Blog Articles

Everything Must Go!

June 13, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Before moving on, Pomona’s Class of 2012 first had to move merchandise and shed accessories. So, for weeks before this year’s Commencement, the daily Student Digester turned into a swap meet laden with “SENIOR SALES!” We looked past the expected futons and floor lamps for the finer things, listed here with the original asking price:

• Tempur-Pedic pillow: $40
• Half-used 3.4-oz DKNY perfume: $10
• Top hat: $10
• Chin-up bar: $15
• Cocktail shaker: $5
• “The cutest toaster you’ll ever see”: $10
• Pioneer PL-530 Turntable: $120
• NFL Fever 2004 for Xbox: $9
• Ski goggles: $15
• Pair of sake cups: $8
• Mosquito net “that you can hang over your bed to make you feel like a princess”: $10

Professor’s Praise Launched Prolific Children’s Author

June 7, 2012 by Sneha Abraham Comments Off

Children’s author Barbara Brooks Wallace ’45 has racked up more than her share of awards and rave reviews in a career spanning five decades. And, at 89, she’s still at it, with the Cinderella-themed Diary of a Little Devil released in December and another book in her Miss Switch series coming in the fall.

But she hasn’t forgotten her shaky start. Wallace, who today lives in a retirement home in McLean, Va., credits her success to an initially-nerve-wracking encounter with her freshman-year English professor at Pomona College.

Wallace had always pleased her high school teachers. But at Pomona she came to realize she was prone to “flossy” overwriting and for the first time in her life, she was making C’s on papers. Then English Professor Charles C. Holmes called her into a meeting.

“He pushed my two essays across his desk and said, ‘There really isn’t much I can say to you.’ My heart nearly stopped because my immediate thought was that my writing was so bad, there was no hope for me,” Wallace says.

His next words stunned her: “If these were done by a professional writer,” Holmes said. “They’d be good enough for The New Yorker.”

Holmes went on to tell Wallace to continue taking English and writing classes—advice she heeded some years later. But first she transferred to UCLA, majored in international relations, got married and had a son. It was her sister Constance Brooks Schindehette ’43 who reminded Wallace of Professor Holmes’ advice.

Wallace enrolled in a creative writing course at Santa Monica City College, and eventually tried using her childhood in China as a setting for a fantasy children’s story—resulting in a book that Wallace says was terrible. “But that story hooked me on writing for children, so that’s what I’ve done ever since.”

Claudia, the tale of an 11-year-old girl overcoming the ups and downs of that age, was Wallace’s first published book.

She has earned acclaim ever since. Praised by the American Library Association, The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews, Wallace has been honored with two Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America for The Twin in the Tavern and Sparrows in the Scullery. She also earned the NLAPW Children’s Book Award and International Youth Library “Best of the Best” for Claudia.

Her many works include Victorian-era mysteries, fantasy novels, a biography of her mother, her autobiography, picture books, teleplays and musicals. The Trouble with Miss Switch and Miss Switch to the Rescue were made into Saturday morning animated specials for ABC, both of which were the highest-rated films in the TV series.

Wallace’s latest book is Diary of a Little Devil, a Cinderella-themed story (“No handsome prince, but a happy ending nonetheless!”) of a young girl, Andy, whose widowed father remarries someone with twin daughters who—once they all return to their home in China—make life miserable for Andy.

Between shooting a YouTube video of her reading a chapter from Diary and preparing for the fall release of Miss Switch and the Vile Villains, this octogenarian is keeping at her keyboard. “What’s next for me is to go on writing one way or another,” she says. —Sneha Abraham

Students give vinyl records a spin at KSPC

April 23, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Digital rules these days in commercial radio, but the turntables are still turning at KSPC (88.7 FM). Last Friday, the campus radio station held a “Vinyl 101” workshop to “encourage students who didn’t grow up with records to get to know” the medium, says station director Erica Tyron. “There are a lot of things that we have that were never re-issued digitally.”

