Winter 2013 – News

�ֲ��ý in Brief Sightings: First-years return from AESOP excursions in Maine

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:53:55 +0000

Gearing Up!

Will a week in the wild prepare you for �ֲ��ý? Right after their AESOP pre-orientation trips returned to campus Aug. 31, and with traces of untamed Maine still upon them, these first-years posed for photographer Phyllis Graber Jensen. They returned with pots, pads and even some leftover pasta sauce — not to mention new skills, freedoms and friends.

About the Cover: �ֲ��ý–Morse Mountain in winter

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:54:16 +0000

Winter 2013 �ֲ��ý Magazine cover photograph by Will Ash.

The cover of the Winter 2013 issue features a photo of grass tendrils poking out from the snow at �ֲ��ý–Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

The image, by photographer Will Ash, is among several dozen published in the book Between Two Rivers: A Year at �ֲ��ý–Morse Mountain.

The photograph invites readers to the essay “Beauty and the Brain” by Laura Sewall, director of �ֲ��ý–Morse Mountain and a pioneer in the field of ecopsychology.

When climbing, ‘nothing else matters,’ says Chester Chiao ’13

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:01:20 +0000

Photographer Phyllis Graber Jensen stopped by the climbing wall at Merrill Gymnasium recently and asked Chester Chiao ’13 of Taipei, Taiwan, pictured here, why he climbs.

Chester Chiao ’13 trains on the rock wall in Merill Gymnasium. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

What are you doing in this picture?
I am training for endurance: keeping myself on the wall as long as possible.

Why do you climb?
I ask myself that question when I am 500 feet above ground on a vertical rock face, freezing my butt off, knowing that I am two-hour drive away from my cozy bed and delicious Commons food!

I climb because it helps me discover my limits, face my fears and overcome them. It also teaches me how to be both physically and mentally in check.

“Nothing else matters until you get to the top.”

The summit is what we strive for, but the process to it is extremely rewarding. I am in a completely different environment in the vertical world, and nothing else matters until you get to the top.

Last but not least, the people you meet along the way and the stories they share about their adventures has also attracted me to the climbing community.

How does climbing fit into your �ֲ��ý life?
My buddies and I always look for adventures on the weekends — trying to get on multi-pitch climbs in North Conway, N.H., or pulling on hard sport climbs in Shagg Crag, about 15 miles east of Bethel, Maine.

Does your style differ from other �ֲ��ý climbers?
I am smaller than most climbers at �ֲ��ý (and the rest of the world). I have to come up with different “beta,” ways or sequences to do a certain climb, and be more dynamic to reach faraway holds.

Why climb shirtless?
Climbing without a shirt is a big part of the bouldering culture. They say it makes you climb harder. Maybe that’s true, or maybe they just want to show off their back muscles. I took my shirt off because it was really hot in the gym, and I didn’t have another shirt to change into before dinner. Plus, I’m too scrawny to show off anything.

Mellnick ’95 and Peterson ’09 meet each other, and Lenin, in Tajikistan

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:27:28 +0000

Vlad and Us

It didn’t take long for Keith Mellnick ’95 and Grif Peterson ’09, attending a horse festival in Murghab, Tajikistan, to ID each other not only as �ֲ��ý grads but as former denizens of adjacent rooms in Smith Hall.

They marked their meetup some 6,300 miles from �ֲ��ý with this photograph, showing them flanking the city’s Lenin statue that’s left over from Soviet days. (Grif’s cap sits atop Lenin’s head.)

Peterson, who blogs for The Huffington Post, is an academic affairs officer for the Univ. of Central Asia, an ambitious new university set to open campuses in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in the coming years.

Keith Mellnick ’95 and Grif Peterson ’09. Photograph courtesy Keith Mellnick ’95

Mellnick is a freelance photographer and writer who posts at his blog, .

Afterwards, Mellnick headed west to report from Khorog, the site of recent armed clashes between government forces and local groups still at odds since the country’s civil war in the 1990s.

By the time he arrived, the city was quiet, yet buildings splattered with bullet holes revealed what had gone down, as did the presence of soldiers in the streets.

Soon, Mellnick was stopped, his bag searched and prodded with the muzzle of an AK-47. The soldiers demanded to know what he had photographed.

