Jared Golden ’11 and Ben Cline ’94

After ranked-choice tabulation in Maine, a second ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ alumnus heads to the 116th Congress — national media 

Jared Golden ’11 greets his supporters at the Franco Center in Lewiston late Tuesday night. On his right is his wife Isobel Golden ’11. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

reported Thursday’s breaking news that Jared Golden ’11, D-Maine, had won his razor-close election in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in historic fashion.

He becomes the second alumnus to win a House seat in 2018, joining Republican Ben Cline ’94, elected last Tuesday to represent Virginia’s 6th Congressional District.

Golden’s election took more than a week to decide because neither he nor incumbent Bruce Poliquin got a majority, so the election was decided by Maine’s new ranked-choice voting format.

The , “made history by winning the nation’s first congressional election to use ranked-choice voting, enabling him to erase an initial deficit by securing the second- and third-choice votes of people who cast their ballots for two independents.”

Golden is the first candidate to unseat an incumbent in the 2nd Congressional District in over 100 years.

Golden, a native of nearby Leeds, served in the U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan prior to entering ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝, where he majored in history and politics. Since 2014 he has served in the Maine House of Representatives, representing part of Lewiston.

The two Congressmen-elect become the eighth and ninth ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ alumni to serve in the House since the college was founded in 1855, and the second time two ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ alums have served in Congress together. The first was between 1933 and 1935, when Carroll Beedy and Donald Partridge, both Republicans, represented Maine’s 1st and 2nd districts, respectively.

Marshall Hatch Jr. ’10

Chicago reverend’s plan to build for the future — NBC Left Field

NBC News featured the Rev. Marshall Hatch Jr. ’10, a youth minister at New Mount Pilgrim Church in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood. Hatch founded the Maafa Redemption Project, a residential program for young African American men.

The story by NBC Left Field, the experimental video unit of NBC News, says that West Garfield Park has a far lower life expectancy, due to poverty and violence, than downtown Chicago.

“When you look at all the social determinants, it’s because it’s a food desert, it’s because it doesn’t have high- quality education, it’s ridden with gun violence and drug infestation,” says Hatch, who earned graduate degrees at the University of Chicago after majoring in politics at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝.

In response, Hatch created the Maafa Redemption Project (maafa is a Kiswahili word that means “great disaster” and refers to the transatlantic slave trade) to give young men stable housing, mentors, job training, and identity and purpose development, and, in turn, to strengthen their communities.

According to NBC, more than 90 percent of Maafa Fellows subsequently enroll in community college or work in construction.

“We wanted to see what impact we could have with the young men in our neighborhood if we created an oasis of opportunity.”

Ari Friedlaender ’96 and Doug Krause ’99

The Big Meltdown — National Geographic

In climate change has wreaked on the Antarctic Peninsula’s animal populations, National Geographic’s Craig Welch talked to Doug Krause ’99 and Ari Friedlaender ’96, experts on leopard seals and humpback whales, respectively.

Doug Krause ’99 operates a drone to track leopard seals off the Antarctic Peninsula. (Courtesy of Doug Krause)

As sea ice melts and leopard seals have fewer floes to rest on, they’ve moved closer and closer to land, where they attack and decimate fur seal populations, Krause said.

“What we’re seeing is extraordinary,” said Krause, a research scientist who has visited Antarctica 12 times since 2002. “No one saw this coming.”

Melting sea ice is actually better for humpback whales, said Friedlaender, who’s made dozens of trips to Antarctica since the late ’90s — they have more open ocean and more time in which to hunt for krill, fueling a population boom.

Christa Mulder ’88

‘World citizen’ winds up in Fairbanks — Daily News-Miner

David James of the Fairbanks, Alaska, Daily News-Miner as part of a series on immigrants in Alaska.  

Christa Mulder ’88 is a professor of plant ecology at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks. (Courstey of Christa Mulder)

A native of the Netherlands, Mulder grew up there and in Brazil and Colombia. She majored in biology at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝; earned a master’s in Ontario and a doctorate at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks, and has had academic jobs in Sweden, New Zealand, and, finally, back at the University of Alaska, where she’s a professor of plant ecology.

Mulder says her globetrotting has given her helpful life skills.

“I learned to make friends with people of all different ages, and I also became very flexible,” she told James.

“I don’t think you could have taken me at age 20 and plopped me down on Banks Island in the middle of nowhere with three other people after a several-hour [flight in a Twin Otter] if I hadn’t gone through the experience of being moved around and being plopped in a new place every so many years.”

Kate Gilmore ’97

New art exhibit features videos, interactive art — The Daily Evergreen

The Daily Evergreen, Washington State University’s student newspaper, , an art exhibition that shows women moving into labor-intensive, female-dominated spaces.

The exhibit, which was first shown at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝, consists of “nine videos that are performance-based and a new piece that welcomes the public to use a sledgehammer to make their mark on five steel fabricated cubes,” wrote reporter Madysen McLain.

“I want the audience to engage in the piece, physically and emo­tionally, and I want to remove myself from the work,” Gilmore told The Daily Evergreen.

