Blog Articles

The Failures of Facebook

March 13, 2024 by David Silverberg Comments Off

Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets by Jeff Horwitz ’03.

To understand exactly what has happened at Meta with its lineup of products such as Facebook and Instagram, ask Jeff Horwitz ’03. The investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal has been on the Meta beat for more than four years with the goal of revealing the inner workings—and management failures—within Facebook’s Silicon Valley walls.

Horwitz tracked how often Facebook chose growth over quality by ignoring misinformation on the site and by lack of moderation, resulting in the investigative series The Facebook Files for the WSJ in 2021. He added additional reporting for his newly released book, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets. In it, Horwitz also looks at how Instagram managers ignored warning signs that the platform seriously damaged body image perceptions for teen girls around the world.

Journalist David Silverberg spoke to Horwitz for Pomona College Magazine to learn more about his yearslong process in investigating Meta, his view on Mark Zuckerberg’s role in the company’s missteps, and why he warns parents to be extremely careful about how their children use social media.

Headshot of Jeff Horwitz ’03

PCM: Technology reporters have been writing that those who run Facebook haven’t learned from the mistakes they made in 2016 and beyond. What’s your take on that?

Horwitz: One of the really fascinating things that came out of the book is that there was a period of time where Facebook invested really heavily in safety and in understanding its product. Then those people made recommendations on how to change the product in ways that would certainly mitigate a lot of the harms from its product, such as misinformation, the formation of massive groups like QAnon, conspiracy movements. There were approaches to fixing this that these folks developed but the problem was they came at the cost of engagement and usage of a platform. Meta and in particular Mark Zuckerberg were not willing to accept that. So the company has actually laid off a lot of the people who are doing this, partly because they aren’t interested in pursuing the work, and partly because they view these people as a fifth column inside the company that is more loyal to their sense of public good than to their sense of what is good for Meta.

The problems of 2016 and 2020 have by and large not been addressed. The ease with which any motivated entity can trick the algorithm into spewing out spam or political content hasn’t fundamentally changed.

PCM: Your book found that Zuckerberg’s role in how his company chose growth over content moderation was a stark contrast to how some other CEOs and founders run their companies. How so?

Horwitz: Everything flows from Mark, and that’s why he’s kind of an anomaly in the tech space at this point. The other big founders tend to step back or work on side hobbies such as Twitter—look at Elon Musk—and with Google and Microsoft, those founders have moved along in their lives and Mark hasn’t. And I think one of the things that’s really striking is he is often describing the open internet where anyone can write what they want but he neglects to discuss what Facebook became, which is an extremely powerful content recommendation engine that will recommend literally anything that will keep people on the platform more often.

No one understood that introducing a reshare button was going to actually produce higher levels of misinformation on the platform because the more times a thing gets shared, it turns out based on the company’s internal research, the less likely it’s going to be true and more likely it’s going to be sensationalist.

PCM: What I also found compelling about the book, and The Facebook Files, was how you established a relationship with Frances Haugen, the famous whistleblower and ex-manager from Facebook who ended up testifying to the U.S. Senate about how the company knew about the potential harm they were causing to both adults and children. What did you think about what she did for you and the investigation?

Horwitz: Frances is an extremely unusual human being in the sense that most whistleblowers burn out first and then they quit in a huff or they get laid off and then they decide they want to talk. I think it’s very unusual for someone to begin at square one and that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t do her best to bring [Facebook’s issues] to the world’s attention.

This is somebody who was breaching the confidence of their employer for a very valid purpose and I think she had a lot on the line.

PCM: Before you delved into writing about Meta, you also wrote about other businesses for The Associated Press when you worked there between 2014 and 2019. How did your stint at AP help you with your career?

Horwitz: I was hired for their Washington investigative team and Donald Trump’s candidacy sort of ate my career there. I think because I had a business focus, I was originally put onto it in 2015 as, oh, hey, here’s another flash-in-the-pan candidate. We’ve seen many of them like that. Every cycle has some sort of Herman Cain-type figure who appears briefly on the horizon and then disappears. And I think that was originally the assumption about Donald Trump’s candidacy as well. Obviously that never happened.