So Mellnick turned himself into Boring Travel Guy, showing each photo on the camera’s LCD display and narrating in excruciating detail: “Here’s my hotel in Murghab. This is the cat that fell asleep on my lap. This is the yurt in which I slept in the Pshart Valley….”

The trick worked, wearing out the soldiers, Mellnick reports. “After examining my passport, they told me to find another road and not to pass that way again.” — HJB

�ֲ��ý in Brief World: Taking photos in the Saudi desert

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:01:44 +0000

What She Saw

A group of Saudi boys cavort for the camera during a desert outing. Photograph by Gintare Balseviciute ’13

The ubiquity of photography, thanks to the digital revolution, hasn’t diminished our curious fascination with one kind of camera: the pro-style, single-lens reflex camera.

That partly explains the boys’ euphoria in the photo above, taken by Gintare Balseviciute ’13 last May during a Short Term trip to Saudi Arabia.

While other students snapped away unnoticed with their pocket cameras, these boys cavorted, wrestled and posed for Balseviciute’s Canon SLR. “When they saw the Canon, it was as if they saw a Lamborghini,” Balseviciute says.

The trip to Saudi Arabia was led by Dana Professor of Anthropology Loring Danforth and largely facilitated by Leena Nasser ’12, a politics major from Dhahran.

A rare hijab-free mingling of the genders on the Saudi plains. Photograph by Ana Bisaillon ’12.

One excursion was to a desert farm in the Eastern Province, where the farm’s owner and family feted and entertained Danforth and the 16 �ֲ��ý students.

A rare hijab-free mingling of genders on the Saudi plains.

After camel rides, live music and good food, the �ֲ��ý group headed into the desert in white Toyota Land Cruisers for sand duning, followed by coffee and dates.

At the gathering, the �ֲ��ý women got the OK not to wear their abayas, so the photo above, and the image at right by Ana Bisaillon ’12, also show a rare hijab-free mingling of genders on the Saudi plains. “Not only are the kids seeing Americans, they’re seeing female Americans. And they’re seeing female Americans in Western dress,” Danforth says.

For Nasser, the image conveys other meanings. “Their clothing and the space may reflect the geography, but their spirits in the picture transcend the individual cultural experience,” she says. “I see hope and potential.” — HJB

World Facts

Facebook page African Economist by Desmond Mushi ’13 got 2,000 likes in first month.

Viewers from 28 countries tuned in for the livestream of President Spencer’s installation.

�ֲ��ý publishes a guidebook for students returning from off-campus study.

2013 Short Term course revisits an oral history initiative with orphans of Rwandan genocide.

“English, French nor Malagasy can describe my experience studying rare eagles on uninhabited islands.” — student in Madagascar

Unusual Fun

“Many prestigious independent schools in Britain have internships, usually linked to sport,” says Michael Bettles P’13, an administrator at Heathfield Community School, a state secondary school in Taunton, U.K. “I could see the benefits that the interns bring to those institutions, so I thought: Why should they have all the fun?”

“Why should they have all the fun?”

Thus inspired, Bettles worked with the �ֲ��ý Career Development Center to grab some of the fun for �ֲ��ý and his own institution. The result: performing-arts internships at the Tacchi-Morris Arts Centre, affiliated with Heathfield, that were inaugurated last summer by a current �ֲ��ý student and a 2012 graduate.

“This partnership is exciting because it provides a paid professional internship abroad in the arts, which is unusual,” says Nancy Gibson of the BCDC.

�ֲ��ý Spoken Here

Of �ֲ��ý’ approximately 24,500 alumni, about 580, or 2.4 percent, live outside the U.S. This snapshot taken right before the Mayan end of the world in December shows their numbers and countries.

79
England

67
Canada

49
Japan

23
Germany

22
France
Switzerland

21
Netherlands

15
China

14
Australia
Brazil

13
Sweden

11
India
Singapore

10
Pakistan

9
Greece
Nigeria
Spain
Thailand

8
Ecuador
South Korea

7
Italy
Turkey

6
Hong Kong
New Zealand
Vietnam

5
Cameroon
Malaysia

4
Austria
Bermuda
Israel
Mauritius
Nepal
Norway
Romania
Scotland
Zimbabwe

3
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Jamaica
Mexico
South Africa
Sri Lanka
United Arab Emirates

2
Argentina
Bangladesh
Belgium
Costa Rica
Denmark
Egypt
Finland
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Kenya
Myanmar
Peru
Philippines
Saudi Arabia
Slovakia
Trinidad and
Tobago

