Hannah Johnson-Breimeier '06 hasn't slowed a wit since she graduated from Rufus King High School last spring. Only now she's busy in Maine, fighting social injustice, studying hard and playing intramural soccer at Bates College. Last February, Johnson-Breimeier was highlighted in a story on high school students with schedules that would overwhelm a Palm Pilot. Everything and nothing has changed for the 18-year-old. When we first met her, she played weekend soccer, was involved with several student organizations and studied Latin at a local university. Johnson-Breimeier swore she didn't do these things to attract college interest. She's made good on her word.

Schools must more effectively reach out to parents of failing students, Anne Wescott Dodd told Wisconsin Public Radio host Kathleen Dunn. Visiting senior lecturer of education at Bates, Dodd appeared on Dunn's program with Jean L. Konzal, of the elementary and early childhood education faculty at The College of New Jersey. Co-authors of "How Communities Build Stronger Schools" (St. Martin's Press, 2002), the two discussed ways of cultivating closer relationships among home, school and community in order to better serve children's educational needs. Schools, Dodd said, need "to be more creative about finding ways both to make these parents feel comfortable when they come to school, make them feel welcome, and also to get them connected without their having to come into a building where maybe they had a terrible educational experience."

Barbara Raths '96 of Portland challenged Maine Democrats to turn their anger over Bush administration policies into action as she was elected state party chairwoman without challenge Sunday. ''Our work is not done,'' Raths said after taking the party's gavel from two-term chairwoman Gwethalyn Phillips. Raths will serve through 2004. A rhetoric major at Bates, Raths is a former executive director of the party who has twice led its coordinated campaign to elect Democrats to national and state offices. Raths said she was exhausted after the Nov. 5 balloting and ''went into hibernation'' to get away from politics. ''I found out very quickly I couldn't sleep very soundly,'' Raths told state committee members, adding that she was stirred by her strong reaction to White House policies on taxes, Iraq and other issues.

This year's opening of an outreach center and adoption of a values-education program show that Cripple Creek, Colorado, is bent on reclaiming its identity. The Aspen Mine Center houses nearly 20 social service agencies in the former Aspen Casino Mine, where an Internet café in the former bar gives clients a sense of anonymity. "Never did a casino fall so far from heaven and land in one piece," said Christopher Briggs-Hale '84, Cresson Elementary School principal. After much community soul-searching, the school district adopted Community of Caring, a program founded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation to teach children about values and good behavior. A stabbing at the junior high school in 1996 was their "wake-up call," Briggs-Hale said.

Amy Radke, a crew team member at Buffalo's City Honors School and a Salvation Army volunteer, visited nearly 20 schools before visiting Bates. Until then, having seen no schools that really grabbed her, she had been unsure if early decision was for her. But something about Bates clicked with Radke, and she knew she'd be making the right choice to apply early there. Students like Radke, who apply early decision because they're convinced they've found their "dream school," are increasingly outnumbered by those who use early decision to ensure a place for themselves at a school — any school. That's one reason such colleges as Yale, Stanford and a few smaller schools have decided to drop their early decision programs in favor of a nonbinding "early action" option.

He forced the opposing shooter into an errant 3-point shot. He jumped, nearly out of his socks, to grab a defensive rebound. He went to the foul line twice to sink three out of four free throws. Not a bad minute for Angelo Salvaggio '03, especially as it came in the last minute of Bates' victory over the University of Maine-Fort Kent, 80-69. During the five years since Maine basketball fans flocked to watch him and a dominant Cheverus High team play, Salvaggio went to the University of North Florida as one of Coach Sidney Green's prized recruits, left when Green left and applied to Bates. Tuesday he starred in his own welcoming party, scoring 36 points as Bates beat the University of Southern Maine, 110-77. "This is a great team," said Salvaggio.

Randy Bumps '95 of Minot has been named state director to oversee constituent services and operations at all six of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins' offices in Maine. Bumps, a Maine native and political science major at Bates, previously served as Collins' Augusta state office representative. Most recently, he worked as deputy manager of Collins' successful re-election campaign and finished his third term as a state representative from House District 106. Previously Bumps worked as U.S. Sen. William Cohen's state office representative in Lewiston covering Androscoggin, Oxford, and Franklin counties. Bumps will have headquarters in Collins' Lewiston office, at 11 Lisbon St.

Steve Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, says that national publicity about Lewiston and its Somali residents overlooks a critical fact: "Lewiston people have shown themselves to be some of the gutsiest people around," he says. "Most of them are absolutely committed to making this work out." At Lewiston High School, with more than 150 Somali students, Wessler's center has encouraged white teens and their African classmates to explore their cultural differences. "In one workshop at Bates College, 40 students paired off for a day — a Lewiston-born student with a Somali student — to interview one another about their heritage, ethnicity, religions and families," he says. "There's been a tempest recently in the public sphere, but these students, white and Somali, have clearly been trying to figure out together how to make this work."

At the 2002 Earth Summit, the world's richest nations committed to halve poverty by 2007, eradicate hunger, reduce under-age-5 mortality by two-thirds, and enroll all school-age children in school. These goals remain unattained while 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day and the income of the three richest U.S. citizens exceeds the combined economic output of the least developed nations. Meanwhile, uneven development is implicated in desertification, failing fish stocks and rapidly disappearing wildlife species. In light of our means, we have done the least of all developed nations to address these issues. U.S. foreign aid, relative to the percentage of gross domestic product, is the lowest in the industrialized world. — David L. Carr '93 (Carr is a postdoctoral fellow at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill)

Though few students can afford to visit college campuses out of state, some minority students in California recently saw colleges back East firsthand through a new wave of multicultural recruiting programs. Smaller colleges like Bates use such programs to bring students to campus, introduce them to student life and let them attend classes. And because many small private liberal arts colleges are in the Northeast, college officials rely on outreach programs to expose students to communities outside of their own. Bates enrolled 50 new students just this year through two multicultural programs, said Dia Harris, director of multicultural recruitment. "Being on the West Coast, students would have difficulty finding time to visit our campus," Harris said. "We can show them what it’s like to spend a day in the life of a Bates College student."

