 2008 sculpture needs a paint job and is one of 23 works selected by the Bank of America Art Conservation Project for grants “for the preservation and conservation of the world’s cultural treasures” in 2023.

“Conservators will apply protective paint layers that have been extensively tested on all the streetlamps, ensuring that substances such as lipstick, permanent marker and dye can be easily cleaned from their surfaces,” the bank announced. Other works selected for preservation grants included 15th-century Armenian manuscripts, Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series and two paintings by Paul Cézanne.

Book Talk: Space for Sale

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Ashlee Vance ’00, author of the bestseller Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, turns his attention to the business of space in his latest book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach. Vance follows four startup companies—Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab—as they race to launch rockets and satellites into orbit. PCM’s Lorraine Wu Harry ’97 spoke to Vance about the book, the corresponding HBO show he is producing and, of course, Elon Musk. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PCM: What made you want to write this book?

Vance: I was not a space junkie (although I seem to be becoming one). Out of the Elon book, my favorite thing to report on was the early days of SpaceX. Those were some of the best stories and the most interesting characters. Right as I finished that book, I could see that there was this new world bubbling up around commercial space. And there were these entrepreneurs appearing all over the planet who were trying to make rockets and satellites. I could see that this was my chance to witness what may be like the early days of SpaceX firsthand. Then, as time went on, it became clear to me that there was this revolution taking place and that space was changing forever. And I had this unique “in” with all kinds of access that you don’t normally get, and I just started chasing it.

PCM: What was it like for you to do research for this book?

Vance: Normally, almost all this stuff is usually top secret. It’s almost impossible to get into, but because I had this track record, people were very willing to let me in, and then reporting it was just a proper adventure. I probably went to about 12 countries across four continents and followed this for five years. That’s one of the things I love about the book: It is about rockets and space, but it’s also this travelogue where you’re going with me on this journey and meeting all these interesting characters. Some of them are in the U.S., but it’s very much a global story and full of drama in all these places.

PCM: You say in the “Dear Reader” section, “I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed living it.” What did you enjoy about living it?

Vance: A lot of these launches take place in pretty exotic locations, and they’re both beautiful but also off the beaten path. The characters were very diverse in their personalities; there are a lot of different archetypes. You got to meet this quite eccentric group of people and spend a lot of time with them. It was this feeling of having a front-row seat to the birth of an industry and really getting to see how it operates. I do lots of very long magazine stories where you might interview dozens of people over a decent period of time. But this was the first time I felt like I was right there getting to witness everything firsthand, and you got a sense of the joy but also the difficulties and travails these people go through. It was the first time in my reporting where I really felt like I knew for sure what ground truth was, through my own eyes, as opposed to trying to stitch it together from other people’s opinions after the fact. I was living it in real time.

PCM: So this was pretty different from all your previous work.

Vance: With Elon, there was a lot of historical stuff where you had to go back all the way to his childhood and recreate things, and the same with some of his earlier companies. But I spent literally thousands of hours with these subjects and so, in that sense, very different in terms of the depth of the reporting. I’d wanted to be a fly on the wall of a journey for a long time.

PCM: Tell me about the show you’re producing and how it overlaps with the book.

Vance: I filmed with all the characters in my book for these five years and I’ve partnered with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries on this project. It’s a more concentrated version of the book that is going to focus on a couple of characters from the book and tell the story about the rise of commercial space. As long as the stars align, it will be on HBO next year.

PCM: Your book about Elon Musk came out eight years ago, and a lot has happened since then. What is your assessment of Musk’s ownership of Twitter?

Vance: Since I’ve done the book, Elon’s only gotten bigger, bolder and crazier over time. I’m still a huge fan of Tesla and SpaceX and find them fascinating. Twitter is not really my cup of tea, and I think it’s a huge waste of time for Elon to be dealing with that. He’s not doing probably the best job of taking it over so far. It’s kind of sad, if I’m honest, because so much of my interest in him was this figure who was not doing consumer technology, was doing stuff that felt a bit more meaningful to me in the world of manufacturing and human ambition and climate change. Even though I use Twitter a lot, I find it to be sort of a large distraction and it falls more in the entertainment category to me. It’s a little depressing that this guy who symbolizes so many other things is getting down in the muck.

PCM: How do you think the recent FTX bankruptcy and Twitter meltdown have changed the idea that tech entrepreneurs can supplant traditional government?

Vance: We’re at a very interesting time where there’s a handful of technology companies that have resources on par with governments and are taking on projects that governments traditionally would have done. If you look at Tesla’s self-driving car network, if you look at all the rockets that I’m writing about, if you look at these giant computers fueling AI—outside of China, you don’t really see countries tackling these issues; it’s being driven by the companies. We’re at this precarious position where I think a lot of the innovation and control has shifted so far from governments and academia toward companies. I’m not sure that most people fully realize the extent of this shift to where if you are a college like Pomona or a university like Stanford, and you want to do breakthrough research on the human brain or something like that, you probably do not have the requisite resources to do that yourself. You’re knocking on the door of somebody like Google to borrow their computers. Overall, I’m not sure this is a good thing.

