Blog Articles

Rite of Passage

February 23, 2015 by Kris Dreessen Comments Off

“HAMBA MUTALIA. Haaaaa woyeee. Hamba mutalia.”

Young Humphrey walks into the center of the crowd before his traditional mud-covered home. The metal jingles on the leather strips on his wrist, making a bright snap in the air.

Surrounded by their voices, chanting softly and clapping, he leads the procession, draped in the skin and testicles of a bull sacrificed to mark this momentous change. They make a clearing for him. He stops silent before an elder, who carefully lifts off the skin. More than 100 of the boy’s family, friends and fellow villagers envelope him with whoops of joy and dance.

The next phase of his coming-of-age ceremony has begun.

The ground vibrates as they lift their hands to the sky and dance. “Hamba mutalia … Haaaaa woyeee…”

Michael Diercks, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Pomona, smiles, watching the circle of bodies sway and jump. In an instant, many people reach out and pull him into the fray.

They will celebrate throughout the night, encouraging 12-year-old Humphrey to have courage for morning, when he will go with them to the river to be covered in mud, and run home for the circumcision ritual to become a man.

It is one of the most important events in Bukusu life—a rite of passage that few outsiders ever see. Humphrey’s parents trusted Diercks to share the event, and want to preserve it for future generations.

“I feel like I know more about the world than I did 24 hours ago,” says Diercks in the morning. “We were experiencing something ancient, right in the present, through their rituals and dancing and singing, that are the same things they have been practicing for ages, perhaps even hundreds of years. It was as if we were transported back in time. When you looked up in the sky in the middle of the night, it could have been 100 years ago.”

Such intimate sharing and insight into Luhya language-speaking communities is the result of a multi-year collaborative international research project, of which Diercks is a principal investigator. A team of seven American linguists are studying four small Kenyan languages—Bukusu, Wanga, Llogoori and Tiriki.

The team is supported by several grants, including a prestigious $477,000 National Science Foundation grant. Much of Diercks’ work so far was made possible by the Hirsch Research Initiation Grant from Pomona College. The team includes Pomona Linguistics and Cognitive Science Chair and Professor Mary Paster and Pomona linguistics students, as well as researchers at Ohio State University, Southern Illinois University, the University of Maryland and the University of Missouri.

While there are more than 1.6 million speakers of the four Luhya languages, they are at risk, says Diercks, as everyday life changes to a less forested area and young people move toward English and Swahili for economic advantage. One example is the circumcision itself. More families are choosing hospital circumcision over the traditional way.

“As the community changes, so does the language, and what isn’t preserved may be lost,” says Diercks.

IN THE MOST comprehensive study of each of these languages to date, the team is collecting audio recordings from Luhya speakers and analyzing tone, sentence structure and other characteristics to describe how the language works. They are also collecting folk tales, narratives, songs and many other kinds of oral literature that document language use and aspects of each culture, as well as creating dictionaries for each language. Their research will be available in open-access venues for other scholars, and for Kenyans to learn about their languages.

“In the end, we are producing description and analysis of these languages that will be theoretically relevant and useful to furthering our knowledge of how human languages work,” says Diercks, “but also producing work that will be valuable to communities, whether for its role in preserving aspects of their language and culture, or in providing resources that will be useful in educational contexts, like adult and child literacy.”

So far, the team has collected and begun to analyze more than 100 hours of audio samples by Luhya speakers. Diercks, and phonologist and co-primary investigator Michael Marlo, from the University of Missouri English Department, have spent a lot of time in Kenya fostering the close-knit relationships needed to gain trust and access to different communities.

Diercks has been to Kenya many times. Earlier this year, he spent several months with a Tiriki family, gathering interviews and training Kenyan research assistants Kelvin Alulu and linguist Maurice Sifuna to collect interviews year-round.

Back in California, the students in Paster and Diercks’ Field Methods of Linguistics course are at the center of Luhya work.

“The field methods class is a great opportunity for students to apply their knowledge of linguistic theory to real languages, which are much messier and more interesting than the data sets they see in theory courses,” says Paster. “We try to find speakers of lesser-known languages so that students have an opportunity to break new ground and publish their findings. Our students this year are doing professional-quality research and writing that will be the basis for all of our future work on Llogoori.”

“I’ve been able to have so many experiences that I would not have had at another university,” says aspiring linguist Alex Samuels ’15. “Professors need research assistants. At other places, it would be graduate students doing the work I’m doing. Here, it gets to be me, which is awesome.”