When tiny wasps go courting, they get some help from plants they live in. They apparently coax the plants to change their chemistry, suggests a new study by a team including John Tooker '92, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. All winter, gall wasp larvae inhabit the fallen stems of certain Illinois prairie plants. When spring arrives, males hatch first and locate hidden females in the dead plant. Tooker, his advisor and colleagues determined that the larvae's presence affects the chemical composition of the plant's aroma, and males follow odors altered by the presence of females. The work adds an intriguing twist to our understanding of the complex interactions between plants and insects.

They are stronger and more skilled, but year-round commitment to a single sport and far-flung travel for more and better competition are isolating our best high-school athletes from their communities and changing the all-around experience that has been at the heart of American sports for generations. The trend is driven in part by the advantage that specialized athletes are perceived to have in applying for college. Even nonscholarship Ivy League and Division III schools are encouraging the trend toward specialization. "Despite support for the notion of the three-sport athlete, many colleges aren't looking for the well-rounded student anymore, but the well-rounded class," says Dan Doyle '72, author of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting. "That means X number of male soccer players, X number of female softball players, etc."

The reliability of witnesses in criminal investigations is increasingly being questioned in the light of a wave of DNA-based exonerations and of witness tips, such as the stories of the white van in the Montgomery County sniper killings, that have proven wrong. Yet few Maryland police departments have changed procedures, saying they already take precautions to ensure witness credibility. Nor does Maryland's judicial system reflect current thinking about witness reliability. "Jurors believe eyewitness accuracy is tied strongly to confidence," said Amy L. Bradfield, an assistant professor of psychology at Bates who has written extensively on misidentification. "It turns out there is a small relationship between confidence and accuracy. You can have this really confident, compelling witness who can also be wrong."

For so long, the dream sustained Sherwa Musse. ''I was just thinking, I'm going to have a better life when I move to America,'' says Musse, who fled war-torn Somalia a decade ago and is one of more than 1,000 Somalis to settle in Lewiston. But dreams have a way of succumbing to reality in this blue-collar town of 36,000. During eight months in Lewiston, Musse has been taunted with slurs and told to go back to his country. Then, last month, Lewiston's mayor asked Somali leaders to discourage friends and family from moving here. Yet the number of Somalis pales compared to previous immigrant influxes, says James Leamon '55, professor emeritus of history at Bates. ''You've got to remember that Lewiston's economy is ... not a booming economy, that these people who are coming in are refugees,'' Leamon says.

It took five days for Sean Atkins '03 to understand what he had done. Five days of friends and strangers seeking him out on the Bates campus to shake his hand and offer smiles of congratulations. Five days of reading e-mails and answering his phone. On the night of the fifth day, Atkins sat with several close friends, TV tuned to Thursday's Cincinnati-Louisville game. Halftime arrived and there it was, as promised: a segment on ESPN's Hidden Video showing Atkins running for touchdown after touchdown in Bates' big 48-28 win over rival Bowdoin last Saturday. Seven touchdowns scored, 302 yards gained. "That's when it sunk in," said Atkins. "Seeing it on ESPN."

Senior tailback Sean Atkins (New York, N.Y.) led Bates to its second Colby-Bates-Bowdoin title in four years with a 48-28 win over Bowdoin on Nov. 2. Atkins set single-game school records for yards rushing (302), touchdowns (seven), and points (42). His seven touchdowns, one shy of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Div. III record, set a new mark in New England Small College Athletic Conference play. Atkins, who was named Eastern College Athletic Conference player of the week and NESCAC offensive player of the week for the fourth time in his career, was awarded the Div. III Coca-Cola Gold Helmet for the week of Nov. 2-8. (Editor's Note: Hidden Video showed Atkins in action at halftime during the Nov. 7 Cincinnati-Louisville game.)

Ben Cline '94 of Rockbridge County became the youngest member of the General Assembly Tuesday by winning a special election for the 24th District House of Delegates seat, left empty by the resignation of Vance Wilkins, R-Amherst, following allegations of sexual misconduct. Cline, 30, a former chief of staff for Rep. Bob Goodlatte '75, R-Roanoke, defeated Democrat Mimi Elrod. The race had a "small world" quality to it from the outset: Elrod is the widow of former Washington and Lee University President John Elrod and she directs the Summer Scholars program at the school. Cline's father is a professor at the school and his mother works in the university's news office.

The humble birth home of Benjamin Mays '20 will make a 15-mile journey Thursday from a rural farm to downtown Greenwood, S.C. In recent years, the simple wooden building in Epworth was used as a hay barn. A coalition led by the Palmetto Conservation Foundation will move and preserve the home. "The rehabilitation of the Mays birthplace will be a benchmark for the preservation of African-American sites across the state," said U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., in a pamphlet describing the project. The son of former slaves, Mays was president of Morehouse College from 1940 through 1967, was an ardent champion of civil rights, and served as both mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. and adviser to presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

A huge "Vote!" banner hanging in a student union is just one example of the effort expended on Maine college campuses this fall to get students out to vote today. Statistics nationwide show that fewer 18- to 24-year-olds vote than do people in other age groups. So in Maine, student volunteers and political groups have been working feverishly in the past weeks to persuade college students their votes are needed. Bates College in Lewiston has registered students to vote, educated them about the issues in the races, and lined up rides to the polls. Environmental concerns — such as global warming — are key issues among students on the Bates and Bowdoin campuses.

"This is largely being a protest vote, in my view. It's to register frustration of Turkish voters, frustration with lack of leadership among the mainstream political parties . . . [as well as] a general sense of dissatisfaction with leadership we have, especially in terms of dealing with corruption."
— Asla Aydintasbas '93, a columnist for the Turkish newspaper Sabah and an adjunct fellow at the Western Policy Center, speaking with NewsHour's Gwen Ifill the night after an Islamic-based party, the AKP, won an upset victory in Turkish elections.

"The people who are in college now, at least at Bates, are young folks who were born in the early '80s, so Edmund Muskie is really history to them. We try to bring students into the archives for exercises in working with primary sources, and in so doing they do learn about not only Ed Muskie's career but also about the times, the politics in which he operated . . . [But] I'm a little unsettled when there's an easy dismissal of politics as 'just' politics."
— Chris Beam, archivist at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates, responding to an interviewer's question about Muskie's relevance to young people

Bates College inaugurated Elaine Tuttle Hansen yesterday as its seventh president. Hansen, who began her duties at the liberal arts college in Lewiston on July 1, had most recently served as provost at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Addressing more than 1,400 inauguration guests, Hansen said the value of a college education is well-understood in terms of increased lifetime income but less well-recognized for its social and civic value. Hansen, the first female president of Bates, earned a bachelor's degree at Mount Holyoke College, a master's at the University of Minnesota, and a doctorate at the University of Washington.