Tom Lopez ’69

Coaches celebrate banner accomplishments — The Boston Globe

Newspapers throughout Massachusetts, including The Boston Globe and Boston Herald, reported a Tom Lopez ’69 milestone: On Oct. 19, as the longtime head football coach at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.

Lopez is just the fifth high school football coach in Massachusetts to win 300 games, according to .

Showing that he still has football moves, head coach Tom Lopez ’69 dodges players trying to dump him with water after his 300th career victory on Oct. 19, 2018. (MetroWest Daily News and Wicked Local Staff Photo/John Walker)

Following the win against Wayland High School, more than 200 friends and well-wishers unfurled a banner and donned commemorative hats, Globe reporter Jake Caccavaro wrote.

An outstanding end at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝, Lopez won his first game as a head coach 40 years ago, on Oct. 14, 1978, in his first season as varsity coach.

Tom Lopez ’69 poses with his family after winning his 300th game as Lincoln-Sudbury High School head football coach. From left, son-in-law Jim Nibberich, son Mike ’04, daughter Beth Nibberich, wife Nancy, Tom (holding granddaughter Rosie, age 2). In front is granddaughter Lucy, age 5. (Courtesy of Tom Lopez)

He has since led the school to seven Massachusetts Super Bowl appearances and 18 Dual County League titles. Lopez deemed the celebration “very neat,” but told the Globe that his main takeaway from the victory was his team’s higher seed in the upcoming playoffs.

“You’re always looking forward,” he said. “As a coach, you’re always thinking about the next opponent.”

Lopez, who was following the victory, recalled being “very fortunate” to play under coaches like Bob Hatch, Bob Flynn, and Chick Leahey ‘52 at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝.

The Class of 1969, he said, had more than a dozen players on the football team, and “were extremely close-knit, and I’m still close with many of them, and see them on a regular basis.”

Mary Morton Cowan ’61

Q&A with Mary Morton Cowan — Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb

On her blog, author and editor Deborah Kalb about Cowan’s new children’s book, Cyrus Field’s Big Dream: The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable.

The book, written for middle-grade readers, tells the story of Field, who spearheaded the effort to lay a cable from Newfoundland to Ireland — only to see it break down just a few weeks after going live.

Cowan said she used a variety of research methods to learn about Field’s life, from web searches to keeping track of his travel dates on calendars to talking to Field’s relatives to spending “many hours at the ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ College library, not far from my home.”

“I’d like young readers to get a glimpse of a persistent man, and to realize that they too can dream, can aspire to achieve lofty goals, and with perseverance, can achieve them,” Cowan told Kalb.  

Lucy Brennan ’14

VISTA worker tracking town’s energy use — Seacoastonline

Seacoastonline was hired as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer to help the town of York, Maine, study energy data and develop clean-energy policies.

An environmental studies major at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝, Brennan will collect energy use data, create a model using that data, and recommend policies.

She is also the sustainability program coordinator for the city of South Portland, Maine (where she works with sustainability director Julie Rosenbach, who formerly did that job at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝).

Eric Chasalow ’77

The fungus on campus — BrandeisNOW

Eric Chasalow ’77, the Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University, took Brandeis’ media relations director Julie Jette and videographer Tarah Llewellyn on a tour of the school’s campus, with a particular eye on the abundance of mushrooms growing there.

A biology and music major at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝, Chasalow dedicated his professional life to the latter but has an abiding interest in mycology (the study of mushrooms) and foraging. 2018 was a bumper year for the fruit of the fungus; “Chasalow has seen varieties he never spotted before,” wrote Jette.

For Chasalow, “walking and seeking help him create a mental space that helps fuel the creativity needed to compose complex works of art,” Jette wrote.

“It’s finding a meditative space and clearing your head and just taking a walk,” he said. “So if you’re just taking a walk and you’re trying to be meditative, if you find things and it’s a treasure hunt, well, that’s a bonus.”

Evelynn Hammonds L.H.D ’11

National Academy of Medicine Elects 85 New Members — National Academy of Medicine

Evelynn Hammonds L.H.D. ’11, a Harvard professor and ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ trustee, was elected , in which membership “recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.”

Hammonds was elected “for being one of the nation’s most influential historians investigating the relationship of race, science, and medicine, and [for] her work in clarifying the use of the concept of race as it relates to important health disparities.”

At Harvard, she is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, professor of African and African-American studies, and chair of the department of the history of science.

To economists, “creative destruction” is something practiced on a grand scale by capitalist societies as one mode of production is swept away by the next.

But artist Kate Gilmore ’97 might interpret the term very differently. Gilmore has drawn by undertaking creative destruction on a very personal, often individual scale. Through videos and performance pieces depicting a woman’s literal struggle with physical challenges, Gilmore delivers sharp societal judgments cloaked in humor and captivating design.

Her work is messy, cathartic, sometimes cringeworthy, often funny, and always thought-provoking, battering at the structures of power, gender roles, and societal norms.

