Robert M. Chute of Poland Spring is the winner of the 2001 Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Poetry Competition. Peter Manuel of Portland won second prize and Carl Little of Mount Desert won third prize. More than 200 poems were entered into the annual competition. Maine's poet laureate Baron Wormser judged the competition. Chute taught at Bates College for many years. He won the Chad Walsh Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal in 1996 and the Maine Arts Commission Chapbook Award in 1986. His most recent chapbooks are "Sweeping the Sky" and "The Thirteen Moons," a three-language edition featuring English, French and Passamaquoddy.

For retired Dean of Students Judith Isaacson '65, forgiveness is a concept she has long thought about. After all, there is so terribly much to forgive. Isaacson's entire family, with the exception of her mother and her aunt, were killed in the Holocaust. They were among residents of a region that saw 95 percent of its population annihilated within nine months. Scroll down to the third story to read this Maine Times feature:

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) Bates College said Tuesday it has received a $1 million gift and pledge from the Orr Family Foundation to support a visiting professorship honoring the late human rights advocate Benjamin Mays. Mays was a 1920 Bates graduate and longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. He influenced a generation of civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Orr Family Foundation was founded by James Orr III, a Bates trustee and former chief executive officer of UnumProvident Corp. The Mays Distinguished Visiting Professorship will support varying terms of appointment in different fields of inquiry for visiting faculty of national and international recognition, the college said.

Irving Isaacson '36 is spending a half million dollars of his own money to help others. And the others aren't the rich and famous; rather, they're the young and active, those with a love of the arts, and those who are getting old and frail. Isaacson's L&A Fund has paid for a library-based children's festival, for computer training for elderly folks, and for long-distance telephone cards to help older people living on fixed incomes keep in touch with their friends and families.

Among the important papers crossing President Bush's desk in the coming weeks will be a recently approved Senate resolution posthumously nominating Benjamin Mays '20 for Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

Peter Morgan Goodrich '89 was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 on September 11, 2001.

Former Lewiston mayor and onetime state senator John Jenkins '74, confirmed Nov. 28 that he will enter the race for governor of Maine. Jenkins said he will formally announce "within the next couple of weeks" that he will run as a publicly financed independent candidate. He is the only African-American in the race and, if elected, would become the first African-American governor in the state's 181-year history. With Jenkins in the race, there are now two Republicans, two independents and one Democrat vying for the Blaine House.

In Kenya, Robin Symonds '72, followed seven vervet monkeys around on a 40-acre farm, jotting down on her clipboard what they ate, how they groomed and slept, and whether they walked on their hands, fingers or knuckles.When she lived in Oakland, Calif., she conducted whale watches off the California coast.In her 51 years, Symonds has lived in Milford, where she was born; on Martha's Vineyard; in Oakland; in Western Massachusetts; in Keene, N.H.; on a farm in Naivasha, Kenya, two hours north of Nairobi. For Symonds, always a free spirit, life has never been boring. Now, as director and manager of the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science, Symonds and her staff want to make sure visitors, too, are never bored.

As a group, the victims of September 11th are eligible for billions of dollars in compensation from the government. Some families of those killed in other terrorist attacks say they have been unfairly left out. Washington, D.C., attorney Karen Hastie Williams '66, represents 12 families who lost loved ones in the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. Says Williams: "You have the same mastermind, bin Laden, using his network to terrify and murder these individuals, and the only difference is that it happened thousands of miles away in Africa. There is a very serious issue of fairness and equity here."

Bates Anthropology Lecturer Bruce Bourque has received high praise for comprehensiveness as as co-author of "Twelve Thousand Years: American Indians in Maine," recently published by the University of Nebraska Press. "This is a part of the world that hasn't had a whole lot of synthesis," said William Fitzhugh, director of the Arctic Studies Center at the Natural History Museum in Washington. "There have been bits of work on culture and time periods. But Bruce has a great handle on understanding early history and native relationship with Europeans. The important aspect of this new book is that it is so immersed in the whole history - archaeology and ethnohistory - of the whole region."

Distinquished federal judge Frank Coffin '40, says why Lewiston-Auburn is close to his heart.

Steven M. Brackett '85, the partner and managing director at Ironside Ventures LLC, knows about making a difference. The firm, which he co-founded in 2000, has a $180 million portfolio and invests mostly in companies developing combinations of technology and software. Brackett says, "We're not just making money; we have the ability to make a change in how technology is developed in the market." In addition to his work, Brackett finds the time to volunteer at such organizations as the Reaching Back foundation, which funds a wide range of charities, and the Brackett Family Foundation, which supports disadvantaged children.

Until there's a standardized college-admissions test that measures persistence, creativity, sensitivity, curiosity, and ethical seriousness, who needs tests? Not Bates College, writes William C. Hiss, the college's vice president for external and alumni affairs.

Jennifer Bowman, Bates' head volleyball coach and assistant softball coach, tells The Baltimore Sun what a great role model Cal Ripken has been and how he "just embodies the game itself and how it should be played."

In 1995, Nicholas A. Basbanes '65 proved there was a market outside the realm of hard-core bibliophiles for books about books. What made A Gentle Madness a commercial success was the fact that Basbanes, a longtime journalist and a book collector himself, profiled the collectors in his first book with a sharp and affectionate eye for their passions and quirks. Now Basbanes, of North Grafton, Mass., has done it again with Patience and Fortitude (HarperCollins), a vivid history of book collecting.

