Blog Articles

A Reunion to Eclipse All Others

November 16, 2017 by Lew and Chuck Phelps ’65 Comments Off

Close-up of the total eclipse. Photo by Tom and Judith Auchter, digitally enhanced by Lew Phelps ’65

WE LOOKED TO the west across the vast plain that lay at our feet, far below the high summit we had recently ascended by ski lift. An ominous wall of darkness rushed toward us, enveloping everything in its path. Someone muttered, “Sauron, the Lord of Darkness, comes now in all his might!” We all then turned from this foreboding view to the sky above to watch the most astonishing and spectacular event in all of nature. This was the moment for which the two of us had been preparing for seven years. Totality had begun for 200-plus Pomona College alumni, their families and friends, in the Pomona College Solar Eclipse Reunion of 2017.

Sagehens watch the slow progress of the moon across the sun from their mountain perch. Photo by Robert Gaines

A hundred families, all of whom shared some connection to the Pomona College Classes of ’64, ’65 and ’66, had assembled atop Fred’s Mountain in western Wyoming. We had flown or driven to the area in the days before, ridden a mile-long ski lift to the top of the peak and watched with growing excitement as the dark disk of the moon gradually ate its way across the surface of the sun.

In just over two minutes, the total portion of the eclipse was over. Light began to return to the sky. Laughter and excited chatter filled the air. Some of us wept from the pure joy and power of the experience.

The 47 Eclipse

One fun aspect of this venture, the Phelps twins said, was the opportunity to infuse Pomona’s mystical number 47 into communications related to the event. In their first written description of the event to classmates, they wrote, “Numerology savants will note that at our location, the eclipse event ends at exactly 1:00:00 p.m. on 8/21/17. The sum of those date and time numbers equals 47! What’s more, the exact geographic location of the top of Fred’s Mountain is N 43.787° W 110.934°. The digits of that latitude/ longitude position also add up to 47!”

We, the authors of this article, are identical twins, both graduates of Pomona College in the Class of 1965. Back in 1991, after jointly experiencing an awesome six minutes and 45 seconds of total solar eclipse in Baja Sur, Mexico, we began thinking about a good place to view the eclipse that would pass completely over the United States on Aug. 21, 2017. About seven years ago, we began to deploy what was then a relatively novel tool, Google Earth, to find an ideal spot for viewing the 2017 eclipse. We plotted the path of totality across the U.S. and then began “walking across the landscape” at high magnification, starting on the Pacific coast.

We came first to a fire lookout tower in central Oregon, smack on the path of totality, but a long, difficult hike from the nearest Jeep trail. We kept looking. The Palouse region, east of the Cascade Mountains, looked promising from a standpoint of cloud cover — the nemesis of all eclipse watchers — but the landscape was tedious. Moving farther east, just as our digital exploration crossed the state line from Idaho into Wyoming, we found a ski lodge.

The ski lift up Fred’s Mountain brings more participants to the reunion. Photo by Alex Bentley and Hunter Bell

Hello, Grand Targhee Resort.

The more we looked at this location, the more interesting it became. The resort sat at 8,000 feet, at the base of a 10,000-foot peak called Fred’s Mountain, with a chair lift to the top. Just east of Fred’s Mountain rise the magnificent peaks of the Grand Tetons.

This skier’s paradise, we realized, might provide a truly unique eclipse-watching opportunity. From atop Fred’s Mountain, with very clear air, one might be able to see the shadow of the moon racing across the 100-mile-wide valley floor below. We calculated that at 1,662 miles per hour, it would take only a bit more than three and a half minutes to cross that breadth, all in view from our aerie-like perch.

Sagehens watch the moon’s shadow race across the valley floor. Photo by Martha Lussenhop

After kicking around various ideas for how best to make use of this seemingly unique site, we decided—shortly before the 50th reunion of our Pomona Class of ’65 (Thor)—to see if our classmates would be interested in an informal class reunion built around the eclipse. The response was enthusiastic. With a goal of completely filling the resort’s 95 rooms, we first solicited sign-ups from our classmates and then expanded the proposal to our two “adjacent” classes, ’64 (Dionysus) and ’66 (Pele). And so we brought together the god of thunder, the god of wine and ritual madness, and the goddess of fire, volcanoes and capriciousness—quite a volatile mix. From those three classes, we drew enough participants to fill the entire ski resort, counting spouses, children and grandchildren of classmates.