As a Summer Undergraduate Research Program scholar, Samuels also spent the summer researching aspects of Llogoori with Paster. Since there is no published grammar of Llogoori, Samuels’ final paper from the previous semester is this fall’s required reading in the advanced fields methods class. “I was really proud,” he says.

WHAT LUHYA SPEAKERS choose to share is a mixed bag. Linet Kebeya Mmbone spoke about hardships after losing her husband, and raising her children as a single mother without skills. Mungambwe talked about Llogoori history. Retired police officer Benjamin Egadwe spoke about how men used to have several wives, and changes in community since Christianity arrived.

Ultimately, the stories will be shared with community members, along with images and stories generated by a volunteer photojournalist who spent several weeks in Kenya last summer. Together, they help to create an intimate portrait of the communities in which the linguistic team works; a snapshot of who they are and what’s important to them. Back at Pomona, the photographs and portraits are connections to the stories and texts students study, 9,500 miles away.

This summer, Diercks was able to see the pride Benjamin and other Llogoori speakers have in their culture and in the language project, when Alulu organized a celebration of progress so far.

They took motorbike taxis over windy dirt paths through the forest to their village. When they arrived, Mugangwe, Egadwe, and a dozen others ran out to meet them, dressed in their finest suits and traditional kanga cloths, and singing traditional greeting songs. They had walked hours into town for a goat, which they slaughtered for the feast.

“This was a big moment for me,” says Diercks. “We spend so much of our time with individual people and then holed up analyzing the language, we don’t always get to see the whole community come together and celebrate research progress. It’s easy to focus on the academic side of things, but a celebration like this really drives home how intertwined language is with our identity, and how even small research advances matter so much to the community.”

At the celebration, Diercks also got a taste of what the project means to the Luhya speakers who have the opportunity to share. “This is how we teach our current children about how the Llogoori used to live,” says Egadwe. “Children have new customs. We feel it is good to teach them this way. Most of the old people do not remain. We are now the old people, telling our ways. This is a way to preserve our culture. We are taking good care of it.”

Preston Versus Amazon

February 23, 2015 by Adam Conner-Simons ’08 Comments Off

THE WORDS THAT galvanized a thousand authors to speak out against a powerful corporate retailer were written along a dirt road, in an 8-by-10 shack, by a wispy-haired, self-described “wimp.”

This past year Amazon spent many months in testy negotiations with Hachette, the fourth-largest book publisher in the U.S. When no agreement had been reached by May, Amazon began delaying shipment of Hachette books, shutting down pre-orders, and even removing the publisher’s titles from its all-important recommendation algorithms.

Such gestures aren’t trivial—when the entity responsible for selling 40 percent of America’s printed books makes yours difficult to buy, sales drop.

Sitting here on the deck of his spacious summer house overlooking Maine’s pristine Muscongus Bay, thriller writer Douglas Preston ’78 clearly isn’t worried for his own livelihood. He’s published more than a dozen best-sellers and cultivated a devout following that will find him with or without Amazon.

But what keeps him up at night—and what spurred him to write 500 words that put his name in the headlines and a sizable thorn in Amazon’s side—is thinking about all the young authors that he says have been “held hostage in the middle of a back-room deal between two big corporations.”

In June, Preston penned an informal letter about Amazon’s actions, with the idea that a few writers might co-sign. After famous friends like Stephen King and Nora Roberts started spreading the word, the letter went viral, and within a matter of days more than 900 of his peers had gotten on-board and joined the group that Preston had dubbed “Authors United.”

It wasn’t a completely united front—a vocal contingent of self-published authors posted lengthy screeds online calling him a “one-percenter,” a “pinhead” and worse, while Amazon reps dismissed him in the press as “entitled” and “an opportunist.” When Amazon found out that he planned to publish his letter as a full-page ad in The New York Times, the company’s head of e-books tracked down his phone number and called to issue veiled threats and try to stop him.

Preston shrugs when he reflects on how the situation escalated and how he, improbably, became the face behind a movement that he never set out to lead.

“I’ve never been much of an activist about these things,” he says. “But [Amazon’s tactics] felt like an act of betrayal. We writers helped a struggling start-up become one of the world’s largest companies, and this is how they repay us?”

Amazon’s path to global dominance hasn’t come without making some enemies. CEO Jeff Bezos has internally referred to his team’s business strategy as “the Gazelle Project,” in that Amazon approaches publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.”

