Letters

Letter Box

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Dying With Dignity

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I read your “Before I Die” article with interest, as I am sure most of us from the Class of 1962 did. It is called current events. However, I suggest that there is one important part of the death process that was not included in the story.

Twenty years ago Oregon passed the nation’s first Death With Dignity Act. Two years later an attempt to repeal it was soundly defeated. My wife and I voted in favor of the act both times, little suspecting that we would use it later. Since then, Washington, Vermont, California and Montana have passed virtually identical laws, and quite a few other states are considering such a law now. The law is nothing at all like the “death panels” that Gov. Palin carried on about for a long time.

In our case, my wife had colon cancer surgery and then breast cancer surgery within one year. Initially the doctors believed that the surgeries were successful. The colon cancer never returned, but the breast cancer came back three years later. After four more surgeries during the next six years, four rounds of radiology treatments (15 each) and close to 100 chemotherapy treatments, her body began to stop functioning. She did not want to get to a point that she would be a “vegetable” (her term) in a care facility, and the family could recognize that life, as any normal person would like to live it, was about over. She was bedridden and had stopped eating or processing food.

A two-week process is required, with certifications from two doctors that the patient’s life will likely end within six months. The doctors referred us to Compassion & Choices, a fabulous group of volunteers nationwide who are leading the effort to expand legislation in other states, and who provide volunteers to help with the process. My wife took the medicine and passed away in less than an hour. She was satisfied with the process, as were all of the family, and friends when told about it later.

C&C can provide much more specific information on the subject. But with the law now in effect in CA, and with so many Pomona alums living in California, I believe it is important that information about Death With Dignity should be included in the otherwise very interesting article you wrote this quarter.

—James A. (Jim) Johnson ’62

Portland, Ore.

Face to Face

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_10_Image_0002 We loved the latest Pomona College Magazine “Face to Face” feature. We wanted to share our relationship to last a lifetime.

In the summer of 1963, we each received a letter from Dean of Women Ina T. Nider informing us that we had been assigned to one another as freshman roommates. It was apparently a successful pairing. We were suite-mates sophomore year and roommates again our senior year. Linda was a religion major, active in Chapel Committee and the Claremont Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Lesley was a biochemistry major and spent most of her time in the chemistry lab.

After graduation, Lesley went on to obtain a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin, did two postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and then worked for 32 years at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, starting as an assistant professor and serving her last 20 years as provost. She has served as president of Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., since 2009.

Linda worked in a garment factory in San Diego, then obtained her teaching credential and taught for 36 years in inner-city Los Angeles, the last 28 years at Manual Arts High School, retiring in 2009. Finding that unsatisfactory, she went back to school, obtained a master’s in history at Cal State Los Angeles and is now an adjunct instructor at East Los Angeles College.

Through the years, we have shared annual trips to Disneyland with our kids, weddings, divorces, an untimely funeral and innumerable photographs of adorable grandchildren. We currently see each other a couple of times a year, chat regularly on Facebook and compete daily in cutthroat games of Words With Friends.

Thanks, Ina T.

—Linda Baughn ’67

Los Angeles, Calif.

and Lesley Moore Hallick ’67

Forest Grove, Ore.

You do, indeed, publish a beautiful magazine! I usually start at the back, to see if any of my classmates are in the Class Notes. Then I page through the entire thing.

However, this month your “Face to Face” feature grabbed my attention right away, so I read all of these stories first thing. That was a clever and time-consuming project for you, I would think. Loved it! The only face I knew was that of Bob Herman ’51. As I remember, he has led our class tours of the campus on Alumni Weekends. A terrific storyteller! My husband, DeForrest ’61 and I met at Pomona, so the married couples who met there were of special interest. We’ve been married 52 years.

One of the many things I like about the magazine is how you include stories from the school’s past, along with what is currently happening on campus. Of course, I love to read what the graduates have done recently. I’m always interested in the books they’ve published. I appreciate your including very short articles as well as longer ones in just the right mix. Some college magazines are so dense with material that there is no hope of reading everything.

DeForrest and I spent a bit of time studying Jeff Hing’s gorgeous double-page photo of the campus. The snow-covered mountains with the clouds spilling over them were spectacular.

I’ve finished reading the “Letter Box.” So, what to read next … the story on Cuba, since some of my friends are traveling there? The article about the celebrity photographer? Maybe about that “youngster” Peggy Arnold, who graduated three years after I did.

My grandniece is a Pomona student at the moment, so I feel that your magazine is keeping me in touch with her there. I’m looking forward to my 55th reunion next year. How I love returning to that beautiful place, full of so many memories.

—Bonnie Bennett Home ’62

San Jose, Calif.

As a friend of Pomona College, I have enjoyed reading Pomona College Magazine for many years. The latest issue moves me to send this appreciation of the continuing quality of the publication under your most competent custodianship. I especially liked the piece about relationships. This reminder of how important and durable they can be during one’s collegiate interlude is nicely done. Thanks to you, your staff and contributors.

—Gilbert Pattison Joynt

Seattle, Wash.

Pomona Lifeline

Since my retirement in 2006, the Pomona College Magazine has become my cherished lifeline to the College and the Pomona family and community that was my home for so many years—and I miss so keenly. Each issue offers delight and fascination for me, as you offer marvelous features about the extraordinary individuals within our diverse community whose creative lives have so enriched our world. As such, the magazine is a beacon of hope for me in a world so darkened by forces of bitter divisiveness and destruction. Our Pomona students, faculty, administration, staff and alumni all have voices within your magazine, and I read every word to learn more about their lives and accomplishments and to celebrate them.

May I say, too, as an English teacher forever enamored with fine writing, that the quality of writing in every article is superb. I especially enjoy your “Stray Thoughts,” always a personal and engaging reflection on issues at hand from your marvelously unique and candid point of view.

Your layout and design are glorious indeed. You offer visual as well as verbal pleasures.

With every best wish for the flourishing of the Pomona College Magazine—and for your ongoing delight in your devoted and inspired efforts for us all.

—Martha Andresen Wilder

Professor Emerita of English

Claremont, Calif.