While visitors hung out and played old records from the station’s still-extensive collection, Tyron noted that some students find working with LPs a tad intimidating because of the direct contact with the surface of the record: “People just get nervous that you’re going to break something.”

Not so for jazz deejay Nathan Schauer ’12, who likes records, in part, because they make it easy to play a particular part of a song. When Schauer was growing up, his dad sometimes played LPs, but “I never really knew how vinyl worked until I started here.” He is one of the roughly 30 percent of KSPC deejays who still make use of the vinyl collection. And with the medium’s recent comeback, the station is even seeing more new releases arrive in LP form these days.

Still, for student deejays the thrill is often found in thumbing through the well-worn album sleeves of yore. “It’s a lot of fun to just find something,” says Ella Schwalb ’14, who has an underground music show. “You don’t really know what to expect.”

Letterbox

September 12, 2011 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Brain Disorders Not for Laughs

Alexander Gelfand’s story, “The Exploding Piano,” about Kathleen Supove ’73 expressed well Supove’s excitement and joy in new music. The energy she brings to her “more inclusive, accessible vision of the piano recital” speaks well to her years of the experimental late ’60s and early ’70s at Pomona. But one recital reported didn’t seem very inclusive.

Although I overlapped her, graduating as a music major in 1969, I don’t remember Kathleen Supove. I suspect neither of us, at that time, would have blanched at “crazy” jokes. But the world is better and

“more inclusive” now. I hope we are both better and kinder now, and that the description of the “show” in Montclair, N.J. where she “came on stage wrapped in a blanket, holding a broom as a pretend rifle, and proceeded to act like a crazy person,” was merely media hyperbole.

One person’s political correctness, is, I suspect, another’s abiding grief. I have a mental illness, but don’t like being called “crazy”; and my daughter, who has schizoaffective disorder, and acts paranoid occasionally, but able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, would not find such an impersonation funny. May we all come to the point where we don’t find “crazy” jokes funny anymore, and where we treat those afflicted with brain disorders with the respect their courage deserves.
—Mary Elgin ’69
Altadena, Calif.

Tower Article Rings Bells

Your article about the Smith Tower carillon (“Old Chimes, New Times”) in the winter issue moves me to make a confession:

An acquaintance was running for freshman class president. A group of his supporters decided to hang a campaign sign atop Smith Tower. I said I could shoot an arrow over the tower, trailing a length of monofilament fishing line. My second shot was true. We started to haul up our nylon rope. Damn! The 6-lb. test line broke. One strand was not enough. We made an eight-strand monofilament hank, capable of supporting more than 47 lbs. The new plan: one strand over the tower with an arrow, then the eight-strand hank, then a rope, then the sign.

In the early hours of Monday, Nov. 13, 1961, we began hauling up our 47-yard long monofilament hank. Oh, no! The wind carried strands into the clock hands, which seemed to reach out and ensnare our makeshift rigging.

Pull! Tug! Yank! Nothing moved except the minute hand, which flexed ominously. Not wanting to leave evidence, we jerked once more. The minute hand suddenly ratcheted from two to six. Time to go!

Worried, we dispersed at 2:47 a.m. Events the next morning confirmed our worst fears. The carillon erupted with seemingly endless chimes. I could see several strands of monofilament wafting from the clock hands, glowing brightly in the fall sunshine. I began to contemplate Life After Expulsion From Pomona.

Agonizing minutes later, I learned the real purpose of the carillon serenade. The previous night, Pomona had vanquished Washington and Lee University on the General Electric College Bowl TV program. Smith Tower was summoning all Sagehens to a rally for the team, which previously had demolished Amherst, Hood, U. of Washington and TCU. With five wins they had retired the huge silver trophy.

A few days later the monofilament disappeared. The clock was reset. I exhaled. The 47-year statute of limitations has expired, so I am now willing to share this story.

—Lew Phelps ’65
Pasadena, Calif.

