Letters

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.

Letter Box

September 4, 2014 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Old and New

The spring issue was an amazing mix of the old and the new—descriptions of some incredible people keeping the values we cherished in more bygone days when I attended Pomona and later practiced pediatrics in Claremont, and the far-out stereoscopic pictures of beautiful California.

It was uplifting for me to hear of Dr. Juan Guerra’s perseverance as he pursued his desire to truly serve his community. I was also pleased to learn that when he was told he wasn’t going make it because of his failure of a biology course, he seemed to realize that the art of medicine was more important than the science. I find that too much emphasis on the science of medicine can lock a physician into a system that won’t allow innovation and cuts off knowledge the physician can gain by listening to his/her patients.

Matt O’Connor, the young man of many talents, unabashedly speaks of his part in Christian Athletes, which shows he is aware of where his talents come from.

The addition of the stereoscopic pictures of naturally beautiful California provided some real nostalgia and balanced the “old” with the “new.”

Let me know if anyone remembers a kindly pediatrician who practiced in Claremont in the ‘60s. He has two pediatric books, with an emphasis on nutrition, that can be browsed on Amazon: books, Ralph Campbell.

—Ralph K. Campbell, M.D. ’50
Polston, Montana

3D Collector’s Item

I appreciate the quality of the content and the professional design of the Pomona College Magazine compared to similar endeavors from other colleges and universities. Your magazine outshines any others I have seen; and I hate to admit, I have attended classes or completed degrees at Scripps College, University of Colorado, University of South Florida, Western Michigan University, The University of Kansas, and Gonzaga University in addition to Pomona College (class of 1970). I am writing because you really outdid yourselves with the Spring 2014 issue. I absolutely loved the 3D photos and appreciated greatly the way you interweaved them from front cover to content to back cover. I have been in love with 3D since the early 1950s Viewmasters and 1953 Hollywood 3D films. You did an outstanding job; what a find to have come across 1870s stereo views of California (I am what was known in the past as a “prune picker,” an old term for someone who was born, raised and lived in California. My dad, Leland Williams [class of 1929], also had this distinction.)

Thanks so much. I will be adding this very special issue to my extensive collection of 3D photography.

—Randy Lee Williams ’70
Spokane Valley, Washington

Environmental Faux Pas

During my son’s remarkable time at Pomona, his mother and I have immensely enjoyed the Pomona College Magazine. And this compliment comes from a magazine publisher (we own three in the field of recycling).

But the Spring 2014 issue was designed with a serious environmental error. The inclusion of 3D lenses was a major mistake on your part. Only two things can happen with these non-recyclable items. The reader might not put them on, and thus the lenses end up contaminating the paper recycling stream, or they end up in the trash. The other result is the reader uses them, and then throws them away.

So it seems your decision meant you harmed paper recycling or added to the waste stream. I think a so-called technology vendor sold you a bill of anti-environmental goods.

Again, I compliment you on a wonderful product. Your product is remarkably comprehensive and well-written. But in the future, please assess the environmental consequences when you consider any publishing changes (paper, inks, etc.). As one publisher to another, I’d love to provide advice to make sure poor environmental decisions such as this do not occur again.

Go Sagehens!

—Jerry Powell
Portland, Oregon

Time for Divestment

The time has come for Pomona College to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industry and redirect its investments into the energy sources of the future. I don’t believe I need to go into detail about why fossil fuels are problematic, as 97% of the world’s scientists have long since identified human use of fossil fuels as the primary driver of climate change.

I am certainly not the first to suggest the College make such a move. For 18 months Pomona students have been asking for change, yet last September President Oxtoby and the Board of Trustees rejected divestment, claiming it would cost the school $485 million in lost earnings and citing the many environmental initiatives occurring on campus.

I am proud of the work Pomona College has done to receive a gold rating from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS), its LEED-certified green buildings, and its environmental analysis academic program. But that is not enough.

I live in Montana, a place with a lot of beautiful, unspoiled landscapes and rivers. But it also has coal strip mines, and its pristine nature is increasingly under threat from fracking as a means of oil and gas development. In addition to harmful climate-change emissions such as fugitive methane from oil and gas extraction, fossil fuel development has extensive impacts on the land, surface water, groundwater and air sheds. Aquifers are polluted, residents get nosebleeds from the fugitive methane, and spills occur regularly, killing fish and waterfowl.