Then came two years of intense planning, including two inspection trips to the resort, negotiations over fees, menu planning for group dinners, contracts with vendors, identifying speakers (what would a Pomona gathering be without strong intellectual content?) and much more. We even included four nights of “star parties”—opportunities to view gorgeous objects in the night sky through telescopes operated by experienced amateur astronomers— organized by Franklin McBride Marsh ’17.

The eclipse reaches totality above the Grand Teton Mountains. Photo by Robert Gaines

We approached the resort’s management well before they had a clear sense of the enormous enthusiasm that would later emerge for the Great Eclipse of 2017. Thus we were able to negotiate a very favorable deal—a four-night-minimum stay at only modestly higher-than-normal room rates. In the months just preceding the eclipse, commercial tour operators were asking—and getting—three or four times as much per person in nearby Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On eclipse day, rooms in a Motel 6 in nearby Driggs, Idaho, were going for $1,000 a night. In the last year before the eclipse, as people began to focus more on the upcoming event, the resort’s marketing team received inquiries from numerous other groups, including eclipse-chasers affiliated with Brown and Oxford universities. Sadly for them, but happily for us, Pomona College got there first.

For our speaker series, Pomona College sponsored two Pomona faculty members—Professor of Geology Robert Gaines and former Brackett Professor of Astronomy Bryan Penprase. And from the ranks of our alumni, we added Ed Krupp ’66, director of the Griffith Observatory in L.A.; Larry Price ’65, part of the team that proved the existence of the Higgs boson with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Barbara Becker, historian of astronomy and spouse of Hank Becker ’66; and James A. Turrell ’65, the world-famous artist who manipulates light and space.

Speaker Series

The Phelps twins have made electronic presentations from the reunion’s speaker series available to donors who give $47 or more to the Phelps Twins Solar Eclipse Fund for Science Internships at Pomona College, created by reunion participants following the event. The presentations, which combine audio recordings with synchronized copies of the accompanying PowerPoints, include “Aliens in the Ooze,” by Pomona Geology Professor Robert Gaines; “Chasing Cosmic Explosions,” by former Pomona Astronomy Professor Bryan Penprase; “Devoured by Darkness,” by Ed Krupp ’66, director of the Griffith Observatory; “The Scientific Discovery of the Century,” by physicist Larry Price ’65; “Risky Business: The Search for the Soul of the Sun in the Shadow of the Moon,” by historian of astronomy Barbara Becker; and “The Art of James Turrell,” a conversation between Krupp and noted light-and-space artist James A. Turrell ’65.

To our considerable relief, the morning of the eclipse dawned with almost completely clear skies. You can plan for a thousand details, but there is no way to control the weather. We had selected the site in western Wyoming for two reasons—the unique view and the area’s encouraging history of mostly clear skies in late August. The historical record proved predictive, but if the eclipse had occurred four days earlier or three days later, we would have been rained out, so we were also lucky.

On eclipse day, the air to the west was darkened by smoke from vast forest fires in the Pacific Northwest. As it turned out, however, the smoke enhanced our eclipse experience. Thanks to the haze, the lunar shadow presented itself to us as an immense 60-mile-wide wall of darkness (some saw it as a wave) that seemed dense, solid and impenetrable. The sight of what appeared to be a huge physical mass moving toward us at twice the speed of sound was awesome—indeed, frightening—and even more dramatic than we had dared to hope. As we stood there at the only vantage point in the world where that unique view was available, we couldn’t help imagining what the experience might have been like for people before science provided an understanding of the event.

Lew and Chuck Phelps, both ’65, embrace at the end of the event. Photo by Alex Bentley and Hunter Bell.

The appearance of the sun during totality is as different from a partial eclipse as (literally) night is from day. All the phenomena one hopes to see during totality made an appearance atop Fred’s Mountain. The glorious halo of the solar corona was much more expansive and detailed than the two of us recall from the 1991 eclipse we saw in Baja Sur. Atop Fred’s Mountain, we observed Bailey’s Beads, the fiery red dots that appear on the rim of the moon at the beginning and end of totality as the sun peeks through valleys in the mountains and craters that rim the moon’s edge. The “diamond ring” apparition as the sun emerged from behind the moon was spectacular. Our bodies’ shadows became extremely sharp-edged as the sun became almost a true “point source” of light just before totality. A beautiful magenta aura caused by prominences erupting from the sun’s surface appeared just before totality ended. Alas, the shimmering and beautiful “shadow bands” that can appear just before and after totality were not much in evidence on the summit of Fred’s Mountain, although more-so to several dozen of our group who stayed at “base camp” at the resort to watch.