I enjoyed reading about the ringing of the Smith Tower chimes on the 47th minute of the hour. As a Smiley freshman I walked by the tower countless times on the way to and from Frary, and my friends and I frequently pulled on the heavy metal door in hopes of finding it unlocked. No such luck … until one night, the door moved!

After dinner and under cover of darkness, Jody Wally ’90 and I returned to the tower, sneaked inside and closed the door. It was almost pitch black, but we could make out a narrow, winding staircase attached to the wall, Vertigo-style. Unfortunately, a locked door on the stairs about 8 to10 feet up blocked passage. The only way around it was from the ground, by boosting and pulling each other up through a small opening on the stairs beyond the door. After a successful bypass, we climbed the stairs all the way up, where they ended at a landing underneath a long ladder attached to the wall. The ladder took us up through a hatch and outside to the platform under the bell. The view was fantastic, and it was a thrill to be up there.

We found it curious that conversations and sounds from below sounded much closer than they were.Who knows, maybe ASPC could hold a fundraising raffle for a guided tour of Smith Tower?
—John Kyl ’90
Phoenix, Ariz.

Females in Frary

Regarding “Prometheus Refound” in the winter issue, it will probably come as a shock to you, but I and numerous female cohorts dined with Prometheus in Frary during 1944–45. Clark Hall housed women during World War II and I was one of them. How long women lived in Clark, I am not sure. We had a dorm mother in residence, and Dean of Students Nicholl and Mrs. Nicholl inhabited an upstairs apartment in Clark, too.

I think the winter 2011 issue was really outstanding.

—Patricia Collins Stanley ’46
Fallbrook, Calif.

There’s More to Spanglish

I am writing in response to the letter (winter 2011 issue) from Robert L. Dennis, Jr. ’69 about Spanglish. As a Spanish major, not only have I read Scenes from la Cuenca y otros Natural Disasters, but I have also taken many classes with the author, Professor Susana Chávez-Silverman. Throughout my studies, I have become aware of many different definitions of Spanglish. While Dennis offers one of many older definitions, a more progressive and inclusive one can be found in Paul Allatson’s Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural Identity Studies. Allatson states that Spanglish “designates the many Spanish-English dialects spoken by many millions of Latino/as.” Its meaning in day-to-day practice is in flux, an ongoing discussion. However, it is clear that Spanglish exists on a wide “interlingual spectrum” in which speakers shift back and forth between Spanish dominant and English-dominant grammatical structures and vocabulary. Therefore, Chávez-Silverman’s “foray into Spanglish” is not just a foray, but a political choice that forces members of the mainstream to accept and include what could be called a “hybrid language” into popular culture. Spanglish is not only used by mainly Spanish-speaking people affected by a “combination of dislocation, poverty, and [a] lack of education.” It exists on a wider plane that Chávez-Silverman seeks to make visible. She makes Spanglish acceptable—not something to be ashamed of—which is something remarkable in and of itself.

—Gabrielle Kelenyi ’13

47 Sighting

2011 is a landmark year for our favorite number. It was 47 years ago this summer that two intrepid mathematical pioneers, about to begin their first year at Pomona, set out to prove—with tongue in cheek— that 47 shows up randomly in nature more often than any other number. Since that time, 47 has taken hold of the collective imagination of Sagehens. This semester, the College celebrated the 47th anniversary of 47 with birthday cake, giveaways, general hoopla and a 47-second video tribute that

you can see online at vimeo.com/pomonacollege/47.

Winter sports report

August 31, 2011 by Ben Belletto Comments Off

Winter Sports at Pomona College

Men’s Basketball

9-16 overall, 4-10 SCIAC, seventh place
The team finished second in the conference in scoring defense. Xavyr Moss ’13 finished first in 3-point field goals made and fourth in the SCIAC in scoring (13.9). Jake Klewer ’14 finished first in offensive rebounds and third in the conference in total rebounding (7.5). Moss was named to the All-SCIAC first team.