1
Albania
Bahamas
Bosnia-Herzegovina
British Virgin Islands
Chile
El Salvador
French Polynesia
Georgia
Ghana
Guatemala
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Latvia
North Korea
Northern Ireland
Panama
Portugal
Russia
Scotland
Senegal
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Ukraine
Venezuela
West Indies
Wales
Yugoslavia

Letters: Winter 2013

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:57:46 +0000

By about a 10–1 margin, readers approved of the �ֲ��ý Magazine makeover that debuted with the Spring 2012 issue. Some said the perfect binding — rather than saddle stitched — makes the magazine hard to keep open. Hint: The binding is more malleable than you might think! Sample comments:

Outstanding job! As an enthusiastic alum (and a long, long-retired IBM manager of graphic design), I “happily pronounce” the new number intelligent, inviting and a joy to both read and behold. An encore may well present a challenge, but the timing for Clayton Spencer’s arrival is exquisite. Heartiest congratulations.

Jonas Klein ’54
Falmouth, Maine

We’re on the beach in Florida reading �ֲ��ý Magazine. It is fantastic.

�ֲ��ý Parent
By phone

I have mixed feelings about the new format for �ֲ��ý Magazine. It doesn’t read easily from left to right, given all the marginal notes, boxes and extended captions. It reminds me of The One-Page Magazine feature in The New York Times magazine. The �ֲ��ý format is better, but not much. Overall, I think it’s trying too hard to be cute or different, but it’s always good to see if there’s a better way than “the way we’ve always done it.”

Lyn Whiston ’66
Glen Ellyn, Ill.

More redesign comments at bates.edu/magazine/redesign/reactions. — Editor

Lofty Perspective

The aerial campus photo (“From a Distance,” Spring 2012) vividly reminded me of what �ֲ��ý has meant to me.

In 1994, I arrived with great intentions of becoming a physician. Two pivotal events that fall allowed that path to change — for the better.

First, President Donald Harward welcomed us by urging us to “pursue paths of ambiguity.” What I took from this speech was that �ֲ��ý was ready for us to experience life in new ways we hadn’t even yet imagined.

Second was meeting Stuart Abelson ’97, president of the �ֲ��ý Aviators. Full of contagious energy and excitement, Stuart urged me and other flying enthusiasts not only to join the club, but also to try an introductory flight at the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport.

I did, becoming enamored with flying that fall even as I discovered my shortcomings in chemistry. I considered leaving �ֲ��ý to attend an aviation-specific college but stayed to pursue my own paths of ambiguity.

I majored in Spanish, spent a year abroad in Costa Rica (where I met my wife) and wrote a thesis in Spanish literature with the gracious guidance of Professor Baltasar Fra-Molinero.

After earning my private pilot’s license (and floatplane license at Twitchell’s Airport in Turner), I frequently took �ֲ��ýies on aerial tours of campus and Maine, working at Security and Campus Safety and Twin Cities Air Service to support this new passion.

My post-�ֲ��ý life found me pursuing my passion. After several years as a flight instructor and charter pilot in New England, life brought my wife and me to the paradisiac island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, where I flew a nine-passenger propeller plane on short flights between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Now a Canadair Regional Jet captain for a Delta Connection carrier, Pinnacle Airlines, I still look back very fondly on those formative days as a pilot, �ֲ��ý student and citizen of the world.

Thanks for putting together a great magazine. Thanks to �ֲ��ý for encouraging students to be themselves and open their eyes to the world.

David Tzeutschler ’98
St. Paul, Minn.

In his letter, Rocky Query explains the misgivings about the GI Bill in 1944 that President Spencer alluded to in her inaugural address. While the union of excellence and opportunity embodied in GI Bill was old hat for �ֲ��ý, the return of older servicemen and their families to �ֲ��ý did shake up the campus scene, as suggested by the cover photo of the May 1947 Bulletin, showing Joseph LaRochelle ’44 and his 1-year-old daughter, Mary Jo — now Mary Jo LaRochelle McBride-Beece ’68.

“Hobo Jungles” Explained

I read President Clayton Spencer’s inaugural address, “Questions Worth Asking,” with great interest and appreciation.

In her address, President Spencer comments on the importance of the GI Bill in expanding educational opportunities for a diverse pool of human talent. She contrasts that legacy with fears expressed by Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago at the time of the GI Bill’s passage, who said that “colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles” as a result of the act.