Bates Professor of Economics Anne Williams has one of the world’s largest collections of jigsaw puzzles — about 8,000 puzzles that she has been collecting for about 25 years. Today, she shows Martha several favorites and discusses jigsaw puzzle history. Early puzzles were teaching tools for children. After the Civil War, puzzles were made to help preschoolers recognize important people, patterns and colors, and to boost problem-solving skills. Puzzles for adults appeared around 1908. Puzzle makers typically didn’t put the picture on the cover for adults’ puzzles before 1940. The world's most difficult puzzle is considered to be "Convergence," published by Springbok Editions in 1964, whose 340 pieces constitute an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock.

Tensions have been high in Lewiston as the world has examined this city in the wake of Mayor Larry Raymond's open letter asking the Somali community to slow their migration north. Although Raymond has received support within the community, the view from outside has been intensely critical. John Jenkins '74, who was Lewiston’s only black mayor and is a former state senator, says that criticizing the city for its handling of Somali immigrants is undeserved. He says that tensions aroused by the trading of letters between Raymond and Somali elders has overshadowed 18 months of efforts to welcome Somalis to the area. Needed now is a “lowering of the rhetoric,” says political historian Douglas Hodgkin, a professor emeritus at Bates. Historian James Leamon, another Bates professor emeritus, adds that tension stirred by immigration is not new to Lewiston. The Irish who began arriving in the 1850s, for example, “were met with a good deal of antagonism,” he says.

The piano crosses lines of private and public life. That's something you can show in movies, and you can show it in characters who go from public careers as musicians to working out the disasters of their private lives. With Five Easy Pieces and Shoot the Piano Player, there's a tradition of characters who have a public life in music and then cut themselves off, and yet the piano is still there for them. — James Parakilas, professor of performing arts at Bates and co-author of Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano (Yale University Press, 2002), one of several scholars who responded to the Chronicle's question about the popularity of the piano in movies.

Deborah Hansen De Haro '86 never expected to be the owner of two of the hottest Spanish restaurants in Massachusetts. But after she and her husband, Julio, left the business world, De Haro took her affection for the culinary and made it a career. "Cooking has always been my passion, ever since I was little," De Haro says. She met Julio in Madrid while earning a degree in Spanish and Latin American literature, and they returned to that city in 1992 to open the restaurant Cornucopia. Back in the States since 1997, the couple now owns Taberna de Haro, in Brookline, and Azafran, an eatery in Winchester specializing in the Spanish rice dish called paella.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has handed Maine $10 million to launch sweeping reforms throughout the state's high schools. Colleen Quint '85, executive director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute, said the first step will be to choose 12 schools that are willing to make some sweeping changes and show community support for reform. "We're talking pretty big picture stuff here," Quint said. "It's not nibbling around the edges." The Mitchell Institute will manage the fund with help from a variety of other Maine groups.

Kenneth Spalding '73 of Wayne has joined the staff of the grassroots conservation organization RESTORE: The North Woods, a leading environment force in Maine for a decade. As RESTORE's Maine woods project coordinator, Spalding will work with citizens, businesses and environmental organizations to build support for the proposed Maine Woods National Park and Preserve. He has been director of the Maine Conservation Corps for the past 16 years, and previously worked in the Maine Department of Conservation. During the 1970s, Spalding helped manage a successful citizen campaign to establish the Bigelow Preserve near Flagstaff Lake.

Name: Carroll "Chip" Ford '94, 30 Employer: Nantucket Nectars, a juice company based in Cambridge. What do you do? I go through the process of presenting and developing the drinks. I take a product idea from concept to reality. Describe the process of developing a new drink: I work with the marketing department. They give me guidelines for a drink idea, and I come up with several concepts. . . . Finally, as a group, we narrow that to one or two that we like. What is your favorite flavor? Cranberry orange papaya. It was my first creation.

Each wooden spoon that Dan Dustin '68 makes begins with a walk in the woods. The master craftsman starts by making a cut out of a tree where the limb meets the trunk. Spoon making, Dustin-style, is far from whittling. A lifelong resident of Contoocook, N.H., Dustin counts close to 30 years as a spoon maker. Dustin, 55, whose work has been exhibited at New York's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, says that historically utensils made from pewter and silver have been more valued than wooden ones. He believes he is helping change that. People value his spoons. "They not only collect them," he says, "but they travel with their favorite."

Lewiston residents are getting to know their new neighbors — some 1,200 refugees from the war-ravaged African nation of Somalia. Lewiston is a predominantly white city about 25 miles southwest of Maine's capital. "That a group from Africa would suddenly show up at our doorstep is really a surprise," said Douglas Hodgkin, political science professor emeritus at Bates College. Most Somalis in Lewiston are still grappling to find a job, and many admit Maine's generous benefits are part of what attracted them to the area. However, Maine's generosity has caused Lewiston's welfare costs to double, and some longtime residents are infuriated. Nonetheless, city officials and many of the immigrants themselves say that for the most part, they have been welcomed.

Drew Dedo '78, a partner at the Philadelphia law firm Rawle & Henderson, relishes covering 60 miles or more — by bike. A champion rider in his Bates days, Dedo had to fight his way back from injuries caused by a hit-and-run driver during his third year of law school. "I was hurt about as badly as you can be hurt and still stay alive," he said. "Because of my endurance sports background, I undertook rehab like I was training for a national caliber event," added Dedo, who was also an alpine skier for Bates. While his accident ended his days on the ski slopes, he was back on the bike within three years. Now Dedo sometimes puts in nearly 200 miles a week.

A few months ago there was a fact-gathering meeting at the Dyer Library in Saco. The gentleman gathering the information about the library asked for some of Saco's background. The library's executive director asked Horace Wood '43, a member of the Dyer Library Association Trustees, to provide some history, for Wood knows more about it than most of the natives. Since this native of Milton, Mass., moved to Saco after retirement, he has led the effort to create the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge there and served on the City Council, the York County Comprehensive Plan Committee and the Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission. You might say Woody is the champion for all that needs fixing.