So it was a really interesting time in terms of the work. But at the same time—I get into this a little bit in the book—it was kind of a depressing time because it really became apparent in 2016 that the only way news could get traction was if it appealed to partisans on either side and, in particular, if it appealed to partisans on Twitter.

I think one of the ways I ended up covering Facebook for The Wall Street Journal is I wanted to figure out that if the news and information ecosystem is permanently broken, then what’s going to replace it? And maybe I should be writing about that. So that’s how I ended up covering Meta.

PCM: How would you characterize the time you spent at Pomona?

Horwitz: One of the best things that happened at Pomona College for me was I got David Foster Wallace when he was teaching creative writing.

I also got into journalism via the student newspaper, and my first ever story for them was covering Professional Bull Riders Association events in Anaheim. It’s not like bull riding is a thing that I am deeply passionate about, but to have my press seat next to ESPN’s was pretty fun.

I began to feel more like an investigative reporter when I wrote on issues at the school, such as when I broke a story about grade inflation at Pomona while I was there. In 2000, The Student Life also reported on a very nasty fight over dining hall unionization and what we saw as some of the labor-busting tactics that the school undertook. I’m grateful to Pomona for a lot of things, but one of them is it kind of turned me on to questioning institutions.

Editor’s note: Pomona’s dining hall workers have been unionized since 2013, and the most recent collective-bargaining agreement provides a minimum wage of $25 an hour for all dining and catering workers by July 1, 2024.

PCM: Lastly, what’s your social media usage like these days? I assume you’re more careful than most considering everything you know about Facebook and Instagram.

Horwitz: I like cat videos as much as the next guy, but I’ve never been a super-heavy user.

So while I don’t have kids, I will say that I have been pretty damn strenuous in telling friends that it’s a good idea to be, shall we say, conservative with how much social media children use for a whole bunch of reasons. [Editor’s note: Since the interview, Horwitz has reported on Meta’s struggle to prevent pedophiles from using Facebook and Instagram in violation of its policies against child exploitation.] An interesting part of the book was revealing how the company really did define what was good for users and whatever made them use the product more. In other words, they must like it if they’re using it more, right? Not so fast.

Books and More Books

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Several readers wrote to note that the tradition of a common book for first-year students to read together began before 2003 (“The Full Stack: 2003-2023,” Fall 2023). Among earlier selections were Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Julia Alvarez’s Yo, Gregory Williams’ Life on the Color Line, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Naguib Mahfouz’s The Palace Walk.

Ann Quinley, Pomona’s dean of students from 1992 to 2007 and an emerita professor of politics, led the first-year book selection for some time with a committee of students and faculty, often reading 20-plus books a year and planning accompanying talks.

“It was my favorite project that I looked forward to every year,” Quinley says, noting that the effort was once the victim of a prank.

“One year, a student—I don’t remember who it was and I don’t think I’d tell you if I did—managed to get hold of the list and add another book. It was one of those bodice-rippers, and then I began to get calls. Students, they are just so creative.”

As for future nominations, Elizabeth Pyle ’84 writes to suggest H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal and a classic, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

Incoming first-year Sophie Park ’28 is excited to find out what her class might read. “I’d like to suggest A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace as my class’s orientation book,” she writes, calling the title essay “one of the most profound yet accessible pieces I know.” She adds: “Even if the essay collection isn’t chosen as the orientation book, ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ is short and an incredible standalone and I would cry if I came to school with all my classmates having read it.”

Bookmarks Spring 2024

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Studio of the Voice: Essays

In Studio of the Voice: Essays by Marcia Aldrich, Marcia Aldrich ’75 serves up intense personal essays, often reflecting on her relationships with her mother and daughter.

One Day This Tree Will Fall

One Day This Tree Will Fall, a nonfiction picture book by Leslie Barnard Booth ’04, invites readers to celebrate the life cycle and afterlife of trees.

Quiet Voice, Awesome Power

Amanda Edwards ’96, in Quiet Voice, Awesome Power, guides readers in communicating with spirit, defining their spiritual path and living with power and purpose.