PCM: Why don’t you think it’s good?

Vance: There are pieces of this that are not good. There are pieces of this that are very liberating. I think it’s bad that five countries controlled space for 60 years. I think it’s a much more equitable future where almost any country that wants to be a spacefaring nation can be that. All the satellite imagery, all these pictures taken of Earth are not just in the hands of spy agencies and militaries. That the public can access all this stuff to see the sum total of human activity, what’s happening with the environment, it’s a much more open scenario with information. So I don’t know. There are a lot of pros and cons.

PCM: Would you say the pros outweigh the cons of commercial space?

Vance: I think it’s to be determined. I don’t think the average person on the street realizes what’s coming, which is that 100 percent, the capitalists have taken over space and the governments will very shortly be also-ran participants in this. People get fixated on space tourism or going to the moon, but in actual fact most of the money and action is taking place in low-Earth orbit where there’s this giant economic expansion taking place. This is very much a capitalist exercise that, on the pro side, is going to bring high-speed internet connectivity to half the world’s population so they can fully participate in the modern economy. We’re going to have all this data that was unimaginable about the health of our planet, monitoring trees, methane. You will be able to calculate and tax every piece of this, but it is companies that are doing this. This is new territory that’s being seized.

PCM: So, to be determined.

Vance: Hopefully, given that this is the last place we can expand, with a bit of luck we will be better stewards of it than we have been of the land and the oceans and the air.

Bookmarks Summer 2023

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Asian American Histories of the United States

In Asian American Histories of the United States, Catherine Ceniza Choy ’91 presents 200 years of Asian migration, labor and community formation, all the while reckoning with the recent surge in anti-Asian hate and violence.

Chloe and the Kaishao Boys

Chloe and the Kaishao Boys, a young adult rom-com by Mae Coyiuto ’17, follows a Chinese-Filipina girl in Manila as she gets off the waitlist for USC and decides if following her dreams is worth leaving everything behind.

The Last Cold Place

Naira de Gracia ’14 writes a memoir about her experience studying penguins in Antarctica, weaving in the history of Antarctic exploration, climate science and personal reflection in The Last Cold Place.

Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe

Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe by Tim DeRoche ’92 is a collection of lighthearted poetry filled with wordplay reminiscent of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss.

I Have Her Memories Now

The short stories in I Have Her Memories Now by Carrie Grinstead ’06 touch on health, medicine and death and explore themes of vulnerability and fallibility.

Nocturne

The poetry of Jodie Hollander ’99 in Nocturne charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist, exploring family dysfunction and musical obsession.

Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity

In Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity, Kenneth Liberman ’70 sheds light on the methods used to convert subjective experience into objective knowledge with coffee as its focal point.

Representation Theory and Geometry of the Flag Variety

Representation Theory and Geometry of the Flag Variety by William “Monty” McGovern ’82 is a reference for researchers and graduate students in representation theory, combinatorics and algebraic geometry.

Blue Jeans

In Blue Jeans, Carolyn Purnell ’06 presents extensive research on the history of jeans as well as the global and economic forces that shape the industry. The book is part of a series called Object Lessons about “the hidden lives of ordinary things.”

Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands

Linda Seligmann ’75 tells the story of Indigenous farmers and the global demand for a superfood in Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands.

The Way to Be: A Memoir

The Way to Be: A Memoir, a firsthand account of the life and work of artist Barbara T. Smith ’53, accompanies an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute through July 16, 2023.

Beyond That, the Sea

The novel Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash ’81 follows Beatrix, an 11-year-old British girl sent to live with a New England family during World War II, as she navigates two worlds.

After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life

After Anne: A Novel of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Life by Logan Steiner ’06 tells the story behind the story of the author of Anne of Green Gables, offering a nuanced portrayal of her life.

Democracy in Latin America: A History Since Independence

In Democracy in Latin America: A History Since Independence, Thomas Wright ’63 chronicles Latin America’s struggle for democracy as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

Alex Zylstra ’09 Plays Key Role in Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

June 6, 2023 by Marilyn Thomsen Comments Off

The shot that took just a few billionths of a second was 60 years in the making, and Alex Zylstra ’09 played a key role in its success. Just after 1 a.m. on December 5, 2022, Zylstra and fellow scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) at last achieved fusion ignition. The energy produced by a controlled fusion reaction exceeded the amount required to fuel the process: 2.05 megajoules in, 3.15 megajoules out. For a tiny fraction of a second, they produced the brightest thing on Earth.