Note Correction

In the Class of ’59 Notes in PCM Spring 2016, there are three entries: Epps, Lathrop Wells and myself. Two of us were botany majors (there were, in total, three botany majors in 1959. How’s that for keeping the Pomona College connection? I think botany was unique because of the three-day field trip fall and spring to all of the vegetation zones of the West over a three-quarter-year span. These field trips formed a cohesion to the department and College, just as student research with faculty does today. Both Betsy and I had keys to the botany building—master keys at that—and this was a bonding element also. But somehow, my note in Class Notes ended short of the complete sentence. I intended for it to say: “I am rich in experiences, but in retirement short on pension. Pomona and Harvard shaped my life, and I will be eternally grateful for the expanding opportunities and challenges I took from them.” I appreciate the correction. We are downsizing and I found 60-year-old 8-page magazines—a far cry from now.

—Garrison Wilkes ’59

Hingham, Mass.

Alumni, parents and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.

Stray Thoughts: Faith and Spirituality

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_09_Image_0003 Pomona’s original seal, emblazoned with the words “Our Tribute to Christian Civilization,” adorned every Pomona diploma for almost a century. Appropriate in 1887 for a church-founded college where theology was part of the curriculum, it slowly became an anachronism, as the College cut ties with the church and drew students from many traditions. Steve Glass ’57 still laughs good-naturedly about receiving a diploma imprinted with that motto just before going to Bridges Hall of Music to be married in a traditional Jewish ceremony.

Over the years, as American culture grew steadily more secular, American colleges—once places for reinforcing inherited belief systems—became, instead, places for questioning them. I was reminded of this fact as I prepared for this issue, when a couple of students declined to take part because their parents weren’t yet aware of their evolving beliefs.

Just in the past decade, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, the portion of the “millennial” generation with no religious affiliation has grown from a quarter to more than a third. Pomona students may be slightly ahead of that curve, judging by the Princeton Review’s rather eclectic rankings, in which Pomona seems to be perennially listed in the top 10 for “least religious students.” (Last year, we were number nine.)

But another study, conducted at UCLA in the early 2000s, found that while religious affiliation typically declines during those college years, “spirituality”—defined as “an active quest for answers to life’s ‘big questions,’ a global worldview that transcends ethnocentrism and egocentrism, a sense of caring and compassion for others coupled with a lifestyle that includes service to others”—actually increases.

That’s one of the reasons why institutions across the country are beefing up offices that provide spiritual counseling and promote religious expression or community service. Here at The Claremont Colleges, for example, the Office of Chaplains recently appointed a new Muslim chaplain, who joins Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains at the McAlister Center to support the needs of individual students and groups spanning a wide spectrum of beliefs.

Since 1914, Pomona’s gates have welcomed students who are “eager, thoughtful and reverent” and encouraged them to “bear their added riches in trust” for humankind. Today we may understand those words a bit differently than when they were first carved. We may speak about reverence for truth instead of reverence for a particular deity. We may discuss the ethic of helping others without framing it in a religious context. But Pomona students continue to keep the faith in their own individual ways.

—MW

Stray Thoughts: Dinner With the Deathies

April 7, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Floral-skull pattern When I was in my early 20s, I briefly dated a young woman who, as I soon discovered, had already planned out her entire funeral. She had it all down on paper—from music to flowers to who would speak when—with corrections and notes in the margins. I suppose that funeral fetish might have had something to do with the fact that we only dated briefly. After all, in our society, thinking too much about death is considered morbid and strange.

Forty years have gone by since then. Thinking about death no longer feels strange—more like inevitable. Recently, a friend about my age said it about as well as it can be said: “The scary thing is to realize that I can no longer die an untimely death.”

So when Peggy Arnold ’65 invited me to Colorado to meet her group of end-of-life activists—whom she refers to as “the Deathies”—and to dip my toe into the the end-of-life revolution, I took it not only as a professional opportunity, but also as a personal challenge. The tangible result is the story titled “Before I Die” on page 44 of this issue. The intangible results are still percolating inside my head.

In retrospect, it was probably a good time for me to bring this part of my inner life out into the open and give it the thought it deserves. Five years ago, for an issue titled “Birth and Death,” I wrote a column that pulled together all my most memorable little moments of epiphany concerning those two great mysteries of life. But what used to come in tiny aha moments—some beautiful, some terrifying—now seems a permanent part of my thought process. I’ve become so acutely aware of endings that I almost dread going on vacation because I can already feel the wistfulness that comes with knowing that it’s over.

But sitting around the dinner table with the Deathies, I found their enthusiasm surprisingly contagious—these are people for whom death is truly an integral part of life. Around that table, thinking and talking about death isn’t morbid—in fact, it’s strangely liberating.

Of course, there are practical reasons for thinking about death, and the Deathies are focused mainly on those. There are decisions to be made while there’s still time to make them. There are preparations to be made to prevent loved ones from having to make them in times of extremis. There are situations ahead that we can’t foresee but that we hope to be able to control when the time comes.

But I’ve found that there are also hidden benefits, and one of them is a growing sense of acceptance. Don’t get me wrong—I trust that I still have miles to go before I sleep. But partly thanks to the Deathies, I’ve overcome some of my fear of the subject. My wife and I are making plans. And if tomorrow, a doctor reads my imminent fate in an x-ray or a blood test, I feel a little more confident that I’ll be able to swallow the news and get on with my life.

Letterbox

April 7, 2016 by PCM Readers Comments Off

What If?

I have long admired your evident editorial hand displayed in the Pomona College Magazine, but the Fall 2015 “What If?” issue deserves special salutations. Others may have come up with the “What If?” idea, but you saw the power in it, which led to a marvelous and stimulating and coherent set of articles of intrinsic value, but which also reflect well on Pomona College as an institution of liberating education. Thank you for your continuing skilled efforts.

—Lee Cameron McDonald ’48
Emeritus Professor of Politics
Pomona, Calif.

A Breathing Institution

I received the email for the survey on improving Pomona College Magazine. I wanted to commend you on looking to improve what I believe is an already fine publication. PCM holds a special place in my heart because my exposure to it was the spark that sent me to Pomona.