The Hachette dispute is far from Amazon’s first: in 2010 it deleted the “buy” option for all MacMillan books, which quickly forced the publisher to cave in during negotiations. The company often paints publishing houses as middlemen and gatekeepers—relics from another era whose skills at distribution and publicity have been rendered moot by instant downloads and viral word-of-mouth.

Many self-published authors agree. Sci-fi writer Hugh Howey has collected more than 8,000 signatures for a Change.org petition arguing that companies like Hachette are “resisting technology” rather than adapting to the changing times.

Preston, naturally, begs to differ. He sees publishers as vital curators, editors and investors, and believes that the biggest challenge for Authors United is, ironically enough, telling the right stories.

Here’s his: it’s 1978, and he’s a fresh-faced college grad creating communications content for the American Museum of Natural History. The job pays peanuts but lets him explore all of the museum’s hidden treasures, from majestic butterfly exhibits to a hair-raising “dinosaur graveyard” in the basement.

A few years into the gig, he gives a tour to an editor named Lincoln Child, who suggests that he pull his anecdotes into a book.

While novels can often be cobbled together on nights and weekends, Preston’s journalistic writing would require some heavy daytime reporting. As a first-time author, Preston isn’t in a position to drop everything to write, but his publisher St. Martin’s Press gives him an advance of $7,200 that lets him take six months off from his job.

“Without that cash, there’d be no first book and I might not even be doing this for a living right now,” he says.

The experience made Preston recognize the importance of publishers as venture capitalists for ideas—a tradition that, in a sense, extends back to the Renaissance, when royal families like the Medicis funded artwork by Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli.

“These publishers supported me when I was unknown and believed in me enough to keep releasing my books even when the first few didn’t sell,” says Preston, who’s been with Hachette for 20 years. “What’s lost in the narrative is that, if authors couldn’t get advances, an awful lot of extremely important books wouldn’t get written.”

As with most business disputes, Amazon and Hachette’s boils down to dollar signs. Their main disagreement has revolved around e-books, which now make up almost a third of the market. Currently 30 percent of each e-book’s revenues go to Amazon, and 70 percent go to Hachette, which then carves out a cut for the author (usually 10 to 15 percent). While nobody knows exactly what was happening behind closed doors during negotiations, Amazon was reportedly pressing for 50 percent of revenues.

What’s also at stake are e-book prices themselves. Amazon has famously been selling many e-books at a loss, and says that prices above $9.99 hurt overall sales. Hachette, meanwhile, has been reluctant to set a precedent for lower prices that might cannibalize hardcover sales.

Preston says he has no particular problems with $10 e-books, but at the same time is flummoxed by the animosity leveled at authors whose books are being sold for a few dollars more.

“Some people have said e-books should be cheaper because they’re ‘just words,’ but then why isn’t anybody out picketing the makers of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ for charging $65 for a video game that’s ‘just electrons?’” he asks. “It devalues all the work that goes into the creative process. Is every book really worth just $9.99 to you?”

Amazon has likened e-books to paperbacks, another technological advance that lowered literature’s costs but also allowed for its increased availability. Many authors would counter that the Amazon-driven trend toward lower and lower e-book prices threatens the long-term viability of the entire profession.

“Amazon is doing the same thing Spotify is doing—treating creative content as though it were a commodity, like a TV set or a vacuum,” Preston says. “They’ve spurred a massive price devaluation of books that’s caused consumers to expect artificially low prices—and the net result is that it’s now exceedingly difficult for young authors to make a living.”

It’s not just first-time authors who’ve felt the pinch, which is why many authors were wary about signing a letter like Preston’s that would pit them against such a massive retail juggernaut. Novelist Lucy Ferriss ’75 was gung-ho about Authors United last summer, but as the publication date of her next book approached, she started reflecting on the wide reach of Amazon, which owns both the review site Goodreads and Audible (the seller of the majority of the world’s audiobooks).

“It becomes much more real when your own sales are tied into it,” Ferriss says. “It’s startling to realize how much of my personal investment as an author is caught up in getting good results with Amazon.”

Despite her reservations, she’s stayed on-board—in no small part because of Preston’s dedication. She recalls that when he and his brother Richard ’76 (a fellow writer) joined Pomona’s literary magazine Passwords, it only took a matter of weeks for her team of editors to voluntarily hand over control.

“They were impeccably organized, they had goals, and we were hopelessly incompetent,” she says with a laugh. “With Authors United, it doesn’t surprise me that Doug’s been able to essentially herd an army of feral cats. Once he decides to get something done, he does it.”