Most of our group had never seen a total eclipse previously, and for days afterward, the listserv that we had established for the group was populated with messages such as “Still quivering!” We received thank-you notes filled with phrases like “experience of a lifetime,” “unforgettable,” “amazing adventure” and “spectacular event.” One participant wrote, “The majesty of the eclipse escapes my ability to describe. … It will live in my memory forever.”

Such is the power of a total solar eclipse.

Sagehens at Work

November 16, 2017 by Jeff Hing Comments Off

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO about the budding careers of six recent Pomona graduates, from across the nation, who are working to make a difference in a variety of fields:

Field Garthwaite ’08 of Los Angeles, was an art major. Today, this entrepreneur is the founder and CEO of Iris TV.
Marybel Gonzalez ’09 of Denver, Colo., was an international relations major. Today, she’s an on-air reporter for Rocky Mountain PBS.
Ellen Moody ’06 of New York City was an art history major. Today she’s assistant projects conservator at the Museum of Modern Art.
Guy Stevens ’13 of Kansas City, Mo., was an economics major. Today he’s coordinator of baseball analytics for the Kansas City Royals.
Scott Tan ’16 of Boston, Mass., was a physics major. Today he’s a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at MIT
Dr. Kara Toles ’07 of Oakland, Calif. was a Black Studies Major. Today she’s an emergency medicine physician working at several sites, including the UC Davis Med Center. (See “Life and Death in the D-Pod.)

Stray Thoughts: Excelling Wisely

November 16, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

G. Gabrielle Starr POMONA IS EXTRAORDINARY. We remind ourselves of this proudly when we marvel at the brilliance of our students and faculty, the accomplishments of our alumni, the talent of our staff, the amazing marks Sagehens leave on the world. How many high-achieving people, people who never give up, do we see every day?

What a wondrous thing! Yet I wonder something else, too. How much room do we give ourselves and each other to slow down? To choose which amazing thing we are going to do—today? There’s a lot of pressure on everyone to take advantage of all of the gifts and opportunities in front of us. We advise each other to excel.

Maybe we can talk about excelling wisely.

Sometimes people ask me for advice, and this column seems a good place to give some, if you’ll let me. Most of us acknowledge that you have to seek balance in life; equally, we acknowledge that finding such a balance is hard. This truth deserves more than lip service. We need to tell ourselves and each other that we can achieve and excel without taking every drop of energy from our reserves. That we all need to take some time to laugh.

Parents, friends, professors, bosses, coworkers and mentors routinely use language that raises expectations: We challenge, we press and we exhort. Even this magazine—always full of stories about people doing extraordinary things—can sometimes seem to be ratcheting up the pressure to achieve. There’s good reason for all of that. Everyone needs to be reminded that they can do great things. But we also need other reminders. Creativity requires freedom, space and room to grow. And achievement isn’t the only thing that adds meaning to our lives.

This issue of the magazine is, as usual, about some amazing Pomona people, but it’s also about the sometimes blissful, sometimes thorny relationship between the work we do and the lives we live. It’s about achieving lifelong dreams and coping with life-or-death stress. It’s about life-changing choices and what happens when everything falls apart.

Most importantly, the stories in this issue are about dealing with timeless, and timely, questions. I hope you pause and give yourself permission in your work, your studies and your relationships to make the life you desire.

—G. Gabrielle Starr
President of Pomona College

Letter Box

November 16, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

“Hidden Pomona” and the Whartons

Hidden Pomona I was recently visiting my mother (Mayrene Gorton Ogier ’49) in Atascadero, Calif., and noticed the cover photo of the Spring 2017 issue of PCM depicting Pomona’s first Black graduate, Winston Dickson 1904. The magazine was doing secondary duty under a flower pot, but the water-stained photo nevertheless looked familiar. And indeed, it depicts Dickson boxing with my great-uncle, William Wharton 1906.

Then, inside on pages 28 and 29, was a wonderful double-page photo spread of Dickson a year and a half after his graduation, socializing with the 1905–06 Pomona College football team—evidently relaxing and recounting plays following a hard-fought game. (In those years, Pomona routinely beat USC, among others.) The gentleman immediately in front of Dickson in profile with his back to the camera wearing a disheveled suit coat is very likely Seaborn Wharton 1901, who stayed on at Pomona as football coach for a number of years before returning to Tulare, Calif., to manage the family farm.