Women’s Basketball

4-21 overall, 2-12 SCIAC, seventh place
Emi Hashizume PI ’14 was second in freethrow percentage (85 percent) and ninth in the conference in scoring (11.9). Emily Van Gulik ’11 finished the season third in rebounds (8.6), 10th in field goal percentage (44 percent) and 17th in scoring (9.3). Neha Savant ’14 finished fourth in assists (3.1) and 17th in rebounding (4.8).

Men’s Swimming & Diving

5-2 dual meet record, third place
The team was led by Max Scholten ’12, who finished first in the 100-and 200-meter backstroke at the SCIAC Championships and was also the runner-up in the 50-meter freestyle. Scholten went on to garner All-American recognition by finishing eighth in the 100-meter backstroke at the NCAA Championships. Other All-SCIAC performances were turned in by Tyler Oe ’14 (three-meter diving), J.P. Cumming ’13 (500- and1650-meter freestyle) and by the team in the 200- and 400-meter medley relays, and the 400-meter free relay, which set a new school record.

Women’s Swimming & Diving

5-2 dual meet record, fourth place
All-SCIAC performances included a third-place finish for Alex Lincoln ’14 in the 200- meter freestyle. The team garnered a second-place finish in the 800-meter freestyle relay and finished third in the 400- meter freestyle relay, setting a new school record in the process.

Talk of the Campus

August 31, 2011 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

“THE MINUTE YOU REALIZE that the people in my generation and above are doing just about everything with our positions of authority but solving your problems, the minute you stand up, like you stood up in 2008, and make history with literally just your feet marching into voting booths, the minute you stand back up again, we’re going to have a different country. And it’s critical you understand this.” –Van Jones, activist and author of The Green-Collar Economy, speaking to students in Edmunds Ballroom in January as part of the Pomona College Distinguish Speaker Series.

“THERE’S A TRUE SCHIZOPHRENIA where if you say to voters, you know, ‘Do you think the federal government spends too much money and they should spend less?’ They say, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ Then you name specific things like Pell Grantsfor students and they say, ‘No, not that.’ How ‘bout NIH, medical research funding? ‘Nah, you really shouldn’t cut that.’ And pretty soon you prove that what the American public is against is arithmetic.” —Bill Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN AN ADVOCATE of going out and registering, finding like-minded people and getting them ready to vote and getting that voting bloc together and that is the way we’re going to change it. You can make as many rallies as you want … you know, all the flag-waving and the rest. And that didn’t get us anything, did it?” –U.S. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez of Orange County, Calif., speaking in March at a Cesar Chavez Day event in the Smith Campus Center.

“THE MEDIA IS LIKE … a dome that settles over this country. We’re isolated in the sense that the media is controlled by corporations, the advertising is the objective, making money and also controlling the information. And I think to get inside that is impossible on a good scale, on a big scale … It’s a roof. It’s like an Astrodome you can’t get through.” –Filmmaker Oliver Stone speaking in Rose Hills Theatre in February after a screening of his documentary South of the Border.

Honors / Alumni Distinguished Service Award

August 31, 2011 by Laura Tiffany Comments Off

Pat Newton ’51 has dedicated her life to improving her community. Lucky for Pomona College, she didn’t stray far from her alma mater. Newton married her husband Sanford, a Claremont McKenna graduate, just two days after Commencement. “Four years later I had four kids,” says Newton. “We’ve been married 60 years this June and I’ve been involved with Pomona College most of that time.”

Newton began her service with the Alumni Relations Office during her five-year reunion and hasn’t quit since. In addition to her involvement with every reunion in some manner, she’s participated in countless phone-athons and made many calls in between—especially during reunion years. She chaired the Annual Fund Alumni Network, a committee that coordinated ways to get alumni involved on campus both financially and as volunteers, and is currently finishing a three-year term on the Pomona College Alumni Board.

Newton is this year’s recipient of the Alumni Distinguished Service Award, which is bestowed annually in recognition of selfless commitment and ongoing service to the College.

“The College has benefited greatly from Pat ever since she was a student here,” says Craig Arteaga-Johnson ’96, director of Annual Giving. “It’s not just her generosity of time and energy. She is warm and friendly and a real can-do person.”