Since the initial letter, Authors United tried to reach out directly to members of the Amazon Board, with no luck. Preston was also approached by a team of prestigious pro bono lawyers who will be submitting a formal brief for the Department of Justice that outlines Amazon’s antitrust violations. He hopes it will encourage, if not an actual lawsuit, then at least more transparency on the part of retailers and publishers’ business dealings.

“Amazon makes most publishers sign non-disclosure agreements, such that we don’t even know what’s going on with these contracts,” he says. “What’s the nature of these relationships, and what is Amazon asking for? The DOJ has to bring this all out in the open so the American people can look at the facts for themselves.”

When I met with Preston on a crisp autumn morning in October, he sounded frustrated and a tad overwhelmed. He was promoting the publication of his third novel of 2014, gearing up for a book fair in United Arab Emirates, working on the next installment in his popular “Pendergast” series, and fielding phone calls from journalists about the ongoing publishing feud.

“Truth be told, I’m sick and tired of the situation, and would love to get rid of Authors United and go back to writing books,” he told me then.

Less than a month later, Hachette and Amazon reached a deal that made Hachette responsible for setting e-book prices, but also gave Amazon the opportunity to offer “specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices.”

Preston views the resolution as just the end of one battle in a larger war for writers, publishers and retailers. Despite the tedious and thankless nature of his role, he says he takes comfort in the fact that his efforts have put a spotlight on the changing landscape of his industry—and the tricky economics that come with being an author in the digital age.

“If nothing else, it’s reassuring to look at the list of folks who’ve signed the letter and see everyone from cookbook authors and sci-fi writers to poets and Nobel laureates,” he says. “I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that it’s rare to get writers to agree on anything.”

Bookmarks

February 23, 2015 by Staff Comments Off

Axioms to Grind & Rhyme and Punishment

rhyme-and-punishment

These posthumously published tomes by Richard Armour ’27 were edited by his son, Geoff Armour ’63. Axioms to Grind includes 900 of Armour’s famed aphorisms. Rhyme and Punishment is his autobiography.

Phoenix Publishing Group 2012 / 225 pages / $14.95

Phoenix Publishing Group 2013 / 122 pages / $14.95

Quest

In a visually stunning sequel to his Caldecott Honor-winning picture book Jour quest ney, Aaron Becker ’96 offers the second installment in an intended trilogy of brightly colored fantasy adventures without words.

Candlewick 2014 / 40 pages / $15.99

Clavichord for Beginners

calvichord Joan Benson ’46, a champion of the clavichord in the modern world, offers a method book for practitioners and enthusiasts alike, including a master class DVD and a CD of Benson performing.

Indiana University Press 2014 / 144 pages / $50.00

The Shelburne Escape Line

the-shelburne-escape-line Reanne Hemingway-Douglass ’63 tells the little-known World War II story of an escape route that the French Resistance used to rescue Allied airmen shot down over France.

Cave Art Press 2014 / 104 pages / $18.95

Plato’s Rivalry with Medicine

A Struggle and Its Dissolution plato

Susan Levin ’84, professor of philosophy at Smith College, examines the famous philosopher’s evolving engagement with the subject of medicine and argues that his works have much to offer in the world of bioethics.

Oxford University Press 2014 / 320 pages / $65.00

Fractured Legacy

In his sixth novel, Charles Neff ’54 revisits the Pacific Northwest, where a $fractured-legacy$ clash between an old family legacy, tribal land rights, and a marriage in trouble results in a suspicious death, threatening the lives of those who try to solve it.

Bennett & Hastings Publishing 2014 / 276 pages / $14.95

Sky Blue Stone

The Turquoise Trade in World History sky-blue-stone

Assistant Professor of History Arash Khazeni examines the origins, trade, and circulation of turquoise in the history of Islamic Eurasia and global encounters between empire and nature.

University of California Press 2014 / 216 pages / $29.95

Citizen

An American Lyric

citizen A National Book Award finalist, Professor of English Claudia Rankine’s meditation on race recounts the racial aggressions of daily life in America in a progression of revealing vignettes.

Graywolf Press 2014 / 160 pages / $20.00

Making Waves: Youth-Led Change

February 23, 2015 by Daniel Gould Comments Off

DURING VISITS TO her hometown of Baltimore while she was a student at Pomona, Celia Neustadt ’12 started to notice some interesting shifts in the makeup of the city’s public spaces. The Inner Harbor waterfront, long seen by locals as a tourist-only enclave, had started attracting black teens from around the city looking for a place to shop and meet friends, a big change from when Neustadt herself was a Baltimore City high school student.