My senior year of high school, I was doing the usual contacting of universities for their information packet and application. I received Pomona College Magazine in my request for information from Pomona. Rather than another vanilla college brochure intent on marketing to me why I should come to their school (“Small class sizes! Award-winning faculty! Here’s a picture of an ethnically diverse circle of students sitting on a grassy quad!”), PCM was something else altogether. PCM was a beautiful snapshot of a breathing institution, populated by what appeared to be really fascinating, really smart people. Back then my family had a good bunch of magazines coming into our home: Time, Discover, National Geographic, etc. In PCM, I saw a glossy, high-quality magazine that was on the same level as those national publications, both in the writing and in the gorgeous photography. PCM seemed to be making an unspoken promise to me: if I could make it into this college, I could be just as amazing as these people that were being profiled. A campus visit only confirmed what I saw, and I was hooked. At that point, every other college application would just be for safety schools. (Okay, that’s a little lie… If Stanford had accepted me, it would have been hard not to go!)

That issue of PCM that I received was probably Fall 1989. In all the intervening years, PCM has maintained the wonderful writing (I’m still a sucker for the alumni and faculty profiles) and the gorgeous photography. I wanted to thank you for your work at the magazine, in continuing the stewardship of what, for me, was a life-changing publication.

Needless to say, I’ve completed the survey. I hope the survey’s results will help you continue to steer the magazine toward fascinating waters.

—Andy Law ’94
San Diego, Calif.

Freedom of Speech

It was disappointing to read President Oxtoby’s email to the Pomona College community about the recent protests on college campuses around the nation without mention of a commitment to protect freedom of speech at Pomona. There is a dark side to the national protests seen in the ludicrous attempts to police Halloween costumes and more broadly, to silence and punish speech deemed “offensive.” Instead, President Oxtoby’s emphasis on “pain,” “sorrow,” and “institution-alized racism,” romanticizes and fetishizes victimhood. President Oxtoby should not be encouraging young men and women to see themselves as victims of oppression, but instead as adults with agency who have made a choice to attend a terrific, albeit imperfect, liberal arts college where they have consented to listen to competing, different, and sometimes offensive ideas in order to broaden their own minds and grow into tough-minded future leaders of their communities. I hope the students and the greater Pomona College community will continue to flirt with dangerous and offensive notions, to talk, argue, read and listen, in order to develop convictions born of experiences, mistakes and failures, instead of trying to create a protective cocoon from which all pain and sorrow can be avoided.

—Gregory Johnson ’00
Los Angeles, Calif.

In view of what happened at CMC I realize that David Oxtoby must tread warily in this minefield but I am appalled by what is taking place in Anglo-American universities. In England’s Warwick University, sophomore George Lawlor questioned ‘consent workshops’ arguing the vast majority of men ‘don’t have to be taught to not be rapists.’

I would have thought this was stating the obvious but in the atmosphere of politically-correct intolerance poisoning our universities he was denounced by radical feminists. The workshop was part of an attempt to create yet more “safe spaces” but it is clear there are to be no safe spaces for “unbelievers,” and feminists demand he be expelled.

He is in good company as Warwick has already banned human-rights campaigner Maryam Namazie over fears she might criticise Islam’s treatment of women. Universities should be the crucible of free expression and the interplay of ideas instead of the promoters of enforced conformism through the politics of grievance and resentment.

—Rev. Dr. John Cameron ’64
St. Andrews, Scotland

Tu Wit Ta Wu

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Doug Leedy ’59, who was Pomona College’s most prodigious and talented composer and musician. I was a first soprano in the Women’s Glee Club 1957-1961. He left us a lovely madrigal which he taught to the Women’s Glee Club:

“Tu Wit Ta Wu”
Lambs skip and play.
The shepherds pipe all day.
Birds sing this merry tune.
Ta Ee, Tu Oo,
Tu Wit, Ta Wu

—Katherine Holton Jones ’61
Alpine, Calif.

Letter Box

December 2, 2015 by PCM Readers Comments Off

Dreamers

I found the Summer 2015 issue very interesting and informative, which has been increasingly the case over the past few years. The “American Dreamers” feature got me thinking about a great use for this issue once I’ve finished it. In the past old issues have found a home on a coffee table shelf before they were recycled. This issue is bound for the waiting room of my physical therapist’s office where it may be browsed by an undocumented immigrant or someone who knows such a person, who in reading the Dreamers feature may use this information. Keep up the good work!

—Steve Lansdowne ‘ 71
Austin, Texas

I don’t believe I’ve ever missed a year donating to Pomona College since I graduated in 1976. My reasoning was that since someone paid for half my education, it was up to me to pay that back, and forward. But I have to admit a few years ago I did ask a Pomona fundraising person why I should still be donating, as Pomona has such a large endowment already. I never felt I really got a good answer until I read an article in The New York Times earlier this year, which I believe listed Pomona as having the fourth most economically diverse student body in the U.S. That was very gratifying.

And now I have a second reason—the Dreamers, as profiled in the recent issue of PCM. I love that my money is going to supporting these great young adults in their quest for high quality college education. As someone who has a conservative/libertarian bent, I am appalled at the racist and xenophobic immigration laws enacted in the last 130 years or so. From my perspective, these young adults are Americans in every sense of the word, so I’m proud to read that Pomona College feels as I do.

P.S. In a bit of irony, my conservative/libertarian political views were largely defined after taking a political science course from the late Dr. Krinsky, whose views were far to the left of where I ended up. When I hear people decry the liberal viewpoints nominally espoused in the typical college curriculum, I think they undersell the typical student’s underlying curiosity and convictions. I spent the semester arguing for Dr. Krinsky’s positions, as students often will, but in the end, I was not convinced. However, although Dr. Krinsky was a true believer in leftest ideals (the benevolent dictator), he invited a group of young libertarians to come speak to the class. He wanted us to hear opposing views, and for me it was a truly pivotal moment in my Pomona education.

—Steve Rempel ’76
Los Gatos, Calif.

The elegantly written piece, “American Dreamers,” expresses the highest aspirations of our College’s founders, of whom my great grandfather was its first dean. Investing in our future leaders, and in this matter, of our immigrant youth, is a passion I share. I am “invested” in this enterprise as a matter of carrying “our riches to all mankind” and have done so in teaching and adopting four of these immigrant kids.

—David Lyman, ‘66
South Pasadena, Calif.