Gov. Howard Dean's longest-serving and arguably most trusted political aide has left state government to run Dean's presidential campaign. Kate O'Connor '86, who described herself as the "governor's political director" in last month's New Republic magazine profile of Dean, said the campaign was doing better than originally projected and a larger staff was needed to handle the growing work. She will leave her $70,000-a-year job as the Dean administration's secretary of civil and military affairs and her position as chair of Vermont's Terrorism Task Force to set up Dean's national campaign headquarters in Burlington. "We're ahead of where we thought we'd be," she said.

As lakefront property prices rise, concern is growing that Maine's lakes will become so polluted and ringed with homes that they'll stop drawing tourists. That would reduce an estimated $1.2 billion spent by vacationers who use the state's thousands of lakes for recreation. Now, a non-profit group brings a novel approach to protecting the lakes: getting kids involved. By taking its message to youths, the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute hopes to cultivate a generation of stewards who will look after the lakes years in the future. "We are trying to instill a sense of wonder in the students about the lakes," said Shippen Bright '78, who founded the institution three years ago in Nobleboro. "Education is key. It changes perceptions."

Diogenes Alex Diaz and Miguel Tavarez joined the Adelante Youth Center in Lawrence, Mass., because scholarships from the center allowed them to attend a private high school of their choice. Now, as both 18-year-olds prepare for college, they credit the center for helping them focus on their future. They are among the first youths to graduate from Adelante — Spanish for ''moving forward'' — and start college this fall. Adelante's School Success Program offers 15 eighth-graders scholarships to attend local private high schools, said Adelante's executive director, Chris Coleman-Plourde '96. The scholarships go to students with exceptional academic and leadership skills, as well as financial need. "The goal is we're developing Lawrence's future leaders,'' Coleman-Plourde said.

If you think telemarketers are rude interrupting your dinner with credit-card and long-distance pitches, consider this: they don't even let the dead rest. About 17 million U.S. households received at least one telemarketing or direct-mail pitch for a deceased household member in the last six months, according to a new survey by Address Guardian, a company that's compiling a "suppression list" of dead people to give marketing firms. "Direct marketers are making a big mistake in ignoring this problem," said President Jim Veilleux '80 of Charlotte, N.C. "They're causing a tremendous amount of pain in reminding people of their loss in the rudest possible way."

Three art museums in and around Boston are having their strongest exhibitions of the year so far: Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, with a smorgasbord of pre-to-post-Pop work; Harvard University's Sackler Museum, displaying Chinese tomb sculpture; and in Portland, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the Maine College of Art, where a survey of work by maverick American artist and Bates College lecturer William Pope.L has opened. Eating, emptiness, childhood, pleasure and their opposites are the active ingredients in the art of Pope.L, the subject of an unorthodox survey titled "eRacism." An underground presence in the art world since the 1970s, Pope.L is best-known as a performance artist but works in various media. Several of them figure in this gutsy, stimulating exhibition that combines autobiography, political anger and absurdist humor.

As a senior at Bates College, Sawler won Division III championships in the hammer throw and the 35-pound weight throw. His winning hammer throw (188 feet, 10 inches) was 7 feet, 6 inches better than the nearest competitor's. He went undefeated in those events in 2001-2002.

In November, as both parties struggle for control of Congress, every seat will count, making close races like the one in Maine's 2nd Congressional District critical. Both candidates present powerful, unusual narratives, making party strategists cautious about predicting a winner. Democrat Mike Michaud is a mill worker, union member and abortion opponent who has been a state legislator since 1980. The relatively unknown Republican, Kevin Raye '83, is an abortion rights supporter and veteran aide to Senator Olympia J. Snowe. He is running in part on his Washington know-how. "My experience under Snowe will allow me to hit the ground running," he says.

A surprise first-place finish in a battle of the bands at Con-Val High School in Peterborough last year convinced a fledgling rock group of four teenage friends, unsure if they were any good, that they should really stay together and continue making music. They had played together for only the second time at the contest, but their decision to forge ahead led to the birth of a rock band called Welcome to Florida. The quartet has three CDs to its credit already — and, explains drummer J.Z. MacMartin '06, songwriters Duncan Pelletier and Wes Chisholm "turn out songs so fast we have material to record another CD right now."

In reviewing Downhome Sophisticate, a recent album by blues singer Corey Harris '91, Fresh Air's critic Miles praises the chemistry between Harris and his band, the 5x5. "The 5x5 band unifies the many modes Harris hears for his music, including calypso, reggae and West African soukous," Miles says. "Harris writes wry dance tunes, reflections on proud or venal gals, and what might be called amiable tales of estrangement from society — but the sturdy melodies and the nonstop momentum of the 5x5 band are what makes Downhome Sophisticate stick fast."

Jyotika Vazirani '91 did not follow an obvious path to her position as an HIV research nurse. After graduation, Vazirani went to work as a farmer's apprentice in rural Maine. A visit to the nurse practitioners at a local clinic for what she thought was a tick bite (it wasn't) inspired Vazirani to enroll in nursing school, and a course on caring for HIV patients convinced her that the virus was a compelling career challenge. In her current role at the Veterans' Administration Medical Center, Vazirani recruits and follows patients for clinical studies. "The first year was really hard," she says. But now, "I just try to keep it all in perspective."

The creature could resemble a goat, a gazelle, an ox or a buffalo. Bits of its fantastically shaped horns are considered a sure-fire cure for snakebite in Cambodia. No scientist has ever seen one, dead or alive. The khting vor remains a cipher, barely studied, never photographed. It is possibly the rarest large mammal in the world, known through about two dozen sets of horns scattered in museums from Dresden, Germany, to Lawrence, Kan. And according to Richard A. Melville '54, a 69-year-old resident of Bristol, Maine, the khting vor belongs in other exclusive company — right beside Sasquatch, the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster.

William Pope.L's laboratory of dissolving food sits in the basement of a Lewiston triple-decker. He has tacked bologna slices to one wall and another features a U.S. map made from hot dogs. Pope.L, who teaches at Bates College, has also swallowed and regurgitated newspaper, crawled over streets and toured New York City wearing an 8-foot cardboard phallus. You are not supposed to eat newspaper nor crawl on New York's streets, and if you aim to be one of the most important black performance artists you are not supposed to live in one of America's whitest states. But these contradictions go into what Pope.L calls "the bundle," the seemingly endless angles that drive a single creation, as illustrated by "eRacism," his first career retrospective, which opened at Portland's Institute of Contemporary Art in July.