Newton says one of the reasons she enjoys her volunteer work is the chance to be on campus and she has lived nearby in Pomona in the same house for 49 years. “Most of the time, I’ve been the oldest person on the Alumni Board. First couple of times I did it, it was intimidating.

But they’ve all been very generous. And I’ve enjoyed the fact that they’re all brighter than heck and enthusiastic and work hard at what the Board does to ensure the relationship of the alumni to the College.”

Pomona isn’t Pat’s only community service passion. She has been involved in Girls Scouts her entire life, including being a leader while on campus at Pomona. She served on local Scout boards and committees, was the local council president, and spent five years on the national board of directors. She’s also involved internationally, raising funds for a small center for older girls in Mexico.

Her service to United Way was recognized with a Gold Key Award in the 1970s and both she and her husband worked with the Jaycees.

She and a group of community members founded a volunteer center in Pomona in the 1970s that assisted organizations in finding long-term volunteers and developing boards and committees. She is also a longstanding volunteer and board member with Mt. San Antonio Gardens. Newton still works with the Girl Scouts and with the Fairplex Friends, which supports the L.A. County Fair in an ad hoc way, including raising funds to provide buses for local school children to attend the fair.

Newton’s husband Sanford was a Realtor in Pomona for his entire career. While their children attended colleges other than Pomona, two of Newton’s grandchildren are Sagehens: Michael Bergeron ’05 and Christopher Bergeron ’14.

“I feel fortunate that I was able to go to Pomona,” says Pat, whose father Howard Wickersham attended Pomona and graduated in 1924. “There was no doubt in my mind where I was going to go to college. I didn’t apply anywhere else!”

Martial Awe

August 31, 2011 by Mark Kendall Comments Off

Martial Awe As a boy growing up in Chicago, Laurence Pommells ’11 begged his mother for a year before she agreed to sign him up for martial arts lessons. Looking back, he doesn’t begrudge her. She just wanted to make sure he would stick with it.

Mom needn’t have worried. From the age of 7, Pommells has been wrapped up in the martial way of life, practicing, over time, tae kwon do, Shaolin chu’an fa kung fu, capoeira and more. “I kept at it because I enjoyed it,” says Pommells, who has worked as an instructor at a Chicago-area kung fu studio. “I loved the form, I loved the discipline. It spoke to me, it spoke to my soul.”

From the start, Pommells drew inspiration from the 1985 Berry Gordon film, The Last Dragon, in which a young Black man “goes on a quest to discover a master to take him to the highest level in the martial arts only to discover the master he was looking for was within himself.” In his own life, Pommells went on to encounter a multiracial cast of instructors and students as he pursued various forms of Asian martial arts. Still, by the time he reached high school, a thought was hanging at the back of Pommells’ mind: “Are there any African martial arts?”

Of course there are. History, he notes, is the story of war and conflict, and every culture has its fighting systems. As he settled in at Pomona College and settled on a major in Africana studies, Pommells began to take a systematic look at the African continent’s many forms of martial arts, which range from ancient

Egyptian fighting systems to Zulu stick fighting. For a Summer Undergraduate Research Project, “Discovering African Martial Arts,” he visited and interviewed instructors in Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit. Later, he attended a conference, put on by Detroit-based instructor Kylindi Lyi, on the relevance of African martial arts today.

Pommells is particularly interested in capoeira, an African-rooted fighting system that was introduced to Brazil by enslaved Africans. The use of music, an emphasis on improvisation and the absence of a definitive ranking system set capoeira apart from some other martial arts that are familiar in the U.S. “It is a different feeling when I practice capoeira,” he says. “It makes me feel closer to my ancestors. My spirit—I can feel something welling up inside of me.”

Graduating this year, Pommells plans to go on to graduate school for a degree in Africana studies—and he plans to keep at a mixture of martial arts to stay in the right frame of mind. “When I stop, my grades fall,” he says. “When I practice, my grades rise again.”

