Timing truly is everything, and the children’s book Outside In, by Deborah Underwood ’83, is arguably prescient. Released in April during a pandemic she never anticipated when she wrote the book, it is a vivid meditation on how nature affects us even when we’re stuck indoors. In these strange times of sheltering in place, this book, illustrated by Cindy Derby, gives readers pause to ponder our connectedness to creation.

Underwood talked to Pomona College Magazine’s Sneha Abraham about the world outside, social distancing, maintaining wonder and more.

PCM: Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship to nature, as a child and now as an adult?

Underwood: Well, that’s a really interesting question. We were not a very nature-oriented family. We didn’t go camping and the kind of things that a lot of people do. I remember loving to play in my backyard. I remember going back behind these bushes and digging for treasure. And of course, every time you hit a rock, you’re like, “I’m either in China or it’s a treasure chest.” But it’s funny; it’s been more of a later-life interest for me. I don’t go camping, although I might try that sometime, but I do love being outside. And there’s the botanical garden very close to where I live, and I spend so much time there. That’s really informed my writing and my process. One of the hard things about the pandemic for me was they closed it for a few months. That was a gut punch. It was just horrible. And I realized how much I had depended on being able to walk in that beautiful place and collect my thoughts for writing. So much of picture book writing is thinking, because they’re short manuscripts. It’s 98% thought and 2% getting it on paper.

One of the things that I’ve done over the pandemic is I put a garden into my apartment building backyard. I had no interest in gardening but just the knowledge that this might be the only safe place to go for a while. My landlord had been paying people to come in and chop everything down and spray the yard with Roundup. When I found out they were doing that, I thought, “You know what? If I can at least get some mulch down, maybe they’ll stop putting that toxic stuff all over it.” But then I started putting in plants, and I connected with people on Nextdoor, and neighbors donated pavers and plants, and I went to Home Depot a million times.

The garden has really made me more aware of the nature around me. I’ve always loved animals. I have a bird feeder and I have … Edward and Elinor Pigeon, Elliot and Shadow Pigeon, Buddy the Raccoon who comes and drinks from the hummingbird feeder. All of a sudden, I feel like I have this little wild kingdom.

PCM: Your nonfiction includes so many books about animals and the planet and the universe. What are you trying to communicate to children?

Underwood: Well, interestingly, the nonfiction, that was almost all work-for-hire stuff. I was doing that when I was getting started writing for kids. I made a career change in 2000 when I got laid off from this corporate job that I was not particularly interested in. And I thought, “Well, if I’m going to do something different, this is a good time to make a change.” So, I decided that I wanted to write children’s books. I started doing a lot of research and dipping my toe into that field. But one of the ways that I made money when I was first starting out was doing these work-for-hire books, which traditionally do not pay well at all but are a really good way to learn about the field. And the editor actually assigns the topic. So an educational publisher will say, “We want to do a series about camouflage. We want a book about this, this, this, this. Can you write it?” And you go, “Sure, I can.” But you don’t know anything about the topic. One of my first moments of true panic as a writer was when I’d agreed to write a book about the Northern Lights. And I said, “Oh, yeah, that sounds so cool.” And then I started doing the research and I was like, “I don’t know anything about physics!” And I realized I had agreed to do this book about something that I don’t have the scientific chops to understand completely. But you find good experts who help you and review things, and then it’s like, “OK. I managed to do that.”

PCM: With your fiction, by virtue of writing for children, you’re also writing for adults who read to them, right? What are you trying to communicate to the adults?

Underwood: Honestly, I don’t really think about the adults. I’m not very interested in grown-ups. It’s a strange field because it’s the only one I can think of where the consumer is not purchasing the product. What you have to do is entice the parent enough to buy it for the kid. But most of the time, I’m not thinking about audience at all. I keep saying that I’m essentially a 6-year-old in a grown-up’s body. So if something is interesting or funny to me, I feel it will be to kids. Usually, if you set out saying, “Well, what do I want to try to teach kids?” that’s a fatal error in writing for them. People come up to me and say things like, “Oh, I have this idea for a kid’s book. I want to teach kids it’s important to brush their teeth.” And you’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m sure kids are going to be really excited about that.” But when I teach writing workshops, I say, “If you write from your heart, your values are going to come out in your work without you doing anything to squeeze them in there.”