Fusion, as the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) describes it, occurs when “two light nuclei combine to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy.” The NIF scientists achieved a breakthrough that could someday lead to limitless clean energy to power the world, using the same reaction as the sun and stars.

Zylstra was on the panel of experts at the DOE news conference in Washington to describe the successful experiment, which involved shooting 192 huge lasers at a target the size of a pea. The resulting temperature reached more than 100 million degrees. The pressure was more than double that at the center of the sun. The level of precision the experiment required was mind-boggling.

“We had a debate over a laser setting equivalent to five trillionths of a meter,” Zylstra said at the news conference. “We had a discussion with the laser science team over timing discrepancies of 25 trillionths of a second.”

In an email, Zylstra writes that he had been “eager to work on validating the results before we went public.” Outside experts also provided peer review before the successful experiment was announced. Still, “When I saw the early data start coming in after 1 a.m. on December 5th, I was incredibly excited,” he writes.

As principal experimentalist, Zylstra describes his role as twofold: “First, to be the primary scientist associated with executing a particular ‘shot,’ or experiment, and second, to guide a set of experiments to develop improvements or test hypotheses.” He describes the NIF as “a highly interdisciplinary endeavor,” and works closely with the other teams—computational, design, measurement, laser and target fabrication, and operations.

Dwight Whitaker, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Pomona, was not surprised at Zylstra’s role in the groundbreaking experiment. Zylstra was in his junior year when Whitaker joined the Pomona College faculty and began setting up his lab. “I was trying to set up some difficult experiments and I was ecstatic when he joined the lab, because he was extraordinary,” Whitaker recalls. “Alex and I worked a lot of hours together. I used to turn knobs with him in the lab, and now he’s running one of the most complicated experiments ever created.”

Zylstra has focused on fusion since starting a doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the fall after graduating from Pomona. As an undergraduate, he’d had the opportunity to see the NIF center being built and says that “it felt like a chance to work on something straight out of science fiction.”

Whitaker says fusion could “solve one of the biggest problems facing humanity right now—the climate crisis.” But fusion research, like most other areas of science, is a long and arduous process. Whitaker says that “probably the personality trait you need to have as a physicist is the ability to grind through very unrewarding times, because experimental physics is usually a lesson in failure. Ninety percent of the things we do don’t work,” he says. “But each time you fail, you learn. I think that’s what fusion has been—lots of incremental steps and failures.” And then, success.

A Sustainable Garden Beside Marston Quad

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

Graphic Credit: Ben McCoy/Department of Space

Alongside the parade of young oaks planted beside Stover Walk to replace some of the trees lost in the 2022 windstorm, a new sustainable garden is taking root in the beds next to Marston Quad’s grassy expanse.

Once it is established in two to three years, the Marston Quad Sustainable Garden will require minimal to no irrigation. It includes plants such as California sagebrush¹, white sage² and chamise³ that have many uses among the Tongva people, the traditional caretakers of the land Pomona College now occupies. Other plantings with importance to Indigenous peoples include chaparral yucca⁴, mulefat⁵, toyon⁶, manzanita⁷ and single-leaf pinyon pines⁸.

While many of the established plants such as camellias and azaleas whose blooms have signaled the arrival of spring for generations remain, the new plantings include 30 species native to California, among them desert mallow⁹, hummingbird sage¹⁰ and California fuchsia¹¹. Designed by Claremont landscape architect Ben McCoy, the garden will have signs that identify the plant species in the Tongva language as well as by their English and Latin names, thanks to input from Tina Calderon, a culture bearer of Gabrielino Tongva, Chumash and Yoeme descent, and Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History.

The decision to create a more drought-tolerant landscape featuring native plants was guided in part by the research of environmental analysis students Lucy Whitman Sandmeyer ’21, Madi Brothers ’22, Owen Hoffsten ’22 and Maya Edstrom SC ’22, who completed their 2022 senior capstone project report, “Roots & Resilience: Reimagining Marston Quad after the Windstorm,” under the guidance of Professor Guillermo Douglass-Jaimes. The group surveyed alumni, students, staff and faculty, receiving the majority of input from alumni, with more than 300 responses. Alumni also had an opportunity to voice their opinions during the 2022 Alumni Weekend in one of two charrettes held by the student researchers.

The survey indicated that most of the Pomona community sees Marston Quad as the heart of campus, the students reported, and supports a landscape plan that “maintains the same open and green design as before the windstorm, features shade trees—especially native oaks—and [is] prepared to withstand the changing climate.”

‘Easter Egg’ Hunt

June 6, 2023 by Staff Comments Off

The season of searching for colored eggs is past, but Brian Faber, director of project management in the Office of Facilities and Campus Services, invites people to search for eight hidden examples of the number 47 on campus. Seven of them are identical, and two different types can be found at the new Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness. All of them can be seen from the exterior and are permanent, Faber says. Happy hunting. We haven’t found any yet.

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