How Much Are These Free Books? True Tales from the Book Nook

How Much Are These Free Books? True Tales from the Book Nook by Judy Schelling Hoff ’62 reflects on Hoff’s bookstore in Schenectady, New York, through 19 years of its existence.

Learning and Teaching Creativity

In Learning and Teaching Creativity, Dan Hunter ’75 details steps to improve student and teacher creativity through imagination.

The Saplings Think of Us as Young

The poems in The Saplings Think of Us as Young by Kim Kralowec ’89 explore the intimacy of living in close relationship with extremes of beauty and distress.

Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning

Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning by Amy Lyford ’86 is a study of the artist’s life and creative output as well as the history of Surrealism.

Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny

In Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny, Jesse Spafford ’12 articulates and defends social anarchism, staking out a number of bold and original positions.

The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall

Ali Standish ’10 reimagines Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life in her boarding school mystery novel, The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall.

Cultivating Care

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Plants on a table

The long winter break provides a respite for students each year, but it can pose a few complications.

For one, how will the plants that make a residence hall room a home survive untended for weeks on end?

Diana Castellanos ’24, a student from Los Angeles, was approached in late 2022 by friends looking for someone to plant-sit before they left campus for break. A known “plant parent” who planned to take her collection home for the holidays, she considered taking her friends’ monsteras, orchids and succulents too, but thought wiser of stashing so many plants in her parents’ living room.

Person sticking something on a plant

Instead, she asked Pomona faculty and staff for a hand. To her surprise, about a dozen people volunteered to care for students’ plants over break—the founding members of the Plant Babysitters Club.

Castellanos, a biology major on a pre-med track, asked faculty and staff for help again this winter, and a tradition took hold. Whereas the previous year the 21-year-old coordinated the drop-off, distribution and pickup of around 75 plants, about 125 were left the second time around. Fortunately, the number of plant-sitters nearly quadrupled, ensuring every pothos, herb and calathea had a caretaker.

After caring for about 20 plants last year, Title IX and Cares Office Associate Director Abby Lawlor volunteered to do it again.

“Plants really add a lot of life and character into anywhere, and there are some studies that show they have stress-reducing and healing properties,” Lawlor says.

Multiple plants on a table

Over two days, Castellanos and some of the EcoReps—students who promote sustainable practices on campus—collected and organized the multitude of plants being dropped off for supervision. They included an ornamental pepper, a tiny succulent in a giraffe planter, and Eric the moss ball.

Before they bid their plants adieu, students taped care instructions—watering frequency, light exposure—to each pot and added their contact information and plant inventory to a Google doc for recordkeeping.

Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, took care of five plants the first year and upped her responsibility to eight this time around.

“I like to think about the worlds these plants otherwise inhabit,” Bahng says. “Maybe they bring students some joy during stressful times, some grounding when the world around them feels so unmoored. And maybe I get to play some small role in keeping that ember of joy alive, even when the odds often feel stacked against us.”

New to the Catalog

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

The Pomona College catalog is ever-evolving, with new and revised courses continually introduced. Among the dozens of fresh offerings this academic year were Medical Ethics, taught by Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum, and Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape, taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Sean Diament.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum’s Medical Ethics class explores topics such as gene editing and euthanasia.

Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum’s MedicalEthics class explores topics such as gene editing and euthanasia.

Tannenbaum’s course touched on topics people will likely face at some point, such as whether euthanasia is permissible and how to respond to health-care practitioners who conscientiously object to providing this and other kinds of medical services.

Many individuals have already weighed in on such debates: “Voters, for example,” Tannenbaum says, “sometimes directly determine whether certain medical procedures, such as assisted suicide or abortion, will be legally permitted.”

Some medical advances seem to raise new questions—as is the case with Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR, which can be used to eliminate impairments in living organisms and as an enhancement in both embryos and adults.

While the question of how to use such emerging medical technology is pressing, this type of issue isn’t new by any stretch.

“Long before CRISPR,” Tannenbaum says, “people were exercising control over what their children would be like, via abortion, embryo selection post-IVF and many other methods. Many of the moral issues with those choices are applicable to CRISPR.”

Diament’s policy class examines how public dissatisfaction with politics combined with politicians running against government culminate “in a particularly self-destructive expression of politics and consistently underwhelming policy provision system.”