The influx of a new crowd, however, had also sparked new tensions. Complaints and concerns from business owners over loitering, theft and “rowdy” behavior were leading to curfews that prevented groups of teens from enjoying thedowntown district at night and after school, and bans that kept them out of popular clothing stores. Negative iteractions with police and security staff added to the resentment felt by Baltimore youth. The friction was palpable, Neustadt recalls, as she walked around the Harbor one night after an Orioles baseball game.

“Not only were there more teenagers than I remembered, but it felt kind of tense. There was a feeling in the air, like if someone lit a match, it would spread like wildfire.”

Intrigued and concerned, Neustadt came back to Pomona for her senior year and began making connections between her own observations and concepts she was studying as a sociology major.

“I had become really interested in these ideas about the power of public spaces,” she says. “I wanted to see if teens were intentionally staking a claim to this space, and figure out how they were using it.”

Neustadt channeled her curiosity into a proposal for a youth-led research team that would help amplify the voices of young people of color who felt excluded from the area. After winning a Napier Grant designed to promote leadership in social change, she went back to Baltimore the summer after her graduation and kicked off a new community organization, the Inner Harbor Project (IHP).

Since its launch in 2012, the IHP has brought together a cohort of high school students from neighborhoods around Baltimore to try to uncover the sources of conflict in the city’s downtown. Building on a tradition in social justice work known as participatory action research, the IHP’s student staffers have combed the city to hold focus groups with other teens, while also interviewing stakeholders such as land developers, security companies and business owners.

The conversations have shed some much-needed light on the issue. Community leaders now have a better understanding of why the Harbor is so valuable to young people looking for a vibrant and inclusive space to call their own.

“Teenagers don’t have that many places to go to in Baltimore, and so they really flock to the Inner Harbor,” Neustadt explains. “They feel like they’ve lucked into this larger world.”

Still, the project has also put a focus on problems like encounters between teens and police, which often cause mistrust and lead to more serious confrontations down the road. To create a takeaway for policymakers and officials, the group used its findings to draw up a list of proposals to reduce tensions and improve safety, catching the attention of local media and politicians. Some of their recommendations were even incorporated into the city’s most recent master plan for the waterfront district.

Neustadt, who says the response from City Hall and local businesses has been “overwhelmingly positive,” credits the Inner Harbor Project’s success to the teens themselves and their ability to draw upon their own lived experiences.

“This organization is about recognizing the extreme potential that these young people have to effect change in their city,” she insists. “They and only they have the answers to this issue that has people at the city level scratching their heads.”

While Neustadt is modest about her own contributions, others stress how her clear values and vision laid the foundation for the program and the positive results that have followed.

“I think Celia’s commitment to community and change has been instrumental in this work,” says Professor of Sociology and Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies Gilda Ochoa, a trusted mentor from Pomona who encouraged Neustadt to involve youth in the project and work from their perspective.

Looking ahead, Neustadt is hopeful that the organization might serve as a model for other cities that struggle with conflict between police and youth of color at their tourist attractions, mentioning locations like the French Quarter in New Orleans and Millennium Park in Chicago.

“This is my attempt to create a little ounce of change, to create a structure for having a discussion about inequality and the way spaces are used. I don’t see myself doing anything else for a long time.”

Alumni News

February 23, 2015 by Staff Comments Off

PCM-winter2015-48_Page_24_Image_0001

Sagehens Flock to Fall Networking Events

Last fall, as students convened on campus for another year of discovery, collaboration and fun, hundreds of alumni and friends also came together to learn and laugh in a series of networking events hosted by Pomona.

In November, more than 120 Sagehens braved the rain in Washington, D.C., to attend the College’s third annual “Pomona in the City.” Held at the stunning Carnegie Institution for Science, the event was hosted by Susanne Garvey ’74. Alumni, parents and friends mingled and enjoyed lectures from Pomona faculty Pierre Englebert, David Menefee-Libey, Cameron Munter, Mary Paster, John Seery and Lenny Seligman, and from President David Oxtoby.