Hurray for Introverts

There are many reasons I am happy to be a new Sagehen mother, one of them being the wonderful Pomona College Magazine. When my daughter Natalie McDonald ‘19 read your essay “The Power of Quiet,” she exclaimed with delight, “Yet another reason I am so excited to be going to Pomona College!” We had so many conversations about Susan Cain’s book, and I even wrote a post about our dinnertime conversations about it. We found it liberating and, as you observed, “reassuring” to understand and appreciate the special gifts of being introverted in an extroverted society. And then I read your recent essay “Stories Matter,” and all I could say to my husband Bill and Natalie was: “Wow…”

—Pamela Beere Briggs P’19
Los Angeles, Calif.

Memories of Little Bridges

Thanks for Professor Beeks’ wonderful tribute to Little Bridges. I was especially interested in his note that 1962 marked the beginning of annual collaborations between the choir and orchestra. In April 1962, I had the honor of performing as concertmaster of the orchestra in the very first such collaboration. Under the baton of Professor William Russell the combined forces of orchestra and chorus performed Brahms’ A German Requiem (in English, interestingly enough) for a full house in Little Bridges. As noted by Professor Beeks, we actually had to build an extension of the stage to accommodate all the musicians for that concert, but Bill Russell had the vision to make it happen and to continue the tradition thereafter.

My other favorite memory of Little Bridges and of Bill Russell is from the concert presented in the same year by the band. Professor Russell wanted to do a program for winds, and I suggested that he include the Second Suite for Military Band of Gustav Holst. This piece includes the “Song of the Blacksmith,” featuring a part for (what else?) an anvil. As a violinist, I didn’t normally play in symphonic bands, but Professor Russell invited me to sit in on anvil for this concert. Once we located an actual anvil for the purpose it turned out neither of us liked the sort of clanky sound it made. Then he remembered that he had a 3-foot length of railroad rail at his house. We hung it from one of those beautiful side balconies over the stage, and I rendered my first (and only) performance with concert band using a large hammer on the stage of Little Bridges Hall of Music. What a glorious, ringing sound it was!

Thanks again for the memories, and Happy Centennial to Little Bridges.

—Paul Bent ’65
Long Beach, Calif.

I found this most recent issue of PCM a particularly good and interesting one. I recall Graydon Beeks leading the tenors and baritones/basses of the choir to learn the new music. This was 1982–1984; 1985–1986, when I sang tenor in the P.C. choir. (The choir director Jon Bailey assisted the sopranos and altos to learn their parts.) But when I read Beeks’ article, that opens the issue, I was really pleased to find that his organ teacher was Doc Blanchard, because my mother, Margaret Lindgren (née Fuller), a Pomona alumna, has often told me the (true) story of Doc Blanchard, who was organist of the Claremont Methodist Church, having to leave in the middle of the Sunday morning church service to go put out fires as he was on the Claremont Fire Brigade!

Especially meaningful to me in this issue, however, is the large section on undocumented students, including the as-yet unpassed DREAM Act and DACA, which President Obama pushed through and still stands, allowing undocumented individuals, under specific circumstances, to remain in the Unites States with full legal protection and renewal every two years, even though they are not granted U.S. citizenship. Citizenship is what the President would really like to see, but cannot without the full backing of the Congress. This act is truly bipartisan, with both Democrat and Republican Congressmen originating and voting for it.

Finally, I thank you for posting my most recent volume, The Wood of Green: Poems, Stories, and Studies. You have done a good synopsis except, I think, regarding the studies or essays. There are only several studies that are of a philosophical nature. Most are human-experiential studies concerning human and divine. I do understand the difficulty to bring all this into focus in such few words.

I enjoyed reading this entire issue; it is one of the best I have read since I began receiving PCM many years ago (over 25 years).

—Alan Lindgren ’86
Culver City, Calif.

More Walton Memories

Thank you, Judy Bartels, for your letter about Jean Walton. In my time at Pomona she was important to women for her skill and caring as dean of women and because she was a rarity, a female professor (mathematics). Mark Wood tells us that stories are important, so I want to share one. One day Dean Walton joined a group of women students for coffee in the village and we began to talk about math and how puzzling it was for many. Dean Walton enjoyed the conversation and began answering questions. I mentioned that I had noticed dividing by whole numbers yielded smaller numbers while dividing by fractions did the opposite. She gave a simple, elegant explanation that differed so from my experiences in math classes that I was charmed. I pondered this for some time and 20 years later, when I decided to teach, I chose secondary math. I hoped to open the door for others that Dean Jean had opened for me. I am retired now, but in my community I am often introduced as “the math teacher” because, I hope, I was able to discover ways to do that for my students. Teachers often have no idea of their impact, and Dean Walton never knew about my teaching, but if I was able to open some doors, I think she would be pleased.

—Frances DuBose Johnson ‘54
Newbury Park, Califirnia

[Alumni and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.]

Stray Thoughts: What If?

December 2, 2015 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Mars crossed out by a red circle Is there any question more characteristically human than one that begins with those two little words? They may be spoken with excitement or with regret, with curiosity or with fear, but they’re always spoken with the brain in high gear—doing what human brains were meant to do: look beyond the way things are to how they might be.

In psychology, such speculations are known as “counterfactuals” or “prefactuals”—the “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” that plague us or motivate us as we reflect upon past events or try to imagine a better future.

In philosophy, they’re part of a long line of epistemological thought reaching all the way back to Aristotle.

In linguistics, they’re those strange and wonderful parts of grammar that we use to describe things and events in precise detail while acknowledging that they have not yet (and may never) come to pass.

In science, they’re the basis of all hypotheses. As such, they are arguably the foundation from which all scientific knowledge springs, and indeed, upon which the whole modern world is built.

In fiction, there’s some sort of “what if” at the heart of every work—sometimes philosophical (What if a mother had to choose which of her two children to save from the gas chamber?), sometimes scientific (What if a lone man were stranded on Mars?), sometimes historical (What if the Nazis had won the war?). There are, as you probably know, whole novels exploring each of these intriguing possibilities.

But one of my personal favorites in the “what-if” realm of literature isn’t a novel at all—it’s a nonfiction book called What If the Moon Didn’t Exist? by astronomer Neil F. Comins. The book is a series of essays, the first of which asks the question in the book’s title. (Spoiler alert: There would probably be no life, or at the very least, no life as we know it.) He goes on to address a series of other questions that would likely result in a dramatically changed world. What if the Moon were closer to the Earth? What if the Earth had less mass? What if the Earth were tilted like Uranus?