People protest, and the fossil-fuel industry uses heavy-handed tactics to buy off politicians and silence dissent. This is happening here in my home, Montana.

I do what I can as an architect, homeowner and bicycle commuter to implement a fossil-fuel-free future, but I know that my action alone is not enough. And far too much is at stake. So I work long hours through a local citizens’ group to hold industry and governing powers accountable. I would like to have my alma mater, Pomona College, as an ally in this work rather than as an opponent. And I am only asking Pomona to uphold its stated core values, as I have challenged myself to do.

I call upon President Oxtoby and the Board of Trustees to become committed and creative about working toward a divestment solution as though their lives depended on it. In the big picture, my life, my home and everyone’s lives do.

—Ed Gulick, ’94
Billings, Montana

Error Card

According to Wikipedia, an “error card” is “a trading card that shows incorrect information or some other unintended flaw.”

Alas, your Summer 2013 issue’s “Pomona All-Stars” baseball card of Mike Salk ‘00, which shows him standing in front of a large banner proclaiming Boston sports radio station WEEI 103.3 FM, has been rendered an “error card” just a half-year after the magazine’s publication.

Although it was the perfect job for Salk, a known—and deeply knowledgeable—sports fanatic since his undergraduate days, it was also an impossible situation: ever since the advent of a rival sports radio station, 98.5 The Sports Hub, WEEI has been inexorably bleeding listeners, ratings and advertisers in the metro Boston market.

An upper-management shakeup, new hires (such as Salk) and other innovations have so far proven unable to resurrect WEEI’s “brand,” as 98.5 is now perceived as the younger, hipper alternative to the “dinosaur” that is WEEI. Not even a cross between the two Howards—Cosell and Stern—could revive WEEI’s fortunes.

With his dedication, intelligence, and likeability, it is no surprise that Salk has already landed on his feet with a new announcing job at Seattle’s ESPN 710.

Perhaps PCM can quietly airbrush out, Soviet-style, the “WEEI 103.3” from the online version of Salk’s “Pomona All-Stars” card, and replace it with “ESPN 710”?

Teasing with affection…

—Doug Meyer ‘01
Waltham, Massachusetts

Drumbeats

James Schlesinger, the rare public servant who served in the Cabinet of both Republican and Democrat presidents, died last week. He was Secretary of Defense for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and later Secretary of Energy for President Carter. He also headed the CIA when its credibility was threatened at the height of President Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Schlesinger was brilliant and blunt, two qualities that don’t always show up together and don’t always work well together in Washington. I met Jim in the 1990’s when we were seated together at a luncheon. As people do in Washington, we looked for common ground. When I told him I was a graduate of Pomona, he immediately started singing, “Drumbeats, drumbeats, drumbeats rolled over the silence profound, high above Pomona, he ne terra toma.” A Harvard man, Jim was in a college singing group when he heard the Pomona men sing “Torchbearers” nearly 50 years earlier. He called it the best college song he had ever heard, bar none. Neither of us knew that “Torchbearers” would become the painful subject of campus debate a few years later. Some were offended by the made-up dialect and the historically inaccurate imagery of Native Americans in the Pomona Valley. Those who loved the song and paid little or no attention to the words thought the controversy was political correctness gone berserk. After a lengthy study, a special committee recommended (if my memory serves) that in the future the song should only be sung at alumni gatherings and only if the offensive words were changed. Sounds like a Washington, D.C., solution (unless it deals with the Redskins). I wonder what ever became of “Torchbearers.” Like Jim Schlesinger, I’ve never been able to get those wonderful, haunting sounds out of my head. If today’s students don’t get to hear it, it’s a shame.