Sagehens on the right coast also flocked to the College’s first East Coast Career Networking Series, with events in New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C. The NYC event, hosted by John Popp ’78, was headlined by The New York Times education reporter Richard Pérez-Peña ’84. In Boston, award-winning architect Chris Chu ’76 shared highlights of her career journey (including a feature on HGTV’s “This Old House Boston”), and the series concluded in the Beltway with remarks by Mikey Dickerson ’01, Chief Administrator of the U.S. Digital Service (and subject of fall’s PCM cover story).

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Sagehen volunteers spearheaded a San Francisco Tech Happy Hour, and dozens of alumni and current Pomona students gathered at the City Club for the perennial Los Angeles Finance Networking Event, overseen this year by Meg Lodise ’85.

In December, the Los Angeles Entrepreneurship and Investing Alumni Panel, hosted by Marcia Goodstein ’86 at her Idealab offices in Pasadena, closed out an exciting events season for Pomona alumni and friends.

Thank you to the many Sagehen hosts, speakers and attendees who participated in the success of these spirited events. To be sure you hear about upcoming networking events in your area, bookmark the College events calendar at pomona.edu/alumni/events, join the Pomona Alumni Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/ sagehens and make sure your contact information is up to date by emailing alumni@pomona.edu.

BULLETIN BOARD

Worldwide Happy Hour on March 11

Mark your calendar. The next Claremont Colleges Worldwide Happy Hour is scheduled for March 11, 2015. Held every year in September and March, the Happy Hour brings together hundreds of alumni from all seven Claremont Colleges at dozens of bars and restaurants around the world. Want to make sure there’s a Happy Hour near you? Consider hosting and adding your own city to the list! For more information, contact Lauren Bergeron ’05 at lauren.bergeron@pomona.edu.

Connecting Sagehens

Looking for a useful tool to locate and connect with Pomona alums in your area or during travels? Sagehen Connect has been helping Pomona alums get in touch since fall 2013. This free app is available through the iTunes App Store and Google Play and offers easy mobile access to fun and helpful features such as:

searchable alumni directory
mapped results of nearby alumni
alumni information via LinkedIn
the Alumni Events Calendar
Pomona-Pitzer sports
news, schedules, broadcasts

To get connected, just grab your iPhone or Android and visit pomona.edu/sagehenconnect. Chirp!

Chirp Along With Sagehens on Pomona’s Social Media

Meet up with fellow alumni online for discussions of all varieties, new and “throwback” Pomona pictures, alumni news and events, Sagehen sports and more. Join facebook.com/ groups/sagehens and follow @SagehenAlumni on Twitter to get in on the fun and to share your own Pomoniana (include #47sightings and #pomonacollege in your posts and tweets!).

TRAVEL-STUDY

Hawaiian Seascapes (Big Island to Molokai)

With Geology Professor Rick Hazlett

Dec. 5–12, 2015

Board the Safari Explorer for a seven-day cruise from the Big Island of Hawaii to Molokai, with stops on West Maui and the “private island” of Lanai. Enjoy dramatic volcanic backdrops, marine life sightings, and opportunities for snorkeling, kayaking and paddleboarding. Join Geology Professor Rick Hazlett for this seagoing tour, with a look into the islands’ volcanic origins, history and diversity of sea life. Highlights include a night snorkel with giant Pacific manta rays, a marine life search in the Humpback National Marine Sanctuary and an evening pa’ina (feast) and Hawaiian jam session on Molokai.

From Angles to Angels: The Christianization of Barbarian England

With History Professor Ken Wolf TBA (2015 or 2016)

The eighth in a series of alumni walking trips with a medieval theme, this is the first involving the United Kingdom. Its purpose is to appreciate the fascinating history (captured by the Venerable Bede) of the conversion of the barbarian conquerors of England, starring the Irish and Roman missionaries. In Scotland, you will visit Kilmartin, Dumbarton and Loch Lomond; in England, Lindisfarne, Hadrian’s Wall and Durham Cathedral.

For more information about these or any of our other trips, please contact the Pomona College Alumni Office at (909) 621-8110 or alumni@pomona.edu.

Daring Minds

February 23, 2015 by David W. Oxtoby Comments Off

“THE WORLD NEEDS DARING MINDS.”

davids-letter These are the words I used four years ago to explain why we were then launching a five-year campaign to raise $250 million in support of some very ambitious goals. My point is the same now as it was then: This isn’t just about Pomona. It’s about the future. And it’s about all of us.