Comins concludes his book, however, with a “what if” question that crosses the boundary from intriguing speculation into scary fact: What if the Earth’s ozone layer were depleted? The picture he paints in his essay is graphic and frightening and all too probably in the process of coming true before our eyes.

As Comins notes, “the ‘what if’ process is an essential part of our ability to consider the long-term effects of our actions before we take them.”

Or in other words, the world would be a better place if more of us would pause to ask: “What if?”

LetterBox

August 3, 2015 by PCM Readers Comments Off

In Defense of Amazon

In “Preston vs. Amazon” (PCM Spring 2015) Douglas Preston makes some good points, but in at least some respects his viewpoint is based on an outmoded author/publisher model.

He states: “If authors couldn’t get advances, an awful lot of extremely important books wouldn’t get written.” While this may be true of some books, it is also true that many great books have a terribly difficult time getting past the gatekeepers at publishing houses, who are increasingly looking for blockbusters and who are increasingly unwilling to nurture beginning authors. The list of highly-rated authors who spent years receiving rejection letters before getting published is a lengthy one. These authors weren’t getting advances, and they had to spend countless hours struggling to get published instead of researching and writing books. (William Saroyan, for example, received 7,000 rejections before selling his first short story; Marcel Proust got so many rejections that he gave up and self-published.)

Publishing on demand (such as is offered by Amazon and other publishers) has solved this problem: there are no gatekeepers. Beginning authors can publish anything they want, and see it listed for sale on a variety of sites, including Amazon. Yes, a lot of dross gets published this way. On the other hand, a glance at the books for sale in airports or on various “best seller” lists demonstrates that a lot of dross gets published the old-fashioned way. In the end, for better or for worse, the market—not a publishing house—will decide what lives and what fades away.

If publishers are “venture capitalists for ideas,” venues like Amazon are virtually cost-free incubators for individual thinkers and entrepreneurs (i.e., writers) trying to get their concepts produced and marketed without having to impress a patron. This is not a bad thing.

—David Rearwin ’62

La Jolla, Calif.

Museum Musings

The College has preliminary plans to build an art museum at Second and College where the cottages now stand, across the street from the Seaver Mansion/ Alumni Center where the Claremont Inn, a real community center, used to be located. As a planner and a donor with a long interest in the College, I would like to see a transparent planning process in which this building project serves the broadest possible cultural goals. We have been constructing single-purpose buildings, and they have created a banal, sometimes isolating cityscape of a college, which for the most part hasn’t deployed architecture to generate a cultural edge. I would argue that Pomona students suffer from this deficit. As a college, we need more cultural energy: a Medici city palace with artist residencies, Claremont fellows, comfortable places for visiting dignitaries and scholars should generate this kind of cross-fertilization and nourish the art of conversation. Maybe we would produce more Rhodes Scholars with this conversational energy and the self-confidence it breeds.

Close to the city center, this site is too important just to be an art museum housing a modest collection, including many Native American artifacts now stored at Big Bridges. With the largest endowment per student in the country, Pomona is rich enough to build new buildings without soliciting big donors or their advice. But I would argue that rather than giving administrators the credit for a single-purpose building that can be done quickly, this site is strategically important for constructing a stronger culture with ties to the community and to the other colleges. It requires real leadership to build those ties and a cultural confidence that many academics lack. An elegant dining room serving the trustees, literary and artistic societies (yet to be formed as they are at Harvard and Yale), community leaders and donors, a cinema café (acknowledging that filmic literacy is part of a Pomona education), community rooms that host endowed lecturers, as at the CMC Athenaeum, and perhaps a used book store will give the site a more dynamic spirit.

It took protests from Yale students in the 1960s to change the plans of the award-winning architect, Louis Kahn, and the donor, Paul Mellon, to transform the Yale Center for British Art on Chapel Street into a lively street presence, with café and book store. Pomona is less urban and, I would argue, less urbane, and there may not be a student constituency that could demand more of the building than an architectural prize or many trustees that care about these values, but let’s try with at least an open discussion. Culture is a sense of mutual responsibility between centers of power. It is time that these centers started having a conversation at Pomona. Now, that is a project for “daring minds,” the current slogan used to raise money for that conservative and safe goal of scholarships. Let’s go further. Let’s make Pomona a scintillating place. Mixed-use buildings are a beginning.

—Ronald Lee Fleming ’63

Cambridge, Mass.

Remembering Jean Walton

The latest issue of PCM introduced Professor Ami Radunskya and a story about women and math. I wonder if she knows the name, Dean Jean Walton, a woman of major importance to Pomona College and its education of women? Part of me wants to write a long piece, but if I try, this will never get sent. Besides, just a quick review of old issues of your magazine will provide information as to how old I am and how old the story of the unique issues of women and the College truly is: Pomona Today Illustrated for July 1973 has an article called “Choices,” and the summer 1990 issue of Pomona College Today has an article called “Rethinking Roles: Women’s Studies Challenges Belief Systems.” My files also include an article from the Winter 2005 PCM titled “End of the Weigh-In,” by Helen Hutchison ’74, remembering a Jean Walton experience.

What I have tended to forget, partly because I never took a math class at Pomona, is that Jean Walton’s Ph.D. was in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. I actually have a copy of her thesis. Although it is unreadable to the likes of me (words like “and,” “but” and “to” were the few I recognized), I love having it. If any of you, including Professor Radunskya, are curious about Dean Walton, (she retired as a vice president, but during my years as a student and when we did the early Choices weekends, she was Dean) one interesting book that has a whole chapter written by Jean is: The Politics of Women’s Studies; Testimony from 30 Founding Mothers, edited by Florence Howe. The heading of her chapter, which is in Part I, is “‘The Evolution of a Consortial Women’s Studies Program,’ Jean Walton (The Claremont Colleges).” I write all this because somehow it is important that these sorts of connections don’t get lost.  It might make the newer faculty a little wiser and more compassionate about their aging ground-breakers.

—Judy Tallman Bartels ‘57

Lacey, Wash.