The two gentlemen sitting in the dirt talking with Seaborn and Dickson are almost surely William, who was team captain in 1906 and strikingly handsome, but who tragically died in a mining cave-in soon after graduating, and likely, Charles Greene (Charley) Wharton 1907, my grandfather, who later became a urologist in the Sierras silver-rush town of Bodie, Calif., and then in downtown Los Angeles, after graduating from medical school at Bowdoin. All three of them were distinguishable from their Pomona mates by their six-foot-plus height and wild curly hair—as was their sister, Minnie 1902, who taught school in Pomona and was vice president of the Pomona Alumni Association after World War I.

If I knew how to communicate with those Whartons now, I would ask about Winston Dickson, as per the wishes of the hosts of the “Hidden Pomona” podcasts, who had little information to work with aside from old photographs. The Wharton family surely knew him very well.

By the way, that early 19th-century Wharton family “thing” about Pomona College (the entire family moved to Claremont for a decade so the children could attend) has persisted. If my children had matriculated at Pomona as I hoped they might (they chose Princeton and Occidental instead), they would have been the 31st and 32nd extended Wharton/Alexander/Ogier/ Gannon/Wyse/Wiederanders family members to do so (counting also my father, Walter T. Ogier, who chaired the Physics Department for many years). To further the Pomona cause, my grandfather, Charley Wharton, and my grandmother, Aileen, in addition to being substantial direct donors to Pomona during their lives, also contributed financially and otherwise to the successful passage through Pomona of my siblings, Thomas Ogier ’82 and Kathryn Ogier Lum ’88. How I managed to miss Pomona’s siren call is not clear.

—Walter C. Ogier
Williams College ‘78
Winchester, Mass.

I Do Belong

Pomona College Magazine Summer 2017 cover I’ve been meaning to write since reading the touching, inspiring article by Carla Guerrero ’06, “I Do Belong Here,” in the Summer 2017 PCM. Then, this week, President Starr asked us to write our Pomona stories to her, and I responded. It was only right that I also write to you, for it was Carla’s story that inspired me to be in touch with Pomona College again after over 60 years.

In 1952–54 I was a freshman and sophomore at Pomona College. As the only Japanese American in my class (there were two other Asians—no Blacks or Latinos) and coming from an immigrant, working-class family in Los Angeles, I was very aware I did not fit at Pomona in terms of race or social class. I was even invited to join the International Club. I suppose the well-meaning people who invited me did not understand that people of color were not necessarily born outside the U.S.

Your story, the information that more than 50 percent of this year’s new class are domestic students of color and President Starr’s appointment fill me with joy. Pomona has always been a fine academic institution. I’m glad it is also moving toward being a welcoming home for multicultural students who reflect the current demographics of our country.

Congratulations and thank you to Carla and others who were part of the wise group of people who brought President Starr to Pomona College.

—Amy Iwasaki Mass ’56
El Cerrito, Calif.

I was very touched by Carla Guererro’s column in the most recent PCM entitled, “I Do Belong Here.” I graduated from Pomona in 1998, and as I read her piece, I was transported back to my days as a student. I could completely relate to her experience as an awkward first-gen Latina daughter of proud immigrant parents trying to find her place at Pomona. Like Carla, I found a good group of peers, and with the support of wonderful faculty and staff, I thrived. The excitement she described at the hiring of Gabi Starr as Pomona’s new president is felt well beyond Claremont. I’ve talked to many of my Pomona friends, and we all agree—we’re so very proud of Pomona and can’t wait to see how President Starr will influence and inspire the entire community. Thank you, Carla, for writing a piece that truly captured not only a shared experience of the past but also a shared enthusiasm for the future of the college we love.

—Juliette Cagigas ’98
Whittier, Calif.

The Mind of a Psychopath

I enjoyed reading the article titled “How to Understand the Mind of a Psychopath” in the Summer 2017 PCM. I was impressed with 2017 graduate Kaily Lawson’s view on cognitive science and what goes on inside the mind of what many consider to be a “serial killer.” I found it interesting that many prominent figures in today’s society have traits found in psychopaths.

Now, when it comes to famous serial killers whose acts spurred an utter disturbance among Americans, it is hard to determine how the legal system should treat these individuals. An example of this is Ed Kemper, infamous as “the Co-Ed Butcher.” Although he was found guilty of his horrible crimes and received seven years to life in prison, he turned himself in to the police and ultimately felt remorse for what he had done. In his most recent parole hearing, he rejected attending it because he deemed himself unfit to return to society. He suddenly recognized that his crimes were morally wrong and confessed his guilt. But what caused this sudden change in intuition? Lawson obviously has a great interest in this branch of psychology, and I completely understand when she says there’s a “continuum” for psychopathic traits, where people may be placed on a spectrum of “good” or “bad.”