Ben Cline '94 could become the Virginia General Assembly's youngest member if he wins election to the House of Delegates. The 30-year-old Rockbridge County resident said he will seek the GOP nomination for the House seat vacated Aug. 15 by retiring veteran Del. Vance Wilkins, R-Amherst County. "Public service has been an interest of mine since I was growing up in Rockbridge," said Cline, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte '75, R-Roanoke. Cline, who has worked for Goodlatte since graduating from Bates College, said Goodlatte is supporting his bid for the House seat.

In a year often characterized by fear and greed, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes '65 is terrifically optimistic about the moral potential of the class of 2002. They are "a generation of young people who as never before in modern times are prepared to lead in the search for noble purpose, the truly good life, if we are prepared to help them do so," the 60-year-old veteran Harvard University minister writes in his new book, The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need. "What has impressed me is their moral curiosity, their desire to know, to be, and to do good," he writes.

Maine is attractive to white supremacist organizations seeking members because it has a rural character and is the whitest state in the nation, said Steve Hochstadt, a Bates College history professor and board member of Maine's Holocaust Human Rights Center. In July, Kennebunk residents found leaflets on their cars promoting membership in the West Virginia-based National Alliance, a leading white-supremacy group. The leaflets prompted residents to complain to police. "Maine is also one of the most liberal states, and these groups so far haven't gotten anywhere in Maine," Hochstadt said.

While many students say they want to attend college, fewer take the concrete steps to make it happen. That finding was one of several barriers to postsecondary education in Maine cited in a study by the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute. The institute, which awards scholarships to Maine students, hopes the findings will help close the gap between the state's promising high school graduation rate and the low percentage of residents with college degrees. "Money, family experience, community support, academic track — and even geography — all impact a student's ability to go on to college," said Colleen Quint '85, the institute's executive director.

Dr. Nancy Cummings '81, a highly regarded orthopedic surgeon, joined the staff of Franklin Orthopedics and Franklin Memorial Hospital on July 15. Cummings was chief resident in orthopedic surgery at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, has been an orthopedic surgeon at hospitals in New York and Washington states, and served as team physician for the Boston Red Sox. She most recently served at the Center for Bone and Joint Surgery in Port Angeles, Wash. Cummings received her B.A. in biology from Bates and was a member of the Bates Board of Trustees from 1994-1999. "Now the time is right for my family to move to Maine," said Cummings.

The national sense of community that followed September 11 has grown legs. Applications to the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps are soaring, while interest in government service at all levels continues to rise. But long before last September, people like Karen Hastie Williams '66 were showing the way. With the expertise honed during an impressive career as a Washington, D.C., attorney, Williams has contributed in many ways. Whether advising government, fostering minority business leaders or working with nonprofits, Williams is perennially ready to be part of the solution. "Being the first in anything is not worthwhile if you don't open doors for others," she says.

let the world go
let it go out of your hand like a ball thrown like a bird flying
you'll be surprised to see it always turning like a musician always
     returning like God to admire man
you'll be amazed by flying festivals, dragons will be like
     grammarians by comparison,
you'll be surprised to see how large the world is what a spinning
     concert singing to you it is.

From "let the world go," a poem by John Tagliabue reproduced by the Providence Journal in a regular space devoted to poetry selected by Tom Chandler, Rhode Island's poet laureate. Author of more than 1,500 poems, Tagliabue taught at Bates from 1953 until 1989.

The College Board's vote yesterday to revamp the SAT I added a writing section, additional reading and higher-level math problems to the nation's most widely used college admissions test. Experts called the latest changes to the SAT I far more significant than the previous changes, in 1994, though some critics contended that they do not address the SAT's core problems. "Do we have a system of standardized testing that is uniformly predictive of performance in college?" asked Bill Hiss '66, Bates vice president for external and alumni affairs, who was instrumental in the school's 1984 decision to drop the SAT entrance requirement. "I don't think the College Board exams have proven this to date."

Philip Marlowe, private detective, is one of the most astonishingly enduring characters in American fiction. A group of authors are going out of their way to promote a new edition of the major works of Marlowe's creator, Raymond Chandler. They include Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Russo, Robert B. Parker and Elizabeth Strout '77, a novelist. What interested Strout, who spoke during a Chandler festival in New York, was Chandler's voice, she said. "The plot doesn't matter so much; the atmosphere and the voice draws you in . . . There's something solitary and rootless about Marlowe, but Chandler makes it a world I want to be in — headed for a rented room with some whiskey and a smoke."

When it comes to testing student readiness for college, writing has long taken a back seat to filling in bubbles. But writing is finally coming to the SAT, as an overhaul of the test effective in 2005 will include an section designed to gauge a student's ability to construct an argument on the fly. Although many educators applaud the change, others reject any standardized testing as an entry requirement. "Why are more tests the right step?" asks William Hiss '66, vice president for external and alumni affairs and a former dean of admissions at Bates College, which does not require the SAT. "The test simply does not reflect the academic promise of a significant minority of students."

When Tom Puglise '40 graduated from Stratford High School in 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, Lou Gehrig won the American League batting title and the seeds of war were being sown in Europe. Although presidents,baseball stars and wars have come and gone in the intervening span of nearly seven decades, the high school's one constant has been Puglise. "I lasted through 10 principals and seven superintendents of schools, and I have to tell you most of them are dead and I am still here," Puglise said last week. After 68 years as a student, teacher, coach and, most recently, media specialist, Puglise, 85 has finally said goodbye to Stratford High.

In her new book, Fair Game? The Use of Standardized Admissions Tests in Higher Education, Rebecca Zwick energetically defends the SAT and similar exams. Zwick mentions the case of Bates, which abandoned the SAT entry requirement years ago, but hers is an incomplete and skewed account. Zwick quotes William Hiss, former dean of admissions, in a 1993 interview in which he suggests that Bates's experience probably couldn't be duplicated at large public universities. But Zwick neglects to mention that Hiss has since disavowed his caveats about Bates's lessons for such universities. "There are 20 different ways you can dramatically open up the system," he said in 1998, "and if you really want to, you'll figure out a way."