Remembering Jack Quinlan

Professor Quinlan was appointed Dean of Admissions in 1969, a critical time in the college’s history. Chicano and African American students felt we were vastly underrepresented in the enrollment at the time. Members of MECHA, including myself, and the Black Students Union were pressing the College to increase its diversity. I had the privilege of serving on a subcommittee on Chicano admissions with Dean Quinlan. Although our relationship was initially adversarial, I soon found John to be genuinely committed to the goal of diversity.

The fact that the enrollment of Pomona College today roughly mirrors that of the nation as a whole is in great part due to Dean Quinlan’s commitment to “quality and diversity,” first demonstrated all those decades ago.

—Eduardo Pardo ‘72

Los Angeles, Calif.

Athletes and Musicians

The PCM reported in the Spring 2015 issue that Kelli Howard ’04 has been inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Hall of Fame, a well-deserved honor. It is worth noting that Kelli and her doubles partner, Whitney Henderson ’04, were also four-year members of the Pomona College Band, playing tenor saxophone and trombone respectively. Combining intercollegiate athletics and serious music-making is difficult at a school like Pomona, with its heavy academic demands, but as Kelli and Whitney demonstrated, it can be done.

—Graydon Beeks ’69

Professor of Music and Director of the Pomona College Band

Claremont, Calif.

[Alumni and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters are selected for publication based on relevance and interest to our readers and may be edited for length, style and clarity.]

Stories Matter

August 3, 2015 by Mark Wood Comments Off

STORIES MAKE us better.

That’s not just my opinion as a writer and editor who’s made a living telling stories for many years. It’s my opinion as a human being who, like all human beings, depends on stories to keep his heart fresh and alive.

Stories can be magical things. They have the power to break down walls, blunt prejudices, calm fears, alter points of view. As I write this, the news just came in that the Supreme Court has come down on the side of gay marriage, following a veritable tidal shift in American public opinion on the subject, following lots and lots of stories—individual stories—that slowly filtered into people’s hearts.

As human beings, we’re simply not geared to sympathize with groups of people, especially groups that are, in some seemingly significant way, different from ourselves. In fact, the opposite may well be true. We fear the collective other. We eye them with suspicion and jealousy. We create stereotypes to rationalize our fears. Some of this may even be written into the darkest corners of our genes.

Statistics—the ultimate in thinking about human beings as collectives—can bring an informative bit of reality into play, and they may nudge us intellectually in a new direction, but they don’t touch our emotions. As someone once said, a million deaths is a statistic, but one death is a tragedy.

That’s because we are also wired to feel empathy—not for groups, but for individuals. We do this largely through the stories we’re told and the stories we tell ourselves about our own experiences.

Literature, I remember reading long ago, is about the creation of complex sympathies. I’ve always liked that definition. Not simple sympathies—those are too easy. It’s easy to empathize with people very much like ourselves, especially if they’ve been victimized or unjustly accused or if they’ve been thwarted by no clear fault of their own.

It gets harder, however, when it’s someone we don’t quite understand, someone whose actions or motivations or origins go against the grain of our opinions or prejudices. It gets harder still when it’s someone from a group we actively disapprove of, someone we automatically stereotype, someone we view with suspicion or fear.

That’s why stories are so important. Good stories are subversive—they intrude upon our neatly built theories with humane sympathies. They put human faces on our straw men. They’re the bulldozers in our heads that make room for growth.

The theme of this issue, “Untold Stories” might be said to be an oxymoron. After all, isn’t a story by definition something that’s told? But there are so many stories—potential stories anyway—that for one reason or another we never hear. Sometimes they’re untold because of fear or embarrassment. Sometimes because of the walls we build to keep them in. Getting them out into the open is sometimes essential therapy for those who have been keeping them inside, but it’s also good therapy for those of us who need to hear them in order to expand our own capacity for complex and humane sympathies.

—MW

The Power of Quiet

February 23, 2015 by Mark Wood Comments Off

If someday you happen to be in downtown Atlanta with a few hours to spare, I highly recommend taking a turn through the new Center for Civil and Human Rights. In fact, if you don’t happen to be in Atlanta, I recommend it anyway. It’s worth the trip, especially if you have kids.

Last fall, while researching one of the feature stories in this issue (“Rolls Down Like Water”), I toured the Center’s exhibits three times, once with director Doug Shipman and twice, more slowly and introspectively, on my own. The Center is a museum in the modern sense—not so much a collection of artifacts as an orchestrated intellectual and sensory experience, rigorously rooted in history. In this case, the experience (much of it conceived by our own George C. Wolfe ’76) is, by turns, enlightening, gut-wrenching, uplifting and heartbreaking.

The last part of my visit took me downstairs to the only part of the museum that really is a collection of artifacts—the small room that houses a rotating exhibit of papers and personal items of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. There, alongside King’s aftershave, aspirin tin and razor, were a couple of thoughtful, handwritten meditations on the philosophy of nonviolence, including one worn thin at the edges from being folded and carried in his wallet.

When we think of the civil rights movement today, the first thing that comes to mind, for many of us, is King’s voice—that powerful, mellifluous baritone. And yet, as the Center’s thoughtfully framed exhibits reminded me, the movement he gave such eloquent voice to was largely a quiet one—based more on restraint than action, more on painstaking planning than quick response, more on passive resistance than confrontation, and more on soft voices than loud ones. Beneath it all was a breathtaking degree of quiet bravery and intellectual daring. Led by perhaps the greatest orator of our time, it was, on the whole, an introvert’s revolution.

That thought came to me as I read Susan Cain’s wonderful book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. In her introduction, Cain compares King’s voluble leadership with the quiet strength of another of the movement’s icons, Rosa Parks, a woman described by those who knew her as “timid and shy,” but with “the courage of a lion.” As Cain points out, if it had been King who refused to give up his seat on that Montgomery bus, he would have been quickly dismissed as a grandstander. Paradoxically, it was the quiet, ordinary outrage of Parks’ “No” that rang around the world.

Today, Cain argues, we live in a “Culture of Personality” that idealizes extroverts and sees signs of introversion as character flaws in need of adjustment. Parents fret about children who want to sit alone and read instead of playing sports. Colleges and universities penalize applicants who aren’t sufficiently gregarious and involved. Organizations assume that being a “team player” is an essential part of being a good employee. People who need time by themselves feel guilty for their lack of enthusiasm for all things social.