Once again, I enjoyed reading this article, and I hope Ms. Lawson finds success in her future career. I also wish her the best in her efforts to influence public policy in today’s legal system.

—Jules Winnfield
Inglewood, Calif.

Extreme Individualism

The summer issue of PCM contains three letters from readers shocked by the simplistic right/wrong mentality of the modern occupants of Pomona College. I studied philosophy with Fred Sontag and W.T. Jones in the ’50s and sang in the glee clubs. But for the last 15 years I have been a student of Sanatana Dharma, the timeless path of the ancient riches in India. Before that I was interested in Chinese thinking for decades.

My background leads me to see what is going on at Pomona as an extreme form of individualism in the still-adolescent culture that is the United States. What we need today is the ability to open our hearts to everyone and use our minds to try to understand what our hearts tell us about others. Pomona is of course a bookish place.

I take issue also with the idea that climate change is the major issue. Doris Lessing’s futuristic novels suggest what the world might look like after catastrophe: They are lost but surviving. However, I would say that the major issue is the fallout from unregulated socially irresponsible capitalism and our apparent inability to live together in a crowded landscape without resulting in wars between city blocks scaled up to nations.

There are so many good people in America, although one might think money is the main value for most people. So I also hold the thought that Trump may save us yet by pushing us so close to self-destruction that we may suddenly experience a mass epiphany and find in our midst unknown new leaders who can lead us, hopefully without too much humor about how foolish we were to be taken in by our dogmatic old beliefs.

—Thomas (Megha) deLackner, ‘58
Concord, Calif.

I hope certain letter writers in the Summer 2017 PCM learn someday that what they call “political correctness” is simply treating those different from them with basic dignity and respect. They should try it sometime. They might learn a few things that four years at Pomona evidently failed to teach them.

—Bruce Mirken ’78
San Francisco, Calif.

Correction

In your obituaries in the Summer 2017 PCM, you listed Robert Shelton as Robert “Bob” H. Shelton ’47. He was always known as “Robin” Shelton at Pomona. I should know because I married him.

—Miriam Cross Shelton
Laguna Beach, Calif.

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.

Working Dog

November 16, 2017 by Mark Wood Comments Off

THE NEWEST MEMBER of the Campus Safety team wags his tail lazily as he strolls across campus, pausing to have his back stroked or his ears scratched. But don’t be fooled—Officer Red Dogg is hard at work.

“He’s built more for comfort than speed at this point,” says Campus Safety Director Stan Skipworth, who adopted the 10-year-old beagle mix from a rescue organization, “but he is actually certified as an emotional support animal, and he’s had some modest training for that.”

Skipworth had been considering adding a canine to the staff, and when he happened onto Red, he decided it was worth a try. “He’s such a good-natured dog, and I thought it would be a nice way to build on our community-oriented policing policy.”

The response, he said, has been remarkable—and not just when Red is out patrolling, wearing his official ID collar and his Campus Safety insignia on a red-and-black bandanna. “We actually get several visitors a week who come here specifically to see Red and pet him, and then they go on to class,” Skipworth says.

Red really earns his keep, however, when people come to Campus Safety to make a report. “He doesn’t do real police work,” Skipworth says, “but he’s our official greeter, and when people who’ve had a bad experience come in to do a report, he comes and sits with them, and I think he makes a real difference.”

Two for MLB

November 16, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

TWO MEMBERS OF last year’s Pomona-Pitzer baseball team are now making their way in the world of professional baseball. Sagehen slugger and second baseman Tanner Nishioka ’17 was picked by the Boston Red Sox in the ninth round of the Major League Baseball draft—the highest draft pick in Sagehen history—while pitcher David Gerics ’17, though undrafted, signed a contract with the Minnesota Twins.

“It’s a huge honor to have two Sagehen baseball players signed by MLB teams in the same year.” says Sagehen Head Baseball Coach Frank Pericolosi.

Nishioka is the first Sagehen drafted to the MLB since David Colvin was selected by the Mariners in the 27th round of the 2011 draft. During Nishioka’s senior season, the neuroscience major from Honolulu led the nation for Division III with 18 home runs and a .888 slugging percentage, and he racked up a slew of honors, including selection for First Team All-American, Academic All-American, West Region Player of the Year and SCIAC Player of the Year.

“I just wanted to play baseball for as long as I could,” Nishioka told the Los Angeles Times. “I wouldn’t say I thought I would get drafted in the top 10 rounds at all. I still can’t believe it.”