As Tess Nacelewicz explained in her June 2 article, service learning benefits students in myriad ways. I suggest that service learning may attain its maximum reciprocal benefit at the college level. Under retired President Don Harward, Bates College has made a substantial commitment to service learning. In the year ending May 2001, Bates students had participated in 53,547 hours of service in the community, and we work with nearly 150 agencies and institutions. In May 2002, college trustees dedicated the Harward Center for Community Partnerships with a $1.75 million initial endowment to support college-community projects. — From a letter to the editor by Bates' Bryan McNulty, director of the Office of College Relations

A beetle with a voracious appetite for purple loosestrife seems to be doing its job, said scientists who assessed the bug's usefulness for controlling the plant at the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area. The beetle's ability to defoliate loosestrife could prove critical to the survival of other plants and natural habitat at the preserve. "There's no easy way to get rid of these plants," said Judy Marden, who manages the preserve. "We're very lucky because if it were to get into the rest of the preserve, it would take over." "We're encouraged because the purple loosestrife has not spread beyond this stand," said Nancy Sferra, of the Nature Conservancy. If the experiment succeeds, it could lead to use of the beetles elsewhere in Maine.

"I thought he was so smooth," Vanessa Pino Lockel '98 told renowned documentary filmmaker Michael Apted in describing the early days of her relationship with her husband Chris Lockel. "He thought he was getting lucky, but I lived with my mother - he wasn't getting anything." The Lockels are one of nine couples Apted profiled for Married in America, his examination of peoples' feelings and beliefs about their marriages. Chris is applying to law school while Vanessa finishes a master's in public administration, and they eventually plan to leave New York City for the suburbs to start a family.

Elizabeth Currie's self-described indecisive personality doesn`t extend to the tennis court. Currie '06 almost didn't get a chance to play for Portland's Waynflete School this season due to a back injury. But she recovered enough to play and her love for the game sustained her. "The team depended on her not only for her great play but for her leadership," Coach Jeff Madore said. Currie made it to the semifinals of the state singles tournament for the second consecutive year. An honor-roll student at Waynflete, Currie was also a captain on the field hockey team last fall.

Since February 2001, an estimated 1,000 Somali refugees have moved to virtually all-white Lewiston. Most of Lewiston has tried to make them feel welcome, yet recent news reports that as many as 1,000 more Somalis may be planning to move to Lewiston this summer have longtime community members anxious. "There is unease," says Douglas Hodgkin, a political science professor at Bates College. Hodgkin sees the influx as a double-edged sword. "People are arguing that there are positives in the sense of getting diversity and getting a better sense of the world. But the positives tend to be pretty abstract and nebulous. People can more readily think about the negatives in concrete terms -- tax bills and competition for what jobs there are."

He is the kind of person who just happens to know that basketball greats Dave Cowens and Dan Issel were both born on the same day (Oct. 25) in the same year (1948). "Al Cowens, the baseball player, was also born on October 25th," explains Dick Johnson '78, curator of the Sports Museum, his labor of love for more than two decades. Johnson can provide you with almost any fact regarding the history of sport in Boston -- and, chances are, he won't have to look it up. "He is the Soul Man of Boston sports," says Bill Galatis, the executive director of the Sports Museum.

Two days ago, Bob Price '88 began his American Legion coaching career. Eight months ago he began his Legion recruiting career and his Legion fundraising career -- all for Plymouth's Durand-Haley Post No. 66, which has not fielded a team for years. If Price's coaching matches his recruiting and fundraising, Durand-Haley's opponents had better be wary. Price, who holds the Bates College record for highest batting average in a season (.516 in 1988), graduated from Laconia High in 1984. Despite excellent high school success, he never played Legion baseball. "I was one of those foolish kids who thought it was important to work during the summer," he said. "I regret that now."

Would a junior in high school ever imagine that she'd be back at her alma mater almost 25 years later, talking to students about her job in the foreign service? That's what Ruth M. Hall '82, a U.S. consul in Frankfurt, Germany, did this week, speaking to students at Middletown High and Gaudent Middle schools. It's part of a State Department initiative that brings diplomats back to their hometowns to speak with youngsters. For her own part, Hall showed interest in the Foreign Service after a history professor at Bates College told her about it.

It is, perhaps, the most feared federal agency. But Peggy Irving '69 is doing her best to dispel the "Big Brother" reputation of the Internal Revenue Service, and show off its family-friendly side. Irving is the IRS's privacy advocate, the taxpayers' guardian. Her job is to make sure the massive monitoring agency doesn't collect unnecessary information about you or reveal personal data that should remain secure. The affable privacy maven has used her law degree and years of experience at the Department of Justice to make the IRS a leader in privacy protections.

Kate Eastman '82, a native of Burlington, Vt., was back home during the Vermont City Marathon last weekend and got held up by it when she went out for coffee. "It was inspiring to watch," said Eastman, who lives in Cumberland. But what inspires her more is "the kids" for whom she will run in the Sportshoe Center Maine Marathon Oct. 6. Eastman is executive director of the Jason Program, which provides care to critically and terminally ill children in Maine. "I am running the marathon for these kids," she says. Proceeds from the race will go to the Jason Program, so Eastman is trying to help raise the Maine Marathon's profile, as well as considering taking fund-raising pledges on her run.

The last bricks in a downtown brickyard were hauled off nearly four decades ago. Now the remnants of the plant are disappearing too. Archaeologists this week are scraping away foundations of the brick plant while searching for even earlier artifacts from Tucson's past. Hundreds of buildings across the city had their genesis in the brickyard, sited on land believed to have supported at least five civilizations dating back 4,000 years. The dig, sponsored by the city of Tucson, examined and mapped the remains of the Tucson Pressed Brick Co., said Michael W. Diehl '85 of Desert Archaeology Inc. At the site, built on clay-rich river deposits, workers turned clay into up to 170 tons of brick a day from 1894 until 1963.