Over the past four years, Daring Minds has become more than the name of a fundraising campaign. The words have been adopted by Pomona students, alumni and faculty in various ways as they strive to express what happens here and why it matters. It has caught on among members of the Pomona family, I think, because it captures something essential to the Pomona experience—something that simply feels true to those who have lived this place, directly or vicariously, and taken a piece of it away with them. Pomona is truly made up of men and women who are both highly talented and venturesome by choice, and a Pomona education provides the foundation necessary for such people to grow in confidence and ability and, ultimately, to make a difference in the world. The results, on display in every issue of PCM, speak for themselves.

Of course, when we talk about daring minds, we tend to emphasize the exceptional cases—daring minds, writ large, so to speak. The main features in this issue are no exception. In the field of science, the work of genetic researcher Jennifer Doudna ’85 is now acclaimed the world over, and its ripple effects are likely to touch all of our lives in profoundly positive ways in the years to come. On the artistic side, the creativity of Tony Award-winning playwright, director and producer George C. Wolfe ’76 at the new Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta is bringing the inspiring story of the American civil rights movement to new generations in extraordinarily powerful ways.

But in this issue, you’ll also find people you probably haven’t seen in the media. For instance, you’ll read about David Wang ’09, who is trying to start a conversation about Beijing’s congested transportation systems by teaching small groups of people to build their own bamboo bicycles, and like Celia Neustadt ’12, who is mobilizing teenagers in Baltimore to work with local government to resolve difficult problems in urban development. And as evidence that this isn’t just about recent generations, there’s the story of physicist Richard Post ’40, who at the age of 96 is still using his innovative genius to build something that will improve people’s lives.

My point is that this is about all of us who have been touched through the years by the ethos and the opportunities that are Pomona College. This is about every member of the Pomona family who heeds the famous charge on our gates—to bear their added riches in trust for humankind—and tries to live it day by day. It’s about people who care about our common future and are moved to do something about it, whatever their walk of life and whatever the reach of their actions. It’s about teachers preparing the next generation. It’s about doctors caring for those in distress. It’s about businesspeople seeking to build something beneficial and lasting. It’s about those who strengthen their local communities in any of a thousand ways.

The world needs the daring minds who walk through Pomona’s gates each year, and that makes this college worthy of all of our support. With one year to go to the end of Campaign Pomona: Daring Minds, there is still much to be done for the daring minds of the future. I hope you’ll join us as we work to make Pomona an even better place for them to thrive and grow.

—David W. Oxtoby, President of Pomona College

First Year: Vintage Made Simple

February 23, 2015 by Daniel Gould Comments Off

Bored of your wardrobe? Jonathan Starzyk ’14 might be able to help. For the past year, he’s been busy filling a gap in the world of men’s wear with his o johnathan-starzyck wn online store that sells unique vintage clothes. First created while he was a student at Pomona, Jonathan’s brand, STARZYK, is now based out of his hometown of Chicago. There, he’s working to make the business take root in the city and continue its growth, using creative efforts to connect with local buyers while still reaching style-minded guys across the country.

A CHANCE WORTH TAKING

Jonathan got his first exposure to the fashion world through summer internships with retailers and brands in Chicago, including a stint at international label French Connection. He loved the field’s link between artistic projects and business know-how, but sought more independence than he saw in some of the positions in the industry.

“I wanted to do something that I knew I’d be really invested in,” he says. “I felt like I understood what worked for a lot of these brands and what didn’t, and I wanted my voice to be heard.”

Interestingly, he was also realizing how difficult it was to find cool, distinctive outfits on his own. Thrift store shopping often meant hunting through racks of cluttered items for hours on end, only to go home empty-handed. Meanwhile, looks from better-known shops were quickly snatched up by others with similar tastes, making it hard to stand out from the crowd.

It wasn’t long before Jonathan sensed a way to tap an unmet need while having free rein to pursue his passion. Why not “gamble on myself,” he thought, and start his own venture?

FROM INCONVENIENCE TO OPPORTUNITY

With the help of a fellowship from student entrepreneurship group Pomona Ventures, Jonathan launched his website ShopStarzyk.com in the fall of his senior year. Selling everything from retro jackets and polos to swim shorts and tees, the site simplifies the tedious task of ‘thrifting’ by collecting quality apparel in one convenient source.

Jonathan finds his inventory by carefully combing through estate sales, thrift stores and other vintage hotspots in search of standout items. The selection process is based on a simple but effective rule: only offer clothes that Jonathan and his colleagues would seek out for themselves.

“We take the time to find pieces that we know we’d enjoy, and we think our customer would enjoy,” he says. “The brand is very much an extension of me and the things I like.”