In a political realm where perception is often black and white, Diament’s course encourages students to find and explore the gray.

“There is very little coherent logic to the American state, both in politics and especially in governance,” he says. “Our system is the product of centuries of snap decisions based on contemporary issues, that are then left on the books and continue to inform and restructure American politics.”

Visiting Assistant Professor Sean Diament, right, introduced a new politics course called Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape.

Diament’s expertise in the field includes the politics of poverty, political inequity, power and conflict, and American political development, among other emphases.

Beyond the political realm, to understand the policyscape, Diament says, is to understand the professional world.

“Coordination is difficult. Problem solving even more so,” he adds. “But another key lesson is to recognize that incremental progress is still progress, and that small modifications to a business, nonprofit, or governmental body can have profoundly positive effects on individual lives.”

Above all, the politics professor adds, Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape sets out to explain how “governing even in the best of times is extremely hard, even without considering a form of toxic politics that makes it that much harder in the contemporary era.”

Here’s one mailing list you might want to be on: Professor of Art Mark Allen turns personal cards and letters into things of beauty, embellishing the outer envelopes with all manner of designs and decorative flourishes. His exhibit From the Desk Of last fall in the Chan Gallery at Pomona’s Studio Art Hall featured prints, posters, zines, pop-ups and a wall of envelopes that once held missives to various friends, faculty, staff, students and alumni. Take a look.

Postmarked Art

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Cards layup of different images Multiple cards layup

Pomona’s Piano Man

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Hudson Colletti ’27 sitting next to a piano

While visiting Canada the summer before his first year of high school, Hudson Colletti ’27 sat down at a piano one day and began tickling the ivories.

In town with family for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Pennsylvania teen wasn’t on stage playing for a capacity crowd inside a palatial concert hall or cozy auditorium.

He was on a street corner.

Within minutes, the sounds echoing through the neighborhood drew passersby, many quick to record the young pianist’s impromptu performance.

“I loved that,” Colletti says. “I thought [playing in public] was a really cool way for me to share something I love. I thought, ‘Why not bring that opportunity back home?’”

Colletti—a first-year student who plans to study economics and computer science, founded Free the Music at 14, not long after returning from Canada. In the years since, he has collected unwanted pianos and provided them to local visual artists as canvases. These customized pianos have found second homes in restaurants and apartment buildings, as well as on various street corners, around Colletti’s hometown of Sewickley, Pennsylvania—population 3,900.

“A lot of people want to learn how to play piano,” he says, “or know how to play but don’t have access to a piano because of how much space they take up or how hard they are to move into a house.”

By placing pianos in public, Free the Music is giving others a chance to fall in love too.

“One of the pianos we placed in town,” he says, “was originally given with nothing inside of the bench, and after four or five months over summer, the bench was filled with books and sheet music from people learning how to play and having lessons there.”

As successful as Free the Music’s initiative has been in his home state, Colletti sees no reason he can’t continue his work elsewhere.

“Music brings people together and brightens our mood,” he says. “It’s a great reminder after finishing a song when people gather around because they have a love of music.”

To see—and hear—Colletti playing one of the painted pianos, check out the video at pomona.edu/hudson-colletti-piano.

Notice Board

March 13, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

From the Alumni Association Board President

Hello Sagehens!

2024 Alumni Chapters from Northern California’s Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Southern California’s Orange County, the Puget Sound region of Washington state and Washington, D.C. With just a handful of months left in my term as Alumni Association Board president, I’ve been reflecting on my time as a board member these past several years. One of the best things about my involvement has been the opportunity to connect with so many of you. I continue to be awestruck that Pomona grads really do blanket our globe. And whether it’s been chatting with alumni at College events, catching up with classmates at informal gatherings, or a random meeting with a fellow Sagehen after spotting a Pomona T-shirt, it reminds me every time of the broad and unique community we have. We often talk about the Pomona experience referring to our time as students, but it only begins there. Meeting up with each other through events, work or chance encounters reminds us that the Pomona experience extends beyond the Gates and throughout our lives.