And yet, as the Rosa Parks of the world show, you can’t measure leadership by volume or the quality of a solution by the confidence with which it’s expounded. Without introverts, Cain makes clear, there would be no theories of gravitation or relativity, no Harry Potter, no Google, no Apple computers—and, for that matter, King wouldn’t have had Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance to carry in his wallet and apply to an America in need of transformation. Daring minds come in all intellectual shapes and all temperamental sizes. As a lifelong introvert myself, I find that thought a reassuring one.

—MW

Letter Box

February 23, 2015 by Staff Comments Off

PCM: Thumbs Up

thumbs-up After a near 50-year hiatus from contact with the College, I am now re-engaged. Two obvious factors have been the 50th^–Year Reunion and the College’s email listserv. A third factor is your excellent publication. Very professional in layout and content. I suspect this may play a role in the increasing recognition of the College in national publications.

—Jerry Parker ’64, Olympia, Wash.

Thanks for the years of editing PCM—I have copies from the ’50s that look like the monthly tool store “what’s-on-sale” mailings. What a change! For me, I would like to see more on the current faculty and profiles of what graduates have accomplished to be a “tribute to Christian society.” (This used to be on each tea bag in the ’50s.) Harvard asks for voluntary contributions, which I have maintained over the years, and you can plan on a steady, small, but constant stream from me. All best wishes for the next 16 years.

—H.G. Wilkes, Hingham, Mass.

Thank you for your letter regarding the Pomona College Magazine. I thought the recent issue was excellent—particularly the article “Ash Heap of Success.” Thank you, Professor Seligman.

—Ellen Walden Hardison ’44, Corona, Calif.

I was in Claremont visiting my sister at the San Antonio Gardens, and one evening we decided to visit the Skyspace installation by James Turrell. I keep most of my old PCMs, and so I found the Winter 2008 publication and was able to read some of the background about the Skyspace. What a wonderful experience. We enjoyed viewing the colors as they progressed after sunset. The night sky changed colors too!

Keep up the good work and thanks.

—Barbara McBurney Rainer ’53, Carmel, Calif.

pcm-codeblue Commentary on PCM, Fall 2014: For some of us, coding is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It has to be continually upgraded. A while ago, I wrote a large number of papers on wavelets, but only as long as I had access to MATLAB’s Wavelet Toolbox.

“The Ash Heap of Success” is a patent dispute (for lawyers). However, the DNA diagrams were marvelous. (I postdoced in DNA.)

DIY Physics: lab projects for electronics; they are confined to mechanics, which makes good sense. A photonics lab might be useful also, using lasers for the same applications.

Keep up the good work.

—Katharine J. Jones, Ph.D., Class of 1961

PCM: Thumbs Down

thumbs-down I have wanted to write this letter for some years, but your August 29 letter, along with the current issue of Pomona College Magazine, prompted me to write you immediately.

If the magazine is in such a financial situation that it has to nickel and dime the alumni to keep going, I have a strong suggestion for you—the same suggestion I have been holding for some years: Cut back!

Let me also put your request in the context of last week’s New York Times article which states that Pomona College’s endowment sits at more than $1 million per student.

The production of the magazine, which has to be extremely costly, is way overblown. If you cut back on paper quality, make it a smaller size—both in measurement and number of articles (nine-plus in this issue; you could do with half that)—but most of all, scale back the DESIGN, the savings would be substantial.

The magazine is so over-designed that it becomes difficult to read. Where is your eye to focus? Where does the article start? Are the sidebars relevant? For those of us slightly older folks whose eyesight is beginning to fail, the type size of many of the articles is too small, and the color tone is slightly lighter than other comparable magazines. The heavy, slick paper makes it harder to read, causing reflections. It is also more difficult to recycle. Perhaps it is time to give alumni the option of receiving all issues online.

I would much rather have my donation to the College spent on tuition relief for a needy student than on a fancy, overdone magazine.

—Susan Hutchinson Self ’62, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Clearer heads didn’t speak up for goodness sakes? A letter announcing the launching of a “voluntary subscription program” has arrived with this latest edition of the Pomona College Magazine. Putting aside the increasingly slick and unnecessarily thick stock chosen for recent publications, let me address my deep aversion to the ploy of “voluntary subscription.” I quote: “everyone will continue to receive PCM whether or not they give.” How very kind of you.

Didn’t anyone realize that such a ploy disenfranchises? Has anyone heard about the unemployed, about fixed incomes further dwindling, about the broader economic chasm experienced by, yes, even Pomona College graduates? You propose the 1% “subscribe.” Even if I were a member of that group I would still be writing this letter because I question whether your need to win accolades has become more important than the mission of maintaining a link with ALL Pomona College graduates. May I respectfully suggest someone needs to put on the brakes.

—Silvia Pauloo-Taylor ’57, Tinton Falls, N.J.

PCM: Thumbs Green

The most recent issue of the Pomona College Magazine is very nice looking, as always, but I was distressed that it was mailed in a plastic bag in order to include the letter asking for funding and the mailing envelope. This could have been easily avoided! It is more difficult in many communities—if not impossible—to recycle plastic than it is paper. Stapling in the envelope, including the letter in the text of the magazine, would have worked very well.

I also noticed that while you do use paper from “responsible sources,” you could go much further to limit the publication’s impact on the environment. I know recycled paper can be more costly and doesn’t always look as nice, but I suspect your audience would forgive you for that. Please include environmental concerns in your aesthetic decisions. In our house, we do almost all of our reading online anyway.

—Ellen Wilson P’15, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Editor’s Note: Sustainable printing is not as simple as it may appear. Some aspects of the matter are counterintuitive. For example, coated paper kills fewer trees than uncoated paper, because it uses less wood pulp and more clay. And recycled sheets may come from Europe or Asia, with a huge carbon footprint. Add to that the fact that there is no reliable certification process for recycled papers to ensure that their production is truly environmentally friendly, and you have a difficult puzzle to solve. The best solution we’ve found so far is to use printers overseen and audited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). This means the paper they use in printing the magazine comes from a mix of recycled waste and sustainably harvested (and monitored) forests. It also means the printer uses environmentally friendly chemicals and inks. —MW

Sagehen Senate

I graduated from Pomona 58 years ago. The world has changed since then. Astronauts have landed on the moon, and I have experienced the Vietnam War; the Civil Rights movement, Women’s and Gay Movements; and the development of the computer age. But I never thought that I would see the day that sagehens, and their male counterparts, the sage grouse, might determine which political party will control the Senate after the forthcoming elections.