Some might take from this quotation that Hutchins did not share President Spencer’s belief in the importance of openness and opportunity in higher education.

On the contrary. In his 1944 essay in ��Ǳ��’s, from which the “hobo jungle” language is taken, Hutchins notes that U.S. higher education has been the “preserve of the relatively rich,” and notes hopefully that the GI Bill seeks to incorporate “into our national policy the principle that there must be no relation between the education of a citizen and the income of parents.”

What, then, were the concerns Hutchins had with the GI Bill?

He explained that because “educational institutions, as the big-time football racket shows, cannot resist money,” they would be distracted from a commitment to their mission by the revenues to be gained from the GI Bill.

Colleges, he said, “will not want to keep out unqualified veterans; they will not want to expel those who fail.”

Further, Hutchins worried that the principle of educational opportunity embodied in the GI Bill would be discredited when educators faced students more concerned with vocational assistance than a liberal arts education. And he worried that such students might feel defrauded by receiving an education ill-suited to helping them find employment.

Today, some universities have indeed taken on aspects of Hutchins’ feared hobo jungle, as students seek educational credentials not out of intellectual curiosity or commitment to academia but because they need jobs. Today’s applicants to �ֲ��ý seek the benefits of the college’s commitment to an excellent liberal arts education, but they are also concerned with the price and affordability of the education they are paying for.

Hutchins’ concerns still seem valid, even as institutions like �ֲ��ý have avoided the demoralization he feared. I suspect he would, in fact, be heartened by the optimism reflected in President Spencer’s approach to today’s important educational questions and by the enthusiastic response she has elicited so far from the �ֲ��ý community.
James “Rocky” Query
Philadelphia

President Spencer’s inaugural address is at bates.edu/inauguration. Read about Nate Boone ’52 and the GI Bill on page 52. — Editor

Blue Bobcats

Our statement that no Blue Devil from Lewiston High School “in recent memory” had played baseball for �ֲ��ý before Mekae Hyde ’15 and Alex Parker ’15 joined the team last year prompted a couple letters.

“Recent memory” probably is right, but my not-so-recent memory contains the following:

Larry Quimby ’52 was the son of Professor Brooks Quimby and Inez Robinson Quimby, both Class of 1918. He graduated from Lewiston High, and I played with him — he was an excellent pitcher. His senior thesis was on the history of baseball.

Dave Harkins ’53 was an excellent catcher on our team, and a Lewiston High graduate.

Fred Lebel ’53 was a good player who was at �ֲ��ý for a year or so, at a time when freshmen couldn’t play varsity sports.

Jim Moody ’53
Cape Elizabeth, Maine

The late Norm Parent ’50 was a legendary Lewiston High School football coach and Lewiston High grad who played on the 1946 Glass Bowl football team in addition to baseball.

Marc Levasseur ’84 was a LHS grad who played baseball when the baseball field was where the Village is now. And Matt Madden ’87 played baseball; his son Chris ’16 is now at �ֲ��ý.

Jim Taylor
Lewiston, Maine

Taylor is head athletics equipment manager. — Editor

Please Write

We love letters. Letters may be edited for length (300 words or fewer preferred), style, grammar, clarity and relevance to college issues and issues discussed in �ֲ��ý Magazine.

Email your letter to: magazine@bates.edu

Or post it to:
�ֲ��ý Magazine
�ֲ��ý Communications Office
141 Nichols St.
Lewiston ME 04240

�ֲ��ý in Brief Lewiston: Many and One turns 10, Bobcats in the community

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:40:47 +0000

Many and One, Plus 10

January saw the 10th anniversary of one of the most heartening shows of humane thinking — a joyous pro-diversity rally at �ֲ��ý that drew thousands.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

The January 2003 event in Merrill Gym grew out of a letter that Lewiston mayor Laurier Raymond sent to Lewiston’s growing Somali community the prior October. Claiming that their presence was depleting municipal resources, Raymond asked Somali elders to discourage friends and relatives from coming to town, predicting that continued immigration would mean “negative results for all.”

Sparking widespread outrage, the letter was welcomed by one tiny constituency: a Wyoming-based white supremacist group who saw it as an invitation to hold a rally in Lewiston for their cause.

A determined group of local citizens would have none of that, though. “This is not who we are, and we have to make sure people know that,” said the late Dean of the College James Carignan ’61.