PCM: How do you maintain that childlike wonder? You said you’re a 6-year-old at heart.

Underwood: Just—I am 6. I just am. I don’t know. I think somebody once said that people who write for kids either have kids and really love kids or they are kids, and I fall into the latter category. If you ask any children’s writer, they will probably be able to say without even thinking, “Yeah, I’m 12.” My 16-year-old friends write YA. My 12-year-old friends write middle grade. And my 6-year-old friends write picture books.

PCM: What were your favorite children’s books?

Underwood:: Like many Pomona students, I’m sure, I was a pretty early reader, so I don’t really remember the picture books as much. What I remember is reading Beverly Cleary books and A Wrinkle in Time and Harriet the Spy.

I do remember my dad reading Dr. Seuss books to me. Those are great read-alouds, and I remember him reading Hop on Pop and all that. I bet if we called him up right now, he would still be able to recite the ABC book: If you said, “Painting pink pajamas. Policeman in a pail,” he would be able to finish the line. So that’s kind of a lesson in paying attention to making the adult happy enough to read the book 500 times, because you know that’s going to happen if the kid likes the book.

PCM: By virtue of being in a pandemic, what role does the outside play in this time of social distancing?

Underwood: It’s made me appreciate it so much more. When the botanical garden opened again, I wanted to go in and fall down and kiss the ground. But I do think it’s interesting that this book, Outside In, about our deep connection with nature, came out in the middle of this craziness.

I’ve always found outside to be a refuge in terms of going on walks and clearing my head and going to the park and all that. And then especially for the first few months, it became fraught because we didn’t know much about transmission. Not knowing if a jogger breathing on you would make you sick—it just added this layer of stress and anxiety onto being outside, which I’d never experienced before.

PCM: I know you don’t have an agenda per se. But one thing that came to mind when I was reading your book is the Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi.” “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” How do you think this connects with environmental issues? Are you trying to communicate anything related to that in your book?  

Underwood: I think if you write from your heart, your values do come out. I feel like Outside In is my environmental book. I have a book called Ogilvy. It’s about a bunny who’s wearing a garment that’s either a sweater or a dress, and the community isn’t sure which, and they’re trying to put the bunny into a box. So that’s my gender acceptance book. I just had one come out called Every Little Letter, which is about these letters and they all live surrounded by walls. So, the H is in the city of Hs, and they’re afraid of the different letters outside. There’s no metaphor there at all, obviously. The letters take down the walls at the end and they start making words and cooperating. Obviously, my values inform what I write.

PCM: Do you write every day?

Underwood: No.

PCM: I feel better as a writer.

Underwood: No. You know what? I don’t know about you, but the last several months have been so hard for every creative person that I know. I have a really strong Facebook community, and it’s very nice to be able to post, “I can’t work. I can’t even read,” and have people go, “Me neither. Me neither. Me neither.”

PCM: It happens to me that I can’t read. I haven’t read in months.

Underwood: No, no. That’s the thing. And it’s so frustrating, right? Because as soon as I heard about the shutdown, I went to the library, I checked out about 25 books. I was like, “Finally, finally, I get to read all these books.” Honestly, I think I’ve read maybe one middle-grade novel since March. I even pulled out a book that I loved when I was a kid and told myself, “Fifteen minutes. Just try to read 15 minutes a day.” And I did it for two days, and then my attention kind of fractured…

PCM: I feel really bad as a writer, but I’ve just been bingeing on Netflix.

Underwood: I think we have to, right? I tell myself—this might not be entirely true—we’re learning about story structure, right?

In his career, Ronald Lee Fleming ’63, P’04, author of the newly published The Adventures of a Narrative Gardener: Creating a Landscape of Memory, worked hard as an urban planner, preservationist and innovator, doing Main Street revitalization projects in small towns even before the National Trust for Historic Preservation took them on. In fact, Fleming says, he was once told, “Well, we’ve copied everything you ever did.”