—Allen Moore ‘66
McLean, Virginia

Saddened

I was deeply saddened to learn that my classmate, Emory Zimmermann had passed away. I sang first soprano in the Women’s Glee Club, and Emory sang bass in the Mens’ Glee Club. I earned Emory’s annoyance one year by lining up not one but two speakers for the Annual Glee Club Banquet: my great uncle, Howard Ross (‘04), an early member of the Men’s Glee Club, and my grandmother, Katharine Bird Twinting (‘04) who knew the origins of “Torchbearers.” She knew Prof. Brackett and David Barrows who copied the music from the local Indians and turned it into Pomona’s “Torchbearers.”

“Torchbearers” requires low basses. Fortunately, Emory had a deep bass voice. One could always hear Emory singing the bass part. Though we grieve that his voice is now stilled, in my mind’s eye, I can always recall the resounding sound of “Torchbearers” and Emory singing the low bass part.

He will be missed by us all.

I was also saddened to learn that my academic advisor, Edwin A. Phillips, emeritus professor of botany, had passed away. I rarely agreed with him, but I was part of the NSF grant studying hybridization of Quercus dumosa x Quercus douglasii. I did complete my Ph.D. magna cum laude in 1966 at the University of Bern, Switzerland, with a dissertation on photosynthesis.

I left biology for physics in 1970, but the Botany Gang was a unique group.

—Katharine Holtom Jones ‘61
Alpine, California

Code

September 4, 2014 by Mark Wood Comments Off

This is surely a first, so (cue the trumpet fanfare) welcome to the first editor’s letter ever written in code.

Not all of it, of course—as you can tell from the simple fact that you’re reading this. But in an issue on the theme of “code,” in addition to articles about genetic code and computer code and decoding animal calls, there had to be something about the clandestine side of the word. But alas, try as I might, I was unable to unearth a single Pomona source for a story about ciphers. Which shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose, since the world of cryptology is, by its very nature, a secretive one.

So to fill that void, please forgive me for offering this light-hearted tutorial on a subject I’ve found intriguing ever since my secret decoder ring childhood.

Each paragraph below demonstrates a different cipher, and—don’t say I didn’t warn you—the codes get progressively harder as they go along. There are instructions in each paragraph to help you translate the next, but if you want to play along, you’ll have to work for it.

We’ll start with one of the oldest and simplest of codes—the Caesar cipher, named for the great Roman himself, who used it in his letters. In this substitution cipher, each letter is replaced by another a fixed number of letters up or down the alphabet. Once you figure out that number, the rest is easy.

Ecguct ekrjgtu ctg ejknf’u rnca vq fgeqfg, dwv vjga ctg cnuq vjg dcuku qh eqorngz eqfgu nkmg vjg Xkpgig`tg ekrjgt, kp yjkej c yqtf rtqxkfgu vjg mga hqt ownvkrng Ecguct ekrjgtu kp c tqvcvkpi ugswgpeg. Vjg pgzv rctcitcrj, hqt gzcorng, wugu “CDE” cu kvu mga. Vjwu, vjg hktuv ngvvgt ku qpg ngvvgt qhh, vjg ugeqpf vyq qhh, vjg vjktf vjtgg qhh, vjgp dcem vq qpg, cpf uq qp.

Sfb Ugkdeb`qc tzq qgmrffq sm yd skapbzixajb, asq hl zqwmsmdqymgw, qgmpd yod dxlmrr jxrr tnpar. Red mkkw qqsix skapbzixajb bgmgco hq qgc “lmc-qhkb oya,” vffbf rrcp zl bmrfqc qdvq zq x jcv. Sm adalcc, vns ptzqqyzs red lrlcohaxk txksb nd bzae kcqsco hl qgc hdw (X dorzjp ycon; X bpsxkq 25) cqmj sfb dorhtxkcks jbsrbq gk sfb lcprydd. Yac 26 rl zlv mcdzrfuc odqrkr. Ffllqc poyzdq xmb mtlzssxsglm, uehae zpb ccidrbc gk qcxk alcca lcpryddq xmwtzw. Qgc hdw edpb hq qgc chpps nxqydqymg mc sffr jbsrbq.

Bm ggc’nw wfqp rhna wsk qcw gyla fx rm ucxknghjd sc ysogg mw b of. Zs hweykewceokaarl.

And with that, welcome to the wonderful world of code.