This summer, visitors to ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ get to experience Gilmore’s work up close and personal — really close and personal, thanks to a new museum commission, a viewer-participation piece involving sledgehammers — as the ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ College Museum of Art opens the exhibition Kate Gilmore: In Your Way on June 9.

Gilmore, who on June 10 will discuss her work and preside over the inaugural hammer attack on her viewer-participation piece, spoke to us from her home in New York City.

You have often been the protagonist in your work, and some of your recent performance pieces have featured groups of women, but not you. And now at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ you’re inviting viewers to take a hand in your work. What will they do?

The work is steel cubes, fabricated in Portland. They’re pink and red, and on gray carpets. There will be sledgehammers available, and every day from one to two o’clock [through Oct. 7], the piece will be open for the public to attempt to destroy these objects.

In the destruction — which is almost impossible because the cubes are steel — they start actually to look pretty spectacular. If people do it for long periods of time it becomes hammered steel, in contrast to these really exuberant colors.

Similar to pieces you had at the New York City gallery On Stellar Rays during the winter.

“” was a big performance piece with female characters on top of metal cubes, pounding to a beat with work boots and brass knuckles. And I did that that you’ve seen on the website.

We changed plans for the show right after the November election, because what I was doing before just didn’t make sense any more — to me at least. I’ve always been somebody who responds to my circumstances and how I view the world, and how it affects our daily existence. That’s really what I’m thinking about in my work.

A frame from the 2011 video “Sudden as a Massacre” by Kate Gilmore.

You’re not going to see a picture of Donald Trump on the cubes that we’re destroying or anything like that, but my work has definitely been influenced by our new situation. Steel seems to be the best material for how I’m feeling right now — just in terms of where we are in our society right now, that kind of anger and rage.

It’s not unusual for things to get broken and messes made in your work. As an aesthetic device, how does damage work for you?

The idea of people rising up or tearing down structures that are holding them back is still really relevant. And whether you’re talking about gender, or sex, or race, or class — OK, it’s really about who has the power and who doesn’t. So I would just say that damage and destruction and rage continue to be a very important language for me.

How do you stay safe while doing your pieces? Have you injured yourself?

Just cuts and scrapes and stuff. You know, I don’t do anything that’s beyond my physical capabilities. Getting hurt is not part of the piece! For some people, that becomes part of their language, but it’s really not for me.

You started out in sculpture, then moved to videos that you’ve performed in. Then in 2010, you made a piece where seven women in yellow dresses moved around on top of a big yellow cube — for 10 hours a day. That was “Walk the Walk,” presented in Bryant Park for New York City’s Public Art Fund. That was your first live public project and your first project that you didn’t appear in.

That commission was for a big outdoor sculpture and live performance. I was petrified, I didn’t know what to do. I was like, “How am I going to do this? I’m so used to doing that.”

For “Roll in the Way,” a work responding to the machismo of artists like Richard Serra, Kate Gilmore dipped more than 500 pieces of wood in paint and placed them on this platform.

And then, I did it — and it changed my life and offered me a whole different perspective and way of making work. It’s allowed sculpture to come back for me in a major way, and it’s allowed me to be an observer of the work, as opposed to always being the participant.

So that’s been really exciting, and this way of working has become really important to me. I haven’t made a video in a couple of years because I’ve been focused on these performances and the sculptures. But I’m going to make a couple new videos.

You also developed pieces where spilling or splashing paint, or paint that looks like trickling blood, is an important element.

There’s always been a robust conversation about paint in my work because my videos are very painterly — the way I layer color and action within a canvas-like frame. So I just started to think about paint directly. And then the actual material of paint offers this great physical action — if you put paint in something and you break the thing, it explodes, right? Then you have this proof of an action because of the remnants of the color.

And then, thinking about painting in terms of the art world and art history, and the weight that it’s given, and [mythologized macho] male painters like Jackson Pollock — thinking about them, and then forcing the female body into making work. All of those things came together and that’s why I started doing it.

Why is humor important in your work?

Beauty and humor can be used in a very similar way. You can make people feel comfortable, and they spend time and relax, and then you can give them the undercut — you know, while they’re feeling comfortable, hopefully force information onto them. So that’s how I use humor and, I would say, aesthetics.

I’m very invested in the language of humor. That’s how I communicate in general. I can’t remember who said this first, but you can say whatever the hell you want if you’re funny!

You teach at Purchase College. How does your education at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ inform how you teach, or does it?

ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ was really important because it gave me this really strong liberal arts background — I was a double major with art and history. So I have ways of making work that combine all these different things, while maybe someone from more of an art school background will just be very invested in making work and then the other stuff comes later.

How I teach is definitely very conceptual. It’s very influenced by current events, history, and political systems. ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ has allowed me to offer more than just an art education to my students.

You’re going to be at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ for your 20th reunion. What does it mean to you to show your work at ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝?

I was very Olin Arts Center-centered. I was just in the studio all the time. I was very focused on what I was doing. ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ is really important to me, so I’m really happy to show there. It’s nice that what I do is being supported.

A frame from Kate Gilmore’s 2004 video “My Love Is An Anchor.”