Knowing he someday wanted to run a startup, Jonathan used the flexibility of his media studies major to pick up valuable skills for the fashion field. At Pomona he took courses in digital photography and graphic design, supplemented by a semester in Australia where he studied marketing. The preparation has paid off, allowing him to handle projects like shooting photos for lookbooks and designing his own logo.

“It’s nice to see how much I’ve grown from my learning experiences and how I’ve been able to apply them to a legitimate business,” he reflects.

LET THE CLOTHES DO THE TALKING

Since relocating to Chicago after graduation, Jonathan has been figuring out new ways to meet the challenges of running an online shop, the biggest of which is getting people to check out the product. The company lends itself well to social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, which Jonathan uses to target likely shoppers and define the brand’s look. Still, he says these tactics are just one piece of the puzzle.

“I’ve learned that people want to be able to interact with businesses in any way they can, and that’s hard to do with our online and social presence alone.”

One way to reach out to buyers is through pop-up shops, temporary stands where Jonathan sells his wares in strategic locations like fashion festivals and street fairs. “The idea is to be present, allow for interaction, and let the clothes do the talking,” he explains.

Wherever Jonathan’s current project leads him, friends and collaborators say they’ve come to expect his unique, self-confident style of career building. “Jonathan always has a vision of what he wants, and will go through a very interesting path to get there,” says Hannah Doruelo ’16, a friend from Chicago who interned at STARZYK for a semester to help get the company off the ground. “I really see him as a trailblazer.”

The Power of Quiet

February 23, 2015 by Mark Wood Comments Off

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—MW

Last Look: Creative Spaces

February 23, 2015 by Staff Comments Off

Cabala-StudioArtHall_83A4594

LAST OCTOBER, POMONA opened a stunning new 35,000-square-foot Studio Art Hall that brings together, under a gently flowing roof, a veritable village of indoor and outdoor spaces dedicated to art making, art appreciation and art interaction.

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Designed by wHY architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the building’s exterior is marked by extensive use of glass, which floods the separate studios with natural light. The building’s open and porous design emphasizes connections, with glass walls exposing the various disciplines during the artmaking process and creating a transparent, collaborative atmosphere in which to explore new ideas, materials and artistic production.

Studio Art Hall Classrooms 2014 32

Maximizing the benefits of its sunny Southern California location, floor-to-ceiling windows in many studios frame the expansive San Gabriel Mountains or adjacent oak grove. The arching wood and steel roof echoes the rise and fall of the nearby mountain range and draws parallels to the historic bow-string trussed warehouses that are home to Los Angeles’ thriving art scene.

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“The seeds for new ways of thinking are planted through the serendipitous encounter, the unplanned studio visit and the informal visibility of the workspaces and studios,” says Mark Allen, chair of the Pomona Art Department. “The building’s non-hierarchical gathering of mediums fuels an openness and unrestricted approach to art.”

Studio Art Hall Classrooms 2014 150

“Cross-pollination of ideas cannot occur in walled-off art studios,” says Yantrasast. “The Studio Art Hall’s concept and design reflects Pomona College’s ethos of nurturing innovation and culturally-minded graduates who either stay in the arts or venture into science, humanities or business. This building really could not exist a
nywhere else.”

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Built to the LEED Gold standards of the U.S. Green Building Council, the $29 million Studio Art Hall forges new connections to disciplines beyond the arts. Major program elements are arranged around a central courtyard that accentuates a prominent north-south path through campus. The studios have the capacity to expand the working environment into the natural elements and pedestrian spaces.

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Letter Box

February 23, 2015 by Staff Comments Off

PCM: Thumbs Up

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

—Jerry Parker ’64, Olympia, Wash.

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

—H.G. Wilkes, Hingham, Mass.

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

—Ellen Walden Hardison ’44, Corona, Calif.

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

Keep up the good work and thanks.

—Barbara McBurney Rainer ’53, Carmel, Calif.

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

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

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

Keep up the good work.

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

PCM: Thumbs Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PCM: Thumbs Green

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

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

—Ellen Wilson P’15, Pittsburgh, Pa.

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

Sagehen Senate

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

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

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

—George E. Sayre ’56, Bend, Ore.

Sad News

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

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

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

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

—David Noon, ‘68, New York, NY

Art on Campus

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

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

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

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

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

Art’s price is paid in differing currencies!

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

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

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

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

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

So—Hail, Pomona!

—Mollie Miles, Portland, Ore.

[Calendar Erratum]

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

[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.]

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