My wife and I live in Bend, Oregon, during the summers. Yesterday the following lead-in appeared on the front page of the local paper. (See below.) Upon seeing the lead-in, I wondered if the sage grouse might be related to the sagehen, so I read the entire article. I learned that the sagehen is the female of the sage grouse species. Seemingly, the candidates for Senate in Montana and Colorado have differing views on whether the sage grouse species should or should not be on the federal endangered species list, and that this issue might indeed determine the composition of the Senate after the fall elections.

I had a convertible during my senior year at Pomona, and the rally committee asked me if I could transport Cecil the Sagehen to the night Pomona-Caltech football game which was being held in the Rose Bowl. We managed to squeeze Cecil into the back seat of my car, and I set out for Pasadena. I couldn’t go more than 20 mph because the wind might damage the Bird, so I wandered through the back roads of Monrovia, Arcadia and Altadena. At one point a motorcycle officer pulled up alongside me at a stop sign. I thought he wanted to give me a ticket for some type of violation, but after looking at me and the Bird with a puzzled expression on his face, he roared away.

—George E. Sayre ’56, Bend, Ore.

Sad News

I was saddened to read of Professor Emerita Margery Smith Briggs’ death just 12 days shy of her 99th birthday.

When I was a freshman, 50 years ago, my first class at Pomona College was elementary music theory, taught by Mrs. Briggs. It was the most difficult class that I ever had either at Pomona or later at Yale. As a teacher, Mrs. Briggs was enthusiastic, demanding, hard-working, organized and inspiring. She expected excellence from herself and from her students.

When I eventually began my own career as a college professor, the first class that I taught was elementary music theory. Then and ever after, I kept the energetic, inventive, dedicated example of Mrs. Briggs before me as a positive paradigm of teaching and personhood.

Over the years, I kept in touch with Margery. We often spoke on the phone, and I saw her in Claremont a year before her death. She was, at the age of 97, bright, engaging, filled with philosophical, musical and historical insights. Always independent by nature, she was still driving and insisted on taking us out to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants.

—David Noon, ‘68, New York, NY

Art on Campus

May I congratulate you and your staff on conceiving and designing the attractive new Pomona College Calendar. It is one of the best I have seen, and aptly demonstrates not only the College’s dedication to art, but also how much its chosen artworks add distinction to the College.

But not everyone appreciates art in the same way, and disagreements about what constitutes good art have not always come down on art’s side in Pomona’s history.

In the spring of1953, Walker Hall had been open about a year. Its lounge was a happy gathering point for those who appreciated a view across a green expanse that perfectly framed Mt. Baldy. It must have been one of those persons who had an idea: Why not place a sculpture in front of the huge new window? In any case, I was at a meeting of the Associated Men Students’ Council when that idea was proposed. Specifically, why not use a $5,000 surplus in the AMS budget to commission a sculpture for the area outside Walker Hall? Even more specifically, the individual floating this proposal seemed to have a commitment from the sculptor Isamu Noguchi to install one of his pieces there for $10,000. AMS approved the idea, and through the Dean of Students, asked that the trustees come up with an additional $5,000 for the project.

Later I talked to the Dean Shelton Beatty (or possibly his assistant, Bill Wheaton) after word had come down that the Board had not granted the requested matching money. Why, I asked, had that happened? One prominent trustee, the Dean said, had opposed the idea, even going so far as to offer, by contrast, a donation of $5,000 to “paint over Prometheus.” That last bit is hearsay, to be sure, and may have been spoken in jest. But clearly Pomona missed out on a Noguchi to go along with its other distinguished artworks. Over the years I have seen a number of Noguchi sculptures. One has stuck with me: it looked a bit like a rocket ship ready to take off. I wondered if that was the piece Pomona missed out on and thought, even then, how stunning it would have looked next to Walker Hall.

One other event was not a miss: Prometheus is gloriously with us. But a collection of incidents adds humor to the creation of Orozco’s masterpiece. My parents were missionaries in Mexico (where I was born) and they knew Orozco personally. They may have heard this story from him and told it to me, or I may have heard it as a student at Pomona. The trustees and Pomona’s president viewed Prometheus as it neared completion and objected to scenes of writhing naked bodies. Orozco angrily effaced the bodies with a strident blue color, a clashing, almost insulting contrast to the colors in the rest of the fresco. The blue is very much still there. Orozco also asked for more money and was turned down. His next commission was at Dartmouth College where, among other scenes, he depicted a group of robed academics at the gates of Hell. Apparently the faces of the first two figures are identifiable as those of the president of Pomona and of the chairman of Pomona’s Board of Trustees.

Art’s price is paid in differing currencies!

—Charles B. Neff, 1954, Mercer Island, Wash.

Hail Pomona! Thank you for the calendar. I took the time, at last, to really look at it. I’m curious about Peter Shelton ’73—the artwork “GhandiG” for July 2015. Is he related to Hal, John, or Marty, who were old Pomona artists, professors, etc.? I have three or four Hal Sheltons hanging here and one Joe Donat, also Pomona. They were 1930s to 1940s—before the ’70s, but certainly could be related.

The map was useful but could have been larger, easier to read and locate—especially better names for buildings on sites for an old dame of 98 years.

Art is delightful. I miss the staged “artistic” performances that melted away with traditions such as the classic Plug Ugly, done annually by faculty and the other traditions that produced “Hail, Pomona, Hail—May thy sons and daughters sing praises of thy name, praises of thy fame ’til the heavens above shall ring—” etc.

“Hail, Pomona” became our standard greeting for a long time—still is with me. An operation that I had about a year ago began with that. The MD performing the operation also was a Pomona graduate.

So—Hail, Pomona!

—Mollie Miles, Portland, Ore.

[Calendar Erratum]

In the 2014–15 Pomona College Engagement Calendar, which was sent to all Pomona College donors last summer, the date for Ash Wednesday was mistakenly listed as March 18, 2015. The correct date is February 18.

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