Eugene Schiller '70 began thinking of cities more than 30 years ago, when he was studying urban sociology and political science at Bates College in Maine. Since 1992, Schiller has been a deputy executive director at the Southwest Florida Water Management District, or Swiftmud, where he directs the annual budget process and supervises finance, human resources, information resources, risk management and general services.

Robert Merritt '05 of Worcester, Mass, launched TheRightBean.com, which offers detailed information about each coffee selection, a monthly "featured bean" and region of the week. For the truly wired, Merritt blends humor into every Web page with famous coffee-infused quotations. There are 53 varieties of fresh-roasted coffee available at about $10 a pound, including Sumatran Mandheling, Merritt's favorite, and French Vanilla, ...

A Lewiston Sun Journal essay remembers the late Peter Goodrich '89.

Brian Arsenault '69, senior v.p. for corporate communications and investor relations officer at Banknorth Group talks about some of the people he dealt with regularly by phone in New York, who most likely have perished in the World Trade Center terrorist attack.

Vice President for External and Alumi Affairs Bill Hiss is interviewed on the racial gap in SAT test results.

During the interview, Nabrit refers to his senior thesis: "During the summer of 1950, after my sophomore year, I went to see Thurgood Marshall in New York and talked with him about my Bates senior thesis, which I eventually wrote on the litigation against school desegregation, and I corresponded with him during those years."

Peter Carlisle '92, founder and CEO of Carlisle Sports Management, a small Portland-based sports agency, scored huge.

Along with his twin brother, Edwin Rambusch '88 runs the four-generation, family-owned Rambusch Company. The enterprise specializes in providing lighting, liturgical arts and architectural restoration services. The brothers' work in the family business has been featured in some of the country's most prominent structures.

Stephen Doppler '79 was appointed president and chairman of the Board of Directors of Sun River Mining, Inc. He's a principal with Switchback Venture Group LLC.

Artist Jason C. Tamthai '98 holds first solo exhibition in his native Thailand.

Bates anthropologist offers insights on historical impact of fishing

OAKLAND, Calif., Jul 23, 2001 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- How do Indian students with scarce resources consistently outscore U.S. students in math and science? A Bates alumnus using a new alumni travel grant intends to find out. Ian Bleakney '91, a science teacher and department chair at Merritt College High School, a small public high school, in Oakland, Calif., was recently awarded the 2001 Barlow Alumni Travel Grant from Bates College. The grant will fund Bleakney's travels to India this summer where he will study teaching strategies and administrative methods in the city of Pune.

Benjamin E. Robinson III '86 is featured in a story about the growing number of chief privacy officers in corporate America. "As chief privacy officer of MasterCard International Ltd., he is the keeper of all manner of sensitive financial information about MasterCard carriers," the story says. Companies like American Express Co., Sony Corp., Citigroup Inc. , International Business Machines Corp. and several hundred others have appointed their own privacy chiefs. It's the chief privacy officer's job to keep a company out of hot water -- whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion. These executives help their companies avoid consumer litigation, assess any risks to customer privacy and develop Internet privacy policies. They also create systems that handle and resolve consumer complaints and make sure new products don't threaten customer privacy.

Martha Elbaum '84, is featured on becoming the new executive director of the East End Children's Workshop in Portland.

Jane Calderwood '83 was named Maine Senator Olympia Snowe's chief of staff. She succeeds Kevin L. Raye, also '83.

Author and illustrator Matt Tavares '97 published his senior art thesis as the best-selling Zachary's Ball (Candlewick Press, 2000), a children's book filled with black and white drawings and simple text that portray a young boy's fantasy life at Fenway Park. Tavares' lifelong dream of working with the Boston Red Sox has now materialized in the form of the Sox endorsing his book. Teaming up with the ball club, Tavares is promoting the Massachusetts Teachers Association/Red Sox Reading Game for Children. Pitcher Derek Lowe is featured holding Zachary's Ball in commercials, bookmarks and posters.

Bates Professor of Music James Parakilas comments on the meaning of ethnic music for immigrants.

"Witchblade" co-star David Chokachi (also known as David Al-Chokhachy '90) admits he has started reading the comic book on which his series is based. "I was never into comics as a kid," says the 32-year-old whom People magazine named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world. Now, "I must have 40 of them around my apartment." As Jake on "Witchblade," which airs at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on TNT, Chokachi plays a cohort to Sarah Pezzini (Yancy Butler), wielder of said 'blade, the ancient instrument of power to stomp out evil.

An Eastport native, Kevin L. Raye '83 toured the Bangor Daily News and other media outlets Friday to announce his candidacy. He noted recent U.S. Census figures that depict a drain of younger workers out of Maine. Five of the 11 counties in the 2nd District lost a significant number of people between 1990 and 2000 and Raye seeks to reverse the trend.

Bates Vice President Bill Hiss and alumna Lien Le, now at Dartmouth Medical School, are interviewed about the good results Bates has experienced since making the SAT optional -- a move proposed for the entire University of California system.

"As a small boy, Benjamin Elijah Mays (Bates '20) watched a group of white men ride into his rural Greenwood County, S.C., yard on horseback, hold his father at gunpoint and force him to bow down before them over and over. Mays decided through that experience and others that the only way to achieve freedom and equality was to get an education."