With this in mind, I am truly thrilled to see the revival and growth of our regional alumni chapters over the last few years. These chapters have been an important part of our post-pandemic reconnection and ongoing Pomona experience. I’m grateful to our chapter leaders for the many hours spent meeting, planning and coordinating meaningful and fun events for alumni to gather in Northern California’s Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Southern California’s Orange County, the Puget Sound region of Washington state and in Washington, D.C. They have organized beach cleanups, trips to museums and a Major League Baseball game, alumni speaker presentations, casual meetups, meals—and the list goes on. My thanks to my fellow board members past and present, and especially to Julie Siebel ’84 and Andrew Brown ’77, for their dedication and leadership in relaunching and helping to rebuild our alumni chapters.

If we haven’t crossed paths already, I hope to meet you at a chapter event or at one of the many other alumni events planned for this spring. The Alumni Board and I will be at Alumni Weekend in April as well. Please stop and say hello when you see us!
Alfredo Romero ’91 Alumni Association Board President

Until next time … chirp!

Alfredo Romero ’91
Alumni Association Board President

Find information on alumni chapters and get involved at pomona.edu/alumni-chapters.

Alumni Weekend 2024 Registration Now Open

Register online now through April 15. Walk-up registration will be available at AW Registration Check-In during Alumni Weekend. Find additional information and register at pomona.edu/aw-registration-info.

Alumni Weekend & Reunion Celebrations: April 25-28, 2024.

April 1: Early bird deadline
April 2: Registration fees increase
April 15: Online registration closes
April 25-28: Alumni Weekend & Reunion Celebrations

Alumni and Families Pulse Survey

Share your Pomona story with us in the Alumni and Families Pulse Survey. Check your inbox for the survey link. Curious to see the results of our previous survey?

Visit pomona.edu/afas-survey.

Sagehen Stories of Impact Online

Read alumni, student and faculty Sagehen stories on the newly launched Stories of Sagehen Impact website. Learn about Professor April Mayes ’94 P’26 and her longtime involvement with the Draper Center, Alumni Association Board member Robi Ganguly ’00 and the remarkable startup company that resulted from a chance meeting with fellow alumni, and many more stories of Sagehens making their marks in the world.

Visit pomona.edu/stories-of-impact for news about Sagehens bearing their added riches in their own neighborhoods and across the globe.

Pomona College: ‘Reflections on a Campus’
New Edition Now Available

Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus cover Written predominantly during the pandemic, this second edition of Reflections by Marjorie Harth, emerita professor and director of the former Pomona College Museum of Art, updates and expands the scope of the first, published in 2007. Like the first edition, this 292-page book documents and reflects upon the campus of Pomona College as an architectural entity and visual expression of the history and identity of a great academic institution. Many of the original entries and essays have been edited and updated, as have the photographs. Among new entries is Scott Smith’s essay on landscape architect Ralph Cornell.

Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus inside spread of Smith Campus Center.

These stunning photographic strolls through campus and poignant essays recount the exceptional transformation of Pomona from desert patch to a “college in a garden.” Would you like to add this special keepsake to your book collection? Copies may be purchased at pomona.edu/reflections-book.

A Woman Is Men’s Coach of the Year

March 11, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

First-year Coach Amber Williams, right, with Assistant Coach Emma DeLira, says, “I’m working with great people.”

Pomona-Pitzer Coach Amber Williams’ path to the 2023 Division III men’s cross country championship and national Coach of the Year honors began a decade ago in Indiana, at her alma mater, Ball State.

There, the former Division I student-athlete cut her teeth as a track and field coach after a gilded collegiate career. Williams spent four years at Ball State before successive stops at Division I programs Colgate, Cleveland State and Columbia.

Last June, Pomona-Pitzer hired her to coach men’s cross country and track and field.

“I’d been lucky enough to know about the program here through other coaching friends,” Williams says. “I’d heard nothing but good things and glowing reviews.

“You feel at times you never get a utopia,” she adds, “but here felt pretty doggone close.”

While not her first time taking over a men’s athletics program, Williams still wondered how a female head coach would be received at Pomona-Pitzer—even with Emma DeLira, an assistant coach and invaluable piece of the program, already on staff.