So under the banner of the Many and One Coalition, organizers mounted a counter-rally that drew 4,000 to �ֲ��ý — Somali residents, �ֲ��ý folks, justice activists and top Maine politicians — with John Jenkins ’74, a former mayor of Lewiston and Auburn, serving as master of ceremonies. Drawing national attention, the rally inspired related programming that included church vigils around Maine.

The supremacist rally across town, meanwhile, drew about three dozen participants.

The anniversary was noted this winter with a commemorative event organized by Welcoming Maine, an immigrant-advocacy organization founded by Sarah Davis ’10. — DLH

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

Close to Home

Jenny Bergeron ’14 of Lewiston can rest assured: She already knows she’ll be heading to medical school.

Bergeron, a biochemistry major, is the first �ֲ��ý student accepted to the Tufts University School of Medicine’s Early Assurance program, guaranteeing her a spot in the med school’s class of 2018 after she graduates from �ֲ��ý next year.

Bergeron will join Tufts’ Maine Track program, reserved for �ֲ��ý, Bowdoin, Colby and UMaine graduates. �ֲ��ý students do “very well” gaining admission through Maine Track, says Karen Daigler of the �ֲ��ý Career Development Center, ticking off a number of recent grads now at Tufts.

Established in 2008 as a partnership between Tufts and Maine Medical Center, Maine Track includes clinical rotations in rural Maine. The program seeks to train more doctors to serve rural Maine, where, according to state data, only 39 percent of residents have a primary care physician. — HJB

Lewiston Facts

�ֲ��ý students make up about 5 percent of Lewiston’s population.

�ֲ��ý is the third largest employer in Androscoggin County.

When �ֲ��ý needs to remove building furniture temporarily, a Lewiston moving company stores it.

President Spencer ate at a local brew pub, Gritty McDuff’s, on her first visit to �ֲ��ý.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

Lasting Memories

Museum L-A offers a compelling set of online oral histories that reflect the craftsmanship and expertise of shoemakers from Lewiston-Auburn’s once-thriving shoe industry. Below is some of what the late Bernard Charest had to say about the art of hand-sewing shoes:

If you want to become fast at anything, you have to eliminate all the wasted movement, and that’s how Marcel Grondin taught me how to become a fairly decent, fast hand-sewer. You start knocking down the movement, you start speeding up the time.

Dick McBride taught me how to read the leather, how to feel it, how every piece of leather is different. It’s a living thing, and he taught me how the leather talks to you, tells you what it wants to do, how it’s going to come out well.

You may have part of the [upper] that’s going to stretch more than the other part, so you may have to cut some off this side, or purposely last it a little crooked, because leather has a memory. You have to learn how to listen to what it’s telling you, and you can make pairs of shoes that last forever.

Museum L-A oral histories

Give and Go

Besides their more visible exploits on the field, Bobcat athletes support numerous nonprofit programs in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Free youth clinics
Women’s track, basketball, alpine skiing, softball, baseball, men’s lax, tennis

Good Shepherd Food-Bank
Men’s lax, football, rowing, field hockey

Tree Street Youth and Hillview housing youth programs
Soccer, baseball, squash

Team IMPACT
Softball, squash, tennis, men’s basketball teams “adopt” children facing life-threatening illnesses

Trinity Soup Kitchen
Tennis, men’s soccer

Holiday support for families in need
Softball, baseball, men’s lax, squash

Athletic equipment donation
baseball, men’s lax, men’s soccer, alpine skiing, athletic department

Lewiston High School Science Fair
Men’s lax, tennis

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Read-in
Football

Lewiston Adult Learning tutoring and 5K fundraiser
Nordic skiing

Youth swim lessons
Swimming

Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund
Men’s soccer; $7,000-plus raised for dependents of 9/11

Maine Premier Soccer Inner-City Initiative
Men’s soccer

Youth camp scholarships
Golf

Dempsey Challenge
Field hockey, women’s lax, athletic department

Rebuilding Together L/A
Athletic department

�ֲ��ý Field Day
All 31 teams; nearly 300 children participated last year

Editor’s Note: Winter 2013

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:39:31 +0000

H. Jay Burns, Editor

In the �ֲ��ý Outing Club meeting room, there was some uncertainty about the provenance of their decades-old gear — the Windsor benches, road signs, the kayak suspended from the ceiling.