In Class With Professor Victor Silverman

August 31, 2011 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

For tonight’s meeting of Professor Victor Silverman’s seminar class on California history, students were assigned to read architecture critic Reyner Banham’s influential 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. An unabashed fan of L.A., the chipper British academic viewed the city through distinct “ecologies”:

Surfurbia (the coast), the Plains of Id (Los Angeles Basin), the Foothills and Autopia (the freeways). But his real innovation, Silverman points out, was in the way Banham looked at Los Angeles architecture in a broad sense, giving hot dog-shaped eateries consideration along with highly-regarded landmarks such as the Modernist Eames House. In this abridged and adapted snippet of discussion, the class takes a happy detour into the quintessential L.A. topic of traffic.

SILVERMAN: Maybe we can turn now to Banham himself and to looking at what he is arguing …What did you think of the book?

LAUREN: I thought it was really interesting because it portrays Los Angeles in a positive light. Being from Los Angeles, I get a lot of crap for that. (Laughter from the class.) He looks at things that tend to be viewed in a very negative light and shows why they can be positive and how they really work in Los Angeles and how they help define it.

SILVERMAN: So what is it about L.A. that he likes that’s different than the usual?

MATT: Well, I’ve only been to L.A. proper twice. He likes L.A. for reasons I don’t like L.A. L.A. just seems vast and it’s loud and it’s smoggy and it’s kitschy. You have Hollywood and you have people in costumes …

LAUREN: Hollywood’s not actually like that. It’s one street that’s like that …

MATT (to laughter): That one street has affected my entire view … It really was not my thing but [Banham] comes through and says, well, that’s what makes Los Angeles so cool because it’s not like any other city. It doesn’t fit any archetype. I had no idea about the Watts Towers. He introduced me to the city in a way that made me step back. He takes you through the back alleyways. He shows you all these very cool architectural buildings. It made me want to see more. I want to understand L.A. for what is.

JAY: Last year I was driving on the freeway—10—to downtown L.A. I really enjoyed it because I was stuck in traffic and I’m like, OK, now I’m in L.A. It confirmed my existence in L.A: I’m in traffic, finally I can tell my friends about it. I was taking pictures of buildings around me, freeway signs. That’s a prime example of what I enjoy about L.A. There are freeways and exits all over the place. It’s just fascinating to me. And he just captures the essence of it.

SILVERMAN: Where does Banham say something that really captures that? Right in the first couple pages, right? … “The language of design architecture and urbanism in Los Angeles is the language of movement,” which is directly contradictory of what you’re saying Jay, which is that the language of Los Angeles is being stuck in traffic. (Laughter.) He goes on: ‘Mobility outweighs monumentality there to a unique degree and the city will never be fully understood by those who cannot move fluently through its diffuse urban texture … So like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive to read Los Angeles in the original.” … So then, what about the freeways?

LAUREN: If you’re from here, you just grow up with it, so it’s normal. I don’t mind traffic. It’s part of Los Angeles and [Banham] accepts that and kind of embraces that. It just becomes a part of how he’s explaining Los Angeles and why it’s different and it’s just a big part of how people function.

SILVERMAN: It’s not just how [people] function. Banham makes it one of the ecologies as well, thinking about the freeway as its own place as opposed to a means of getting from one place to another. And the fact that it’s the one ecology that is everywhere makes the freeway central to his overall point—just as it’s central to what makes L.A. L.A.

Senior Seminar on California History

The Professor

At Pomona since 1993, Professor of History Victor Silverman teaches classes on topics ranging from the labor movement to the U.S. role in the Middle East to drugs and alcohol in modern society. He earned his Ph.D. in history from UC Berkeley. An Emmy-winning filmmaker, he is also the author of three books and many articles. His latest book, California: On-the-Road Histories, will be published this summer.

The Class

From the European conquest to the current stalemated government, Californians have contended with a series of upheavals often at a great human cost. This upper-division reading seminar offers students a chance to learn the current scholarship about this tarnished Golden State.