His idea of place-making wasn’t just for Main Street, though; it also extended to home sweet home, in the form of gardens. In the book, Fleming tells the story of his life, his family and friends, his 12 gardens and the gardens that inspire him. In this conversation with Pomona College Magazine’s Sneha Abraham, he talks about why he wrote the book and, among other things, offers advice for horticulturalists who also want to be place-makers.

This interview has been condensed and edited for space and clarity.

PCM: How did you first get involved in urban planning?

Fleming: I didn’t know before college that there was such a field as planning. But I had built a little town in my backyard when I was growing up. I went to all the ghost towns in the West, and then I came back and built a little town. I called it the Ghost Town. And that’s what got me involved with all the local neighborhood kids. I was a sort of Tom Sawyer, and they were painting my fence.

Then one summer just after Pomona, I won a fellowship to Deerfield, Massachusetts, where I studied history and decorative arts at Historic Deerfield. You had to write a thesis, so I studied towns. I did a comparative study of Greenfield and Deerfield.

And while I was there, I went up to see Professor Philip Gray’s family who summered on Caspian Lake in Vermont. Peggy Gray  motored us in her ancient Pierce Arrow to this little town nearby called Craftsbury Common, which is very beautiful. And I went to a wonderful picnic with all kinds of people of all backgrounds, but they’re all enjoying each other. It was called a Strawberry Supper.

Years later, when I came back from Vietnam, a cynical reporter said to me, “What do you think you were dying for in Vietnam?”  I said, “Well, I was dying for a Strawberry Supper on Craftsbury Common.” That was a place where America came together. It was the idea of a common where people of various backgrounds and incomes all came together in harmony.

I still didn’t know there was such a thing as getting a planning degree until I met Professor Gray’s son-in-law who was teaching at MIT. He was a professor of planning, and he got me all involved in that. So when I came back to Harvard, I kind of treated that first year back as a sort of sabbatical. And then I went into planning, and that’s where I got my degree. And that’s what my whole story has been about—planning and place-making.

PCM: So what was your reason for writing this book?

Fleming: I think I had two reasons. One was to celebrate the fact that I had been able to create these 12 gardens and tell a narrative story—through a narrative garden. But I also did it for my children, to help them understand my mentality and what I was up to. And to tell the world what I valued.

Ironically, I now understand that garden-making is something of an achievement, even though I had done all these other things. I had been a fellow at the U.S. National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites. I had been a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. I had received a number of distinctions in my career.

But I think, really, that people may remember me as a gardener.

But it’s not just a pretty book, as one of the writers who reviewed it has said. It’s also a harrowing memoir of Vietnam. Because I was in Vietnam as an intelligence officer assigned to the Special Forces—the Green Berets. And then I was working in the embassy for a while. And then I worked for what we call “the Company.” You know, you can figure that out. All of that is in the book, in Chapter 4, which is the one that is about Vietnam. It’s also about my friends who died. So many of my friends died. So why did I write it? I wrote it to make more precious the memory of these people. And then I also had to talk about the commons, where we could all meet in the back of the garden.

PCM: What is a narrative garden?

Fleming: A narrative garden tells a story. It tells a story about a place. So what I wanted to do was to use the 12 different gardens here at Bellevue House, in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s three and a half acres with a wall around it, so it’s very private, but it’s right next to the downtown. That’s the marvelous thing about it—it’s so urban. I can walk to the club, I can walk to the art museum, I can walk to the Redwood Library, America’s first athenaeum. They’re all within a half-mile. That’s wonderful. Because I’m at the cusp of the residencial part of Bellevue Avenue where the great mansions are located. Have you ever been to Newport?

PCM: No, I haven’t.

Fleming: Newport was this great playground for America’s wealthy people in the Gilded Age. We’re living in a new Gilded Age right now, but that was a time of enormous wealth in America, after the Civil War. Before that time, it was a place of artists, and it was a place of Southerners. Southerners came up in the summertime, and they had houses here. Some of the leading families of Charleston and Savannah had houses right here, including the George Noble Jones family of Savannah who lived across Bellevue Avenue and the Middletons of Charleston who owned my land.