///////////////////////////////

Stray Thoughts (decoded)

Here is the plain text of the three enciphered paragraphs in the Stray Thoughts:

[Caesar Cipher:]
Caesar ciphers are child’s play to decode, but they are also the basis of complex codes like the Vinegère cipher, in which a word provides the key for multiple Caesar ciphers in a rotating sequence. The next paragraph, for example, uses “ABC” as its key. Thus, the first letter is one letter off, the second two off, the third three off, then back to one, and so on.

[Vinegére Cipher:]
The Vinegère was thought to be unbreakable, but in cryptography, those are famous last words. The only truly unbreakable cipher is the “one-time pad,” which uses an entire text as a key. To decode, you subtract the numerical value of each letter in the key (A equals zero; Z equals 25) from the equivalent letter in the message. Add 26 to any negative result. Ignore spaces and punctuation, which are deleted in real coded messages anyway. The key here is the first paragraph of this letter.

[One-Time Pad Cipher:]
If you’ve come this far, you must be as intrigued by codes as I am. So congratulations.

Letterbox — Spring 2014

March 11, 2014 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

I had the good fortune of traveling to Borneo last summer and seeing orangutans and gibbons in their natural habitat. I also saw the absolutely devastating effects of palm oil plantations that are destroying one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. I want to express my support and enthusiasm for Madison Vorva’s work!

—Rebeca Plank ’92
Boston, Mass.

Agricultural Adventurer

The cover story “Back to the Farm” in the fall issue caught my interest. During my last trip to Alumni Weekend five years ago, Pete Stephens ’68, Mark Sweeney ’69 and I stopped by the Wash to find hippie-style concrete domes with a garden of tomatoes and other vegetables, along with chickens in the area. Finding a young co-ed puttering around there, I inquired whether she thought such activity was worth the sizable tuition her parents were paying, particularly at a college with no courses in agriculture practice.

The back story was that I graduated from Pomona a published author with Clifton Trafton in brain research, went on to UCSB and NYU grad schools to publish more brain research with M. S. Gazzaniga, only to run screaming to the horizon and the middle of nowhere (east of Garberville, Calif.) on 60 acres (with Jacob Smith ’69) to pursue a career in art, for which I was basically untrained and arguably unaccomplished.

There, off the grid for the next 30 years, I hunted or raised, prepared and preserved my meat and foraged, or grew and preserved my fruit and vegetables in a 100-by-100-foot garden. Eventually, I returned to civilization, to the small village of Blue Lake, Calif., 100 miles north of my rural property. Along with doing some art, I’ve been propagating rare and endangered succulents and selling them along with fruits and vegetables my family grows at local farmers markets. In this sense, my entire adult life has been occupied with activities Pomona College did nothing to prepare me for, although I’m grateful for the wide worldview I obtained there. I wonder what percentage of other graduates have strayed so far from their training.

—Bob Filbey ’68
Blue Lake, Calif.

Rooftop Memories

Every Christmas season, I think about how much I would enjoy having a CD of the “tower music” that we played from the roof of Big Bridges each December when I was at Pomona. For those who aren’t familiar with this bit of campus history, Professor William F. Russell was the director, and the group was meant to be similar to the musicians, apparently common in Renaissance villages, who would play for the townspeople from the tower of the village church on important occasions. At Pomona, the group was maybe 10 musicians, with prominent brass, and the tunes simple songs of that era such as “Il est ne le divin enfant” and “In dulce jubilo.”

One thing that made the process memorable was getting to the roof of Big Bridges. We had to work our way through the labyrinth of the backstage passageways, following each other through a succession of narrow hallways and stairs until we finally emerged into the cool night air. We couldn’t actually see our audience, so we played to the night sky and hoped the people on the ground could hear well enough. It was a special privilege to be permitted to play up there.

It wasn’t a spectacular event or a showing of musical virtuosity; it was just a comfortable holiday tradition. But for me it was a special part of the Christmas season. I expect many alumni have pleasant memories of playing in the group or listening from the quad. It may not be practical to produce a CD, but maybe a download would be economical. I hope there is a way to make the music available.

—Don Wolfe ’73
Portland, Ore.

[Alumni and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or to send them by mail 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.]

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