Nishioka completed his college career in the top six in Sagehen history in hits (254), home runs (36), batting average (.395), runs (189), and RBI (166). Nishioka also ranks seventh in single-season batting average (.441) and is tied for third in home runs in a single season (18).

Gerics ended his senior year with a career-high of 86 strikeouts. He also earned All-West Region honors during his junior season, as he finished the year with a perfect 7–0 record and a 2.31 ERA with only 16 earned runs surrendered in 62.1 innings pitched.

After graduating in May with a B.A. in economics, Gerics tried out with the Mets, the Angels and the Twins. He was on his way to Gary, Ind., with plans to play baseball for the non-MLB affiliate, the Gary Southshore Railcats, when the Twins gave him his long-awaited callback.

“Two hours before I arrived, I got the call that my wildest dreams were becoming a reality,” says Gerics. “I couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t believe it. It was pure elation.”

The 2017 Wigs

November 16, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

The 2017 Wigs

Each spring, juniors and seniors honor a group of outstanding professors, recognizing their excellence in teaching with the Wig Distinguished Professor Award. Here is the list of the recipients for 2017 (left to right in the photo above), each with a quote from a student.

Philip Choi, associate professor of physics and astronomy, teaches such courses as Techniques in Observational Astrophysics, and Stellar Structure and Evolution. This is his first Wig.

“Professor Choi is one of the most helpful and contemplative professors I’ve met. He’s not only is a gifted instructor and mentor, but he truly cares about his students and their successes.”

Tzu-Yi Chen, professor and chair of computer science, teaches such courses as Intro to Computer Science, Computer Systems, and Algorithms. This is her first Wig.

“Pillar of the CS department. Always open to talk and support students despite doing so much already.”

Vin de Silva, associate professor of mathematics, teaches such courses as Topics in Topology and Geometry, and Combinatorial Mathematics. This is his second Wig.

“Professor de Silva is simply brilliant. His lectures are very insightful. I also got to have him in my ID1, ‘I Disagree,’ and his arguments and lessons were often extraordinary.”

Donna Di Grazia, David J. Baldwin Professor of Music and choral conductor, teaches courses like Engaging Music and conducts the Choir and Glee Club. This is her second Wig.

“Professor Di Grazia consistently goes above and beyond with her students. She offers her full self to her teaching, to her committee work and to her performances.”

Michael K. Kuehlwein, George E. and Nancy O. Moss Professor of Economics, teaches such courses as Principles: Macroeconomics, and Advanced Macroeconomic Analysis. This is Kuehlwein’s sixth Wig.

“Professor Kuehlwein is one of the best professors and mentors I have ever had in both my life and my time at Pomona. … Overall, it is because of his classes and the times we’ve talked together that I chose to pursue a career in economics.”

Pardis Mahdavi, former associate professor and chair of anthropology; dean of women; director of the Pacific Basin Institute; and coordinator of gender and women’s studies. Mahdavi left Pomona last summer to become the senior associate dean at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. This is her second Wig.

“Pardis sparks my desire to learn, to improve myself, and to fight so others can have equal opportunities in this world. She’s unmatched in talent and in her ability to inspire courage in all her students.”

John Alldredge Clithero ’05, assistant professor of economics, teaches courses including Behavioral Economics and Experimental Economics. This is his first Wig.

“Concise lecturer follows up with students a lot after they have finished taking his course. One of the most knowledgeable professors at Pomona College by far!”

David R. Kauchak, assistant professor of computer science, teaches courses that include Natural Language Processing, and Computation and Cognition. This is his first Wig.

“From his matter-of-fact, clear lectures to his fair and balanced tests and assignments, Professor Kauchak is an excellent communicator, whether in a lecture-based class or in a seminar course.”

At Home with Mark Twain

November 16, 2017 by Susan McWilliams Comments Off

Mark Twain at Quarry Farm

I HAVE A PICTURE of myself as a child, sitting on the very porch where, 30 years later, I am writing these words. Quarry Farm hasn’t changed much since my last visit, although most of my life has.

As a kid, I spent a couple of summers at Mark Twain’s Quarry Farm—the house in Elmira, New York, where Twain lived and wrote books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Life on the Mississippi, and Tom Sawyer—because my father, Wilson Carey McWilliams, was a great teacher of Twain’s work and a scholar-in-residence here. During the days, my sister and I romped around the grounds while Dad held seminars.