So first, it was a place where Southerners and Northerners got together. After that, it became an artistic retreat, and it became very wealthy. And it became, intellectually, a very powerful place. You had a whole amount of energy here, intellectual and artistic energy. Which created this district of great houses, which I’m still fighting to save on the local level. Trying to save the houses and the character of the place.

PCM: A narrative garden also tells the story of a person. In this case, you. What is it in your life that inspired you to build these gardens?

Fleming: I’ve had an extraordinary life experience. As you know, I worked hard as a planner and innovator. I did all these Main Street projects in small cities and towns. I’ve seen lots of gardens. I survived all kinds of misadventures depicted in the cascade of the years of living dangerously, all the different adventures I’ve had where I was almost killed. I almost skidded off a cliff in a Volkswagen on the edge of the Adriatic Sea 300 feet below. I survived Vietnam, where a sniper missed me by three inches. And you know, and I was almost killed by a village mob near Casablanca, when I was driving my XKE at night and they thought I had clipped a bicyclist, a Third World death sentence. I had a minute to show what happened. Later in life, I had three strokes and a kidney transplant, so with immune deficiencies, I’ve used up my nine lives and am living on borrowed time.

And so even though I’ve had years of some tranquility, all these things inspired the idea of a narrative garden that would tell the story and would relate to all these different gardens that I had seen. 

PCM: You write that programming a garden can invoke a spirit. Can you give an example?

Fleming: There’s a muscle memory that comes out of animating a garden space and doing activities in the garden. So the idea of constantly using the garden imprints on the mind the nature of the spirit of the place. I had 35 artists and artisans involved in this thing. So, I was very interested in how you involve the arts and how you make it special. And I didn’t want just the arts to be the single use zoning that we have now in cultural districts in America, where you have an art park and all the artists plopped around on the park. I’m interested in place-making, not plop art. I wanted to have the art relate to the spirit of the place.

PCM: You’ve written—I’m quoting—“Before attempting to transform the built environment, we need training in how to make visual choices and how to understand the visual language.” How do we get that kind of training?

Fleming: I think it’s hard. For instance, I think the visual environment at Pomona has not evolved so well because Pomona has made a lot of mistakes in terms of building choices. Some of the earlier architecture, site plans and buildings by Myron Hunt and Sumner Spalding were beautiful, but they haven’t respected that architecture in terms of a lot of the changes that were made. Until Robert Stern came around, that is—the new student union is quite successful in terms of relating to that vocabulary, so that was a really good choice. I think some of the other choices were not as good, and I’ve told the president about that from time to time.

PCM: You also said you’ve made some mistakes along the way.

Fleming: Yeah, I’ve made mistakes. My biggest mistake is this one garden, which is at the back of the property. What I liked about it was the plane of water and then the diagonal edge—a crisp line—and then beveled grass going up to a tempietto. So my failure was working with landscape architects with no cultural memory. Most people who are living in our age do not have the historical context —they haven’t seen it. I was away when they installed the rocks. And they put in little stones—kind of rough stones, rusticated stones—rather than understanding that what they should have done is a crisp wall edge. I’ve been to Studley Royal in Yorkshire, which is the model for my own garden folly.

PCM: What would be your advice for people building their own gardens? 

Fleming: A garden should empower a person. In other words, what I’m trying to do with a narrative garden is to show that other people can tell stories in their gardens. And everybody has a story to tell. And I think our lives are richer if we can tell a story. I want to go beyond the abstraction of just doing drifts of flowers and things like that. I want to empower people to put more meaning into their places. It’s about place-making; it’s about layers of meaning in your life and for your family. And so that’s what I hope we have achieved.

PCM: When you were a student at Pomona, was there a space that you particularly loved?

Fleming: Yes, there was. In fact, that’s where I kissed my first girl. I was a late bloomer. And there was a little courtyard, Lyon Court, next to Little Bridges. That little area there. That bench in the back, that’s where I kissed my first girlfriend.

Welcome, Nathan Dean ’10

In July Pomona College welcomed Nathan Dean ’10 as the new National Chair of Annual Giving. Nathan will serve a two-year term as the College’s primary proponent for annual giving and as an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees.

Working to lead and support fundraising for top priorities, Nathan will partner with the Office of Advancement and the Board of Trustees Advancement Committee to set and monitor Annual Fund goals, assist with volunteer recruitment and serve as a spokesperson for Annual Fund initiatives.