David Chokachi (also known as David Al-Chokhachy '90) and his co-star, Yancy Butler, continue their fight for justice in the new TNT series Witchblade. Chokachi resumes his role from the original movie as Jake McCartey, a homicide detective and the partner of Sara Pezzini (Butler), the woman who wields the Witchblade. Witchblade is based on the comic book of the same name, about an ancient gauntlet so powerful it can battle Earth's darkest evil forces, and the woman destined to wear it. The series picks up where the movie left off. Chokachi spoke to Science Fiction Weekly about Witchblade, science fiction and keeping his shirt on.

Capt. William J. Prendergast IV '90 was one of 27 Army officers given the 2001 General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award at a Pentagon ceremony May 22. The annual award recognizes extraordinary leadership abilities and ideals embraced by General MacArthur. Criteria include the ability to motivate others, understand fellow soldiers, and inspire commitment, teamwork and esprit de corps. Prendergast, of Portland, Ore., represented the Oregon Army National Guard among award recipients, which include 13 active Army officers and seven each from the Army National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve. He was assigned as commander, Company D, 1st Battalion, 186th Infantry Regiment, when selected.

"I like to call my music 'diaspora rock,' " blues musician Corey Harris '91 tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. "I'm looking at my people who are black around the world and seeing what unites us musically, and trying to express that as a black American." From his early work in traditional acoustic blues, Harris has followed his muse from Maine to Mali and to the hip hop clubs of Washington, D.C. "Today's blues is hip hop," says the singer, whose new album is titled Downhome Sophisticate.

One of four GOP hopefuls for the open 2nd Congressional District seat, Kevin Raye '83 "has not promoted himself. He's that laid-back kind of nice guy who decided, 'Well, I've done this for a long time,' and . . . decided to try his own hand," said Douglas Hodgkin, a political science professor and Raye supporter who has known the candidate since he was a student at Bates. But now, after years of working for Sen. Olympia Snowe, Raye said it's his turn. "I am somebody who has always believed that one individual can make a difference," Raye said. "And when all is said and done, I want to have made a difference."

Dean of Admissions Wylie Mitchell discusses standardized testing on the morning show On the Line. Mitchell joins host Brian Lehrer and Rebecca Zwick, author of a new book about standardized testing and a professor of education at UC Santa Barbara. Mitchell outlines Bates' decision to drop its SAT requirement in the mid-1980s and explains that test scores haven't necessarily predicted student performance, saying "motivation, engagement and interest" may not be factors a test can measure. Daniel Schwager '93, now with the New York County district attorney's office, calls in to say that by keeping SAT scores optional, Bates engenders loyalty because it's "willing to look at you as a person."

Bates College is cheering on a track-and-field star who's getting national attention in the hammer throw. Jamie Sawler hasn't lost once this year, and will head out to Minnesota in a couple of weeks as a favorite to come in first. The Bates senior says you need strength and balance to excel in the hammer throw. The "hammer" isn't the kind you use to nail down shingles, but a 16-pound metal ball attached to a long metal handle. Throwers also need to be able to avoid getting dizzy, since they turn in tight circles to build up momentum for their throws.

Friends knew bits of Irving Isaacson '36's story - of his days as a spy in Europe - but no one really knew the whole thing. Now Isaacson has summoned his memories of World War II: his haphazard attachment to the Office of Strategic Services, his secret travel in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe and his romance with a Hungarian girl who had faced some of the war's worst horror. Those memories have merged in Isaacson's just-published autobiography, Memoirs of an Amateur Spy ["He is the Errol Flynn and Scarlet Pimpernel of spies, quite untouchable, who carries us with him on this lilting tale of adventure in Europe," says reviewer John Cole in this same issue of the Sun Journal.]

Dan Rice '73 can bring it - both as a pitcher and a stockpicker. The 50-year-old portfolio chief plays baseball in a men's senior league and says he logs around 100 innings a summer. Rice's fastball clocks in at about 100 miles an hour, but he fashions himself more a finesse than a power pitcher. Rice, who played ball at Bates and now manages the $187 million State Street Research Global Resources Fund, sees similarities between the summer game and stockpicking. "There are a lot of ups and downs," he says. "I have a coolish personality that doesn't get rattled."

Thirty-one years ago, I graduated from the Suffield Academy prep school, in Suffield, Conn. Recently Suffield wooed a bunch of allegedly wealthy alums with a presentation from the headmaster and the director of technology. And let me tell you, corporate America could learn by observing how Suffield has integrated computers into its curriculum and daily life. Under technology director Dean Ellerton, a member of the Bates Class of 1985 and a former chemistry teacher, Suffield has developed an altogether rational and reasonable approach to computing.

Jaime Sawler of Stratham, N.H., looks to be on track for his second national championship this year. Sawler, a senior at Bates College who won a NCAA Division 3 title in the 35-pound weight throw last winter, has been undefeated this spring in the hammer throw. Sawler has already won New England Small College Athletic Conference and New England Division 3 crowns this season in that event. At the New Englands, Sawler outthrew his nearest competitor by 4.5 feet. Sawler is the top-ranked hammer thrower nationally in Division 3 by more than three feet.

Site-specific performance is central to the art of Bates lecturer in theater William Pope.L, 47, whose endurance-test pieces draw equally from social ideas and personal biography. For The Great White Way, his performance in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, he plans to crawl 22 miles through Manhattan - from the foot of the Statue of Liberty to the Bronx, where his mother lives. Mr. Pope.L has described the piece as a symbolic gesture referring to immigrant history, the courage of the homeless and "the privilege of being a vertical person."

Kristen McLeod '95 was raised in Sanford, Maine, but lived in Boston for the last few years, where she was employed as a case manager for a local welfare-to-work program. Kristen arrived at the Montana location for the Public Broadcasting Service television series Frontier House on July 4th, 2001, and married Nate Brooks, her long-time fiance, in a lovely outdoor wedding. The reality of frontier life set in quickly after the wedding. Sanitation was primitive and cooking was frustrating. "It was also hard to have no place to escape," she says. Their cabin was very small, and the daily routine was monotonous, and she suffered greatly from isolation and lack of socializing.

Richard Nixon continues to haunt the United States from his grave. During the past five years the National Archives has released batches of Nixon's secretly recorded White House conversations. In all, almost 1,800 hours have been made public from the 3,700 hours of tape that were accumulated during the two and a half years the White House recording system was activated. According to Christopher Beam, a historian who worked on the tapes from 1978 to 1982 and is now archivist at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates, there are probably about 1,000 hours of conversation still to be released.

