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

[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.]

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.

What’s Behind Walker Wall?

I am writing regarding the history of Walker Wall found on the College’s website. That article reports that the wall “remained unadorned until the spring of 1975, when several students painted ‘Free Angela’ on its inner surface, referring to the imprisonment of Black Panther and Communist Party activist Angela Davis after her conviction on murder conspiracy charges.”

As I recall it, Walker Wall comments started two years earlier, during the 1972-73 school year.

My recollection is that one night just before Founders Day someone spray-painted a phrase on Walker Wall near the pass-through to go toward Honnold Library. The phrase was not particularly clever or political, but it was potentially offensive, perhaps scatological. I was an R.A. for Clark V that year and knew that maintenance would not be able to do anything before alumni were on campus, but I did have access to painting supplies from Zeta Chi Sigma, my fraternity. Betsy Daub ’74, also in Zeta Chi Sigma, allowed herself to be enlisted and our quest became covering over the offending text. We used rollers and white paint to neatly block out the graffiti.

What happened next is somewhat lost to me. Somehow we wound up adding our own phrase on the white surface we had created. As I recall, we had each been considered as possible members of the Mufti crew, and in that spirit we came up with the phrase “Veni, Vidi, Vino” and signed it in some way. That comment stayed for some time and others followed. Although I knew several members of the Pomona administration fairly well, I don’t remember any discussion about the wall, and I don’t think Betsy or I was ever questioned about it.

—Jo Ruprecht ’73
Las Cruces, N.M.

Case for the Liberal Arts

President David Oxtoby’s Aug. 7 letter, directed to alumni of the College, brings up the perennial question “Is liberal arts education still relevant in today’s world?” This question requires a perennial answer:  Soon after my graduation from Pomona, I found myself locked into a career in engineering, despite the fact that most of my education had been in art and the humanities. Yet that liberal education proved to be relevant in my unexpected career path. If monetary reward is the main goal, and sadly that is often the case, then one is likely to miss the practical benefits of a liberal arts education, as well as the enrichment of one’s quality of life.

“Liberal education” asks more questions than it answers. This can provide some valuable mental equipment, for answers often become obsolete with time. But if the habits acquired in looking for answers remain with you, and the habit of recognizing analogies is developed, you will have acquired a transferable ability which, unlike rigid collections of facts, can go on helping you generate answers to problems in any field.

—Chris Andrews ’50
Sequim, Wash.

All-Star Mistake?

I have to hand it to you. The “Who Did You Get?” article and trading cards in the Summer 2013 edition of PCM are, perhaps, the most offensive thing I have ever seen in the magazine since I graduated in 1972. Quite an achievement.

Please understand, I am not denigrating the achievements of those honored; their accomplishments are noteworthy and deserve praise—but not by implying (if not actually stating) that all the rest of us just don’t measure up.

Not really worthy of calling Pomona their alma mater, and pretty much beneath the College’s concern. Whether you realized it or not—and my sincere hope is that you didn’t—elevating a few graduates to “Pomona All-Star” status relegates the rest of us to just being average. Banjo hitters. Utility players. Minor leaguers. Barely above the Mendoza Line.

That is not how I like to think my college views me. And yet, there it is. At least you deigned to give us the privilege of “round[ing] up a few of [our] Pomona pals” so we can presumably trade cards. I can hardly wait.

Maybe in the Fall 2013 issue you can identify the biggest donors so far in 2013, and the amounts they’ve given. “Who’s gonna come out on top?” “How much did he/she give?” “Can you believe that [fill in the blank] isn’t on the list?” Now I’ll bet that would be a competition the College could really get behind!

—G. Emmett Rait, Jr. ’72
Irvine, Calif.

Baseball and Bytes

Your article on Don Daglow ’74 and his contributions to computer baseball could have been written, without many changes, about me—if I had just been born a few years earlier. Like Don, I loved the All-Star Baseball board game and was an English major. I wrote my first All- Star Baseball simulation using punch cards on an IBM 1620 in my sophomore year of high school in 1974—just three years too late to gain immortal fame!

I also applied at Mattel to work on Intellivision, but here our paths diverge, for alas, I was not hired. However, my All-Star Baseball game did have one last gasp of life—if you can find an ultra-rare copy of Designing Apple Games with Pizzazz (Datamost, 1985), you’ll find a whole chapter, with source code, devoted to a game called Database-ball.

—John “Max” Ruffner ’81
North Hollywood, Calif.

Fraternity Memories

The letter from Leno Zambrano ’51 in the summer issue of PCM surprised me. I knew Leno as a classmate but I had no clue he was homosexual. I have no recollection of Leno seeking membership in the KD fraternity, of which I was president in the spring of 1951. Not all the men at Pomona in those days felt the need to join a fraternity. Some of them were former members of the military and were beyond the need to join a social fraternity. I don’t know if we had any homosexuals among our KD members at that time, but if we did, they kept it to themselves. We had no policy against homosexuals, per se, in our fraternity mainly because it was never one of the factors we discussed during our consideration of prospective members.

—Ivan P. Colburn ’51
Pasadena, Calif.

I was dismayed to learn from the letter by Don Nimmo ’87 in the summer issue that the fraternity/community Zeta Chi Sigma has ceased to exist. When did this happen, and why? I joined Zeta Chi in my sophomore year—freshmen were not permitted to join frats in those days—and my membership was a significant part of the college experience for me, and not only because of playing pool or watching College Bowl every Sunday. I’ve mentioned Don’s letter to other alumni from that era and am assured that I’m not alone in wondering what happened.

—Steve Sherman ’65
Munich, Germany

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.

The magazine you hold was born 50 years ago this fall as Pomona Today, when the sharp new publication replaced an alumni newsletter. And while the name has long since changed to Pomona College Magazine, it seems about half of our readers still know it by the old moniker. (Call us whatever you want—just keep reading.)

The pages of the first issue are laden with an early-’60s sense of purpose: men in suits and ties assembled around a cyclotron, a professor exploring the “Frontiers of Science,” a photo showing light—and, no doubt, knowledge—aglow through the glass doors of the newly-built Seaver Laboratory. A Space Age feeling pervades: All that’s missing is a make-your- own Gemini capsule cutout.

Heavy play is given to then-New York Times editorial page editor John Oakes’ commencement address, “Smashing the Cliché,” in which he tells students, “man will soon be searching, not by proxy but in person, the pathways of the stars … in your lifetime you will witness man’s arrival on new planets, his penetration of the outer void, his unfolding of the mysteries of the universe.”

In “The Case for the Liberal Arts College,” Professor W.T. Jones notes that “The fundamental fact of modern life is the acceleration of change—economic change, social change, political change, cultural change. … Indeed, in the physical sciences, the rate of change is so great that theories which are “true” when a freshman enters college are likely to be exploded by the time he graduates.”

My favorite bit of writing from that issue, though, is a short caption accompanying a photo of two pensive-looking classmates that simply reads: “Students in a complicated world.”

Fifty years later, the world grows more complicated and the change keeps coming. But PCM is still here, in print and online. Our circulation has yet to reach new planets; there is no home delivery to the “outer void.” Strangely, the birth of each new issue still feels as heady and fraught as an early-’60s rocket launch. And when it’s over, we editors come crashing back down to Earth, and get to work on the next one.