Visit pomona.edu/give and support current students through the Annual Fund today!

Say Hello to Alisa Fishbach,

our new Director of Alumni and Parent Engagement

The Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement welcomed Alisa Fishbach as its new director this past summer. Alisa is a graduate of Occidental College and brings with her to Pomona College more than 30 years of experience in nonprofit and corporate management, event production, fundraising and higher education community building. In addition to her background in higher education, Alisa has extensive experience in theatrical production and promotion, working with Broadway’s Shubert Organization and Theatre L.A., Los Angeles’ consortium of performing arts organizations. Alisa was born in India and lived there and in Iran and Hawaii before settling in California, where she enjoys life with her family. Alisa shares that, as a product of the liberal arts, her commitment to the philosophy and tenets of the mission of Pomona College is firmly rooted, and she is thrilled to be working on behalf of Sagehen alumni and families. Chirp! Chirp! 

Save the Dates for Big Sagehen Celebrations in Spring 2021

We are excited to announce two celebratory virtual events coming next spring to bring some joy and rejuvenation to all.

Our annual 4/7 Day will celebrate and honor Sagehens for their local and global contributions. All are invited for a special day of recognizing and discovering the extraordinary impact that alumni make in so many ways in their hometowns and across the world, bearing their added riches!

On May 1, classes whose years end in 1 or 6 are invited to our Pomona College Reunion Celebration. Planning is underway for an online event filled with opportunities for alumni in reunion to gather, reminisce, explore and celebrate! And don’t forget, it’s never too early to start contributing to your Reunion Class Gift. Visit pomona.edu/class-gift to give today.

Watch your email for details on these special spring events! Need to update your contact information? Go to pomona.edu/update-your-info.

Shifting to Virtual Alumni and Family Events This Year

Along with many other changes in the pandemic (hello Zoom!), our alumni and parent programs have pivoted quickly to reshape our events and continue to provide opportunities to come together in our virtual world. Thanks to Alumni and Parent Engagement and the partnership of the Career Development Office (CDO), the Benton Museum at Pomona College, the Orange County Regional Alumni Chapter and others, the fall presented a variety of online events for alumni and parents to engage with Pomona. To highlight a few of those:

In September, the Pomona College Orange County Regional Alumni Chapter hosted “DACA 101: The Supreme Court Decision, the Sagehen Community and Beyond,” a panel discussion on the current state of the DACA program and the impact on the Pomona community should DACA end. Panelists included:

• Gilda Ochoa, professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies at Pomona College and moderator
• Arely Zimmerman, assistant professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies at Pomona College
• Paula Gonzalez ’95, immigration attorney and co-founder of the Pomona College Pro Bono Legal Network
• Daniel Caballero, assistant director, First-Generation & Undocumented Student Programs at Pomona College
• Aldair Arriola Gomez ’17

In October, the CDO and Alumni & Parent Engagement launched “Trustee Talks from the Workplace,” a series featuring Pomona College trustees sharing career experiences and advice with students and young alumni. With nearly all industries impacted by current public health and economic conditions, the talks focus on how industries are adapting, as well as job market realities and current and future opportunities. This first talk focused on “Hollywood in the Time of COVID” and featured panelists:

• Aditya Sood ’97, president, Lord Miller, Pomona College trustee
• Gregory McKnight ’90, partner, United Talent Agency
• Ryan Engley, assistant professor of media studies and moderator

At the end of October, the new event series “Faculty Chirps & Chats,” presented by the Alumni Association Board, began with “Six Days Left! A (Most Unusual) 2020 Election.” Each month, alumni and families are invited to join Pomona College faculty talks where speakers will discuss their current research, projects and interests. This recent chat featured a close look at the 2020 election and a lively bipartisan discussion about the fight for the White House and the Senate. Panelists included:

• David Menefee-Libey, Pomona College professor of politics and coordinator of public policy analysis
• John J. Pitney, Claremont McKenna College Roy P. Crocker professor of politics
• Don Swan ’15, Alumni Association president and moderator

Watch your email for ongoing event announcements and registration information.