This was in January, right before the BOC’s big move from Alumni Gym, its home since 1929, into renovated space in Chase Hall.

Take the vintage photo of women in formalwear. It depicts not Southern debutantes, as some BOC members thought, but the queen of a �ֲ��ý Winter Carnival.

This lapse is understandable. BOC leaders turn over every semester (and the student body every four years), slowly rinsing away historical knowledge.

Plus, as �ֲ��ý anthropologist Elizabeth Eames points out, our society relies on the written word to preserve history. The BOC’s own publications and meeting minutes notwithstanding, an oral society would tend to pass down the meeting room’s history through various “spoken, visual or kinetic” rituals, says Eames.

Long ago, �ֲ��ý history was imparted through such “age-grade” rituals, “difficult yet meaningful” initiations where elders shared �ֲ��ý knowledge with newcomers.

Back then, new students learned history during the hazing rite called “Freshman Rules.” The venerable Harry Rowe delivered a signature lecture on �ֲ��ý traditions, a practice kept up on a smaller scale by recently retired administrator Bill Hiss ’66.

Actually, it’s not essential for a group to know the history of something it reveres, says Eames’ colleague Loring Danforth.

For example, the origin of the club’s beloved “Ma Bell” award, a mangled remnant of a bicycle that goes to the BOCer who survives a risky experience, has several versions. The correct one is that Laird Allen ’83, biking in Auburn in 1981, rear-ended a telephone truck while wearing a Bell helmet, hence “Ma Bell.”

The BOC reveres the Ma Bell Award the way someone might value hearing Mass in Latin, “without understanding the words,” Danforth said.

Meeting-room items aside, kudos to the BOC for generally being keenly aware of its place in �ֲ��ý history, thanks to adviser and elder Judy Marden ’66 and BOC alumni who remind the club of its traditions and responsibilities in Maine.

Beyond the BOC, students learn �ֲ��ý history from professors who use the robust resources of the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library in their coursework. And the athletics programs turn to the Archives to reify Bobcat history.

How �ֲ��ý’ past will influence our future is a hot topic this cold winter.

First, alumni engagement (volunteerism and fundraising) depends on students becoming alumni who understand �ֲ��ý history.

Second, President Spencer invoked our history of “standing firmly on principle and encountering the world with energy and confidence” during her inaugural address. This �ֲ��ý “mindset” readies us to “engage robustly and effectively with the forces that are reshaping our world.”

In that spirit, this issue offers stories about both the past — looking at Benjamin Mays ’20 and about the Gomes Chapel — and current concerns, including our ecopsychology-inspired cover essay about beauty, mindfulness and nature; and our take on Spencer’s inaugural message.

H. Jay Burns, Editor
magazine@bates.edu

Opening Thought: Emily Kane

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:29:56 +0000

“Gender is not a straightforward amplification of underlying biological differences between males and females; rather, gender is constructed through social processes and enforced through social mechanisms.” — Emily Kane, Professor of Sociology

From Emily Kane’s book The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls (NYU Press, 2012).

�ֲ��ý in Brief Arts & Culture: Astrophotography in Northern Maine

�ֲ��ý Magazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:19:40 +0000

Shooting Stars

By Doug Hubley

On the first night of a backwoods workshop dedicated to night-sky photography, the weather was clear and a motionless pond mirrored the heavens.

“I spent a few minutes just looking down into the lake,” says Will Strathmann ’13, of Newtown Square, Pa. “I got the same feeling of seeing the sky. I had a little vertigo, and it was very surreal, but stunningly beautiful.”

“Surreal, but stunningly beautiful.” Photograph by Will Strathmann ’13

Strathmann captured that beauty in the panoramic photograph shown above. He was one of 10 students, faculty and staff in the �ֲ��ý workshop held at West Branch Pond Camps, nearly four hours north of campus and some 10 miles east of Kokadjo, Maine.

Leading the workshop was Babak Tafreshi, a journalist, photographer and champion of the night sky. Born in Iran, Tafreshi was one of the artists in Starstruck, the 2012 �ֲ��ý Museum of Art exhibition that was one of the first to treat astrophotography as an artistic genre.

Photograph by Babak Tafreshi

“Being in the right place at the right time.”