When Nazi soldiers herded Judith Isaacson '65 and her family onto trains headed for Auschwitz, she wasn't much older than students who arrived at the Civic Center for Tuesday's Civil Rights Team Conference. The annual conference, held for students by the Attorney General's Office, is meant to reduce bias-motivated harassment and violence in school. Originally from Hungary, a retired dean of students at Bates, Isaacson conducted a workshop during the conference, discussing her experience in the concentration camp and sharing excerpts from her book, Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor.

John Carrafa '76 settled into a quick breakfast recently at the Good Enough to Eat restaurant on the Upper West Side. Mr. Carrafa, who lives in the same building, once worked as a cook there. Now he is a choreographer who seems to be everywhere at once. Mr. Carrafa has two musicals on Broadway, is creating new choreography for "The Pajama Game," and will soon begin the Broadway-bound musical "Dance of the Vampires." He coaches actors for dance sequences in film, and is choreographing a revival of "A Little Night Music" at the Kennedy Center.

Episcopal High School girls lacrosse coach Alanna DeNapoli '01 had her doubts about the 2002 season after the first few weeks. The Knights dropped five straight matches to start the year, and it appeared as if Episcopal couldn't cut it in the Texas High School Lacrosse League. "We weren't playing very well in the beginning," said DeNapoli, a former player at Bates. But Episcopal's season turned around against Klein, with the Knights posting an 11-4 victory.

The bride wore white and carried a bouquet -- and a passport. It was Aug. 6, 2000, and Allison Hodgkins '91 was getting married on the Mount of Olives. There would be an Israeli checkpoint on her way, she remembered, so Hodgkins grabbed her American passport as she left home in her wedding gown. Sure enough, she was stopped, her papers were checked. The groom, George Rizkallah, a Palestinian then living in Ramallah, has no passport because officially he is "stateless." Although they didn't know it at the time, their wedding was a farewell party of sorts, the last big bash with their friends Arab and Jewish alike.

As companies struggle with an economic downturn and the effects of Sept. 11, they are seeking less costly ways to cull through the class of 2002 and find the best employees. At the same time, colleges are being more creative about getting new graduates together with businesses. Bates has banded together with other liberal arts schools to give employers a virtual look at their students. The consortium of about 25 schools has created an online job board that allows employers to post openings and students to post their resumes. "We're using electronic means creatively to enhance the networking and connection process," said A. Charles Kovacs, director of the Office of Career Services at Bates. "We and other schools might not be centrally conveniently located for you, so we will take the first step."

Green Independent Jonathan Carter said he expects to qualify for nearly $1 million in public financing for his Blaine House run. Carter said he plans to hold a news conference later in the week to announce his successful Clean Election drive. If his bid to win Clean Elections funding is successful, Carter would become the nation's first gubernatorial candidate to qualify for public campaign financing. Carter, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1992 and for governor in 1994, is likely to draw more liberal voters away from the Democrats' gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Rep. John Baldacci, said Bates College political science professor Douglas Hodgkin.

The Baku-Balakan highway in Azerbaijan is closed due to civil unrest. Heavy fog looms over India. A Hamas anniversary is coming up. You're a traveler about to venture into a post-Sept. 11 world where danger seems to lurk beyond every airport metal detector and customs checkpoint. You want information more current than the travel guides, more comprehensive than CNN, more practical than what you get from the State Department. Enter iJET, a start-up that provides access to detailed travel intelligence on 156 countries. - Jeremy Breningstall '97, Post correspondent

Wrapping up four years of scholarship packed with four years of community service, 22-year-old Jenny Blau harbors large expectations for her future. The Bates College senior knows she wants to continue the community health work she began as a student. Blau's achievements and vision are becoming commonplace on campuses across Maine and America. Town-gown barriers begin to fall, and students like Blau, a California native who works with Lewiston's Spanish-speaking population, embody the positive change.

Without Susan Gordon '83, the Kinney Azalea Gardens, in Kingston, R.I., would not be what they are today, full of Richard Jaynes' hybrid mountain laurel, lots of rhododendrons, a burgeoning viburnum collection and loads of native plant material to go along with the azaleas. An adjunct professor in plant science and landscape architecture at the University of Rhode Island, Gordon began working with garden founder Lorenzo Kinney when she was 16 and now runs these famous azalea gardens.

Pathetic! Poignant! Revolting! we proclaimed at the prospect of watching Paula Jones and Tonya Harding duke it out on "Celebrity Boxing." Then we tuned in by the millions. Some scholars believe we are drawn to such spectacles by the same impulses that led crowds to the coliseums of the Roman empire to watch gladiators fight. Gladiators were "socially dead," said Margaret Imber, a classics professor at Bates College. Often despised in polite society, the fighters lacked legal rights, she said. "Harding and Jones arguably are in a similar situation because they sought — despite their non-elite origins — to play on an elite stage" (Olympic skating for Harding, American presidential politics for Jones).

Jaime Sawler threw the equivalent of a heavy bathroom sink more than 60 feet to win a national title. The 22-year-old Bates College senior from Stratham, N.H., hurled a 35-pound ball 64 feet, 1.75 inches to win the title in the throw weight at last Friday's NCAA Division III indoor track and field championships at Ohio Northern University, in Ada, Ohio. The 35-pound weight, a ball with a handle attached, "threw me around for a little bit" when he first started four years ago, says Sawler.

Kyle Hildebrand hasn't always done things the traditional way. He's not your average student or your average athlete, and despite taking two years off between high school and college, the 24-year-old Bates senior has kept his direction. His destination, however, usually leads downhill. Hildebrand, captain of the Bates alpine skiing team, is a three-time All-American and one of 34 skiers competing in the NCAA National Collegiate Skiing Championships at Alyeska Resort in Anchorage, Alaska, through Saturday.

At a New York City Starbucks, Thomas Herman '93 mulled the excesses undermining the Internet marketing firm KPE. Example: an aquarium that costs $4,000 a month to maintain. Like fish tanks and foosball tables, Herman is a dot-com era icon. He and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman starred in Startup.com, a documentary chronicling the pair as they cooked up a scheme for paying parking tickets online, raised millions, then turned on each other as the business fell apart. Two years later, Herman, 31, and Tuzman, 30, are in business together again, with the Recognition Group, which advises troubled tech firms.