“You never know how a men’s team will react” to having a female coach, Williams says, “but they were so warm and so open to the opportunity. It speaks volumes to who they are as people. … When it comes to those guys, they knew at the end of the day, the mission was to try to get another championship.”

Introductions behind, Williams and the Sagehens set out on a bounce-back season.

“There’s a tradition of competitiveness and a winning culture here,” Williams says. “You feel that prestige when you come through the doors. After what happened last year, we hoped we could bring it back.”

Despite coming up short in 2022, Pomona-Pitzer returned five of seven athletes who competed in the national meet and began the campaign ranked highly in Division III. But injuries, illnesses and lackluster performances in the latter part of the year tanked the Sagehens’ ranking heading into the postseason.

With adversity, however, came perspective.

“Being the underdogs, you wonder how a team will take that, how it’ll react when something doesn’t go their way,” Williams says. “Some athletes feel the path has to be perfect, and if it isn’t, nationals is out of reach. These guys figured it out every week, every meet. You saw them believe the good races were coming and uplift each other, care about each other.”

As they had the year before, the Sagehens captured conference and regional championships on their way to nationals.

But typically, Derek Fearon ’24 says, teams ranked outside the top three heading into the title race have little chance to win. Pomona-Pitzer had fallen to No. 8.

“I didn’t wake up in the morning thinking we were going to win,” he says. “All I knew is we had to run the best race.”

They did, winning by the narrowest of margins.

Williams also made history, becoming the first female head coach to win a Division III men’s cross country championship.

“For a lot of the guys, there’s more ownership of this championship compared to 2021,” says Colin Kirkpatrick ’24.

“Two years ago, we didn’t really know what it would take to win. But this year, we knew exactly what it would take, how hard it would be and how unlikely it was.”

In the days following the team’s historic win, Fearon, Lucas Florsheim ’24, Kirkpatrick and Cameron Hatler ’25 earned All-America honors. For Fearon and Florsheim, the distinctions were the third of their careers.

Additionally, Williams was named national men’s cross country Coach of the Year for Division III—the first female and third Pomona-Pitzer coach to receive the honor.

While it is an individual coaching award, Williams is effusive in her praise of DeLira, a tireless leader.

“I’m working with great people, in a great space, in a great environment,” Williams says. “I hope we can continue to do great things for a long time.”

Homepage: Poetry in the Parks

March 11, 2024 by Staff Comments Off

Joshua Tree with the sun setting in the background

Photos by Carrie Rosema

Westward lies the Pacific, but Joshua Tree National Park—about 100 miles to the east of Claremont—is another place Pomona College students go to experience the grandeur and beauty of California. It is 800,000 acres of rugged and often lonely terrain where one can see a sudden wildflower bloom in spring, climb on massive rocks or stay after sunset to behold the expanse of the Milky Way.

The desert also is a place of inspiration. In September, poet Jodie Hollander ’99 led several workshops in Joshua Tree as part of her Poetry in the Parks project, an ongoing series in national parks and other National Park Service sites. Hollander, second from right above and at far right in opposite photo, led Joshua Tree sessions on landscape poetry, the poetry of grief and healing and narrative poetry. The author of two well-received collections, My Dark Horses and Nocturne, she has been the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

When an unexpected rain fell in the desert during the landscape workshop, it stirred new creative directions and brought to mind lines from Hollander’s earlier poem, “After the Storm”:

Later that night I lay there in darkness
wondering about the storm, and what
I had seen unfurl in such violent release,
then wondered, too, what I really knew
of myself, and my own dark moorings.

12 3 ›»

Blog Articles

Studio of the Voice: Essays

One Day This Tree Will Fall

Quiet Voice, Awesome Power

How Much Are These Free Books? True Tales from the Book Nook

Learning and Teaching Creativity

The Saplings Think of Us as Young

Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning

Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny

The Improbable Tales of Baskerville Hall

From the Alumni Association Board President

Alumni Weekend 2024 Registration Now Open

Alumni and Families Pulse Survey

Sagehen Stories of Impact Online

Pomona College: ‘Reflections on a Campus’ New Edition Now Available

Pomona College: ‘Reflections on a Campus’
New Edition Now Available