Images by Tafreshi, who photographed the circular “fisheye” image above and whose clients include National Geographic, frame the night sky with the ground-level landscape, a genre called landscape astrophotography. “The trick,” he says, “is being in the right place at the right time.” Hence the workshop location: First West Branch Pond, ringed by mountains and trees, for that framing effect.

Still better is its freedom from the light pollution that obscures the stars in so much of the developed world. With an open sky for three of the workshop’s four nights, the lack of light pollution “let us see the Milky Way very stunningly,” says Tafreshi, as well as usually invisible phenomena such as zodiacal light, a faint heavenly glow around sunrise and sunset caused by space dust reflecting the sun’s rays.

Sacrificing shut-eye for shutter time, the group shot all night and spent the daytime editing their digital images. Tafreshi explains that landscape astrophotography can be done with quite ordinary, if judiciously chosen, gear — namely good tripods and fast, wide-angle lenses. “You need to get the use of any photon arriving at your [camera’s] sensor,” he says.

In between shooting, editing and catnaps, the �ֲ��ý group enjoyed the hospitality of camp proprietors Eric Stirling ’97 and his wife, Mildred Stirling. The business has been in Eric’s family since 1910. “I would go back just for the food,” says Megan Lubetkin ’16 of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who does time-lapse and star-trail photography.

But all in all, there would be plenty to go back for. “It was just so serene,” says Lubetkin. “The lake was so pristine, there was no one else around, and it was just untouched. It was perfect.”

Arts & Culture Facts

In October, singer Dev’s concert rider asked for cough drops, sugar-free Red Bull and beef jerky.

Faculty composer Hiroya Miura premiered a work based on cosmic radiation patterns.

Trumpeter James Jhun ’16 played a fanfare for President Spencer’s arrival at the Inaugural Reception.

Artist-in-residence Dawoud Bey will set up studio in a former Lewiston mill building during Short Term.

A dance by professor Rachel Boggia incorporates video of her father training a horse.

Rhythm-n-Roots

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

Kirsten Pianka ’13 of Cleveland performs the dance “Rhythm-n-Roots” last fall, choreographed by guest artist Robin Sanders.

Sanders taught her �ֲ��ý dancers classic hip-hop techniques like popping and tutting, and related hip-hop to traditional West African dances.

A Little Afternoon Music

An assignment to write music for a college president’s inauguration is an honor, for sure, but can be fraught with more than the usual load of expectations.

Esty Professor of Music William Matthews, photographed by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College

William Matthews, the Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music, has composed music for three inaugurations at �ֲ��ý and one elsewhere. The music must be something, he says, “that can be performed by undergraduates with limited rehearsal time, will inspire a lay audience, will please the dedicatee, reflects musical styles of our time and reflects our institutional values.”

For President Spencer’s Oct. 26 installation, Matthews composed a setting for “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” a Wallace Stevens poem that Spencer selected. Scoring it for the college’s orchestra and choir, he included a neat twist to emphasize the “world” concept: recitations by three students in their native languages, Urdu, Nepali and Korean. — DLH

Winter 2013 – News

�ֲ���ý in Brief Sightings: First-years return from AESOP excursions in Maine

About the Cover: �ֲ���ý–Morse Mountain in winter

When climbing, ‘nothing else matters,’ says Chester Chiao ’13

Mellnick ’95 and Peterson ’09 meet each other, and Lenin, in Tajikistan

�ֲ���ý in Brief World: Taking photos in the Saudi desert

World Facts

Unusual Fun

�ֲ���ý Spoken Here

Letters: Winter 2013

Lofty Perspective

“Hobo Jungles” Explained

Blue Bobcats

Please Write

�ֲ���ý in Brief Lewiston: Many and One turns 10, Bobcats in the community

Close to Home

Lewiston Facts

Lasting Memories

Give and Go

Editor’s Note: Winter 2013

Opening Thought: Emily Kane

�ֲ���ý in Brief Arts & Culture: Astrophotography in Northern Maine

Arts & Culture Facts

Rhythm-n-Roots

A Little Afternoon Music

�ֲ��ý in Brief Sightings: First-years return from AESOP excursions in Maine

About the Cover: �ֲ��ý–Morse Mountain in winter

�ֲ��ý in Brief World: Taking photos in the Saudi desert

�ֲ��ý Spoken Here

�ֲ��ý in Brief Lewiston: Many and One turns 10, Bobcats in the community

�ֲ��ý in Brief Arts & Culture: Astrophotography in Northern Maine