At night, just as Twain had done for his own daughters, Dad made up stories for us based on the pictures on the fireplace tiles in the parlor. And he read us Twain, of course: the stories and the novels and the bull’s-eye critique of James Fenimore Cooper that always made me laugh, even though I’d never read anything by James Fenimore Cooper.

Susan McWilliams in her office with her father’s manuscript and files

My father dropped dead 12 years ago, on a sunny Tuesday morning, leaving behind notes on the manuscript about Mark Twain that he’d been working on for decades. His friends and colleagues mourned the lost book, but of course the manuscript was not the main thing. The more pressing concern was just getting through the day; Dad, a big-hearted, big-hugging, big-thinking man, left an absence that felt even bigger than his presence. Grief had me by the throat.

I got my dream job, teaching at Pomona College, a few months later.

I tell my students, sometimes, that grown-ups are not lying to you when they talk about how fast life goes. You wake up and really do wonder where it all went—which is why one of the great luxuries afforded Pomona students is the freedom to sit down on Marston Quad or in a dorm room and to talk with friends, or to think for yourself, about where you want to be and, more importantly, with whom you want to be there. Your job isn’t just to learn a subject. It’s to learn to live a good life.

And so it is years later, and I have my own children now, and they are almost the age that I was when we spent that first summer at Quarry Farm. And they love stories that are the stuff of Twain: kids getting in trouble, kids being sneaky, kids in danger, knights, tricks, grownups who do stupid things, those rare acts of true bravery and courage that make you believe human beings might be worth something, after all.

Perhaps all that storytelling has something to do with why I finally picked up those old manuscript notes—and why this summer, I’m the professor working at Mark Twain’s house, as a fellow of the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies, trying to finish a book that my father was writing before I was born.

One of Twain’s great themes was that the American myth of individual autonomy and self-creation is a lie—a lie that enabled the great moral evil of slavery, for one thing, but that also impoverishes our lives in subtler ways. Huck Finn has a lot of adventures, but other Americans are always trying to get one over on him, and Huck feels “awful lonesome” most of the time.

The truth about us humans, Twain taught, was that we are social and political creatures who are inextricably bound to other people. Love calls us and can ennoble us, and Twain was “confident,” my father wrote, “that the comradeship of honorable love is the clearest human instance of what is divinely right.”

Twain knew that we have to admit our connection and indebtedness to others if we are ever to know ourselves. And we have to be willing to dedicate ourselves to others, and to do so out of love, if we are ever to be truly free, to smile in the face of our certain deaths.

My father wrote this: “Love, particularly when it is linked to the rearing of children, can nurture and sustain the spirit, even in a gilded age, just as a great storyteller can help us to hear the music in our souls.”

And so it is that here I am, on this front porch looking out at the hills of upstate New York, at home again with my father, and at home again with Mark Twain, with the abiding refrain in my ears.

Susan McWilliams is associate professor of politics and chair of the Politics Program at Pomona College. The author of Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory, she has two books in the publishing pipeline ahead of the Twain book.

Sea Chanties

November 16, 2017 by Patricia Zurita Vest Comments Off

Professor of Music Gibb Schreffler (right) and class aboard the Exy Johnson. Photo by Lushia Anson ’19

TO HELP HIS students get on board with one of his chief research interests, Music Professor Gibb Schreffler got them out of the classroom and out to sea.

On a breezy spring afternoon, aboard the two-masted sailing vessel Exy Johnson in Los Angeles’ San Pedro Bay, Ranzo—Schreffler’s chantyman alter ego—led a group of Pomona and Claremont Colleges students in singing “Goodbye, My Riley” and “Tom’s Gone a Hilo,” traditional work songs known as “sea chanties.” Adding the physical labor and rhythm of pulling halyard lines gave the students a sense of how chanty singing once fit into the work of the crew on a traditional sailing vessel. As the hoists grew more difficult toward the end of the lines, the chanty leader shifted to a “short drag” chanty such as “Haul Away, Joe” and “Haul the Bowline” to reflect the cadence of a more demanding physical effort.

The half-day sailing field trip was part of Schreffler’s special topics course, American Maritime Musical Worlds, where his class explored America’s musical development from the perspective of those who have lived or worked near the water. The goal was to better understand the context and function of the shipboard work songs prevalent in the 19th century.

According to Schreffler, the topic of American maritime music is not well-documented or researched. His scholarship focuses on the musical experiences of African Americans, and his findings place the tradition of sea chanties within the larger umbrella of African American work songs. The epicenter of the chanty genre, he explains, was not Great Britain but America—or, more precisely, the western side of the “Black Atlantic,” rimmed by Southern U.S. ports and the Caribbean.