Reading List

Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936, by Lisbeth Haas
Indian Survival on the California Frontier, by Albert Hurtado
Americans and the California Dream, by Kevin Starr
The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California, by Richard Walker
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, by Reyner Banham
Suburban Warriors—The Origins of the New American Right, by Lisa McGirr
Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States, by Gilbert Gonzalez

How I Became a Football Hero for One Day

August 31, 2011 by Dave Rearwin '62 Comments Off

I joined the frosh football team by accident. The day of the first team meeting, a group of jocks stopped by my room to pick up my roommate, a standout on his high school team. I looked up from my book as they came in, then retreated back to the pages. At the door, the group paused.

“Well, aren’t you coming?”

Since I was the only one left in the room, I deduced that this was directed at me. Obviously they didn’t know my history—the perennial klutz, the kid who had failed kickball in elementary school, who was always chosen last if at all—but who was I to enlighten them? This was a ticket to guydom; there was no way I was going to miss out. I got up and went.

The team was filled with tough-looking athletic types, warriors all. Some of the guys looked like they needed to shave twice a day. Working out in the weight room, they would load up the bar with gigantic steel platters, muscles bulging, veins standing out like swollen fire hoses.

In the midst of all this jockery, I was a cross between a pipecleaner man and Gumby. I tried manfully to do my part, but everything had to be scaled down. What they used for wrist curls challenged me for bicep curls. On the field I resembled, as one teammate so elegantly put it, “a giant daddy longlegs spider running around.”

Game day! Second half. Our lads are defending a narrow lead, the other team has the ball and they’re driving hard. I’m on the bench, right where I’ve been the entire season. An incomplete pass has left the opponents with third and long. Our defensive end, making a herculean effort to break up the play, has injured himself. Out he comes, one arm dangling loosely, face contorted with pain. The coach has no choice. He looks at me with a mix of desperation and distaste.

“Get in there, Rearwin. Don’t get fancy, just make sure they don’t run outside.”

He foregoes the usual pat on the back or ass given to the more stalwart backups. Probably doesn’t want to get spider juice on his hand.

I line up at right end, near the sideline. The count, the snap. Sure enough, the opponents recognize a weak spot on the defensive line and the play heads right toward me. The ball carrier, a tough, conditioned mass of bone and sinew, strides confidently and begins to turn the corner.

He’s protected by what seems like an entire regiment of blockers. Snorting like war-horses, heads scanning left and right looking for someone to hit, they gallop in my direction amid the pounding of cleated feet and the leathery clatter of pads.

And suddenly it dawns on me—I’m so hopeless-looking that I’m being ignored! The first blockers sweep by me. I can smell the mix of liniment and aftershave and a hint of forbidden tobacco as they churn past. Between them and the next blocker is a gap, and in the gap is the runner, eyes downfield. In his mind, he’s past me.

Instinct kicks in—a mutation of the instinct that allowed tiny proto-mammals to survive in the age of dinosaurs. I execute a clumsy leap, landing on the ball carrier and wrapping around him like a squid on a sperm whale. It’s a desperation grab: eyes closed, teeth clenched, face squinched up in anticipation of a thrashing. There’s a smack like sides of beef colliding, and my helmet is ripped from my head. In a moment of selective auditory clarity, all other sounds disappear while I listen to it bouncing hollowly across the dried-up turf.

The whistle blows, the play is over. The magic moment passes and my senses return to their normal settings. I get up, retrieve my helmet, go back to my position. Tackled for no gain—they have to punt.

The coach calls me back to the sideline. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he says, stone-faced.

I don’t remember anything else about the season, probably because I didn’t have much to do with it. I practiced, worked out, showered, sat on the bench. And then it was over, leaving me with a new self-confidence. I had held the line. And there was more: I was part of a group. The football guys were members of a universal fraternity of maleness, and I had been allowed to join. Not as a full member, of course, but as a provisional temporary associate member, junior grade. That didn’t matter. I had nowhere to go but up.

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