Schreffler’s research also found that chanty singing by sailors at sea represented just one branch of a larger network of work-singing practices, most of which were performed on terra firma. In fact, far more chanties were sung by stevedores—the workers loading ships—than were ever sung by sailors. Sailors’ labor tended to be associated with white workers, and stevedores’ labor was associated with Black workers—which partly explains the neglect of the latter’s story in ethnocentric narratives told by English and Anglo-American authors of the last century.

Schreffler’s research has been challenging, in part, because much of what has been presented in the last century has created a strong bias against recognizing African Americans as creators of the sea chanty genre. His published work on the subject includes the article “Twentieth Century Editors and the Re-envisioning of Chanties,” in the maritime studies journal The Nautilus.

His research takes him to archives and ports in cities around the country that were centers of maritime commerce, such as Mobile, Alabama, and Galveston, Texas. He also has traveled internationally in a traditional sailing ship from the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic, to the coast of France, to study applied seamanship in order to better understand the historical texts he studies.

Since the maritime work songs Schreffler studies are not used in today’s sailing, recreating their performance helps him imagine them and find answers, despite the lack of detailed information available. Since 2008 he has been working on posting online his renditions of every documented chanty song he has encountered. His purpose for the recordings is to simulate psychologically the process of acquiring a repertoire and learning the genre’s method and style.

“Scholars in my field, ethnomusicology, traditionally employ fieldwork to interpret living culture as ‘text,’” he explains. “In order to study culture of the past in this fashion, I try to convert history into a sort of living text in the present.”

Last spring was his first time teaching the course, but Schreffler previously brought chanties to Pomona College and The Claremont Colleges through the Maritime Music Ensemble he founded and directed in 2013. In the ensemble, all songs were taught orally to simulate a realistic way of acquiring the tradition. Students needed no prior formal training and took part in engaging sessions of rehearsals or jam sessions as well as performances.

Experiencing music in order to understand it is at the core of Schreffler’s teaching and research. Also a scholar of the vernacular music of South Asia’s Punjab region, he learned to play the large drum known as the dhol. “Without my doing this, many of my interlocutors would have had no idea how to relate to what I was doing in studying Punjabi music,” he says.

Schreffler has plans to return to his Punjabi research and work on a forthcoming book during his upcoming sabbatical year. In addition, he headed to the Caribbean during the past summer to get reacquainted with the Jamaican music scene in order to prepare his next spring course. Among the topics he will explore in that class, he says, is the connection of Jamaican music to the beginnings of hip hop and electronic music.

“Some of my students are very interested in producing or becoming DJs, so this course could be of special interest to them, given the connection to the origin of hip hop and dance music.

“My goal with this class, as in all of my classes, is to give them information and lively discussion that will challenge them about something that is related to a topic they’re interested in to begin with. I don’t necessarily tell them that it is related, but I drive them to make the connection. Once they see the connection, it transforms their learning about the original topic of the class.”

Sagehen Now Part of Rock History

October 27, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Sagehen Pride is now part of the very landscape of California.

Four years ago, while still at Pomona, geology-physics double-major Benjamin Murphy ’13, did his senior thesis on a geologic formation in Eastern California near Mammoth Lakes. Thanks to a serendipitously-located road, Murphy and his mentors, geology professors Jade Star Lackey and Robert Gaines, came up with the idea of naming it the Sagehen Formation.

A few years and some revisions later, their paper was recently published in the Journal of Sedimentary Research, making it all official.

Geologically speaking, the Sagehen Formation is a package of coarse-grained sedimentary rocks (sandstones and conglomerates) that were deposited within a lake in the Long Valley Caldera in California between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago, according to Murphy, now in his third year in a Ph.D. program at Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

How did they manage to name it after our mascot? A newly discovered formation must be named after some local landmark that is as near as possible to the “type section”– the place where the formation is best exposed and representative, says Gaines.

It turned out that Sagehen Road was one of the only named features anywhere near the type section. “Once we realized that, there was no need for discussion! It was obvious that it was both scientifically appropriate and awfully fun,” says Gaines.

For those new to Pomona, nobody is quite sure how the sage hen, also known as the sage grouse, became our mascot a century or so ago. A sizeable bird with spiky tail feathers, the sage grouse ranges over much of the West, but is not found in the Claremont area. In fact, the region where the Sagehen Formation stands is one of the only places in California where these birds roam, making the name a rock-solid choice.

«‹15 161718 19 ›»